In udder woids, how far back is "Old School"?  Is it pre-1991, as suggested in the "Fastest Chargen Ever" thread?  What defines the "Old School" feel?  Is it a mindset?  An aesthetic?  Cheeto dust?

Hell, I dig it and I haven't bothered to define it.

For me it's 1991 as that I think is when Vampire came out.  For better or worse, and opinions genuinely vary, for me that is when the old school ends.

Why?  Fluff and fiction, old school is about cutting to the chase and getting to the game, new school tries to evoke atmosphere through use of appropriate fiction and setting info.

I think it's a combination of mind set (PCs are 'free' to explore a dangerous environment; no coddling of players; no meta-plots or storylines that they have to follow; etc.) and aesthetics (weird dungeons; Wilderlands/Greyhawk style fantasy worlds; 'sword-and-sorcery' ethos, a la Howard, Leiber, Vance, et al.; Erol Otus and Dave Trampier pictures; not 'dungeonpunk' or 'anime/manga'; etc.).

At least that's how I see 'old school'. :wizard:

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!... Is it pre-1991...?

I'd say, at least with respect to FRPGs (and especially D&D), the advent of Dragonlance (1984?) heralded the end to the dominance of 'old school'.

I see old school as strictly an 80s phenomenon. In that period of time RPGs briefly flirted with real commercial success. There were a plethora of games out and though starting to break away from wargaming in design, still had obvious attachments.

It's also an art thing for me. 80s gaming art is a treat for me to look at. While the game art nowadays is flashy and clean, but it also feels a little sterile. The older stuff has a real sense of personality, IMO. "Diesel" LaForce, Otus, Sutherland, Elmore, and Easley, with their contemporaries they made really a enthusiastic and joyous body of work that defined the entire decade.

For an example of what I'm talking about artistically go no further than you Doc, it has the same feel I get when I look at my Basic Set:

That's a toughie, as "old school" is an amorphous term that can mean many different things to many different people.

When I consider the games I think of when I hear that term, I see the following similarities (a general list of features; just about every "old school" game breaks one or more...FGU games violate #4, but I still think of them as "old school"):

1. Fairly bare-bones characters.  Even if the chargen process is involved, PCs are generally defined in fairly broad terms (the exception to this usually being combat).  There tend not to be laundry lists of advantages/disadvantages, traits, feats or what have you.  Most of the mental/social aspects are left for the player to define on their own terms.

2. Openness.  Settings are ill-defined at best (e.g. D&D or Traveller have a strongly implied default setting), and the games are meant (at least in theory) to accomodate a wide variety of genre-appropriate material.

3. The system defines the PCs as game pieces; the role-playing is meant to take place without system constraints.

4. Brevity.  Most of these games tend to have short, simple rules that attempt to cover only the most salient activities required by a campaign.  GMs are explicitly or implicitly encouraged to house-rule to their hearts' content.

5. Resource management.  Heavy emphasis on resource management, teamwork (fighter, mage and cleric as "combined arms").  Scenarios are created to test player abilities at managing their resources.

6. Referee/Player split.  GMs and players have distinct roles and responsibilities around the table.

These are just off the toppa my head, and in the time it's taken to type this between calls at work, I'm sure many others have contributed better replies to the topic.

IMHO "Old School" Is definitely pre 91. TSR being the king of old school.

As much as I see 1991 as a deeply significant year for RPGs, the year everything started to go truly wrong, I think that the "old school" definition would probably fit better as pre-1989, before AD&D 2e was released.  That's a much more significant divide when it comes to determining what was "old school" and what was not, because 2e ended up sucking the flavour out of D&D, and other RPGs were no longer looking at D&D as the vanguard from a creative point of view.

RPGPundit

For me, old school games involve encounters keyed on a map (eg. B2: Keep on the Borderlands) or randomized (eg. Wandering Monsters) rather than set events that will occur (eg. DL2: Dragons of Flame) to advance "the plot".

Chargen is fast, character mortality is higher.

