Quote from: RPGPunditDo you really think that people were doing all that inconsistent stuff because they were just more ignorant then? Old School games KNEW they were gonzo, and liked it that way.  They didn't take the "hobby" as seriously as some people do now.

RPGPundit

I don't think the games were gonzo they were just inconsistent -and I played a hell of a lot those games.

Also there really wasn't much of a hobby back in the day to take seriously - some would argue there still isn't today.

Regards,
David R

You know what Old-school gaming is/was?  

NOT TALKING ABOUT IT ON A FORUM, AND JUST PLAYING.

pretty much..

Quote from: KrakaJakPretty close. Although I'd say, it was Old School to follow the rules and hope a future supplement had the new rules you were looking for!

"Old school" is games that were complete out of the box. We never hoped for future supplements to contain anything other than cool shit and I think any game that said, "You need to wait for Supplement X to get rules to do Y" would have gotten trash canned. The idea that you needed to wait for supplements to get the complete rules set is a product of '90s line bloat.

Quote from: Wil"Old school" is games that were complete out of the box. We never hoped for future supplements to contain anything other than cool shit and I think any game that said, "You need to wait for Supplement X to get rules to do Y" would have gotten trash canned. The idea that you needed to wait for supplements to get the complete rules set is a product of '90s line bloat.

That is definitely true.

Quote from: RPGPunditDo you really think that people were doing all that inconsistent stuff because they were just more ignorant then?

No, and I didn't say that.

QuoteOld School games KNEW they were gonzo, and liked it that way.

I think that some of them did (Arduin being an obvious example), though I think that others (Greyhawk, for instance) were largely inconsistent because they borrowed heavily from existing sources without much thought as to how all of those borrowed elements would ultimately fit together.

That is, I don't think many old school settings set out to be inconsistent by design, but just ended up that way as a side effect of the writers incorporating what they liked from a myriad of inspirational sources without regard to making those things butt up against one another in a manner that made sense.

For what it's worth, this wasn't a matter of ignorance (and, again, I never said that), but a matter of focus -- old school designers did not care about things making sense internally, rather, they simply focused on emulating what they personally liked from pre-existing sources, with little (if any) regard for consistency in how that stuff was implemented.

That is, most of them weren't deliberately designing "gonzo" settings or systems -- it was merely a serendipitous (well, depending upon your tastes) side effect of the other goals they were persuing (i.e., making sure that their settings included elements from existing works that they found enjoyable).

AD&D 1e probably serves as the best example of such design, as magic items (even some of their names) were largely ported in from Leiber's short stories, while magic itself was an unabashed port of that found in Vance's The Dying Earth. And as Gygax himself notes in the DMG, when realism and fun collided in the design process, he opted for fun.

That is, Gygax didn't deliberately pursue "gonzo" as an ideal but, rather, fun (i.e., what he found to be fun). "Gonzo" was just a natural by-product of how he went about pursuing this goal.

QuoteThey didn't take the "hobby" as seriously as some people do now.

I disagree. They (designers) simply didn't care much about "realism" in design back then. They still took their fun plenty seriously.

Quote from: jdrakehI'm tempted to go one step further and say that eschewing internal consistency (both in rules and adventure design) is also a defining feature of many "old school" games. Witness the early D&D dungeons with a monster in every room, yet zero interaction amongst them, charcters adventuring just because they can, etc.

I'm not sure I'd consider this a "defining feature" of the period so much as a "more accepted practice" or "more common practice".  Even in the "old school" days, there were plenty of people trying to write and run internally consistent games.  See, for example, Bill Armintrout's article about his college Metamorphosis Alpha game (in the 1970s) in The Space Gamer #42.  It's also why there were so many games in the late-1970s and early-1980s filled with rules trying to make them more realistic than D&D.  Yes, there was Gamma World but there was also Aftermath and Morrow Project.  Where at least some of that "internal inconsistency" came from was the mining of fictional sources for elements, but for every Star Patrol (which had no problem putting Vulcans and Wookies in the same setting), there was a Traveller (which, despite borrowed elements like The Sword Worlds, was fairly internally consistent -- licensed supplements aside).  Yeah, there was plenty of gonzo but also plenty of seriousness, too.

Quote from: John MorrowI'm not sure I'd consider this a "defining feature" of the period so much as a "more accepted practice" or "more common practice".

That's probably a better way to think of it, though when "old school" discussions come up on forums they, for the most part, tend to focus on a rather narrow body of fantasy RPGs (and for those, I think, my earlier statements ring true).

