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<blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7769351" data-attributes="member: 5142">Old School RPGs (OSRPGs) and New School RPGs (NSRPGs) do not seem like meaningful categories. Even if we speak more broadly in terms of &quot;how (RP) games were&quot; versus &quot;how (RP) games are now,&quot; regardless of how we define those respective parameters, we are looking at a tremendous degree of diversity in the market. There are even some critical differences, IMO, between &quot;OS games&quot; versus &quot;OSR games.&quot; And I would be somewhat more interested in comparing these two sets of games than OS to &quot;NSRPGs,&quot; which in this article seems to include a wide berth of game systems, such as Fate, 4-5e D&amp;D, Savage Worlds, and probably Powered by the Apocalypse. Why OS vs. OSR? Unless I am mistaken - and I would welcome clarification here - Old School did not seem to exist as a concept until the Old School Revival/Renaissance. And much like the actual Renaissance, I suspect that OSR created a false narrative of the current/preceding generation of games in favor of establishing a false narrative of &quot;reviving&quot; something that was not necessarily lost. But I also think that if we compare OS and OSR games we can probably have a better understanding of the contemporaneous influences on OS-inspired games as well as the play that OSR attempts to emulate. Because even if the OSR movement claims to represent a revival, a restoration, a renaissance, or some other highly romanticized 'r word' of Old School games, their design and writing will likely betray some of those nebulously-defined &quot;NSRPG&quot; influences, some consciously and others not. For example, both Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures and Black Hack place themselves under the OSR umbrella. But both games also have decidedly contemporary influences, and consciously so even. BtWaOA, for example, incorporates PbtA-influenced playbooks and the character creation process entails the players filling out a village, its inhabitants, and their connections to other PCs. Black Hack incorporates some 4-5e inspired mechanics such as advantage/disadvantage while also seemingly streamlining the OS experience through a more unified mechanic: i.e., attacks, defence, saving throws, skills, and such are collectively turned into roll-under attribute system. So through identifying some of the &quot;novelties&quot; and/or similarities that OSR brings to OS, we can potentially gain a greater sense for both OSRPG and NSRPG more concretely than comparing OSRPG directly to a more nebulous range of NSRPG systems.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aldarc, post: 7769351, member: 5142"] Old School RPGs (OSRPGs) and New School RPGs (NSRPGs) do not seem like meaningful categories. Even if we speak more broadly in terms of "how (RP) games were" versus "how (RP) games are now," regardless of how we define those respective parameters, we are looking at a tremendous degree of diversity in the market. There are even some critical differences, IMO, between "OS games" versus "OSR games." And I would be somewhat more interested in comparing these two sets of games than OS to "NSRPGs," which in this article seems to include a wide berth of game systems, such as Fate, 4-5e D&D, Savage Worlds, and probably Powered by the Apocalypse. [B][I]Why OS vs. OSR?[/I][/B] Unless I am mistaken - and I would welcome clarification here - Old School did not seem to exist as a concept until the Old School Revival/Renaissance. And much like the actual Renaissance, I suspect that OSR created a false narrative of the current/preceding generation of games in favor of establishing a false narrative of "reviving" something that was not necessarily lost. But I also think that if we compare OS and OSR games we can probably have a better understanding of the contemporaneous influences on OS-inspired games as well as the play that OSR attempts to emulate. Because even if the OSR movement claims to represent a revival, a restoration, a renaissance, or some other highly romanticized 'r word' of Old School games, their design and writing will likely betray some of those nebulously-defined "NSRPG" influences, some consciously and others not. For example, both [I]Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures[/I] and [I]Black Hack [/I] place themselves under the OSR umbrella. But both games also have decidedly contemporary influences, and consciously so even. BtWaOA, for example, incorporates PbtA-influenced playbooks and the character creation process entails the players filling out a village, its inhabitants, and their connections to other PCs. Black Hack incorporates some 4-5e inspired mechanics such as advantage/disadvantage while also seemingly streamlining the OS experience through a more unified mechanic: i.e., attacks, defence, saving throws, skills, and such are collectively turned into roll-under attribute system. So through identifying some of the "novelties" and/or similarities that OSR brings to OS, we can potentially gain a greater sense for both OSRPG and NSRPG more concretely than comparing OSRPG directly to a more nebulous range of NSRPG systems. [/QUOTE]

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