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Old School Gaming Explained© 2012 J.D. Neal

 All Rights Reserved.Release 4

Thanks to the blathering that goes online andspills over into gaming tables, there was for a time aholy war between "new school gaming" and "oldschool gaming." It was ignited and flamed by zealotsspewing doctrinal hate at each other. For somepeople, it could be summed up, "I hate your game. Ihate you."

This is intended for anyone who doesn't like thatline of thought, and who wants to learn more aboutold school gaming without the lies and animosityothers spew.

What is "old school gaming" versus "new school

gaming"? Summed up: older versions of Dungeons &Dragons were aimed towards a more simplistic styleof play. When Wizards of the Coast designed thenew versions, some of the mechanics were alteredand a layer of options added, like skills and feats.The changes and additions were not actually new,

 per se; many were taken from or inspired by ideas inolder games.

Some fans loved the changes; some dislikedthem. And that sums it up. Some fans wanted areturn to simpler D&D.

Older versions of D&D are no longer supportedby the current owner: WOTC does sell old materials,but not often. You can buy old materials as usedmerchandise (and sometimes quiet cheap).

You cannot legally distribute your own materialsfor the official, older versions of D&D. Or, rather youcan, but only as a generic item. There are variousconcerns about intellectual property rights involved.You cannot legally post a PDF file of a rule book andtell your players, "Download this and read it and let'splay it."

Some of the fans of older versions startedcreating clones and simulacrum games based on theWizards of the Coast SRD (System ResourceDocument) and OGL (Open Game License). Theyused the legal ideas to create games that played

much like older versions of D&D. Most of theseclones and simulacrums have lenient licensesallowing users to distribute materials for them withoutnecessarily asking permission and without anylimiting ties to a single overbearing entity.

Old school gaming was no longer dead. And yes,that means old versions of D&D are no longer dead.

To whit, the term OSR (Old School Revolution,Renaissance, or whatever) itself has been bandiedabout by many. It is a reference to TSR - once an

abbreviation for Tactical Studies Rules - and theversions of D&D it once published. Some peoplehave made OSR logos that are formatted much likecertain TSR logos.

Hence, in the context of this discussion "oldschool" does not refer to games that are old; manyold games have many of the components seen inmodern games. And many old games are stillsupported.

Nor does it refer to to later versions of D&D suchas 3.0 and 3.5, even though they are now "obsolete"

and no longer supported by WOTC. Albeit peoplelike Paizo still do."Old school" is in fact a simple euphemism for 

TSR-era D&D.

The Appeal of the Old

What is the interest in these sorts of games?Why do some fans not only want to play but alsolegally distribute material for them?

They were simple and easy to play. Up to acertain point in time, a person could take any moduleintended for any variant of older D&D games and

play it with any other version with few if any changes.Minor statistical differences were easily changed -and some could be ignored.

Indeed, much of game play was about theadventure - not the rules. Some games were sosimple that character record sheets could berecorded on a single 3" x 5" notebook card, with thegiven that some elements had to be looked up duringplay.

 And that is the appeal of older variants of D&D:they are simple. You can make up a character rather quickly and hop into play. If character dies, you canroll up a replacement quickly and wait for the DM tobring it into play.

Fans of older games can play death-trap-dungeon adventures chock full of hazards andmonsters, going through two or three characterseach, enjoying seeing how they each get killed off.

 And they can do so in one or two nights, becausenothing about the game is time consuming.

 After all, these games are games of theimagination. In the long run, many people simplywant an easy game to play using mainly their imagination. Rules and options and numbers only getin the way.

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Some people who have played only newer gamesexpect games to include die rolls and skills to helpthem handle many situations. They can be lost whenthey try an older version and do not find said die rolls.

The credo of old school games was to keep itsimple, not worry about so many fussy details, andmake many things up as needed (and if needed)during play. After all, consider the DC (Difficulty Class)

check system of newer games: in the end, a DC checkcan be summarized as "The player rolls a d20 andadds modifiers and compares the total to an arbitrarynumber the DM chooses based on their intent for thesituation." Old school games simplify this into oneidea: since the DM knows what they intend, they canpick a number and let the die be rolled.

Indeed, die rolls are not skill rolls, they are anti-skill rolls. They rob players of a chance of success byforcing results to be determined by pieces of randomlyrolled plastic. The reason newer games created somany skills and what not was simply to make abilityscores more useful in play. As new games were

made, this trend continued to the point where the

designers started creating arbitrary uses for abilityscores, using pixie dust and whimsy.

Old school games realized that the only wayplayers can actually exert skill in games is by makingdecisions. Thus, they de-emphasized the importanceof ability scores and character skills and die rolls infavor of player skill - decision making. If the charactershad nice scores, it helped now and then, but often

they could ignore the character record sheet and playmainly with their wits.

This let the gamers concentrate on game play.You can play the same way with any rule set.

Many people play any game they have very "oldschool." The appeal of older versions of D&D, though,is the ease of play: make up characters quickly andspend most of your time playing with your imagination,not playing with numbers and character creationoptions.

Which is why so many people wanted and builtsystems for playing old school - so they could havesimple games to play.

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