I have no idea why this is.  "Old school" D&D (we'll say 2e or below) was a positively hateful game that systematically fucked players over and pitted them against the DM in repeated "fuck you" scenarios.

Let's compare some stuff.

QuoteHP:
Old school: Roll for HP.  (Haha, the fighter rolled a one!  Hope he doesn't mind sucking!)

4e: Static HP.  (HP is not wildly divergent between characters.)

Healing:
Old school: Slow and terrible.  (Good luck on getting by without chugging healing potions or having a divine caster in the party!)  Magical healing has a large opportunity cost to it (both in terms of resources and actions in combat).

4e: Healing surges.  Full health after every rest.  Minor action healing means "free" healing during combat.  Many ways for even non-magical characters to heal.

System Fundamentals:
Old school: Non-casters don't get nice toys.  What is this "balance" of which you speak?  And math?  Enjoy your THAC0, bitch.

4e: Everyone is on the same power schedule and virtually everyone is equal in terms of power.  Balance is Very Important.  Desperately attempts to create a system where the "math just works," but fails miserably and embarrassingly.

Spells:
Old school: Spells are fantastic, accompanied by lots of flavor text describing the effects.  Magic is extremely powerful, and even potent spellcasters must choose when to cast spells.

4e: Damage + effect with a line of flavor text.  Spells are used almost every round of every combat.

Magic Items:
Old school: The DM is in charge of magic items, and he hands them out as he sees fit.

4e: Treasure parcels with players encouraged to give the DM a wish list.

Combat:
Old school: You're going to go through a few characters.

4e: It's difficult to die.  Encounters are carefully balanced so that the PCs will almost always succeed.

Death:
Old school: If you die, you roll up a new character.  Even if you get rezzed, you're kind of screwed.

4e: Easy rezzes with a (yawn) -1 penalty for a short time period afterward.

Consequences:
Old school: Long term.  Enjoy your negative levels and permanent stat loss.

4e: Rarely last longer than the encounter.

Please, enlighten me on how people can claim this to be true.  As far as I can tell, it's just made by retards who have a boner for 4e and think that selling it as "old school" lends them some kind of nerd credibility.  About the only thing in 4e that resembles "old school" D&D is the skill system.

Skills:
Old school: Tacked on skill system that doesn't really work.

4e: Tacked on skill system that doesn't really work.

And yes, this is trollbait/trollface but whatevs.

4E love is the new storygames

This is soooo 2008-2009.  :rolleyes:

n/m not going to get trolled by trolly mctrollerson the failtroll

When we first played 4E back in the summer of 2008, at the time it seemed like everything I wanted in a D&D type game.  (Not necessarily old school).  Though in hindsight it was the "shiny new thing" smell, which was coloring my judgement at the time.

It wasn't until we got to higher levels (ie. above level 5) and used more 4E supplement books, that we came to the realization that combat was just as long and messy as 3E/3.5E D&D.  It was no better than previous editions.

Two years in to 4E, it's already a bloated mess with tons of errata and already a mid-edition reboot.

That, I'm afraid, is the heart of what 4e has in common with 'old school'.

Both, at one point, were new. People that say 4e is 'old school' are merely identifying that the feel of 4e has something in common with any game that is new, much as old school was.

It's about the same when people say 4e is D&D...both are RPGs, and thus share many things common to RPGs.

Maybe not everyone has the same thing in mind when they say 'old school'?

Quote from: Doom;461984That, I'm afraid, is the heart of what 4e has in common with 'old school'.

Both, at one point, were new. People that say 4e is 'old school' are merely identifying that the feel of 4e has something in common with any game that is new, much as old school was.

It's about the same when people say 4e is D&D...both are RPGs, and thus share many things common to RPGs.

I think it is more than that, or was.  WotC was pushing the 'back to the dungeon' idea really, really hard.  The big problem, as far as I can tell, is that was the only thing the new designers seemed to take away.  The rest of it was just an increasingly greater complexity over the previous versions.

For certain values of 'balance', however, classes evolved into a much more modular design.  In 1st Edition, is the rapid advance in combat abilities worth the same or similar to the ability to cast spells?  What about some spell casting ability with moderate combat skill?  The ability to sneak around and pick locks?  2nd Edition made some headway with guidelines for creating new classes, but it was never officially implemented.  Kits were highly uneven, but did provide a method for adding some facets of a class for additional customization that wasn't otherwise provided by the rules, and options for characters that couldn't multi-class.  3.x provided rules for differentiating within classes with feats, but it was well known and later admitted some of those options were far sub-optimal, and intentionally so.  Additional supplements further fouled up the whole mess with wildly unbalanced feats and prestige classes.

