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Mert & the others - very good discussion, and very good posts. I will try to cook up something, because this thread could go in all kinds of great directions.

O-kay, I thought about this last evening, and this is what Ive come up with (Warning: long and rambling!). In some ways, I definitely share Merths preferences. For example, although I respect Tolkien, I dont find his aesthetics and worldview appropriate for an old school role-playing game. Ive known a lot of gamers, especially when I started, who tried to marry Tolkieniean concepts and ideas to D&Ds play model, but none of these experiments ended well. It was relatively easy to fit The Hobbit in there, but the Rings trilogy was always a failure in some way you either got a D&D campaign that didnt feel like Tolkien, or you had to make so many concessions that you couldnt call the game normal D&D anymore. In fact, it is a considered opinion of mine that Tolkiens influences on D&D are mainly cosmetic; and are in fact a red herring, and the way it should be played old school is closer to sword and sorcery. IMHO, Gary Gygax got this instinctively when he railed against drawing a direct paralell. You see the influence of Vance, Leiber, Howard and others in the games outlook on morality, story structure and premises, but there is precious little of Tolkien. If you want high fantasy, Poul Andersons seminal Three Hearts and Three Lions is a much closer fit. Just because a game has orcs and elfs and dwarves doesnt make it a Tolkienian game in actual play.

On the other hand, I disagree with Merth and have to agree with the Colonel on historical paralells. You can sort of draw some as an afterthought, because D&D is easily adaptable to a more ancient Mediterranean outlook (as seen in the Wilderlands as a consequence of its strong sword and sorcery heritage), but D&D isnt mediaeval or historical at all. The players are definitely a reason for this. The game primarily serves their enjoyment, and no matter what others say, not even roleplayers... not most of them, anyhow... enjoy stepping out of their personality too much. Thus, we bring anachronistic values and outlooks to the table. For example, in order to let women game, we relax the sexism of the older ages. We gloss over historical bits we find distasteful (it depends on the person Ive got nothing against antique slavery or casual drug use as a normalized thing [mind you, I dont practice either IRL, nor do I wish to], but I guess this would be very different for others) or uninteresting. Coincidentally, this is the very same thing the old sword and sorcery authors did. They didnt want to create accurate historical millieus, they wanted to sell popular stories with some cosmetic elements of old cultures. In their case, the concessions were for the sake of literature. In our case, it is for the sake of a game.

In my opinion, classic sword and sorcery is a good model, a good approximation for old school D&D. Players are mostly motivated by mercenary reasons instead of idealism gold, magic items and experience. They can, of course, play good characters, but lets not fool ourselves. Even players running good characters expect to be rewarded with very material rewards. Just try it a few times: give out minimal XP and no treasure for saving peasants in a starving village. In fact, let virtue be its own reward. If your players are anything like average roleplayers, they will be complaining to high heaven or declaring that the game sucks. Furthermore, the story structure of an old school game as it unfolds (and here I use story as something that evolves from in game actions instead of a predetermined plot!) is closer to how most sword and sorcery tales were set up. Instead of epic world-saving quests, they are focused, short and mostly self-contained stories with an action-based premise. Enter the Crypt of Footzum and recover the skull of Yuggg. Kill the giants. Annihilate the slavers. And so on. Old D&D modules were also like short stories. Definite end, definite beginning, modular and self-contained. Occasionally, they were mini-campaign settings. They werent, until the abysmal Dragonlance modules, plot-based. Plot-based modules can be done well, of course, but I dont think old D&D really supported this style in spirit. World-saving epic campaigns arent too D&D either. Not pure D&D anyway.

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What new fantasy changed was the way it looked at the protagonists and the story, and the world as well. For better or worse, player characters gained more value as individual personalities (instead of playing pieces used by the player) who mattered in the world, and even had a specific, pre-determined function in the game story. In old D&D, heroism is accidental. It happens when you perform really well and survive. The rest of the characters are average guys out for profit and survival, and a lot of PCs simply die. In fact, the entire world is violent, and against potential heroes (remember the liches in the freaking town encounter table? The golems and mind flayers roaming in the City State?). And they die. Now, in a modern game, PCs matter. You can see the disconnect between old school and new school when you place a new school player in an old school campaign situation, or vice versa. Like, say, a Gygax module. The assumption that your PC will survive is very ingrained and then comes the shock when that @#%$ of a DM rolls the dice, you fail your save and you are DEAD! Wow, thats heartless. And unfair. It wasnt supposed to end that way.

