The state of Post-OSR content

[Pseudoephedrine]

One thing I'm trying to get across in the essay to just avoid a bunch of "Oh, I'm actually these three, and this is all subjective" is to hammer home the point that the paradigms exert their greatest influence in:

1) Low-skill / low-judgement situations, like when someone is first coming into the hobby and trying to figure out what the hell it is and how you do it;

2) Manneristic examples like the one above which are self-consciously trying to express a pure tendency;

3) Arguments between people over what ideal play looks like.

I think in actual practice by people who have cultivated a certain unspecified minimum threshold of skill and judgement use those abilities to combine elements and practices from different paradigms to taste, tho' the formation of a person or group's taste is a critical historical phenomenon engaged with these same paradigms itself rather than some innate, mysterious orientation pre-existing them.

@Pseudoephedrine : What png's? Portable-Network-Graphics?

Yes.

 

[squeen]

Yes.

Seriously, when I search...that's all I can find.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I think this does show how the extreme forms of the ideals and values of neo-trad are starkly different than the extremes of trad.

My question is this: If these extremes can be made within the same game style categorization, such that the two are entirely distinct from one another, then how can one categorize something as being "trad/neo-trad/whatever" instead of being just another permutation of the game's varied spectrum of styles? That is to say, how can you be sure the boundaries you use to define trad/neo-trad/etc are actually indicators of different zeitgeists of playstyle, as opposed to just different approaches under the same style umbrella?

I think a point that needs addressing is that D&D and its clones are more often than not inherently learned from social experience, rather than by following a written course of action. Players learn to play by playing, so to speak, or by watching others play (especially in the age of YouTube and the popularity of things like Critical Role). And in this way, I believe an individual's style/emphasis/practices are formed not by what is prescribed in the books, but rather what their own group has undergone. Some groups emphasize adherence to the book and others are more lax, but in the end they are that way because that's the way they've learned the game from their peers. Consequently, I think it becomes less useful to ascribe a specific playstyle to a specific era of the game, because there is seemingly no shared universal experience of how to play the game.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I think I can do so because the values motivating play are distinct, and the most extreme extensions of those values demonstrate their incompability and incommensurability when manifest, whereas different styles within the same paradigm or culture retain a commensurability and compatibility even if the priority and weighting of those values are different. This is a pretty standard way to demonstrate these kinds of differences, adapted from Kuhn's later work (post-The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

I completely agree that texts alone don't determine things - I mentioned right back near the start that neo-trad is mostly spread in the community by people imitating the norms of streaming campaigns like CR, and that trad appears to have initially spread from Hickman and Clegg's social circles from 1977-1978 and only began circulating in textual form several years later (in the early 1980s). However, I don't think the books are totally irrelevant either. They are simply in the mix and particularly easy to point to as examples, since most play is not directly recorded in recoverable ways until quite recently. You might recall that I have repeatedly avoided saying that texts "are" a particular culture, but rather that they express its values or are designed to accommodate its values and do so in ways that underdetermine their use.

Similarly, I think your claim that ascribing specific playstyles to specific eras is impossible is correct if, and only if, you supply the implicit premise that those styles only happen during that time period. I do not make this second implicit claim - I think they originate at a particular point in time and space and then sprawl out from there temporally and spatially.

Relatedly, the claim that there is no universal experience of play doesn't contradict anything I've said. It's about what scopes of analysis can be applied to play. I don't disagree that there's an atomising reading of games as individual species, I just also happen to think there are genera into which those species fall.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I think I can do so because the values motivating play are distinct, and the most extreme extensions of those values demonstrate their incompability and incommensurability when manifest, whereas different styles within the same paradigm or culture retain a commensurability and compatibility even if the priority and weighting of those values are different.

