People talk about "old school" D&D (and other games), but there are many different visions of it floating around. Matt Finch's primer is a good start, but maybe not enough for all versions.

So, Ill list some of his ideas (first four) and some others, and you can tell me what is important to OS in your opinion, or add your own number.

1) Rulings, not Rules. You don't need many rules, the GM can come up with something.
2) Player Skill, not Character Skill. You don't roll find or disarm traps, you describe it.
3) Hero, not Superhero. Characters become power but not too powerful (whatever this means).
4) No such thing as "game balance". Challenges aren't tailor-suited to the characters - if they go wandering to Forest of Death or whatever, they are risking their necks.

Some things I find important:

5) Starting characters aren't special. They don't have elaborate backgrounds or many special abilities.
6) Resource management is important. You shouldn't be handwaving money, encumbrance, torches etc.
7) There is no "story" being created on purpose. The focus is survival and profit, not catharsis. There is no start-beggining-end, there are things that happen, and that's it. You can tell your exploits after the fact, but you aren't thinking of "what would make for a good ending" when you're fighting the ogre.

What say you?

A few more common characteristics.

The main area of exploration is multi-level dungeons. Secondarily, wilderness hex crawls.
9) The game has clear built in danger signals, that warn the players when the PCs are out of their depth. These appear in two main forms: Dungeon levels (level 2 is harder than level 1), and monsters (orcs are harder than goblins are harder than kobolds). The latter means no orc mooks and orc slaughterkilldeathmachines -- except for NPC parties, meeting an orc means you're facing a monster with 1 HD (there are leader types, but they're part of the lair structure).
10) Wandering monsters make it dangerous to stay in one place. Since they lack the treasure of stay-at-home monsters, it forces the PCs to aggressively seek out lairs/hoards.
11) A sense of humor. Survival horror is leavened by jokes, most of which break the fourth wall.

I pretty much agree with the points in the first post. Four additional very important "old school" points for me are:

A) Combat is fast and fairly abstract. While combat happens a lot in most old school games, it is not time-consuming nor is it intended to be the most interesting part of the session. Minis/pieces and battlemats can be used if the GM wants but they are never required.

B) System mastery is not required. Players do not need to know the rules to play (and play well). They can simply describe what their character is doing in plain language (not gamespeak) and the GM will tell them the results of their action or what they need to roll.

C) The rules are merely guidelines for the GM. The rules are not intended or designed to protect players from a "bad" GM. Players can and should, of course, not play with a GM they consider bad.

D) The system mechanics are not purposely designed to be interesting for players to manipulate but to get out of the way so the stuff going on in the campaign is the center of attention. It's not about what mechanical features a character gets as the campaign progresses but about what the character does in the campaign.

I'd agree with Eric and RandallS points... and I do like Matt Finch's primer.

Quote from: Pat;846495 The main area of exploration is multi-level dungeons. Secondarily, wilderness hex crawls.

I'd take exception with that one. Or maybe it's just that most locations... urban, rural, wilderness are run like dungeons.

Quote9) The game has clear built in danger signals, that warn the players when the PCs are out of their depth.

I'm for giving the PCs some warning clues when they're sticking their necks out but I'm not favoring predictable monsters/settings. Orcs are as variable as men, goblins are weird... and if you're not sure what that thing in the cave is you might not want to fuck with it. Level 9 of the dungeon might be the puppy farm where they breed all the puppies they feed to the thing on Level 10... awww, puppies!!!

Quote from: Simlasa;846505I'm for giving the PCs some warning clues when they're sticking their necks out but I'm not favoring predictable monsters/settings. Orcs are as variable as men, goblins are weird... and if you're not sure what that thing in the cave is you might not want to fuck with it. Level 9 of the dungeon might be the puppy farm where they breed all the puppies they feed to the thing on Level 10... awww, puppies!!!

I think it's hugely important. Because without clear, consistent markers about difficulty, the players can't make rational decisions, which means they have to rely on the DM to always provide appropriate encounters. And that destroys the whole pseudo-realism of a sandbox world where things exist whether or not the players interact with them today or 10 levels from now.

Quote from: Pat;846512I think it's hugely important. Because without clear, consistent markers about difficulty, the players can't make rational decisions...

I agree that signposts are very important... but I think there are lots of ways to do that besides predictable dungeon levels and monsters. If the orc lair has a lot of heads on posts outside and some of them are still recognizable as some seriously tough guys you met in a previous session... you might think twice about whether these are just your average pie-loving orcs.

Quote from: RandallS;846503I pretty much agree with the points in the first post. Four additional very important "old school" points for me are:

A) Combat is fast and fairly abstract. While combat happens a lot in most old school games, it is not time-consuming nor is it intended to be the most interesting part of the session. Minis/pieces and battlemats can be used if the GM wants but they are never required.

B) System mastery is not required. Players do not need to know the rules to play (and play well). They can simply describe what their character is doing in plain language (not gamespeak) and the GM will tell them the results of their action or what they need to roll.

C) The rules are merely guidelines for the GM. The rules are not intended or designed to protect players from a "bad" GM. Players can and should, of course, not play with a GM they consider bad.

D) The system mechanics are not purposely designed to be interesting for players to manipulate but to get out of the way so the stuff going on in the campaign is the center of attention. It's not about what mechanical features a character gets as the campaign progresses but about what the character does in the campaign.

This needs to be made into a fucking poster, with D highlighted and underlined.

