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Author Topic: What IS Old School?  (Read 3238 times)

WillInNewHaven

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What IS Old School?
« on: January 20, 2020, 10:37:08 AM »
Because of a recent discussion on Facebook and perhaps because of a perverse fondness for definitions, I would like to bring this up here. I am not specifically talking about Old School Revival (OSR) In addition to the qualities I am mentioning, I believe OSR requires having roots in early editions of D&D but otherwise I think it embraces these qualities at least for the most part.
A set of rules can be old school or not and so can a campaign. I am not saying that old school games are better than modern games or vice versa, I'm just defining them. I discuss each quality that makes up old school and then I add a second paragraph saying why I prefer that quality over its opposite. In every case, there can be shades of grey.

1: In an old-school game or campaign the setting is concrete. It is created by the GM or taken from published material and does not change in order to improve the story or because a player wants to change it. The rivers, towns and other features are where they are and do not shift around.
     Playing a character in such an environment makes immersion easier for me and for many people I have played with.

2: In an old-school game or campaign, once character-creation is over,  player-agency is largely character-agency. A player makes decisions for the character and can use any power that the character has. However, the player has no out-of-character agency. The player does not make decisions that the character could not make or even know about.
      Assets such as Fate Points make sense if you are playing a game against the Game Master but not if you are inhabiting a character.

3: In an old-school game or campaign, a character can have many different motivations and can make decisions based on those. However, making a better story does not seem to be a real motivation for characters. The GM cannot force a story on the players because that violates their agency.
            Looking back on the story we have inadvertently told is quite satisfying.

Whether one prefers old-school games or not, I think that these characteristics are what make them old-school

estar

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2020, 10:58:33 AM »
old school
noun
noun: old school
used, usually approvingly, to refer to someone or something that is old-fashioned or traditional.
"amenities that my parents, being of the old school, still take for granted"

So what do you consider old-fashioned or traditional? That old school. Basically a subjective judgement that changes as time marches on.

For the OSR this means a focus on classic editions of D&D circa 1974 to 1989, from OD&D to early AD&D 2nd Edition. Along with related RPGs usually those published in the 1970s and early 80s.

Circa 2006 this largely aligned with what the rest of the hobby considered old-fashioned and traditional. However now it is 2020 and it not so clear as to what is old school for RPGs in general. Is Vampire 1e "old school?" Is Chill old school?. Or James Bond 007? Amber? And so on.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2020, 11:02:54 AM by estar »

Bedrockbrendan

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2020, 12:07:11 PM »
I think old school just refers to style that is in the spirit of the old days of the hobby. It is a broad term. OSR is more specific in my mind.

bat

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2020, 02:20:44 PM »
As someone that was in on the first conference calls from what became TARGA, before the OSR, yet comprised of largely the same group, The OSR/TARGA was primarily interested in getting people to play older editions of games, not just D&D. Traveller, RuneQuest, Gamma World, MERP, Chill, etc. The idea was to encourage people to try playing these games (in public if possible), not just talking about them. This was, of course before the explosion of retroclones. Raggi was a member, in on those calls, as was Victor Raymond and many others.I did the illustrations for the fliers for people to fill out to announce games.
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estar

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2020, 03:23:29 PM »
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1119570
I think old school just refers to style that is in the spirit of the old days of the hobby. It is a broad term. OSR is more specific in my mind.
What I said about the issue back in 2009

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

Brad

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #5 on: January 20, 2020, 04:20:21 PM »
-Old School is poker and standard variants, some wild cards thrown in every so often for fun
-The OSR is Texas Hold'Em
-New School is playing with seven wild cards and requiring a die roll at the beginning of each hand to see how many cards you get to draw
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Shasarak

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2020, 04:45:24 PM »
To me Old School is like playing on "Nintendo Hard" difficulty.
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SavageSchemer

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2020, 08:01:24 PM »
I don't agree with #1 at all. Runequest is the only Old School Game I know that had a concrete setting (depending on where we draw the line for old school, we could also include WEG's Star Wars and Ghostbusters). In most old school games, setting was entirely incidental, and was likely discovered in play. Even my Classic Traveller games, which tend to have some advance setting prep (usually a few worlds and maybe a settlement or two on one of those worlds) leaves a ton of information to come out during the course of the game. Players may not be able to spend some sort of meta currency to "change" the setting, but they often unwittingly do so as a consequence of their choices.
The more clichéd my group plays their characters, the better. I don't want Deep Drama™ and Real Acting™ in the precious few hours away from my family and job. I want cheap thrills, constant action, involved-but-not-super-complex plots, and cheesy but lovable characters.
From "Play worlds, not rules"

Spinachcat

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2020, 10:29:25 PM »
Quote from: estar;1119568
Circa 2006 this largely aligned with what the rest of the hobby considered old-fashioned and traditional. However now it is 2020 and it not so clear as to what is old school for RPGs in general. Is Vampire 1e "old school?" Is Chill old school?. Or James Bond 007? Amber? And so on.


We argued about those in 2006 too.

And let's not forget Warhammer 1e had Fate points back in 1986.

I don't have a good definition for old school games. I can talk about OSR D&D as being gameplay based on TSR versions of D&D, but "old school" almost needs to be "games published before 19XX" and who knows what year that would be.

There seems to be an Old School vs. New School vs. Storygames, but I doubt ANY definition is going to corral every game neatly into their particular silo.

