Searching for "New School" elements

[the Jester]

[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION]: Are you running the material as presented? It doesn't sound like it. Reading KotTW, it seems to me that you are supposed to present the encounters in a specific way, and in a specific order. If you are not doing so, I would qualify that as a major change. If you are not doing that, I would hesitate to call what you are doing "old school".

The presented material is where the situation starts. The changes are reactions to the pcs' actions, so the stuff that happened first in our case was because they waited for something to happen.

I consider the starting conditions just that- starting conditions. If the pcs elect to wander off and let the trolls do their thing, it's not like they wouldn't attack again until the pcs returned and investigated the warren.

Now, I don't consider this a major change in the module's contents so much in the style of running it. YMMV; I have never felt (f'rexample) that the "tactics" section of an encounter was binding material so much as advice. Likewise, I always consider an adventure's timeline subject to change based on pc actions.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It isn't about the adventure per se, so much as the intersection of the adventure and the running of it.

This is probably why I never fully bought into either old or new school methods. I've always been the type to watch out for the players, help them with their characters, provide some balance--because I was going to be a rat bastard DM once the adventure started.

Maybe this is from my formative years learning chess with my Dad, starting at age 6. He used to spot me his queen and both rooks--and then beat the snot out of me once the game started. I also recall many instances of, "Are you sure you want to do that?" But I don't recall any taking it back once I said I was. That sounds vaguely familiar, somehow.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The presented material is where the situation starts. The changes are reactions to the pcs' actions, so the stuff that happened first in our case was because they waited for something to happen.

I consider the starting conditions just that- starting conditions. If the pcs elect to wander off and let the trolls do their thing, it's not like they wouldn't attack again until the pcs returned and investigated the warren.

Now, I don't consider this a major change in the module's contents so much in the style of running it. YMMV; I have never felt (f'rexample) that the "tactics" section of an encounter was binding material so much as advice. Likewise, I always consider an adventure's timeline subject to change based on pc actions.

I see where you are coming from, but the presentation of the 4e modules (or the late 3e Delve Format modules) seems a lot less old-school friendly. Likewise, I have heard of people having difficulty changing 1e modules to work with 4e.

Obviously, you can ignore what is written in the module; I would consider this a "change on the fly", and it seems to me that you are doing a lot of changing on the fly. IOW, you are using the materials in the module, but you are not presenting the materials as written.

Rather as though I were to say I was playing 4e, complain about how the rules work, but not be using the actual rules. Except that you're not complaining, because not using the actual material-as-written is obviously superior to using almost any 4e module as written.


RC

 

[the Jester]

I see where you are coming from, but the presentation of the 4e modules (or the late 3e Delve Format modules) seems a lot less old-school friendly. Likewise, I have heard of people having difficulty changing 1e modules to work with 4e.

Obviously, you can ignore what is written in the module; I would consider this a "change on the fly", and it seems to me that you are doing a lot of changing on the fly. IOW, you are using the materials in the module, but you are not presenting the materials as written.

Hmm, I guess I would attribute the difference in our mileage on this at least partially to how craptacular the Delve format is for a real adventure. Well-intentioned, but... ugh.

To me what I am doing is no different than assuming a funny voice for the hermit in Keep on the Borderlands. I guess you'd say it's an elaboration on the material rather than a revision or rewrite of it.

Except that you're not complaining, because not using the actual material-as-written is obviously superior to using almost any 4e module as written.

Ha!

The truth is, 4e modules usually have a few cool bits of "run with it" advice in them, but it's kind of scattered away from where it would do a novice dm any good because of the two-book format. One of the main issues with the delve format, imho, is the moving of all the combat stuff away from most notes on roleplaying or other options for the encounter. Heck, Temple of Elemental Evil even has a guard room with notes on the personality of a random half-orc guard and how it might affect the encounter- that kind of stuff doesn't fit well in the current format.

 

[Ariosto]

There are multiple "new schools" and multiple "old schools".

Personally, the only "new schools" I recall back in 1979 were the "OFFICIAL®" school (typified by a new, AD&D-centric generation with such pressing concerns as whether female dwarves had beards) and the "slick system" school (typified by "partisans" of Chaosium's RuneQuest and MetaGaming's The Fantasy Trip, which I recall as more a matter of critics, while players were pretty omnivorous).

Those really were "schools" addressing the RPG hobby in general, although the one was immediately almost wholly a school within D&D and the other was rather anti-D&D.

They may still inform "new schools" in D&D -- see for instance folks who enthuse about "the universal D20 System mechanic" versus "a different rule for everything in old D&D" -- but they are not themselves very new.

An aesthetic school is not necessarily as ideologically rigid as, say, a political demagoguery with a checklist of party-line votes to see to what percent someone is One of Us.

