So I started playing solo games 83 and was doing d&d earth 84. 15 I was in a war gaming club full of grogs with oldest d&d books and adventures lying around the place, and ppl played some wildly old and odd games. I worked in game and comic shops from 86 and hung out at a library where hamers hackers and shoplifters combined their skills to get free games and hack them and produce manuals, decoder wheels and daily updated play guides. Christians harrased and spied on us playing Cthulhu. Librarians got their complaint letters and the service head came down to ask us if we were levitating or talking to demons. They kept religious nutters spying on boys in a pulic place away.
We had all the basic box sets around and as we couldnt find companion set in time we went to as&d. I think peak d&d was 1985. I did like 2nd ed briefly for the first brown and green history books but quit from what i saw as worse writing, bigger space wastage per page and blandness. The art changed too and id grown out of teen pinup girls with huge shiny gems and feathers fantasy. I love gammaworld and liked star frontiers and top secret/s1. From 86 I was increasingly into Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Ringworld. I also ran a d100 game we wrote and over time it started getting like BRP more and more so when wwe spat dummy on d&d early 90s we went to BRP games from 91-2012. I also ran a superhero game that started Champions and Superworld then TSR Marvel system not setting. Weirdly lots of stuff in out 20 year + Supes game predicted lots of 90s comic tropes years early.
So 2012 I was not gaming much and a bookshop wanted me to run a game. While bedridden, I wrote the skeleton of my homebrew and started following G+ and what I thought were likewise interested gamers. I started my Blog in part to work on my homebrew as I had only one D&D book the dungeoneer's survival guide. There were some predictable schisms in that world. Like lots of weird scenes I was a part of, eventually the weird go pro and stop sharing and start selling instead.
So people tell me what is oldschool often and over-philosophise it and draw lines in the sand. Mostly, I see pseudo-academic thought on gaming. I find it mostly elitist and to exclude ppl. As Im aware of the oldest eds and like my 1985 niche style, I thought I was oldscool but I increasingly have doubts about this. I can see why some creators I admire walked away from the scene and did their own thing. My other influences on my retroclone is Dragon and old White Dwarf and UK punk grit style. You also found this aesthetic in 2000ad comics and see how it led to warhammer/40k. Chaosium games were also a big part of this vibe with goat folk and tentacles and cultural depth and more folk horror.
Cthulhu got me reading real history and I began photocopying stuff from uni libraries as dial up internet on a rotary phone was a special time. My preference for a history book to gamers' recreations of history I could do myself stopped me from buying stuff. Cthulhu was the only game I consistently bought but Im increasingly over that genre now. I liked reading classics, weird and sf short stories and new wave SF mostly brit writers like Moorcock who got me into anarchism and George Woodcock. I went on to study Archaeology, Art History & Philosophy and have 3 degrees. I worked in a comic studio and we were very into UK comic realism.
Warlock! game has captured this vibe also plus has spirit of fighting fantasy. Dragonwarriors a brit rpg in paperback form, were fantastic and had great art. The modern version lacks the spooky folk horror vibe art and possibly the art and adventures left a long legacy with me. Grailquest and Lone Wolf gamebooks were part of this vibe too but 84 I was mostly gaming with ppl but all these books left a mark on me.
So I still play much the same way I did then, probably just more sophisticated and hopefully less full of accidental shitty colonialism and retro sexism and racism. Hopefully, it's more a parody of that or critical of that. DMG literally had a prostitute table and how women had different stat limits. We preferred species as a term in 80s.
While I was involved in Con scene in Sydney ppl said I was Mr Oldschool and we talked of having a secret minicon which never happened. A kid came to my game having heard of me and was somewhat outraged at my non oldschoolness about 2015. He was displeased the players never ran away, nobody died, i used skills, there were no loops in the dungeon.
So I rarely kill in games but I do theatre of risk. If players feel afraid and dont use up half their HP being cautious and running back to town, that's fine. Raise dead is easy in d&d and being in debt to a church is awesome and affordable. In part, I like horror and resources in games. In Call of Cthulhu, it is fine when you dont kill everyone of maim them, and people can still feel afraid. When you get to a few hp and a fight really was close it's more thrilling of course but it doesn't need to go that way. Im all for concessions on the campaign world of neglecting problems or even creating new problems. That's a form of horror i can get behind.
Your players going back to town when spells down and HP half is cautious and fine. If you expect them to suicidally face more horrors they should have higher stakes or personal reasons than money or the fun of survival. I do like event timers and dungeons that react to invaders and change. Being risk taking murderhoboes with syphalytic brain damage and a need for beer money is fine too. Sometimes one character like that gets action happening more but yes killing commoners is questionable serial killer stuff that should lead to angry mobs, wanted posters, soldiers and other problems. Of course the risk of going back to town is the monsters change tactics or even call allies or have a coup from an evil cult faction.
Loops are a nice theory, especially for 6-room modern dungeons to make them seem bigger. My maps are more inspired by function and archaeological floorplans of archaeology. I find that distinct dungeon zones for factions work well if sections are isolated. I like a central hub or neutral area in between. Janell and I hated the same ppl and spoke weekly about them and i miss her but yes props to her for this contribution to gaming culture in d&d and RQ.
