Quote from: DavetheLost;916042I felt there was a sea change with AD&D. The philosophy shifted from DIY to "Official Size and Weight" with Gary proclaiming that if you did not play just so then you were "not playing Dungeons & Dragons".

My theory that it was a reaction with TSR literally deluged with question about OD&D. If you read the various accounts about the earliest days of TSR, one thing that stands out they how people wrote, called, and came in person to demand answers from TSR on various rules. I also got the impression got an ear beating everytime a D&D tournament was run at a convention. Judges Guild published a few of the convention adventures with every note incorporated into the product. Scrapfaggot Green and Gen Con IX Dungeon there are couple of pages of rules that amount to "This is how we are going to play D&D at this tournament." It not exactly house rules as they invariably address the vague parts of original rules rather than make up something special for the tournament.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;916045I'm only twenty-three, so that may have something to do with me considering Vampire: The Masquerade 1E and the Sailor Moon RPG "Old School", so keep that in mind.

  Yeah; most of us here were probably gaming before you were born.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;916045I'm only twenty-three, so that may have something to do with me considering Vampire: The Masquerade 1E and the Sailor Moon RPG "Old School", so keep that in mind.

Good Lord I feel old!  I may have been gaming before your PARENTS met...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;916244Yeah; most of us here were probably gaming before you were born.

Hell, most of us were probably bitter about changes to gaming before he was born. I had gotten temporarily burned out on D&D and was focusing on GURPS around that time.

Most of my rulebooks are older than he is!  Now I feel old. Get off my lawn!

Quote from: DavetheLost;916042Ken St Andre is the designer of Tunnels & Trolls. He also wrote much of the first edition of Stormbringer for Chaosium.

I think the reason "old school" has never quite gelled for me as a distinct thing is I can't draw a line in my gaming over the last 4 decades and say "here is where the old school ends". A lot of the OSR stuff I look at seems "old school" more in name or being formatted like older rulesets than actually being played the way I played back in the day.

And the rules as printed are a very different thing than the rules as played. We gleefully allowed all sorts of creatures as PCs, just gave them appropriate attributes and a character class and off they went. Even if the RAW only allowed a very narrow selection "officially". I felt there was a sea change with AD&D. The philosophy shifted from DIY to "Official Size and Weight" with Gary proclaiming that if you did not play just so then you were "not playing Dungeons & Dragons".

At this point I have played and GMed so many games, and read many more, that they do get a bit muddled up. Especially as we learned by playing and passing on oral tradition, with the books just there as a reference. I don't think any of us ever sat down in the early days and tried to run the game "By The Book" we ran the game by "this is how you play and look it up if you need to check a number".

I have been stuck away in my rural isolated area without going to game cons or subscribing to the gaming press. So a lot of stuff may have marched on by without me noticing.

Thanks.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;916045I'm only twenty-three, so that may have something to do with me considering Vampire: The Masquerade 1E and the Sailor Moon RPG "Old School", so keep that in mind.

And im only 22 like i said in my other post its very much a point of view thing.

Quote from: David Johansen;915877People point to White Wolf's Vampire as the dawn of the "new school" but really it goes back to Star Wars with its scripted interludes, template characters, and rules to simulate the genre.  And further back to Ghost Busters and Paranoia, and even Toon.  Really if you read Toon, it's very newschool.  All one designer too Greg Costikyan.  No I don't hate him but he's the true pioneer of the narrative dominated game that attempts to create a satisfactory outcome.  One might gaze farther, to Ken St Andre but that's probably stretching things a bit too much.

Thanks, yeah this is what I wanted to say too. You can definitely see "New School" design emerge in the 1980s, with West End Games taking the lead in games like Ghostbusters & Paranoia, The Price of Freedom and Star Wars d6. VERY GOOD GAMES btw - IMO much better generally than 1990s 'new school' design. But the scripted scenes and emphasis on taking the PCs through a pre-scripted 'story' is definitely there.

WEG adventure design definitely contrasts with that of eg GDW, who in the '80s generally stuck with a much more unscripted approach for Traveller, Twilight 2000 et al - and I have to say the WEG stuff generally came across better and was easier to run for new GMs. Nor did the WEG adventures I GM'd (Star Wars & PARANOIA) feel railroady or stifling, unlike 1990s stuff from Chaosium et al.

Some things 1980s New School did not have, as a rule:

Special Snowflake NPCs
Focus on special-snowflakeness of PCs (contrast with Vampire, Exalted etc)
Metaplot
Focus on Fiction - books for reading not playing.

So IMO & IME the WEG 1980s 'New School' was functional in a way the 1990s New School ceased to be.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;916045I'm only twenty-three, so that may have something to do with me considering Vampire: The Masquerade 1E and the Sailor Moon RPG "Old School", so keep that in mind.

Quote from: kosmos1214;917323And im only 22 like i said in my other post its very much a point of view thing.

My copies of Classic Traveller and Star Wars RPG, Revised and Expanded are older than you both are.

I have an overwhelming urge to call you both "Kid" and send you old school game books.