Variety of "Old Schools"

[Iosue]

I originally posted this over on RPG.net, but I'd love to hear EN Worlders' takes on this as well. I posted this in General Discussion rather than Legacy D&D because I'd like people who perhaps don't normally venture there to see it as well.

I'm in the excluded middle. I'm not an OD&D grognard. But I was playing B/X and BECMI before 2nd Edition hit the shelves. I enjoy the TSR-era games, but I'm also a big fan of 4e. I like me some sandboxy hack-and-slash, and I also like narrative goals. I read accounts such as this of gaming at Mike Mornard's table, and I think, "That's awesome!. I read Chris Perkin's descriptions of his campaign at The Dungeon Master Experience, and I think, "That's awesome!" In the immortal words of Bill Cavalier: "Does this game have Dungeons? Does this game have Dragons? Then I want to play this game."

I don't deny that there are differences between D&D back in the day and D&D of the last 10 years or so. The media gamers are exposed to is different, roleplaying games are different, hell, just the world is different. But what's frustrating for me, as a TSR-era gamer, is that whole era has been hijacked, in a way, by the image of play described in such pieces as the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming. This is not a criticism of anyone or anything, but just an observation that when the Old School/New School arguments start, the points of reference get polarized. That image of "zero-to-hero, player skill über alles, rulings-not-rules, high lethal combat with Save or Die," and so on becomes the go-to reference, by self-described Old Schoolers and New Schoolers alike.

But Old School is a moving target. Virtually from the beginning, the game was changing. The Greyhawk supplement was virtually like 0.5e. Holmes Basic was similar, yet different. Moldvay Basic also similar, yet different. Mentzer Basic was almost exactly the same as Moldvay, and yet different. AD&D was yet a whole other thing, and while the original AD&D diehards may laugh and point at the 2nd Edition players, those folks certainly consider themselves Old School compared to WotC-D&D players. Old School D&D was homebrew. It was campaign settings. It was dungeon delves. It was adventure paths (Dragonlance!) It was Otus and Sutherland. It was Elmore and Easley. It was matrices. It was THAC0.

I read the Old/New School arguments, and find myself not agreeing with anybody. Our D&D wasn't about "pixel-bitching", though we had no rules for rolling for perception/spot check. Our D&D wasn't about starting out as farmboys and becoming heroes, it was starting out as competent professional adventurers that did battle with goblins and saved princesses and such. That didn't mean we wanted "superheroes". We plotted out labyrinthine dungeons, but filled them with hardly any traps. DM fiat was king with no concept of "player empowerment", but there was no adversarial relationship between DM and players.

What I'd like to do in this thread is celebrate the varieties of "Old School". Note that this is NOT to say that "New School" is by implication not varied and diverse. QUITE THE OPPOSITE, I assure you. However, I think the varieties of WotC D&D have been pretty deeply delved into with the 3e/4e wars. What I'd like to do is have folks come and talk about how they played Old School, regardless of what the general image of it may be. What I hope will happen is it will be seen how much so-called Old School and New School are really alike.

So, folks, tell us about your old TSR D&D games! What D&D did you use? Homebrew or campaign setting? Fantasy ing Vietnam or High Adventure (or somewhere in between?) What literature and media were your influences? High lethality? Low lethality? Over the top outrageous adversarial relationship with DM? More dramatic/narrative type stories? Sandbox? Modules? Just like the "Old School Primer" or something different? Whatever you want to share, please do. I only ask that the thread be kept positive, with no jibes or backhanded compliments towards WotC D&D or other playstyles. If you want to take issue with someone's statement, please start a new thread. I'd rather this thread be about contribution and inquiry rather than debate.

 

[S'mon]

My main campaign (1e AD&D from 1987/1988 on) was:

High Powered - we started at 3rd level. Two 6th level PCs once chased off Graz'zt.
Extremely high lethality - 28 PCs dead in the first adventure, according to my log.
High risk/high reward - several PCs made Demigod, one (Thrin) made Lesser God
Expansive, high powered - fate of nations stuff, not fantasy effin Vietnam
Not much dungeon-crawling, and never 'routine'
No megadungeons, more like short delves.

 

[Celebrim]

There are two things to consider about your thesis.

