In the past I have sometimes refered to my gaming habits as Old School or Retro, but it occurs to me that they are not the same thing, but overlapping phenomena. Old School gaming involves turning back the clock to the non-existent Golden Age of Gaming. Old School is getting together with your high school game club and running your old PCs through module G3, because you never quite managed to finish the G series when you were kids. Old School is teaching your nephews to play D&D using the '81 Basic rules so that you can assure yourself that you helped raise them right. In short, Old School gaming is pure undiluted nostalgia.
Retro is different. The nostalgia shines through but it is tempered by modern sensibilities. A Savage Worlds game set in the World of Greyhawk is retro. Using the latest GMing techniques to drift your AD&D game into narrativism, that's retro. It would be the height of retro to run an old Traveller adventure exactly as written while ironically winking at the outdated sci-fi technology. Retro looks back at the Old Days, but remains apart.
At least that's how I define these two terms with regards to gaming.
Interesting...
ReplyDeleteI guess I never thought about differentiating the two...
Let's see if I got this straight:
Old School - getting together with my old D&D buddies and digging up our old character sheets out of mothballs, dust them off and run them through D3 or something using AD&D 1st Ed.
Retro - getting together with my old D&D buddies and digging up our old character sheets out of mothballs, convert the characters to D&D 3rd Ed. Maybe run a new module and throw in some more roleplaying (i.e. the characters are now 20 years older, run kingdoms, wizards schools, etc. and are called out of retirement for one last adventure...
I think I'd like Retro better than Old School...:)
Look at my new blog, dammit! (Not that there is anything to see yet)
Yeah, I think I like Retro better as well. Why turn the clock back when you can play all those old games with the experience and attitude that you bring to games today?
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