OSR: what is it even

[Vargold]

I know I felt that way as a tween. Gary's editorials in the '80s were an influence on me quickly moving away from D&D to other games.

I had the B/X ecosphere so I stayed with D&D. But we were also playing Top Secret, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Paranoia, Traveller, even Talislanta.

 

[T. Foster]

As a 10 year old I thought Dragonlance was pretty awesome - great art, great looking maps, cool epic story, plus novels that both matched the modules (the first one at least) and were easier to read than Tolkien but more substantial than the Endless Quest books.

In my 20s I railed against it as per the grognard party line - that it was emblematic of everything wrong with post-Gygax D&D (nevermind that the bulk of it be released when he was still at TSR and had at least his tacit approval - when Gygax regained control of TSR in 1985 they didn’t stop releasing Dragonlance products and even commissioned new ones, like the second trilogy of novels).

Nowadays I accept it for what it is: TSR serving their “new” fans (like 10 year old me) who wanted epic stories and didn’t care about wargamey stuff (but note that even there TSR released a literal hex & chit DL wargame (DL11) alongside the modules and integrated Battlesystem minis battles into several of them - DL8, 9, & 12); TSR taking full advantage of their upgraded art and graphics teams; TSR developing original IP to at least theoretically stand alongside Tolkien, Shannara, etc without having to pay third party licensing fees; and (yes) TSR adding more of a romance element to try to make the game more appealing to girls.

It’s hard to begrudge them any of that, and if you look past the corny framing (including sheet music for songs in the modules was the nadir IMO) there are actually at least a couple pretty decent dungeons in there. My favorite is the High Clerist Tower in DL8, which is non-coincidentally the only one where Laura Hickman gets a co-writing credit alongside Tracy (supporting my position that she was the better dungeon designer and TSR hired “the wrong Hickman”).

The biggest bummer is that TSR didn’t continue releasing more old-style stuffy alongside the new-style DL stuff. Technically they did, at least in 1984-85, with T1-4, WG5 & 6, and the Lankhmar book, but those were a rear-guard action and WG6 in particular shows embarrassing evidence of trying to “keep up” with the DL style by including a huge boxed text intro and scripted mandatory final battle.

D&D in the mid 80s was headed in a different different direction than the stuff I liked best, and while Dragonlance is emblematic of that change it didn’t initiate it - it was already well underway and also wasn’t limited to TSR and D&D, really the entire hobby was moving in that direction and if anything DL was kind of a milquetoasty compromise version of what other companies were already doing (because, as everyone playing RPGs in the 80s knew, TSR was always a follower, never an innovator).

 

[David Johansen]

So what about Thieves Guild then?

 

[Voros]

As a 10 year old I thought Dragonlance was pretty awesome - great art, great looking maps, cool epic story, plus novels that both matched the modules (the first one at least) and were easier to read than Tolkien but more substantial than the Endless Quest books.

In my 20s I railed against it as per the grognard party line - that it was emblematic of everything wrong with post-Gygax D&D (nevermind that the bulk of it be released when he was still at TSR and had at least his tacit approval - when Gygax regained control of TSR in 1985 they didn’t stop releasing Dragonlance products and even commissioned new ones, like the second trilogy of novels).

Nowadays I accept it for what it is: TSR serving their “new” fans (like 10 year old me) who wanted epic stories and didn’t care about wargamey stuff (but note that even there TSR released a literal hex & chit DL wargame (DL11) alongside the modules and integrated Battlesystem minis battles into several of them - DL8, 9, & 12); TSR taking full advantage of their upgraded art and graphics teams; TSR developing original IP to at least theoretically stand alongside Tolkien, Shannara, etc without having to pay third party licensing fees; and (yes) TSR adding more of a romance element to try to make the game more appealing to girls.

It’s hard to begrudge them any of that, and if you look past the corny framing (including sheet music for songs in the modules was the nadir IMO) there are actually at least a couple pretty decent dungeons in there. My favorite is the High Clerist Tower in DL8, which is non-coincidentally the only one where Laura Hickman gets a co-writing credit alongside Tracy (supporting my position that she was the better dungeon designer and TSR hired “the wrong Hickman”).

The biggest bummer is that TSR didn’t continue releasing more old-style stuffy alongside the new-style DL stuff. Technically they did, at least in 1984-85, with T1-4, WG5 & 6, and the Lankhmar book, but those were a rear-guard action and WG6 in particular shows embarrassing evidence of trying to “keep up” with the DL style by including a huge boxed text intro and scripted mandatory final battle.

D&D in the mid 80s was headed in a different different direction than the stuff I liked best, and while Dragonlance is emblematic of that change it didn’t initiate it - it was already well underway and also wasn’t limited to TSR and D&D, really the entire hobby was moving in that direction and if anything DL was kind of a milquetoasty compromise version of what other companies were already doing (because, as everyone playing RPGs in the 80s knew, TSR was always a follower, never an innovator).

I remember liking the High Clerist Tower as well as a few other dungeons in the original DL series, Justin Alexander generally praises the dungeons in DL as well. The wargame module was one of my favourites as a kid and my introduction to wargames in general.

I've been meaning to revisit the modules maybe even do a thread here on them but Justin has pretty much already done it, although it seems limited just to Twitter, not his blog.

Most of the railroading in DL is pretty unnecessary and easily excised, when I played the first few modules as a youngster we used our own PCs and the GM ran it loosely. It was only after reading the modules on my own that I realized they had pre-gens, which was pretty standard for modules at the time. Neither I nor anyone in our group had read the books at the time, we were playing them pretty close to when they were released and ironically fantasy fiction wasn't my thing despite my near obsessive interest in D&D at the time.

I agree that a lot of the best Hickman work came under both of their names. Although I'll still defend the, even by modern standards, Dragons of Dreams module, which is highly randomized and dreamlike, as the title suggests. I also really dug their Desert of Desolation dungeoncrawl modules, although again I haven't revisited them since I was a teen.

 

[robertsconley]

Yes, my tweener group thought Gary was an ancient geezer crank based on his Dragon editorials.

From the Archives

---

unc!tim
View profile
More options Oct 20 1982, 6:28 am
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
From: unc!tim
Date: Wed Oct 20 06:28:39 1982
Local: Wed, Oct 20 1982 6:28 am
Subject: AD&D sucks

In a possibly vain attempt to get some discussion on this group, I will now come out of the closet
publicly and say I think that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a very poor excuse for a game. Gary Gygax has no conception of how books are actually used in a play situation, and a very poor ability to understand hand-to-hand combat. Further, the magic system is totally counter-intuitive. Finally, the importance of magic items (as well as the ideas of class and level) depersonalizes characters, leading to a "rogue"- type environment. (Oh yes, the description of gods in terms of hit dice, etc., is totally useless to the DM, and the unarmed combat system is an atrocity; sorry to have forgotten these.) The only reason that AD&D is the most popular FRP game around is that it has a major lead on the others--unfortunately, TSR has not used this time to improve the rules, only to lengthen them.

