loverdrive
Prophet of the profane (She/Her)
I think it's a useful framework to think, talk, and analyse games, so I don't see why not share it with westerners. You know the drill already, I hope: not prescriptive, rpgs are complex, all that jazz. And, yes, labels like "old" and "new" suck, as, say, Dogs in the Vineyard is almost twenty years old at this point, but I didn't choose them.
So.
There's
the Old School,
spawned from Kriegsspiel-style wargames. Y'know, not the kind of wargames where you field a Draigo deathstar (you can tell I'm like five years behind, can you?) barely painted in three colours to give you that sweet bonus points, no. The kind of wargames that look almost indistinguishable from RPGs, and if you're not listening closely, can easily be mistaken for one.
Old School is about players overcoming challenges through their knowledge of strategy, tactics, lore and, to at least some extent, ability to "read" the referee. The rules are simple, if not simplistic, but the large scope of the game allows for a great overall depth and a lots of small decisions add up over time — this is the reason why such games focus so much on "boring" stuff like counting torches, food and water — things that in, say, D&D 3E are often glossed over as unimportant.
That brings us to
the Mid School.
Mid School is also about players overcoming challenges, but in a very different way. Mid School adds another, "game" layer to, well, the game — character optimization, leveraging mechanical synergies between abilities, and all that jazz is much more important.
Say, in Moldvay's, there's no character optimization — you make exactly zero choices about your character's progression anyway, so there's nothing to optimize. Contrast it with D&D 3E, where picking the right class, the right race, the right feats, the right spells, the right magic items and then utilize all this stuff in the right way in the moment-to-moment gameplay are the key to achieving success.
Naturally, this often leads to "boring" stuff being discarded — first, because our capacity to process information is limited, and when you're already tracking a metric crapton of different things, tracking torches becomes burdensome. Second, because there already is depth, and large-scope things just aren't required — if you remove all the minutiae from Moldvay's, you'll end up with a very boring game that largely boils down to randomness, but if you remove it from 3E? You still have a reasonably solid game.
Another important difference is, well, characters: they are expected to have an interesting personality separate from the player on their own right from the get-go, as opposed to being the player's avatar rolled in two seconds. Mechanics for personality traits (like, say, Overconfidence disadvantage from GURPS) are not uncommon too, and, overall "what would my character do here?" is a more important question than "what is the best course of action here?", but, since there's still challenge, they're often at odds.
But what if we get rid of it? Welcome to
the New School.
Here, your skill at playing the game barely matters. It's not being tested, and playing smart doesn't influence the outcome that much. "What is the best course of action here?" and "what would my character do?" are the exact same question.
Think about this way:
I know you probably understand this already, but I'll highlight it: it's not a linear evolution from old to new, with each new iteration getting just plain better. That's not the point — different games serve different needs, but it's important to use tools that align with your goals. Trying to forge a neat story about a bunch of fascinating characters in, say, Moldvay's is bound to backfire when your hot-headed fighter will start a brawl that is impossible to win, just like going into Fate with a desire to get your planning skills tested is bound to be disappointing.
Хуй війні. Треба спалити москву.
So.
There's
the Old School,
spawned from Kriegsspiel-style wargames. Y'know, not the kind of wargames where you field a Draigo deathstar (you can tell I'm like five years behind, can you?) barely painted in three colours to give you that sweet bonus points, no. The kind of wargames that look almost indistinguishable from RPGs, and if you're not listening closely, can easily be mistaken for one.
Old School is about players overcoming challenges through their knowledge of strategy, tactics, lore and, to at least some extent, ability to "read" the referee. The rules are simple, if not simplistic, but the large scope of the game allows for a great overall depth and a lots of small decisions add up over time — this is the reason why such games focus so much on "boring" stuff like counting torches, food and water — things that in, say, D&D 3E are often glossed over as unimportant.
That brings us to
the Mid School.
Mid School is also about players overcoming challenges, but in a very different way. Mid School adds another, "game" layer to, well, the game — character optimization, leveraging mechanical synergies between abilities, and all that jazz is much more important.
Say, in Moldvay's, there's no character optimization — you make exactly zero choices about your character's progression anyway, so there's nothing to optimize. Contrast it with D&D 3E, where picking the right class, the right race, the right feats, the right spells, the right magic items and then utilize all this stuff in the right way in the moment-to-moment gameplay are the key to achieving success.
Naturally, this often leads to "boring" stuff being discarded — first, because our capacity to process information is limited, and when you're already tracking a metric crapton of different things, tracking torches becomes burdensome. Second, because there already is depth, and large-scope things just aren't required — if you remove all the minutiae from Moldvay's, you'll end up with a very boring game that largely boils down to randomness, but if you remove it from 3E? You still have a reasonably solid game.
Another important difference is, well, characters: they are expected to have an interesting personality separate from the player on their own right from the get-go, as opposed to being the player's avatar rolled in two seconds. Mechanics for personality traits (like, say, Overconfidence disadvantage from GURPS) are not uncommon too, and, overall "what would my character do here?" is a more important question than "what is the best course of action here?", but, since there's still challenge, they're often at odds.
But what if we get rid of it? Welcome to
the New School.
Here, your skill at playing the game barely matters. It's not being tested, and playing smart doesn't influence the outcome that much. "What is the best course of action here?" and "what would my character do?" are the exact same question.
Think about this way:
- Old school: you defeat the dragon because you've outsmarted the scaly bastard
- Mid school: you defeat the dragon because you've created a strong character and smartly used all their strengths
- New school: your character defeats the dragon because they've struggled and changed enough and it'be awesome if they won
I know you probably understand this already, but I'll highlight it: it's not a linear evolution from old to new, with each new iteration getting just plain better. That's not the point — different games serve different needs, but it's important to use tools that align with your goals. Trying to forge a neat story about a bunch of fascinating characters in, say, Moldvay's is bound to backfire when your hot-headed fighter will start a brawl that is impossible to win, just like going into Fate with a desire to get your planning skills tested is bound to be disappointing.
Хуй війні. Треба спалити москву.
