Wednesday 25 June 2008

Regarding Old School Sensibilities; A Rant

James, author of the Grognardia blog, complained in a recent post about the tendency of "Old School" products to "go beyond homage to the past and verge on fetishization" in terms of layout and design. I agree with him, and that has been one of the major turn-offs for me when it comes to accepting Older D&D clones like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord. Why do we always have to hark back to a far-off golden age that might not have been all that golden to begin with? Why does using an older ruleset always have to mean older aesthetic sensibilities? Why is 'modern' like a four-letter word to some people?

Art is a minor thing, of course. Although it goes a long way towards setting the tone for a game, players are free to ignore it. More worrying for me is the tendency of these products to fetishize a certain tone of play itself - that is, the same hotpotch of influences, trends and game settings that were popular in the mid-late 1970s and 1980s heyday of the D&D genre. I often feel that to play an adventure like The Pod Cavern of the Sinister Shroom is to look at a museum exhibit as much as it is to play a D&D module; I almost feel like these pieces would be more accurately envisioned as exercises in cultural anthropology as they would role playing games or game modules. (Speaking of course as a non-grognard myself. To those who were there at the time, I suppose the analogy would be to somebody looking at old pictures in a dusty photo album.)

I'm not talking about mechanics, please note. To me, the Rules Cyclopedia and earlier incarnations of AD&D are highly eccentric systems, but they are systems that work surprisingly well, and which make up for their lack of unified mechanics with comprehensiveness and ease of modification. (There is certainly nothing about them that is any worse than, say, the Storyteller system or the Burning Wheel engine.) No; I'm talking about the use of the old tropes of game design, and the same old expectations of what a D&D adventure should be, that were present in the 70's and 80's.

To use a cooking analogy, it's as if the Old School world is mostly interested in rehashing the same old (albeit hearty and delicious) recipes: Take 100 ml of Robert E. Howard, 3 table spoons of Fritz Lieber, a dash of Michael Moorcock, a pinch of Tekumel and a good helping of Arduin, then bring to the boil. Baste your breast of Greyhawk with the resultant sauce, bake in the Mystara oven for 40 minutes, and allow to cool before serving. It tastes good, of course, and when it comes to a Sunday roast, there's little better. But it's as if all the curries, salads, bisques and sashimis that have become popular in recent years never existed. It's like Old School players are still eating lamb shanks and bread and butter pudding in willful unawareness that they could be tucking into a mutton dhansak that tastes even better.

For one thing, I yield to nobody in my appreciation of pulp fantasy and the effects it had on shaping early D&D. But there have been leaps and bounds in the genre since then - not to mention expeditions backwards to rediscover lost influences who were writing long before the likes of Howard. Why shouldn't we be incorporating the sensibilities of the modern greats - people like George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, M. John Harrison and Guy Gavriel Kay - into our games? Why shouldn't we be mining the works of Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald and Edmund Spenser for inspiration? And more to the point, why on earth shouldn't we be designing and writing new products which take these sensibilities into account?

For another thing, there have been great advances in gaming since the 1980s, too. I'm not talking about 3rd or 4th edition D&D, of course, or even other game systems at all; I'm talking about the fertile settings and ideas that have been and continually are being created and which are exemplified in games like Iron Kingdoms, Ptolus, and Reign, to name but three. Such settings show what can be done by people writing with imagination, flair, and a greater awareness of what is possible within the fantasy genre. Setting aside the mechanics issue entirely, their creativity should be spurring on the Old Schoolers to put their collective money where their collective mouth is, and use their much-vaunted retro systems to create something fresh.

In OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord and the Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game we have the tools with which to do anything possible within the huge boundaries of the fantasy genre and beyond. Powerful, versatile tools. And yet still the vast majority of designers insist on using them for - oh look, a dungeon crawl in a mushroom infested cavern. I mean, don't get me wrong; I love dungeon crawls through mushroom infested caverns. But I rather think I have enough of those modules already, 99% of which I designed myself. Where's the imagination? Where's the Reign or the Ptolus - or hell even the Planescape equivalent in the Old School world?

Until somebody uses OSRIC or Labyrinth Lord to create something genuinely new, instead of churning out same-old same-old products, I don't believe the so-called Old School revival will amount to much more than pissing in the wind. You're telling me that a 16 year old player, new to the game and the mind-blowing things that fantasy has to offer, is going to be satisfied with what his Dad enjoyed playing back in his almost-forgotten youth? Well, maybe he will if he realises that though the system is the same, it doesn't matter because the system can let you create just about anything. That sure won't happen if all that's available are clones of 1980's Dungeon modules, though.

