Six Cultures of Play within TTRPGs 

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Inevitably, and despite the writer of the blog *explicitly* declaring it doesn't make sense to use it that way, people are going to apply this as a allegiance chart.

This is a fantastic breakdown, man.

Great video. In my experience, every group is its own culture of weirdos. That said, different systems lend themselves to different styles of play.

At my table, I have a HIGH crunch player whose almost entire source of enjoyment is proficiency with the rule set and the exploit of the close reading and stacking of mechanics, AND a HIGH narrative player who works almost entirely in story and gets surprised when there's a rule that arbitrates. The evolution of our play culture so we all want to keep playing, has been kind of a beautiful thing.

As a model, I've found this really useful. I've found that 90% of all conflicts I observe between people in tabletop are related to them misunderstanding the underlying different assumptions about how play should work. The model of groups as different "cultures", and even then not necessarily perfectly within boxes and categories, has helped me have a more open mind and move farther away from "this is the right/wrong way to play." This has especially been the case in the OSR. There's a general misunderstanding about the OSR that views a part of that crowd as antagonistic or worse, and part of the conflict comes from two cultures who are overlapping but doing very different things. The classical crowd uses different terms for things, so for example, they wouldn't call Knave or Cairn "OSR." This may *seem* like gatekeeping, but the truth is that sometimes, this is just a completely different way of framing things. To them, the OSR is something they love and they have a different view of what the "R" is as you said. In fact, I used to describe the friends I had that played OD&D and AD&D in a gamey way by-the-book as "OS without the R." I can see how labelling people in ways that they don't want to be labelled can cause conflict. I have this conversation frequently within my classical gaming circles. When they say that Shadowdark is a bad game, they are saying that from the point of view of a single play culture with distinct goals. I find I have to say, "Shadowdark isn't classical D&D and isn't trying to be. It's not trying to meet your measure of a 'good' game." I have the same conversation with modern OSR people who say that "long empty corridors that terminate at a dead end are bad dungeon design" or "B/X is full of fiddly rules that have no meaning and is a bad game/we've moved past that." I have to say that, "people who play and run OD&D are not trying to cut out the connective tissue of dungeoneering checks, for them it's an important feature of the game not something outdated or boring." And for the past couple of years in these conversations I tend to point to this article.

Great and interesting analysis! Perhaps a new category is "Comedic Play / Beer & Pretzels." A few times, I've DM'd for an interesting group that just wanted goofiness, jokes, word play, and improvising the most ridiculous things to do. No concern with story, challenges, character development, progression, etc. Purely for beer and pretzels and laughter 😂

The terms do not lend themselves to use in marketing, but understanding the differences of the six cultures will aid designers in reaching their audience.

Simulation play. Story telling. Method acting. Group story telling. Group gaming. Player fantasy fulfillment. Classic = realistic world rules first. Trad = GM's story (narrative fiction) first. Nordic LARP = whole team high dramatic immersion first. Story Games = whole team group story telling first. OSR = emergent experience based on rules, rulings and random tables. OC = player enjoyment first (players want to feel powerful/cool and be entertained by the story, if the game is not pleasing the players then something is wrong)

OSR and Story games seem the most attractive to me as a DM. They seem the easiest to DM. They both share elements of being "colaborative" and putting emphasis on the players being more active participants in the game than just riding along for whatever the DM has made. The concept of Neo-Trad just exhausts me. It seems like its asking the DM to do all the heavy lifting for the players with the expectation that they cater to the wants and needs of the player without them really having to do anything besides show up each week. Trad is fine, but having run that style of game for a while, it does get exhausting as a DM and frustrating when what you prepare/develop doesn't really resonate with what they players want.

Something I really appreciate about the article: It makes a distinction between traditional and OSR. Something I've said for years... OSR games aren't "THE WAY" old D&D was played. OSR is its own play style. So, while OSRevival is more like traditional its not exactly the same. And OSRenaissance is definitely its own style. As someone who grew up playing AD&D in the 80s, I can tell you there we're many different ways to play back then. The Gygaxian style of the 70s and early 80s is certainly different than OSRenaissance. But even in the 80s, every table was different. No one I knew played AD&D rules as written... everyone cherry-picked rules... even Gary himself. Plus, every B/X DM I knew added some things from AD&D. Even in my own gaming group... I ran a more narrative style with lean rules, while one friend ran a narrative style but with AD&D closer to RAW. While, another friend ran a very Gygaxian style. All three of these were different games played in the 80s, but None of these would be considered OSR.

This article is one of the best to come out of the OSR blogosphere (which by and large is the culture of play into which the Retired Adventurer blog itself tends to fit, tho I know him and he has dabbled in 'em all), and one I am constantly referencing people to who haven't read it. Happy to see it get the additional reach your channel affords it, it's a worthy post for a video to be made on!

For me, one of the key takeaways from GNS theory and the Forge was that there is no single 'correct' form of TTRPGs. Players bring agendas to the table, and when those agendas clash they get bogged down arguing over specific mechanics while their real issue is they disagree about *what this game is for*, ie they are seeking different play experiences and different kinds of fun. Great video. This is a nice update to those early discussions 20 years later.

I think I fit somewhere in between story gaming and OSR. I love using tables to generate a setting, locations and enemy/NPC encounters, and letting the dice establish how things go for the players. I also like hearing player suggestions for set dressing and random small bits of worldbuilding that I might not have considered on my own as the GM. As long as the suggestions are applied with sensible restraint, of course. To me, the collaboration between the GM and the players can create a much richer and more fulfilling world for the group as a whole. And then when the dice and some tables get involved, looking back and seeing how what started out as a string of random events and logical rulings in regards to mechanics has created a coherent story is magical. That to me, is the best thing about RPGs and the styles of play I like to mix.

