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<blockquote data-quote="jmucchiello" data-source="post: 5588843" data-attributes="member: 813">Jumping in late, I've had a perspective change on what is old school recently and thought I'd share.Old school is pre-1st Ed DMG. Because before that no one knew what the hell they were doing. Most learning about how DMing happened via in-game play. Once the DMG exists, people could &quot;study&quot; DMing outside the play environment. And thus a previously &quot;verbal&quot; tradition was written down. And by being written down could be interpreted without benefit of seeing it in action first.At around the same time, TSR was pumping out tournament style modules and there is nothing Old School about a tournament module. Sandbox play and tournaments play have very different goals. But that isn't the important part. Tournament play concepts leaked into non-tournament modules. That's why the number of &quot;Keep on the Borderlands&quot; style modules diminished over the history of 1e. Modules started being written with the attitude that the players were going through it once and never coming back. That is not old school. (What better way to get folks to buy more modules?) TSR becoming a &quot;big&quot; business also affects how the game is developed.Notice that on page 5 Bullgrit complains about not liking a list of &quot;old school&quot; modules. Everyone was originally a tournament module. Coincidence?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jmucchiello, post: 5588843, member: 813"] Jumping in late, I've had a perspective change on what is old school recently and thought I'd share. Old school is pre-1st Ed DMG. Because before that no one knew what the hell they were doing. Most learning about how DMing happened via in-game play. Once the DMG exists, people could "study" DMing outside the play environment. And thus a previously "verbal" tradition was written down. And by being written down could be interpreted without benefit of seeing it in action first. At around the same time, TSR was pumping out tournament style modules and there is nothing Old School about a tournament module. Sandbox play and tournaments play have very different goals. But that isn't the important part. Tournament play concepts leaked into non-tournament modules. That's why the number of "Keep on the Borderlands" style modules diminished over the history of 1e. Modules started being written with the attitude that the players were going through it once and never coming back. That is not old school. (What better way to get folks to buy more modules?) TSR becoming a "big" business also affects how the game is developed. Notice that on page 5 Bullgrit complains about not liking a list of "old school" modules. Everyone was originally a tournament module. Coincidence? [/QUOTE]

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