To have a measuring stick for something, first you must be willing to exclude.  Otherwise there's no point in measuring.  This is where gamers' competing desires to classify, and also to never be called mean, collide like the irresistible force meeting the immovable object

I'm fine with OSR failing to qualify as a precise classification.  I don't really care if anyone is included or excluded.  But the reason there is no measurement is because any time one is proposed it goes something like this:

"I propose OSR is defined as X"

"What?! I like Y, and think I should be able to call myself 'old school' too.  Are you saying I'm not old school?"

"Uh, no.  I wouldn't want to make you upset by defining you outside of 'old school'"

And so it's just an adjective that anyone can use for any reason on themselves or what they sell, but also one that enough people use a certain way that it still is understood by most to mean "early D&D"

Like "story", "old school" is only useful as a more precise term when it is used in a small group discussion where everyone agrees (if only for sake of that discussion) on the boundaries.  Outside of that environment, it can be useful as a signal that one would enjoy participating in such a discussion.  Of course, it is right at the boundaries where the most interesting discussion takes place.  If, for example, nearly everyone accepts that a dungeon crawl with a lot of chances for character death is probably old school, then there isn't much to say about it beyond why that it is true.

Waitaminnit.

The New School idea of "Telling Story ®" is bullshit. They're "participating in happenings." Happening isn't story. Story is what comes after happenings.

So don't advance that BS. It's logical fallacy. The SJWs so much enjoy transmuting words to mean what THEY WANT despite what the words have always meant to Humanity.

You want to practice Deconstructionism, let's do it. And I'll crush you. This is the idea of what playing an RPG is, the very foundation of the battle.

SJWs want D&D to be FATE. It isn't that game. Orcs can't be Black people in a setting with Black adventurers who are human. It's only white, priveledged SJWs projecting their inherited racism on the game.

Stop.

Step back and ask yourself does your crusade make sense. It doesn't.

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 03, 2021, 01:54:30 PM
Step back and ask yourself does your crusade make sense. It doesn't.

My only crusade is that One True Wayist OSR nuts can die in the same fire as the SJW One True Wayist nuts. Both are more concerned with telling other people they're having fun in the wrong way than in actually HAVING FUN.

If the first goal of your game is not "how do we ensure everyone participating will have an enjoyable experience", but pushing some agenda, then you have failed as a game designer.

I would think we would all agree that unspecified and unnamed people who act like dicks should stop acting like dicks.

Quote from: TJS on February 03, 2021, 03:37:37 PM
I would think we would all agree that unspecified and unnamed people who act like dicks should stop acting like dicks.

But if I stop acting like a dick, and the other dicks here did the same, our traffic would plummet!

QuoteAs for one true wayism - thank god for that.  You can't actually push any kind of worthwhile creative agenda unless you think you have a better way.

Well only not... that is not matter of creative agenda, it's matter of political agenda. Fact that there is somehow more, and more visible anti-SJW element among OSR, flows from simple fact, lot of OSRians are well older players, not used to SJW nonsense, and raised on old D&D. This is not a war between OSR and PBTA, this is a war between SJW and non-SJW, and pushing one true gaming-wayism in a way is just turning it into edition flame.

QuoteWhenever someone complains about the strength of others' opinions, it is just a sign that their belief in their own opinions is weak.  The weak-minded hate self-assuredness.

Well being fanatic in terms of variant of leisure is a foolishness, worthy of complain. I encourage political, religious and philosophical fanatism. Being fanatic of leisure type is WEAK AS FUCK.

QuoteThe DM is to have no agency

DM has the same agency as usual. Being honest and judging rules, and having rules is not taking agency from DM. Otherwise we can just play storygames where DM can judge anything in any way.

QuoteFor me, one of the "tells" that something is not OSR is the sense that there is no longer wonder in magic, that magic is just another perfectly predictable "effect" to serve as a mechanical piece for a "build";

I must say spell descriptors from older editions does not look any more mystical and mysterious compared to 3e. I mean... if you want mysterious magic - any edition of D&D is about worse choice you can take. Ever. Unless your DM full of agency randomly changes spell effects then sure.

QuoteThe New School idea of "Telling Story ®" is bullshit. They're "participating in happenings." Happening isn't story. Story is what comes after happenings.

Primo, there were RPGs for a long time that really was storytelling basically without gaming.
Second, difference between happening and story is a narrative structure - any game that have mechanism maintaining narrative structure of a session - is a narrative, storytelling game in a way. Like Blades in the Dark for instance.

