The Retired Adventurer

7/13/2021 The Retired Adventurer: Six Cultures of Play
mais
The Retired Adventurer
Popular Posts Apr 6, 2021 Post
Six Cultures of ▼
▼
Play Six Cultures of Play ►

►
A Time Tracker In this post I am going to present the taxonomy of the six main play cultures as well as a few notes ▼
▼
For You about their historical origins. I am doing this to help people from different play cultures both
understand their own values better as well as to encourage stronger and more productive cross-
A Procedure for
Wandering
cultural discussion. ►
►
Monsters
There are at least six main cultures of play that have emerged over the course of the roleplaying game ►
►
hobby. There may be more: my analysis is mainly restricted to English-language RPG cultures, tho' at
Other People ►
►
least three of them have significant non-English presences as well. In addition to these six cultures,
Liche's Libram there's a proto-culture that existed from 1970-1976 before organisation into cultures really began. ►
►
turbo tag: the

►
►
simple quick A culture of play is a set of shared norms (goals, values, taboos, etc.), considerations, and techniques
combat system ►
►
you already know that inform a group of people who are large enough that they are not all in direct contact with one
how to run another (let's call that a "community"). These cultures of play are transmitted through a variety of ►
►
2 hours ago media, ranging from books and adventures to individuals teaching one another to magazine articles to ►
►
There Could online streaming shows. A culture of play is broadly similar to a "network of practice" if you're
Have Been ►
►
familiar with that jargon.

