Old School RPG — what is it?
 

I'm doing the "#RPGaday" exercise (on my FaceBook page), which means that I am asked to write about "Most Old School game owned". The problem is that I don't know what Old School Gaming and the Old School Revival are.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

My understanding is that there are people who are trying to run and play rpgs in the style of the first generation, roughly from Chainmail up to around when Basic Dungeons & Dragons came out. They aren't using the actual original rules, which are often incoherent or poorly thought out, but they are trying to achieve clearly stated rules that basically do the same things and enable the same type of play.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

That being the case, I don't own any Old School RPGs, and probably wouldn't recognise one as such when I played it.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

The closest I have that would qualify would probably be Classic Traveller and Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer D&D.

Somewhere, I've got the purpose built OSR game Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but I've barely looked at it.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Of course, it's always possible that they also want to know about those original games. I own Chainmail, D&D, Traveller, Superhero 2044, and Villains and Vigilantes, for example.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

I swapped my Classic Traveller reprints for a mint 1st edition ForeSight. That leaves The Fantasy Trip (1980–81), Bushido (1981), DragonQuest (2nd ed., 1982), and James Bond 007 (1982) as the oldest RPGs I still own.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

My copies of En Garde!, Superhero 2044, and Traveller are all dated 1977. My Chainmail and D&D are later reprints.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Those are all "old school" for OSR purposes, except Mentzer, but it and Alston D&D get a pass as Old School by many, since the mechanics are still Moldvay.

The key is "Rulings, not Rules" and, usually, Class & Level.

Traveller gets a pass because of age, but often RuneQuest (same age as CT) does not.

Starships and Spacemen is Old School, but newer than Traveller.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

I don't think class and level are essential. I've played with a re-creation of Superhero 2044; I think if I ran it it would be old school, even though S44 didn't have class and level and in fact was the first game ever to use character points.

I agree about excluding RuneQuest, though. RuneQuest strikes me as the first game to have what I think of as the full paradigm of "new school" games: sharp distinction between stats and skills, skill rolls being as important as stats and levels, a wide variety of skills, the attack/defend/damage sequence of combat rolls, advanced fighting ability being represented by a higher probability of parrying or dodging rather than by massively increased hit points. All that has become the default model of rpg rules construction now; those "old school" games are marked by that pattern not having been worked out fully.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Another characteristic of old-school games is embracing randomness (eg. random character creation, random encounters, random treasure tables). Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay feels old-school for that reason.

Of course, the key feature is "how I remember playing as a teenager" (or think an older generation played) so people can understand "old school" in different ways.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Would "most old school game owned" just be "oldest game"? So if the oldest game you own is...Maid the RPG then that would be the answer.

That being said, the feature that most typifies the oldest games is "not being design-driven".

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Accurate except there is also substantial use of the original. What happened was that the first OSR game, OSRIC, was written as a publisher resource. The expectation was that you use OSRIC when writing a module or supplement. But use the original books during actual play.

As it turned out people wanted to use OSRIC directly because like you said the original lacked clarity or were poorly presented. People found OSRIC useful at the table.

As the OSR spread this mix of old original, and new presentation was used for other editions, and other older system.

Then a wave of near clones which took things into new genre or presented older mechanics in new ways. My Majestic Wilderlands supplement being one of the first in this wave.

Flash forward to today, the OSR is hugely diverse with the classic editions of D&D at the core. Anything that could be done with classic editions and mechanics somebody in the OSR is likely doing it. Mostly this is a result of the widespread use of the Open Gaming License.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

I don't think so, because I think that most gamers would agree that oughties-vintage Aces and Eights or Hackmaster is more “old school” than 80s-vintage GURPS 3rd Edition.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Perhaps Professor Foxworthy's determination methods could help here:

Do you roll your stats? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

Do you roll your stats In Order? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

Can you die during character creation? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

Can rolling your stats result in an unplayable character? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

Are there more pages dedicated to critical hit charts than skills? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

Do you get more experience for taking their stuff than for killing things? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

Do you get no experience for talking your way around something instead of killing it? You might be playing an Old School RPG.

You get the idea. :)

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Not only does this capture exactly the tenor of my own thoughts, but I caught myself reading it in a "redneck" accent. ;)

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Are Old School RPGs more lethal? Certainly D&D 4th edition seemed to go out of its way to ensure no PCs ever kicked the bucket. Compare that to the mentality of Tomb of Horrors, where life as a PC was nasty, brutish and short.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Just today, I was in a semi-pickup session of GURPS, run by one of my regular players. And one of the other players, who's been gaming with me since the 1980s and who was an old D&Der before we met, was surprised and disturbed when it emerged that it's possible in GURPS for an injury to result in permanent crippling of a limb. His model of gaming was that it should not lead to permanent consequences for the PCs, or at least I so understood him.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Would GURPS Dungeon Fantasy qualify?

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Yes, it was difficult to be maimed because there were no rules for it. But an average 1st-level fighter in Basic D&D had 5 hp. Once he reached 0 he was dead. That could be a single sword cut away! On average two sword cuts. And people say GURPS is lethal!

All poison is lethal. And if you're unlucky enough to be bitten by a venomous snake, you have about 20-25% chance to survive (I don't have exact numbers)!

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Well, yes, but lots of people played D&D for years and got their characters up to tenth or twentieth level, where they were all but indestructible. And of course they didn't have much investment in the first level characters, any more than they did in the guys they were rolling up in Traveller who died in the Scouts. And there were people whose custom was to start everyone off at third or fourth level, or who carefully levelled the challenges so that a first level wasn't going to face anything that was likely to kill them. Or even who just had the dramatic death convention, if not as a rule than as a social contract.