Dungeons & Dragons from the start was a game of many modes and moods, from pleasure in a character's virtual pet or home in the imagined world to the challenge of competing in a tournament at Origins.

Looking at the cumulative effect over many expressions of "the way we play", the different distributions in different schools become more distinct.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Just to add to this different points of view thing:

Obviously, you can ignore what is written in the module; I would consider this a "change on the fly", and it seems to me that you are doing a lot of changing on the fly. IOW, you are using the materials in the module, but you are not presenting the materials as written.

Then how do you run your old-school dungeons? I semi-randomly grabbed a room description from ToEE; it's room 27. of the moathouse dungeon:

27. Recruits

This is the lair of six bugbears, who have recently been recruited by the New Master (room 35). If any lights are shown in the chamber to the north, these creatures sneak forth quietly to investigate, gaining surprise on 1-3 (1d6).

The bugbears know only that the Master is quartered somewhere to the north. Each has 12 gp. The leader (17 hp) wears a bracelet, which is actually a silver necklace (worth 450 gp) set with five gems of chrysoprase (four small, worth 50 gp each, and one of larger size worth 100 gp).

The "chamber to the north" is the only access to this room, so chance are that the Buggies are warned by lights, take initiative, and a fight will start.

A fight usually ended with the monster party slain, so the possible hint may not reach the players. Let's use moral rules.

The bugbears' basic morale score would be 63%, the first check would occur when two monsters are dead with an effective morale score of 38%. The result needed for surrender would thus be 89 on a d%. The second check with three bugbears dead uses an effective score of 18%, so the GM would have to roll a 69+ on d% for the monsters to surrender.

In other words, played as written the PCs will probably kill the monsters and take their stuff.

And if the PCs are unlucky, get clobbered, and flee? According to the rules (case 3.B.) the bugbears are 40% likely to pursue. If they catch the PCs, well there are nor hints in the adventure nor rules for the bugbears, so they would continue fighting and perhaps achieve a TPK.

According to this description it sounds like a very bland encounter, certainly not the stuff players are talking about for years to come. Haven't it always been the individual touches a GM adds to an adventure - with some exceptions like ToH - which make it a really enjoyable experience? Does it really make a difference whether I add stuff in ToEE or change/remove stuff like in KotTW?

I don't think so.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Then how do you run your old-school dungeons?

For one thing, I don't use the Delve Format.

I don't start with the assumption that the monsters are going to be located at exactly spots X, Y, and Z, no matter what the PCs do. Nor do I assume that the encounters will occur in a specific order, or at all, no matter what the PCs do. I certainly do not say, "Regardless of what the PCs do, the villain is encountered in this room. If the PCs take a long time, just assume that the villain does, too."

I assume that treasure is what it is, where it is. If the PCs don't look, it doesn't automatically follow them around. There is no such thing as a "treasure bundle".

Combat occurs in the game, but is not the focus of the game. Therefore, wiping the floor with a few kobolds shouldn't take 45+ minutes.

Challenges do not scale to the adventurers......this is a big one. The players determine what their PCs are going to do, allowing the players to set the challenge level. Nothing prevents the 1st level noobs from trying their luck on level 10. And if the 10th level lords stick around on level 1, that level doesn't suddenly become more challenging.

Etc., etc.

RC

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Some divergence here, RC. I was remarking on your line telling us: "IOW, you are using the materials in the module, but you are not presenting the materials as written."

Which is IMHO the hallmark of a good GM, regardless of system, edition, and school-adherence.

 

[Ariosto]

From how I understand the distinction, I think the above details are considered “New School.” Is this what everyone else understands, or have I misidentified anything?

Let me see:

On the first page, there’s about 7 column inches [3” wide columns] of introductory back story going back over a dozen centuries. At the back of the booklet, the a full page is devoted to the back story, going in more depth and detail.

I don't see how this distinguishes any "new school". It might be characteristic of a school with some sort of program related to the history of places, but even if I knew of one I can tell you that it is hardly exclusive to that school.

One presumes that a Dungeon Master prepares for publication such material as he or she expects to be interesting to a goodly portion of the audience. How much of that is "back story" may vary from article to article. A writer just doing a job may instead have a quota to fill.

Although the adventure locale exists basically because of the old, time-honored reason of “a wizard created it,” the premise for the party to explore the location is not open dungeon exploration. The party is sent, hired, to quest for multiple McGuffins. (At least it’s not a rod broken into seven parts

This is typical of tournaments. In a tournament, you don't even have the choice of not going to Place X, because there is nowhere else to go except out of the game!

Published scenarios more generally tend to offer some assumed context for the nature of the rest of the presentation. Some may offer more than one such 'hook', perhaps with examples of how to modify the default situation accordingly.

