Looking at various discussions about D&D4e as against earlier editions and the "retro-clone" movement, and Ryan Dancey's famous comment that "roleplaying is twenty minutes of fun packed into four hours", we can see that many people don't understand what "old school" is about. The essence of old school is nothing to do with dungeons, but is a playstyle based on,
The GM hates you. The rules hate you. The dice hate you. Only your wits can save you.
It's a joke but in every jest a little truth, as Shakespeare said. The truth is that the GM is there to present you with interesting challenges, and you can't rely on the rules or lucky dice rolls to solve those challenges, you have to use your wits and think your way through problems.
If you're a munchkin or attention junkie, you'll be upset at having to use your wits, because you haven't got any. You'll claim the GM is oppressing you.
Many people don't get this about old school. Over on the GURPS forums people were discussing the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books. The writer had the characters start off at 250 points, which is about 10th-15th level in D&D (depending on edition), and said this was because,
"I looked at the canonical GURPS stats for pits, poisons, dangerous animals, and other threats and disasters, and made the DF templates sufficiently robust that using them would yield the carefree, cinematic fun of old-school dungeon crawling instead of some sort of grim survival horror.
"[...] the 250-point power level is needed to make a larger-than-life, carefree genre work in a grim, gritty system like GURPS, where enough kobolds will eventually get behind you, roll a critical hit, etc."
That is, he imagines that characters just fall into ten foot pits and jump out swearing a bit but largely unharmed, they regularly face down hordes of kobolds who line up to be dispatched one by one, and so on. He imagines that nobody uses their wits.
Of course he's entirely wrong about dungeons. The pit trap, for example, is not something you fall in, climb out of and laugh at. It might kill you, so what you do is not fall in. You achieve this by looking for traps, and going around them, disarming them or setting them off harmlessly.
The monsters are deadly and vicious. You don't survive them by sheer number of hit points you can receive or deal, but by using planning, tactics and teamwork.
Some will perish. But with wits and some luck, some will survive and prosper.
If you enjoy a challenge of your wits, you will enjoy this kind of gaming. If you're witless, you won't, and will probably complain that the GM is oppressing you. You might even come up with a new edition of your favourite game with detailed rules for everything and carefully minimaxed character classes to help protect you from the arsehole GM.
The GM hates you. The rules hate you. The dice hate you. Only your wits can save you.
It's a joke but in every jest a little truth, as Shakespeare said. The truth is that the GM is there to present you with interesting challenges, and you can't rely on the rules or lucky dice rolls to solve those challenges, you have to use your wits and think your way through problems.
If you're a munchkin or attention junkie, you'll be upset at having to use your wits, because you haven't got any. You'll claim the GM is oppressing you.
Many people don't get this about old school. Over on the GURPS forums people were discussing the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books. The writer had the characters start off at 250 points, which is about 10th-15th level in D&D (depending on edition), and said this was because,
"I looked at the canonical GURPS stats for pits, poisons, dangerous animals, and other threats and disasters, and made the DF templates sufficiently robust that using them would yield the carefree, cinematic fun of old-school dungeon crawling instead of some sort of grim survival horror.
"[...] the 250-point power level is needed to make a larger-than-life, carefree genre work in a grim, gritty system like GURPS, where enough kobolds will eventually get behind you, roll a critical hit, etc."
That is, he imagines that characters just fall into ten foot pits and jump out swearing a bit but largely unharmed, they regularly face down hordes of kobolds who line up to be dispatched one by one, and so on. He imagines that nobody uses their wits.
Of course he's entirely wrong about dungeons. The pit trap, for example, is not something you fall in, climb out of and laugh at. It might kill you, so what you do is not fall in. You achieve this by looking for traps, and going around them, disarming them or setting them off harmlessly.
The monsters are deadly and vicious. You don't survive them by sheer number of hit points you can receive or deal, but by using planning, tactics and teamwork.
Some will perish. But with wits and some luck, some will survive and prosper.
If you enjoy a challenge of your wits, you will enjoy this kind of gaming. If you're witless, you won't, and will probably complain that the GM is oppressing you. You might even come up with a new edition of your favourite game with detailed rules for everything and carefully minimaxed character classes to help protect you from the arsehole GM.
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