Not As Old-School As We Think...

Now we love old-school gaming and have built our entire catalogue around the idea of emulating it.  Indeed, the amateur production and design alone does something to promote this.  And it doesn't stop there, as many of our design choices reflect old-school ideals as we understand them, and will share again:

Our hobby is 40+ years old, so we need to reconcile the current state of the hobby with its history, and old-school is more enduring than recreating any one system.

In short, old-school means enthusiastic amateurs making their own fun, and although we can't create the hobby all over again, original house rules and a DIY mindset keeps that spirit alive.  This fact accounts for the OTHER elements of old-school...

(1) A division of labor between the players and GM,

(2) An emphasis on decision-making, exploration, and role-playing over systems that "automate" these processes, which means that players must explain exactly how they're searching for traps rather than rolling a spot check for success and,

(3) Open-ended gameplay where players are free to innovate, and referees are encouraged (indeed, expected) to add or change anything to suit their own campaign and/or playing style.

This happens around tables all the time, and as it represents the state of the hobby in the early days, it's a throwback to old-school philosophies that survive (and thrive) to this day...

And our products have been fairly transparent about this as a specific design goal.  This goes for Barons of Braunstein, Blood of Pangea, (and Retrospace), and Pits & Perils.

Crappy little rulebooks manually done
in someone's basement?  Check!  Open-ended
gameplay where players have to work
for it?  You bet!  But this stuff is also
quite modern in approach and design... 

But our games are also quite modern...

(1) All feature a consistent core mechanic.  OD&D was rife with competing sub-systems.  Combat was resolved differently from magic, which, in turn, differed from stealth.

(2) Player characters are generally more durable.  Not every encounter is going to be your last.  Instead, characters accumulate injury over time and MAY die if foolish and/or unlucky.  This creates an environment more akin to books, movies, and television, where a stable cadre of "heroes" engage in continuing adventures and death is an ongoing risk that sometimes plays out...     

(3) In the case of Barons and Blood of Pangea, hit points are replaced with LUCK/LIFE/MIGHT that can be spent improving rolls as well as surviving any physical trauma, etc.

So this is our disclosure.  Pure "old-school" might not exist, although varying degrees persist in modern systems, and the best we can do is emphasize its finer ideals.  Moreover, our own products represent a blend of old and new, and for all their old-school leanings (it's there), what we do is also more modern...

Is old-school dead?  Far from it!  It lives on in every session where the GM makes an on-the-spot ruling or whips out their homemade hit-location tables and/or makes the players explain themselves or act out exchanges instead of rolling dice.  Old-school lives on!