Worlds of Design: “Old School” in RPGs and other Games – Part 1 Failure and Story

For me, the difference between Old School and anything else is not in the rules, but in attitude. Is failure, even losing, possible, or is it not? Is it a game, or is it a storytelling session?

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Notice it’s “storytelling”, not storymaking. Every RPG involves a story, the question is, who creates the story, the GM or the players?
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Inevitably, 40-some installments into this column, “Old School” would come up.

“ . . . role-playing games do not have plots. They have situations at the campaign, adventure, and encounter level which the players are free to interact with however they wish– as long as they accept the consequences!” - Jeffro Johnson (author of the book Appendix N)​

This will be in three (oversized) parts, because understanding of this topic is fundamental to discourse about what some of us (at least) call RPGs, and there’s too much for one or two columns (I tried). I think of a Quora question that asked what a GM can do when a player’s character does something insane or ludicrously inappropriate during a game. The answers varied widely depending on the goals of the answerer. The Old School answer is, “let the character suffer the consequences of the action”; but for those on the New School side, it was a much more complex problem, as the character’s actions would make it hard if not impossible for the GM to tell the story he had devised for the adventure.

Likely everyone reading this has seen and perhaps discussed the term “Old School” in connection with RPGs. When I started to reconnect with RPG fandom a few years ago, I wasn’t sure what “Old School” meant. There seem to be many definitions, but I now see the fundamental divide as not about rules. Rather, it’s about the attitude of the GM, and of the players, toward losing and failure. That’s at the root of Jeffro’s rant, though he puts it in terms of plot and story, which are closely related.

As I said, this is in three parts. The second will talk about rules, GMing, and pacing, and about non-RPGs reflecting the two schools. The third part will talk about differences in actual gameplay.

I’m not going to be “one true way” the way Jeffro is (“thieves must have d4 hit dice” is one of his rants). I write about RPGs as games, not as story-telling aids or playgrounds, but I am describing, not prescribing even as I obviously prefer the Old School. Let’s proceed.

If it’s a game (Old School (OS)), there’s a significant chance you can lose, you can fail. If it’s a story session, with no chance you can lose, it’s something else. This is like a co-operative board game that you cannot lose: why bother to play?

In terms of story, in OS the players write their own story, with the benefit of the GM’s assistance. The GM sets up a situation and lets the players get on with it. (This is sometimes called [FONT=&amp][FONT=&amp]"[/FONT][/FONT]sandbox[FONT=&amp][FONT=&amp]"[/FONT][/FONT] in video games, though video games tend to impose an overall story as a limitation of using computer programming instead of a human GM.) The other extreme is when the GM tells the players a story through the game. (In video games this is called a linear game, where the story always ends up the same way.)

If a GM is Old School and runs the same adventure for several different groups, the results will probably vary wildly. If the GM is at the other extreme, the overall shape of the adventure will be the same each time, with variance only in the details.

Old School adventures are usually highly co-operative, because the characters will DIE if they don’t cooperate. New School doesn’t require cooperation, you’re going to survive anyway.

Not surprisingly, as the hobby has grown, the proportion of wargamers (now a small hobby) has decreased drastically. Many players are not even hobby gamers, that is, they’re not quite “gamers” in the old sense because the only game they play is their RPG(s). Many people want their games to be stories, so the shift from Old School to something else is not surprising.

D&D 5e bears the marks of the newer playing methods, as there’s lots of healing as well as the ridiculous cleric spell revivify for mere fifth level clerics.

There are all kinds of shades of the two extremes, obviously. And all kinds of ways of running RPGs. Next time, I’ll talk about more differences between Old School and newer ways of playing such as Rules and Pacing, and compare with non-RPGs.

This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. You can follow Lew on his web site and his Udemy course landing page. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!

 

[Ovinomancer]

There is a lot that I like about BitD, but I'm not the biggest fan of the setting itself. So any time I engage with reading through BitD, my thoughts always wonder to reverse hacking it to something more generic or useful for other setting ideas I have on my back burner.

I hear this, but it turns out to be a lot of work. The beauty and horror of Blades is just how tightly integrated it is with setting and theme. Generalizing it would sacrifice a lot of that integrated character. You can port it to a different theme, but, as I said, it's a lot of work. I think it would be amazing as the engine of a cyberpunk game, frex, but I haven't been happy with fan attempts and don't have the time to craft my own, especially since Blades is not the main game of my group.

 

[Yardiff]

About 35 years ago, yes; though we call it a body point/fatigue point system the principle is the same. Still use it. Write-up's here ( http://www.friendsofgravity.com/gam...ecast-blue-book-in-html/decbluebook4.html#hit ) if you want to look deeper.

The biggest in-play thing we have to deal with is that b.p. and f.p. cure differently, meaning almost every cure spell has different dice to roll depending on whether the target is in bodies or fatigues.

Well, we thought it was; and through several system rebuilds since we haven't changed it much if at all.

We did a Vitality/Body thing back in 3.5 and they healed slightly differently. We had the stat bonus to the die roll heal body.

 

[Aldarc]

I hear this, but it turns out to be a lot of work. The beauty and horror of Blades is just how tightly integrated it is with setting and theme. Generalizing it would sacrifice a lot of that integrated character. You can port it to a different theme, but, as I said, it's a lot of work. I think it would be amazing as the engine of a cyberpunk game, frex, but I haven't been happy with fan attempts and don't have the time to craft my own, especially since Blades is not the main game of my group.