By whose definition though? I mean, this whole conversation is making a lot of assumptions based on extremely subjective, nearly inconsequential datasets. My point was to say essentially as much; with no fundamental, documented, axiomatic way to learn the game, why are we comparing organically-developed styles as though they can be measured against some universal standard (something you can point to and say "that's a very trad thing" or "that's not something that happens in neo-trad play")?

Similarly, I think your claim that ascribing specific playstyles to specific eras is impossible is correct if, and only if, you supply the implicit premise that those styles only happen during that time period.

My rhetoric was meant to be less along the lines of "how can you?" and more along the lines of "why would you?" - that is to say, what's the point of even addressing it? Is there a gain to be had by drawing these seemingly conflated lines in the sand?

 

[squeen]

Relatedly, the claim that there is no universal experience of play doesn't contradict anything I've said. It's about what scopes of analysis can be applied to play. I don't disagree that there's an atomising reading of games as individual species, I just also happen to think there are genera into which those species fall.

I let this drop originally, but can you enumerate the qualities necessary for a "culture" by your definition again. I am unclear since universal experience of play seems not to be on that list anymore.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

What universal standard are you talking about here? The notion of a style or culture isn't a "universal standard". Nor is a "fundamental, documented, axiomatic way to learn the game" required for styles and paradigms to exist or be characterised. Taking that as a bar, there are no such things as literary or artistic styles or cultures, which seems to show that the consequences of such a view, and thus the view itself, are untenable.

Your criticism here seems to be directed at some other set of ideas that have very little to do with my claims.

My rhetoric was meant to be less along the lines of "how can you?" and more along the lines of "why would you?" - that is to say, what's the point of even addressing it? Is there a gain to be had by drawing these seemingly conflated lines in the sand?

I think improving people's self-understanding generally makes them happier, and allows people to pursue the truth better. For example, you frequently get into ill-structured back and forths about values and practices with the members of this forum, and you are not unique in that respect (either on this forum or elsewhere) - all over the internet and elsewhere, I see people who struggle to understand that they are not having a discussion about the respective priorities of shared values or how best to manifest them in play, but rather that they actually disagree on those values entirely with their interlocutors.

Giving people the language and concepts to better understand how their values differ would provide a baseline for them to navigate these differences instead of being lost in parochial, self-satisfied, and non-truth-productive arguments, exhortations, and other low-quality interactions. Outside of just generally improving discourse, I think improved self-understanding of one's own historical-critical position provides a useful baseline for people to start reflecting on their own play experiences and develop further agency and judgement.

On a personal level, you might note that I am one of the people least hostile to neo-trad on this forum - I simply don't care for it, I don't think it's flawed or awful or morally reprobate. That is partially because with this viewpoint, I am not stuck in the dead end of thinking that what I like is directly commensurable to other styles such that one can simply be ranked superior or inferior.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I let this drop originally, but can you enumerate the qualities necessary for a "culture" by your definition again. I am unclear since universal experience of play seems not to be on that list anymore.

It never was! I think culture in this case emerges once one goes beyond personal and direct paedogogical chains of influence and experience, and is most fundamentally found in shared norms, values, and other regulatory ideas about play, often embodied in a set of latent techniques and practices, a subset of which may be manifest or known to any member of the culture.

If we rely on universal experiences as the standard, almost nothing we call "culture" would qualify. There would be no French culture, no Yoruba culture, no Han Chinese culture, etc. because members of the same cultures do not have the same experiences in any robust sense of the word "same".

 

[squeen]

I am pretty sure what I like is what I like (subject to change without notice)...

...and I do think is it acceptable to philosophize and debate about "What is Good?". Honestly, folks can play whatever is fun for them---calling it D&D (as with the neo-trad-in-extreme example you give) is a bit of a stretch to my way of thinking. Too foreign.

But calling it an "RPG" is totally fine.

...is most fundamentally found in shared norms, values, and other regulatory ideas about play, often embodied in a set of latent techniques and practices, a subset of which may be manifest or known to any member of the culture.