The only game I know of that's worse than AD&D, aside from basic D&D, is Tunnels and Trolls. Both RuneQuest and The Fantasy Trip provide much better alternatives, and I am told that SPI's DragonQuest (now owned by TSR) is hard to learn but very smooth once one learns it. I strongly recommend that any AD&D player buy RuneQuest and play a few games before further glorifying their rather primitive game.

I suppose I should be afraid to sign my name,
Tim Maroney (unc!tim)

---

net.games.frp
Post from 1981 to 1985

 

[robertsconley]

Semi related, I'd like to know how much room is there to grow and innovate within the RPG sphere? I constantly here the market is saturated, but I wonder lately, whether it is or not possible to lead by offer in this sphere - rather than follow demand.

If you are talking about a decent return on the time invested rather than making a living, the market is effectively unlimited. An organized individual capable of writing clearly, doing the work, and actually being able to process feedback, both good and bad, can ignite a small community of hobbyists that just large enough to sustain a niche. A few hundred is enough to the trick.

By decent return, it is enough revenue to cover costs for professional work plus profits that pay for a few nice things in the person's life.

 

[Endless Flight]

The mid-80s TSR era to me was like the golden age because I’d go in the hobby shop or the bookstore and see stuff like this on the shelf. Blew my mind.

 

[Vargold]

The mid-80s TSR era to me was like the golden age because I’d go in the hobby shop or the bookstore and see stuff like this on the shelf. Blew my mind.

View attachment 79939

I had the older version of that book as well as the Avengers one. We put all the characters' names on slips of paper and then drew the names out of a hat to determine matchups in a Marvel version of Wrestlemania. Jarvis vs. Juggernaut was a trip.

 

[David Johansen]

In the comics, Jarvis would win every time. Partially because Cain Marko is somewhat vulnerable to politeness, civility, and compassion. I think it would be quite unfair to disallow Jarvis his only powers in such a contest.

 

[Sharrow]

This is opposed to an attitude that has grown in the hobby over the past two decades that the only things that can be in a setting are those things found in the rulebook. The only things a character can do have to be described in the rulebook.

Detailed system design is one thing, but the above is, in my opinion, is antithetical to how RPG campaigns were designed to run.

It's like the community has gotten stuck in what I used to call 'the second stage of player skill'.

The first stage, is that of newbies. They know nothing of the rules, or of how rpgs work sometimes, and thus they just tell the GM what they want to do, and the GM turns that into game system actions, rolls they need to make, etc. Because they don't know anything of the rules, they don't feel restricted by the rules, and what the rules say they can do. If the GM's flexible and suitably good at either managing the rules or making rulings, enthusiastic players at this stage are a huge boon, and can bring a lot of fun and wonder to a game.

The second stage player knows the rules, but either not well enough to interpret creative ideas, or just sees them as being the walls around the game, they way they so often are in a computer game. All too often they let this stifle creativity.

The third stage know the rules backwards and forwards and know how to describe all kinds of weird stuff using the rules. If they also know very well how their GM and table do things, it's a bit like 1st stage players, but without the GM needing to turn declarations into 'game-legal' actions and skill checks - the players can just describe their crazy stuff in 'game speak'.

Sometimes I want to whack 2nd stage players over the head when they leap in and tell newbies how they "can't do X" or "should take action Y". I want to hear what the new player wants to do, and once they've described it we can decide how it's going to work in the game. Pushing new players into a straight-jacket of "The RAW are the complete simulation of the game world" does nobody a service.

 

[Sharrow]

D&D was designed by and for wargame hobbyists, which was a very niche audience of maybe a few thousand people in the US and a couple thousand more (at most) in the UK. These people were all heavily into homebrewing and customizing, basically each club sort of cobbled together its own set of rules which may never have been put down in writing and if they were distributed at all it was on mimeographed sheets that were handed out for free. To the extent there was any money in this hobby it was in selling figures and models, not rules.

Don Lowry at Guidon Games was the first one to try to make a business out of selling miniatures rules pamphlets like Tractics and Chainmail and Don’t Give Up the Ship as their own thing (rather than a promotional loss-leader for a line of models) and everyone thought he was nuts (and considering how the company struggled and ultimately failed they were probably right). That’s the environment in which D&D was written and initially marketed - that the existing hobbyists would see it and take inspiration from it to effectively create their own similar games the way Prof. Barker did. The thing that was felt to have possible mainstream appeal was Dave Megarry’s Dungeon boardgame, which was a sort of simplified and streamlined distillation of the dungeon-crawling aspect of Blackmoor, which is why even after TSR was founded and D&D published Megarry and Gygax were still attempting to sell that game to a mainstream publisher, and only after a year+ of frustration and failure eventually decided to publish it through TSR instead.

In the 70s and 80s, as a kid I read a bunch of books our local library had on wargaming, by authors such as Donald Featherstone and Gavin Lyall. Just about all of them either had a set of rules in them as an example of how one might write rules, and of what you should consider when doing so, or enough discussion of contemporary thinking on the matter that you write your own functional rules from them. Going to the town's wargaming club and discovering that they used WRG rules (okay, fine), and that they were considered unalterable was an eye-opener to me. I didn't stay.

That’s all summarized from Jon Peterson’s Game Wizards book. The point is that D&D pretty quickly grew way beyond that initial audience by hooking sf and fantasy fans who didn’t have any real prior overlap with historical wargaming so they didn’t have the grounding or habits in creating their own rules - they needed and wanted things explained more clearly and in more detail than what D&D provided. Not because they were stupid or lazy, they just had different interests and priorities - they wanted to create characters and stories and worlds, not rules simulations. So D&D had to change to accommodate that new (and much, much larger) audience, because if they didn’t someone else was going to - T&T was iterating editions and getting more polished, Chaosium was developing RuneQuest, FGU has Chivalry & Sorcery, Judges Guild was having success selling D&D play aids and modules, etc.

Though C&S was pretty clearly written for wargamers, at least in the first edition - it had a set of wargaming rules in it, and they were integrated into its rules for economics, etc. (and vice-versa). The 2nd edition split the war game rules out into a supplement, and were clearly more aimed at the 'new' type of player.

 

[sharps54]

The intro to this video is a defense of the abstraction of Gygaxian D&D

 

[T. Foster]

It's like the community has gotten stuck in what I used to call 'the second stage of player skill'.