23 comments:

  1. I agree and disagree with you.

    You're telling me that a 16 year old player, new to the game and the mind-blowing things that fantasy has to offer, is going to be satisfied with what his Dad enjoyed playing back in his almost-forgotten youth?

    There's not a reason in the world why he shouldn't be. If you tie the hobby into the "here and now," and discount the older things, you're creating a transitive hobby where most of the people in it will leave it when it moves on to the next "here and now" thing. How can we hope that a new player will still be playing in 10, 20, 30 years in the future if we turn our noses up at the methods of the past 10, 20, 30 years? I guess that's the problem with "modern" as well. When we're trying to get lost in time, I suppose we don't want to risk drawing on a source that may end up very much being a product of the time it's made... and you can't tell which is which for awhile.

    Then there is the actual issue of literature. I don't read modern fantasy - that idiot Goodkind was the last straw back in the 90s - so worrying about incorporating it would be kind of... false. ;)

    Maybe a good lesson to take from your blog (and others which talk about the influences of D&D) is that inspiration for gaming, and gaming products, shouldn't come from the game itself... it should draw from the influences that made you predisposed to liking the game in the first place. How's that?

    And then... about the Shroom thing... I want to love it, Finch seems to be a really cool guy... but yeah, it just seems like a museum piece, and while it's a versatile adventure in the sense that it can be plopped in anywhere in a campaign, it has a very limited scope as a product. "This here in this location."

    Of course, bitching about it is not the best way to deal with it in the current environment. The best way to comment on a deficiency in the gaming scene is to write and release your own stuff that addresses that deficiency.

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  2. There's not a reason in the world why he shouldn't be. If you tie the hobby into the "here and now," and discount the older things, you're creating a transitive hobby where most of the people in it will leave it when it moves on to the next "here and now" thing.

    You're right, in a way, and I don't think I phrased what I wanted to say particularly well. What I mean is, it's important to be aware of roots and the contiuning traditions of the game. But at the same time it's important that it looks to new horizons, otherwise it'll grow stale.

    Of course, there's a danger that the new stuff will be a pale imitation of the old. I love 60s and 70s soul music, and modern day R'n'b is just a shit poor man's version of it. But on the other hand I love how grunge built on garage rock and punk to create something new and fantastic. I want to take that as my model for role playing game design. Draw on the old to create something new and great.

    Then there is the actual issue of literature. I don't read modern fantasy - that idiot Goodkind was the last straw back in the 90s - so worrying about incorporating it would be kind of... false.

    I hate those Goodkind books too. A lot of modern fantasy is tripe. But then a lot of pulp fantasy from the golden age was tripe too. You have to trawl for the good stuff, just like Gygax and co trawled for the good stuff, but it's there.

    Of course, bitching about it is not the best way to deal with it in the current environment. The best way to comment on a deficiency in the gaming scene is to write and release your own stuff that addresses that deficiency.

    You're right, and I think I've read you making that sort of comment before. Maybe I just will go ahead and do exactly that.

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  3. I hate those Goodkind books too. A lot of modern fantasy is tripe. But then a lot of pulp fantasy from the golden age was tripe too. You have to trawl for the good stuff, just like Gygax and co trawled for the good stuff, but it's there.

    True, but I enjoy reading older stuff more. The wording of 100+ year old authors is stimulating in itself, and I find the wonder expressed in the works of guys like Verne and Wells doesn't diminish with time. It's also so little-read these days that taking freely from 19th century sources means people don't recognize it in play as often as they might something more current.

    ... I also have very limited resources to get all the stuff I'd want (living in a different country where one's grasp of the native language isn't good enough to read literature makes a trip to the library worthless), so working through the older stuff is where I'm comfortable at right now.

    My next reading project looks to be Melmoth the Wanderer, which should be interesting and challenging reading.

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  4. I really recommend you check out George MacDonald. He was writing in the mid 1800's and he's one of my favourite early fantasy authors.

    I hear Finnish is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn (used to know a Finnish girl), so I hear where you're coming from about not reading the native literature. But I want to read the Kalevala someday (in English, obviously).