First, humans are very bad at describing things in terms of quantities. They tend to be rather digital in their thinking and in their language. Things are either 'yes' or 'no'. In reality of course, many things differ by degree more than by kind, and reality is analog and this is true even when there aren't obvious physical characteristics that you can measure. When humans argue or debate, there is a strong tendency to want to assign everything to two easily differentiatable camps, so there is a tendency to always describe everything according to extremes so as to highlight how different the thing that you don't like is from the think that you favor. Of course, in reality, even if the two debaters are as extreme as they make themselves, which is unlikely, the majority of people probably are not and the difference between them - while real - isn't as easily described or labeled.

Secondly, from my experience of the 'old school' days, every table was different. House rules and interpretations of the rules dominated. Many people played mix ups of basic and the advanced game, and widely supplemented their game with ideas from Dragon and their own ideas of what would be 'realistic' and 'fun' (often at the time confused, as their was a prevailing idea that what took the game in a more realistic direction would be inherently more fun). You could not make blanket statements about what sort of game people where playing. This is of course true to a great extent of 'new school' as well, which explains to me quite well why the fan base as fragmented.

I played several different games. One was basicly D&D modules strung together. Another was gritty and dungeon delving. Yet another was high powered political stuff with artifact powered magic items distributed about the party. I played a couple of sessions with a DM who didn't even like the players to have character sheets and was played entirely by game proposition without reference to the rules. My own game(s) started at 1st level, but wasn't 'zero to hero', more like local hero (who might be a farm boy) to national hero. Luke was a very compotent farm boy. I had assumptions about player interaction via concrete game proposition, but I don't remember anyone thinking it was 'pixel bitching'. I sometimes used modules, and sometimes wrote my own material. Dungeons were often goals to be reached and where the climax of a story or chapter would take place, but they weren't the sole form of gaming nor where they usually more than 30 or so rooms. Megadungeons were imagined and fantacized about by myself from the very beginning, but ultimately seemed to daunting to create or explore so I never ran them. Players were expected to interact with NPC's as if they were themselves the PC rather than simply saying what they wanted the PC to accomplish in the conversation, but I sometimes rolled dice to determine how the NPC responded. Magic items couldn't be bought, except for potions and scrolls of the more ordinary sort, and there was a general assumption that gear of +2 level wouldn't be obtainable before 3rd or 4th level at the earliest, and gear of +3 wouldn't be available before 8th-9th level. More powerful items weren't generally placed at the level of play we'd commonly reach, but sometimes I'd also randomly roll for treasure. In general, I expected my players or fellow players to obtain a high level of skill in the game above and beyond mere 'systems mastery', but I don't at the time remember differentiating systems mastery from other skills of play. The DM was in charge and his word was law, but I don't recall more than one or two incidents where anyone had a problem with that. There were often intense adversarial relationships between the PC's and the DM, but rarely do I recall that being a problem because players wanted to be challenged and they also wanted to 'win'. Players were far more concerend that other players would consider their game 'Monte Haul' (by which they meant 'too easy' with 'unearned rewards') than with the DM 'disempowering them' - a concept I don't recall existing. Traps were very common dungeon features, but I can only remember that being considered a problem once and then only when we hit college age and began to tire a bit of the same old same old. Mostly players seemed to find them fun, and desired an 'Indiana Jones' feel to their dungeon crawling. In short, I don't think I had any hard and fast rules nor purist approach to the game. I did what seemed fun.

 

[Iosue]

There are two things to consider about your thesis.

First, humans are very bad at describing things in terms of quantities. They tend to be rather digital in their thinking and in their language. Things are either 'yes' or 'no'. In reality of course, many things differ by degree more than by kind, and reality is analog and this is true even when there aren't obvious physical characteristics that you can measure. When humans argue or debate, there is a strong tendency to want to assign everything to two easily differentiatable camps, so there is a tendency to always describe everything according to extremes so as to highlight how different the thing that you don't like is from the think that you favor. Of course, in reality, even if the two debaters are as extreme as they make themselves, which is unlikely, the majority of people probably are not and the difference between them - while real - isn't as easily described or labeled.