Which brings us to 4e.  Each class is almost entirely defined by the powers (and to a lesser extent, the feats) it is granted.  Making a new class is a matter of working out some powers with a rather easily discerned template (based on role), adding in the details like hit points, builds if desired, and skills.  Exception based rules are more or less fully implemented.  Every power is an exception to some simple rule, and the number of those rules is quite limited.  Many rules interactions that would have previously required a table or chart look-up are now opposed task resolution rolls.

This all leads to the unintended consequence of emergent complexity at a pretty high level; many, many groups note that combat can be and usually is even longer than it was in 3.x.  This complexity, then, is not the beneficial kind that spurs imaginative use of abilities or skills, but rather the bureaucratic kind that slows action sequences that should be fast-paced, and without a concomitant enhancement of play.

Other than the tone WotC promoted (perhaps a bit too single-mindedly), I have also had a very difficult time detecting what is 'old-school' in the newest rules.

Quote from: B.T.;461974I have no idea why this is.  "Old school" D&D (we'll say 2e or below) was a positively hateful game that systematically fucked players over and pitted them against the DM in repeated "fuck you" scenarios.

I'll give you that OD&D, and to some extent, AD&D (only because it flips between "viking hat" and "fair judge" tones in different sections), did a poor job of communicating what the DM was "about", but if you read BECMI or the RC (or any of the other texts of the era), it makes it very clear that the DM is meant to challenge the players, but be a fair sport about it.  You're not going to pull your punches, but you don't kick the players when they're already down.

"Fuck you" scenarios and "Mean DM" stories are a byproduct of dysfunctional play rooted in poor social and communication skills.

As for 4e, I guess I can see how some aspects are "old-school", with its focus on tactical battles and whatnot, but for every piece of it that resembles old-school, there's another piece that's completely unlike old-school play.  Still, it's reasonable that people who enjoyed specific aspects of old-school play might find something in new-school play that reminds them of the good-old-days with a new coat of paint, but that's more or less a personal "This feels like X" because whatever combination of aesthetics and gameplay is pushing the buttons that trigger those memories.

Most of the things you describe about older versions of D&D are exactly the things I dislike about D&D. But at least the older versions of D&D had a virtue, they were simple. D&D3.X had a lot of what I disliked about old school D&D, and on top of that, it was overcomplex!!

I liked a lot of the things I've read about D&D4, but in spite of the simplifications, it's too complex yet, I wish somebody did something like D&D4, but simpler.

Quote from: Peregrin;461994"Fuck you" scenarios and "Mean DM" stories are a byproduct of dysfunctional play rooted in poor social and communication skills.

Or every single adventure module for 1e and most for 2e.

Can we just jump this thread along to the inevitable debate about whether OD&D used miniatures or not?

Wow, you are so clever. I feel smarter just knowing you are in the world.

I only played 4E a few times, but I have noticed a wide range of opinions on what feel it achieves.

I think where it is definitely not old school is in the area of balance. 4E appears to be a  game (and I really see this more as a direct response to 3E than old school editions) where they strove to make characters on par with one another at each level. Whereas in 3E (and older editions, but I think the range increased in 3E), you could have five different characters (even characters of the same class sometimes) with widely varying levels of combat power because of character building choices the players made.

Lethality is another. Old school gaming had character death. I had countless characters die in the 1e and 2e games I played. 4E has a lot of ways for characters to heal themselves (notably with healing surges).

Where I think people may see a similarity is on the dungeon crawl/combat focus (but that really started to come back in 3E IMO).

Personally I don't see much of a connection between 4E and old school gaming. The times I've played it or read through the core books, it had a very different feel than previous editions. It really seemed like they were trying to give D&D a more modern design when they built it.

The only thing Old School about 4e is that outside of combat there are not many mechanics that defines the character. The minimal skill system and rituals are pretty much it and much of it to the adjudication of the referee.

However combat dominates a 4e session when it takes place. In a four hour block you are lucky to get in three balanced combat encounters. With two roleplaying encounters sandwiched between the combat.

But late 70s games like Chivalry & Sorcery also had long combat, where 4e really diverges in the presentation of adventures which rely on the system of balanced combat encounters and treasure parcels. So while 4e is capable of running an old school game, I have done it, what novice referees and players see from wizards on how to run 4e is NOT old school.