"How do you define “Old School”" Topic

When you consider that Plato was complaining about "Kids today! Ain't got no respect!" this Old School has been going on a long time.

What it usually means is "The way we played when I first started playing".

I will let others define Old School themselves.

My first stab at miniatures was WRG Ancients. Basically, you added up a bunch of positive factors, subtracted negative factors, and rolled the dice. The factors usually canceled out, except when things were going bad.
We also tracked single man casualties on a 1:20 roster sheet and removed figures when the roster showed 20 casualties.
To me, that defines Old School. YMMV. Surprisingly, that is also exactly how my first AWI rules, 1776, played, except the dice were decimal rather than D6 + "average".

So, to make it easier to define a choice in a poll, I will simply call my choice "WRG Ancients".
I totally realize that this is not everyone's cuppa. But I broke in with that style, so for me, it is Old School.

But which edition?

Old School is massively overused in wargaming circles IMO, it should, I think, be reserved for games using archaic (to modern eyes) systems.

To me Old School is shiny toy soldiers in a game using Charles Grant's War Game rules

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My first stab at miniatures was WRG Ancients. Basically, you added up a bunch of positive factors, subtracted negative factors, and rolled the dice. The factors usually canceled out, except when things were going bad.
We also tracked single man casualties on a 1:20 roster sheet and removed figures when the roster showed 20 casualties.
To me, that defines Old School.

Disagree. Old School is anything that predates WRG Ancients. In my book WRG Ancients was the first set of rules that were NOT Old School! The idea of each figure representing 20 men and tracking the number of casualties was revolutionary. Up till then a figure was just that – a single figure.

What I played when I was age 12-25. Which I expect is pretty much how everyone defines "old school" for themselves.

In my case that was 1977-1990, give or take.

Anything before that is, of course, "ancient history."

I disagree with your disagreement!
Old School is personal and different for everyone. It is totally subjective.
So, for ME, WRG Ancients, 4th ed, what I broke in with, IS Old School.
YMMV, but that doesn't change what it means to ME.

I've been called "old school" … and even much worse !

Hmm. I tend to define "Old School" as slightly older than what I started off with in 1969--large individually-mounted castings, individual casting removal and D6's exclusively. Mind you, this would make many of the products of the Evil Empire, "old school" but I think from a rules perspective they are.

Using the rules definition I would say Charge or Little Wars were a d6 is used instead of a working cannon.

It also could be rules that for whatever reason remind me of the games I played in my youth (in a good way).

So … "Old School" … uhmmmm …

1) Too many modifiers
2) Too many dice
3) Too impressed with how awesome we were

I consider my armies old school, based on 1980, plain painted stands.

Frappe with 1/72nd scale airfix figures. Pretty old school

I t probably depends on when you went to school….I hear talk of OldHammer, but since all Warhammer is post-Reaper….

I agree with Major B (and it is all a little bit before my time): "Old School" does not mean the stuff I started playing with, it means the Featherstone, Grant, Young, Wise, Bath & Tarr et al type rules and their direct derivatives.

Being at my first Napoleonic game where they were using magnificent painted Historex 54mm figures mounted individually for gaming. I was hooked after seeing that, but my Arifix soldiers and my cruddy paint job brought me down to reality.

Only use d6 (or, at a stretch, dAvg) and with saving throws (which all could have been avoided with more modern dice). A lot of GW should be considered "old school" for the mechanics regardless of when published.

'I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["old-school rules"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…'

old school is basic clean paint jobs, shiner finishes and green stands, no flocking. Today's figures are over the top in realism. Shading highlighting, flowers and grass on the bases and painted eye balls…they almost museum quality.

For me it's epitomised by the work of Don Featherstone, Charles Grant and Peter Gilder. This overlaps in time with WRG / Phil Barker but continued use and evolution of these keeps them feeling more contemporary.

Charles Grant or Don Featherstone played with Airfix figures, Bellona trees and home made houses. Individual figures.

WRG was the first modern set I played, and introduced the I've concept of bases.

+1 Martin Rapier.

Our age somewhat defines our view of Old School. I think of individual figure removal, buckets of dice, one page QRS, and lots of vagaries in the rules. Also great fun and nostalgia.

+1 Martin

Once again I find myself agreeing with Winston.

Old School is anything that predates WRG Ancients. In my book WRG Ancients was the first set of rules that were NOT Old School! The idea of each figure representing 20 men and tracking the number of casualties was revolutionary. Up till then a figure was just that – a single figure.

Never heard of Joe Morschauser, MajorB? His How to Play Wargames, complete with scaled representation and unit rosters predates the 1st edition of WRG Ancients by seven years (1962 v. 1969).

You are Old School if you recognize what it means when I put my fingers in the "A-ok" symbol and then place my hand on my knee.

youtu.be/ypSxs0ARywI

Never heard of Joe Morschauser, MajorB? His How to Play Wargames, complete with scaled representation and unit rosters predates the 1st edition of WRG Ancients by seven years (1962 v. 1969)

Yes and he too, was very much Old School. His rosters did not represent "men" but "Battle Power"
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All this proves is that Old School means what you think it means.
Good Thing there is no Department of Official Names to enforce this poll.
And if my suggestion doesn't win, I will just ignore the results.

. His rosters did not represent "men" but "Battle Power"

That is a quibble. Many American followers of Morschauser, e.g., Strategos N, which our group was already using in 1966, specifically indicated that the rosters represented men.

And Winston is right, "Old School", in any endeavor, is both personal and generational.

These were my first rules Airfix Robin Hood vs the Sheriff

Old school is arguing about what it means to be old school.

+1

Old school is arguing about what it means to be old school.

Nah, that's really a hipster thing.

This topic confirms my long-held suspicians: "old school rules", has no specific meaning. For that alone, I appreciate this thread. Thank you, Winston.

I've been playing the same set of 'bucket-o-dice' rules since around 1995, wondering if they qualified as, "old school rules"… Cheers!

Here's a current take on how I define Old School.

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More here
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Also, the old school I graduated from was a prison in WWII.

How about Quarry's Napoleonic rules?

For me

in wargaming; Young, Grant, Featherstone.

in shooting; 1911

What I played when I was age 12-25. Which I expect is pretty much how everyone defines "old school" for themselves.

Nah. Old School is what the dinosaurs played before I was around.