The first stage, is that of newbies. They know nothing of the rules, or of how rpgs work sometimes, and thus they just tell the GM what they want to do, and the GM turns that into game system actions, rolls they need to make, etc. Because they don't know anything of the rules, they don't feel restricted by the rules, and what the rules say they can do. If the GM's flexible and suitably good at either managing the rules or making rulings, enthusiastic players at this stage are a huge boon, and can bring a lot of fun and wonder to a game.

The second stage player knows the rules, but either not well enough to interpret creative ideas, or just sees them as being the walls around the game, they way they so often are in a computer game. All too often they let this stifle creativity.

The third stage know the rules backwards and forwards and know how to describe all kinds of weird stuff using the rules. If they also know very well how their GM and table do things, it's a bit like 1st stage players, but without the GM needing to turn declarations into 'game-legal' actions and skill checks - the players can just describe their crazy stuff in 'game speak'.

Sometimes I want to whack 2nd stage players over the head when they leap in and tell newbies how they "can't do X" or "should take action Y". I want to hear what the new player wants to do, and once they've described it we can decide how it's going to work in the game. Pushing new players into a straight-jacket of "The RAW are the complete simulation of the game world" does nobody a service.

Very well put. Those 2nd stage players (and GMs!) are a hard nut to crack, especially when they insist on arguing with, correcting, and stifling 3rd stage players for doing things that are outside the bounds of the text.

 

[howandwhy99]

I've been looking at 3.0 D&D again and seeing how it was still trying to recreate AD&D, albeit in a "1990's cutting edge game design" manner. That meant dropping many major design elements which 2e didn't really use and it's likely the designers didn't understand the purpose for. Like not having skills or feats, much less character levels and unified saving throws.

It's fair to say 3.0 went sideways, but it should be remembered 3.5 was not made to repair the game (which needed a year or two more of hard playtesting), but to convince the customers to repurchase all the core books once more. Not to mention it pulled the rug out from under all the competitors who had built up in what was viewed by the public as 3rd party support. (I don't believe Hasbro saw it this way).

The point is, by the end of 3.5's publication cycle, and the ramping up of 4e, the WotC designers have largely thrown 3e aside. They aren't even trying to fix it now. They are creating substitute classes for broken core classes and different powers systems to change how combat magic works. When they published 4e and lost out to Pathfinder 1e (D&D 3.75) it must have been astonishing given how power the 3.5 system was compared to 4e.

Here's the point, 4e fixed 3.5's problems, but 3.5 D&D is not attempting to make 3.0 more like AD&D 1st edition and earlier. It's a complete sideways shift. And I'd say 5e is more an iteration of 4e, but with lots of fluff to handwave earlier mechanics into the game.

The OSR is a response to the end of 3e's Silver Age of D&D. People who could actually remember strategic play without rules wanted their actual game back, the one they returned to the hobby for. Lots of internet discussion on messageboards, blogs, and Google+ followed. That's the OSR.

What wasn't or isn't the OSR is community which never level AD&D when 3e brought everyone back to the hobby.

Neither is the Forgite (anti-point scoring, strategy simulation D&D) story game and indie circuit which travels in applying directly oppositional theories to old school RPGs. Claims like "rules light" and "we don't keep score" make little sense and have low appeal before the turn of the millenia.

 

[Voros]

It's like the community has gotten stuck in what I used to call 'the second stage of player skill'.

The first stage, is that of newbies. They know nothing of the rules, or of how rpgs work sometimes, and thus they just tell the GM what they want to do, and the GM turns that into game system actions, rolls they need to make, etc. Because they don't know anything of the rules, they don't feel restricted by the rules, and what the rules say they can do. If the GM's flexible and suitably good at either managing the rules or making rulings, enthusiastic players at this stage are a huge boon, and can bring a lot of fun and wonder to a game.

The second stage player knows the rules, but either not well enough to interpret creative ideas, or just sees them as being the walls around the game, they way they so often are in a computer game. All too often they let this stifle creativity.

The third stage know the rules backwards and forwards and know how to describe all kinds of weird stuff using the rules. If they also know very well how their GM and table do things, it's a bit like 1st stage players, but without the GM needing to turn declarations into 'game-legal' actions and skill checks - the players can just describe their crazy stuff in 'game speak'.

Sometimes I want to whack 2nd stage players over the head when they leap in and tell newbies how they "can't do X" or "should take action Y". I want to hear what the new player wants to do, and once they've described it we can decide how it's going to work in the game. Pushing new players into a straight-jacket of "The RAW are the complete simulation of the game world" does nobody a service.

I agree with your analysis to a large degree except the earlier claim from Rob that this is something that has become more prevalent in the last two decades is something I'm just not buying.

For one thing, it really strikes me as a D&D-centric claim. It's not true of CoC, Delta Green, SW, PbtA, Free League and the many other non-D&D rulesets in the last two decades. The revived Mythras, RQ and WFRP aside, all newer editions of older games, I see little evidence that the direction of games in the last two decades has been towards high crunch. The exact opposite in fact.

For another, I remember lots of players and GMs obsessed with RAW, rules-lawyers and power-gamers before 2000. To think this is something new or worse now in rpgs strains credulity. At best the net has allowed those types to congregate online and annoy the rest of us more effectively.

The claim that the OSR is reviving some supposedly forgotten style of play is blinkered, the least convincing and most chauvinistic stream of 'thought' from the OSR I've encountered.

Plenty of us played D&D in a sandbox style and made rule calls at the table long before the OSR, I figured it out as a teen for christ's sake, let's stop pretending like it's some genius, revolutionary idea discovered from the rpg equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

[Vargold]

I mean, Over the Edge and Risus and Everway (to name three such games) all date to the 1990s, and they are essentially "rulings, not rules" insofar as they feature a relatively straightforward resolution system that has to be contextually interpreted.

 

[sharps54]

i think most of use consider the afterward in OD&D as giving the referee freedom to do as they wish by telling them to “decide how you would like it to be, and then just make it that way!”

 

[AsenRG]

From the Archives

---

unc!tim
View profile
More options Oct 20 1982, 6:28 am
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
From: unc!tim
Date: Wed Oct 20 06:28:39 1982
Local: Wed, Oct 20 1982 6:28 am
Subject: AD&D sucks

In a possibly vain attempt to get some discussion on this group, I will now come out of the closet
publicly and say I think that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a very poor excuse for a game. Gary Gygax has no conception of how books are actually used in a play situation, and a very poor ability to understand hand-to-hand combat. Further, the magic system is totally counter-intuitive. Finally, the importance of magic items (as well as the ideas of class and level) depersonalizes characters, leading to a "rogue"- type environment. (Oh yes, the description of gods in terms of hit dice, etc., is totally useless to the DM, and the unarmed combat system is an atrocity; sorry to have forgotten these.) The only reason that AD&D is the most popular FRP game around is that it has a major lead on the others--unfortunately, TSR has not used this time to improve the rules, only to lengthen them.