His theories about the neo-trad/OC style of play are spot on with my experience of WotC editions of D&D and Pathfinder play culture, and not just those games either given the broad impact of those games on the hobby generally. I think it also emerges at least in part out of online freeform OC-focused roleplay on forums and pre-social media websites that laid the ground for social media, like LiveJournal. My first D&D edition was before WotC took over the IP and I've been there for all of that (the freeform OC play online and the 3.x/4e/PF/5e culture shaping), so it is definitely something that tracks for me when I think about how that particular culture emerged and developed over time. I also think they are the culture least likely to want to be pigeonholed as being in a particular culture of play as compared to other cultures of play...idk if it's just "wanting to feel special" leanings in their play orientation having influences on how they view themselves as players and not just characters, but everyone I've shown this article to in the past who roughly belongs to one of the other cultures of play has found it illuminating and impressive...with the exception of neo-trad/OC types who tend to fall into one of two camps: being able to admit it describes them but protesting about how their style of play is phrased and framed, or straight up denying they fall into the camp and acting like they're in some Unique Camp of Their Own (then describing the style of play in the article when I press them for details about what their game is like).

I find it kinda interesting that both OSR and Neo-Trad de-emphasize the DM when compared to their primary historical influences (classic & trad).

I feel it hit the mark except I feel that Neo trad can be split in two. There the fiction side where players really focus on fulfilling character goals and the fact side of neo trad where players really focus on fulfilling rules goals. I have played on many tables with either paradigm. Generally they don't mix. If you wish to make a good build, story isn't a priority. It's nice if it has storytelling potential, it's possible to join the fiction and shape it, but mostly number go up is their motivation. If you wish to focus on the story, you aren't as focused on the rules. LANCER tries to stop this by having one character sheet for your mech, for the fact side and one for thd pilot for the fiction side

Wow, I've been preaching about this theory ever since I've read the blog back in 2021. I was in a huge argument with my friend about whether a system should give the players any control over the narrative (like it is in PbtA and the like) -- I was stubborn on the idea that players always struggle to "win" the game. The sole idea that there *_*are*_* different genres opened my eyes. It's so helpful to call out by names what people are trying to achieve in their games, when they don't see past the default D&D 5e + PF 1-2 systems. You're right noone's playing the genres by this definition. I myself seek to mix (neo?)Trad with OSR. That is to have a PC-relevant story and power growth, but in a low fantasy world that I only care to truthfully simulate (random encounters included), so no balance, high lethality, and no railroading the story.

Ever since I started hearing about the OSR, I was always left a bit confused. A lot of (often younger) folks were talking about playing "the way they used to," but what they were describing didn't sound anything like what we were doing in the 80s & 90s, nor anything anyone I knew who'd been gaming since the 70s was doing either. This separation of "classic" from "OSR" makes that make a bit more sense. I think another problem, especially for folks who came to the hobby in the age of 5e, even if they aren't necessarily into 5e, is that they sort of perceive everything through the lens of D&D in its various incarnations, like it was the default game in the hobby. It sort of makes sense, because D&D (arguably) started it all and has remained a presence in the hobby for 50 years. But I don't think a lot of folks know how largely irrelevant it was for at least 20 of those years. In the mid to late 80s, pretty much up until 5e, with a bump around 3rd Ed, D&D wasn't the big dog on the block. Working at a game store through the 90s, D&D was only a small section of our RPG area, and mostly just frequented by a handful of old diehards. We had RPGs, sometimes several different games, being played in the store every night of the week, and I don't think in nearly 10 years I saw any variation of D&D played more than 4 or 5 times. Most of the time, when people talked about TSR (except for the novels, which were very popular), it was with derision, because they seemed like a dinosaur that refused to grow or change with the times. They were still putting out books with art that catered to horny 12 year old boys when other companies had realized that women and LGBTQ people existed. That's part of why I was so dismayed when I came back to the hobby in 2019 after a 15 year break and found D&D 5e and Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) to be so completely dominant. It felt like the hobby had taken a giant leap backwards. Yet, in the shadow of that colossus, so much great new stuff was and is being made. I would say most games I saw, ran, or played in the 80s & 90s were mixes of "Traditional," "Story," and what now would be dubbed "Old School Renaissance." Usually GMs would pitch a general idea, setting, or game. Once players were on board, the GM would come up with an initial premise, NPCs, locations, etc. And maybe a vague idea of where things might go, or what would happen if the PCs weren't there. Then, as the players interacted with those things and made choices, the GM would change and adapt based on those choices, rolls, etc. In the meantime, the players might do things like introduce background ideas, or have out of session conversations about things they were interested in doing/seeing/exploring, for the GM to build on. Of course, very few people I knew were using adventure modules or the like as anything more than guidelines and idea mines, because they were often written in too rigid a way, making far too many assumptions about what players would do or how successful they'd be. Until I ran Portal Under the Stars for Dungeon Crawl Classics sometime in 2020 or 2021, the only published scenario I'd ever run in nearly 20 years of GMing was a heavily modified (read: almost completely re-written) version of The Haunting for Call of Cthulhu. I remember my dad talking about this group jumping ship on D&D as soon as RuneQuest came around, because it facilitated the kinds of character/story based games they were trying to play better than D&D, which at its heart has always been a game about killing monsters and looting the bodies, no matter how much extra stuff they try to tack on to pretty it up. I also don't know about "fairness" in the "classic" era. A lot of the published material from that era seems arbitrary and dickish; the classic "adversarial DM" problem. It was player VS DM, not player character VS DM's world. I was reading one of Gygax's modules recently, and it both rewarded and punished you for the same of action, seemingly at random. If you investigate in Room 1, you get zapped into oblivion. No roll. You're dead. If investigate in Room 2, you find an amazing artifact that you need in order to "win" the dungeon. If you do anything at all in Room 3, you're poisoned and die in three rounds, unless you found the cure potion under a pile of trash at the bottom of a well that you could only find if you reached your arm into a tiny hole while holding your breath for 10 seconds. "What?! You didn't KNOW you were supposed to do that? Fool!!!" It's no wonder folks quickly made their own games and took the hobby in a different direction.