Yes I like skills in games. I played BRP and many skill-based systems and prefer character classes. If you look in the left-hand drawer and there is a thing there yes, you can find it without a roll. Roleplaying can circumvent problems and tasks especially with time and planning. Skills can be a shortcut and a claim of special expertise with benefits. Skills are so you dont have to explain or roleplay how you fucking search a room or craft some armour. Skills can mitigate player metagaming of real-world knowledge. Skills can speed activity in a game - a skilled looter might be faster than a bunch of guys who have time to methodically search a room. Time as a valuable resource for the players and their characters can be eased by skills. They are a simple way of making your dude different. Skills can be part of your back story.
The Dungeoneers Survival Guide book I loved - except they had pointless mods on stat roll rather than just stat roll, which was fiddly BS. D&D non-weapon proficiencies were fine but long-winded. I liked skills in Marvel and D&D that provided a numerical buff rather than just being a % success/fail/fumble/critical. I'm seeing a trend to have more variable results from rolls and then an unimaginative GM struggles to improvise these differences, session after session. I've kept up a skill system and incorporated lots of other stolen mechanics into the system, modern players would see as feats. My thieves are all about lots of weird skills. Fewer types of powers and abilities and fewer resources to keep track of is nice. I prefer to roll abilities into a spell, skill or unique class ability and not too many other possibilities. I disliked feel of spells rolled into feats that 4th ed did. I like spells are fire and forget vs skills and different.
I am also happy to count some resources like Ammo and food. Counting is not hard. I dont want to gamble with how much I have, I want to know. Systems where you make it a gamble to have food or have ammo, I find weird extra steps and unnecessary rolls. Speaking of rolls all the roll an extra dice mechanic for a + bug me too. Players who roll and count slooooowly can drive me crazy. Good dice disciplene speeds the whole table. D&D5 and CoC7 roll more dice to do the same thing as older versions. I went back to D&D clones in 2012 because i found other ppl doing whay i liked on blogs vs what was in stores.Also BRP has huge stat blocks vs the older D&D clones so les record keeping for DM. This property has changed and huge modern stat blocks makes me reluctant to do origional work to make my own monsters up.
Cruch of games I find helps set tone and mood. thats why i only know 3 basic games Marvel for superheroic stuff, d&d various versions cover heroic to action fantasy but if i want realism i will play BRP. I find fragile characters and gritty systems make action far more setrious. In my BRP car game I have 1 second combat rounds and lots of burst fire and where all the bullets goes matters. So if your car stops and you run its pretty agonising to get to saftey. Your exact location and details matter more. All these friction points add to the thrill.
D&D5 wants lots of character resources and rolls and power but you basicly whack at each others HP till zero and apply lots of abilities like they are collectable cards in a deck or something. Its a lot of mechanics to slow game to achieve less. But it does make characters shine and fancy. I do like characters of same type have differences. I dont like dozens of fancy named abilities that could be the same like losta of subclass abilities. Barbarian subclasses in 5th ed have lots of self healing abilities slightly different im not sure this is good. Guesss in my system i mostly make my subclasses just example builds using existing skills and spell lists rather than clusters of unique gimic abilities. Id rather solve problems with skills and spells. In D&D5 I might make some feats rather than subclasses. Im not in love with D&D5 skills and find fidly vs roll under stat. I also give a stat point per level so those skills also improve and players go from average to demigod over a long campagn.
I do play shadowdark (though our DM too nice for a killer game). It has a few mechanics I dislike. I dont want to carouse by drinking and partying. Some characters might but my priest might not and even nag players they healed to come and prey in church instead. My carousing tables are just fun encounters not a mechanical neccesity and i have class and background and location based carousing tables. Their is no money or mechanical benefit but you might get some buff or item or contact or new problem. The priests have different problems if they downtime in church or they might go with adventurers to protect them. Lots of the ideas of shadowdark were in use on G+ days and id already not been using. I do like lots of it's aesthetics - its well designed and a good business model but it would price out so many gamers. I also dont need d100 tables but I think to me lots of oldschool stuff features d100.
I am liking oldschool esentials. It still has saved lots of stuff i dont like. Lots of fidly race limits and and a few fluff bits but basicly so simple its fine. The main reasons I have got d&d5: Dyson maps, Theros, Saltmarsh. Most of what I got was on sale or simply was in a shop where I am. Id buy more obscure stuff but availability, post and distibution kill lots of games here. I guess I started playing d&d about 2020 in part to be sociable and because its the bulk of all games here. Im puzzled by games that have shifted far from having a human baseline. Ive seen one player be a human in 5 years the rest all damned furries. Im still meeting wildly different playstyles which is good.
I do like lots of the older tropes like fatter monsters and the more historic looking characters. I like punk rock grime and gloomcore stuff, it leaves lots in the world to improve. Folk horror and ethical problems are good. I do really like domain play and Ive got lots from Pendragon to all my games. I like upper level game being a shift to global power or even planar power. Planes i like to be weird. Every day world saving and plane hopping scenarios like some recent D&D books are more about using as much IP as possible not actually interesting. Tomb of anihilation seems a bit much 1st level characters off to save every resurected person in the world when their must be thousands of more qualified people in the world and like every cleric even some evil ones. I like characters starting unknown and poor and becoming local then regional then national or world heroes. 20th level for me is the point of demigodhood and has risk that the gods want you to join them but probably nvolves your martyrdom and painful death before the gods nab you.
I do like oldschool style but I dont think im a strict adherant or a slave to it. Im fine with ppl matching the profile like my work. I dont mind you could build a d&d5 campagn with almost all talking and sparkling charactrers with three official books. Im fine with that. They could probably do a simpler more rpg edition with simpler faster violence rules but third party creators probably have done it.