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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 6262509" data-attributes="member: 83293">If the rules themselves emphasized rules as a source for success, then the rules obviously are very capable of impacting play and are not just occasional tools, even when they fade into the background.  I would say earlier games seem like occasional tools more because the entirety of them work together to resolve things based on the described fiction and not references to other rules. They actually are in use all the time because the rules are what tell you what the job of the various participants of the game are and what they should do, including describing things, having dialogue and applying various resolution mechanics.  I think it's the constant pointing at the content of the description that makes old school games seem like they are only occasional rather than always in effect.  They're always there, but they hide by diverting your attention back to the content of the fiction/description rather than to another rule.I don't know if that makes sense, but basically I count the procedures of play that the rule book directs you to undertake as being the rules of the game.  Including the part about the referee describing the situation and referencing the shared game state in fictional terms using real language rather than mathematical or symbolic rules terms.Think about when a new player transitions from just describing what the character does and relies on other participants (likely the GM) to tell him/her what to roll and the point when they start to actually know how a given system works and starts proactively rolling the right dice and going through the game procedures outlined in the rules.  They're certainly not treating the rules as occasional tools for success, but as part of the larger procedure.I really don't think you can run D&D 4E in an old school way because as soon as you do, you've modified things to stop pointing back to the rules (power use and the hit, miss and effect lines) and back to the fiction and thus you're no longer playing 4E.  You need to abandon the procedures of play of the game in order to run it as if it were an older game.Basically if you take a modern game that is not old school in its approach and run it as if it was an old school game, you'll be cutting out the procedures of play from that game and replacing them with procedures for previous games.  So if I say to myself that it's not the rules, but how you run it, what I'm actually doing is creating a hybrid game where the rules and procedures of old school games replace the rules and procedures I don't feel are old school.  In short, I'd be playing my own home brew hybrid game that is an old school version of a non old school game.</blockquote>

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