Secondly, from my experience of the 'old school' days, every table was different. House rules and interpretations of the rules dominated. Many people played mix ups of basic and the advanced game, and widely supplemented their game with ideas from Dragon and their own ideas of what would be 'realistic' and 'fun' (often at the time confused, as their was a prevailing idea that what took the game in a more realistic direction would be inherently more fun). You could not make blanket statements about what sort of game people where playing. This is of course true to a great extent of 'new school' as well, which explains to me quite well why the fan base as fragmented.

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say, but that doesn't address the point of the thread, which is: "Tell us about your TSR-era D&D campaign, particularly how similar or dissimilar to the style of play described in the "Quick Primer", and without edition warring or putting down 'new school' style of play."

 

[Treebore]

Played Old School? Still playing, by the book 1E AD&D every Wednesday. I've even played in several one shot Swords and Wizardry games (Little Brown Books, all of them, with some optional rules), and had fun playing in all of them. I still prefer to GM with Castles and Crusades, but I still manage to have fun with each system for a variety of reasons, most importantly, to me, the different approaches I have to take to be a "successful" adventurer, which is why as a player I have enough fun with each that I play again with no hesitancy.

 

[Treebore]

Plus, again from my perspective of actual play, just days ago, the story is much more the focus. It is definably much more about the story. The DM makes ruling along the way to move things forward in as fair a way as they can come up with, when the rules don't actually cover the situation, which is actually rarely, so far at least.

There are things I definitely prefer how it is done in newer versions of D&D, but even with the little idiosyncrasies I find myself feeling like I am having noticeably more fun as a player than I have been having with the newer games. Not that I don't have fun. It is just more a matter of coming to find that even with all the weird/odd rules ideas the originals have, or the OGL/OSR versions have, that after the session is over I am thinking of how much fun I had, and the thoughts are about the story, how it unfolded, how lucky we were, etc... and not much thought at all to the abilities of my character, but how I actually played him, the decisions I made, the decisions my 3 fellow players made, and just how fun the character was.

Even the odd ball rules don't bother me enough to think about them after the game.

So from my perspective of having played every edition of D&D, I find myself having fun with each for different reasons. Those who have brought up over the years how much more the "story" is front and center with the old editions, well, I have to say I now agree with them.

To be clear, this does not mean that story is not front and center in the newer editions/versions, but because the rules are really so much fewer, once character creation is done, the story is much more the focus, because we are not paying attention to all the various rules, powers, skills, etc... we really do focus more on the story, decision making, etc...

One thing I got reminded of is that when your doing 1E btb there is a lot of rules to character creation, especially in the gear, because we are using the weapon speeds and the weapon versus armor tables. I discovered, hopefully rediscovered, that my dwarven Fighter Cleric CAN use edged weapons, by the book, and it was a sentence written in an easy to miss place. So easy to miss I am not sure if I ever noticed the sentence back when I originally played 1E for several years, things like that.

I had also forgotten that having a 17 WIS allows me to start off with 3 first level spells, and that when I got to second level, I got 2 more bonus spells, etc...

So its been a lot of fun for me to get back into the "old editions" and play them by the book, and see once again precisely how they do play, and the play itself has been tremendous fun. Like I said earlier, I now jump into these games without hesitation. They were fun way back when, and I have fun with them now. Lots of fun. Its been eye opening, for sure.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you say, but that doesn't address the point of the thread...

You wrote a good deal more though than simply what you quote as the point of your thread. And I wrote a bit more than what you quote when you respond to me. I don't see how you get to choose what to exclude when responding to me and I don't get to choose what to respond to out of what you wrote.

In particular, I'm responding mostly to this claim: "I'm in the excluded middle.", which I took to be your thesis. I don't necessarily disagree with your thesis or anything you use to support it, but I don't see why I can't elaborate on it.

 

[Mark CMG]

I sometimes run across newer gamers who deride old school play after having picked up an older ruleset on ebay and given it a try with some friends. I've met other newer players who have done the same thing but with far different results. A lot of what is playstyle (not necessarily roleplaying style) comes from what folks bring to the table rather than what they get from the rulebooks.