I think he sort of touches on this a little bit in the article but doesn't really fully acknowledge it - the OSR play is actually a lot like the original play of the game in many ways. What is called "Classic" in the article is, by the author's admission, the style that D&D transitioned into after Gary decided that for tournament play it needed to be more locked down and systematized, and less freeform and spontaneous, in order to have consistent module scoring when groups at Gen Con played against each other, etc. The thing is, when reading into the early history, watching Secrets of Blackmoor, etc. it occurs that the OSR as it has developed over time has tended to lean much more towards Dave's playstyle than Gary's (or at least Gary's later one, since I think it's also pretty widely acknowledged that he was quite spontaneous himself in personal games / early play). Dave did a great deal of inventing things on the fly, didn't really seem to care at all if encounters were balanced from what I've read of him (which is reflected in the fact that most older editions give experience for "overcoming an encounter" - not only for killing an enemy, which can mean avoidance, parley, etc.) and indeed didn't seem to tell his players any more of the rules than he felt they needed to know. Heck Dave Wesley's Braunstein / Free Kriegsspiel games seem very close to the modern OSR in many respects, and I think he's increasingly coming to be acknowledged too as one of the conceptual creators of RPGs (even if his were never published as such). I just feel it's kind of misleading to act like the disregard for strictly balanced games is somehow a modern innovation of the OSR, when really it's more of a divergence with the later-Gygaxian focus on tournament play and strict definitions (which was arguably moving into the Trad category anyway). I'd rather see Classic identified with Dave Arneson and the earlier playstyles of OD&D (and imo B/X and BECMI as well), and 1e / 2e acknowledged as sort of a gradual building away from that style and towards the roots of the trad movement that would solidify with 3.5 (even though there are some major differences between 3.5 and AD&D). Otherwise, I do think this is a neat framework.

it's valuable to have have theory written on the practice of play. it's a reflective moment for us all to look back at our hobby to try to understood why some books succeeded and others failed (for our group). This blog post need not be accurate for all of us, it is subjective and is also subject to when it was posted, it needs to only have been posted to be a marker in this moment of what an individual thinks is true of our hobby. What i find personally interesting, is that over the years (i've been GMing since '85) and over the groups I've run, we've gone through all these styles of play... or cultures... as they're group dependent (and time dependent). My players now expect to have some control on their narrative, but back in the day (30+ yrs ago)... they were only too happy to be part of the ride. Last point, the game system suggests the style of play. While you can certainly bend any system to your whim and change it to be how you want to play, there is some intrinsic "this is how the game is played" codified in it. So, as the article points out... some of the cultures are in response to the predominance of a successful system, either because of their success or in spite of it. This has also had an effect on how groups of friends play over the decades of the hobby.

Oh I've read this on the blogpost. It was really helpful in helping me define my own style of play even after a decade of playing already. I highly recommend people read the article and ask themselves which style they're interested in and try to indentify systems and groups that facilitate that style better than others as this will help you out a lot when looking to dive into new games/groups.

Don't know about you, but these are my stats. Six Ability Scores: Classic (CL): -2 Traditional (TR): -1 Nordic Larp (NL): 0 Story Games (SG): +2 OSR (OS): +2 Neo-Trad (NT): +1

Yay! Now the people I talk to who insist on _never_ reading anything I share as a conversation starter can finally engage with this subject! :D

There's something very freeing for me about understanding these categories. There's so much goddamnded advice out there for a GM, and so many horror stories about bad groups and bad games, but it really feels like this framework is like... the secret key for parsing all that. Like, if you don't have any language or any sense of your own play culture or your own play tastes, then every piece of advice you find is just another thing on THE BIG PILE OF STUFF YOU SHOULD BE DOING. But once you have these categories, you can begin to sift through all the information out there and pick through it - to see what's relevant to the way you actually like to play, and what isn't. I've been running games for 16 years and this really feels like it rearranged my entire goddamnded brain lol.

Pretty good blog post - I really appreciate him separating Classic and OSR, and pointing out "The early OSR had Grognardia to provide it with a reconstructed vision of the past to position itself as the inheritors of," - far, far too often I've run into OSR folks who seem to believe that they are playing the same game as the Classic players, with the same philosophy, though it's demonstrably untrue. Anyone who actually reads B/X and the 1e DMG will see, in black and white, the advice given to DMs about fairness, balance and not allowing unfairness to emerge from die rolls. OSR is not Classic, but that delusion causes a ton of misunderstandings. I definitely run games as a mix of these styles....I strongly believe in the Classic concepts of scaling difficulty (to a point) and keeping the game fair. I think Trad games had great contributions on story and narrative, and really making sure the WHY of the world matters. Story games did great things about marrying mechanics and theme - a big disagreement I have with some OSR folks is that their games are all about avoiding combat at all costs, when D&D is -at its heart - a combat game. That's dissonant to me. But I strongly identify with OSR thoughts on things like random tables and emergent narratives. The biggest weakness of this article is indeed the OC/Neo-trad section....his understanding of this "type" of play is very fuzzy. You absolutely do not see Critical Role fans coming into the game worrying about character optimization....they are far more concerned with character backstories and narrative arcs. Often the mechanics of D&D get in their way, but it may be the only RPG they know. I also don't think he's fully understood the role of the DM in those games. While yes, the DM has a much bigger obligation to bring in character backstories and arcs, I don't feel that it deprioritizes their role as creator - the players know that their desired character arcs are going to be challenged, and potentially changed, by the player's response to the DM's challenges. If anything, the optimizer and organized play crowd hearkens back to the Classic style of play more than anything else - make sure your character is able to stand up to any challenge (at your level) and tackle every adventure as a problem to be solved (not a story to be experienced). The game is a puzzle to them, like RPGA tournament style play. That's wholly separate, even anathema, to someone who is playing D&D with their only experience being Critical Role.