OK. Then "pre-trad" or pre-1979 D&D qualifies as culture too---unless there is more to a (quantifiable) list.
To discount it seems a subjective bias.

I may detect the academic's curse happening here. One tends to fall in love with one's model to the point where it becomes confused with reality, rather than just a handy tool to describe a simplified version of reality. "The Map is not the Territory", goes the Zen Koan.

In the hard sciences, we frequently are forced to accept the limits of our models---the contrary results are catastrophically shoved in our face.

In the social sciences...not so much. One can edit or discount data that does not fit the mental mold we have fabricated. The feedback loop that forces us to admit the limitations of our model doesn't always exist.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

It's not actually true that the social sciences discount data that doesn't fit their model, but it is very common in folk reasoning about social phenomena, and your comment is a good example of just that - it discounts the many numerous examples of social science models being revised in response to data or failed predictions. For that matter, models are not abandoned in the hard sciences because of some sort of "failure" since no one can define what "failure" means in a robust way - this was well-established in the mid-20th century and endures as a folk belief about the hard sciences. Lastly, "the map is not the territory" was invented in the 1960s by Alfred Korzybinski, a semanticist, and is not a Zen koan.

I've made what I think is a good case that prior to 1977 there really isn't a culture of D&D and no one has managed to provide a counter-claim to demonstrate that the evidence I've adduced and the absences I've pointed to aren't accurate or descriptive. I'm open to the idea that from 1977 onwards there's an attempt to put one together, tho' I notice that I had to do all the research on that myself since none of the defenders of the idea could point to anything beyond what I told them about what is supposedly their own culture, and could not cite a single temporally-appropriate text to defend such a view (back when they were claiming that such a culture predated 1977). So I remain unconvinced simply because no one seems able to provide even a basic justification for it beyond the evidence that I have introduced and found inadequate (so far - the hunt continues on my end). You can call that "subjective bias", but that's simply another inaccurate label and claim, designed to paper over that it is the advocates for the existence of such a culture that have so far been epistemic damp squibs.

I'm not an academic, tho' I am using basic historiographical methodology like that if B happens after A, B can't be the cause of A, and that if a claim produces absurd and obviously false conclusions, it's probably not true. To be honest, to even call this a "model" is distorting it - I'm provide a simple taxonomy or categorisation here. A model would have typically have a causal, logical, or some other type of principle structuring the relationship between the elements, whereas I'm simply using conceptual distinctions between types.

 

[squeen]

It's not actually true that the social sciences discount data that doesn't fit their model, but it is very common in folk reasoning about social phenomena, and your comment is a good example of just that - it discounts the many numerous examples of social science models being revised in response to data or failed predictions. For that matter, models are not abandoned in the hard sciences because of some sort of "failure" since no one can define what "failure" means in a robust way - this was well-established in the mid-20th century and endures as a folk belief about the hard sciences. Lastly, "the map is not the territory" was invented in the 1960s by Alfred Korzybinski, a semanticist, and is not a Zen koan.

I knew this would get your goat. Just using it to see if you were a social scientist.

"...folk reasoning...", Ah! I get the implied insult and chose not to respond.

100% wrong about failure in the hard science. Math models fail spectacularly in a measurable way. I speak from personal experience. There is no ambiguity.

Kudos on tracking down the non-Koan, I was passing it along as it was presented to me in literature (30+ years ago...pre-wikipedia).

And yes, there are examples in the social sciences that can be quantified --- this is not one. You have proved nothing...just stated your subjective belief and discounted anything to the contrary (which is why I dropped the debate). The Scientific Method cannot prove anything, just disprove. Declaring yourself the winner is a difference of opinion carries little weight. Again, if the criteria was quantifiable... I remain unconvinced because of the ambiguity in your standards.

Also, true---it's no real model. just a taxonomy...and an interesting one that I think everyone enjoyed learning about. I am just cautioning you on being overzealous in it's defense (although I fear that line has already been crossed).