/sigh. That is a problem. I have considered re-tooling the notion of the Crew and instead have it be about a Village. So instead of building up a Crew, you are building up a Settlement, Tribe, etc. And instead of dealing with other gangs, you are dealing with potentially other Settlements, Tribes, Clans, etc.

 

[Lanefan]

Blades is fascinating in that not only do players create their individual PCs, but also collectively they choose a crew for the entire party's shared enterprises, a kind of party character sheet, if you will. Not only do the players advance their characters after scores (read: level them after adventures), but they also advance the crew's sheet, choosing new plays from the playbook options available to their specific crew.

The nature of accruing heat and trauma (the consequences of failures and qualified successes on player actions declarations) suggests that over time PC attrition is a component of play. (For all the silly talk of "New School" play not coming with serious consequences and risk for characters without their consent, this game, at least, should put that to rest. There are mechanisms to reduce or delay serious consequences, but the implicit setting and rules principles indicate this is a brutal world that will break you in the end, even if that just means retiring a character from play.)

Further, during downtime activities to clear heat (a similar mechanic, in some ways, to healing damage), a player's roll might result in an overindulgence of a vice, which comes with the choice of consequence of said player choosing to set aside that character for a period of time (out on a narcotic bender, wrapped up in a torrid love affair, whatever is suggested by the nature of the vice) and turn to another character for a time.

The rules don't really specify whether the crew is envisioned as a static set of players, but it certainly offers the possibility that this is not so.

Interesting.

Would the 'crew' concept be flexible enough to handle multiple parties with PCs who swap in and out every so often, all with a common home base? If yes, tell me more.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Interesting.

Would the 'crew' concept be flexible enough to handle multiple parties with PCs who swap in and out every so often, all with a common home base? If yes, tell me more.

I've never read Blades in the Dark so i can't comment on it, but I've played in an "ensemble cast" type game where the PCs were a group of somewhat loosely connected adventurers. We also had henchmen of various sorts that sometimes got "promoted" to being a PC, or would sometimes leave the game if it made more sense for them to retire, move on, were busy with spell research, etc. We were based in the City of Greyhawk. It was a really great way to have a small group of players (2-3) have a beefy enough party to be successful with just a few protagonists. Fitting this was in Greyhawk, because I think it's very much the way that the old Lake Geneva crowd actually played, as opposed to the "zero to hero" party of five that seems to be assumed in most later editions of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

In most RPGs that I play, there is no such thing as "the adventure". So I'm not sure what it would mean to run "the same adventure for several different groups".

Example: running Keep on the Borderlands for one group, then running it again a few years later for your next group, then hauling it out ten years later for another group, and so on....

Perhaps in your case a better example would be re-using a setting e.g. you already have Hardby somewhat put together in your mind from one campaign, and could recycle it later in another.

 

[Lanefan]

I've never read Blades in the Dark so i can't comment on it, but I've played in an "ensemble cast" type game where the PCs were a group of somewhat loosely connected adventurers. We also had henchmen of various sorts that sometimes got "promoted" to being a PC, or would sometimes leave the game if it made more sense for them to retire, move on, were busy with spell research, etc. We were based in the City of Greyhawk. It was a really great way to have a small group of players (2-3) have a beefy enough party to be successful with just a few protagonists. Fitting this was in Greyhawk, because I think it's very much the way that the old Lake Geneva crowd actually played, as opposed to the "zero to hero" party of five that seems to be assumed in most later editions of the game.

I was asking more about the 'crew-as-character' concept and wondering whether it could handle an ensemble cast like yours - or mine; between four current and about 8 past players my current campaign has several dozen PCs running around in it, many of whom at least vaguely know (or know of) each other and quite a few of whom share a sort-of-common home base.

 

[darkbard]

Interesting.

Would the 'crew' concept be flexible enough to handle multiple parties with PCs who swap in and out every so often, all with a common home base? If yes, tell me more.

I don't see why not. I've only ever seen the game played with a relatively small group of constant players, but there is nothing in the rules to suggest this is the only mode.

*Assassins are killers for hire.
*A Cult serves a forgotten god.
*Bravos are thugs and extortionists.
*Hawkers sell illegal products.
*Smugglers transport contraband.
*Shadows are thieves and spies.

The crew type isn't restrictive (you can pursue a variety of activities); it's there to help focus the game play.

[...]

Regardless of how a crew comes to be formed, they all have one thing in common: they exist to create a legacy that will last beyond the founding members. When you start a crew with your partners, you intend to build something that (hopefully) will live on past the scope of your own criminal careers. [...] In a sense, the crew is the central figure in the stories we're going to tell about the underworld of Doskvol [the built-in post-apocalyptic, ghost-and-demon haunted, steampunk-inflected industrial-fantasy setting].

 

[pemerton]

Example: running Keep on the Borderlands for one group, then running it again a few years later for your next group, then hauling it out ten years later for another group, and so on....

Perhaps in your case a better example would be re-using a setting e.g. you already have Hardby somewhat put together in your mind from one campaign, and could recycle it later in another.

Every time I run Keep on the Borderlands, the PCs get involved in some fashion with the evil priest and his cult. That's the best bit of the Keep, in my view.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I was asking more about the 'crew-as-character' concept and wondering whether it could handle an ensemble cast like yours - or mine; between four current and about 8 past players my current campaign has several dozen PCs running around in it, many of whom at least vaguely know (or know of) each other and quite a few of whom share a sort-of-common home base.

We just did that in a more or less ad hoc way because we had a small group of players who were pretty much all on the same page about what to do. I'm fairly certain that scaling it up would require some kind of formalization, even if the players were pretty solid with each other.