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Post by Morose on Dec 19, 2022 22:39:51 GMT -5
I thought this was interesting as a topic, "Fundamental Difference - Old School vs. Modern". I think some of the posting on it is rather funny.
A poster known as "xguild" is the OP over there and he was looking for more the philosophical differences between Old School D&D gameplay and modern(aka New School) D&D gameplay, instead of the mechanical differences. Also he was looking as a secondary thing for when people thought the changes happened.
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Post by Morose on Dec 19, 2022 22:58:02 GMT -5
I think the biggest thing is something that has been pointed out here many times and that it that New School Players are largely defined by a few things. One is lack of knowledge of the foundational fantasy literature.
Almost everyone (probably over 95%) born after 1980 and a huge amount of those born after 1968 are largely ignorant when it comes to fantasy. They have not been read and told fairy tales, nor have they read them, themselves. Myself and a lot of people here have read hundreds of fairy tales. Many of us are widely read in mythology as well. Many of us have read a lot of Tolkien, and most or all of Howard and Burroughs. Many of us have also read most of the Appendix N stuff and a lot of the older fantasy that no one these days have heard of.
So there is no wonder that there is such an extreme philosophical and mechanical difference between Old School and New School gaming. They are completely difference games and the people who play them are in a practical sense born 100 years apart.
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Post by Morose on Dec 19, 2022 23:08:47 GMT -5
Part of the philosophical difference is the way so many lie and claim OD&D is poorly organized. That is the number one sign that no matter how much someone claims to be old school, there is a high probability that they are in fact not old school when you read they other things they say and how they themselves tell you that the play.
The claim that OD&D plus supplements is just AD&D, what they forget is that OD&D players are not stupid enough to try to use the entirety of all the supplements at the same time. OD&D players cherry pick a few things they like from the supplements and so their version of OD&D is nothing like AD&D.
Also you can not talk about philosophical and mechanical differences, individually because in so many ways they are linked. In AD&D, non weapon proficiencies, are added. This is both a major philosophical and mechanical difference, a big shift in the focus of the game. But this major shift started with the introduction of the thief in Greyhawk. Rangers were more crunchy than paladins, druids, illusionists and bards were part of a major shift. In fact, The Strategic Review introduction of the Bard, completely jumped the shark, it was the dream character for munchkins.
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Post by Morose on Dec 19, 2022 23:14:54 GMT -5
Those that worship Gygax and call themselves Gygaxian are in my opinion fooling themselves when they claim to be Old School. Nothing against AD&D really, but it is not remotely the same game as OD&D, it is not played the same, does not have even remotely the same vibe and in my opinion is not properly Old School. Nor is it full blown New School, that arrived with 2E AD&D, but it is at least half way there.
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Post by Morose on Dec 19, 2022 23:17:52 GMT -5
By the time 2E came along, most the new players had a complete disconnect from all of the Appendix N stuff and knew nothing of Fairy Tales or Mythology. And most of the older player were almost solely composed of module users. The 1E people who did most of the remaining homebrew, did not make the switch to 2E.
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Post by Morose on Dec 19, 2022 23:24:03 GMT -5
Some of the 1E players, more of the 2E players switched to 3E and that is were new players were added. IMO this is when the anime influence started to dominate, in addition, to the video game component that came in with 2E.
I don't know what 4E was, but it was not D&D. 5E loudly praised by many so-called Old School Grognards, but it is all anime and video game, with munchkinism, min-maxing and power-gaming as the paradigm. It barely give any lip service to Old School Gaming and IMO those who claim to play it old school are fooling themselves with all the compromises they have made. I think they are blinded to the compromises and honestly have no clue that they have compromised everything.
