I'm new at tabletop RPGS. What does "old school",

>>45924498
Older design ideals compared to newer ones.
The break is around '96 or so.
Old school revival is bringing old design ideals and mechanics back.

>>45924828
I think OP is asking what the literal changes are in general.

>>45924828
Well yeah I can figure out that much but - yeah what >>45924874 said. What does it mean to be an old school game, in terms of mechanics and stuff?

File: quick_primer_for_old_school_gaming.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>45924498

This pamphlet is a bit pamphletty, but it gets the general idea across alongside the propagandizing.

File: The Role-Playing Game Primer and Old School Playbook.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>45925002

This one is a bit more measured, but you have to go all the way to page 37 where he explains "Rule Zero" before he even digs into what Old School is, so it's less useful as a quick answer.

>>45925077

Err, page 47, that is.

>>45924874
>>45924885
Old school mechanics are generally lower power (though not all, see OWoD), much less forgiving to player error (AD&D), less cohesion and smoothness in the actual mechanics (both, Shadowrun 1e-3e, Scion, Exalted) and more stress on thematics (both, Exalted).
New school games generally are better designed mechanically, tho not always (3e D&D and onward), possess more harmony in mechanics (Shadowrun 4e, NWoD) and offer more weight on mechanics in play over thematical (RoS magic, while powerful, isn't going to solve problems over a good bit of steel in the hand, NWoD Werewolf 2e, despite being fisticuffs focused, isn't head an shoulders over Vampire 2e, which has stronger social bends).
Old school revival tries to balance out the two ideals, usually leaning towards old school design motes.
>I apologize for any bias bend in my post, neither is inherently better than the other, but it is easier by and large to run and understand new school games in my some 20 years of game experience.

>>45925002
This one says old school has fewer rules and is more about common sense, description and roleplaying, while new school is just rulesrulesrules and dicerolls
>>45925110
however this one says old school just has rough mechanics and isn't as well-designed.

are these compatible? I'm honestly not sure.

>>45925110

This guy's not talking about "Old School," just old.
The "Old School" in "Old School Revival" is a specific thing about early D&D and its rules and play style. It's a criticism of the direction D&D went in over the years, as it was bent and twisted into a big rickety general purpose fantasy novel emulator, instead of the polished and well-oiled dungeon crawl game it was designed to be.

>>45925178
>>45925110 here, that is bias coming thru.
AD&D is a great fucking game, but it had a LOT of individual rule sets in it that had no relation to any other rule set, so you had to learn each one if you wanted to play diverse characters.
Also, that applies a lot more to the divide in design in AD&D to 3e D&D than anything else. It doesn't apply to OWoD to NWoD for example, or Shadowrun over the years, which has ALWAYS been rule heavy.
>that's why anon said have a eye for the propaganderizing

>>45925250
>polished and well-oiled dungeon crawl game it was designed to be.
Which is hilarious since that was a criticism about 4e D&D when it tried to bring back that design.

>>45925273

I'd say 4e is a polished and well-oiled battle game, not so much a dungeon crawler. Its rules are geared towards set-piece battles, rather than the tactical crawling that you get with Moldvay, where much of the rules are about resource and time management, and balancing risks between running into traps or standing around until wandering monsters locate you.

>>45925002
I dunno if I'm being propagandificated but holy fuck this booklet describes every reason I thought 4e was boring.

>>45925375
4e has a fair number of both, but they are only suggestions in the DMGs, versus hard coded into the gameplay.
That said, resource management was a big part of older D&D games, and the wandering monsters could absolutely fuck you.
>>45925420
What part of what is being said doesn't apply to 3.x?

>>45925487
I'm not 100% sure I understand your question, but the only thing I ever played was 4e so if you're asking if I meant that 3.5 was better than 4e then no, that's not what I meant.

What I meant was, let's take the example that the pamphlet uses, the moosehead one. In the campaign I played, in 4e, you enter a room, you roll for Spot, you get all the info, and that sucks ass.

Pamphlet says in OD&D, you'd have to describe going up to the moosehead to investigate it, and specifically how you investigated it, and the DM would tell you if those specific attempts yielded any results based on common sense and his ruling. Now, again, never played OD&D so I have no idea if that's how it actually goes in the game, but I love the idea

>>45925654
Both of those are up to the individual gm and their group, not mandated by the game.
You can choose to do the bare minimum, or get more involved.
To that end, OD&D also had a "Spot", it was called roll wisdom to notice things that were hidden or not readily noticed. 4e relied on passive perception to deal with things in the open, and if your passive perception was high enough, could tell you things in a room that were out of place. In most games, doing this
>you'd have to describe going up to the moosehead to investigate it, and specifically how you investigated it
would give you bonuses to the roll to discover things you would find, and OD&D was not an exception to this. The point of rolling at any time was that something was on the line, something you could miss or fail at, and if you weren't rolling dice, there was no failure clause attached to it.

File: image:27577.png (24KB, 500x283px) Image search: [Google]

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Old school is really anything prior to 2005ish and is mostly related to nostalgia thaNks anything. New school could be best described as anything during the rpg explosion in the turn of the millennium. Old school revival is mostly picrelated

>>45924498
>"old school"
2e
>"new school"
3.5, 4e, 5e
>"old school revival"
b

Or, if you like:
>"old school"
Games published between 1987 and 2002
>"new school"
Anything post 2002
>"old school revival"
Anything post 2008 based on something pre 1987.
>So what are pre-1987 games?
Things that no one plays.