For me, old school was the era when White Dwarf was a gaming mag with articles about RQ, Traveller and (A)D&D and Dave Langford was championing authors, like Zelany, Wolfe, Aldiss...good times

Regards,
David R

"Old school" is when the comic book store had to special order the "funny dice" and games like D&D and Traveller came in a box. Ass end of the 70's through the Reagan 80's.

Quote from: AkrasiaI think it's a combination of mind set (PCs are 'free' to explore a dangerous environment; no coddling of players; no meta-plots or storylines that they have to follow; etc.) and aesthetics (weird dungeons; Wilderlands/Greyhawk style fantasy worlds; 'sword-and-sorcery' ethos, a la Howard, Leiber, Vance, et al.; Erol Otus and Dave Trampier pictures; not 'dungeonpunk' or 'anime/manga'; etc.).

Well yeah. Adventuring for adventuring's sake should also be in there somewhere.
Old Shool = stuff before the Dragonlance adventures
Grognard = someone who came from a wargaming background and moved on to D&D before the release of the 1st edition PHB
Old Geezer = that guy who played with Gary Gygax

You can be old school without having experienced stuff "back then". The other two categories are more exacting.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!In udder woids, how far back is "Old School"?  Is it pre-1991, as suggested in the "Fastest Chargen Ever" thread?

Yes.  I personally think it's at least early 1980s and before.  There is an even older school before that.  Look through the Dragon Magazine Archive CD-ROM and you can see some distinct points of change.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!What defines the "Old School" feel?  Is it a mindset?  An aesthetic?  Cheeto dust?

Random tables.  Lots of random tables.

I'm getting the feel from what you guys re saying, and furthermore I can agree -- especially with the "1980s and before" sentiment.

I agree with Balbinus that Vampire is a definite turning point.

For context, here's the list of games which were originally published in 1991, from John Kim's excellent RPG encyclopedia. (I've stripped away 2nd editions of things, to leave only games which had their first edition put out in 1991.)

Adventure Quest: Jaern
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright
Afterwars: Roleplaying in Post WWIII America
All Star Wrestling
Amber Diceless Role-playing
Beach Bunny Bimbos with Blasters
Bloodlust
Cyb: Gioco di ruolo in un lontano futuro
Dark Conspiracy
Desperados
Duck Trooper
FSpace RPG
Fuerze Delta
Il Gioco Di Ruolo Di Dylan Dog
Gioco Libero
Guardians
Hahlmabrea
Heavy Metal
Kult
LEF: DE SAMLEDE VRKER
Legend Quest
Lost Souls
Mercenaires
Le Messager
La Méthode du Docteur Chestel
Monsters & Slayers
Mutantes en la Sombra
Nephilim
Plüsch, Power, und Plunder
Verlag
Reich Star
So Ya Wanna Be A Rock N' Roll Star!
Tagmar
TAQ
Thundering Steel: The Role-Playing/Combat Game Of Warfare In The Near Future
Tigres Volants
Timelord
Vampire: The Masquerade
WarpWorld
Webs Basic Gaming System
World of Synnibarr

Have to say, that isn't an encouraging crop. I haven't even heard of most of those games; of those which have become prominant, Vampire is the most obvious one; Kult, Nephilim and Dark Conspiracy all sit in the modern-day horror niche (they can't all have been imitating Vampire - was Nightlife more influential than it's given credit for, or was there something in the air at the time?), and Amber is, while Pundit-approved, nonetheless highly experimental as far as games go. (Was it the first diceless system, or merely the first one to catch on?)

As for World of Synnibar... well. The nicest thing you can say about it is that it is more widely-known than many of the others on that list.

That said, I'm not convinced 1991 marks the end of the "old school". Check out the games published in 1990: Torg, Blood, Nightlife (more modern day horror!), Cyberpunk 2020 (technically a 2nd edition, but it's the version which seems to have made the most impact)... not much which says "old school" to me, except for Rifts.

Perhaps the publication of Rifts should mark the end of the old school? Love it or hate it, you've gotta admit that Rifts takes the class/race/level model of adventure gaming and turns everything to 11 - after you've gone that far, there's not much left to do with it.