Snakes
The Keep on ►
►
Yeoldelands – Individuals in the hobby, having been aligned to and trained in one or more of these cultures, then
Session 3 develop individual styles. I want to point out that I think talking about specific games as inherently Tagg
5 hours ago
part of some culture is misleading, because games can be played in multiple different styles in line
H
Throne of Salt with the values of different cultures. But, many games contain text that advocates for them to be
The War of the R
played in a way that is in line with a particular culture, or they contain elements that express the
Bull, In Detail O
5 hours ago creator's adoption of a particular culture's set of values.
D
DMDavid The Six Cultures T
Add Tension and
Interesting 1) Classic S
Choices to D&D W
Adventures With Classic play is oriented around the linked progressive development of challenges and PC power, with N
This Potion
the rules existing to help keep those in rough proportion to one another and adjudicate the M
6 hours ago
interactions of the two "fairly". This is explicit in the AD&D 1e DMG's advice to dungeon masters, R
Dyson's but recurs in a number of other places, perhaps most obviously in tournament modules, especially
Dodecahedron M
The Fallen House the R-series put out by the RPGA in its first three years of operation, which emphasise periodic resets
M
of Githaleon between sections of the adventure to create a "fair" experience for players as they cycle around from
20 hours ago E
tournament table to tournament table playing the sections.
S
The Nine and
Thirty N
The focus on challenge-based play means lots of overland adventure and sprawling labyrinths and it
Kingdoms T
Treasure Codes: recycles the same notation to describe towns, which are also treated as sites of challenge. At some
N
How Coins Work point, PCs become powerful enough to command domains, and this opens up the scope of
21 hours ago T
challenges further, by allowing mass hordes to engage in wargame-style clashes. The point of playing
I
https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.com/2021/04/six-cultures-of-play.html 1/14
Campaign the game in classic play is not to tell a story (tho' it's fine if you do), but rather the focus of play is A
Mastery
Take Two And coping with challenges and threats that smoothly escalate in scope and power as the PCs rise in level. F
Call Again The idea of longer campaigns with slow but steady progression in PC power interrupted only by the 4
22 hours ago
occasional death is a game play ideal for classic culture. T
Notes From
Pavis This comes into being sometime between 1976-1977, when Gygax shifts from his early idea that D
Updating the D
MeG Spirits –
OD&D is a "non-game" into trying to stabilise the play experience. It starts with him denouncing
Sickness Spirits "Dungeons and Beavers" and other deviations from his own style in the April 1976 Strategic Review, P
1 day ago but this turns into a larger shift in TSR's publishing schedule from 1977 onwards. Specifically, they V
Dungeon begin providing concrete play examples - sample dungeons and scenarios, including modules - and W
Fantastic specific advice about proper play procedures and values to consumers. P
Call of Cthulhu
Kickstarter P
This shift begins with the publication of Holmes Basic (1977) and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1977),
1 day ago
before eventually culminating in AD&D (1977-1979) and the Mentzer-written BECMI (1983-1986) P
The Wasted line. Judges Guild, the RPGA, Dragon Magazine, and even other publishers (e.g. Mayfair Games) get M
Lands
Coming Soon: on board with this and spread Classic norms around before Gygax and Mentzer leave TSR in late
The Night 1985 / early 1986. Judges Guild loses its license to print D&D material in 1985, and the RPGA's
Companion for
tournaments have shifted away from classic play by about 1983. Most of the other creators at TSR
Night Shift: VSW
1 day ago have shifted to "trad" (see below) by the mid-1980s, and so the institutional support for this style
starts dries up, even tho' people continue to run and play in "classic" games.
Delta's D&D
Hotspot
Violence Classic is revived in the early 2000s when the holdouts who've continued to play in that style use the
Inherent in the internet to come together on forums like Dragonsfoot, Knights and Knaves Alehouse, and others,
System (of Art)
and this revival is part of what motivates OSRIC (2006) to be released. NB: This is the only name in
1 day ago
this essay where it's not an autonym used by the practitioners themselves, tho' Gus L. of All Dead
Into the Odd Generations is interested in many of their ideas and does call his own style "Classic".
Primordial
Spellbook - The
Book of the One weird quirk of history is that people who were trying to revive classic in the early 2000s are often
Cosmic Serpent lumped into the OSR, despite the two groups really having distinct norms and values. Some of the
1 day ago confusion is because a few key notable individuals (e.g. Matt Finch) actually did shift from being
tenfootpole.org classic revivalists to being early founders of the OSR. Because both groups are interested in challenge-
Griff’s Vale based play, even if they have different takes on challenge's meaning, there are moment of productive
1 day ago
overlap and interaction (and also lots of silly disputes and sneering; such is life).
From the
Sorcerer's Skull This intermingling of people from different play cultures who initially appear to be part of the same
Dark Sun: The
movement but turn out to be interested in different things is pretty common - story games and
Shadow King of
Nibenay Nordic LARP go through a similar intermingling before they split off into different things (more on
1 day ago that in a sec).
Seed of Worlds
Shiny TTRPG 2) Trad (short for "traditional")
links collection
#25 Its own adherents and advocates call it "trad", but we shouldn't think of it as the oldest way of
1 day ago
roleplaying (it is not). Trad is not what Gary and co. did (that's "classic"), but rather is the reaction to
Elfmaids & what they were doing.
Octopi
Oaths of
Trad holds that the primary goal of a game is to tell an emotionally satisfying narrative, and the DM is
Brightness &
Darkness the primary creative agent in making that happen - building the world, establishing all the details of
1 day ago the story, playing all the antagonists, and doing so mostly in line with their personal tastes and vision.
Tales of the The PCs can contribute, but their contributions are secondary in value and authority to the DM's. If
Grotesque and you ever hear people complain about (or exalt!) games that feel like going through a fantasy novel,
Dungeonesque
Van Richten's that's trad. Trad prizes gaming that produces experiences comparable to other media, like movies,
Guide to novels, television, myths, etc., and its values often encourage adapting techniques from those media.
Ravenloft: Tepest
and Valachan Trad emerges in the late 1970s, with an early intellectually hub in the Dungeons and Beavers crew at
1 day ago
Caltech, but also in Tracy and Laura Hickman's gaming circle in Utah. The defining incident for
Trollsmyth Tracy was evidently running into a vampire in a dungeon and thinking that it really needed a story to
Using the Real
explain what it was doing down there wandering around. Hickman wrote a series of adventures in
World to Create
Post-apocalyptic 1980 (the Night Verse series) that tried to bring in more narrative elements, but the company that was
Maps supposed to publish them went bust. So he decided to sell them to TSR instead, and they would only
1 day ago buy them if he came to work for them. So in 1982, he went to work at TSR and within a few years,
I'll See It When I his ideas would spread throughout the company and become its dominant vision of "roleplaying".
Believe It
More MOSAIC Trad gets its first major publication articulating its vision of play outside of TSR in Sandy Petersen's
Strict Sets!
Call of Cthulhu (1981), which tells readers that the goal of play is to create an experience like a horror
1 day ago
story, and provides specific advice (the "onion layer" model) for creating that. The values of trad
Dragons Never crystallise as a major and distinct culture of play in D&D with the Ravenloft (1983) and Dragonlance
Forget
Dyvers: The (1984) modules written by Hickman. TSR published Ravenloft in response to Call of Cthulhu's
Alliance is critical and commercial success, and then won a fistful of awards and sold tons of copies themselves.
Everywhere
2 days ago
Within a few years, the idea of "roleplaying, not rollplaying" and the importance of a Dungeon Master
Gundobad creating an elaborate, emotionally-satisfying narrative had taken over. I think probably the ability to
Games
GMing Knacks: import terms and ideas from other art forms probably helped a great deal as well, since understanding
some tricks that trad could be done by anyone who'd gone through a few humanities classes in university.
save me time &
headaches when I Trad is the hegemonic culture of play from at least the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, and it's still a
run games fairly common style of play. For an example of a fairly well-thought through style of trad by someone
2 days ago
who's been influential on the last 15 or so years, check out S. John Ross's RPG Lexicon.
Box Full of
Boxes Both of the next two styles emerge out of problems with trad, especially the experience of playing
Magic, Madness,
& Sadness Part Vampire (a tradder-than-trad game in its authors' aspirations), but the details of that are larger than
IV - A Sense of this essay can contain so I'm just going to mention it and leave it for another time.
Enchantment
3 days ago
3) Nordic Larp
Methods &
Madness This is again an autonym. The "Nordic" part is more about origins and mass of the player base than a
Minimalist D&D
XII - twelve
true regional limitation of any sort. The "Larp" designation is part of the name for reasons that are
classes; what are unclear to me, even tho' its ideas started in tabletop roleplaying, and its philosophy and aspirations are
your favorite realisable in tabletop games just as much as in dress-up games. (Edit: Spelling it as if it wasn't an
features?
acronym is a shibboleth of Nordic Larp, so in keeping with the autonym principle I've edited it to
3 days ago
follow that convention when referring to the culture, but kept the activity as LARP)
In My
Campaign Nordic Larp is built around the idea that the primary goal of a roleplaying game is immersion in an
Polyhedral
Pantheons: Won’t experience. Usually in a specific character's experiences, but sometimes in another kind of experience
You Be My where player and character are not sharply distinguished - the experimental Jeep group often uses
Neighbor? abstract games to affect the player directly. The more "bleed" you can create between a player and the
3 days ago
role they occupy within the game, the better. Nordic Larps often feature quite long "sessions" (like
The Lizard Man weekend excursions) followed by long debriefs in which one processes the experiences one had as the
Diaries
The White Sea character.
3 days ago
Show All Embedding the player's character within a larger story can be one way of producing vivid, absorbing
experiences, but it's not necessary and may even interfere with pulling it off (especially when done
badly). Nordic Larp players emphasise their collaborative aspects, but when you drill into this, it's a
rejection of trad's idea of a single DM-auteur crafting an experience, and the collaboration is there in
service of improving immersion by blending player and character agency more thoroughly.
I think LARP conjures up images of people doing fantasy cosplay, and there are sometimes elements
of that in some Nordic Larps, but I actually think the trend has been away from fantastical games to
scenarios and set-ups that are closer to real life since it allows the incorporation of modern
architecture, technology, and other details from the real world to facilitate immersion.
Nordic Larp's first major publication that I know of is the very self-conscious Manifesto of the Turku
School by Mike Pohjola in 2000, and I think the early community is in dialogue with the Forge crew,
