What makes something "classic feel with modern design"?

[Wofano Wotanto]

What does that mean to you? What elements of game design are modern, and what elements are "classic"? How much of the game needs to be "modernized" for it to count as "class feel with modern design"? How much is too much and the "classic" part is lost?

Doesn't have much to do with game design theory or mechanics to me. "Classic" means something stirs up nostalgia for my gaming memories from the 70s, 80s, even 90s, and it sure isn't tied to just D&D or even fantasy. "Modern" means the game's actually reasonably playable without a calculator, the rules are written so I don't need someone to walk me through them, the layout doesn't look like it was done with scissors and glue, and the printing didn't involve a mimeograph - or a dot-matrix printer for the newer stuff. Needless to say it's all pretty subjective, and much like obscenity I can't define it but I know it when I see it.

By way of examples, I could see myself applying "modern with classic feel" to Mongoose Traveller (although it's a little too art-heavy to quite hit all my buttons, I'm an LBB fan), Free League's Twilight 2000 and Forbidden Lands, Necrotic Gnome's OSE (sure, it's a retroclone but the layout and art is modern gold), Monkey House's Mighty Protectors (which is V&V) and the most recent edition of Talislanta. Probably quite a few other things I'm forgetting too, mostly small indie stuff.

 

[overgeeked]

Classic feel. High lethality, combat as war, dungeon crawling, random encounters, shenanigans abound, etc.

Modern feel. Story focus, low lethality, character builds as a pillar of play, combat as sport, etc.

Classic design. Discrete subsystems abound, use all the dice, etc.

Modern design. Unified resolution system, lack of discrete subsystems for various skills and abilities, clear and concise explanation of rules, etc.

OSR. Classic feel...classic design. OSRIC, Old-School Essentials, DCC RPG, etc.

NuSR. Classic feel...modern design. Shadowdark, Dragonbane, X Borg, etc.

 

[pemerton]

No wacky races (with Dragonbane's mallards being grandfathered in ), and no class concepts that people aren't familiar with.

Is Dragonbane a RQ derivative? That would make any ducks classic!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Is Dragonbane a RQ derivative? That would make any ducks classic!

Not AFAIK. I think we're looking at a case of parallel evolution there.

 

[schneeland]

Is Dragonbane a RQ derivative? That would make any ducks classic!

The English Wikipedia has a bit of information on this (I think one of the Swedish users here on the board also elaborated on this, but I don't remember in which thread exactly: Drakar och Demoner.
In short, the original game evolved from BRP and Magic World, and the anthropomorphic ducks were incorporated from Runequest/Glorantha, but it's not a direct descendent.

 

[TiQuinn]

Classic feel to me means the artwork is comparable to 1970s or 1980s TTRPG art.

Modern design means minimalistic prose and simple mechanics.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Old-school design kind of isn't design. You have disconnected sub-systems that are designed to be compartmentalized. An attack roll is entirely different from a check to do something athletic or social. A skill system might use an entirely different system to resolve. Psionic powers? They have nothing to do with how we deal with magic. Those hodge-podge designs can be fun, but they also mean you have to invest significantly more in learning the game. If you know how to make an attack in 3E onward, you know how to do anything else task-related.

If we limit the discussion to D&D-adjacent, probably this.
If not, "classic" is whatever and however you played back then. If a game is doing "classic Fighting Fantasy but with a modern design", that probably means having only one core stat and pretty much the most unified and simplistic resolution system you can think of. If it's doing Traveller, well, it just keeps doing Traveller more or less the way it's been for decades (if you disregard all the radically different off-shoots), only a little more streamlined (so what Mongoose is doing). If you're doing RuneQuest (like Chaosium right now), it means unified core resolution system, but still with lots of fiddly bits and keeping advancement strictly in-game and concrete. The modern design comes here comes in mostly in terms of art and organisation.

 

[payn]

If we limit the discussion to D&D-adjacent, probably this.
If not, "classic" is whatever and however you played back then. If a game is doing "classic Fighting Fantasy but with a modern design", that probably means having only one core stat and pretty much the most unified and simplistic resolution system you can think of. If it's doing Traveller, well, it just keeps doing Traveller more or less the way it's been for decades (if you disregard all the radically different off-shoots), only a little more streamlined (so what Mongoose is doing). If you're doing RuneQuest (like Chaosium right now), it means unified core resolution system, but still with lots of fiddly bits and keeping advancement strictly in-game and concrete. The modern design comes here comes in mostly in terms of art and organisation.

Traveller is an interesting case. It's core mechanic has essentially been kept over the decades. Mongoose has simply refined it into something modern without losing any of the classic feel.

 

[Quickleaf]

What does that mean to you? What elements of game design are modern, and what elements are "classic"? How much of the game needs to be "modernized" for it to count as "class feel with modern design"? How much is too much and the "classic" part is lost?

My mind was blown when I heard two players discuss 3rd edition mechanics like prestige classes as "classic." So I agree that it's a very personal question that is a moving target.

What makes something "classic feel with modern design"?

Answering your question focused on design – as opposed to themes/motifs/genres – here's my take...

@SteveC describes old-school design as disconnected sub-systems... and while that often was objectively true in past games, I consider this "old school baroque" design.

The thing about classic feel is that it's an emotional goal. It's less about recreating how OD&D, 1e, 2e, BD&D, or whatever edition was designed in terms of specific rules. I would describe the emotional goal as:

The game happens at the table by encouraging player ingenuity and looking to their creativity for answers first, and discourages the character building game and looking to their sheet for answers first.

For me, that's the core feeling of "classic" D&D/adjacent games that I want. ..It's a matter of degree, I think, so the goal isn't to make the character sheet irrelevant, for instance.

"Modern" design may be minimalistic like @Emberashh suggests, but I don't think that's the only way to skin the cat of "modern" design in terms of classic feel. ...Or maybe it's minimalistic in comparison to 3e, 5e, PF, PF2e, etc.

Another way I see "modern" design is that it's about a cohesive rules framework that is not "baroque" disconnected subsystems. For example, an attack matrix vs AC based on weapon wielded vs. armor type would be the opposite of "modern" design.

So, when I hear "modern" design (in the context of "classic" feel), I think that's synonymous with streamlined. The number of disconnected subsystems is minimized in favor of cohesive rules, and if there's a proliferation of character options they're not overlapping/redundant/all-at-once, but rather fill unique necessary niches and are organized in a way that's more digestible.

Edit: Btw, I think it's possible to have a game that's "classic feel with modern design" AND includes streamlined disconnected sub-sytems (e.g. quantum arrows/ammo dice from Into the Odd...iirc) AND has some degree of a character building mini-game (e.g. playbooks from Freebooters on the Frontier).

Just my two coppers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'd argue that what generates the classic feel has more to do with adventure design (Appendix N) than with the system. Having fewer tables is nice, but I don't think tables have much to do with classic feel unless you are a grognard like me.

I love tables and feel they contribute greatly to classic feel, but then I am also a grognard.