The "Old School Revival" - The Light Bulb Goes On

[Votan]

However, I think you'll find that there is some linkage - the system isn't completely irrelevant. The number of GMs around may well depend on the details of the dominant system, because those details may encourage or inhibit new GMs from sticking with gaming.

I agree. But looking at the system from the point of view of the DM (how do we make things easier for Dungeon Masters) tends to lead to a different set of solutions than focusing on the best system.

While I am generally not a 4E fan, I think that this is one area that it has done well. Developing monsters to be less complex and giving them explicit roles makes it a lot easier to assemble or run encounters on the fly (at least for me). And I have been a GM for about a decade now, far mroe than I have played.

Now, I have met exceptions to the rule who revel in complexity. But if the way to improve the hobby is to bring in more game masters than it is the marginal GM that matters (not those who would be GMing anyway). My experience is that light preparation (via either system design or pre-prepared adventures) is the easiest way to move me between the active and inactive column.

 

[Ydars]

The point I think Dave Morris was trying to make is that WE are NOT representative of all the people who were in the hobby in the 1980s; we are that tiny minority who stayed with it, despite the increasing complexity of the systems on offer.

I also disagree with Celebrim; for me every system has a particular 'flavour'. Could I run a dungeon bash with Ars Magica; sure but it wouldn't work very well because the system is not designed to support that style of play. Similarly, I have been running a ssndbox using 3.5 and it is a nightmare compared to when we used to use BECMI back in the day, simply because 3.5 tends to put players in a certain mechanical mindset no matter what the DM does.

So whilst I acknowledge that you CAN use any RPG however you want, each game has a set of players who tend to have their own 'baggage' and expectations. I will even profess that when I play 3.5 I play differently than when I play Dragon Warriors; I roleplay far less because the system takes up a lot more of my attention with 3.5.

 

[Umbran]

I agree. But looking at the system from the point of view of the DM (how do we make things easier for Dungeon Masters) tends to lead to a different set of solutions than focusing on the best system.

The best system... at what?

I don't believe there is a single objective "best system". Finite rulesets simply don't allow for you to to everything well. Each game must pick its battles with respect to the genres they intend to portray, and what GM and player experiences the mechanics lead to. All games are compromises.

 

[Celebrim]

The point I think Dave Morris was trying to make is that WE are NOT representative of all the people who were in the hobby in the 1980s; we are that tiny minority who stayed with it, despite the increasing complexity of the systems on offer.

Hogwash. We are also the 'tiny minority' who stayed with it despite the lack of increasing complexity of the systems on offer, as evidenced by the very 'old school revival' and 'there is only one true game and it is OD&D'. And we are also the 'tiny minority' of gamers how didn't start with the game with the 1980 red box, but who started with 2e or 3e or who play C&S or C&C or Savage Worlds or Fantasy Craft or who knows what. We are no more and no less homogenous as a group of gamers now than then.

ISimilarly, I have been running a ssndbox using 3.5 and it is a nightmare compared to when we used to use BECMI back in the day, simply because 3.5 tends to put players in a certain mechanical mindset no matter what the DM does.

Why do you persist in confusing a cultural issue with a mechanical issue? I run sandboxes using 3.5 and I do just fine (in fact, I don't feel my DMing style has really changed between 1e and now) and whatever 'mechanical mindset' you have doesn't impact what I do. It's an artifact of who you are playing with and your tables culture and not of the system.

So whilst I acknowledge that you CAN use any RPG however you want, each game has a set of players who tend to have their own 'baggage' and expectations. I will even profess that when I play 3.5 I play differently than when I play Dragon Warriors; I roleplay far less because the system takes up a lot more of my attention with 3.5.

The word you are looking for here is 'culture'. While I acknowledge that laws and rules can have a slight impact on a groups culture (in the real world usually one that requires many years to accumulate into noticible changes), one of the problems I have with 'statism' and 'systemism' alike is the failure to recognize just how relatively small a component the law is in the overall culture of a community and how relatively little impact the law alone can have over a culture. Indeed, one of the big problems of 'statists' is that they don't even recognize that culture exists, or if they do recognize it, don't realize what a culture is, and so not only completely misdiagnose problems but completely fail to realize how some new set of laws will actually work in the light of the prevailing culture. 'Systemists' fail to realize that you can change the law completely and end up with effectively the exact same game (something brilliantly parodied by KotDT I might add).

 

[Ydars]

Having read a great number of your posts Celebrim, and acquired a good deal of respect for you, I am going to assume that when you say 'Hogwash' you mean you don't agree with that I have said.

Fine; I respect you opinion, now please do the same for me and don't include me in your 'rant'.

My experience is exactly as I wrote it; and no I am NOT talking about culture. The SAME group of gamers playing D&D 3.5 play completely differently than when they play other games, even with the same DM. I also notice that I DM differently when I use different games.

I accept this might not be your experience, but it IS mine.

 

[Celebrim]

Having read a great number of your posts Celebrim, and acquired a good deal of respect for you, I am going to assume that when you say 'Hogwash' you mean you don't agree with that I have said.

Oh good. You have actually been reading a great number of my posts, because that's exactly what it means.

Fine; I respect you opinion, now please do the same for me...

