Quote from: StormBringer;376634A good point, I would go one step further and say 'old school' was influenced by earlier literature, while 'new school' is influenced by previous games, including the feedback loop of RPGs and computer versions of same.

Not that this feedback loop is necessarily a cul-de-sac or anything, but there is a distinct point where RPGs stopped drawing from 'unrelated' literature and started drawing from the body of writing and other media that developed around it from previous games/tropes.

I don't agree about this.  D&D very quickly turned into its own genre with its own tropes. That is, a typical 1E AD&D adventure written out as a story bears little resemblance to Tolkien or Vance or anyone.  And an awful lot of 70s and early 80s RPGs were created as a reaction to D&D (i.e. "D&D in Space") rather than as independent adaptations of literature.  Many later games often drew inspiration from literature - like Lovecraft for Call of Cthulhu, superhero comics for Champions, Zelazny for Amber Diceless, Anne Rice for Vampire: The Masquerade, R.E. Howard for the Conan RPG, and pulp stories for Spirit of the Century - not to mention the horde of movie and TV emulating games, like Star Wars, BESM, etc.  Genre emulating games like these are more New School than Old School, I'd argue.  

Now, like some here, my experience is that later RPG play (aka "New School") tends to be less do-it-yourself, with players sticking closer to published material.  However, I suspect that the main reason for this isn't that RPG players changed their tastes, but rather that the RPG market got better at designing books that matched what players wanted.  Most people who were do-it-yourself-ing in 1980 were probably glad to get RPG books that better fit their style and drop DIY, leaving a minority of disgruntled folk who preferred the more DIY days.

There is no new school (which also explains why people don't sit down and say "We're going to play this New School style" unless they are trying to denigrate it or be ironic). "New school" is just a label for whatever normal gaming is taking place now.

Old school, by definition, is reconstruction of what gaming might have been or "must" have been.

When you were playing AD&D in 1983 or whatever, it was (by definition) new school at the time. And nobody was making an attempt to reconstruct anything, because there wasn't anything to reconstruct.

Quote from: jhkim;376646I don't agree about this.  D&D very quickly turned into its own genre with its own tropes. That is, a typical 1E AD&D adventure written out as a story bears little resemblance to Tolkien or Vance or anyone.  And an awful lot of 70s and early 80s RPGs were created as a reaction to D&D (i.e. "D&D in Space") rather than as independent adaptations of literature.  Many later games often drew inspiration from literature - like Lovecraft for Call of Cthulhu, superhero comics for Champions, Zelazny for Amber Diceless, Anne Rice for Vampire: The Masquerade, R.E. Howard for the Conan RPG, and pulp stories for Spirit of the Century - not to mention the horde of movie and TV emulating games, like Star Wars, BESM, etc.  Genre emulating games like these are more New School than Old School, I'd argue.  

The end results may not have often been Tolkien- or Vance-like, but the influence in the rules is clear.  More recent games are just as clear in elevating tropes that came from within the gaming genre itself, as you say, in reaction to original gaming ideas or tropes.

QuoteNow, like some here, my experience is that later RPG play (aka "New School") tends to be less do-it-yourself, with players sticking closer to published material.  However, I suspect that the main reason for this isn't that RPG players changed their tastes, but rather that the RPG market got better at designing books that matched what players wanted.  Most people who were do-it-yourself-ing in 1980 were probably glad to get RPG books that better fit their style and drop DIY, leaving a minority of disgruntled folk who preferred the more DIY days.

I would disagree that is necessarily what the players wanted.  Like most products in any field, they tend to be designed from scratch, and then a market is created for them.  Steve Jobs has crafted a multi-billion dollar company based on this.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;376638That, I can partially get behind.

Although, thematically, I don't necessarily see "new school" games as necessarily commonly drawing from other games so much as drawing from geek culture. (And even then, not always: look at Grey Ranks.) Even when there isn't a direct geek culture referent, the point of commonality is still visible in the willingness to invent concepts whole-cloth, instead of referring to external traditional culture. Many new games seem to be game-ifying the ideas of jaded GMs who've already seen & done everything.

Rules-wise, "new school" games are certainly very game-referent. The technology is mature, even in the sense of seeing it as a technology. Whereas old-school games were often working from a very limited toolkit, or obviously working from a completely clean sheet.

Yeah, I can see that fitting better, especially the self-referential gaming part.

Quote from: jeff37923;376630After thinking about it most of the morning, the one point which really differentiates New School from Old School in my mind doesn't have much to do with RPGs as it does with console and computer gaming. New School games are influenced more by tropes and standards of computer gaming while Old School games are the ones that most influenced computer gaming. New School gamers come from a computer game background where they were exposed to games first while Old School gamers come from a tabletop RPG background and then migrated over to computer games to add to their gaming.

I am not so sure. There were and there are computer games that strike me as fundamentally old school in approach or aesthetic - Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, the SSI Gold Box series or from the more recent crop, even Deus Ex come to my mind. We can say then that these are the games that were inspired by old school gaming, but then the whole point would become quite meaningless.

Most of the old school players I know are, or have been exposed to computer gaming. In fact, Crusaders of the Dark Savant seems to be an important shared experience for us - I have discovered that a lot of people whose gaming preferences are closed to me have played and enjoyed that game, and used it as a wellspring of inspiration. There may be more recent ones for others (GTA as a sandbox game? I have never played it, but it may fit the bill) - I may have to think about this more.