If the scenario is site-based rather than event-driven, it tends to be easy for the Referee to adjust the material to whatever circumstances may actually provide the impetus for player-characters' investigation.

There is indeed a "new school" that takes prescriptive setups as normative for all play. In this school, the old kind of structure referred to as, e.g., "the Blackmoor campaign" or "the Greyhawk campaign" is deprecated. The game is instead routinely structured on the expectation that the DM directs the players.

In other words, the relevant "new school" is defined by excluding an aspect of the game. The "old school" includes it in the mix.

An individual meal might be "vegetarian" in the sense of not including meat, but it does not follow that it was prepared by or for people committed to vegetarianism! A non-vegetarian can enjoy cereal for breakfast, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, and a pork pot roast for supper.

Explanation of the levels the adventure is designed for: the text gives direct warnings that lower level PCs are likely to be killed too easily; higher level PCs won’t find a proper challenge in the adventure. Warning about a good party balance.

There is nothing new about that. Ever hear of Dungeon Levels?

The encounters in the adventure are all designed to be appropriate challenges for the PCs. (There are no overwhelming encounters that should be avoided. In fact, few encounters *can* be avoided if the quest is to be completed – see below.)

Once again, it is necessary to point out that the characteristic of the related "new school" is an insistence that it should always be so. That "new school" is defined by its exclusion on principle of encounters that are "too hard" for a given group of characters to beat in combat.

I do not know of any "old school" that makes it incumbent on professed members to eschew, and disavow all enjoyment of, tournament scenarios (which would bar most early AD&D modules). There is plenty of room for various situations either in addition to a full-fledged campaign or even, for that matter, within it!

And that brings us to the map of the adventure, itself. The “dungeon,” (if we want to call it that), is pretty linear in layout – it’s not a sprawling environment conducive for wandering and exploration.

No "dungeon module" is likely to be very much like what was called in OD&D "a good dungeon". It may, however, serve as a modular part of such a dungeon, or of a greater campaign milieu.

Once again, we have the vegetarian crying, "Look! Look!" at the meat-eater who happens not to have a hamburger in hand at the moment. It is simply not the meat-eater whose ideology is defined by exclusion!

Now, if your ideal, if what you want most or all of the time, is to get ushered from room to room (or scene to scene) in sequence, then you may be a member of a "new school".

The text explains why the named boss opponents are in the adventure and guarding the McGuffin. Heck, even some of the non-boss enemies get names and explanations/motives: there’s a romantic couple, (a fighter and a sorceress), and a fallen knight, (known by at least one of the PCs). There’s also mention of how the non-humanoid monsters get care and food.

To what "new school" are such matters supposed to belong? What "school" demands that NPCs should be unreasonable, unmotivated, nameless and unprovided for? I do not know of it, unless it be one that takes to a radical extreme the 4e ethos that emphasizes "the encounter".

The final set-piece encounter for the whole adventure, (scheduled for only after the party has found the McGuffins), is dependent on how hard or easy the PCs have found the linear challenges. The text says, directly, that the final challenge can be omitted if the party had a hard time, or it can be scaled up if the party had an easy time with the other challenges.

Well, in that case I would think it unfair to include the outcome in tournament scoring.

Otherwise, there appears to me to be in the most prominent D&D "old school" no agreement that a DM cannot make such an adjustment. There are some individuals who would prefer never to have that done, but it does not seem to be a shibboleth for the whole affinity group.

When I think of prominent DMs of the 1970s, I think of nuanced advice for judges rather than rigid, all-or-nothing prescriptions.

On the other hand, to assert that a DM should make such adjustments continually would be to express a view clearly at odds with the "old school" ethos.

That is a corollary of the view that the DM should not continually be deciding for the players where they will go and what they will do. There is a mutual support between the two aspects.

It is because of lack of player choice that outcomes become the DM's responsibility. It is to give meaning to player choice that outcomes are left to depend on that plus luck of the dice.

 

[M.L. Martin]

There are multiple "new schools" and multiple "old schools".

A supporting witness to this fact showed up in a thread on RPG.net today:

My old school, which is represented in science fiction fanzines and apas starting around the summer of 1974 and in gaming-specific apas a few months later, includes very rules-minimal storytelling, world-building, individual, familial, and dynastic drama, ways of including characters' ability to persuade, intimidate, compel allegiance or dread, and other aspects of social and emotional interaction, and like that. Much of this is anathema in "old-school" design, but it's just as old a school, just a different one. And there are others, about as old, different from both.

I found it an interesting and valuable reminder that, despite the claims of some of the more strident OSR folks, that mode of play is not the only 'old school', or the One True Way To Play D&D As Intended by Gygax Himself.