Searching for "New School" elements

[Bluenose]

For me, the center of the "school argument" is over what the guy behind the screen is doing. Rather than introduce the positions myself, let's take a quote from the 4e DMG:

"When you start a campaign, you should have some idea of its end and how the characters will get there. Fundamentally, the story is what the characters do over the course of the campaign.
Keep that point in mind—the story is theirs, not yours... If the characters go in drastically unexpected directions, try to coax them back to the story you want your game to tell without railroading them." (Emphasis mine.)

This is what one might call "shame-faced" storytelling. The DM is telling the story - but has to remember it's the characters' story, not his! The DM should try to get the characters onto the story he wants to tell - but don't "railroad" them!

Paizo's Gamemastery Guide has the courage of its convictions:

"Storyteller: Weaving plots involving the characters and any number of nonplayer characters, leading dialogue, and unfurling a vast tapestry of ideas, stories, and adventure, the Game Master is a storyteller first and foremost. While the game is a collaborative narrative told from all sides of the table, the Game Master paves and maintains the road along which the adventurers walk." (Emphasis mine.)

It would have been a step too far to literally say that the characters should be "railroaded", but it's quite clear what this means.

On the other side, the 1e DMG:

"It is no exaggeration to state that the fantasy world builds itself, almost as if the milieu actually takes on a life and reality of its own. This is not to say that an occult power takes over. It is simply that the interaction of judge and players shapes the bare bones of the initial creation into something far larger... What this all boils down to is that once the campaign is set in motion, you will become more of a recorder of events, while the milieu seemingly charts its own course!" (Emphasis mine.)

The reader, naturally, will be able to tell which side I'm taking. But the main point I'm trying to make is that there is a real debate, over something fairly important to the hobby.

Under these definitions, a GM who gets a group together with the intention of playing G1-3 seems to be engaging in "New School" play. I do not find that a convincing argument. I'm not a fan of 'story-telling' GMs, but I'm not sure that it's a valid way to distinguish between old- and new-school gaming styles even if you're restricting the argument to just D&D. Note that plenty of modern games are far more inclined to suggest a play style recognisable from the 1e DMG.

 

[RedTonic]

I'm not sure you're reading what I actually wrote, RC, even though your response was really long. (I admit, I had to skim--I'm sitting in a lecture on non-profit fiduciary duties).

I don't believe the game style is attributable to the "age" or gaming generation of players. I think (?) you don't really buy that, either. I do think there are differences in styles--and obviously you see differences in styles as well.

Given that you're eyerolling at my response, I do think you're dismissing me out of hand because I appear to disagree with you. I may be wrong; I make no claims as to the accuracy of my internet telepathy. I think you're getting a little snarly at me for no real reason.

Note, I didn't say there's no difference between the editions. That's silly. We can sit down together and write really long lists of differences. But playstyle differences exist beyond those edition & game (!!!) differences and I think (entirely! but am willing to compromise to "mostly") independent of the editions.

 

[Doug McCrae]

That's an analogy. Insofar as it says anything substantive, it says the GM is not in charge of details.
...
I don't see this as even relevant to playstyle. That's just a description of the D&D genre.

Are there not many old schoolers today who thoroughly reject any terms, such as 'thespian' or 'playwright', that smack of story, even when it's just an analogy?

“You will acquire gold, magic items etc” seems new school to me. Old school would be, “You may acquire gold and magic items, but only thru smart play”. The view is that power-ups were contingent, but have become necessary.

I consider that a thoroughly old school statement. The new school says play balance, shared group goals, and "progress" is made in adventures. The old school says, screw that, the player character is all-important, and stuff happens.

But is it not frequently said that new school puts more emphasis on the player character? Builds, feats, magic items in the PHB, player-focused splatbooks, increased player entitlement, art with no backgrounds suggesting the game-world has been deprecated in favour of the PCs.

I think a better critique of my quote would have been to point out the places where Gary states that the PC is not all-important.

That's old school. The new school says a game should sound like a good fantasy story, which is something else entirely. The word play is the key. When GMs ask for help telling their story, my inner old schooler cringes. You don't tell the story, you play the story.

I agree that gamist play is, on the whole, more an old school thing, though 4e is very gamist. However Doug Green's article is all about making D&D less gamist and more like a fantasy novel. He wants D&D to do what rpgs like James Bond 007, WEG Star Wars and Feng Shui try to do – simulate fiction. It's a very interesting article and I talk a bit more about it here.

Old school. Since the monsters are going to be random and have a "real" existence, they need to be tailored in a reasonable way or they will slaughter the party.

Wouldn't an old schooler say, “And so what if they do? The players should've played smarter and avoided the encounter.” I see the old school approach to encounters as being status quo. Numbers and type of monsters encountered depend solely upon game-world factors such as terrain type, dungeon level, etc, and not at all on the size and strength of the party.

I don't see this as relevant to a play style.

Tailored vs status quo encounter design.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The usual conceptual D&D "old school" (a very broad association of people who for diverse reasons prefer the old game) coalesced in opposition to philosophies that rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s.

On the board Knights & Knaves Alehouse it's generally accepted I think that old school ended some time in the early 80s. The turning point is variously located - Unearthed Arcana, Dragonlance, Gary leaving TSR - but there's general agreement.

Dragonlance would be my personal pick because it clearly moves away from the gold-seeking, mercenary, small-scale, sandbox-y mega-dungeon style toward altruistic PCs on epic adventure paths.

 

[Vespucci]

Under these definitions, a GM who gets a group together with the intention of playing G1-3 seems to be engaging in "New School" play. I do not find that a convincing argument.

