Old-School Fantasy Rules

A Circular Journey or "There and Back Again"!

As I continue to play role-playing games of all sorts, both old and new, including the "improved" versions of older systems, retro-clones and newer editions of older favorites, and others that are completely new, I find myself returning time and again to the original game I started with. I have often heard others say, "You will always favor the very first game system that you play." I am not so sure that is a true statement for many, but it has mostly been true for me and my FRP game preference.

One reason I like to dispute the "your first game is always your favorite" theory, however, is that it doesn't hold true for me in any other area of gaming. Let me start by saying that I love games of all sorts. Even sports. My tastes have evolved over the half-century-plus of playing all kinds of games, and continues to do so today. 

Like many, I started playing kiddie games - I won't bother to mention more on this subject. With respect to the various games in the genre of "adult" gaming, I have left behind many - probably most - of the games that I started out with and several of the more recently acquired new ones as well. Of all the earliest "wargames" which  served as my gateway to other strategy and adventure games, I have little interest in returning to any of those very  early systems. Computer games of every ilk have all gotten better since I purchased "Bard's Tale" for the Commodore 64 and revisiting an early CRPG, or flight simulator, can have little appeal for me except as a brief bout of nostalgia.     

So what is it about the old-school fantasy game that appeals to me so? The following list includes the reasons I have been able to think of. 

• Character knowledge and player knowledge are aligned in old-school play. 
• There is an emphasis on referee rulings which are based on common sense and the natural laws of what is possible in "the real world".
• A class based character system that reflects classic archetypes.
• Game mechanics that are easily committed to memory, require little thought during play and readily recede into the background allowing the game's fiction to be foremost in my mind.
• It serves as a do-it-yourself outlet for creativity.

Role-play isn't "acting" for me. The RPG is a game we play and knowledge of the game should be useful - at least that's what I think. One of the reasons I tend to shy away from skill-based systems is that they separate what the character knows and is good at, from what the player knows. I find rolling dice to convince the guard to let you pass is less interesting than "role-playing" how your character goes about the "convincing". In a similar way, I also find rolling to search and rolling to detect whether an NPC is lying to be interior practices to the old-school alternative of "tell me how you search" and the referee giving "obvious" hints about how truthful the NPC is being - "wink, wink!"

No rule system can cover every conceivable action a player can imaginatively ask to try - nor should it. Such a tome would be immense and likely require constant consultation during play. Part of the art of running a game is to use one's creativity - making good on-the-spot rulings is exercising that creative muscle. Common sense and knowledge of the real world should guide such rulings unless there is something "magical" or supernatural at play. The magic is that much more powerful when most things follow the familiar way of the real world.

Classic archetypes have their antecedents in the subconscious mind. Also, they have many reflections that can readily be found throughout literature. Leveraging the power of the familiar aids in the believability of the fiction. By contrast, the bizarre is simply that, and usually produces little more than confusion.

For most, learning a new game can be fun, but it takes effort. Sports require training our bodies and tabletop games require training our minds. We learn the relationship of the parts, the procedures and hopefully commit them to memory lest the game be constantly interrupted by consulting the book. I find that it is only after the game is largely committed to memory does it function well as an "adventure" experience where-in one may temporarily suspend disbelief and imagine the shared fiction as if it were unfolding before you. Under these conditions, the "adventure game" or "RPG" can become much more than a game of "Monopoly" or "Life" played with fantasy "trolls and wizards".

Many games, including most boardgames, card games and sports, require a strict adherence to the "rules as written" to ensure "fairness". I see role-playing as a departure from this concept. The nature of those little brown books was "rules are to be added to". This was a common approach seen in many miniature wargames of the day (and so it continues to the present) and I - like many who played such games - assumed that it was/is expected that I use my own creativity to enhance the fun and realism for those who play when I act as referee. It is expected that the referee should draw-up maps - both dungeon and wilderness - and populate said dungeon and wilderness with fantastic creatures. Once the game evolved to the point where we sought to include life among the "civilized" towns and cities, various aspects of the imagined culture and society becomes important and the original rules-as-written (intentionally) say very little about that. Thus we referees are invited to become "world builders". 

This formula works well for me and has proved a good "fit" lending itself to over four decades of awesome gaming. I continue to consume many new publications each year and enthusiastically "borrow" from them all their new ideas and creative mechanical systems that seem likely to fit with and perhaps improve on those found in the original little brown books.