tho' the two groups have very different ideals of play. By 2005 you have specific groups like Jeep
developing these ideas, and in 2010 you get the publication of the Nordic Larp book. Nowadays
there's also a wiki and an official website.
Nordic Larp is the part of roleplaying that seems to receive the most grants and funding for academic
study. I'm never sure why, tho' I suspect some of it has to do with the interest in commodifying
LARP ideas to create immersive entertainment experiences for tourists at mega-resorts in the Gulf
Cooperation Council countries. I'm not going to link to any specific individuals connected to Nordic
Larp who have jobs there to avoid doxing private individuals, but they exist (please don't dox anyone
in the comments, either).
4) Story Games
Again, an autonym. Most people who dislike them call them stuff like "Forge games" or "post-Forge
indies" after the Forge indie RPG forums. "Indie RPGs" was a term for these at one point as well, but
I don't think it was particularly distinctive or edifying, and evidently neither did the adherents to this
culture since they mostly abandoned it. Here's a post discussing the origin of the term "story game"
from Across the Table.
The Big Model is notoriously obtuse and post-Forge theory has a lot of ideas I strongly disagree with,
but I think a fair characterisation of their position that doesn't use their own terminology is that the
ideal play experience minimises ludonarrative dissonance. A good game has a strong consonance
between the desires of the people playing it, the rules themselves, and the dynamics of the those things
interacting. Together, these things allow the people to achieve their desires, whatever they may be.
"Incoherence" is to be avoided as creating "zilch play" or "brain damage" as Ron Edwards once called
it.
The story games crowd, to their credit, is willing to be very radical in terms of techniques towards that
end - both the mechanics proper and the development of positions (story gamers often call them
"Creative Agendas") like "narrativism" are meant to produce consonance and avoid dissonance on as
many levels as they can picture it happening.
Story games starts with Ron Edwards in 1999, when he writes System Does Matter and sets up the
Forge. By 2004 you have the Provisional Glossary and the Big Model, and one million arguments on
the internet about what is or isn't "narrativist" and how much brain damage RPGs are causing, etc.
The Story games forums themselves are founded in 2006 as a successor to the Forge. For the past
decade, the big cluster of story game design has tended to orient itself around "Powered by the
Apocalypse" games patterned after or building on Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker.
BTW, if you want a great example of someone applying the cultural norms of story games to a game
that was written to be played in a trad way, The Sacrament of Death by Eero Tuovinen describes his
experiences doing just that.
5) The OSR ("Old School Renaissance / Revival")
Yes, it's this late in this chronological listing. And yes, the OSR is not "classic" play. It's a romantic
reinvention, not an unbroken chain of tradition.
The OSR draws on the challenge-based gameplay from the proto-culture of D&D and combines it
with an interest in PC agency, particularly in the form of decision-making. The goal is a game where
PC decision-making, especially diegetic decision-making, is the driver of play. I think you can see this
in a very pure form in the advice Chris McDowall gives out on his blog for running Into the Odd and
Electric Bastionland.
An important note I will make here is to distinguish the progressive challenge-based play of the
"classic" culture from the more variable challenge-based play of the OSR. The OSR mostly doesn't
care about "fairness" in the context of "game balance" (Gygax did). The variation in player agency
across a series of decisions is far more interesting to most OSR players than it is to classic players.
The OSR specifically refuses the authoritative mediation of a pre-existing rules structure in order to
encourage diegetic interactions using what S. John Ross would call "ephemeral
resources" and "invisible rulebooks", and that the OSR calls "playing the world" and "player skill",
respectively. Basically, by not being bound by the rules, you can play with a wider space of resources
that contribute to framing differences in PC agency in potentially very precise and finely graded ways,
and this allows you to throw a wider variety of challenges at players for them to overcome. I could
write an entire post on just what random tables are meant to do, but they tie into the variance in
agency and introduce surprise and unpredictability, ensuring that agency does vary over time.
I tend to date the start of the OSR from shortly after the publication of OSRIC (2006), which blew
open the ability to use the OGL to republish the mechanics of old, pre-3.x D&D. With this new
option, you had people who mainly wanted to revive AD&D 1e as a living game, and people who
wanted to use old rule-sets as a springboard for their own creations. 2007 brought Labyrinth Lord,
and the avalanche followed thereafter. The early OSR had Grognardia to provide it with a
reconstructed vision of the past to position itself as the inheritors of, it had distinct intellectual
developments like "Melan diagrams" of dungeons and Chris Kutalik's pointcrawls, and I would say it
spent the time between 2006 and roughly 2012 forming its norms into a relatively self-consistent
body of ideas about proper play.
6) OC / Neo-trad
This is the only one of the terms that isn't fully an autonym, tho' "OC" can be appended to a "looking
for game" post online to recruit people from this culture consistently, so it's closer. I also call it "neo-
trad", firstly because the OC RPG culture shares a lot of the same norms as trad, secondly because I
think people who belong to this culture believe they are part of trad. You also see this style sometimes
called "the modern style" when being contrasted to the OSR. Here's an example of someone who calls
it "neo-trad" elaborating a very pure vision of the style (tho' I disagree with the list of games provided
as examples of neo-trad at the end of the article). On Reddit, "OC" is often called "modern" as in "the
modern way to play" or "modern games".
OC basically agrees with trad that the goal of the game is to tell a story, but it deprioritises the
authority of the DM as the creator of that story and elevates the players' roles as contributors and
creators. The DM becomes a curator and facilitator who primarily works with material derived from
other sources - publishers and players, in practice. OC culture has a different sense of what a "story" is,
one that focuses on player aspirations and interests and their realisation as the best way to produce
"fun" for the players.
This focus on realising player aspirations is what allows both the Wizard 20 casting Meteor Swarm to
annihilate a foe and the people who are using D&D 5e to play out running their own restaurant to be
part of a shared culture of play. This culture is sometimes pejoratively called the "Tyranny of Fun" (a
term coined in the OSR) because of its focus on relatively rapid gratification compared to other styles.
The term "OC" means "original character" and comes from online freeform fandom roleplaying that
was popular on Livejournal and similar platforms back in the early 2000s. "OC" is when you bring an
original character into a roleplaying game set in the Harry Potter universe, rather than playing as
Harold the Cop himself. Despite being "freeform" (meaning no die rolls and no Dungeon Master)
these games often had extensive rulesets around the kinds of statements one could introduce to play,
with players appealing to the ruleset itself against one another to settle disputes. For the younger
generations of roleplayers, these kinds of games were often their introduction to the hobby.
I think OC RPG emerges during the 3.x era (2000-2008), probably with the growth of Living
Greyhawk Core Adventures and the apparatus of "organised play" and online play with strangers
more generally. Organised play ended up diminishing the power of the DM to shift authority onto
rules texts, publishers, administrators, and really, to players. Since DMs may change from adventure
to adventure but player characters endure, they become more important, with standard rules texts
providing compatibility between game. DM discretion and invention become things that interfere
with this intercompatibility, and thus depreciated. This is where the emphases on "RAW" and using
only official material (but also the idea that if it's published it must be available at the table) come
from - it undermines DM power and places that power in the hands of the PCs.
These norms were reinforced and spread by "character optimization" forums that relied solely on text
and rhetorically deprecated "DM fiat", and by official character builders in D&D and other games.
Modules, which importantly limit the DM's discretion to provide a consistent set of conditions for
players, are another important textual support for this style. OC styles are also particularly popular
with online streaming games like Critical Role since when done well they produce games that are
fairly easy to watch as television shows. The characters in the stream become aspirational figures that a
fanbase develops parasocial relationships with and cheers on as they realise their "arcs".
No Quizzes, No Buckets
When I first presented these on a forum, someone joked that I ought to create a quiz for people to
determine which culture they belonged to, but I'd rather not. Truthfully, I think most individual
gamers and groups are a blend of cultures, with that blend realised as an individual style. The play
cultures are more like paradigms - they cohere at the level of value and reflection on what "excellent
play" could mean (put more formally, they share teloi of play). To be a part of a play culture is in some
sense the capacity to recognise when someone else is playing in accord with a set of values you share
with them.
My main purpose in the above taxonomy is to help people better understand that there are distinct
paradigms of play that esteem different things, tho' they can be sutured together (with all sorts of fun
results) in concrete situations. I doubt this list is exhaustive, and there are probably cultures I've left
out as well as ones that are yet to emerge. The purpose of the list is mainly to briefly illustrate that
there are many different values of play, and to discuss the logic animating some of the more well-
known ones.
The original purpose of this essay was to talk about OC roleplaying, since I think it's the least well-
characterised out in the wild, and most characterisations are relatively pejorative (see the above
"tyranny of fun"). There also tends to be a lot of confusion between people working within the
paradigm of OC and trad, since they often use the same terms to refer to very different things.
Also, without wanting to be a jerk, OC roleplaying tends to be the default paradigm of new players
coming to the hobby through streaming, and thus has the largest group of people who are low-skill
and ignorant of the history of roleplaying. I'm hopeful that articulating their values and relation to
the larger hobby will encourage them to develop OC roleplaying culture in interesting and robust
ways, while also steering them away from arrogance about the universality of their vision.
I am hopeful that the above taxonomy will help people to apprehend and navigate the differences
between cultures and styles rather than constantly running into dead-ends as it turns out that the
baseline assumptions about play that one is working from simply aren't shared with one's
interlocutor(s).
I unfortunately can't respond to comments on the blog directly, so if people leave comments or
questions about the above taxonomy, I will collect them up and respond in a blog post.
Labels:
Theory
34 comments:
Ben L. April 6, 2021 at 11:56 AM
Thanks, this is really informative. Especially interesting to me is the difference between Classic and OSR
on the one hand, and Trad and OC on the other.
Reply
Matthias April 6, 2021 at 12:09 PM