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  5. A very good post and one with which I largely agree. Most of my objections are similar to those of Jim. I don't think gaming needs to be "current" to be fun. His analogy with literature is, I think, very apt. However, I also think there has to be a middle ground between treating the past a museum piece/dusty photo album and rejecting it wholesale.

    In other words, I'm seeking the world that exists between the festishization of the days of yore and the wholesale dismissal of them we get with, say, 4e. I'm not yet sure how to get there, but, again, I think Jim is on to something when he says we need to create new stuff that addresses the weaknesses with the other approaches. From what I have seen of his upcoming work, he might just have done that.

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  6. I don't think gaming needs to be "current" to be fun. His analogy with literature is, I think, very apt. However, I also think there has to be a middle ground between treating the past a museum piece/dusty photo album and rejecting it wholesale.

    In other words, I'm seeking the world that exists between the festishization of the days of yore and the wholesale dismissal of them we get with, say, 4e. I'm not yet sure how to get there, but, again, I think Jim is on to something when he says we need to create new stuff that addresses the weaknesses with the other approaches. From what I have seen of his upcoming work, he might just have done that.


    Essentially I agree; I don't want to give the impression that I believe all links to the past must be severed or that we continually have to ape current trends. I'm striving for that middle ground too. Possibly my middle ground is slightly more towards the "new" end of the scale and yours is slightly more towards the "old", but broadly our thinking is probably the same.

    My main concern is that Old School sensibilities should be tempered with innovation, because otherwise said 16 year old will be unhappy with the result. Not because of any inherent weakness in the system, but simply because lack of innovation can only result in stagnation and stagnation is intrinsically dull and unattractive. I don't believe for a second that this means pandering to "the modern age"; we just have to be doing something creative beyond simply rehashes, if for no other reason than to convince ourselves and others that we have a living hobby and aren't just museum curators.

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  7. I don't know how to spot-link to my response to James' response to your comments on his blog. But I've outlined attributes of old-school art that identify it as a particular style not linked to any period of time.

    Please take my disagreements below as completely friendly; I played 3e for years and don't at all look down on people who prefer it, nor do I look down on people who haven't grasped what old school gaming is about - it is a huge leap into a different style of gaming, and very difficult to see from the perspective of the modern-style gamer.

    In response to the question of innovation in old school gaming, I think you've missed several points. First, you're correct that OSRIC and Pod Caverns are museum pieces in one sense. OSRIC was created as a resource for publishers and has outgrown its original purpose - I expected a few new players to come to the game via OSRIC, but I had no idea that this would far eclipse the perception and use of the book as a tool for publishers. Second, and related, I expected that publishing to be for the grognards, not new players. Seen this way, you can see that OSRIC was designed for one market and picked up by a different market. Everyone is assuming that new players were the main purpose of the work since that's how it's playing out on ENworld - "Want to try out 1e? Use OSRIC, it's a clear and accessible summary of those rules." We didn't expect that to happen at the scale it's happening. Same with Pod-Caverns, which is, I think, as the author, more creative than you suggest - it's designed as an introduction to meat and potatoes 1e, and as a module for grognards to enjoy. So your criticisms of the basic documents of the system aren't on point. These are designed to appeal to grognards, and shouldn't be judged based on what they can achieve - they are intended to set a baseline, not a stretch.

    My newest project, Swords and Wizardry, is designed to promote the stretch. The vehicle is the 0e rules, which are better suited to this goal than the 1e rules.

    As to old-style gaming, you're off point on a couple of points. First, as you even mention in your post, you make the assumption that additional spice is inherently an improvement on meat and potatoes. While as a matter of taste I agree with you, I think you're missing that point that this simply isn't true for everyone. The older tropes are a rich mine, rich enough for some people never to need something additional. That's like saying that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony can be improved objectively by a really awesome banjo solo in the middle. The best banjo solo won't improve the Fifth Symphony - at least, not in the eyes of virtually any classical music fan.

