In general I view the old school guys (which includes a number of bloggers I respect) with some degree of amusement. I played OD&D when it was first released, and much of what they describe as Old School is anything but IME.
They say "rulings, no rules" and call that fun. And I remember those days as a trip through hell dealing with poor rulesets that defined the ground floor of a hobby that was just kicked off. Indeed that very statement about rulings reflects a deep division in rpgs that started from day one and continues to this day.
Even so, they often hit on something that I do consider a characteristic of old school, as Zachary does here. My original campaigns were very like this (and still are), it was up to the players to decide what they would or would not tackle and the only 'balancing' the GM did was to make the information about what was over the next hill possible to be found to those looking for it.
The concept of balancing for story, character ability, or anything else didn't appear on our radar for years after we started playing.
If I had to pick one characteristic that truly defines old school, it would be this one. And poorly written and designed rules would be the second- except of course that still applies to games written today and thus isn't very defining...
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This pretty much hits my own preferences with taking things from the "old school".
A balanced world doesn't appeal to me that much. Whereas I don't want characters to hit an unescapable clash with a dragon an hour into the game, resulting in a wipe, that dragon will -always- be there regardless of their level.
Having a good solid ruleset and allowing expansion and tweaking aren't mutually exclusive, as some might think.
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