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Post by simrion on Dec 20, 2022 7:51:10 GMT -5
Those that worship Gygax and call themselves Gygaxian are in my opinion fooling themselves when they claim to be Old School. Nothing against AD&D really, but it is not remotely the same game as OD&D, it is not played the same, does not have even remotely the same vibe and in my opinion is not properly Old School. Nor is it full blown New School, that arrived with 2E AD&D, but it is at least half way there. Honestly though a case could be made OD&D is Gygaxian. It is my understanding that prior to his development of LA (Lejendary Adventures) that he used OD&D for his house Dungeon (Greyhawk) when he'd invite folks to his front porch to game. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Dec 20, 2022 11:29:47 GMT -5
Those that worship Gygax and call themselves Gygaxian are in my opinion fooling themselves when they claim to be Old School. Nothing against AD&D really, but it is not remotely the same game as OD&D, it is not played the same, does not have even remotely the same vibe and in my opinion is not properly Old School. Nor is it full blown New School, that arrived with 2E AD&D, but it is at least half way there. Honestly though a case could be made OD&D is Gygaxian. It is my understanding that prior to his development of LA (Lejendary Adventures) that he used OD&D for his house Dungeon (Greyhawk) when he'd invite folks to his front porch to game. Some of the people that are self labeling themselves as Gygaxian apply it strictly to AD&D and not OD&D, they consider it to be True Gygaxian. After Gary was booted from TSR by the POG, I have never read any mention of him playing AD&D after that point. He seemed pretty offended by 2E and refused to answer questions (for the most part) about 1E. As far as I know, when he played D&D after he was booted from TSR, OD&D is the only flavor he played and I have never heard that he ever played Holmes- B/X, BECMI or RC. Even after LA (Lejendary Adventures) he still used OD&D for home games with fans to the best of my knowledge. Also the self-proclaimed Gygaxian crowd, have a pretty strict definition of Gygaxian that pretty much excludes OD&D and they have said some pretty nasty things about OD&D. I don't think their definition would match up with yours. All of that said, OD&D is Gygaxian, it is the Gygax interpretation of Blackmoor. He kept the Arneson game engine, but switched out Arneson mechanics for his own. In some respects, I even think it would be fair to say that AD&D is less Gygaxian than OD&D. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Dec 20, 2022 11:36:47 GMT -5
I think the biggest thing is something that has been pointed out here many times and that it that New School Players are largely defined by a few things. One is lack of knowledge of the foundational fantasy literature. Almost everyone (probably over 95%) born after 1980 and a huge amount of those born after 1968 are largely ignorant when it comes to fantasy. They have not been read and told fairy tales, nor have they read them, themselves. Myself and a lot of people here have read hundreds of fairy tales. Many of us are widely read in mythology as well. Many of us have read a lot of Tolkien, and most or all of Howard and Burroughs. Many of us have also read most of the Appendix N stuff and a lot of the older fantasy that no one these days have heard of. So there is no wonder that there is such an extreme philosophical and mechanical difference between Old School and New School gaming. They are completely difference games and the people who play them are in a practical sense born 100 years apart.When I look at myself and my personal cultural back story and someone born in the 70s or later, I would have to say that in a practical sense the cultural divide between myself and them is more like a couple of hundred years. My parents belonged to the last purely oral history generation and lived their whole lives that way. I got major exposure to it, but after college moved to the city and so I was part of the hybrid generation with a base in the oral history generation and a foot in the post oral history generation with a preference for the former. By the time I left grade school, those that followed me for the most part lost all connection to the oral history paradigm. |
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Post by simrion on Dec 20, 2022 19:00:09 GMT -5
I agree with where you are coming from PD especially with how exponentially technology changed during my span on this plane. I think back to when we had a black and white TV and rabbit ear antenna with 3 - 5 stations available max. Phone calls were made with the wired and corded phone in the house or at a payphone. Music provided by transistor radio or vinyl records. Information cam from books especially at the library. I contend the original growth of the game evolved as the "computer game" of the imagination with your brain as the computer. Leap forward a scant 20 years and the game is literally played on a computer or, these days, on a mobile device. I think that has much more to do with the cultural divide, especially when the game is now about your back story and story and how dare my character die? Much like computer games I think there is a modern expectation you should be able to save your progress and respawn if your character dies. Sorry for the ramble that is not entirely "on topic."