I know that for myself, as someone who has played all editions and many, many other roleplaying systems besides, describing a game as old school or new school seems sometimes a fruitless endeavor. I've gamed with the original old school gamers in RPGs at the convention in the mid- and late Seventies, and still do these days at fun conventions like Gary Con in Lake Geneva each year. I've been DMed by folks like Frank Mentzer and Tim Kask, and this year will have a seat at a table run by Ernie Gygax. You'll gain no greater understanding of old school gaming style from blogs or essays than you will directly from the source. I hope to see the 5E designers at Gary Con this year, integrating with the attendees in the (O)D&D, 1E, and other games to get a true feel for those traditions.

There are plenty of younger gamers who run RPGs in that style at Gary Con and elsewhere too, younger being anywhere from fifty to fifteen, in some cases. Many of them are folks who have been doing it since the early days in the Seventies or run the old rulesets handed down to them from friends, fathers, or other family members. I can certainly understand how someone who wasn't part of or raised on that type of gaming would find written accounts seemingly lacking. I sometimes do as well and I was there so you'd think I could look over such accounts and point out which are accurate and which could be more so. But I don't know that it is as easy as all that.

Even back then, for example, as someone who loved both Tolkien and Howard, as well as many other fantasy and swords & sorcery authors of the day and previous eras, there were people bringing different expectations to the table. I knew of plenty of Tolkien fans who never touched a Conan book and plenty of Howard fans who thought Tolkien's work was not the type of material they would want to emulate in their gaming. (Their words, from both sides, were often stronger. ) So it's fair to say that "old school" is a mash up of many attitutdes and to put too much emphasis on any single account would be doing the traditions of many others a disservice.

So I wouldn't say it is a moving target but merely that it has never been as narrow a target as some would have others believe. Let the definitions be loose, as that would more accurately reflect the true spirit of old school anyway.

 

[Aramax]

Ok heres a brief history of my 30 year game
the game started in a comunity collage in about10/81.
!st ed was still new but I wanted something more so I added skill point which in to days term would be more correctly identified as feat points.
I wanted the majority of the players to be fighters cause that would be more "reallistic'.so I told the players that magic Items were skewed toward
fighters and fighters got 8 skill points and everybody else got 5.
I added a barbarian class from White Dwarf Mag. that was heavilly modified.The adventures were set in the, eponimois city that gave the game its name.Mysantia=By far my main literary influance was The Thievs World anthologies and the gitty steet leval adventures reflected this.Most players never got past 2 or 3rd level,and the games were so riviting I caused about 4 of the players to fail college because we played around my schedual and they were all missing class to play.
this phase continued for abot 2 years untill I ran a series of adventures surrounding an Orcish Messiah.
At this point the focus of the game changed from trying to scrample for every meal to world saving at first level.
I also intoduced the concept of the greater adventering Kharmic Line,as simply as I can put this-the players were a 3 dimentional construct of a 4th dimentional being that was like the antibodies of the material plane.This is also the beginning of the HEAVY influance HP Lovecraft has on the game to this day.
Amoung the effects of this are,when seperated the players have no problem finding each other,when first meeting the group you insattly
know that these are the people you were destined to adventure with and
the group must get along as harmoniusly
over the years I ended up writting my own PHB,but it was still recognizable as D&D,just optimized for low leval play(1-5)
eventually I had too much power creep in my rules so the year before 4th came out I switched to 3.5.
when 4th came out I switched again,we took those characters to L27
and decided 4th was not for me.
switched to Pathfinder and Im still not happy
Maybe 5th........

 

[Rogue Agent]

But what's frustrating for me, as a TSR-era gamer, is that whole era has been hijacked, in a way, by the image of play described in such pieces as the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming.

Can't blame you. The Quick Primer for Old School Gaming is a decent (if heavily biased and frequently nonsensical) manifesto for GM fiat. But it's hardly a holistic appraisal of what gaming was like "back in the day" and the things it tries to claim were inherent in old school game systems are incredibly laughable when you spend any time actually looking at those systems.

As for me: My TSR-era BECMI and AD&D games looked and played pretty much exactly like my 3E game does today... except the rules were a lot clunkier, we had a lot more house rules, and I wasn't as good at GMing. My campaigns were pretty much limited to dungeoncrawling and linear railroads which I tried very, very hard not to be railroads, but since the only thing I knew how to prep were linear railroads I was fighting the prep structures TSR modules were teaching me.