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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 4890000" data-attributes="member: 44797">Well, as evidenced by the first few pages of this thread, there is no agreement on what old school is.  Therefore, there is no real way to tell you what old school is.  However, you could end up with a lot of definitions from various people, and sorta make an amalgam out of it.For me, there is absolutely nothing about old school style that is unique to old school games -- every single element could be incorporated into a newer module or game, no problem.  Having said that, I guess there is a fairly cliche list of things that older modules are reknown for.  These might include:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">No monster ecology.  As previously mentioned, see the old White Plume Mountain module for a visual of this -- monsters in giant glass aquariums, living right next to each other without fighting until the PCs come along.  This is very gamist -- it makes no sense but in my early years it was ridiculously fun.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Dungeon crawls.  Not every old module was like this, but many of the famous ones were.  I still have my copy of The Lost City, and I remember fondly the many rooms that took months of real-world time to slog through.  Michael Ferguson says of it, "<a href="http://www.emeraldlich.com/post.php?post_id=1138" target="_blank">hack-and-slash ruled the day</a>."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">No battle mat.  Players would be expected to get out graph paper and chart out a map square by square.  This idea is pretty much dead.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Exploration.  Old D&D did not reward for killing monsters.  It rewarded 1 XP per gold piece found.  Thus, modules would often be deathtraps filled with riddles, poisons, pits, and other non-monster dangers.  (Although monsters would be present too -- and hearkening back to the first point, the monsters would never trigger any of the dangers on themselves.  They just waited, perfectly safe, until the adventurers arrived.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">DM/player negotiation.  Back then, there was no feat list, nor skills.  Any trick you wanted to pull off required selling the DM on the idea, and then having him make up a mechanic for it.  Matthew Finch calls this "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/content/3019374" target="_blank">Rulings, not Rules</a>."  This is the most contentious point, I think.  We've seen in recent threads here that many gamers nowadays are violently opposed to this style of gaming.  It has been called fascist, oppressive, and someone recently said that DMs who run games like this are "control freaks."  The thing is, that description might be slightly accurate in the sense that the game back then absolutely did rely on DMs taking control, but as a positive thing.  What's interesting is that there are many current non-D&D games, such as Mage, that rely on this method nowadays.  The games are not scorned, nor do the players get nerd-ragey about it.  It seems only older versions of D&D get this vitriol, I guess because the players have become used to D&D 3 & 4 providing something else.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Character fragility.  You had very hostile ways to create your character -- sometimes you couldn't even decide which stat would be your best.  You might have longed to play a wizard, but you ended up with a character that had 4s in every stat except strength, which was an 11.  Well, tough.  That's the character you got.  And guess what?  Your wimpy fighter wouldn't get max HP at first level, so you might end up with 2 hit points.  Death?  Happened <a href="http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0536.html" target="_blank">all the time</a>.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Newness & surprise.  This actually isn't a feature of old school so much as a byproduct -- the game came out, and as a generation began playing, everything was unknown.  You had no idea what the monsters were like, nor what they could do.  When people accuse grognards of looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, this is probably part of what they mean.  It's a "thing" that we attribute to old school, but which is really more accurately attributed to age.  So old school unfairly gets extra credit, which obviously raises some people's hackles.</li> </ol>Note that none of those are absolute.  Someone could certainly post a reply saying that in their games they absolutely did have a battle mat (or whatever counterpoint they wish to make).  That's fine.  Exceptions don't diminish the generalities.To me, of the 7 points I listed, I'm really only interested in exploration, fragility, and surprise.  Fostering those things makes my games so much more enjoyable (to me).You can get stuck playing D&D 3 or 4 and forget that 1st edition game play had some completely different aspects to it.  Sometimes, <a href="http://www.lulu.com/content/3019374" target="_blank">looking back at how things were played</a> helps you to remember that some of the old approaches were quite fun.  Once you realize it, you want to pull those aspects back in.For me, I loved that old modules had large sections that were not monster fights.  So I have bought up many of the Dungeon Crawl Classics modules, with their heavy traps and riddles.Regarding character fragility, I tend to run sandbox games, and I will allow my players to fight giants at level 3.  But I will also not pull punches, and deliver a TPK.  To me, this is actually interesting if done in moderation.  Too much and you can disrupt a player's attachment to the game.  But without at least a little danger, the players will become bored and assume that success is inevitable, even with limited effort.  I make sure my game foster something more intense -- they have to pay attention, use tactics, play smart, retreat, snipe, poison, whatever.Finally, regarding surprise, I have found that the best way to foster this is simply to never run anything as-is.  I revise everything, and if a player gets fussy that the module or monster isn't running as expected, well, good.  I've put into the game a number of monsters that are simply bizarre and which the players have never seen nor heard of before.  Therefore, it's much easier for them to role play their characters' bewilderment.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />That's for you to decide.</blockquote>

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