Thanks for this, especially for articulating "neo-trad" as a style - it's something I hadn't really thought of
as its own category before.
I do notice that character immersion only seems to be an explicit goal of Nordic LARP, but anecdotally
the appeal of this seems to be quite wider! When I notice people articulate why they don't like
storygames, or when I try to articulate that myself, what seems to come up most commonly is that
things like PC-NPC asymmetry and narrative currency break immersion. These people are most
commonly coming from a trad, neo-trad, or trad-influenced OSR perspective - certainly not "pure"
versions, but one where I'm confident that the immersion influence isn't picked up from hanging out
with the Nordic LARP scene! So I think this immersion goal really does structure a lot of how those
practices work, especially in terms of preferred play procedures.
Reply
Matthias April 6, 2021 at 12:16 PM

Also (I realize just after submitting) I don't know how much the two OC/neotrad strains naturally fit in
with one another - that is, the player-focused version coming out of charop boards and the version
coming out of streaming and podcasts. I haven't listened to Critical Role, but I do remember listening to
Glass Cannon for a few seasons and it was extremely trad in its focus on providing a narrative story
through traditional gameplay mechanics, something practically demanded by that kind of format. My
intuition is that those coming through Critical Role are imbibing a version of GM-led narrative play-
with-traditional-mechanics moreso than player-led charop, even if both are things that grognards can get
fussy about.
Reply
Dan April 6, 2021 at 1:05 PM

This is a REALLY good essay.
Reply
VPofTucson April 6, 2021 at 1:15 PM

This is a great description of the different play cultures and I appreciate the clarity by which you've
identified the assumptions and styles for each.
I think there's something to be said for how the influence or popularity of different cultures wax and
wane with the times. I imagine editions of D&D can be roughly mapped to the rise of each one of these
play cultures, either as a promotion or rejection of the prevailing style of play.
How do you see these trends continuing in the future? As a millennial/zoomer, I see friends following
streamers and Twitch content to a level near-parallel to TV, and I can only imagine that influence
continues to grow. One of the effects of streamed games like Critical Role is how "siloed" new roleplayers
are in terms of their expectations and assumptions regarding RPG play. Someone new to the hobby may
only be exposed to the OC/neo-trad as the "right" way to play.
Are
Reply
dssong April 6, 2021 at 1:27 PM

responding to matthias, i wonder about that too. i suspect that charop and critical role-esque
"performance play" that basically resembles cathectic improv are at odds to some extent. however, the
folks in the space seem to deny it.
Reply
Xaosseed April 6, 2021 at 1:54 PM

Nice work - this is helpful as a frame; particularly breaking out strands like trad and storygames. This
was a fuzzy spot for me.
Reply
Forrest Aguirre April 6, 2021 at 2:07 PM

