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!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think you touch upon an interesting distinction in that perhaps in Old School, the player isn't as concerned about the overall story so much as simply advocating for their character, so to speak; where as in New School (as these terms seem to be used in the article that started the discussion, anyway) players seem to be a bit more focused on the fiction created through the game. So an Old School gamer would never willingly lose something because it "makes sense" fictionally for the character to do so, but a New School gamer wouldn't hesitate. So there could be some difference in that way in regards to loss.

I would hesitate to describe OS role-playing as advocacy, because I actually see that as the biggest difference between the two camps: In an OS game, you are the character; in an NS game, you advocate for the character.

I think you're right, that NS gamers are more willing to make sacrifices in the name of a good story, but I think that has more to do with perspective. In an NS game, all of the characters are fictional, and you're allowed to take that into consideration when you have them make decisions. In an OS game, you're making all of the decisions from the perspective of the character (because meta-gaming is forbidden), so obviously you can't take the fictional nature of anything into account; as far as your elven wizard is concerned, this is real life, and real life doesn't conform to narrative conventions.

I've said it for a long time, but the worst thing you can do to a player in an RPG is to protagonize them.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Perhaps, but it does make it much more difficult to discuss in any sort of concrete terms.

Certainly, but that implicitly favors systems that have everything all defined and therefore makes something focused more on "story loss" seem not real. A lot of more "new school" games are much more focused on story loss. I think is often one reason that arguments like this start and perpetuate. It's really important not to fall for the trap of thinking that if something isn't quantifiable it's not real.

(Aside: I have a graduate degree in statistics and teach it for a living; I run into this issue all the time IRL.)

True; though it's always had mechanisms for fixing these sort of things e.g. Heal, Restoration, etc., it's never really had any useful rules or guidelines to help with handling what happens between the maiming and the healing.

They did, but they were essentially out of reach of most characters (being 7th level spells that aged the caster in 1E!) so they might as well have not been there.

 

[TrippyHippy]

The categories presented here have no real validity, in my own experience.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't think you can say this. Some NS games absolutely focus on being an advocate for the character vice the story. Conversely, some OS play involves sacrificing a character for party success.

This is not a strong distinction.

I agree that there is advocacy for character in New School games. I think the point was that it is often (or maybe only sometimes) superseded by advocacy for the story, which would never (?) happen in an Old School game.

I was kind of going off of what Saelorn said, and I think that there is a point in that regard. I disagree with his conclusion that there is no loss felt by the New School gamer, but I can see the nature of advocacy as a possibly relevant distinction in play style.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I would hesitate to describe OS role-playing as advocacy, because I actually see that as the biggest difference between the two camps: In an OS game, you are the character; in an NS game, you advocate for the character.

I think you're right, that NS gamers are more willing to make sacrifices in the name of a good story, but I think that has more to do with perspective. In an NS game, all of the characters are fictional, and you're allowed to take that into consideration when you have them make decisions. In an OS game, you're making all of the decisions from the perspective of the character (because meta-gaming is forbidden), so obviously you can't take the fictional nature of anything into account; as far as your elven wizard is concerned, this is real life, and real life doesn't conform to narrative conventions.

I've said it for a long time, but the worst thing you can do to a player in an RPG is to protagonize them.

I don't see the distinction you're making between "being" the character and "advocating" for the character. Obviously, there is a known distinction between player and character no matter how much we may try to sublimate it....so advocacy means acting on the character's best interests. Which I think is present in all manner of games.

As for best decisions.....an elven wizard's best interest is to live, but a character could decide to sacrifice himself for some cause or greater good. So even if you are trying to "be" the elven wizard, you are (or should be) still capable of making a decision that is clearly not in his own best interests. So I don't know if I can agree with that view at all.

 

[MGibster]

As a group activity, I don't really know of any RPG where the story would be about something other than the group/party/team/crew.

How does this vary by game?

While certainly not old school, many of the meta plot driven published adventures found in various games during the 1990s had the player characters as second bananas to the publisher's favorite NPC.

 

[Lanefan]

As I said before, I suspect that it is an issue of framing. But I don't believe that the whole "story is greater than character" spiel comellingly fits the bill for describing notions of Old School gaming. It describes your preferences certainly, but likely not the early generation as a whole of gaming.

We agree, then, that the party-as-a-whole is what the story ends up being about. Good.

Now consider the difference when that party, over its ten-adventure existence, has seen 35 characters pass through as members at some point due to perma-death and other types of turnover - and where none of those that started the saga were around at the end (this to me is very much OS); as opposed to if that party had mostly the same 5 characters all the way through (which to me says NS). The end-result stories of those two parties-as-entities, assuming all other things were roughly equal, ends up roughly the same. But in the first the story (or the party, same diff) was clearly bigger than any one character; not so much the case in the second.

Which does not seem uniquely distinct from how games are played now, which would further require a different explanation for OS games other than "the story is bigger than the characters." And many homebrew OS games were run built around certain characters.

This one always red-flags to me as a bad (or at least very inexperienced) DM warning, in that if a game or story is built around a certain character then a) that character is inevitably going to be treated with favouritism and-or b) things have real potential to go sideways should that character perma-die or otherwise leave the party.

I also do not like how this framing implies in its uniqueness that in New School games that the story is subordinate to or less than the characters.

