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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5585454" data-attributes="member: 80487">There are multiple &quot;new schools&quot; and multiple &quot;old schools&quot;. Personally, the only &quot;new schools&quot; I recall back in 1979 were the &quot;OFFICIAL®&quot; school (typified by a new, AD&amp;D-centric generation with such pressing concerns as whether female dwarves had beards) and the &quot;slick system&quot; school (typified by &quot;partisans&quot; 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 &quot;schools&quot; addressing the RPG hobby in general, although the one was immediately almost wholly a school within D&amp;D and the other was rather anti-D&amp;D.They may still inform &quot;new schools&quot; in D&amp;D -- see for instance folks who enthuse about &quot;the universal D20 System mechanic&quot; versus &quot;a different rule for everything in old D&amp;D&quot; --&nbsp; 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 &amp; 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 &quot;the way we play&quot;, the different distributions in different schools become more distinct.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5585454, member: 80487"] There are multiple "new schools" and multiple "old schools". Personally, the only "new schools" I recall back in 1979 were the "[B]OFFICIAL®[/B]" 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 [I]many[/I] expressions of "the way we play", the different distributions in different schools become more distinct. [/QUOTE]

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