Youtube is awash with radicalised opinion froth about games.

@Taskerland @malin

@Taskerland I'm split down the middle. In many cases I like trad with GM (although I don't like adversarial GMs, but rather prefer facilitator of even collaborative ones). I agree that overall I like rules-light (or at least rules-consistent: C&S5 is not rules **light** but it has two, very simple to describe, core mechanisms to learn instead of dozens) over rules-heavy/inconsistent because nothing drags me out of character faster than rolling endless dice and consulting endless tables.

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@Taskerland But, too, I sometimes find the simulationist/trad world a bit stifling in terms of actually getting an interesting story out of them. So even in those games I like having some form of metaprocedure (like the best-named "ass-saver points" from CORPS at minimum).

And I'm unabashedly a fan of games like the FU-derived ones, or FATE or the Spark-derived ones.

But I can't stand the PbtA/FitD/whatever ones, both from what I can understand of the design and for the paired culture.

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@Taskerland @vdonnut I could not find a coherent definition of what NSR even meant, to be honest.

Moreau Vazh What I find really fascinating about this is the endemic belief among TTRPG fans who know that multiple systems exist, that those systems are built for specific styles or genres of play. 5e and Pathfinder for high fantasy “crunchy” play, KitD and Dungeon World for “narrative” play, and OSR for dark,edgy, gritty play. The idea of a generic system seems to be reserved for GURPS enthusiasts.

Modern players conflate system with setting and aesthetic to such a high degree, it’s kind of paralyzing.

Moreau Vazh It’s a bizarre cognitive divorcing of play preference from play choices. I’ve heard people say things like “OSR is super deadly, so you need to avoid combat”, when how deadly combat is is entirely a function of what the GM chooses to make you fight, and how they choose to play out the combat. Similarly, I’ve seen people tell curious new folks that PF2e isn’t for them if they like roleplaying, because it’s just a combat game with a thin veneer of the fantasy genre (while also complaining about how much page space is dedicated to non-combat material). But, like, 5e seems to become “OSR” really quickly if you smother it in black paint, print an opinionated guideline for combats, and hype it on YouTube, and OSR becomes extremely crunchy if you slap a Goodman Game’s logo on it and pepper in some werewolves or whatever.

Yet no one seems to be willing to admit that their games play out the way that they do because of their choices at the table, not their choices at the book store.

Moreau Vazh But that means… talking to the other players at the table! Ewwww!