The only game I know of that's worse than AD&D, aside from basic D&D, is Tunnels and Trolls. Both RuneQuest and The Fantasy Trip provide much better alternatives, and I am told that SPI's DragonQuest (now owned by TSR) is hard to learn but very smooth once one learns it. I strongly recommend that any AD&D player buy RuneQuest and play a few games before further glorifying their rather primitive game.

I suppose I should be afraid to sign my name,
Tim Maroney (unc!tim)

---

net.games.frp
Post from 1981 to 1985

I like that post in more ways than one, though I also find it highly amusing...

Also, the respected Tim Maroney is still right, except WotC has both changed and lengtened the rules, but keeping all the basic cruft!

It's like the community has gotten stuck in what I used to call 'the second stage of player skill'.

The first stage, is that of newbies. They know nothing of the rules, or of how rpgs work sometimes, and thus they just tell the GM what they want to do, and the GM turns that into game system actions, rolls they need to make, etc. Because they don't know anything of the rules, they don't feel restricted by the rules, and what the rules say they can do. If the GM's flexible and suitably good at either managing the rules or making rulings, enthusiastic players at this stage are a huge boon, and can bring a lot of fun and wonder to a game.

The second stage player knows the rules, but either not well enough to interpret creative ideas, or just sees them as being the walls around the game, they way they so often are in a computer game. All too often they let this stifle creativity.

The third stage know the rules backwards and forwards and know how to describe all kinds of weird stuff using the rules. If they also know very well how their GM and table do things, it's a bit like 1st stage players, but without the GM needing to turn declarations into 'game-legal' actions and skill checks - the players can just describe their crazy stuff in 'game speak'.

Sometimes I want to whack 2nd stage players over the head when they leap in and tell newbies how they "can't do X" or "should take action Y". I want to hear what the new player wants to do, and once they've described it we can decide how it's going to work in the game. Pushing new players into a straight-jacket of "The RAW are the complete simulation of the game world" does nobody a service.

I have whacked some of them over the head for this. Sometimes metaphorically.

I agree with your analysis to a large degree except the earlier claim from Rob that this is something that has become more prevalent in the last two decades is something I'm just not buying.

Yup, me neither. "You can't do that, it's not in the rules" has been uttered by our first DM, using AD&D2e, in 1999...and the players didn't appreciate it, to say the least!

For one thing, it really strikes me as a D&D-centric claim. It's not true of CoC, Delta Green, SW, PbtA, Free League and the many other non-D&D rulesets in the last two decades. The revived Mythras, RQ and WFRP aside, all newer editions of older games, I see little evidence that the direction of games in the last two decades has been towards high crunch. The exact opposite in fact.

Likewise. But then Rob is, like it or not, and no matter how much he tries to focus on the setting, squarely in the D&D-mechanical groove.

The claim that the OSR is reviving some supposedly forgotten style of play is blinkered, the least convincing and most chauvinistic stream of 'thought' from the OSR I've encountered.

Plenty of us played D&D in a sandbox style and made rule calls at the table long before the OSR, I figured it out as a teen for christ's sake, let's stop pretending like it's some genius, revolutionary idea discovered from the rpg equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Again, likewise. The second campaign I ran, ever*, with Acsiom 16, was in a sandbox style, after I tried to think how I'd like a GM to run RPGs for me, and gave it some serious consideration...
I did give it up, later, because of advice from "experienced GMs" stating that "it's not sustainable". It was a mistake.


I did learn a lot about making it better from OSR articles, blogs, books, and various sandbox proponents on different fora, starting from TBP. But the first time I tried running it, I didn't know the word "sandbox". Someone told me this on TBP. (A bit later, the story repeated itself with the West Marches style of play).


*The first (1999-2000?) was an unabashed railroad, much to my shame, since I was trying to apply my knowledge of writing, not of games:goosecry:!

 

[sharps54]

The great thing about the OSR is that you can take from it what you want and leave the rest. Although you can do that with any RPG…

 

[AsenRG]

The great thing about the OSR is that you can take from it what you want and leave the rest. Although you can do that with any RPG…

Indeed!

 

[robertsconley]

I agree with your analysis to a large degree except the earlier claim from Rob that this is something that has become more prevalent in the last two decades is something I'm just not buying.

For one thing, it really strikes me as a D&D-centric claim. It's not true of CoC, Delta Green, SW, PbtA, Free League and the many other non-D&D rulesets in the last two decades. The revived Mythras, RQ and WFRP aside, all newer editions of older games, I see little evidence that the direction of games in the last two decades has been towards high crunch. The exact opposite in fact.

The last two decades takes us back to 2004. My perspective stems from how I saw things over the years since 1980.

In addition, my point has little to do with the level of detail or what you call "high crunch." It is about how rules are used in a campaign, whether it is that detailed or not, or something in between, as most RPGs are.

For another, I remember lots of players and GMs obsessed with RAW, rules-lawyers and power-gamers before 2000. To think this is something new or worse now in rpgs strains credulity. At best the net has allowed those types to congregate online and annoy the rest of us more effectively.

I remember "lots" from back in the day of the 80s as well, but not as much as I see now.

Why is this happening?

For two main reason
Because organized play is a thing, and to make organized play fair, the organizers require that the rules be followed RAW. So referees don't have much leeway they would in their own campaign.

Many hobbyists today first learned roleplaying through MMORPGs or CRPGs where the "referee" always applies RAW 100% of the time. Where there is a subculture of folks who love poking at the rules behind the software and figuring out how to optimize their characters. Back in the 80s, there were limits to how patient or receptive a group is towards a player doing this. But software algorithms are a different story.

As for the D&D-centric nature of this, that is a result of D&D's overwhelming presence in the market and in organized play. The fact that other RPG escape this because they are mostly centered around the traditional setup of a group of friends gaming for fun.

Which brings up another salient fact for the difference is that campaigns consisting of strangers are more prevalent today. Back in the day, whether it was D&D, Traveller, or Runequest, there was always some amount of "culture shock" when moving between different groups. Everybody had their quirks both in and out of game. For example gaming at college for the first few months.