I respect your experience just fine. However, I neither require you to respect my opinion, nor can you require me to respect yours. I'm not arguing against your experience. You are having exactly the sort of experience I'd expect you to have and I well believe it. I'm asking you to consider your evaluation of your experience.

My experience is exactly as I wrote it; and no I am NOT talking about culture. The SAME group of gamers playing D&D 3.5 play completely differently than when they play other games, even with the same DM. I also notice that I DM differently when I use different games.

But none of that proves that it isn't culture and quite the contrary, to me it strongly suggests that in fact it is culture that it is the issue. Nothing prevents a single community from having multiple cultural contexts and in fact just a slight bit of reflection will show you that culture is almost always about how to think and behave given a particular context. Take even someone not seriously steeped in say an evangelical Christian culture, and put them in a Church - or a Cathedral - and there will tend to be a conscious or unconscious change in their behavior based on their evaluation of the surroundings. Take that same person and put them in a sports bar on a saturday afternoon while a big ball game is on, and you'll get entirely different set of behaviors. Now, if you are thinking that is a system issue, then you are wrong. Because take the evangelical Christian and put him in the Church, and he might - depending on the cultural tradition he's steeped in - start whooping it up and hollering, whereas you put him in a bar and what you'll likely get is slightly uncomfortable silence. But what's 'appropriate'? It depends on the culture, and not on the building. Aggragate human behavior is almost all about culture.

When your group moves between systems, you change cultural expectations and so you get different games that result. You, as you admit, referee different game systems differently. But that's a choice and its based on inferences you have made about what you are supposed to do in the game space created by the rules. A different set of inferences however would lead to an entirely different game using the very same set of rules. And when those two groups sat down to describe their experiences with the game and their problems with the game, they'd be talking right past each other 90% of the time completely unaware that most of their issues weren't with the rules per say but with the assumptions that they'd made in their own play.

In KotDT, it doesn't matter how many times Steve Jackson revises the rules, it doesn't matter how many different systems that they play, they always get the same game. That's because the culture (hilariously) never changes.

I accept this might not be your experience, but it IS mine.

Fine. Again, I'm not arguing against your experience. I'm sure you've had it. But if our experiences with the same system seem to be highly at odds, doesn't it suggest maybe that some other factor than the system is determining our experience?

 

[Umbran]

My experience is exactly as I wrote it; and no I am NOT talking about culture. The SAME group of gamers playing D&D 3.5 play completely differently than when they play other games, even with the same DM. I also notice that I DM differently when I use different games.

I accept this might not be your experience, but it IS mine.

Ydars, that it is the same group, and different games, does not make it not culture.

Cultural norms can include "Game A is played differently than Game B." Think of it in terms of tradition - Game A has one tradition, Game B has another. Thanksgiving has some traditions, New Years has other traditions - that's culture.

Mind you, I think Celebrim thoroughly understates the effects mechanics have upon the play-traditions that develop among the wider audience.

 

[Umbran]

But if our experiences with the same system seem to be highly at odds, doesn't it suggest maybe that some other factor than the system is determining our experience?

Two words, Celebrim: sample size.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Why do you persist in confusing a cultural issue with a mechanical issue? I run sandboxes using 3.5 and I do just fine (in fact, I don't feel my DMing style has really changed between 1e and now) and whatever 'mechanical mindset' you have doesn't impact what I do. It's an artifact of who you are playing with and your tables culture and not of the system.

I strongly disagree....and I seldom disagree with your posts.

There is a clear relationship between power curve and the way material is approached. Simply put, the flatter the power curve, the longer a given scenario, unchanged, can be of interest to any given set of PCs. Likewise, the longer it takes to resolve an encounter, the less desirable easier encounters become....and the more "weight" each encounter has toward determining how successful any given gaming session is.

It is plausible that your DMing style in 1e was close enough to that optimized in 3e that you feel no difference. It is not plausible that 3e can handle any DMing style equally well. It is not plausible that any game or any edition can do so.


RC

 

[innerdude]

When your group moves between systems, you change cultural expectations and so you get different games that result ... But that's a choice and it's based on inferences you have made about what you are supposed to do in the game space created by the rules. A different set of inferences however would lead to an entirely different game using the very same set of rules.

I think this can be accurate, but within limits. For example, a few years ago we played a 3.5 Eberron campaign where the PCs were all goblins. And it was a VERY different experience playing a character from that perspective--undersized, ugly, socially misunderstood, fighting for respect tooth and nail. Not that you can't play a character like that being an ugly gnome, or whatever, but the shared perspective of ALL OF US being goblins made for a much different type of experience.

But I think there's also some truth to the idea that system mechanics represent a shared "world reality," and in order to have a wholly different "experience" from that reality, it requires a different set of resolution mechanics that interpret that reality, or "filter" it back to us as players.

If Savage Worlds feels different from D&D, or GURPS feels different from Cthulhu, it's partially player expectation and culture, but it's also because the mechanics interpret player's physical interactions (and their results) differently. Does that interpretive mechanism work the same way for every player, identically? Of course not, because everyone brings something different to the table, but I'm not totally comfortable assigning all experience to just a shared "group think." Rules systems are built to create a different experience.