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Dec 20, 2022 22:15:29 GMT -5
I agree with where you are coming from PD especially with how exponentially technology changed during my span on this plane. I think back to when we had a black and white TV and rabbit ear antenna with 3 - 5 stations available max. Phone calls were made with the wired and corded phone in the house or at a payphone. Music provided by transistor radio or vinyl records. Information cam from books especially at the library. I contend the original growth of the game evolved as the "computer game" of the imagination with your brain as the computer. Leap forward a scant 20 years and the game is literally played on a computer or, these days, on a mobile device. I think that has much more to do with the cultural divide, especially when the game is now about your back story and story and how dare my character die? Much like computer games I think there is a modern expectation you should be able to save your progress and respawn if your character dies. Sorry for the ramble that is not entirely "on topic." Not off topic at all IMO. When I was a kid there were three stations, the antenna was at the top of the hill (about 150' up) and the line ran all the way down to the house and you got one TV station that came in good, one that was mostly OK and the other not unless you turned the antenna and then the others went away. I got a transistor radio when I was eight, up to till then the radio was a really old vacuum tube radio and about 6 stations came in. We got our first black and white TV when I was 7 and it had vacuum tubes, no transistors. The first computer I used was in the engineering department in college, an IBM 1130 you wrote your program, created punched cards and fed them into it. CPU 16-bit, word addressed, 15-bit address space. Dimensions desk-size: width 58.5 in, depth 29 in, height 44.125 in and weighed 660 lb. |
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Post by Morose on Dec 21, 2022 23:26:55 GMT -5
Those that worship Gygax and call themselves Gygaxian are in my opinion fooling themselves when they claim to be Old School. Nothing against AD&D really, but it is not remotely the same game as OD&D, it is not played the same, does not have even remotely the same vibe and in my opinion is not properly Old School. Nor is it full blown New School, that arrived with 2E AD&D, but it is at least half way there. Honestly though a case could be made OD&D is Gygaxian. It is my understanding that prior to his development of LA (Lejendary Adventures) that he used OD&D for his house Dungeon (Greyhawk) when he'd invite folks to his front porch to game. Agreed. I am making a distinction between Gygaxian and those that proclaim themselves to be part of The One True Gygaxian. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Jan 13, 2023 18:56:25 GMT -5
I have to find time to read the rest of that multipage thread.
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Post by Vladimir, The Dark Prince on Mar 14, 2023 22:16:17 GMT -5
Honestly though a case could be made OD&D is Gygaxian. It is my understanding that prior to his development of LA (Lejendary Adventures) that he used OD&D for his house Dungeon (Greyhawk) when he'd invite folks to his front porch to game. Some of the people that are self labeling themselves as Gygaxian apply it strictly to AD&D and not OD&D, they consider it to be True Gygaxian. After Gary was booted from TSR by the POG, I have never read any mention of him playing AD&D after that point. He seemed pretty offended by 2E and refused to answer questions (for the most part) about 1E. As far as I know, when he played D&D after he was booted from TSR, OD&D is the only flavor he played and I have never heard that he ever played Holmes- B/X, BECMI or RC. Even after LA (Lejendary Adventures) he still used OD&D for home games with fans to the best of my knowledge. Also the self-proclaimed Gygaxian crowd, have a pretty strict definition of Gygaxian that pretty much excludes OD&D and they have said some pretty nasty things about OD&D. I don't think their definition would match up with yours. All of that said, OD&D is Gygaxian, it is the Gygax interpretation of Blackmoor. He kept the Arneson game engine, but switched out Arneson mechanics for his own. In some respects, I even think it would be fair to say that AD&D is less Gygaxian than OD&D.I have to agree with that and boy would that frost some of the One True Gygaxian folks. |
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Post by Vladimir, The Dark Prince on Mar 14, 2023 22:18:06 GMT -5
I agree with where you are coming from PD especially with how exponentially technology changed during my span on this plane. I think back to when we had a black and white TV and rabbit ear antenna with 3 - 5 stations available max. Phone calls were made with the wired and corded phone in the house or at a payphone. Music provided by transistor radio or vinyl records. Information cam from books especially at the library. I contend the original growth of the game evolved as the "computer game" of the imagination with your brain as the computer. Leap forward a scant 20 years and the game is literally played on a computer or, these days, on a mobile device. I think that has much more to do with the cultural divide, especially when the game is now about your back story and story and how dare my character die? Much like computer games I think there is a modern expectation you should be able to save your progress and respawn if your character dies. Sorry for