Without quibbling, assuming that it's 1982 and the ref is playing straight out of the module and refusing to let the players break out of G1-3 - it's still not New School. By the conventions of the Old School, that ref is green or a jerk. He is wrong to try to force the players to carry on through G1-3.

Flash forward ten years, to a group of gamers who came into the hobby with Dragonlance and 2e's style agnosticism. Some New Schoolers would say that this DM is being heavy-handed, and needs to avoid (the appearance of) railroading. But he is right (or, in the liberal wing, that he has the right) to protect his story from the players.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Without quibbling, assuming that it's 1982 and the ref is playing straight out of the module and refusing to let the players break out of G1-3 - it's still not New School. By the conventions of the Old School, that ref is green or a jerk. He is wrong to try to force the players to carry on through G1-3.

Flash forward ten years, to a group of gamers who came into the hobby with Dragonlance and 2e's style agnosticism. Some New Schoolers would say that this DM is being heavy-handed, and needs to avoid (the appearance of) railroading. But he is right (or, in the liberal wing, that he has the right) to protect his story from the players.

I would modify this somewhat.

There is nothing wrong, in either school, about saying "Hey! Let's run through G1-3!"

The difference is, in the old school, the DM had to be upfront that he was running only a limited campaign milieu, because that wasn't the general expectation. In the new school, the DM is encouraged to pretend he is running an open campaign milieu, while in fact running a limited campaign milieu.

The difference, I think, is one of respect for the players.

When one discusses actual choice (and choosing to run through G1-3, knowing that is what you are choosing, is an actual choice) over the so-called "illusion of choice", I am strongly of the opinion that "illusion of choice" assumes a level of naivity on the part of those poor, gullable players that (IME and IMHO) is almost never warranted.


RC

 

[the Jester]

Dragonlance would be my personal pick because it clearly moves away from the gold-seeking, mercenary, small-scale, sandbox-y mega-dungeon style toward altruistic PCs on epic adventure paths.

I'd agree with this because it also introduced the "Dragonarmy in the way" railroad and "pcs cannot die!" plot immunity.

 

[Ariosto]

On the board Knights & Knaves Alehouse it's generally accepted I think that old school ended some time in the early 80s. The turning point is variously located - Unearthed Arcana, Dragonlance, Gary leaving TSR - but there's general agreement.

Dragonlance would be my personal pick because it clearly moves away from the gold-seeking, mercenary, small-scale, sandbox-y mega-dungeon style toward altruistic PCs on epic adventure paths.

K&KA is pretty explicitly focused on "Gygaxian D&D", and Gygax and TSR parted ways at the end of 1985.

I am not sure, though, how many (if any) take "old school" to mean "TSR operations at some point in time". Those are certainly "old" a quarter-century later, but hardly seemed "a school" at the time, and I wonder how many people seriously consider them the same phenomenon as the Internet one we have seen in recent years.

Certainly "old school" (or "old skool") often is just a figure of speech with a purely chronological meaning: the way things were "back in the day", in certain years. I do not think you will find that many "old school" D&D enthusiasts have quite such eclectic tastes. Indeed, I think you will find that most have little or no acquaintance with most non-TSR RPGs from the first decade of the hobby/industry. I reckon I may have encountered most, but I do not like them all very much, and I certainly do not consider them all to have a single "old school vibe" or something. Different games are different.

The notion that every member of "the old school" ought to or must embrace everything that is chronologically "old skool" makes nothing but trouble. "It was in 1981, too," is really no reason it should be incumbent on an old-D&D fan also to be a RuneQuest or Champions fan (although many are). Historical coincidence is really no reason it should be incumbent on an old-D&D fan also to be a fan of the "Hickman Railroad", or any other technique or variant.

"The old school" is happening NOW, in response to the "new school" in contrast to which it is defined.

Dragonlance was a pioneering plot-line scenario, and there were I think a few more before 2nd ed. AD&D (1989). The '90s were the era of 2e, in which the Tracy Hickman style "storytelling scenario" became very prominent. From what I have heard, it indeed became the usual thing.

The epics formerly were largely expected to be consequences of campaign play: YOUR epic in YOUR world caused by YOUR player-characters. The Temple of Elemental Evil package was compiled by Frank Mentzer from Gygax's notes on the sites of events briefly recounted therein, part of a larger saga that the players' actions and interactions created.

My impression is that most of the K&KA guys are in much more modest affairs, with for instance The Party as a singular entity just as seems conventional among 'modern' games. The key difference (apart from lower-order 'mechanics') would tend to be the driving role of player choice. The DM sets up situations rather than preparing stories; "the adventure" is not a pre-game text, but whatever enterprise the players have undertaken.

Such an enterprise may well be both large scale and altruistic, the more so as characters have the power to do large scale things and to be grandly altruistic without being suicidal. It is only with 4e, I think, that low-level characters have much in that department (and then perhaps only in combat).

In 2e or 3e, low-level characters are I think not superheroes without considerable 'fudging' -- and 'fudging' is a big issue to people far removed indeed from the rest of the ethos of "old school" gamers!

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'd agree with this because it also introduced the "Dragonarmy in the way" railroad and "pcs cannot die!" plot immunity.

That's the point I suggested in my blog as well (Raven Crowking's Nest).


RC

 

[Crazy Jerome]

IMO, Illusionism--whether manifesting in that bad 4E GM campaign advice, or in running something like the giant series as a tournament module while pretending not to--is not characteristic of any school, old, new or indifferent. Rather, it is a particularly incoherent symptom of cognitive dissonance that can infect any school, when someone wants to have their cake and eat it too.