This is a fantastic analysis. Likely to spawn lots of debate and disagreement by those who don't carefully
read the caveat that "most individual players and groups are a blend of cultures". This is especially true in
a group like my weekly group: I started Classic, back in 1979 (but have "evolved" into OSR), two of our
group were more Trad, with 2e, two are more OC/Neotrad, and the other two I just plain don't know.
The cool thing is that our various play styles each bring something cool to the table, and we enjoy the
amalgam of them all.
Reply
Gus L April 6, 2021 at 4:15 PM

Great essay, and thanks for the shout out. I think after reading your description my play-style is more
"Classic" or "Neo-Classical" perhaps? It may seem not as my design focus is on A) Filling in gaps in
Classic rules that were likely assumed to be part of the war gaming inheritance of the Lake Geneva crew
(e.g. Hazard/exploration dice and slot encumbrance) B)Varies considerably from the aesthetic of D&D
vernacular fantasy. Goals and methods sound pretty similar though.
Thanks for putting this together - it's quite convincing and really points out that the difference in play
style are as old as the hobby, which is a useful distinction to push back against nostalgia driven
gatekeeping and misunderstandings.
Reply
NiTessine April 6, 2021 at 4:38 PM

The reasons Nordic larp (and it's "larp", all lowercase - we have fought for this) stuff is the focus of so
much academic study and gets grant money are not related to the GCC. I suspect the misunderstanding
arises from one single project undertaken some years ago in Dubai by a company that has since gone out
of business. The actual reasons are that many people active in the scene has entered the academia and
universities in Tampere, Gothenburg and Copenhagen have solid game studies programs. The Nordic
countries also have fairly generous grants programs for this kind of thing, and these things influence one
another. A larp designer can point to a body of academic and para-academic literature on Nordic larp,
and therefore has legitimacy in the eyes of the grants committee (nowadays some of the cultural funds
have actual experts on board). They get grants, the field gains credibility, and it's easier (it is never easy)
to get future grants.
Reply
Hanley Tucks April 7, 2021 at 1:09 AM

Insightful stuff, and much to think on.
Reply
E.T.Smith April 7, 2021 at 4:41 AM

Really shrewd, this is one of those rare insights that's both elegant and novel enough to make one
exclaim "oh gosh, of course!" Interestingly, until now I generally ascribed to there being three broad
cultures: Old-School, Trad, and Story-games, but they only somewhat covered the bases; splitting each
in half is something I wish I'd thought of sooner (especially since I was already mostly aware of the split
between Classic and Revival behind the facade of the OSR).
One criticism: I don't agree with your evaluation of the actual-play values of story-games, it's too
focussed on the dialog around them. I think a more accurate description is that story-games believe that
systems can (and to some degree are obligated to) evoke distinct experiences. There are other nuances
like questions of authority, but that's the main thing. This clarifies why nordic-larp is distinct; where
story-games say "rules support experience, immersion isn't a thing," Nordic-larp says "rules obscure
experience, immersion is the *only* thing."
Reply
Replies
PhDTwenty April 18, 2021 at 8:27 AM

I agree. Also, I would stress that story now games (much like OSR) are also incredibly pro-
player agency. Story now games typically resist the pre-authoring of story (hence "story now"
contra "story before") and GM force, particularly when it applies to GM as author and
adjudicator. IMHO, both OSR and story now games are counter-measures to GM
authorship in Trad gaming.
Reply
Anonymous April 7, 2021 at 5:25 AM

What you list as 'neotrad' seems to be several styles conflated into one.
Is it players trusting the rules to be well-written such that the GM is just another player, and they can
trust the rules as written to work out?
Or is it players frequently *modifying* the rules, as listed in the 'Tyranny of Fun', for gratification or ease
of streaming?
Or perhaps it's the real largest RPG segment - "players who want to play an interesting character, but are
forced to default to DnD as their system because that's what people around them are playing"?
Reply
Matt P April 7, 2021 at 7:25 AM

Great stuff. The distinction between trad and neo-trad as "GM-centered storytelling" vs "Player-centered
storytelling" is not something I'd seen articulated before, but it makes a lot of sense.
Similarly with the distinction between classic and OSR. Something I frequently like to point out is that
certain OSR-isms like McDowell's "all traps should be obvious, the fun & challenge is figuring out how
to bypass them rather than rolling dice to find them", while useful, seem explicitly at odds with the
actual old school rules what with their 1-in-6 search checks everywhere. I think that tension is what I've
been seeing.
Reply
George Jirico April 7, 2021 at 9:37 AM

Thanks for this, I love learning more about the history of the hobby as it enriches my understanding of
the 'why'.
I came into the hobby through watching streaming, so the OC/Neo-Trad style was my first exposure
and what I sought to replicate in my first games. There is, however, a lot of vestigial
content/practices/themes in D&D 5E that are not well explained by the current rules. Only by diving
into more history and studying other ruleset, especially those in the OSR community have I finally
begun to understand the 'why'.
For example, the 5E cleric feature 'Turn Undead' seemed like a 'meh' to me the first time I read through
it. "Why would I want to scare undead monsters off? I want to fight them!" But working through Old
School Essentials and the OSR ethos I recognize now this was a valuable skill to bypass some fights that
might have otherwise been lethal. I had already assumed that if I was fighting undead it would be a
balanced fight and I'd have a chance to succeed.
I'm now looking to migrate my table to a more DM-friendly OSR style game. But what I gain in
flexibility as a DM, the players will lose in durability and super powers. My players love the trappings of
the OC/Neo-Trad but it's difficult for me as a DM to maintain.
For that reason, I think a lot of the OC/Neo-Trad DMs will either migrate or burn out and we'll see an
increasing backlash as tables explore other options.
Reply
Matthias April 7, 2021 at 10:37 AM