    Finally, I think you're missing what old school gaming is all about, because it's a massive paradigm shift from the type of gaming that's evolved since, say, the early days of 1e. The paradigm shift isn't about roleplaying, because 3e actually stepped back from the 2e model of gaming and back toward 1e. That's too big a topic for this post, but many aspects of 3e are more similar to 1e than 2e. But not a step toward what I consider the heart of "old school," which is the vagueness and openness of the rules. Ignore rule 0: that's a fig leaf except for a very few 3e gamers. Early D&D was built in a way that allowed one's own interpretation or flexing of the rules to fit easily with your personal vision of fantasy, whether Tekumel, Discworld, the magic system of the Wheel of Time, or fantasy gaming on Barsoom. The paradigm shift is hard to describe; it's gaming where there are rulings rather than rules. What fits? The imagery is easier to portray when tripping and falling doesn't have a rule; hey, you rolled a 1, so, um, okay, you fall when your missed stroke overextends itself. The DM pulls a cool situation out of nowhere, and you don't have to follow it with specific rules. It's freeform, and it has an utterly different feel to it than a situation in which the designers have tried to provide rules-resolutions for as many situations as possible. Using more rules is a very valid design - I don't like it - but it's completely valid. Yet it has a completely different feel at the gaming table. So it's not about rehashing old fantasy tropes, it's about playing the game with a very different approach that's structured into the rules (or lack thereof).

    This isn't a matter of sticking to the past, it's a matter of playing a game that could have been designed yesterday, and if it were, would represent a radically "new" approach to gaming. Indeed, some new games appear to be making exactly that same leap, and are indeed being hailed as revolutionary. d6, the game within, for instance.

    Although I could go on much longer, I think I've covered most of the main points. But I believe you haven't made the paradigm shift of seeing the faces that frame the vase in the old optical illusion. Because you aren't seeing it (which is not a criticism - just an observation) there's no way of seeing early D&D as anything other than sticking to old tropes. It's not about fetishism, it's about playing with a flexible ruleset that requires innovation.

    I realize that your response to this is likely to be that you're not talking about what old school is, but that it can be improved by innovation. What I'm pointing out is that (a) for many people this isn't true, and their "fun" can't really be disagreed with (b) OSRIC and Pod Caverns were designed as museum pieces and basic-groundrules by people who completely agree with your attitude about innovation, (c) that I'm actually engaged in a project that meets your suggestion now that the baseline has been covered, in the realization that these documents are being used as an introduction to old-style gaming, and (d) by reference to James' blog, I've outlined there some of the non-historically related descriptions of old school sensibilities - with the important ability to find newly-made artworks which nontheless qualify as old-school, even when executed in new media such as CGI. With examples.

    Hoping not to be seen as an arguer, but as someone who's an advocate of open-rules and the wild gaming sh*t that can be done with it much more easily than with a ruleset that aims specifically to provide a rules-mechanism for as many situations as possible.

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  8. I don't really understand this issue.

    When I referee, I am looking at a sea of lap tops, tapped at furtively by the players who find it easier to change their hit point count without the need of paper. If I chance to have reason to get up and walk around the room, their desktops are filled with a cacophony of different images, each of which has been selected off the net to suit their personal tastes.

    What care they that the books feature this art or that? They pick what they like, what talks to them...and they are free to change it constantly--which they do--from the net while we are playing. It really makes no difference to the way my world is run.

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  9. Thanks for the long comment, Matt. I think however that you're slightly misinterpreting my position.

    First, please understand that I'm not a 3rd edition or "modern style" gamer. I exclusively play Rules Cyclopedia/BECMI and 1st/2nd edition AD&D, so all that stuff about rulings rather than rules is preaching to the choir; I've been "seeing it" since the age of 11!

    Second, I never criticized OSRIC or called it a museum piece. (I was using that phrase to refer to the Shroom module and those like it.) In fact I regard the venture quite highly. Rather, I was bemoaning the fact that self-confessedly old-school designers and writers only use OSRIC (and Labyrinth Lord, BFRPG and other retro-clones) to rehash what has already gone before. What I'm advocating is the use of the tools we have in OSRIC, LL and the like to do something new and fresh - to create games and settings that aren't just carbon copies of old dungeon crawl modules. OSRIC, being a simulacrum of AD&D 1e, is an extremely versatile system; why not get truly creative with it and use it to make up a new set of game ideas, just as people took the d20 system and used it to do so?

    Third, I think your analogy of Beethoven with the banjo solo is misplaced. I'm not arguing that we should insert banjo solos into the 5th symphony; rather I'm arguing that if musicians were like current old school designers, we'd still be stuck with Gregorian chants. Evolution is important - so while listening to Beethoven's 5th symphony is rewarding, so to is listening to Lead Belly, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye and David Bowie, none of whom would exist were it not for the impulse to innovation.

