(To be fair, Des encouraged me to take some time for blogging to let off some steam.)
However, I'm still solidly in the "old school" camp because, frankly, I can't stand modern RPGs. Four-hundred page rulebooks, litanies of feats, powers, items, sooper classes, and gimmicky mechanics. Blech! (Yes, I know Old School doesn't necessarily equate to rules light, but even the most complex Old School games could barely hold a candle to the more complex systems of today.) At any rate, the re-branding of OSR to stand for Old School Rules works a charm for me. My system of choice is Basic Roleplaying and its derivitives (chiefly Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon), which is a very old school system indeed. If I were ever to play GURPS again, I'd most likely go the route of S. John Ross "Classic-Era GURPS" (scroll to the bottom for a definition), restricting myself to the 1988 3rd Edition Basic Set. And I'll always have a soft spot for Palladium, the most successful set of 1e AD&D house rules ever published. So even though dungeon crawls and Old School D&D was never really my style, I can firmly get behind the "Old School Rules" movement. Here's to the "new" OSR!
Agreed. I'm not a huge D&D fan and never have been, but the philosophy of the old-school is one I can get behind, and I consider Call of Cthulhu and WFRP to be just as old-school as anything else.
ReplyDeleteI consider Call of Cthulhu and WFRP to be just as old-school as anything else.
ReplyDeleteOf course they are! I've been trying for a long time to impress upon people that "old school" isn't limited to D&D, but the level of interest in those other old school RPGs is limited. Why, just the other day, someone commented on my blog that I had "changed" since I started the blog and was now talking more and more about other games, as if this were odd. That's just the nature of the beast, I'm afraid, though I do wish we had more old school bloggers interested in other games. Maybe then people would get it through their heads that there's more to all this than D&D.
I agree with everything that has been said here.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you're using "Old School" and "Rules-light" interchangeably. I know you mention that there were more complex games back in the day, but you justify it by saying that they are still rules-light compared to newer games.
ReplyDeleteIs "Old School" just another way to say "Rules-light," or is there something more to it; I can't really tell from this article.
Also, I've always thought OSR meant Old School Revival.
I've never really grokked OSR and what it stands for. It seems to stand for different things to different people. So I just avoid the topic and keep playing.
ReplyDeleteWe had the second half of 501AD this week and the players royally kicked my a$$. Not only did they recover Hertford castle; but, they killed the Anglish King Cwichelm in the process. 6 straight triumphant battle rounds. I couldn't roll to save my life (or the life of the saxons, as the case may be.)
On the bright side, one of the player knight's now has a daughter hatched out of an egg. She's pure white of complexion with deep, sea-blue eyes. That's all I gave the player and she's his to deal with. I've also bought the 4th edition rules to figure out how to play a magical character when(if) this little girl makes it to adulthood.
1d12: What I'm trying to get across is emphatically not that "old school=rules light" - however, old school games, as a general rule, are less crunchy and...verbose, if you will, than contemporary games.
ReplyDeleteCompare the 1988 3rd edition GURPS Basic Set to the current 4th edition. The former weighs in at 296 pages in a single volume, the latter 576 pages in two volumes. Yet both editions are completely playable as-is. Likewise, 4th edition sourcebooks are considerably lengthier and denser than 3rd edition, despite the fact that 3rd edition sourcebooks are universally acclaimed for their utility. I gave 4e a chance and, by and large, did not find the extra layers of complexity/extra reams of info to be worth the extra effort and time required.
To take it back to D&D, you'll often see discussions of the Molvay Basic/Expert set laying out pretty much everything you'd need to run literally years of games in just 64 pages, compared against the hundreds of pages you'll find in even just the Pathfinder or 4e core books.
So old school, to me, isn't about questions of complexity of the rules per se, but rather economy of presentation and economy of game play. As a general rule, old school rules require far fewer rules lookups during game play, for instance.
Obviously there are exceptions to all this, but in short what I'm trying to say is that ten-page character sheets do not make for better characters; 400- to 500-page rulebooks do not make for better game play or more inspirational reading.
Eric: Love the child hatched from the egg! I'll have to steal that. :)
As for the OSR, if I could sum it up I'd say that it is/was about re-approaching older editions of D&D (and associated styles of game play) like they were worth a damn.
I have Tunnels and Trolls which is old school and while it is not really rules lite, they encourage you to add and subtract bits. It seems that old school stuff has less need to be comprehensive and is more about giving you and your group a game to have fun with.
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