> responding to matthias, i wonder about that too. i suspect that charop and critical role-esque
"performance play" that basically resembles cathectic improv are at odds to some extent. however, the
folks in the space seem to deny it.
Right, and they even have a term for that denial: the "Stormwind Fallacy," that you can't play and
provide a backstory for a character you've put optimization work into. As phrased here (and there), I
think this critique of a false dichotomy is absolutely correct: you can indeed take your 1-20 build and
play them as a fully-fleshed out character, certainly no less than you can when you take a bunch of OSR
tables as your mechanical starting point.
I guess my issue was that I was thinking too much in terms of "player-led" and "GM-led," and thinking of
things like narrative arcs and so on as inherently GM-led. But I wonder if what leds something of a unity
to the neotrad style (not that it, like all the others, doesn't contain contradictions) is an assumed social
contract with something like:
1) The player will present a character to the group. Both mechanical stuff (like "builds") and backstory
elements are an expression of agency and artistry on the player's part.
2) The GM is expected to provide (i) an escalating series of balanced encounters (a bit like the "classic"
model)! and (ii) "narrative arcs" that fit the characters, their backstory, their personalities, and so on.
Through this, gameplay and narrative are fused in purpose in a way that would make (a hypothetical,
less cranky) Ron Edwards happy.
But someone like George (great comment btw!) might be better able to articulate if that fits what they're
seeing from OC/NT spaces.
Reply
nat April 7, 2021 at 11:32 AM

I think your taxonomy is great. I don’t have enough experience with your group 6 to comment on
whether it’s 1, 2, or many groups (as others have suggested), but the rest looks very solid.
But a quibble with your history: Story Games (the culture of play, not necessarily the specific label)
predate the Forge and predate Edwards’ essay. There were commercially published story game-style
RPGs in the ‘90s, and glimmers of the playstyle at least as far back as the late ‘80s. The Forge didn’t
create the playstyle; it validated, popularized, and to a degree codified, it, in the processing creating a new
taxonomy and vocabulary (largely supplanting the existing (conflicting and not-widely-used) taxonomies
& vocabularies for that playstyle).
Reply
RedJokerX April 7, 2021 at 11:45 AM

This feels like it's inflated with complex jargon for no reason and the explanation loses half the readers (I
say this after coming from a discussion on a dnd discord about this article). Next time, can you include a
simplified explanation in layman's terms so that it would be easier to understand, as is, 4 and onward get
confusing. Is nordic supposed to just be people like to roleplay?
Reply
Ian April 7, 2021 at 12:31 PM

Really interesting. If you're following up any time, my systematising brain wanted more reasons why
these are distinct philosophies rather than just shifts in emphasis over time. I think the last bit about
individuals and groups having blended styles fitted better to the body content than did the intro about
values and taboos.
On immersion, I think this was a consideration well back into the last century, if you want to find the
roots of 'Nordic larp'. I'd have to dig through my collection to date it precisely but I think there was a
Dragon feature back in the 90s on fear and atmosphere in horror games, fundamentally about the
emotional experience aspect of play. Less seriously, the very early Knights of the Dinner Table satirised
the trend with the eyebrow removing fireball generator and the steam tunnels incident.
BTW, writing acronyms with only an initial capital or none at all is not at odds with them being
acronyms. The Guardian style guide for example says all caps is only for initialisms pronounced letter by
letter (eg USA), initial cap for most acronyms (eg Nato) and no cap for acronyms known mainly as
words (eg laser). Seems like the Nordic larp crowd want to be a proper word?
Reply
Pepp April 8, 2021 at 2:30 AM

Coming from non-english RPG culture highly influenced by Japanese RPG scenes, and OC roleplaying
culture (which is not same as TTRPG). There is this trend that focuses on the characters personal
drama and especially their relationships. I will call this a Shipping culture myself.
This culture focuses one two things. One is role playing, to figure out how the character will act in
certain situations. Whole plots and situations are just tools for the character's narrative. Two, the
relationship. This culture focuses on the "special, irreplaceable" relationship between two characters, and
how this relationship develops through certain circumstances. What I find this different from general
OC culture or more traditional shipping culture is that the characters themselves are extension of the
players. Although still being two different entities, immersion is huge part of this culture and sometimes
it reaches the point of virtual dating. Which was originally derived from OC role playing communities
that are much, much more older than this trend in RPG scene.
Rules associated with this culture mostly comes from Japan, but I think any 1 on 1 RPG rule can be
associated with this. Examples I know of is 《 Stellar Knights of the Silver Sword 》 and 《 Unsung
Duet》.
Reply
Uncaring Cosmos April 9, 2021 at 2:27 PM

Brilliant essay. Really insightful and thought-provoking. I especially liked the distinction between
"Classic" and "OSR", which I hadn't really thought of before (having bought into the idea that OSR was
a resurrection of how RPGs were originally played). However, I think you're absolutely right. Might
there be a "proto-Classic" style in the dark ages before the Classic style was codified by AD&D and
tournament play? I'm thinking mid-1970s Greyhawk / Blackmoor. Looking at the OD&D wandering
monster table, for example, and contrasting it with the B/X wandering monster table (as Martin Ralya
has done: https://www.martinralya.com/tabletop-rpgs/wandering-monsters-odd-vs-bx-dd/ ), it doesn't
scream "fair" challenge to me. If anything, it seems crushingly arbitrary and unfair (an unfairness that
AD&D would smooth out).
Reply
Secrets of Blackmoor: A D&D documentary April 13, 2021 at 12:43 PM
Interesting.
I tend to view it from a much earlier perspective that predates D&D with war games at the root. i.e. The
games with play surfaces and minis being a regression to a war game RPG. Pathfinder is a good example
of this style.
What you are describing does not really jive with in play behavior. The Classic Style is Traditional Play
methodology and comes from Arneson's Blackmoor, 1971 to present. I've watched Arneson's group run
games and this is what they do.
OSR and FKR ascribe to Traditional Play methods. I'd say that how people describe their games may
not be in line with what they really do and the Community is really diverse.
You might want to consider the changes within D&D as being related to the extent of Mechanization via
rules, and the polarity in play experience created by how much mechanization exists vs.the extent that a
referee simply makes rulings and or is being bound by Rules As Written. That is at the core for how
RPGs come into existence.
We all see different elements when examining RPGs. Again, I tend to lean toward the perspective that
one needs to look at what the people do when they use their rules. To what extent are they bound by the
rules and to what extent are they binding things together with Role Play Methodology.
You can see my ideas on the subject in this 2+ hour movie here:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sobfinal/354448963
Reply
Lukas April 14, 2021 at 2:38 AM