Razor 007

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2020, 11:03:53 PM »
Nothing else says Old School, quite like OD&D.
I need you to roll a perception check.....

trechriron

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2020, 11:44:26 PM »
We need an RPGsite wiki, with boilerplate debates logged for posterity. This would be an ideal candidate. Call it "theRPGSite knowledge repository and philosophical library".

The Old School R... (revival, renaissance, resurgence, regurgitation, retribution...) is one of several things based on a) who you're talking to, b) how much skin they have in the definition and c) how self-important they deem their opinion. Trying to define what the OSR is by anything "scientific" is a fool's errand. It defies definition. Like trying to scientifically define "the best chocolate the world has to offer". After you sifted through the 9 opinions offered by the 6 people you asked - you will still be left without an actual... definition.

1 - Some hold the OSR in a near-religious reverence as being ONLY the purview of older versions of D&D. Mentioning even "clones" or derivative works will have you declared a heretic and a crusade will be called upon your house. You will be tracked down, beaten, skinned alive and hung from a lamp-post as an example for other would-be heretics to behoove.
2 - Some hold the OSR in a more "gentlemen's club" reverence, where members play the older D&D and enthusiastically make clones and derivative works. As long as you stay within club guidelines (hotly debated during meetings), and your works bear a strong resemblance to the originals, then you can remain in good standing. I use the term "gentlemen's club" not in the modern sense of strippers but more in the Commonwealth old school meaning. To stay on theme of course.
3 - Some hold the OSR as a "playstyle". These are the Buddhist sects of the OSR, where one should strive for game perfection by employing the approaches and sensibilities of the Old Ways(tm). GMs don't pull punches. Players use their own ingenuity to navigate tough situations. Social interactions are from the players skill not from numbers on a sheet. You play to see what happens and GMs are encouraged to let things unfold based on how the players discover things, not in some pre-arranged level-appropriate theme park ride where you see only what you can handle.
4 - Some hold the OSR to be a larger preference for older games. These are the agnostic empathic near-do-wells of the bunch. They are fine calling any older game made in the 80's or early 90's, or any clones or derivivative works of these games to be considered "old school".

Some people are a mixture of different passions from these broad groups.

They all like to argue about who's the most correct, most pure and most likely to have been derived from the holy energy of the original creators (Gygax and Arneson) of which there is debate about which one of these chaps ACTUALLY created the game in the first place. So you could be an Arnesonian Hardline D&D Adherent who abhors clones and thinks D&D 2nd Edition was made by communists who successfully ruined the entire hobby or a more relaxed Playstylist Clonist Enthusiast who is happy to share their creative energies with the other OSR-like people in the room and tolerate the same.

And everything in between, outside, adjacent and even unrelated to any of those definitions.

So, basically, "OSR" has become a term that has been so muddied by all the various "religions" worshipping it - it's really hard to tell what it means or why the fuck we even care anymore.

Honestly, we should all stop giving a shit and just play the fucking games we enjoy playing. The real world already has enough tribes and cantankerous old grognard is already one of them! We already have a tribe folks! We don't even have to make t-shirts!

Just my two cents...
Trentin C Bergeron (trechriron)
Bard, Creative & RPG Enthusiast

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Scrivener of Doom

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #11 on: January 21, 2020, 12:33:56 AM »
The OSR is a celebration of incompetent game design because of the space it creates to make your own game often while it is being played. In short, the bugs are the features.
Cheers
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Philotomy Jurament

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #12 on: January 21, 2020, 01:37:45 AM »
To me, the terms (i.e., "old school gaming", "OSR") have lost any value they once had. Over time the perceived scope expanded way beyond my sphere of interest. For example, around 2007 or so if someone said "hey, check out this old school module", I would have taken some notice, thinking it might be in line with my tastes and preferences. These days, if someone says "hey, check out this old school module/game/whatever" it can mean practically anything, so I no longer find the term useful. Same goes for "OSR."

Personally, I think of "old school D&D" as being TSR D&D up through the early-to-mid 1e period. I'd include close clones of those editions in my concept of "old school." (That's just the way I think of it, I'm not expecting universal agreement and not interested in debate about it.) And personally (again), I don't really apply the concept of "old school gaming" outside of D&D. I do *play* older games that aren't D&D, but I never really apply the idea of "old school" to them. They just are what they are. I guess that's increasingly true with D&D, too, since the term "old school" as it applies to D&D has less and less value in my eyes.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2020, 01:40:38 AM by Philotomy Jurament »
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Shawn Driscoll

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #13 on: January 21, 2020, 01:41:17 AM »
Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1119564
What is Old School?
Writing your character sheet on an index card is old school.

Any game session played like Mother, May I is old school.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2020, 01:44:45 AM by Shawn Driscoll »

Omega

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What IS Old School?
« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2020, 02:46:37 AM »
Old School. Usually used derogatorily and aimed at fans of older games or media. Storygamers love to toss that one around.

With RPGs its a virtually meaningless term unless referring to mechanics and even that can and does end up being meaningless.

At the end of the day its still just a petty hateful little term tossed around by petty hateful little people.

And used willy nilly by everyone else to the point its just short of lost meaning to an allready meaningless term. Some try to use it to mean "anything pre 3e D&D". Some use it to try and segregate styles of play that were in play from practically the start. Some try to use it to mean "discontinued game that was discontinued yesterday" and so on ad nausium.