Quote from: Soylent Green;376666Early 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.

I don't think I ever got a GW module, so I will defer to your analysis.

Quote from: StormBringer;376667I don't think I ever got a GW module, so I will defer to your analysis.

And should I get my Gamma World facts wrong, I am sure Tetsubo or Silverlion will set me straight

Quote from: Soylent Green;376669And should I get my Gamma World facts wrong, I am sure Tetsubo or Silverlion will set me straight

They are pretty good about that.  

Quote from: StormBringer;376607EDIT:
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Clash is right, I will try to turn over a new leaf.

Probably for the best considering you missed both the point and the mark in relying yet again on a totally D&D centric world view.

Perhaps the more elegant, less butthurt inducing way to put it would be that new school acknowledges the existence and contribution of other games and styles that have come since the original D&D.  The point remains the same.  It also squarely markes 3e and later as "new school" as that was the first that really acknowledged the additions of other games to the designer's toolbox.

Quote from: J Arcane;376672Probably for the best considering you missed both the point and the mark in relying yet again on a totally D&D centric world view.

Perhaps the more elegant, less butthurt inducing way to put it would be that new school acknowledges the existence and contribution of other games and styles that have come since the original D&D.  The point remains the same.  It also squarely markes 3e and later as "new school" as that was the first that really acknowledged the additions of other games to the designer's toolbox.

But that was virtually inevitable, although still avoidable.  There were no other games to draw from in the OD&D days.  I am not saying either of these is good or bad, simply the way things turned out.

Quote from: StormBringer;376674But that was virtually inevitable, although still avoidable.  There were no other games to draw from in the OD&D days.  I am not saying either of these is good or bad, simply the way things turned out.

See I'd go so far as to put the mark well into the 2e.  I always get the sense from TSR's stuff that they basically felt they were pretty much in their own little world and felt no need to acknowledge anything else or had even read anything else, besides D&D.  

You especially see it in their attempts at doing other games, in stuff like Alternity and Gamma World 4e, like their trying to puzzle out on their own mechanical concepts that were quite familiar by that time to everyone else, and winding up with this weird convoluted half-formed thing.  

Like those moments when you come up with what seems like a good idea, and you're struggling to explain it to a friend, and then the friend says, "Oh, you mean this?" and you realize that's exactly what you were trying and failing to get at and if you'd only been more literate on the subject you'd already know it.

Quote from: StormBringer;376674But that was virtually inevitable, although still avoidable.  There were no other games to draw from in the OD&D days.  I am not saying either of these is good or bad, simply the way things turned out.

I don't feel that's true.  OD&D came out of the wargaming and Braunsteins that preceded it.  Really, I'd say that OD&D derives from earlier wargaming at least as much as many later games like Traveller or Amber derive from OD&D.  Further, within just a year or two of the publication of OD&D, there were games that derived from it - i.e. Tunnels & Trolls and Metamorphosis Alpha.

Could gaming theory make the difference here? I.e. in older days, designing a new game that was inspired from another was about adding some cool bit like percentage skills or cultures to make it "more realistic", or "more lethal", whereas today it's about copying design patterns, systems, having "narrative control" and "cinematic combat" with a game more or less fitting in a sort of GNS clusterfuck of game design. Am I making any sense, here?

Quote from: Benoist;376685whereas today it's about copying design patterns, systems, having "narrative control" and "cinematic combat" with a game more or less fitting in a sort of GNS clusterfuck of game design. Am I making any sense, here?

I think that in a vast majority of cases, this isn't correct. Folk just design stuff that they think will be fun.

Quote from: One Horse Town;376688I think that in a vast majority of cases, this isn't correct. Folk just design stuff that they think will be fun.

*nod* I can sort of feel what the difference is between the designs then and now, but can't put my finger on it.
Just trying to figure it out.

Quote from: Benoist;376685Could gaming theory make the difference here? I.e. in older days, designing a new game that was inspired from another was about adding some cool bit like percentage skills or cultures to make it "more realistic", or "more lethal", whereas today it's about copying design patterns, systems, having "narrative control" and "cinematic combat" with a game more or less fitting in a sort of GNS clusterfuck of game design. Am I making any sense, here?

Kind of depends what counts as "older days". A lot of 80's games were not just tweaking the existing games. Games like Ars Magica, Pendragon, WEG Star Wars took the hobby in different directions and are clearly designed to be played in a certina way with mechanics the reinforce this.

I swear I replied to this before.

Quote from: J Arcane;376678See I'd go so far as to put the mark well into the 2e.  I always get the sense from TSR's stuff that they basically felt they were pretty much in their own little world and felt no need to acknowledge anything else or had even read anything else, besides D&D.

You especially see it in their attempts at doing other games, in stuff like Alternity and Gamma World 4e, like their trying to puzzle out on their own mechanical concepts that were quite familiar by that time to everyone else, and winding up with this weird convoluted half-formed thing.

I can see that, especially the first part.  I don't know for sure if they were quite so isolated as you claim, but likely they were to some degree.

I was using OD&D as the extreme outside example, ie, the first point of reference.  I would probably put the latest marker a bit earlier, perhaps around mid- to late- 1st edition.  Certainly around UA and Dungeoneer's there started to be a large enough body of RPGs that a certain 'cannibalization' started up in earnest.

While I appreciate the possibility that I may have stumbled onto some insight (in collaboration with SB), and I think that John is somehow latching onto a peripheral issue, I'd like to remind folks, again, that definitional wrangles really aren't what Clash is after.

Pick a few games you think are "new school", explain why they're new school if you like, but most important say what you think are their strengths compared to whatever you think of as "old school".

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;376700While I appreciate the possibility that I may have stumbled onto some insight (in collaboration with SB), and I think that John is somehow latching onto a peripheral issue, I'd like to remind folks, again, that definitional wrangles really aren't what Clash is after.

Pick a few games you think are "new school", explain why they're new school if you like, but most important say what you think they do that's better than whatever you think of as "old school".

I will take co-sponsorship of your insight, if you think it is appropriate.  

The definitional stuff was me talking out loud, mostly.  Hopefully, it didn't throw the thread too far off track.  With this in mind, I would say 'old school' for me is somewhere around the early 90s.  Perhaps a couple of years before White Wolf hit the scene, there was an incubator of story driven games that gave rise to the sensibilities that coalesced in V:tM.  Certainly, 2e AD&D contributed, as well as some other games.

I am unable to get much more specific than that.  For sure, EotPT is old school, as is the early editions of Rolemaster.  Traveller, Tunnels and Trolls, Palladium Fantasy...  For me, it is more of a feel of the rules:  messy, cobbled together, tenuous connections between them; and how this led to a less organized style of play like hexcrawling through a sandbox, occasionally stumbling on a dungeon or something.

Essentially, there was a story waiting to be told, but it was told during the course of the game, post facto.  The events of the game made the story you would tell later rather than engineering events in the game to satisfy the outline of a story you had in mind beforehand.  'Old School' games are the former, 'New School' games are the latter.

And...are there any "New School" games that have strengths vis à vis the "old school"?