For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, the “Old-School Renaissance” style is based on a certain play style that was popular among Original D&D players back in the 1970’s (going back to the days when D&D didn’t even have a thief class). This very old-school play style has been having a resurgence lately, hence the name “Old-School Renaissance.”

You can get a more detailed understanding of this style of play at http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/ There you can download Swords and Wizardry, and discuss old-school roleplaying in general (including OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord, two of the other old-school retroclone games). My summation is brief and probably slightly inaccurate, but here goes.

The game was designed for a very specific play style, one in which the player supplied all the character’s mental and social abilities.

Players/characters searched rooms by description and conversation, not by rolling Perception or Find Secret Doors. Players/characters negotiated social encounters by “roleplaying it out.” The characters’ combat abilities, obviously, couldn’t be easily talked through, so those were systemized. But the challenge of the game was figuring out things.

Being able to play a character who was smarter, more perceptive, more charismatic, etc. than the player just wasn’t a priority. By modern standards, these weren’t even “complete” games. They were very focused on a certain type of exploration, a very specific type of scenario. In some ways, they were more like some dungeon-esque board games than modern RPGs.

Clearly the Tarafore System was not written in this style, but in a heavily simulationist-immersive, modern style.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at creating a game like this. But there was one thing I promised myself I’d do. I wouldn’t publicly write a word about it until I had at least the foundations of something that would be substantively different than playing a retroclone. There’s really no point in writing a new game if that game is roughly as complicated and does roughly the same thing as OD&D, Swords & Wizardry, or OSRIC.

I’ve been doing some thinking, and while I haven’t gotten the game into a solid enough shape to present its mechanics yet, I do have my objectives.

1) The game has to be simple enough for pickup games, significantly simpler than OD&D, but still needs to allow for customization and advancement of characters (I’m thinking three main traits, plus “paths” that give special abilities like magic, martial arts, etc).

2) The game has to be suitable for games featuring carefully constructed “dungeons” in which the GM spends time trying to create challenges for the players to overcome (this is the true old-school style).

3) The game also has to be suitable for quickly put-together (at least partially through randomization) pick-up games. The two types of game experiences can and should be different, but both should be satisfying.

4) The game mechanics should involve multiple levels of tactical choices. Every turn in combat, every pursuit, every use of resources, should involve some kind of meaningful choice. (To this end, I’m planning to include a lot of expendable, one-use items in “dungeon construction.” The way the attributes are structured will also help this, as will the specific powers the PCs may have, such as magic spells or special combat abilities).

5) Avoids the “sociopathic dilemma” of killing “humanoids” and stealing their money. The setting involves an ancient civilization, much mightier in magic than any that exists now. The things hanging around the ruins are all either constructs, undead, or lingering, spontaneous manifestations of the ancients’ magic and arrogant greed. In-setting, killing an actual person is a big deal, as it should be.

I think these are enough objectives to keep me on track. If I succeed, I’ll create a game that actually works with the old-school style, but does some things OD&D and the retroclones don’t. It’s true that there’s no point in reinventing the wheel, but that doesn’t mean my Chrysler uses the same tires as my Grandpa’s WWII-surplus Jeep did.

So I think I have a good start. We’ll see how it unfolds over the next couple of months. I also have a title: MORE (Modern Old-school Roleplaying Engine). I love the recent use of “Engine” where “Game” or “System” would previously have been used. It makes goofy acronyms so much easier to construct.

And this one is just so unceremoniously pretentious, like a 1950’s commercial. “Old-School Roleplaying? Don’t settle for less. Get MORE.” In stores, right between the Lily Flour and the Pomade.