When RPGs first hit in my hometown everybody was hopping around playing different campaigns with the same characters. But by 83 to 84 this became less of a thing because of all the arguments this caused with monty haul characters or players complaining that Sherlock on Baker ran things this way and you should too. So it faded away in favor of the more traditional setup with characters made for a specific campaign. And the expectation that the referee (or, in many cases, the group of friends) set the rules.

In the 90s I was part of running events for a LARP chapter that was part of a national organization. While the details differ the same basic problems emerged as I saw earlier when campaign hopping was a thing.

Throughout the middle 80s, 90s, and early 00s I didn't see much of this for tabletop roleplaying, but with Living campaigns and MMORPGs hitting their stride by the late 00s I saw again all the old issues remerge that I saw back when everybody was campaign hopping. With the added wrinkle of folks coming in from MMORPGs and CRPGs.


Now you may not find any of this credible or chalk it up to Rob's limited life experience. If you ran organized gaming like running a LARP chapter or events, running a MMORPG server, managed organized play at a game store, or a convention. Then you will see what I am getting at.

Finally it not I am down on these other form of roleplaying games. I enjoyed all of them a lot and learned how to run and play them well. They have strong points which make them a fun experience to play. But they have weaknesses and limitations as well. Which drags down the tabletop RPG experience when it is brought in.

It is not D&D is that impacted by this either. I have seen this spill over to GURPS, Traveller, and Fate campaigns as well. But again most system don't have a strong organized gaming component. Many have a publisher who sets a good tone which provides a common frame of reference when players get together.

The claim that the OSR is reviving some supposedly forgotten style of play is blinkered, the least convincing and most chauvinistic stream of 'thought' from the OSR I've encountered.

Did somebody make that claim here? Or was it some random asshole making a youtube video.

Plenty of us played D&D in a sandbox style and made rule calls at the table long before the OSR, I figured it out as a teen for christ's sake, let's stop pretending like it's some genius, revolutionary idea discovered from the rpg equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And who is making that claim? In this thread?

I agree there are folks out there doing this. But they are outliers amid folks like myself, Kevin Crawford, James Mishler and others who are just doing their thing.

 

[SJB]

I find far too much loose talk on OSR and other rpg blogs with little to no sourcing.

I think this might be setting the bar a little high! Discussants here and elsewhere are mainly having fun circling their hobby. Part of that fun is the licence to mix up recollection, nostalgia, opinion and the occasional bit of analysis.

I’ve only noticed one person (Peterson) whose made a fist of “proper” history by publishing books with citations whose factual content and interpretation can be challenged through the standard mechanisms of scholarly discourse.

 

[Voros]

I think this might be setting the bar a little high! Discussants here and elsewhere are mainly having fun circling their hobby. Part of that fun is the licence to mix up recollection, nostalgia, opinion and the occasional bit of analysis.

I’ve only noticed one person (Peterson) whose made a fist of “proper” history by publishing books with citations whose factual content and interpretation can be challenged through the standard mechanisms of scholarly discourse.

I'm not talking about academic standards, I'm talking about actually reading something before criticizing it. I've seen numerous repeated claims made that a simple reference to the text would prove wrong.

Forums are for loose discussion and I'm more forgiving there except those with the most strident and dogmatic claims are often the worse for simply never having read what they're attacking.

Too many fans want it both ways, they want their opinions taken seriously and with respect but don't want to put in the minimum required for their opinion to be informed.

 

[TristramEvans]

It's like the community has gotten stuck in what I used to call 'the second stage of player skill'.

The first stage, is that of newbies. They know nothing of the rules, or of how rpgs work sometimes, and thus they just tell the GM what they want to do, and the GM turns that into game system actions, rolls they need to make, etc. Because they don't know anything of the rules, they don't feel restricted by the rules, and what the rules say they can do. If the GM's flexible and suitably good at either managing the rules or making rulings, enthusiastic players at this stage are a huge boon, and can bring a lot of fun and wonder to a game.

The second stage player knows the rules, but either not well enough to interpret creative ideas, or just sees them as being the walls around the game, they way they so often are in a computer game. All too often they let this stifle creativity.

The third stage know the rules backwards and forwards and know how to describe all kinds of weird stuff using the rules. If they also know very well how their GM and table do things, it's a bit like 1st stage players, but without the GM needing to turn declarations into 'game-legal' actions and skill checks - the players can just describe their crazy stuff in 'game speak'.

Sometimes I want to whack 2nd stage players over the head when they leap in and tell newbies how they "can't do X" or "should take action Y". I want to hear what the new player wants to do, and once they've described it we can decide how it's going to work in the game. Pushing new players into a straight-jacket of "The RAW are the complete simulation of the game world" does nobody a service.

I wouldn't call those stages, I'd call them preferences. I prefer the first. The second I find boring, and the third I find "playing the system rather than the game", which is likewise not to my tastes - that's the domain of WoTC D&D, Hero & GURPs players.

 

[Baulderstone]

I wouldn't call those stages, I'd call them preferences. I prefer the first. The second I find boring, and the third I find "playing the system rather than the game", which is likewise not to my tastes - that's the domain of WoTC D&D, Hero & GURPs players.

I agree. I've encountered all those types of players, but it's not always that kind of progression. A lot of people come to TTRPGs from video games, which means they are already in a "stage 2" mindset.

 

[Voros]

The last two decades takes us back to 2004. My perspective stems from how I saw things over the years since 1980.

In addition, my point has little to do with the level of detail or what you call "high crunch." It is about how rules are used in a campaign, whether it is that detailed or not, or something in between, as most RPGs are.


I remember "lots" from back in the day of the 80s as well, but not as much as I see now.

Why is this happening?

For two main reason
Because organized play is a thing, and to make organized play fair, the organizers require that the rules be followed RAW. So referees don't have much leeway they would in their own campaign.

Many hobbyists today first learned roleplaying through MMORPGs or CRPGs where the "referee" always applies RAW 100% of the time. Where there is a subculture of folks who love poking at the rules behind the software and figuring out how to optimize their characters. Back in the 80s, there were limits to how patient or receptive a group is towards a player doing this. But software algorithms are a different story.

As for the D&D-centric nature of this, that is a result of D&D's overwhelming presence in the market and in organized play. The fact that other RPG escape this because they are mostly centered around the traditional setup of a group of friends gaming for fun.

Which brings up another salient fact for the difference is that campaigns consisting of strangers are more prevalent today. Back in the day, whether it was D&D, Traveller, or Runequest, there was always some amount of "culture shock" when moving between different groups. Everybody had their quirks both in and out of game. For example gaming at college for the first few months.