QuoteSo don't advance that BS. It's logical fallacy. The SJWs so much enjoy transmuting words to mean what THEY WANT despite what the words have always meant to Humanity.

Words for humanity shifted meanings and context almost every few generations.
Now this is just pointless, authistic wordgames.
People understand what narrative/storytelling games are, and no matter how much you gonna cry those are happening games... people won't use it. Also because it just sounds lame, while storytelling game sounds cool and rock and roll.

QuoteYou want to practice Deconstructionism, let's do it. And I'll crush you. This is the idea of what playing an RPG is, the very foundation of the battle.

That's just perfect comedy, I have to admit.

QuoteSJWs want D&D to be FATE. It isn't that game. Orcs can't be Black people in a setting with Black adventurers who are human. It's only white, priveledged SJWs projecting their inherited racism on the game.

OK, but what does it have to do with storytelling problem?

I'm kewl with One True Way for myself and my table. I know what I like, I know what works best for me as a GM, what works best for me as a player, and I know that other players keep coming back to my table to dance and play in my One True Way.

I never gave a shit how others play at their table, except when the retard brigade started declaring what is / was / will be the hobby.

BTW, I think D6 would do "heroic fantasy" better than OSR D&D which isn't built to be cinematic. For me, OSR D&D works best as "dungeon horror" or "brutal apocalypse" or other genres where death is very present for the player characters. In my mind, "heroic fantasy" is more akin to Star Wars where few heroes die, even when they fail.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 02, 2021, 07:53:26 AM(short version; don't have assholes introduce your game system; players will associate your system with the bad experience... slightly longer version; there are lots of systems that do heroic fantasy better than the versions of D&D that the OSR fetishizes ever did).

I'm not alone in that assessment. If the OSR-style play were really the end-all-be-all of gaming we wouldn't have gotten games outside that style as early as the 80s.

Frankly, my impression is that the OSR as a movement is too stuck up its own ass with One True Wayists who despise any concepts outside of Tolkien-derived races, AD&D classes (or race-as-class) at most. Those types love to crap all over things like tieflings, dragonborn, warlocks and warlords or being able to customize a character in ways other than magic item acquisition. While this is a bit of a generalization, I've felt it a LOT from the developers of OSR products.

It doesn't help that the "movement" has scattered itself across dozens of variant lines instead of a singular product (ex. D&D, Pathfinder, Vampire the Masquerade as only three lines to seriously capture non-trivial percentage of the RPG market).

1: Oh so very true and sad that some here cannot grasp that at all.

2: um. Theres been all sorts of RPGs practically right out the gate. Themes, Systems, Settings, etc. But one of the reasons D&D gets copied so often is because it is a surprisingly solid system at its core and gets the job done with the fewest moving parts for that core. Yet is flexible enough you can add on endless widgets or retheme it and run with little effort. But even without that the nature of the game will tend to push design to certain patterns that can and will look rather similar. Stats, Classes, Races, Damage, etc.

3: Unfortunately true for some. Not all. But theres some definite bad eggs in the lot who have positioned themselves to try and lord it over everyone else. Luckily that just does not really work when all someone has to do is step around them and do as they please. And people have.

4: Well then which do you want? The OSR locked down into one pattern? Or the OSR fractured into dozens of patterns, some of which are direct attempts to bypass the OSR gatekeepers?

The dividing line for Narrative / Storytelling games and Traditional RPGs is easily defined by WHEN the story happens. If the story of what happened can only be told after the RPG play is done, it's a traditional RPG.

It's also easily defined by the role of the DM. In Traditional RPGs, the DM controls the world and the players dictate their characters' actions. If players can dictate what happens in the world beyond their own PC's actions, then it's a narrative/storytelling game.

The stupidity is trying to make believe these two very different games are both RPGs. It's equally dumb as trying to pretend CRPGs and LARPS are the same game. We can call a dozen things "rpgs", but improper and sloppy naming isn't going to make them the same.

Spell descriptions in 3e onward do not appear any more mystical, that is true, but in prior editions players did not insist to me that a poorly worded description in a spell write up should work exactly as written with a legalistic/rules lawyer/computer logic reading of such, if they a expected a spell to have an effect and you ruled a slight variation for the circumstances they did not spaz out and insist they were entitled to exactly the possible summons listed in the phb. They also never tried to diplomacy roll a king into giving up his crown or a dragon into having sexual relations and then insist if this did not occur that you'd cheated them of skill ranks. The problem was never descriptions, the problem was a mindset carried by players that had no experience with prior editions and made "builds" rather than "characters".