Quote from: Pat;846512I think it's hugely important. Because without clear, consistent markers about difficulty, the players can't make rational decisions, which means they have to rely on the DM to always provide appropriate encounters. And that destroys the whole pseudo-realism of a sandbox world where things exist whether or not the players interact with them today or 10 levels from now.

But having every level be magically a set difficulty destroys it too.

I cannot help but notice that, like many critics of the OSR are quick to point out, this thread assumes right off the bat that "old school" means "old school D&D." I'm fine with that, though, and I'll play along.

I just have one point I'd like to dwell on, as it is very, very relevant to my interests.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;8464933) Hero, not Superhero. Characters become power but not too powerful (whatever this means).

Actually, high-level old school D&D characters are superheroes. "Superhero" is even a level title in OD&D, cribbed from Chainmail.

More to the point, "endgame" old school D&D PCs get to be Batman or Iron Man. They have a cool crib (stronghold!), wondrous weapons and devices beyond mortal ken (magic items accumulated from years of adventuring) and of course, tons of money.

Where it differs from the new school editions is that they don't really get to be Superman or Doctor Manhattan, cleaving down endless hordes of foes in a fell swoop while still living from inn to squalid inn with nothing but the gear on their backs as they adventure.

Quote from: The Butcher;846542I cannot help but notice that, like many critics of the OSR are quick to point out, this thread assumes right off the bat that "old school" means "old school D&D." I'm fine with that, though, and I'll play along.

I was gonna argue on that as well but figured there wasn't much point. Still, most of these qualifiers are in place when I'm running Magic World, which is Stormbringer, which is BRP, which is the core of the old Runequest that I gave up D&D for wayback when.
They also seem to be in our GM's head when he's running Pathfinder... so yeah, I don't think which rules you're using matter all that much and it's more about the atmosphere/style.

I never have played too close to that endgame superhero stuff. Not that I'd snub playing an actual superhero game.

16) The game is not about running a predefined, prewritten setting. A GM has to make the game and the setting his own, even if he does use "official" material (like that gorgeous Greyhawk map...), and bonus points if he builds it from scratch.


(I always had more respect for GMs that did that. Even if their maps were sketchy - they were theirs.)

Quote from: The Butcher;846542I cannot help but notice that, like many critics of the OSR are quick to point out, this thread assumes right off the bat that "old school" means "old school D&D." I'm fine with that, though, and I'll play along.

I don't think the 7 in the original post or the four in my post are limited to D&D. Most apply to almost all the games I playing or ran in the 1970s: D&D, EPT, Traveller, V&V, RQ, T&T, C&S, Gamma World, Superhero:2044, Starships & Spacemen, etc. Perhaps one or two of the 11 items don't apply to each of these games, but most do.

Very good point in this thread...

Those two expressed exactly what I was looking for:

Quote from: RandallS;846503B) System mastery is not required. Players do not need to know the rules to play (and play well). They can simply describe what their character is doing in plain language (not gamespeak) and the GM will tell them the results of their action or what they need to roll.
[...]

D) The system mechanics are not purposely designed to be interesting for players to manipulate but to get out of the way so the stuff going on in the campaign is the center of attention. It's not about what mechanical features a character gets as the campaign progresses but about what the character does in the campaign.

Well said.

Heh, so much of this was the exact problems that the so-called "Swine" had with D&D 3E - a focus on rolling over roleplay, players becoming disengaged from the world as their character level grew, a mathematical focus to gameplay, preplanning 14 levels of character development at level 1.  

I'd propose that you're all flailing around trying to define something that's abstract - a "feel".   You and your allies against an ultimately uncaring universe.  There's no fairness or justice, just the quick and the clever.  You can't hide behind some points system, or the rulebook, or some awesome magic your class gets - you get poked with a poison needle and die because you picked up the wrong book.    The only other thing I'd add is that the rules are a tool, they're not meant to be a defined social contract.  They're a method of action resolution, not a system you interact with.

Frankly I've run and been in Vampire campaigns that had far more of an "old school" feel than certain Monty Haul-esque D&D games I've been a part of.

To me, one major part of "old school" is thin rulebooks. Usually not hardback. In the good old days, D&D was easy to learn. Not just because it had a quick combat system or other factors already mention in this thread, but also because there really weren't that many rules to know. You really could sit down in an afternoon and pretty much read all of the rules, and sit down in 5-10 minutes and make up a character. Nowadays rule books are often hardback color monstrosities on glossy paper. Players have to read all about their options and figure out how their character will develop, becasue if you pick the wrong feat/skill/option at level 2 it might mess up your character when you get to level 8.

Look at all of the early RPGs (particularly the TSR ones) and you will find thin rulebooks. D&D, Metamorphosis Apha, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Black box Traveller, RuneQuest, and more typically were softback in 64 pages or fewer. And that includes both player and DM information.

When I run OD&D, I often do it like this:
1. 3x5" notecards for character sheets.
2. Either a homemade DM screen or "reference sheets" instead of a rulebook.
3. A monster book handy, just in case.
4. Either a thin module, or ususally a dungeon map found through Google and with the rooms filled in by me shortly before play.

When I run 5E, it usually looks more like this:
1. Pre-printed character sheets for easy fill-in by players. Each player has his own copy of the Player's Handbook for referece during play.
2. Either a homemade DM screen or my WotC one.
3. A monster book handy.
4. Some sort of hardback module.

I enjoy both games, but I think my OD&D campaigns have a very different feel to them. That's what "old school" means to me.