I think "neo-trad" and "OC" should probably be a bit separated. This is partially for genealogic reasons.
In the linked post about "neo-trad" style, a number of Free League games are mentioned (as well as
games developed by Free League and distributed by Modiphius). These have their origin in a particular
Swedish game design milieu where the term "neo-trad" was in use at least as early as 2006, in association
with the publication of the game Noir by Marco Behrmann and Petter Nallo. Focus has always been on
taking certain player-centering mechanics from story games and placing them within a more traditional
framework. Grabbing stuff from FATE, Solar System and Powered by the Apocalypse seems popular.
However, certain of the features described, such as rapid gratification, charop and focus on curated
content, are not really part of this.
The "OC" style, which is more born out of freeform internet roleplay, streaming and the popularity of
5e, is probably something like a decade younger. I'm not as familiar with it, and I would also presume
that it is still in the process of taking shape. However, it contains so many new elements compared to the
"neo-trad" style described above that I think it would be fairer to treat them separately.
Reply
george rahm April 15, 2021 at 3:09 AM

Some rather academic and confusing words for a kid's game.
We once just had a rulebook. People would follow the rules. Those rules set options and tone. A Ref
would change rules less to fit player desire and more to discard what doesn't work.
Confused by "taxonomy" (the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms). I
would think players classified by social interaction, which has been done many times--power gamer vs
social gamer--would be simpler and clear.
Game systems might promote an order of organisms, but I have just not played many of these kinds of
post 2000 storyteller games. Role-play may be a shitty term; adventure gaming may better describe what
some players like myself do as a hobby. Too many things are called rpg, even White Box DnD is hardly
the immersion style found in the examples online (read Mercer+Coville).
Could be the problem many see with DnD is that it's popular but isn't useful for what many (most)
enjoy.
I game for comradery of overcoming challenges, to move to end points and allow characters to earn
more options in future play. What pattern is that on the punchcard of taxonomy, caveman?
Reply
Nirkhuz April 15, 2021 at 7:18 AM

Great article indeed!
Reply
Unknown April 16, 2021 at 1:42 AM

"I game for comradery of overcoming challenges, to move to end points and allow characters to earn
more options in future play. What pattern is that on the punchcard of taxonomy, caveman?"
-george rahm
Classic I think. Maybe OSR, we'd need more data to say for sure.
Reply
Alex W. April 16, 2021 at 6:56 AM

This article is fascinating, but it's a bit weird that you're claiming OC/Neo-trad didn't emerge until the
2000s, because most of what you're describing about it matches how we played RPGs from 1989
onwards, and the person who taught me to play that way was older, and claimed her group played that
way. Plus, the level of importance of the DM and the question of how important fun was and how
valued input from the players should be was a significant point of debate from the early '90s onwards, on
the early internet. So I recognise the Trad/Neo-trad divide, but it's definitely older than you're
describing. As others have said too, the conflation with OC doesn't entirely make sense - whilst some of
that stuff may have happened at similar times, and there's crossover, I don't think it's really the same
thing.
Reply
Replies
Lee Davis-Thalbourne April 19, 2021 at 1:37 AM

I think it's worth noting that play styles do not equal cultures here - yes, the OC/Neo-trad
style of play has existed for a long time, but it only more recently began to become an
identifiable *culture*, independent of individual or group play-styles, something that is
taught and transmitted outside of the actual game session.
Reply
Anonymous April 16, 2021 at 8:50 PM

I appreciate this taxonomy - most of the other attempts at trpg taxonomies I've seen don't acknowledge
the existence of OC play, or don't distinguish it from storygames. I'm primarily OSR with some
experience with PBtA storygames, but I've also got one foot in the fandom-derived OC space and I agree
with your frustration at its poor characterization. I have tried to run what was in retrospect a hybrid
OSR/OC game, using some storygame-derived bits of game design to try to bridge the gap. It went ok in
general but not on that front - the disparity between those two play cultures was a constant tension and
storygame techniques did not make for an effective bridge, possibly because I was treating storygame and
OC play as basically interchangeable at the time. I'd like to try making a similar hybrid again sometime,
but I think I'd want better characterization and theory of OC play to make it work.
I agree with the other comments that your category of OC/neotrad is conflating at least two cultures of
play, though. I would split out trpg-forum-derived charop and fandom-derived OC play as separate
cultures of play with separate histories, and "neotrad" might be it's own third thing as well although I'm
much less familiar with it. A couple further thoughts to try to characterize OC play better:
I think it tends to carry with it a broader "fandom" ethos and approach, although I'm not sure how to
describe that beyond just a vibe.
With regards to the roles of players and the GM, I think OC play is characterized by a high level of
player-led pre-planning. Both storygames and OSR have a strong norm of "play to find out what
happens" (the phrase is PBtA, of course; the norm is at least as strong in OSR games but rarely stated as
explicitly. "prep scenarios not plots" might be the closest OSR catechism), and my impression is that in
trad games advance planning is mostly the realm of the GM. OC play includes not only bringing a
character to the table with a backstory fleshed out as "an expression of agency and artistry" (to quote
Matthias's nice phrasing), but often also includes the player planning out in advance how they want
their character to grow and change as a person and potentially specific emotional and plot beats to hit
along that arc. This is shared with/developed in collaboration with the GM, whose role is then to make
sure that their plot incorporates all the plans of all their players along with whatever they have planned
that the players don't know about. This isn't set in stone at character creation, players often change how
they want their arcs to go in response to things that happen in-game and communicate that with the
GM who changes their plans to incorporate it etc. etc. iteratively. I suspect this tendency comes out-of-
character planning talk in freeform fandom RP, but I wasn't directly part of that scene so I don't know. I
think this style much more closely approaches "collaborative writing" than any of the other cultures of
play, but it retains players (and characters) reacting during play to things they didn't expect, which is one
of the strengths of ttrpgs in general.
(You could make an argument that charop also includes a similar style of player-led pre-planning that
GMs design their own plans to accommodate, since builds are often planned out many levels in advance
and GMs balance around that, but I still think it counts as a distinct culture of play).
Reply
Replies
Anonymous April 16, 2021 at 8:54 PM