Quote from: jdrakehThat's probably a better way to think of it, though when "old school" discussions come up on forums they, for the most part, tend to focus on a rather narrow body of fantasy RPGs (and for those, I think, my earlier statements ring true).

Well, when people talk about either "a defining feature of many 'old school' games" or even acknowledge that they are really just talking about "a rather narrow body of fantasy RPGs" and then use only D&D or possibly also Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World (other TSR games) as examples, I'm reminded of the old joke that game supplements labeled "suitable for use with all role-playing games" really meant "suitable for use with D&D".  

There was plenty of experimentation going on in those "old school" days.  I seriously recommend that old Bill Armintrout TSG article.  It's still amazingly good advice today, though it would probably drive modern game theorists nuts since the advice is all over the place in terms of style.  He talks about making the setting more realistic, using story sensibilities to deal with a romantic quest, system design issues, character role-playing, and even assistant GMs and involving the players in creating setting details -- all ideas that he used back in the 1970s.

Quote from: John MorrowI seriously recommend that old Bill Armintrout TSG article.

I may have read it, as I was a devout collector of all Metagming material at one point in time, though if I did, it failed to impress me as much as it did you. The one article I do still recall from my Space Gamer collection was an eerily accurate prediction of future RPG trends from Steve Jackson (of Texas).

As I said earlier, there are exceptions to my earlier statements, but IME stuff like the article you cite and Tekumel are just that -- exceptions to the rule. I think that the best known (and therefore most defining) games of the late 1970s were largely devoid of internal consistency (Traveller would be the big exception).

I dunno, RQ is sort of internally consistent. I never got the impression that it was intended for (intentional or unintentional) "gonzo" play. I do not know C&S very well but I suspect it also was designed for a pretty consistent setting & tone.

By 1979-80 (if you look at jhkim's RPG encyclopedia) there were already a pretty large number of games being released that had a focused, coherent setting. I really think the "gonzo" ethic was mainly found in D&D and other TSR games, plus a few direct derivatives. On the other hand all those settings (gonzo or not) seemed pretty well "architected" for open-ended adventure, playgrounds in a way. As such whatever movement or dynamism might occur was pretty much left up to the GM & players. Wandering around killing things was a pretty viable playstyle even if some groups developed over time in different directions.

Quote from: jdrakehI may have read it, as I was a devout collector of all Metagming material at one point in time, though if I did, it failed to impress me as much as it did you.

It was from the Steve Jackson Games era of TSG.  The advice was no such much profound as simply good, and not what a lot of people think of when they think of "old school".

Hmmmm.  I think I just realized another thing that might be important to the "old school" feel.

I've always said that a key difference between Star Trek: The Next Generation (and later Star Treks) is that the writers were writing Star Trek and knew it.  When the writers wrote the first generation of Star Trek, there were real science fiction authors who weren't necessarily trying to write Star Trek.  They were trying to write stories in the Star Trek framework.  This also relates to the genre comments on that Conan article I posted a link to earlier in the thread -- the difference about being a work in a genre and a work about a genre.  

With respect to role-playing games, I think there was a lot of experimentation in the early days because people were figuring out what the medium could do.  They tried new genres, new systems, new ideas, and so on.  They were like the writers on the original Star Trek series.  They were defining the hobby, not trying to conform to it or reinvent it.

Quote from: jdrakehThe one article I do still recall from my Space Gamer collection was an eerily accurate prediction of future RPG trends from Steve Jackson (of Texas).

Do you remember any details?

Quote from: jdrakehAs I said earlier, there are exceptions to my earlier statements, but IME stuff like the article you cite and Tekumel are just that -- exceptions to the rule. I think that the best known (and therefore most defining) games of the late 1970s were largely devoid of internal consistency (Traveller would be the big exception).

Again, I think the exceptions are common enough (Traveller being the most obvious, but there were plenty of others) that I'm not so sure it's a characteristic of the era so much as it's a characteristic of several of the most popular games of the era.  While you can argue there isn't much of a difference between those two statements, I think there is.  While there were plenty of people looking for gonzo, there were plenty of people running away from it, which is why I think the hobby, as a whole, has largely run away run it.  In fact, while I think some of the gonzo was intentional (e.g., Gamma World), at least some of it was simply the product of trailblazers trying to worldbuild in a vacuum with varying degrees of success.  Let's not forget how difficult it was to find obscure information about, say, runic alphabets or Indus Valley ruins in the 1970s compared to today, when I can get pages and pages of information with a search on Google.  That worldbuilding today is more robust and consistent is hardly surprising.

Quote from: John MorrowDo you remember any details?

Unfortunately, no. All that remains is the feeling of awe. That said, I think that it may have been the "Where We're Going" article in issue 30.