It's funny to me because my style of game is absolutely "neo-trad" and has been for 16 years, despite me learning (and playing with) the Red Box Basic Set until well into the 2000's. I've always run my games focused on slow build-up and long term gratification and exploration/decision making instead. And now I get why my players always seem hesitant and impatient when our adventures start, because while I am clearly playing to the current trend, I'm taking this one step against it that confuses their expectations.

I've always thought that the mechanisms for advancement or experience, whatever they may be, are incredibly important in how they influence playstyle and midset. A game that awards xp for every gold piece value of treasure found and nothing else is going to foster a very different play culture than a game that awards advamcement for specific character achievements. Something to consider in this metric.

I'm fully in the Classic/OSR camp myself. Interesting for sure!

basically what im getting is that it's not player types, but a history of roleplay, roughly: gamism (classic) giving way to published modules and metaplots (trad), which then split into people who think the story should come from the GM (still trad), the rules (story games), PC backstories (neotrad), or player choices (OSR), then there's also the "immersion" crowd (larp) i guess the problem with this model is that pretty much everyone i meet with strong opinions on the nature of roleplay is a mix of at least two

Thanks for highlighting this blog; I will mine it for more of his wisdom. I'm entirely into the OSR style of play. I wonder if it's because I started playing AD&D in the summer of 1979 when I was 10.

The title, "Nordic LARP", got me giggling. I was totally bemused when I played "Dragonlance". I do miss the Forge.

I thought the OSR was a reaction to the release of 4e, with its video game-like mechanics, and the death of Gary Gygax, which occurred at about the same time.

I LOVE this - so much better than material that assumes a certain play style is better - it’s all about context, and what any given group is trying to achieve. ❤️

Thank you for sharing this. This articulates much of what I have experienced but never intellectualised.

"He probably had it coming" for the cthulhu t-shirt had me imagining a cultist's take on Chicago's Cellblock Tango

This is really interesting stuff. I look forward to reading this article a using it to help refine my understanding of my own game.

I wonder where FKR would fit into these 6 schools of play. It may be considered closer to storygames, or OSR, iguess but i feel it's kinda its own thing

Vampire mentioned! It is my favorite storytelling game, especially when you run werewolf and mage afterwards

Great article, great video. Definitely helps make explicit the often implicit assumptions about how people want to play and does good work to de-stigmatizing difference. Not "you're wrong" just "you're interested in a different kind of play". Helps people find the points of difference to just agree to disagree and the points of similarity to compare notes and learn from each other with minimal conflict.

Another reminder to discuss your expectations when joining a table

Fascinating read and watch. My background in tabletops is almost exclusively D&D, but I have dabbled with almost every edition. As a kid, I rolled a few characters and played a couple of sessions of 3.X with my friend and his brother, but we never really got anywhere. Then for most of my childhood, the majority of actual hours spent playing D&D were spent playing a homebrewed version of AD&D at the local rec center. When I had my first job I bought a bunch of the 4th Ed books and spent hours pouring over them but spent very little actual playtime, and really it wasn't until starting a 5e group with some work friends and some friends from that same AD&D scene. This video really helped me put into frame exactly what feels so different between my expectations and the actual reality of what playing with my group is like. My group doesn't fit neatly into one of these buckets, but it does have a much bigger emphasis on capital r Roleplaying than I'm used to, and so it has forced me to become more of an actual roleplayer, which I think is a good thing. With that said, I do have a bit of a craving for more hack n slashy, dungeon crawly, wandering monster type stuff that just doesn't seem to happen too much, and I wish there was a cleaner marriage between Classic RAW balance and moment to moment dungeon crawling and Neo-Trad ideas about character fantasy fulfillment.

Great video. Very informative. Love your content.

I really enjoyed this post. Although I'm not super plugged into the online discussions, it really helps me identify threads in my own play, in the history of it over time, and what I want most out of games. And it will vary from time to time. I think I've enjoyed aspects of all of these except that, strangely, trad play never really seemed to stick the landing for me. You'd focus a lot on following the story the GM laid out but I personally never really experienced really euphoric story moments compared to the spontaneous emergent ones. And this piece made me reflect that while I have enjoyed moments of total character immersion sometimes - as per Nordic Larp (I didn't previously realise that this was an explicit intention of play for many people) - other people seem to view the very notion with deep suspicion.

Solid breakdown, as always :)

Fantastic video! Thank you.

Ben, you are a treasure, thanks for the all the high quality content! This vid was one of my favorite so far, love the theory stuff

I read this article about a month ago and really enjoyed it, but thank you for illuminating Nordic Larp better for my brain. I hadn’t really understood what that was.

