Comments on The Core Mechanic: Surveying the "Old School" RPG Concept Independent...

To me, Old School games are much more simplistic a...

2009-11-24T03:33:35.625-05:00

To me, Old School games are much more simplistic and imaginative than the newer games. So many new games that I've looked at have been far too complicated to be able to just jump right into them.

Less rules = Less Lawyering = More Play = More Fun.

I long to play Basic D&D again... I'd still throw out the Vancian magic system though, and replace it with a more balanced system I made up years ago, where spellcasters can cast all day, but at lower power levels.

Have to say that having been in this hobby since i...

2009-05-28T08:59:23.194-04:00

Have to say that having been in this hobby since it's inception, I've seen aspects of all this stuff both in early games and in later games too. I wouldn't necessary say any are characteristic of either school, since game designers of both schools were notorious of borrowing things they liked or saw in other games into their own.

None of that stuff is really old school or new sch...

2009-05-28T05:50:14.844-04:00

None of that stuff is really old school or new school, I think. Except maybe for box sets, and that's mostly because people have since realized that it isn't really very practical to release things that way.

But I had to pick antiquated and obsolete for random character backgrounds because, well, really, what's the point? Ew.

Also, emo elves are fundamental. You can't have a game without them. Even if you want to, they'll still show up. They may show up in the guise of, say, Toreadors, but they'll show up. There is no escape.

Few of what you list are causally related to being...

2009-05-28T00:14:12.741-04:00

Few of what you list are causally related to being an old school game. Sure, some of them may have been common in old school games. But putting them into a game won't magically make your game 'old school'.

Now if your game included mechanics that focused on player skill/ interaction with the world rather than character abilities or on enabling GMs to follow rough guidelines rather than attempting to create a rule for every situation, then you might be able to call your game 'old school'.

Carl

FIXED. sry, i was tied up in the lab.

2009-05-27T10:28:28.009-04:00

FIXED.

sry, i was tied up in the lab.

It's cut off in IE7 on XP too. Need to adjust the...

2009-05-27T09:50:45.839-04:00

It's cut off in IE7 on XP too. Need to adjust the iframe width I would assume.

The right side of the quiz is cut off when I look ...

2009-05-27T09:06:08.585-04:00

The right side of the quiz is cut off when I look at it in Firefox 3.0.10 on Vista.