What Does "Old School" Gaming Even Mean? (Part 1) A Lesson from Peter Parker

     "With great power comes great responsibility, Peter." Uncle Ben's sage advice to his nephew encapsulates one of the aspects of Old School Gaming that WOTC left behind years ago.

    This idea first came to me in 2016 when a friend of mine showed up to a game with a huge tote of vintage game books that he had acquired just that day from some sort of garage sale or something.

    The first item I picked up was a 1980's D&D Master's Set module. One of the important chapters of that quest involved a war, a mass combat between two navies of flying ships among the stars. (Fantasy flying ships, not sci-fi flying ships. Such a thing would, about 10 years later, be called Spelljammer.)

    In the module, the player characters were to be the admirals in charge of the navies. Several pages of material existed to explain how to run the naval battle. It was more like playing Risk than D&D, more a strategy board game than a straight-up role-playing experience, except that the outcome of the battle would determine the fate of the world in which the characters would role-play their lives. When a game of Risk is over, it doesn't affect the next game of Risk. The outcome of a war in a D&D world can impact the campaign forever.

    I remembered that in Boxed Set D&D and in 1st edition D&D, at around 9th or 10th level, characters had options to become more than just wandering murder-hobo mercs in an endless chain of adventures. At higher levels, characters could become kings, queens, warlords, thieves' guildmasters, or archmages with their own apprentice mages and magical schools. Monks could start their own monasteries and dojos. Clerics could rise in the ranks of their religious hierarchies, perhaps to be sent to new lands to found new temples to their faith.

    In the 1980's when I grew up gaming in a game shop's basement, players lovingly mapped their characters' castles. They went to war on the maps of the Forgotten Realms or Mystara and had a few sessions that were like games of Risk.

    There were taxes to collect and resources to manage. D&D was like Settlers of Catan, Sid Meier's Civilization, and Minecraft before their time. Players were rulers who managed their imports and exports and established trade routes with other rulers.

    The idea that a 20th level fighter would still be wandering around drinking in bars and looking for random jobs just like he or she was at 1st level was just silly. Any fighter who lived long enough to be 20th level would be a warlord, a king, a general, a grand marshall...something.

    With great power comes great responsibility, to become part of the campaign world itself.

    In Old School Gaming, PCs aren't engaging in an endless stream of rando one-offs. They have lifelong goals and aspirations that might take them months or years to achieve. And along the way, they will make so many memories with their friends. 

But that thought leads me to Part 2 of Old School Gaming, long term campaigns. Let's explore that next time.