No hard feelings, I hope.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Yeah, this isn't a social scientific theory, squeen. I didn't claim it was. Nor am I a social scientist. It's specifically a critical-historical theory. I don't even know why you think this is a "social scientific" theory in the first place, frankly.

Your opinions on science, and what "subjective" means are so bad I'm not sure I can unpack and explain why they're wrong in detail on top of everything else, so I'll just leave it at the pseudo-Popperian vision you're elaborating about science hasn't been taken seriously since the mid-1970s when Lakatos revised it, and your notion of "subjective" is similarly parasitic on rejected ideas about the ineffability of taste from the 19th century. Just as one concrete example of this, models don't "fail" (no one can establish what such a state would look like for a model) but rather the explanatory theories that map models onto target systems fail. The failure state of the explanatory character of a theory is easy to explain - the mapping between the state the model predicts and the state of the target system fail to correspond over time without the operation of a known defeasor. That's not a failure of the model tho'.

(Phil of science is what my specialty in university was, albeit primarily focused on intellectual virtues and their relationship to theoretical production and evaluation rather than models per se, but this is why I find this tinker-toy vision of science so ridiculous).

Like, there's no hard feeling on my end in the sense that I don't think you're a morally deficient person who deserves punishment, but please understand that it's frustrating as hell to deal with people a) asserting and arguing with things I've never said b) introducing a bunch of badly formed and irrelevant ideas. I didn't provoke you to start wittering on about "social science" this and that, that's on you.

As a specific instance of how frustrating and distracting and just basically false most of this is, your claim that I "declared myself the winner" isn't true. I've challenged you multiple times to provide evidence of your claims (which you have not), said that I am open to any such evidence you can provide (none so far) and have done my own independent investigation. You claim that you abandoned the argument because I declared myself a winner - very well, cite where I made such a claim?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

What universal standard are you talking about here?

I guess I mean the universal standard of writing a post that says "there are X number of different styles of gameplay in D&D; trad which is like this, neo-trad which is like that, etc." When you categorize something (for example, playstyles being trad etc.) you are slapping a definitive label on it, which is sub-textually claiming a universal standard of things - i.e. Gameplay style "X" is considered "neo-trad" because it adheres to these universally-recognized criteria which have been identified as hallmarks of neo-trad gameplay. My question more accurately boils down to "how can you identify the hallmarks of a style if there is no standardization across game groups"?

It's not that I object to the conversation... I just question it's ability to accomplish anything definitive when the entirety of its subject matter is wholly subjective.

HOWEVER

I recognize what you're trying to do here; to try and connect dots between styles to see if there are emergent patterns, and to do all this as a way of developing an introspection towards commonalities across comparable styles. It's definitely churning up some good food for thought.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

This thread is getting bogged down in increasingly long diatribes producing increasingly large amounts of hot air.

In the hard sciences, we frequently are forced to accept the limits of our models---the contrary results are catastrophically shoved in our face.

In the social sciences...not so much. One can edit or discount data that does not fit the mental mold we have fabricated. The feedback loop that forces us to admit the limitations of our model doesn't always exist.

For that matter, models are not abandoned in the hard sciences because of some sort of "failure" since no one can define what "failure" means in a robust way - this was well-established in the mid-20th century and endures as a folk belief about the hard sciences.

Yet an academic should have recognized that your counter-argument does not follow from Squeens initial premise; that Hard sciences are called "hard" because their models are comparatively much easier to test and harder to falsify and the Null Hypothesis can be stated in terms that are vastly more precise then the models of the social sciences, which often lack general effect sizes and are able to describe effects specific conditions in terms of general correlations and causations and perhaps, if we are lucky and the GM is merciful, an effect size or a beta and the validity of any experimental setting must also be tested against the real world, which is a vertiable sea of multiple effects constantly acting on eachother. The difference is accuracy.