This really helped me analyse the behaviour of my players from previous campaigns - which i think is incredibly useful! Specifically - ive certainly had some players at my table who came with expectations of Trad and Neo-Trad style games and were disappointed when i ran an OSR style game. Some of those players ended up leaving and i felt as though i let them down. Looking back on it - this would have been a fantastic way of clearing up expectations before starting a new game. Also - i wonder if i could try running a Neo-Trad style game and what that would be like - it doesn't sound like something i would want to play - but perhaps it would be a good stretch of my Refereeing skills! Great Video Ben!

Very helpful summary of all of this! I just updated the Wikipedia entry for the OSR with your description of "Revival" or "Renaissance" in that term.

Interesting article and video! I have mostly GMed Modern, but I've been shifting into OSR for the last couple of years. As a player, I have mostly played Modern and I have been bamboozled into playing "Trad" with the guise of "Classic" and "OSR" 😂, and sadly I have rarely played some real OSR. Hey, what about an other subculture, the "Beer & Pretzels" one. Mostly one shots that are really -really- rules lite and they are designed to be wacky and not take the table very seriously, I can think of games like Kobolds Ate My Baby and I have hacked some GHOSTBUSTERS to be played this way (using EZD6).

Just posted a video that covers the four styles of play based on these cultures and what I've observed at tables. I would recommend this to anyone in this hobby. Spend time thinking about your experiences and how they relate to these styles. This will help you understand compatibility with others when sitting down to play.

Yeah I too have experienced these - and usually its a sort of mix of them cause I think most people don't sit down and analize what kind of D&D game they are going to run ahead of time - but I think this is useful for reading your group and helping picking a game to play - kind of like choosing a genre to read from. Thanks for sharing that-dudes names to all these styles - great work Questing Beast - I'd give you 👍👍 if I could!

great content as usual!

I agree that the foci of the different stories are very different. When I DM, the game is much more about overcoming obstacles, whereas when my friends run the game, it is much more about "the story." Appreciate the video

Very insightful article and video. The main problem with it IMHO is that it's essentially about most vocal proselyting ttrpg cultures (and dnd-centric especially). People who just play and people who write articles about how to play with skill of literature major - very different kind of people. So we have 5 out of 6 DnD cultures and some interesting info for indi game designers. Essentially DnD fan who is indy DnD game-designer that want to sell its product wrote article :)

Thank you for this video Ben! I had actually read the 6 cultures of play article, but I didn't really understand it. Too much jargon, too many inside terms, too many assumptions about what the reader already knew... and I didn't know enough to understand. Your video really clarified the different cultures for me in an accessible way. So thank you!

Fascinating, I never thought of V:tM as a game that is advocating for the GM to run a story, I always saw it as character driven and not plot driven. And that is how I had run that game for years. I have seen people like Ron Edwards making claims about V:tM, but nothing in the actual books is telling people to do this Trad approach or culture of play. And well, it comes not as surprise that I felt at home in Nordic LARP and used those techniques in my table games. I also tried a lot of story games, but was not always happy with the results. Probably because most story games still go with a focus on what the character is capable of doing and not who the character is, which I find more important to experience the character and express a character beyond mere competency.

Absolutely awesome

I got some insight from this. It helped me put into words the idea that yes, I'm invested in my character and want them to reach their goals, but I don't want it cheapened by the need for gratification. It explains why I feel a disappointment at finding a stack of powerful items, and why I'll unconsciously start to push back if my character gets something it doesn't feel like they've earned yet. Do I want them to succeed? Yes. But embracing that success without embracing the flaws and failures and accepting that some things might be out of their reach feels hollow.

I'd say I'm a mix, because I have played every edition of D&D starting with Holmes Blue Book. The one constant is the use of miniatures in my games. I think that aspect really does get overlooked as the game had it's origins in miniature wargames. Gygax himself felt the Elastolin figures he owned were splendid heroic types. That being said, I would add the wargamer as another type. I have heard from another old schooler that he knew of a group that still used Chainmail to play D&D! I think the visual and contextual appeal is what satisfies me the most.

I have three broad types of play in TTRPGs. 1 Survival is based on the players in a more open world surviving the various dangers. 2 Simulation which is closer in some ways to the miniature battle simulations that were the forerunner of early RPGs or the set piece adventure modules in d20 and 4th ed. The role of the player is to accomplish some goal set by the GM. 3 Storytelling is focused on the RP part of RPG. It can be more GM or player driven, but it works best with cooperation between them.

That actually explains a lot about my apparent inability to enjoy a game as a player... Very insightful.

I would say that my style of DMing is interposed between what the author describes as "traditional and "neo-trad" but I feel like I have taken bits from the OSR. Typically when I have my players create characters I tell them to keep their backstories basic. I do expect them to have some sort of backstory because I use their ideas as springboards for ideas of my own. However, I don't want each character to have some sort of "grand character arc", because I encourage the players to expect their characters' growths to come from working together to solve problems and synergizing as a party. Their character's "growth" comes more from what their characters experience together rather than what the players are expecting or hoping to happen.

Thanks Ben! Fascinating, and extremely useful. In my 40 years of playing, I've definitely experienced and enjoyed all of these - although the dedicated LARP thing is my least favourite by itself - because I've definitely experienced and run games that have amalgamated two or more of these play 'cultures.' It's kinda cool to look at this to work out in which style I'd like to run my next game. Feels like an interesting lesser gathered and defined set of game controls that can be tweaked to adjust potential outcomes and table mood. Neo-trad/OC (I love this definition- makes so much sense), would seem to have been heavily influenced (at least, to my mind) by at least two generations of RPG players being used to linear character design options and levelling-up in PC and Console games. Thus, the player character destination and autonomy - the goal of the game - often delimited within 'authored' official RAW options from the books (and or apps) becomes extremely important. This seems more likely to be a more ubiquitous and deeper cultural factor than official organised play groups. If organised play is actually the main defining influence, I wish I'd lived in one of those many gaming Meccas with such an abundance of groups.