Quote from: Theory of Games on February 03, 2021, 01:54:30 PM
Waitaminnit.

The New School idea of "Telling Story ®" is bullshit. They're "participating in happenings." Happening isn't story. Story is what comes after happenings.

Except its not a new concept in any way shape or form.

Instead what you have is a new cult trying to push it as TRUE role playing. And invariably as all fanatics do. They eventually extend RPG to mean "everything on earth" and the term no longer has any meaning when they use it.

THIS is the problem. Not storygamers themselves. Its this cult that treats RPGs like a sex fetish and sets out to infiltrate and co-opt everything they can to push that agenda. And we are allready seeing the exact same thing forming in the OSR, just not as pervasive or hostile. Yet.

There may well come a time when we will be sitting here discussing how bad the OSR cult is as it co-opts and damages more and more games. Unlikely to be sure. But considering how these cults keep gaining momentum, it is still a possibility as long as we have more than a few nuts in the OSR.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West
Well only not... that is not matter of creative agenda, it's matter of political agenda. Fact that there is somehow more, and more visible anti-SJW element among OSR, flows from simple fact, lot of OSRians are well older players, not used to SJW nonsense, and raised on old D&D. This is not a war between OSR and PBTA, this is a war between SJW and non-SJW, and pushing one true gaming-wayism in a way is just turning it into edition flame.

WTF?  I thought one true wayism is about playing games?  Not politics.  The OSR is not fundamentally anti-SJW - that's just the Pundit.  The OSR as a whole has always been fundamentally anti-political and that's what it must hold to.

QuoteWell being fanatic in terms of variant of leisure is a foolishness, worthy of complain. I encourage political, religious and philosophical fanatism. Being fanatic of leisure type is WEAK AS FUCK.

Excluded middle.  Thinking that A is better than B doesn't make one a fanatic, it makes one a human being with a fundamental ability to recognise one's own mind.

An awful lot of political bullshit about games and any kind of media is because people have bought into the fundamentally stupid idea that one cannot talk about aesthetic preferences at all without it being fundamentally abritrary.

Of course being humans, people do have opinions so they channel it into bad faith arguments.  Rather than try to make a case for why my aesthetic preferences should be upheld I will instead try the bad faith tactic of moving the conversation to the political realm and accusing you of evil.

Quote from: Omega on February 04, 2021, 07:21:22 PM
2: um. Theres been all sorts of RPGs practically right out the gate. Themes, Systems, Settings, etc. But one of the reasons D&D gets copied so often is because it is a surprisingly solid system at its core and gets the job done with the fewest moving parts for that core. Yet is flexible enough you can add on endless widgets or retheme it and run with little effort. But even without that the nature of the game will tend to push design to certain patterns that can and will look rather similar. Stats, Classes, Races, Damage, etc.

Yeah, already corrected a few posts back. I was speaking in a general not a literal sense. The point beyond the specific date applies regardless.

Quote from: Omega on February 04, 2021, 07:21:22 PM4: Well then which do you want? The OSR locked down into one pattern? Or the OSR fractured into dozens of patterns, some of which are direct attempts to bypass the OSR gatekeepers?

It's not a matter of what I want; I know the OSR is not for me, so its also not for me to say which way it should go.

My point was more about WHY the OSR won't be able to take over the position of D&D if WotC were to collapse. The only systems that have ever come close; Pathfinder c. 2008-2013 and Vampire the Masquerade in the late 90's; were singular systems, not a gaming movement with dozens of different variant systems.

You could sit down at any Pathfinder or VtM table and know what the rules are and you only really the core book for the most part. There is no one singular core rulebook for the OSR... each OSR game has its own slightly different core rules book and while collectively you might have some numbers, the odds of finding another table playing the exact same OSR system in the same area are pretty slim (whereas in any reasonable population center you could find multiple Pathfinder or, back in the day, Vampire tables... just as you can find multiple 5e tables even in smaller cities/towns).

Quote from: EOTB on February 03, 2021, 01:08:47 AM
To have a measuring stick for something, first you must be willing to exclude. 

Exclusion is the road to excellence!