I've made what I think is a good case that prior to 1977 there really isn't a culture of D&D and no one has managed to provide a counter-claim to demonstrate that the evidence I've adduced and the absences I've pointed to aren't accurate or descriptive. I'm open to the idea that from 1977 onwards there's an attempt to put one together, tho' I notice that I had to do all the research on that myself since none of the defenders of the idea could point to anything beyond what I told them about what is supposedly their own culture, and could not cite a single temporally-appropriate text to defend such a view (back when they were claiming that such a culture predated 1977). So I remain unconvinced simply because no one seems able to provide even a basic justification for it beyond the evidence that I have introduced and found inadequate (so far - the hunt continues on my end). You can call that "subjective bias", but that's simply another inaccurate label and claim, designed to paper over that it is the advocates for the existence of such a culture that have so far been epistemic damp squibs.

So this seems pretty clear to me that even by 1976, we're already having people abandon the progressive, challenge-oriented gameplay and campaign structure Gygax envisioned but did not articulate explicitly in OD&D.

Holsinger's articles are very clearly focused on creating a plausible campaign setting that enable "scenarios" to be run that feature large-scale miniature combats, with dungeon-delving as at best a prelude to that. He actually recommends in one issue that any new player who wants to join a campaign has to provide a prewritten scenario of this sort for the DM's use (and he seems to believe PCs will continue to do this as the campaign goes on as well). Holsinger and a number of other contributors to the Judges' Guild Journal's emphasis on realism is explicitly against Gygax's own statements on the matter about D&D.

The reason this entire discussion is getting mired in pettifoggery is because A) two different points are argued and B) you are long-winded. As has been pointed out to you, the single culture point is essentially a strawman. The only meaningful question is whether, on average, via inference or the existence of dominant sources, something called 'oldskool play' can be distilled and contrasted with later cultures of gameplay, such as 5e. The fact the 1970-1977 era had a great deal of individual variety is trivial to the central question; can something be distilled from the body of work, collective experience and wafts of airy vapor emitted from the pits of the Temple floor that is MORE TRUE to what Oldschool play would have looked like then random chance, and the answer is OF COURSE because many innovations you see in modern rpg games simply did not exist at the time, which you yourself acknowledge by producing this typology. IS the current conception of the OSR representative of what it was like back then? A scientist should ask compared to what other model?

Lich van Winkle is terribly angry at Gary for having run over his dog and slept with his girlfriend once and since then he's been determined to show us sweaty nerds how terrible we were by having a hobby and liking a game. Instead we should surrender to the fatalistic precepts of his grim and joyless creed: that all opinions are equally valid, that god is dead and that there is no D&D.

 

[squeen]

but this is why I find this tinker-toy vision of science so ridiculous.

It's true, I am not a scientist -- just an engineer. I construct math-models for simulation of systems which we then go into a ground-test program before they are launched into space. The models often "fail" in that the results predicted by them are useless compared to the real-world (measured) results, or something is physically destroyed. Hopefully the mission also does not "fail" due to a poor system design (based upon inaccurate model). These are my concepts and usage of the term. (Your elaboration was a highfalutin way of saying exactly the same thing---where I am using the term "fail" loosely. The meaning is identical. I refuse to be bamboozled or intimidated by your language.)

As such, I think of the Philosophy of Science as a "soft science" and am woefully ignorant of it's precepts. Ditto I am fairly ignorant of Sociology (...but not statistics)...nevertheless I label it likewise.

As for the rest...Prince said it better.

EDIT: I'd still rather a list of quantifiable criteria to qualify as a culture rather than have you play judge. Then perhaps I can produce counter-evidence (if I am so inclined--this is your baby, after all, I'm just a vocal member of the audience.)