When RPGs first hit in my hometown everybody was hopping around playing different campaigns with the same characters. But by 83 to 84 this became less of a thing because of all the arguments this caused with monty haul characters or players complaining that Sherlock on Baker ran things this way and you should too. So it faded away in favor of the more traditional setup with characters made for a specific campaign. And the expectation that the referee (or, in many cases, the group of friends) set the rules.

In the 90s I was part of running events for a LARP chapter that was part of a national organization. While the details differ the same basic problems emerged as I saw earlier when campaign hopping was a thing.

Throughout the middle 80s, 90s, and early 00s I didn't see much of this for tabletop roleplaying, but with Living campaigns and MMORPGs hitting their stride by the late 00s I saw again all the old issues remerge that I saw back when everybody was campaign hopping. With the added wrinkle of folks coming in from MMORPGs and CRPGs.


Now you may not find any of this credible or chalk it up to Rob's limited life experience. If you ran organized gaming like running a LARP chapter or events, running a MMORPG server, managed organized play at a game store, or a convention. Then you will see what I am getting at.

Finally it not I am down on these other form of roleplaying games. I enjoyed all of them a lot and learned how to run and play them well. They have strong points which make them a fun experience to play. But they have weaknesses and limitations as well. Which drags down the tabletop RPG experience when it is brought in.

It is not D&D is that impacted by this either. I have seen this spill over to GURPS, Traveller, and Fate campaigns as well. But again most system don't have a strong organized gaming component. Many have a publisher who sets a good tone which provides a common frame of reference when players get together.


Did somebody make that claim here? Or was it some random asshole making a youtube video.



And who is making that claim? In this thread?

I agree there are folks out there doing this. But they are outliers amid folks like myself, Kevin Crawford, James Mishler and others who are just doing their thing.

I didn't claim anyone in this thread said it, although we have had posters do it on this forum. I was criticizing a common assumption of some in the OSR.

Gus L., Tenfootpole, the Raven's Crowkings Nest blog and a poster here who claimed that only someone with his next-level GM skills could even run a sandbox are just some examples of this idea I've encountered in the wilds of the net. I won't mention that last poster by name as he left the forum and he won't be able respond.

It's been noted before that if one criticizes certain tenets of the OSR here at the Pub it provokes all kinds of umbrage, whereas broad, negative and even outright inaccurate claims about other games don't. That some don't like to hear criticism of their precious is understandable but the inconsistency and goal-post moving becomes boring.

I like sandbox play and I'm quite comfortable running it but it isn't the end-all and be-all way to play all rpgs. That shouldn't be a controversial statement but in some circles it most certainly is.

 

[JoeNuttall]

The claim that the OSR is reviving some supposedly forgotten style of play is blinkered, the least convincing and most chauvinistic stream of 'thought' from the OSR I've encountered.

Plenty of us played D&D in a sandbox style and made rule calls at the table long before the OSR, I figured it out as a teen for christ's sake, let's stop pretending like it's some genius, revolutionary idea discovered from the rpg equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And who is making that claim? In this thread?

I agree there are folks out there doing this. But they are outliers amid folks like myself, Kevin Crawford, James Mishler and others who are just doing their thing.

I didn't claim anyone in this thread said it, although we have had posters do it on this forum. I was criticizing a common assumption of some in the OSR.

Gus L., Tenfootpole, the Raven's Crowkings Nest blog and a poster here who claimed that only someone with his next-level GM skills could even run a sandbox are just some examples of this idea I've encountered in the wilds of net. I won't mention that last poster by name as he left the forum and he won't be able respond.

I've read Raven Crowking's blog quite extensively and I can't recall any claims of the sort. My understanding of his opinion is simply that he thinks campaigns where the DM does not place arbitrary restrictions on the players (which he refers to as a sandbox) are more enjoyable if you like (what he considers to be) the roleplaying aspect of RPGs - and then he gives advice on how to run such a campaign (in the face of much advice elsewhere that such a campaign is undersirable/too much work/can't possibly exist/is a meandering waste of time). Quite a useful online resource really, though I personally don't run a true sandbox.

I'm not talking about academic standards, I'm talking about actually reading something before criticizing it. I've seen numerous repeated claims made that a simple reference to the text would prove wrong.

Forums are for loose discussion and I'm more forgiving there except those with the most strident and dogmatic claims are often the worse for simply never having read what they're attacking.

Too many fans want it both ways, they want their opinions taken seriously and with respect but don't want to put in the minimum required for their opinion to be informed.

So have you some damning quotes from Mr Crowking that prove your point?

It's been noted before that if one criticizes certain tenets of the OSR here at the Pub it provokes all kinds of umbrage, whereas broad, negative and even outright inaccurate claims about other games don't. That some don't like to hear criticism of their precious is understandable but the inconsistency and goal-post moving becomes boring.

You have to remember that D&D is only popular because it was the first RPG (every other game since is better in every way), Gary Gygax was an asshat, OD&D was badly written, AD&D is an over-complex mess, Dungeons are stupid, Classes are stupid, Hitpoints are stupid, all old games are crap, you only like it because of nostlagia anyway, isn't 5E good enough for you, you only didn't play 4E because you're a sad stick-in-the-mud, and some-other-guy-who-isn't-you said something stupid on the internet once and they had similar interests to you so I hate you. You're clearly not enjoying that game, you're deluding yourself, all your players hate you and you're just DMing because you're on a power trip (my childhood was scarred when my brother ran Tomb of Horros and killed my PC and tore up my character sheet and laughed). RPGs would be so much better if D&D had never existed.

It's just sad when people can't handle a bit of criticism ;-)

I think it's clear why people are defensive of the things they like, I think it's also clear why people don't feel the need to rail against Runequest (Ducks???) T&T (Take that you Fiend?) Rolemaster(Chartmaster?) Mythras(Sorry - that gam'es perfect - don't set the geese on me). People make an idle criticism of those games and move on.

 

[ffilz]

I'm curious, outside of the living campaigns which are more or less explicitly a single huge campaign, if anyone still moves characters from campaign to campaign. When I started gaming at MIT in 1979, pretty much everyone there ran D&D, some adopting the AD&D books as they came out and some not. There was one guy among the older gamers who had his own game system. Characters hopping from campaign to campaign mostly happened among the younger (teens and 20s) players, but Glenn Blacow would accept imports to his campaign, and he'd bring his PCs into other campaigns (or at least mine - I don't know how much other crossover there was between the older and younger players).

By the time I left for college in 1981, there was starting to be more gaming in other systems. Some of the younger crowd was trying out Bushido (there was a significant interest in samurai and ninja, Sheldon Price who authored the Ninja in Dragon #16, updated in Dragon #30 was a member of the younger crowd), Traveller, I had run some RuneQuest (and others of the local Wild Hunt crowd also had), and a few other games were happening. It was a little later before I saw Champions and other Hero gaming which eventually almost took over the "multiverse" gamers. By then, moving PCs from campaign to campaign was occurring less often.

