An interesting piece about the relative importance of different elements in various games #ttrpg

I'm not sure of how useful the circles actually are as the games are very different and the mechanics/procedure is an OSR affectation born of a refusal to accept that their culture of play is getting sucked back into the mechanical maximalism of mainstream D&D.
https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2025/12/10/coring-the-onion-osr-structuralism-and-non-osr-games/

@Taskerland I've never found _any_ flavor of theory useful, but, if this has any truth in it, it may help in some small way to explain why I bounce so very, very, violently hard from OSR stuff.

@SJohnRoss I like the rules lightness. What they do with the rules they have is another question entirely.

@Taskerland Sure, but the OSR was invented around 2011 or so, and by that point we already had ... almost innumerable examples of rules-lightness.

But I agree; rules-lightness is one of the frequent aspects of the OSR that makes me nod, and not in order to hurl.

What they do with the rules doesn't interest me one way or another. What they do with higher-order design, on the other hand ... ugh.

@Taskerland I've never found _any_ flavor of theory useful, but, if this has any truth in it, it may help in some small way to explain why I bounce so very, very, violently hard from OSR stuff.

@SJohnRoss @Taskerland I find theory helps me move from "I don't like your game and you don't like mine" to "here are things we both like, so a game that does those specifically is one we can play together".