    What I'm trying to say is that I like modules like the Shroom one, because it's what I cut my gaming teeth playing, but I think if that's all OSRIC is going to be used for, it's being critically underused. I appreciate the effort. But I want to see it flexing its muscles (so to speak) to go off in a new direction. Not just harking back to the gone-forever glory days.

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  10. What care they that the books feature this art or that? They pick what they like, what talks to them...and they are free to change it constantly--which they do--from the net while we are playing. It really makes no difference to the way my world is run.

    Well, as I said, art is a minor issue that players are free to ignore. My concern is style of play. Why do old school systems (OSRIC, LL, BFRPG) only get used for making stuff that feels like it stepped out of the 1980s - not in design but in play?

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  11. When I referee, I am looking at a sea of lap tops, tapped at furtively by the players who find it easier to change their hit point count without the need of paper.

    Wow. WOW. I couldn't even begin to run a game until all of that is put away.

    And people have to leave the table if they get a cell call.

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  12. Why do old school systems (OSRIC, LL, BFRPG) only get used for making stuff that feels like it stepped out of the 1980s - not in design but in play?


    I think the crux of this problem is the very real fact that whatever desires many in the old school community may have in regards to recruiting new players via old school products, it's an uphill battle. The problem is that almost all of these new RPGers cut their gaming teeth on CRPGs, and paper and pencil RPGs that are based on a ruleset resolution for every conceivable player action as opposed to freeform playing out of dice rolls/encounters...so they expect their 'new school' RPGs to be based on similar paradigms.

    I think they also believe that it is 'correct' to be able to hand-pick and tailor every aspect of their character, not only from a rules perspective, but also from a personal choice perspective...there goes random tables right out the window...and 3D6 randomly to assign ability scores? Forget it! They want complete control over who and what their character is and aren't interested in RPing characters with 'interesting' flaws (unless the flaws come with a compensatory point bonus to some other aspect of their character). I think this ties in to the noted use of Elmore as the point of departure between old/new school art: the world and dungeon with generic PCs takes a backseat to the 'posed' uber-PC that is master of any situation.

    Just like many old schoolers have certain expectations of the very basic definition of what an RPG is based on what it was like when they cut their teeth on it, the new schoolers have their own, very different, ones. This means that even with 'new school' dressing (art, storyline, world building, whatever) they are much less likely to even accept the basic mechanical premises upon which the game is built.

    So many elements of old school gaming are anathema to them and the way they were brought up to play these games that it's an uphill battle to convert them to an old-style system even if you added 'kewl' artwork and veered away from the pulpish content of earlier versions.

    Also, for good or ill it really seems that in the fantasy community epic high fantasy has more or less won the war and is seen as the paradigm of what 'fantasy' is as opposed to the sword and sorcery school of the pulps upon which OD&D was based...so many of the 'story' elements that most grognards see as emblematicc of the earlier versions of the game aren't necessarily what newer players even accept as 'real' fantasy (or at least as a complete picture of it).

    Thus we fall into the trap of having the people who love the 'old shool' versions of the product and to want to work with systems like OSRIC or LL using basic inspirations and expectations that are very very different from those of the newer players and who even see introducing any of these 'new' elements to the game as somehow betraying the spirit of old school since they see the older characteristics as intrinsic to the system. In essence it often seems like the old school people, those very ones who are most likely to design new products for retro clone systems, are too married to the older styles/ideas and don't really care to write 'new style' worlds/adventures for an old school system. This is by noe means a bad thing...unless you want to recruit new players who have come to expect the newer elements.

    Anyway a long screed that I hope may have some relevance to the topic!

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  13. A minor point, but I thought the art in Labyrinth Lord was rather good. And there's an alternate "orange cover" that isn't as, uh, busy as the first cover image.

    Having said that, I completely agree with all your points.

    I ran a couple Castles and Crusades sessions using the old 2e Vikings book and it was a blast. I'd love to see some old school adaptations of some of those 2e settings.

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  14. Heh, I definitely made some wrong assumptions about your gaming. Please consider those to be a rhetorical device addressed to a 3e player, then. I was in essay mode and following James' link, so I didn't browse your site before making my comment. Most sincere apologies for that - it's bad form.

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  15. Terry: I think you're right on all those points as regards the reasons behind what's happening. But I think sometimes more is made of the differences between generations than really exists - because after all, we've never tried to create new worlds or settings using the old systems. I'd be interested to try it and see what happens - "modern" players might be more accepting than we sometimes expect. And even if they aren't, I think it would still be good for us Old Schoolers ourselves to have something new and interesting to play with. It can't be satisfying just playing the same old thing over and again until kingdom come, can it?