I definitely saw rules exploitation happening right from the start. Definitely by the time I got into Champions in college, some of the RPI gamers not only were serious about "min-maxing", they suggested it was a player's obligation to try and break the system. But I know there was plenty of min-maxing at MIT in those years. On the other hand, most players were fine with each GM having their own take on whatever game system they were running. Actually, through all my years of gaming, I've almost never had a player challenge my use of house rules, though sure, some have challenged my logic in making a ruling, sometimes referring to the written rules. I would say I see very little rules lawyering in my recent gaming. On the other hand, I'm running RQ1 and Cold Iron, both older games with players that understand what I'm offering.

 

[Urdlen's best boy]

Minor point but as someone who started w/ 3.5 + cRPGs, we'd do "rulings not rules" any time we forgot what's the rule and/or thought of a better resolution/ etc.

"It's not in the rules" GMing is a thing, I dont doubt it, but it's largely self-inflicted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll second Voros on the strident orthodoxy debunked by simple reading. Haven't read anything ITT I'd qualify as such (agree w/ Sharrow RAW as straight jacket bad, disagree about the whys and hows, but wouldn't say it was dogmatic) but it's common enough and I've seen it even here at the PUB w/ relative frequency. Idk if that's worth dwelling on it here, but trying to paint it as exceptionally rare clashes with my experience.
Ultimately if I go check and learn something I count that as a good thing for me, but I'm also good at not taking seriously the most dogmatic/tribalistic side of some of the more vocal & chauvinistic OSR proponent - the most extreme of which are outright deleterious to the hobby, and are likely to turn off people from sometimes valuable ideas.
edit: and not because of vigorous discussion, that's fine with me. Because of the weird personality cults & similar garbage.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That said I'll throw a wrench and say the word "milieu" occurs 0 times in the DMGs of 3.5 e, 4e, 5e so I do think there was a loss with regards to D&D specifically ( so only indirectly to RPG general) and sandbox play, as I do find the concept important to explain to new DMs (and players). But interestingly, it's a lack of rule/advice that's a problem here, not the crunch. And it's not a skill issue either, or has anything to do with computer games.

Note how 5e didn't bring it back despite the OSR consultants, which leaves me wondering whether they were more concerned with made up revisionist issues...

 

[JoeNuttall]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll second Voros on the strident orthodoxy debunked by simple reading. Haven't read anything ITT I'd qualify as such (agree w/ Sharrow RAW as straight jacket bad, disagree about the whys and hows, but wouldn't say it was dogmatic) but it's common enough and I've seen it even here at the PUB w/ relative frequency. Idk if that's worth dwelling on it here, but trying to paint it as exceptionally rare clashes with my experience.

Actually I think it's extremely common everywhere, on the internet and in real life. My whole life, and in every subject.

It's especially tedious when you have to deal with it at work.

 

[Voros]

The intro to this video is a defense of the abstraction of Gygaxian D&D

One little discussed section of the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, not mentioned in this video as far as I can tell or Grognardia's short review on his blog, is the description of Linear, Open and Matrix adventures and campaigns.

I believe this is where a young Voros would have first read about what we would now call sandbox play, called an 'Open Campaign' here.

It's the one element of the book I remembered well after all the crunch for underground exploration were long forgotten. Revisiting it, I was surprised to discover it's a mere 3-4 pages.

If I remember right Jennell Jaquays also discussed similiar concepts in the 2e Catacombs and Campaign Guide, which was a big influence on my GMing way back when.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I think this might be setting the bar a little high! Discussants here and elsewhere are mainly having fun circling their hobby. Part of that fun is the licence to mix up recollection, nostalgia, opinion and the occasional bit of analysis.

I’ve only noticed one person (Peterson) whose made a fist of “proper” history by publishing books with citations whose factual content and interpretation can be challenged through the standard mechanisms of scholarly discourse.

I want to qualify this with the fact I'm not really talking about people on this forum. I'm not even just talking about the OSR; I'm talking about the broader self identified "old school D&D" peopl.e. There's some overlap but the worst people aren't generally part of the OSR. In fact, you often find they haven't actually played any RPG, D&D or otherwise, for at least 30 years

I mentioned this earlier but there are absolutely people out there who seem to genuinely resent Peterson's work. Not because they disagree with his analysis, but because they're angry about the fact his primary sources disagree with their opinion of what old school RPGs were like.

But I don't think nostalgia or recollection or even opinion are the problem. It's when people make what appear like statements of fact is where a higher standard is needed. (I'm not as anti Grognardia as some but I think this is the major issue with him).

I'm not expecting people to have the same kind of deep dive into fanzines Peterson does. But Dragon and White Dwarf aren't difficult to track down. Neither are interviews with Gygax. There's a lot of stuff out there. So if people are going to state definitely that "this is how D&D was played in the early day" I think it's fair to expect them to have taken the two minutes out of their day to read Blacow's player typeologies. And even more I think it's fair to have expected people to actually read the AD&D DMG before they start spouting off demonstratably false stuff about how it recommends 3d6 down the line.

Different analysis of the original rulebooks are great and to be expected. But there's far too much being spouted by people who seemingly haven't read them.

 

[robb]

I think it's fair to have expected people to actually read the AD&D DMG before they start spouting off demonstratably false stuff about how it recommends 3d6 down the line.

To be fair there are a lot of old editions with different nuances, like 3d6 down the line or not.
It is easy for newer people to get confused by what is "old d&d".

Also massive DM power and cargo cults was the norm. It is quite possible to have played
1e for years with a DM that insisted on 3d6 down the line to the point where you had internalized it.
and I can easily imagine it being spewed onto the Internet 30 years later.

 

[T. Foster]

To be fair there are a lot of old editions with different nuances, like 3d6 down the line or not.
It is easy for newer people to get confused by what is "old d&d".

Also massive DM power and cargo cults was the norm. It is quite possible to have played
1e for years with a DM that insisted on 3d6 down the line to the point where you had internalized it.
and I can easily imagine it being spewed onto the Internet 30 years later.