In any case, my friend was surprised and dismayed to learn that GURPS has real and lethal consequences. I promptly warned him that in the campaign of mine that he's playing in, the ammo is definitely live. Don't want him getting a nasty surprise if he finds out the hard way.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Old school means simply this: the game exists to challenge the abilities of the PLAYER, not the character. The character is simply an avatar to put the player into the game. This avatar has a general description and perhaps a few special powers, but his chances to do various things are undefined.

In an old-school game, if you want to find a trap in a room, you tell the referee where and how you look for it. If you want to make friends with someone, you converse with the referee. There's no rolling to do these things, unless the referee doesn't want to decide for himself and leaves the outcome to a chance he decides on.

In a "new-school" game, you check against your CHARACTER'S ability to find a trap. If you want to make friends with someone, you make some kind of influence roll based on your character's abilities. If the referee demands you to "role-play it," this only supplements the roll, or vice-versa.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

For OD&D, the original 1974 rules plus supplements, it largely depends on how much gear and magic items you hand out. If you don't hand out a lot then high level characters are vulnerable to attrition. If you do then their ability to adapt and recover increases enormously.

The way to think of it in OD&D is that by 9th level the character can function effectively as a standalone unit of one figure in a miniature wargame. But it still just one unit, so a organized attack by units comprised of many figures can take out the character about as easily as it could take out any other unit on the playing field.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

I wouldn't say that this is wrong, but I think it's a bit too simple and too dualistic. In GURPS Social Engineering, for example, the goal is to enable players to play "face" characters, as the goal of GURPS Martial Arts is to enable players to play combat monsters. But the final page of main text is titled "Throw Away This Book" and is about the "just roleplay" approach. It does not say by any means that you have to roll dice, or that the acting is there only to supplement the dice roll.

On the other hand, there is a difference akin to what you're describing: old school games are action/adventure; new school games commonly try to enable drama as well as action.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

DF has some aspects of it, but it has other inspirations too, notably some of the dungeon-like computer games. DF characters also start off pretty powerful in terms of the setting, whereas real old-school games made you start as someone who could be killed by a small pack of ordinary wolves, if they took against you.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

"The game" is what you make of it. If I use all of the rules from Social Engineering and you ignore them all and just make stuff up as you see fit, we're not playing the same game. Yours is "more old-school" than mine is because you use more old-school techniques than I do.

Playing GURPS plus Martial Arts is just as "newer school" as GURPS plus Social Engineering. Both provide a great deal of detailed rules to "compute" what a character can do. The difference is not in what genres the rules work with, it's how much freedom the GM has to just make stuff up and still be working within the framework of those rules. (If you ignore rules to make stuff up, you're not working under those rules.)

As has been pointed out much recently, GURPS is a game-making toolkit more than it is a game. The game you create with GURPS make have more or less old-school elements than another's game.

I don't completely approve of the term old school in this context, but it's what the old-schoolers believe. I, for one, enjoy a wide spectrum of styles, from the almost complete reliance on the referee of early D&D to the strong reliance on detailed rules of a complex GURPS game.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Well, that's wrong. D&D thieves were constantly rolling to detect traps.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

But we are both playing GURPS, and both approaches are part of the official rules of GURPS.

GURPS is a game that includes, as official rules, "reality testing" (the GM should set aside the published rules if they lead to results inconsistent with the facts) and "when in doubt, roll and shout" (make the dramatically satisfactory ruling rather than taking several minutes to work out the one that's exactly according to the rules). It's hard to justify the claim that this is in conflict with reliance on GM judgment calls or that such reliance is non-GURPS-ian.

The elaborate rules in GURPS are largely there as options for the GM who wants to use them, and especially for the GM who is prepared to spend the time to internalize them because of personal interest. Few of them are mandatory.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Nope. First off, thieves weren't in the original set; they're part of the "let's add more rules" movement that I said started right away. Second, in Greyhawk, thieves are given an ability to remove traps, not to find them. Thieves couldn't officially "find traps" until the Players Handbook was published in 1978. (Basic D&D didn't get Find Traps until the Moldvay rules in 1981.)

Now, some people may have been rolling detection rolls before the rules officially supported it, but we're talking about what games qualify as old school, not what house rules do.

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Which simply means that GURPS isn't a game you can easily peg as old or new school, which is what I've been getting at. Old or new is a continuum, affected by how you play. Some games specify how something is done. GURPS specifies how something is done, but intentionally sets itself up to be modular so you can ignore whatever bits you want and not break anything. Some games, like early D&D, specify very little about how to do anything, and don't present options because it didn't present a rule in the first place.

And this is also why I wouldn't ever try to list how old or new school a bunch of games are, because EVERY game has the assumption that you can ignore or change anything you want. Stating it explicitly in the rules doesn't change anything. This isn't evidence of being old-school; it's evidence that there are no Game Police.

I remember once someone complaining to the author of Continuum: Roleplaying in the Yet that he didn't include a statement in the rules saying that we are allowed to change the rules. The author's response was, to paraphrase, "I didn't think you needed my permission, so I didn't write it."

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

I'm pretty sure first edition AD&D still counts as "old school".

Re: Old School RPG — what is it?
 

Yes, but again, my point is that "old school" isn't black or white, it's a continuum. The oldest school started with the first RPGs which were almost entirely handled by people saying what they wanted to do and the referee deciding what happened. As time went on, rules for everything were slowly added. AD&D was part of this, including the Find Traps roll.

And I'll tell you this: go to the OD&D Discussion Forum and you'll find that many of them consider AD&D to be a newfangled, rules-bloated monstrosity.