To me player freedom, an open world mentality and lethality are important, but also strict adherence to rules. Rules are always subject to change though. I think the players have just as much to say about these things as the GM does.

Let me say first that I dmed white box D&D for years and have played first edition D&D, but very few sessions of later versions. One good view of OD&D is pasta and sauce. The strands of pasta are the stories and the sauce is all the other stuff going on. Players had to locate the stories. A player sitting down at the table for the first time is not yet even in a story, let alone the protagonist of one. Players finding a story arc and making it their own was very satisfying for them; it had become more their story than mine as DM. on game balance, dungeons had levels and wilderness areas had reputations. Players knew, or could find out, that there were hobgoblins in those hills, minotaurs in that forest, and giants in that ravine. The difficulty of encounters were largely a matter of player choice. on character growth, going from 4th level to 8th level as a fighter involved doubling the experience required. The rate of experience gained increased some, but much less in proportion. Level growth slowed over time. My understanding of D&D 3 (and later editions?) is that level growth over time remained steady or increased. i don't remember Ravenloft, but I do remember the Dragonlance modules and novels. That corresponded in chronology with my abandonment of D&D for Runequest and Pendragon. This video is an excellent explanation of why that happened. I find it amusing that that play style is here referred to as traditional, where for me it was terminal. When I was introducing D&D to new players (almost all players in my game then had no previous experience with a role playing game, or any cooperative game), was that the goal was for your character to be a good subject for a biography. Also, have fun and try to help the others to have fun as well. I knew only a few people who wanted to use episodic television as a model. My response at the time was that if I (or any of my players) wanted to watch TV, we could do that. We would not be at a D&D table if there was something else we would rather be doing. D&D, 45 years ago.

Fair comment, especially when injected with your experience and personal insight. I'd bookmarked this blogpost sometime back but have only skimmed through it so your read through was especially welcome.

You've made a fairly opaque article make a lot more sense, thank you! I remember stumbling upon it and having it fly over my head a bit. I still think it misses a few other cultures by focusing on the big ones (fantasy d20 games, their cognates in the OSR, their competitors in the form of CoC and VtM, and their contrasts in the storygame scene). Take, for example, the "grim & perilous" games (1st, 2nd and 4th edition of _Warhammer Fantasy RP,_ and their retroclone, _Zweihänder)_ - they are crunchy, but not overly concerned with balance; they have extremely granular character progression, but a flat power curve; they have dangerous, random gameplay, but character death is rare; they simulate everyday life in great detail, but aren't really "cozy" games. The idea of grim & perilous games is to evoke a heightened parody of life in the Early Modern period - you play a common person in a society that is emerging from a "simple" age of nobles and knights into one of increasing complexity, ever-bloating bureaucracy, political and religious strife, mercantile interests, technological change, and the inhumane horrors of industrial warfare. And then the designers supercharge all of those themes to a comedic degree. You don't get to die, because death is a _mercy_ - you will live, and go about your everyday business, only to be marked by wounds, plagues, corruption, persecution, until you are completely unrecognizable. Welcome to modernity! As the character creation chapter of Zweihänder says, "This is not a story about people changing the world; it's the story of a world that changes the people within it." And it's usually quite the funny affair. I'm not sure what I would call this kind of gaming culture. It has the "drive your characters like stolen cars"-attitude of storygames, but it's also full of crunch and accounting (sometimes literally, depending on your character's Career); it has the grimness of the OSR, but not much of its focus on agency (in fact, it can be thematically important to accentuate how little agency you actually have over the state of the world). It's one of the only subgenres in gaming where comedy (not usually of the full-bellied variety, but rather a kind of satire) is essential to the experience.

Advanced Adventures off the back of OSRIC had ads in the back that refer to Old School Revival circa 2006. Only later did revival switch to renaissance which makes since considering the timeframe

I liked that article a lot because it was useful, and clarified things for me (especially Classic vs. Trad. vs. OSR). I think it is awesome you did a video on it. I appreciate your commentary. I also think that the various "cultures" can be problematic. It's inevitable that people separate themselves into groups and have different preferences, so there's nothing wrong with that per se. The main issue is that becoming strongly conscious about having a specific "approach" or "preference" (OSR, OC, etc.) causes a lot of conflicts. Recognizing the existence of "cultures" can mitigate this by making people aware of the tendencies. On the other hand it can also put too much emphasis on theoretical preferences, when the primary concern really should be that everyone is getting along and having fun together. - I'm "Dex" from Traveller.

I would say that there are many fusion cultures of play as well. And if I remember correctly, he talked about this in the essay as well. I tend to run a mix of trad, OSR, and story games at my table. I like to be creative because that’s largely what I enjoy doing, so trad is important to me there. Id also say my table practices OSR and story games through a trad lens. This is also because, as mentioned in the essay, trad involves taking inspiration from other forms of media, and my main inspiration for my games includes video games, epic fantasy novels, and OSR play in it of itself. I like to create an experience for my players, but I want it to be interactive for them and satisfying as well while still generating an emotionally satisfying story. Of course, this can’t all be done all at once. So for me, it’s a very difficult balancing act. I guess the lesson here is that I’m a trad GM whose inspiration is story games and OSR, which means those cultures inevitably find their way into my games.

I had no idea how close my playstyle was to OSR. The kinds of games I run and play in are very sandbox and freedom focused, without concern for a player's level. If they want to engage something far overleveled for them, it's their funeral.

