I've been refereeing a diverse play group finally, and it's really cemented my views on Dungeons & Dragons. All of my players have been extremely helpful in playtesting my "Dungeon Crawl" (we've settled on that name for now) rules for Arcane Adventures.
One of my players has been extremely vocal and enthused about the playtest. He's a 3E player, and in interest of making the game fun for himself, and making sure it achieves my goals, he's been intentionally trying to break it. He's not being rude by any means of course, and it's been really helpful, and I see the few things I need to fix before I do anything serious with my game. In fact it's been nice to see that I won't have to make many changes, as my game handles powergaming really well.
What's great though is we've been having really constructive conversations about our styles of game play. This player, my wife, and myself have been discussing the differences from the mix of AD&D we play, and 3E which he plays. The best part of these discussions is we acknowledge the differences, and always come to the agreement that neither is superior, both are fun, in different ways.
This player has also played some AD&D when he was younger, and several of the players at the store have played AD&D. I've also been discussing ideas and how we play our games with those players as well. As I've said before, I never actually played AD&D in it's hay day (I wasn't even alive back then), I've really just been discovering AD&D/Old School D&D through the web, retroclones, and the books I mange to find.
From the discussions with these players, I'm finding that only one player I've gotten to talk to extensively on the matter played AD&D the way I've heard it played. This player is in my game, which is working great to add to the diversity. He's loving how old school my game feels, and he shares my mentality strongly, that every editions has cool stuff to add to the game. However like I said, he's about the only player who still has a positive view of AD&D after all of these years.
What I have noticed about the players who don't like AD&D, is that they are very self-centered in their playing style. This is by no means an insult, and my 3E player will proudly exclaim he's selfish when he plays. There's nothing wrong with that, when people play games they want to win, and that in itself is selfish. I have noticed that this affects the game though; in that they play the game to suit their whims and accomplish their goals. My old school players on the other hand; play the game to accomplish the game's goals and work in the game world.
In other words, the real difference between old school and new school is the player mentalities of whether the game is meant to fit the player, or the player fit the game. Neither option is bad really, but this is the point I'm getting to about how D&D used to be played. I wasn't around back then, and I don't know if the majority of old school bloggers actually represent how games were played back then, but what I do know is how they're being played now.
I just found this site and, this particular article is of great value:
http://web.fisher.cx/robert/infogami/Classic_D&D:_I_used_to_think...
Something I found extremely interesting is that my 3E player admitted that AD&D allows for much more creativity than 3E, because of a lack of rules. I do not know if the rules lite mentality was actually used back in the 80's, or if people actually did roleplay out traps and challenges. What I do is that several people have pointed out that it can be played in a creative way, and that's the way I'm playing it.
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