    Matt: That's okay, as a rhetorical address to a 3e player it was a very good one! I hope you realise I'm not singling out your Shroom module for special criticism. I respect the fact that you're doing something to keep old school games alive, and as I wrote in the entry, I like crawls through fungus infested caverns. Your module was just a springboard for my general moaning!

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  16. "You're telling me that a 16 year old player, new to the game and the mind-blowing things that fantasy has to offer, is going to be satisfied with what his Dad enjoyed playing back in his almost-forgotten youth?"

    Yup.

    Assuming a decent DM and some good fellow players, of course. He's not likely to enjoy anything without those.

    I like to think of Gygax-era TSR's most famous products as *classics*, not "museum exhibits."

    Are the works of Shakespeare "museum exhibits" now that we have all these new plays and poems? Of course not. They're works of immortal greatness that as as enjoyable now as they ever were. They'll be read, performed, and appreciate for, I've no doubt whatsoever, generarion after generation for many centuries to come.

    It might be good to give new roleplayers more credit than the "Dude, that rulebook's, like, old" stereotype allows.

    And should fantasy roleplaying games draw on the work of contemporary authors? Sure. They are. But D&D? No. D&D needs to stick to its roots in order to preserve its identity.

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  17. Will: Don't forget I added a caveat to that sentence - namely that the 16 year old will enjoy old school games provided that what's on offer isn't just rehashes of modules from the 1980's. And I stand by that.

    I think Shakespeare is actually an excellent analogy. Yes, Shakespeare's plays are classics and will probably still be being performed in five hundred years' time. But you're probably also aware that playwrights don't write Elizabethan-style comedies and tragedies today. There have been innovations in drama since Shakespeare's time that have changed the theatre - and it would be crazy to argue that those changes are bad. Without them there would have been no Journey's End, no Blood Brothers, and perhaps more to the point no West Side Story.

    In other words, early D&D modules will likely still be being played far into the future. They're Shakespeare, if you will. But if all people do is provide imitations of those early modules, then where are the Leonard Bernsteins, Willy Russells, Rogers and Hammersteins, Edward Bonds and Arthur Millers going to come from? And won't old school gaming be the poorer without them, just as English theatre would have been if people had just endlessly rehashed Shakespeare?

    It might be good to give new roleplayers more credit than the "Dude, that rulebook's, like, old" stereotype allows.

    That's exactly my point. Let's also give them more to be interested in, though, than just "This is the way D&D was and this is all it should ever be."

    And should fantasy roleplaying games draw on the work of contemporary authors? Sure. They are. But D&D? No. D&D needs to stick to its roots in order to preserve its identity.

    You seem to think that by drawing on contemporary influences D&D will necessarily lose its identity. Tell me, did English theatre lost its identity by creating alternatives to Elizabethan tragedies and comedies?

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  18. "You seem to think that by drawing on contemporary influences D&D will necessarily lose its identity. Tell me, did English theatre lost its identity by creating alternatives to Elizabethan tragedies and comedies?"

    The theater, or even English theater specifically, is more of a medium than anything else. Much in the same way that roleplaying, and fantasy roleplaying specifically, is a sort of medium.

    As I said, new roleplaying games can, should, and are exploring new sources of inspiration. D&D, however, should stay grounded in its 70s/80s roots.

    Unless your only goal is to have some game, ANY game, with "Dungeons & Dragons" as its title in print at all times, no matter what. That's not a very logical goal to me because frankly, a name is just a name.

    Let's use another of my favorite RPGs as an example: Toon.

    Toon is a frenetic, rule-light RPG based on violence-filled classic cartoons of the Warner Bros/Tom & Jerry type.

    These kind of cartoons are not very popular at all among young people today.

    So, if a new version of Toon were proposed, should it:

    a) Be based as much or more on anime and other popular "modern" cartoon styles in order to attract as many new players as possible.

    b) Stick with its original concept, even though this won't be the best thing for sales.

    c) Be ruled-out entirely because neither of those first two options are ultimately acceptable.

    The only clearly incorrect answer, for me, is a, because it would result not in a new edition of Toon, but a new game called "Toon."

    I say let D&D live or die based on what it is, and leave the innovation to new games with new names. I'd rather see the game I love relegated to museums than still popular in a form that gamers thirty years ago wouldn't have even recognized. That's pointless, ridiculous, and even a tad grotesque.

