Against splitting RPGs into OSR, DIY, Indie, Story Games, etc. (campaignwiki.org)

submitted 1 year ago by kensanata@lemm.ee to c/osr@lemm.ee

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Here I am arguing against the split into the various sub "camps" of current RPG culture. I used to believe in this divide, too, but now I'm convinced the differences are just talked up and don't really exist except as tags, not inherently better or worse than tags such as "solo", "rules lite", "gonzo" and all the other ways of splitting it up. The tags remain important for some people to "find their crowd" but that's far weaker than saying that these are the most important splits in RPG culture.

My actual favourite category would actually be "64 pages or less for rules, setting and adventure"! 😅

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[-] copacetic@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

I generally agree. The problem is you probably never know in advance if a new group will have enough action to sustain itself or if it will die.

My assumption is that the primary reason for a split is that some group is invisible in add larger group because it is smaller. For example, in a general „rpg“ group it will be mostly about D&D 5e. Everything else is barely visible. So someone will try to create another group. Zero problems:

How to split? There are multiple dimensions and „not D&D 5e“ is a stupid name. One could split by system, by genre, by publisher, or whatever. It is effectively a random choice.
Due to the invisibility in the large group, nobody knows how many will follow into the splinter group. That is the risk.

[-] GrumblingGM@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

That is true. I do feel like whenever there's a general RPG group, it usually breaks down quickly into every post either being related to 5E, or complaining about 5E.

I stopped visiting RPG on Reddit because it felt like half the posts were just complaining about 5E, and while I don't disagree with those posts, I would rather talk about the things I DO enjoy.

this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023

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