Neoclassical Roleplaying Games
Earlier editions of Roleplaying Games like Dungeons & Dragons are sometimes referred to as Old School, Retro, or Original. These are fine terms, but things become a bit confused when more recent supplements or “Retro-Clones” are produced. Are these also “Retro” or “Old School” even if they were published last week?
Another term that’s often used to describe the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons and the game during the TSR era is “Classic” D&D. Other RPGs of this era are also referred to as Classic games. It occurred to me then, that a better term for new material for old games, or new games that simply draw upon the style of older games would be Neoclassical.
Neoclassical games aren’t just recreations of out of print RPGs, but rather new twists on the themes and aesthetics of those earlier games. What makes a game like Swords & Wizardry compelling compared to just using the original D&D is the blend of the classic game with the new ideas fine-tuning game mechanics, layout, organization and so on.
Unlike “Old School” or “Retro” which often involves people talking about the game having or not having a particular feel to it (something that’s very subjective) a Neoclassical game would be more mechanically similar to the Classic games it draws inspiration from. 4th Edition D&D might have an old school feel for some players, but it wouldn’t be a neoclassic game. Meanwhile some new game that lacks the “old school” feeling could be neoclassical due to more simplified mechanics, or an overt attempt to structure itself after classic games.
While I didn’t feel comfortable describing some of the articles I wrote for D&D here as “old school” I think if you needed to use a term to describe them (and you certainly don’t!), then Neoclassical would be the one to use.
Update
Taking a ride on this train of thought, I’ve come up with the other ‘movements’ in Tabletop RPGs.
- Classical – 1st Edition D&D
- The Dark Ages – 2nd Edition D&D, when TSR went under, and D&D went out of publication for a while.
- Gothic – Vampire / World of Darkness… obviously.
- Renaissance – 3rd Edition D&D when it came back again.
- Baroque – 4th Edition D&D, “Emphasizes power and authority” but also “extravagantly ornate, florid, and convoluted”
- Neoclassical – Reacting against the Baroque style and recalling the Classical style
So I suppose the future of tabletop RPGs holds “Romanticism” – The Conqueror Worm RPG, and Senses & Sensibilities (S&S).
Coincidentally… while not Edgar Allan Poe, Mike Mignola’s “The Conqueror Worm” has been a major influence on the game I’ve been working on. 
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Sounds good.
I think this is very accurate, and I like the reference to art styles. The only thing I disagree with is referring to 4e as “convoluted”. I think it’s absolutely everything else you discribed, but convoluted isn’t one of them.
I genuinely think 4e convoluted (meaning “complicated; intricately involved”) compared to “classic” and “neoclassic” games like B/X or Swords & Wizardry. Of course 3.x (and Pathfinder) are at least as convoluted as 4e, and possibly more so.
It all depends on what you’re comparing it to. If your point of comparison is 3.5 with all the splat books, then core 4e is going to look very streamlined and simplified. If you’re comparing 4e to date to something like Labyrinth Lord, then 4e is going to seem convoluted by comparison.
[...] Robertson Games – NeoClassical Roleplaying Games [...]
I actually think that more than reflect the mechanics properties, it reflects the stories it creates.
You see different role-playing games promote different kinds of stories, not even the stories in the game, but the game-play experience.
D&D 1st ed. adv. Create simple, epic stories. The game itself allows itself to simple experiences. This experiences would define most of the basic “game-experiences” we want to build.
Think of the classical legends, epics, dramas and comedies and how they defined many of the archetypes and symbols.
D&D 2nd ed. Just as in the dark ages, the culture stagnated, but that didn’t mean that the art stopped. The experiences where based on the classical stories, but became convoluted and joined.
2nd ed. was very similar to 1st ed, but had much more realistic, complete but complex rules. The stories of this era are defined by the many diferent mechanics that advanced without TSR. Just like ed. 0 (pre-advanced) there was a lot of experimentation and variation, but the experiences players had weren’t as polished unless an experienced DM would handle this.
Vampire The mechanics are very different, but the experiences similar. It was an evolution from understanding that D&D had some issues that got in the way of the experience of the player. Like Gothic art, that still followed many of the medieval concepts, but had more form and was made by more talented artists. Vampire as a book had a set of rules that was made much more polished.
Vampire and gothic art is much more limited than the dark ages, there was much more control.
WoD isn’t gothic really, I think it’s more of baroque style of experience.
D&D 3rd ed is the renaissance. It’s the result of the desire from previous movements that have made the medieval’s weakness obvious. It looks at the classical era, noticing that it had “something” and decides to emulate it, but at the same time remake the techniques in different manners (some will not be recovered until centuries later). Here it’s not the fact that the original rules have been lost, but the experiences have. Also we don’t understand the whole “thing” that made the experience happen.
Barroque RPGs (D&D 4th and WoD) are much more strict in their rules. Barroque had complex and strict methods and techniques to create flexible, intricate and complex art. The new RPGs promote the “epic” tale a lot more. Think of how hard it was to get a character from lvl 1 to lvl 20, think then playing that same character through epic-levels: how often did you know of characters as this? What did you think of that game? This new RPGs allow it to be “easier” to do this. They also allow for much more intricate and complex stories, things that would be a very special and considered special details (half-dragon characters) are the bread and crumb. Still it’s extremely complex to create new experiences (since it requires the creation of new rules which as complex and detailed are hard to make).
This complexity of rules creates a reaction for the simplicity. By know techniques have been made that the classical experience can be recreated, but also new realizations have been found in the way. This would be neoclassicism. It’s the movement that is just starting. Remember that movements begin first as DM tips and house rules, then advance into modules and finally end up as their own systems.
Using this, we can deduce that “romantic” RPGs will focus more on the concept of beautiful experiences that are more organic (a more streamlined system?) but at the same time don’t allow as much detail and excess as the baroque.
We can’t go further, because we don’t know what techniques will appear and what problems will happen. As a matter of fact for romanticism to work we first need to find what 4ed did right that no other version got as well.
This works for a reason. The artistic movements occurred as reactions to the previous one, while at the same time acknowledging the previous lessons. This process isn’t perfect, there’s always an emotional reaction against the new movement, a belief that everything it did was wrong (even if it was the case). Hence when the more simple, based on 1ed, systems start showing errors, people will claim that it was the opposite of what should have been done, and will make it.
I wanna go beyond realism and naturalism into modernism and the contemporary movement, see how that comes out (maybe it’ll inspire itself on chat role playing and tabletop games)
[...] Neoclassical Roleplaying Games [...]
[...] developed the term here in the plush leather chairs of the Robertson Games study in an article on Neoclassical Roleplaying Games. It is most gratifying to see the term has settled into somewhat regular use among the global [...]
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