the ramble that is not entirely "on topic." Not off topic at all IMO. When I was a kid there were three stations, the antenna was at the top of the hill (about 150' up) and the line ran all the way down to the house and you got one TV station that came in good, one that was mostly OK and the other not unless you turned the antenna and then the others went away. I got a transistor radio when I was eight, up to till then the radio was a really old vacuum tube radio and about 6 stations came in. We got our first black and white TV when I was 7 and it had vacuum tubes, no transistors. The first computer I used was in the engineering department in college, an IBM 1130 you wrote your program, created punched cards and fed them into it. CPU 16-bit, word addressed, 15-bit address space. Dimensions desk-size: width 58.5 in, depth 29 in, height 44.125 in and weighed 660 lb. I for one, am really glad transistors were invented and all the stuff that came after. I cannot get into those little tiny phone screen though. |
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Post by Morose on Mar 14, 2023 23:11:44 GMT -5
Some of the people that are self labeling themselves as Gygaxian apply it strictly to AD&D and not OD&D, they consider it to be True Gygaxian. After Gary was booted from TSR by the POG, I have never read any mention of him playing AD&D after that point. He seemed pretty offended by 2E and refused to answer questions (for the most part) about 1E. As far as I know, when he played D&D after he was booted from TSR, OD&D is the only flavor he played and I have never heard that he ever played Holmes- B/X, BECMI or RC. Even after LA (Lejendary Adventures) he still used OD&D for home games with fans to the best of my knowledge. Also the self-proclaimed Gygaxian crowd, have a pretty strict definition of Gygaxian that pretty much excludes OD&D and they have said some pretty nasty things about OD&D. I don't think their definition would match up with yours. All of that said, OD&D is Gygaxian, it is the Gygax interpretation of Blackmoor. He kept the Arneson game engine, but switched out Arneson mechanics for his own. In some respects, I even think it would be fair to say that AD&D is less Gygaxian than OD&D.I have to agree with that and boy would that frost some of the One True Gygaxian folks. That is a good point, but I think it would be faired to say that AD&D is the same level of Gygaxian as OD&D, just without a word limit and no short deadline. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Mar 15, 2023 2:39:47 GMT -5
Some of the people that are self labeling themselves as Gygaxian apply it strictly to AD&D and not OD&D, they consider it to be True Gygaxian. After Gary was booted from TSR by the POG, I have never read any mention of him playing AD&D after that point. He seemed pretty offended by 2E and refused to answer questions (for the most part) about 1E. As far as I know, when he played D&D after he was booted from TSR, OD&D is the only flavor he played and I have never heard that he ever played Holmes- B/X, BECMI or RC. Even after LA (Lejendary Adventures) he still used OD&D for home games with fans to the best of my knowledge. Also the self-proclaimed Gygaxian crowd, have a pretty strict definition of Gygaxian that pretty much excludes OD&D and they have said some pretty nasty things about OD&D. I don't think their definition would match up with yours. All of that said, OD&D is Gygaxian, it is the Gygax interpretation of Blackmoor. He kept the Arneson game engine, but switched out Arneson mechanics for his own. In some respects, I even think it would be fair to say that AD&D is less Gygaxian than OD&D.That it would, for sure! |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Mar 15, 2023 2:40:11 GMT -5
Not off topic at all IMO. When I was a kid there were three stations, the antenna was at the top of the hill (about 150' up) and the line ran all the way down to the house and you got one TV station that came in good, one that was mostly OK and the other not unless you turned the antenna and then the others went away. I got a transistor radio when I was eight, up to till then the radio was a really old vacuum tube radio and about 6 stations came in. We got our first black and white TV when I was 7 and it had vacuum tubes, no transistors. The first computer I used was in the engineering department in college, an IBM 1130 you wrote your program, created punched cards and fed them into it. CPU 16-bit, word addressed, 15-bit address space. Dimensions desk-size: width 58.5 in, depth 29 in, height 44.125 in and weighed 660 lb. I for one, am really glad transistors were invented and all the stuff that came after. I cannot get into those little tiny phone screen though. I am right there with you. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Mar 15, 2023 2:40:37 GMT -5
I have to agree with that and boy would that frost some of the One True Gygaxian folks. That is a good point, but I think it would be faired to say that AD&D is the same level of Gygaxian as OD&D, just without a word limit and no short deadline. That is probably right. |
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Post by Vladimir, The Dark Prince on Mar 15, 2023 13:13:06 GMT -5
I need to go back and dig through that thread, there is a lot more there to comment on.
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Mar 18, 2023 7:50:46 GMT -5
I need to go back and dig through that thread, there is a lot more there to comment on. I couldn't agree more! |
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