Apocholypse world dominates the "Story Game" space because early playtesters realised the power and flexibility of its core mechanics. Its first two clones; Dungeon World and Monster Hearts were in development before Apoch. had even released. So very quickly, there were 3 PbtA games that appealed to a wide market and demonstrated the flexibility and ease of development PbtA offered. It snowballed from there, each game reinforcing PbtA as the default engine of "Story" games.

I'm classical, one of my DMs is neo-traditional and while I enjoy his games man do we have completely different ways of approaching it, feels like a completely different game even if we are using the same system (Pathfinder first edition). And since there's a lot of cross pollination in our groups (we play in each other's games) you can really tell the difference in philosophies. I think the best description is once I told him I was jealous of how good he was at weaving a story, and he told me "I may be a good narrator, but I would much rather play in a dungeon you designed than one I designed." I also noticed once when I was talking to a guy at work asking me about how I make my stories and my big bad and I was like "I don't, I usually plop them in a town and tell them there's a dungeon nearby and the rest just happens naturally." To me the dungeon is like 90 percent of the game, I have a tendency to tune out when we aren't in a dungeon.

I would actually split stuff like Vampire / other WoD games (my main focus nowadays) or Shadowrun from trad and give them a... let's say, ”metaplot-mixed” category: the catch here being that there is a large metaplot influencing the game, sinking down to its rule system, and that your table is not necessarily „alone” in the experience, but rather, a larger part of o developing world, centrally guided, and that it is also the GM's (or GM + players') job to decide how much of that seeps into your shared world and experience of said world. Trad is not enough! :))

Really interesting! I will definetly read the original article. Our play group has 4 DMs lol and we each have our own styles. We know what to expect when we switch games. Back when I ran shadowrun 4th ans Blade of the Iron Throne I guess it was a mix of storytelling and OSR with a little bit of neo-trad (even if jt did not exist at the time). I wrote a lot of background from the world based on my players’ characters (which we created all together). We made sure we filled a lot of different roles and while it was not pure sandbox, the “operations” were very sandboxy and unbalanced. But my players liked that :) When we were at the “run” phase of shadowrun, my players went into a place that I designed with as much believability as I could muster but I had no idea how they would run things. And a lot of secondary characters and locations popped up instantly or gradually based on their questions and the preestablished way that this particular game/ world worked. So it was like a bunch of small sandboxes linked linearly with potential branching paths.

Very interesting topic.

Hi Ben, a small point of nitpicking: Story Games, understood as defined in Ron Edwards’ essay “Story Now!” are not about creating an “emotionally satisfying story”, they are about players addressing a Premise (ie a question or problem pertaining to human behaviors) and developing it into a Theme via play (Theme = a judgmental statement about how to act, behave or believe)

Super interesting!

Oh, i ran across this post a while ago like last month, nice to see it here!! OC/Neo-trad maps fairly well to things such as 5e/pf2e in my experience. However, in speaking of those two systems and their communities specifically, for 5e the adherence to RAW is quite variable whereas for pf2e RAW is sacrosanct. 5e people tend to be much more willing to dropkick RAW in the face. As far as I've seen it's a not uncommon sentiment of exasperation from pf2e players that "gods I'm so glad that people actually want to play the game as it is, not what they imagine what it is like in 5e". This is about these specific games tho. But some online talking heads for other games who give advice do seem to have quite a similar disposition to the post's description. Imo anyway.

I played with a group of 8, and they and the DM were Trad-LARP hardcore, sometimes going a bit melodramatic for my tastes, but I always prefered elements of Classic and OSR, though I share the emotional enjoyment of the LARP. Never really a problem with DM Fiat, but it started to become clear to me that my character was never in a real risk, outcomes were set, and it all became predictable.

There is also the murderhobo style of play.

I remember reading an early draft of these ideas a year or two ago, and found it an eye-opening way to look at things. As a classic DM, culture shock would actually be a good description of my experience encountering modern (meaning trad and neo-trad) D&D. I found the OSR more agreeable and worth borrowing some ideas from, yet even so some of it still felt a bit "off" (especially in advocating a near total disregard for balance).

Thought provoking. It's interesting how tastes change with time and it depends on who you're playing with too and what RPG you're playing. When I first started playing in the late 90s, everyone I gamed with played what would be described as Classic or Trad or a mix of either. Vampire was a factor in this but all the 2nd edition AD&D games were like that too. I didn't discover OSR until 2019. It's definitely my favorite now but when I play GURPS or Vampire it's mostly back to the Classic/Trad mix. I bet if I ever played 2nd edition again, it would feel like that instead of OSR. So maybe nostalgia and habit play a role as well.

Great video!! And interesting article. Yeah, I'm not so convinced about his neo-TRAD bucket, (some of it has merit I think but, yeah not that knowledgeable about it) but the other buckets seem to be pretty well thought out. Also, I do feel like Classic, OSR, and Trad aren't so well delineated in real life play. I feel like many people play a mix of two of these three or all three of these. My style would be a mix of these 3, classic, trad, and OSR.

Great video

Yeah this matches my experience. There are wildly different expectations and assumptions among rpg players. I was introduced to the hobby 6 years ago and we played the trad style with my friend pretty much writing the entire session beforehand as a branching narrative. I've played PbtA games which are fun but don't have staying power and don't scratch the problem solving itch at all. I have a friend who loves to give me updates on his Curse of Strahd campaign and the intricate character relationships between PCs and NPCs. And I've tried to run OSE with a group where players would talk to me between games about how they wanted their character arc to unfold and asked me to make plans to facilitate those arcs. What OSR promises to deliver is fantastic but its very hard to do this if you don't have a player group that is equally excited about playing in this style. I would say that even having open-minded players who understand the principles of OSR isn't enough. The players need to want to play in this way. But there are other styles of play as well. For instance, I've played with a group where the story didn't really matter, the rules didn't matter and there weren't really any challenges. It was just improvised comedy where the GM set the scene.

