Satcher's page

I see two big differences between 'Old School' and the current ethos:

1) In the Old School, the creativity in the game before you sat down at the table was all in the hands of the DM. The DM had the leeway to adapt and adjust the world and everything in it while the players had to find a way to fit their PC vision into the ruleset, which was limited and fairly fixed in the types of characters that could result. The current ethos makes PC creation just as creative an enterprise as world design, to the point now where a DM has to protect his game world by restricting the options ('house ruling' being much more now about PC creation than about in-game play, at least for my table) so as to insure that the players don't break the world with their effective an nuanced character optimization. There is now so much material for PC creation and customization that playing a game RAW requires a DM with a photographic and encyclopedic knowledge of dozens of books about the PCs, in addition to the traditional massive information load on the DM for the rest of the world.

2) In the Old School, the 'balance' in the game was calibrated for the party as a whole versus the intended encounters in a gaming session. A DM was expected to put challenges in front of the party that the party could handle by letting each character shine in specific situations (some traps for the thief, something requiring magic for the magic-user, some brutes for the fighter, and no chance to rest/an undead challenge for the cleric). That led to party composition ALWAYS having at least one of the major four classes and exotic parties were those that had the sub-classes while parties that didn't hit the main tent posts were usually annihilated. (Ever try running a four fighter party through Pharoah? Count on a TPK even though the module is not especially lethal.) The current ethos calibrates balance between the various classes at every level. While in the old game a Thief 12 was less powerful than a Wizard 8 (roughly the same XP), the party as a whole was balanced against the DM's creations. In the new game, every player can expect their 5th level character to be roughly equivalent in terms of power; when that doesn't happen, the underpowered class can expect to be revised or ignored (see the creation of the Ninja class and the 'Unchained' Rogue to creep up the power curve to equal the Wizard/Cleric of the PFRPG).

These two core mechanical differences lead to changes in how time is spent in the game. In the 'Old School' world, introducing new players to a game is a snap and character creation takes less than 15 minutes. In the current ethos, introducing new players takes an orientation and character creation takes at least an hour and often takes several more hours, especially if the new PC is coming in at greater than level 1. Additionally, while playing, in an 'Old School' game, the vast majority of rules discussions relate to making up a workable rule for that situation while in the current ethos, rules discussions tend to be an exercise in researching the vast body of explicit rules.

In both cases, you have role-players and roll-players, power-gamers and story-tellers, DM tyrants and Monty Haul DMs.

At my table, I have seen the challenges of DMing change and the objections of players change too. I don't think there is a perfect system but there is a perfect style for your group of players; the goal is to find it. If using an 'Old School' label helps with that task, it is only because it helps you identify what your players are looking for in a game.