I often get a sense - particularly from the story-now crew* - that the real interest lies in the stories of individual characters, with the story of the party as a whole merely tagging along for the ride.

* - though I suppose these could almost be defined as post-NS.

On the whole, other explanations are required to describe the difference. [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] offered a fairly compelling alternative, namely that the kernals for numerous modes of gaming were present from the beginning. The proliferation of games with a range of niches since that time have drawn attention to those differences. And "New School" games may favor and expand upon a subset of those early kernals. The OSR movement is clearly attempting to bring something back in at least spirit, but even "OS emulators" seem divided over what that essential substance entails.

Oh, there's no denying that all sorts of modes of gaming and-or storytelling have been around for ages. It's general trends toward/away from one or another that we're looking at here; and how some things once generally seen as poor have become good while things once seen as good have become viewed as poor.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't see the distinction you're making between "being" the character and "advocating" for the character. Obviously, there is a known distinction between player and character no matter how much we may try to sublimate it....so advocacy means acting on the character's best interests. Which I think is present in all manner of games.

I think the distinction is in how you-as-player view the events unfolding in the fiction and react thereto: in the first person as your character, or in the third person as a player playing a character.

As for best decisions.....an elven wizard's best interest is to live, but a character could decide to sacrifice himself for some cause or greater good. So even if you are trying to "be" the elven wizard, you are (or should be) still capable of making a decision that is clearly not in his own best interests. So I don't know if I can agree with that view at all.

It comes down to "Is this what the character would do?" and ignoring any metagame ramifications if the answer is "Yes".

A good example - and one I've done to myself-as-player on numerous occasions - is where a player role-plays himself right out of a game because leaving the party is what that character would logically and reasonably do in that situation.

Whether or not a character's decision is in its own best interests is up to the character. It's whether a decision is being made due to the character's best interests or the player's, on those occasions where those interests are in conflict, is what matters.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As for best decisions.....an elven wizard's best interest is to live, but a character could decide to sacrifice himself for some cause or greater good. So even if you are trying to "be" the elven wizard, you are (or should be) still capable of making a decision that is clearly not in his own best interests. So I don't know if I can agree with that view at all.

People make self-less sacrifices all the time, in real life, so that's not un-realistic or anything. But they make sacrifices for things that matter to them, like the well-being of others, or principles like honor. As mentioned much earlier in this thread, death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a character, so making a sacrifice for the greater good can still be acting in your own best interest.

One of the big differences with NS games, and with FATE in particular, is that they ask the player to make decisions against the character's interests. They want the wizard's brother to die, not because it's what the character would want in any capacity, or even because it's a necessary sacrifice for the greater good that they believe in, but because it's more dramatic and narratively satisfying for the players at the table.

I don't see the distinction you're making between "being" the character and "advocating" for the character. Obviously, there is a known distinction between player and character no matter how much we may try to sublimate it....so advocacy means acting on the character's best interests. Which I think is present in all manner of games.

It's kind of hard to describe, but I'll try.

The difference between being the character and advocating for the character is a fundamental distinction in how the decisions are made. It's a different process, by which information is analyzed and weighed. From what I understand, it uses different parts of the brain, though I can't offer more specificity on that point. When you are the character, you actually imagine yourself to be in that situation, in order to find out how you would respond. You imagine the musty corridor, and the crazed zombie, and your mighty thews, and the sword in your hand; and whatever your brain kicks back for what you should do in that situation, that's what you do - that's what you say your character tries to do.

I'm not an expert on NS gameplay, but that's not the process I understand from reading the FATE Core book. What they describe is more a system of collaboratively story-telling, where you identify with your character but not as your character. It's like you're one of four writers, working on a novel or a something, and you're debating how the story should unfold. You are advocating for your character, in that you want them to be memorable and do cool things, but you don't really stop to imagine yourself in the situation before letting them do anything. You maintain your position as an outsider, even while you're making decisions for the character.

 

[Arilyn]

I have played a wide variety of role playing games over the years, both old and new. I usually have
no trouble immersing myself in my characters, whether it is an older edition of D&D, Fate, Dungeon World, or Masks. Personally, I find the newer mechanics more satisfying and more immersive. Others, or course, find them disruptive. It is all just different flavours of role playing. Fate, is often accused of being a storytelling game, but it is very firmly in the rpg camp. It doesn't even straddle the fence like Hillfolk.

Storytelling games are markedly different. Mechanics revolve around gaining the chair, so to speak, in order to further the story. Players, depending on the game or scenario, might share multiple characters between them. Sometimes the end result is already known, as in the fall of a kingdom, and players are creating the circumstances which inevitably lead to the fall. It's a very different experience, which games like Fate do not emulate.

These days there is some mixing of old and new. 13th Age definitely has new school mechanics, but succeeds in being a love letter to traditional D&D. Dungeon World also has a feel of old school philosophy, with modern mechanics.

People are natural storytellers, and more emphasis on character over solving dungeon puzzles is just going to generally be more appealing, but not overwhelmingly exclusive. How those stories are told is going to vary. I was turned away by pure dungeon crawls, but even back then, other players were doing story. Fortunately, I found like minded players with the Old Warhammer rpg. Newer mechanics are not killing role playing or making games soft and easy. They are great tools, which have been furthering our hobby for many years. Without them, our gaming choices would be greatly limited.

After reading these posts, I believe that you might get a sense of old and new school, but laying down an actual definition will prove elusive.