Continued from above (ran out of characters, whoops):
With regards to the desired experience of play, I'd tentatively characterize it as a) creating a
character and gradually developing them as, again, "an expression of agency and artistry" in
itself, b) being a fan of the other players characters (in the fandom sense) and seeing how they
develop, c) playing out interactions and relationships (not necessarily romantic, but
sometimes) between those characters as Pepp describes, and d) the question of "how would
this character react to xyz unexpected situation, not only in terms of what they would do but
also in terms of how they feel about it and how it affects them going forward". Of those four,
c) and d) are certainly not unique to/definitive of the OC culture of play, but a) might be.
PBtA games explicitly invoke b) ("be a fan of your character") but in practice I feel like that
means something slightly different between the two cultures of play because of the
distinction between strict "play to find out what happens" versus the inclusion of iteratively
planned character arcs.
There's also something to be said about how OSR and storygames seem to be largely made by
and for amateur-game-designer-GMs and spend a lot of focus on curating experience of play
through carefully tweaking rules and/or GMing technique, while OC play seems to be much
less so and takes the rules more at face value.
Reply
Stirling Newberry April 20, 2021 at 9:35 AM

I am afraid that this does not ring true to me:
1. The were LARPS in the 1980's, though not named as such. This was because the edge of roleplay
intersected thing such as the SCA.
2. Wargaming was a big source of people especially in the "classic" and "traditional" modes of play. See
Matt Colville on youtube for example. The want "tables" and to roll dice.
3. The trials and tribulations of getting dice meant that whole swathes of people reject the notion out
right. This is seen in the Roleplaying in Amber.
4. The is a element of whimsy in many of the figures in the game industry that is not captured.
5. The OSR in not the only style which reacts to the more modern sense. I am thinking of Hârn
specifically. In a word, the are looking for "crunchiness" rather that "ease of play." Also "Empire of the
Petal Throne" is not "ease of use."
6. Comp Sci need to be highlight as a large influence.
7. Styles of fiction and anime need more attention: people often wanted to make some specific character
from a specific source, that influence their "culture."
I could go on, but this looks like a first draft not a final product - as sort of "one man's look at the
hobby," rather than a seriously though out system.
Reply
NPRPGSoc1986 April 21, 2021 at 4:07 AM

1Levels note TnT no Alinements.
2Alinements LG ,saintly beautficatic
Skills Runequest( cults links )<> traveller ,no LG : space opera
TFtrip gurps advantages /disadvantages
Paranoia cuthul ;great feel
Vampire 🧛‍♂️ social attacks
Levels ,not levels
Orcs trolls low Cha ,poor Languages ? Default to Str intimidation
Or TnT RQ trolls high Cha command many ?
Richard Dawkins ' beast mode?'vs social (not reasoning ?) Attack???

Reply
JB May 11, 2021 at 3:55 PM

Very interesting stuff. Thanks!
Reply
Enter your comment...
Comment as:
kjjj (Google) Sign out
Publish Preview
Notify me
Newer Post Home Older Post
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Subscribe To

Posts

Comments
Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.

The Retired Adventurer - Six Cultures of Play

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

The Retired Adventurer - Six Cultures of Play

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Retired Adventurer - Six Cultures of Play

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

7/13/2021 The Retired Adventurer: Six Cultures of Play

Popular Posts Apr 6, 2021 Post

Play Six Cultures of Play ►

turbo tag: the

familiar with that jargon.

5) The OSR ("Old School Renaissance / Revival")

Matthias April 6, 2021 at 12:09 PM

Matthias April 6, 2021 at 12:16 PM

Dan April 6, 2021 at 1:05 PM

VPofTucson April 6, 2021 at 1:15 PM

dssong April 6, 2021 at 1:27 PM

Xaosseed April 6, 2021 at 1:54 PM

Forrest Aguirre April 6, 2021 at 2:07 PM

Gus L April 6, 2021 at 4:15 PM

NiTessine April 6, 2021 at 4:38 PM

Hanley Tucks April 7, 2021 at 1:09 AM

E.T.Smith April 7, 2021 at 4:41 AM

PhDTwenty April 18, 2021 at 8:27 AM

Anonymous April 7, 2021 at 5:25 AM

Matt P April 7, 2021 at 7:25 AM

George Jirico April 7, 2021 at 9:37 AM

Matthias April 7, 2021 at 10:37 AM

nat April 7, 2021 at 11:32 AM

RedJokerX April 7, 2021 at 11:45 AM

Ian April 7, 2021 at 12:31 PM

Pepp April 8, 2021 at 2:30 AM

Uncaring Cosmos April 9, 2021 at 2:27 PM

Secrets of Blackmoor: A D&D documentary April 13, 2021 at 12:43 PM

Lukas April 14, 2021 at 2:38 AM

george rahm April 15, 2021 at 3:09 AM

Nirkhuz April 15, 2021 at 7:18 AM

Unknown April 16, 2021 at 1:42 AM

Alex W. April 16, 2021 at 6:56 AM

Lee Davis-Thalbourne April 19, 2021 at 1:37 AM

Anonymous April 16, 2021 at 8:50 PM

Anonymous April 16, 2021 at 8:54 PM

Stirling Newberry April 20, 2021 at 9:35 AM

6. Comp Sci need to be highlight as a large influence.

NPRPGSoc1986 April 21, 2021 at 4:07 AM

2Alinements LG ,saintly beautficatic

Skills Runequest( cults links )<> traveller ,no LG : space opera

Paranoia cuthul ;great feel

Vampire 🧛‍♂️ social attacks

Levels ,not levels

Orcs trolls low Cha ,poor Languages ? Default to Str intimidation

Or TnT RQ trolls high Cha command many ?

Richard Dawkins ' beast mode?'vs social (not reasoning ?) Attack???

JB May 11, 2021 at 3:55 PM

Enter your comment...

Newer Post Home Older Post

Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.

You might also like