Old schoolers righteously mock and taunt new players who are affronted by this behaviour, when in fact this is a consequence of changed expectations. New characters are heroes from the get-go. They are significant. Thus, by killing them, you are breaking an implicit promise; a social contract if you will that they, as a protagonist, will be successful either by survival and prosperity, or at least dying a meaningful death. Of course, anyone who has read a Gygax or Gygax-inspired module knows well that in old school games, death is brutal, ever-present, and hence no big deal. It makes a good war story later on, but you get on with the game, because you can alway roll up a new character who may be luckier next time. But a lot of the animosity against gygaxian game design, or its children, is because the players wanted something out of a game and got something completely different. Although sword and sorcery heroes succeeded and survived, you alway had the feeling that they could have died an ignoble death and nobody would have given a damn. The first is because of story logic; in roleplaying games, however, game logic prevails, especially in gamist games which are about challenges and defeating them. No matter what the books tell you, D&D has precise winning and losing conditions. You win if your character survives and gets more powerful; you die when he or she bites it. And thats it. A lot of people who wanted tales of heroism out of D&D got brutal humiliation instead. In some cases, this was because of @#%$ teenager DMs or their adult equivalents. In other cases, it was again different expectations or even survival skills. You go in a gygaxian dungeon, your PC dies in the first room (dont stick your head in there!) and you walk away disappointed. Obviously, the game was unfair! Gygax is a bad designer! Well, no. EGG wrote for people with very good tactical ability; his own players I believe. This challenge level was normal for them. For others, it wasnt.

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Another element is magic and inherent abilities. Ever notice how many people criticised D&Ds spell system and thought it was unrealistic or said that magic doesnt work that way? I think this is once again the influence of modern fantasy (more Tolkien-derived). Of course, the unrealistic argument doesnt mean much. Duh, magic doesnt exist. But I think the people who made and make this argument are unconsciously formulating a very good argument... that D&D magic isnt how current fantasy literature or even genuine magical traditions treats it. From what Ive read of new fantasy (and thats not much) and Tolkien-clones; even Tolkien... in these books, magic is an internal force. It is, ah, a part of the world, or a part of a personality. An in-born talent, a potential which may be developed, sure, but it is there from the beginning. See, in 3e, you have sorcerers who are dragon-blooded. Thats very modern fantasy! It is also one of the reasons it was the first class I banned. Old D&D magic, or memorization, is derived from Vance, and from wargame mechanics (where you had fireball ammo and lightning ball ammo a la normal ammo... this makes the integration of this concept into the game much less puzzling!), but it corresponds with a lot of S&S tales in that it is an external force. You cant be a natural-born wizard, and you cant draw spells from within yourself, orMother Earth, or your dragon heritage. Instead, you get it from somewhere else: learn it from spellbooks, get it from your god, or a demon prince, whatever. No matter. But it is always from outside the natural order. It is, in some ways (although this isnt touched upon in the game Dark Sun, the most old-school 2e setting excepted) a hostile, harmful force, an aberration. Magic is strange, magic is dangerous, magic isnt normal. Magic is hard. Thats not modern fantasy. Modern fantasy has mostly normalized and tamed magic; made it easy to use, a commodity teenagers can handle. I dont think memorization itself is the key. The way of treating magic is. An old school spell system sword and sorcery inspired wouldnt need to use memorization. But it would need to make being a wizard a challenge in some way. Memorization is a challenge because you have to use finite, pre-chosen resources in a hostile environment. You have to get spells by force or guile (see in 3e, your wizard automatically researches new spells by going up a level). You have to learn it, as a player, how to be an effective wizard. You have to know when and how to drop your fireball, when and how to use utility spells effectively (many people who play wizards never get this far). And so on. You have to master this dangerous force, this force which can make you very powerful, but only after you have mastered it. You could do the same with demonic bargains, for example. That would be also very appropriate (and Jack Chick would have a heart attack, too! but see M.A.R. Barkers Book of Ebon Bindings for a great example of what I am talking about).

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Okay. This has gone on far too long, further than I wanted it to go. Ill stop now and have a Pilsner. But to sum up, Ill say that the way fantasy manifests in todays RPGs and why the way D&D did things is considered an anachronism (even by some of the most prominent game designers involved with WotC, IMHO!), is indeed a reflection on changing attitudes, changing fantasy. When people say 3e is anime-like or like a video game on paper, they are giving a badly worded interpretation of their displeasure of what fantasy is becoming, and how D&D adapts to this challenge. On a pessimistic note, I have to say catering to people who liked old D&D isnt a sensible decision for an enterprise focused on a good bottom line. The game will change in directions many of us wont (or already dont) care about. Hell, 2e was, no matter where TSR failed, extremely popular. FR was popular. Elminster and Drizzt were popular. The novels were selling like hotcakes. Eberron is the new milleniums FR. It may not succeed as a campaign world in the long term, but its attitudes are here to stay; maybe not all, but a lot will be an integral part of 4e when it comes out.

On a more optimistic note, the Internet lets people with a more old school compatible outlook reach a critical mass of some sort, support their own communities and even support a few companies producing appropriate books for this audience. And thats not bad either, much better than the 2e years in my eyes.