Much like alignment, I don't find the categories themselves helpful or practical - but the process of comparison they prompt can create useful thoughts and insights. It's a bit like genre, they're a helpful shorthand or starting point for having a conversation - but I wouldn't want or need to rely on it when making any actual decisions.

Thanks for the summary video. I got recommended this article, but found it hard to follow due to the lot of fluff and unnecessary name dropping by the end. Two things I noticed. 1. I find it funny that the same terms can be used to describe completely different things. I move in some LARP circles and "Nordic LARP" means something... well not *completely* different, but different enough that it doesn't fit 1:1 how this article describes it. The term I heard mostly thrown around with Nordic style is "Play to lift" - meaning the goal of the game is to collaborate with others and forge a story together, and not necessarily chasing your own goals. I do not agree that the heavy focus on immersion and bleed is what separates Nordic from other styles, because the same can be said of Neo trad in some aspects... or almost all styles to some degree. (Funny note: "Bleed/Bleeding" is another LARP word they use differently in the LARP circles I know) I think the article doesn't do a clear job of explaining what exactly separates this style from say Story Games. Because it is very similar, and for Tabletop games in particular, I would dare say it could be a sub-genre of Story games, rather than it's own style. What separates Nordic LARP games at the tabletop? Is "Fiasco" Nordic or is it a Story Game? Is "Ten Candles"? "Wanderhome"?? 2. I do not agree with Neo Trad for the most part. It feels... outdated for me, to some degree. Organized play and things like Adventurers League for D&D 5e is super North America-centric, and not really representative for the rest of the world... other than major English speaking countries - maybe. For my example, I GM D&D 5e for the most part, so by definition I probably play Neo Trad, right? But while I have player's with characters and there aspirations and let them live out there stories, I still have stories and conflicts I come up with, and that are not just there to confirm to my players wishes. I encourage players to have their own story and enjoy the one I present rather than bringing over-optimized powerhouses designed to dominate my challenges. By this definition, I don't think what I play is Neo Trad then, so what is it? Also, I think Neo Trad probably came before OSR emerged. I know this article is about the emerging styles from the history of (english) rpgs, but there are still many hazy boundaries that could use some more refining, maybe adding new or sub-categories. And at the end of the day, it still comes down to player preference. I have players in my group who's play-style can be put all over this list, yet they still come together to enjoy a game night together.

God this is fascinating. I think one thing I disagree with is the casting of neo-trad style as being focused on character powerment over a short period. While I agree that a lot of modern play takes place over shorter campaigns, I don't think it's a preference, so much as a product of circumstance. People have less time to play than we maybe ever have before, and if we want to see a story finished, there's a lot of pressure to get it done before schedules drift and the table falls apart. I also disagree with the idea that the focus is on empowerment, specifically. In my experience, people coming into the hobby and engaging on the level of their OC don't *necessarily* want that character to be cool and powerful. Lots of us do, but lots of us don't. I distinctly remember a 5th edition game I played one-on-one years ago, where the entire adventure was to put my character through a series of torturous games. It was this dark experiment where the goal was to see who that character was as they lost the things they - and I - saw as central to them. Really, I think the big focus of "oc" play is that it has a huge focus on giving characters satisfying arcs, whether those be heroic, tragic, or comedic.

Great video. Sharing with friends so they have a better understanding of OSR. I have a number of friends experiencing 5E burnout.

Organized play started in the early 90s with TSR's living campaigns.

What I found most interesting was the explanation on OC or Neo-Trad style. I think that might contribute to the DM shortage issue. I've encountered groups and players before that I ended up not running games for because of differences in style and expectations that sounded related to this approach.

As a long time GM and sometime player, I listened to this twice. Twice, because in my first run through I was not attracted to any of these "cultures". Second time confirms it. None of these describe what I seek or how we play. They may be data points on the continuum, but they don't describe the continuum, or the bits of interest to me. GNS seems simpler and more satisfying.

It’s funny that the essay involves into a long discussion about why OSR is special and different

I really liked this article and agree with you that perhaps it's most useful contribution is giving the community the words to describe what they like and what they're trying to achieve in their games. One of my criticisms of 5E is that I feel it tends to try to be many of these cultures all at once while many of these cultures are in conflict. It's why I think a lot of 5E community groups have DMs asking for advice on how to manage the dissonance that comes with these cultures conflicting in their games at their table. And why the advice often tends to also fall into one of these cultures at the expense of another.

new culture is the rise of Solo play since covid, the ttrpg for me always was a group only thing but now is mixed, i even use the same PC on group and on solo adventures. In solo I use random tables and oracles, there is a story line to get to the end but the voyage is a random mistery

I agree with the general assessment from a historical perspective. And yes, I agree that the OC/Neo-traditional style is fairly accurate, too. I've been playing 5e since launch, and I've run organized play games. However, there are exceptions, obviously. My DM style certainly fits neo-traditional, and it's been that way since the mid-80s. So, I arrived at the style independent of historical or cultural developments. For whatever that 2 cents is worth.

Very interesting video. My DM style is most informed by videogames (especially BioWare games). I create hubs where conflicts are happening that are impossible to completely avoid, then the players are free to engage with those conflicts as they would like. My job is to ask hard questions (my worlds tend to be very morally ambiguous) and create interesting problems the party can choose whether or not they want to try to solve (but if they choose not to decide, I generally make that the worst outcome).