Quote from: jeff37923;376649Yeah, I can see that fitting better, especially the self-referential gaming part.

Yep! This is clicking with me too. Are we actually coming to something like a consensus? :O

-clash

Quote from: StormBringer;376648The end results may not have often been Tolkien- or Vance-like, but the influence in the rules is clear.  More recent games are just as clear in elevating tropes that came from within the gaming genre itself, as you say, in reaction to original gaming ideas or tropes.

Actually, I was saying the opposite.  

I'm saying that games like Gamma World or Star Frontiers (i.e. Old School) were inspired more by gaming tropes than by literature.  They were more D&D in space, rather than an attempt to really emulate any sci-fi literature.  The same goes for the numerous early D&D clones, which were reactions to D&D rather than adaptations of literature.  

In contrast, recent sci-fi games like Star Wars D6 or Burning Empires or Star Blazers (i.e. New School) were clearly inspired by film/literature and that influence is clear in the rules.  Star Wars D6 may have used many of the Ghostbusters RPG mechanics, but it wasn't an effort to be Ghostbusters in space - it was emulating Star Wars, and you can see that.  

This isn't absolute, by any means.  D&D4 definitely does have many CCG and computer game influences, for example.  If we were talking only about D&D rather than RPGs more broadly, my view would be different.  However, across RPGs, I think that direct literature-to-game influences are at least as common in post-1985 games.

Quote from: flyingmice;376651Yep! This is clicking with me too. Are we actually coming to something like a consensus? :O

In 20 years, people will still be having this debate.

Though by then, what we call presently call "old school" will be called "ancient school" and what we presently call "new school" will be called "old school".

Quote from: flyingmice;376651Yep! This is clicking with me too. Are we actually coming to something like a consensus? :O

-clash

I can't think of any objection.
That certainly is a part of what we're talking about, for sure.

Interesting. Most of my game writing ideas are external--inspired by non-gaming media, and ideas. Except for Derelict Delvers, which is an alternate realities D&D...

So. Would it be fair to talk of a sort of "echo chamber" as far as "new school" game design is concerned?

Quote from: Silverlion;376656Interesting. Most of my game writing ideas are external--inspired by non-gaming media, and ideas. Except for Derelict Delvers, which is an alternate realities D&D...

I'll buy that.  And I think that's true for a lot of other designers.  Truth & Justice, Zorcerer of Zo, In Harm's Way, and so forth are all strongly tied to a literary genre.  Further, attempts to do variant D&D aren't new at all - going back well into the 70s.  

When I think of RPGs that draw from literature or other genre, I think of Call of Cthulhu, James Bond 007, Star Wars D6, Amber Diceless, etc.  When I think of variant D&D RPGs, I think of Gamma World and Rolemaster first, although there are plenty of later ones.

Quote from: jhkim;376652Actually, I was saying the opposite.  

I'm saying that games like Gamma World or Star Frontiers (i.e. Old School) were inspired more by gaming tropes than by literature.  They were more D&D in space, rather than an attempt to really emulate any sci-fi literature.  The same goes for the numerous early D&D clones, which were reactions to D&D rather than adaptations of literature.  

This is where you lose me.  Star Frontiers didn't cite any direct influences, and it is difficult to pin it down with a specific genre, but it is pretty clearly pulp action in space and not D&D in space.  I would contend there are not many games out there of any genre that are farther from D&D than Star Frontiers.

Gamma World may be closer to your point, because that used a system that was very similar to D&D in many ways, so in one sense, it would have been difficult to separate the two in terms of game play.  But even then, it is kind of a stretch.  GW was much closer to hexcrawling than dungeoncrawling.

Quote from: jhkim;376658When I think of variant D&D RPGs, I think of Gamma World and Rolemaster first, although there are plenty of later ones.

Gamma World is even more of a bastardisation because it derives from Metamorphosis Alpha which was about a generation starship (the original D&D dungeon in space). So things that made sense in MA, like the universal colour coded access keys, found there way into Gamma World and stayed there as far as the 4th edition.

Both MA and Gamma World of course cite various books and movies as inspiration , but there was no attempt in the actual mechanics, character build or GM advice to really capture the sources.

Quote from: StormBringer;376662This is where you lose me.  Star Frontiers didn't cite any direct influences, and it is difficult to pin it down with a specific genre, but it is pretty clearly pulp action in space and not D&D in space.  I would contend there are not many games out there of any genre that are farther from D&D than Star Frontiers.

Gamma World may be closer to your point, because that used a system that was very similar to D&D in many ways, so in one sense, it would have been difficult to separate the two in terms of game play.  But even then, it is kind of a stretch.  GW was much closer to hexcrawling than dungeoncrawling.

Early Gamma World adventures, for instance, "Legion of Gold", where in the vein of "Keep on the Borderland" (I think), a mini campaign setting with a lot of dungeons. 3rd edition gamma World adventuers were more hex crawls like "Isle of Dread" (although there was an over arching goal linking all the 3rd edition modules). 4th edition Gamma World modules were more like the Marvel Super Hero adventures - linear, scripted plots with boxed text to read out.