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  19. Will: I think we need to clarify things a little here. Changing Toon from a celebration of Tom & Jerry to an anime-fest would be like changing D&D into a superheroes game, because about the only thing that Tom & Jerry cartoons and anime have in common is that they are animated. It isn't really analagous to what I'm proposing.

    I should also add that I've not anywhere said that we should be aiming to a) increase sales by pandering to modern gamers, or b) trying to please younger players by aping their likes and dislikes. What I have said is that stagnation is bad for any hobby or artform, and that by showing that we have a bit more life and vitality we might attract more newcomers to the old school scene. That absolutely doesn't mean, to use your analogy, the anime-ization of Toon. Rather, it means, let's say, the introduction of impressionism into Western art.

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  20. "the only thing that Tom & Jerry cartoons and anime have in common is that they are animated."

    And I would contend that the only things REH and G.R.R. Martin have in common are that they both have books in print with "fantasy" embossed on the spine.

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  21. And I would contend that the only things REH and G.R.R. Martin have in common are that they both have books in print with "fantasy" embossed on the spine.

    Actually they have quite a lot in common if you disregard A Song of Ice and Fire. Even if you don't disregard it, they still have more in common than Tom & Jerry and anime. The difference between High Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery is not the same as the difference between a cat running after a mouse and The Ghost in the Shell.

    Besides, Howard was hardly the only influence on early D&D. George R. R. Martin's short stories have quite a lot in common with Vance and Leiber and he cites them as influences. In fact he's just edited a new book of short stories as an homage to Vance.

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  22. I love this blog. Great work. It appeals in so many ways to the "grognard" in me.

    I agree wholeheartedly, innovation's a good thing. It was good in the 60's and 70's when Gygax, Arneson and others decided to evolve a war game into a role playing game. And it's good today.

    A couple of things leap out at me when I read your post and the ensuing comments.

    1. I'm not sure that everyone that cut their teeth on Dungeons and Dragons back in the "day" plays from the same baseline of expectations. In other words, I started with the Holmes edition way back when, and I don't particularly like the "roll 3d6 for attributes and choose a class based on those rolls" concept. I never have. What does that mean? In short, everyone has different needs, and has historically played the game (in all of it's different guises) to suit their desires.

    2. Monopoly is a great game. Applying those rules to different "settings" has been successful. Why not old school DnD? I think it could work. Why hasn't it happened? In truth, I would think that it's because of the "name" issue that Will had mentioned in his comment.

    The basics of the game have changed pretty dramatically. The game has "evolved". But that evolution has taken an interesting turn.

    In biology living organisms are identified in a taxonomic way. It's a parent child relationship. If the child changes enough of it's attributes then it's reclassified. This is pretty clear cut and simple.

    Dungeons and Dragons has not "really" followed this scheme. And personally I think that it's created a whole lot of confusion. Brand identity is a huge factor here and that's why my analogy isn't 100% accurate... But still, I don't see a clearly spelled out distinction between what Gygax and Arneson had created and what WotC is offering today.

    I would posit that it's evolved to the point that their should be clearly defined children now. Third edition, Fourth edition, etc, is not a clear enough distinction. The water is muddy.

    So what to do? I like the idea that those talented enough (I would imagine that most of those posting here, minus myself, fit that bill.) take the reins and come up with something new that would fit within what we've come to define as "Old School".

    I love what I'm seeing these days though. You, Jeff Rients, James Maliszewski, James Mishler and many many talented others are reigniting a torch that has smoldered for far too long.

    Oh for the record, I'm running B2 for my daughters using the Castles and Crusades rules. Of course this is the true meaning of what was old is new again. They're having an absolute blast. Nothing stale there... ;-)

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  23. Jeff: Thanks for the compliments - they're always welcome. ;) Although I definitely wouldn't put myself on the same level as the other people you mentioned. I'm just a piddling amateur enthusiast, with the luxury of a job which allows me lots of free time sat staring at a computer.

    Your comment about taxonomy is really interesting. I actually agree with you. In many ways I wish WotC would release an "old school license" or something, similar to the OGL but to allow third party products to be created for the pre-third editions. That would have the advantage of letting us retro-types have our fun without having to resort to making things like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord - and it would also cement the distinction properly between the old and new. That will never happen, I know, but still.

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