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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alexander Kalinowski" data-source="post: 7769867" data-attributes="member: 6931283">I feel compelled once more to point out that beyond Old School (which largely amounts to Gamist rulesets) and New School (which many seem to think largely congruent with a more narrative approach) there's a Middle School which was pretty Simulationist. As mentioned above, skill lists, Ads/Disads lists ("Feats") and plenty of circumstantial modifiers were its hallmarks. As for 5E, a disclaimer: I am not a 5E expert, nor a D&D expert in general. So if any of my takes are misguided, I honestly appreciate any corrections.As I see it, 5E has been moving away from the Middle School and more towards Old School in some aspects (deemphasizing character customization via skill lists and "Feats", reducing the number of circumstantial modifiers, thus undoing some of the simulationist Middle School features of 3E) at least. As for the New School, let's see:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Luck and rerolls are not really New School. GURPS had Luck/Extraordinary Luck/etc as Advantages for a long, long time. The first time I encountered rerolls, I think, was in GW's Bloodbowl 2E. The edition is from 1988. WFRP had Fate Points, Shadowrun 2E had Karma Points that could be drawn on for luck. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Second Wind: why is that New School? I'm not sure how it's any different from a GURPS advantage. The only unusual to me is that it seems to be more or less once per encounter. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Encounter Design: This is largely a D&D thing. Most big non-D&D RPGs leave encounter design up to the eye measure of the GM and rules of thumb rather than use a specific metric. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Save or die: This may or may not exist in other games but I am not sure this is representative of newer RPGs overall. In particular, in games with Fate Points of some kind Save-or-Die is less of a problem because you can generally expend a FP to save your skin this time. So if newer games have these FPs, they are more likely to have Save-or-Die situations. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bounded Accuracy: Isn't that a D&D-specific fix of poorly designed (at least in part, don't get mad at me) earlier editions? I mean, Rolemaster had 'soft' bounded accuracy back then: attributes gave you normally max +25 (=>+5 in D&D, nice coincidence), skills could be raised indefinitely but with diminishing returns ('soft') and you had some per level bonus. Anyway, all BA does is improve game balance and plausibility? Is that really a new game paradigm? </li> </ul>Overall, I struggle to identify what you consider New School. If New School games are games like FATE and PbtA (and possibly Genesys), they are in part defined by abandoning trying to have accurate probabilities and by giving players agency over more than their character's decisions, imho.If it's not these games, what IS the New School here?</blockquote>

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