Which is a big part of the issue with talking about old D&D (less so with other rpgs of similar vintage which tended to be a lot more clearly written and also appealed to older and more experienced players): almost everybody tends to generalize whatever weird cargo-cult and telephone-game Frankenstein version of D&D they played as a kid into “how everybody played.” So you get people who only played homebrew sandboxes and people who only played published modules, people who always used minis and people who never used minis, people who always spoke in character and people who never spoke in character, people who were heavily into PvP and evil PCs and people who wouldn’t even consider it, people who mixed editions freely (and maybe weren’t even aware that there were multiple editions) and people who never did that, people who used tons of third party material (Arduin, Arms Law, The Arcanum, etc) and people who wouldn’t even look at a non-TSR book, people who read Dragon magazine religiously and people who never saw an issue, and so on and so forth, and almost all of them insist the way their childhood DM played is how everyone played and anyone claiming contrary experiences is lying or at best part of some statistically insignificant bizarre fringe of people who played wrong.

AFAICT most people who didn’t attend cons and play in RPGA-sanctioned games had no idea until going online to Dragonsfoot or wherever that their childhood group’s house rules and customs and misinterpretations weren’t shared universally (and the con-goers and RPGA players (like me) aren’t immune either because we all assumed everyone was playing like us and were incredulous to hear how vastly different many isolated home groups were in their practices than what we were doing).

ETA: I’m not complaining about this. I actually think it’s really cool that so many people had such widely different experiences with the game and everybody kind of subconsciously drifted and adapted it to something that worked for them and that that adaptability (even though TSR tried to squelch it) is a big part of why the game was so popular and “sticky” - a true organic folk tradition. It just makes it hard when people on the internet or at cons start telling each other they’re doing it wrong and it turns into a whole macho dicksizing thing.

 

[Urdlen's best boy]

Actually I think it's extremely common everywhere, on the internet and in real life. My whole life, and in every subject.

It's especially tedious when you have to deal with it at work.

No disagreement here, sadly.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Which is a big part of the issue with talking about old D&D (less so with other rpgs of similar vintage which tended to be a lot more clearly written and also appealed to older and more experienced players): almost everybody tends to generalize whatever weird cargo-cult and telephone-game Frankenstein version of D&D they played as a kid into “how everybody played.” So you get people who only played honebrew sandboxes and people who only played published modules and people who mixed editions freely )and maybe weren’t even aware that there were multiple editions) and people who never did that, people who used tons of third party material (Arduin, Arms Law, The Arcanum, etc) and people who wouldn’t even look at a non-TSR book, people who read Dragon magazine religiously and people who never saw an issue, and so on and so forth, and almost all of them insist the way their childhood DM played is how everyone played and anyone claiming contrary experiences is lying or at best part of some statistically insignificant bizarre fringe of people who played wrong.

Regional variations in the UK were massive as well as individual group variations. So I can only imagine what that must have been like in a country where conventions weren't at most a six hour train ride away from where you were.

 

[AsenRG]

Minor point but as someone who started w/ 3.5 + cRPGs, we'd do "rulings not rules" any time we forgot what's the rule and/or thought of a better resolution/ etc.

And often, when you check afterwards, you'd realize your houserule is better than the official one, or alternatively, that you've guessed the rule almost exactly...
(Granted, sometimes the actual rule is much better than your hastily-thrown-together kludge, but IME those are actually in the minority. That's why I like robertsconley 's approach to playtesting so much).

Talking from experience, I am, and it's not even about the system...

I want to qualify this with the fact I'm not really talking about people on this forum. I'm not even just talking about the OSR; I'm talking about the broader self identified "old school D&D" peopl.e. There's some overlap but the worst people aren't generally part of the OSR. In fact, you often find they haven't actually played any RPG, D&D or otherwise, for at least 30 years

...please remind me, then, why are we discussing their opinions, instead of excluding them like so much useless noise from someone who's out of the loop?

I mentioned this earlier but there are absolutely people out there who seem to genuinely resent Peterson's work. Not because they disagree with his analysis, but because they're angry about the fact his primary sources disagree with their opinion of what old school RPGs were like.

Well, they can resent it all they like!

Different analysis of the original rulebooks are great and to be expected. But there's far too much being spouted by people who seemingly haven't read them.

While I agree with you 100%, now you know how Traveller players feel about the "you can die in chargen" meme...

 

[Sharrow]

I agree. I've encountered all those types of players, but it's not always that kind of progression. A lot of people come to TTRPGs from video games, which means they are already in a "stage 2" mindset.

I first came up with these categories in the early 90s. There was more of a mental separation of the two types of gaming then (at least where I was).

And the 3rd is not 'playing the system' - that's more the 2nd. The 3rd is having enough system mastery that you can describe how to do things that aren't explicitly described by the rules using the rules, and also knowing when the RAW just won't handle something, and then making a ruling (or asking for one, if a player), and not just choosing some 'by the rules' option.

 

[TristramEvans]

I first came up with these categories in the early 90s. There was more of a mental separation of the two types of gaming then (at least where I was).

And the 3rd is not 'playing the system' - that's more the 2nd. The 3rd is having enough system mastery that you can describe how to do things that aren't explicitly described by the rules using the rules, and also knowing when the RAW just won't handle something, and then making a ruling (or asking for one, if a player), and not just choosing some 'by the rules' option.

I think conflating the GMs and players is conceptually a bit of a mess. Because the 1st preference can ONLY be players, 2nd is now "feeling confined by the rules but also gaming the rules to achieve your ends" which are too contradictory to describe the same category, and third involves using the system to make rulings or" ask for rulings" (? that isn't how Rulings not Rules works) but isn't "gaming the system" because...reasons? Like, it's literally a description of gaming the system: using system mastery to achieve one's ends in the game, if it's describing a player. But this is somehow suppose to encompass the GM and players roles?


I honestly think all attempts to categorize gamers eventually fall into these logic traps, and it's just best to not do it really.

There are better things to categorize that are conceptually cleaner and far more logical.

 

[Urdlen's best boy]

And often, when you check afterwards, you'd realize your houserule is better than the official one, or alternatively, that you've guessed the rule almost exactly...
(Granted, sometimes the actual rule is much better than your hastily-thrown-together kludge, but IME those are actually in the minority. That's why I like @

robertsconley 's approach to playtesting so much).

Talking from experience, I am, and it's not even about the system...

Yep, to it's credit most of the 3.0/3.5 rules are relatively intuitive to the d20 framework (with huge exceptions like feats or grappling, but then those are the ones best ignored or homebrewed)

Plus it didn't tell you that you need every rule etc. It's more of a AD&D thing when Gygax was saying stuff like "you can change the rules but then you're not playing AD&D and players have the right to leave and buh and buh and buh..."

Speaking of I still count 3.5 Unearthed Arcana in the best D&D books ever (3 class system, wound system, reputation, armor as DR... )
Really goes to show WOTC era D&D designers can pull off interesting stuff... if corporate lets them... or at least they could at the time