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Your opinions on science, and what "subjective" means are so bad I'm not sure I can unpack and explain why they're wrong in detail on top of everything else, so I'll just leave it at the pseudo-Popperian vision you're elaborating about science hasn't been taken seriously since the mid-1970s when Lakatos revised it, and your notion of "subjective" is similarly parasitic on rejected ideas about the ineffability of taste from the 19th century. Just as one concrete example of this, models don't "fail" (no one can establish what such a state would look like for a model) but rather the explanatory theories that map models onto target systems fail. The failure state of the explanatory character of a theory is easy to explain - the mapping between the state the model predicts and the state of the target system fail to correspond over time without the operation of a known defeasor. That's not a failure of the model tho'.

It's been a while since I passed history of scientific philosophy but models fall out of favor when the amount of ad-hoc hypotheses required to explain their core hypotheses/premeses with the observed results come to accumulate when contrasted with other models that require less ad-hoc hypotheses yes? So model A isn't wrong so much as model B is better. Maybe both you and squeen drink a glass of water and return to the topic of DnD.

As such, I think of the Philosophy of Science as a "soft science" and am woefully ignorant of it's precepts. Ditto I am fairly ignorant of Sociology (...but not statistics)...nevertheless I label it likewise.

Philosophy of science is philosophy, the epistemological underpinnings of science that can be logically argued but cannot themselves be experimentally verified. Your statement on the relative difference in accuracy between the two is accurate, though I agree with Pseudoepinephrine that theoretically, on some abstract plane, you used the wrong terminology. Recommendation to drink a glass of water and return to the topic of DnD.

 

[squeen]

(gulp, gulp, gulp) Roger that.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I disagree with PoN's characterisation of science above, but agree it's a distraction and want to get back to D&D.

The reason this entire discussion is getting mired in pettifoggery is because A) two different points are argued and B) you are long-winded. As has been pointed out to you, the single culture point is essentially a strawman. The only meaningful question is whether, on average, via inference or the existence of dominant sources, something called 'oldskool play' can be distilled and contrasted with later cultures of gameplay, such as 5e. The fact the 1970-1977 era had a great deal of individual variety is trivial to the central question; can something be distilled from the body of work, collective experience and wafts of airy vapor emitted from the pits of the Temple floor that is MORE TRUE to what Oldschool play would have looked like then random chance, and the answer is OF COURSE because many innovations you see in modern rpg games simply did not exist at the time, which you yourself acknowledge by producing this typology. IS the current conception of the OSR representative of what it was like back then? A scientist should ask compared to what other model?

I'm long-winded because I started off being concise and was grilled for more details, and any time I did not specify something in exhaustive detail, my not doing so was taken as a supposedly fatal flaw in the taxonomy.

I think that your above statement here presumes a number of things that I do not, and disagrees with a number of things that I do hold.

There are a profusion of individual practices in play 1970-1976 that could have become cultures, but most didn't. I don't think they can be reconciled and distilled into a shared core without imposing a Whiggish historical lens of inevitability over it, and I decline to do so.

I've cited four different examples of radically different play, all of which were in circulation, and I don't doubt there were others. There was nothing to normalise across these play types until Gary started writing essays about D&D in the Strategic Review in 1976 (followed shortly by others there and elsewhere), and the publication of Holmes Basic in 1977. So the question squeen and I are going back and forth on is really whether D&D from 1977 onwards has a culture of shared values that stabilises before Call of Cthulhu, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance and all of that turns Trad into a hegemonic force that suppresses (demeans, excludes, etc.) other ways of gaming for nearly two decades.

I don't even disagree that Gygax is trying to _create_ such a culture, but I'm waiting for some evidence that he was successful.

I don't care too much whether the OSR recreates this proposed culture, since I think it's more interesting that they don't. Instead they combine some of its ideas with a bunch of myths to use as a springboard for new stuff. That's why I don't think the contrastive method here is super useful. My goal isn't to say "The OSR is closest to Gygax's vision, unlike those pretentious trad shits".

Lich van Winkle is terribly angry at Gary for having run over his dog and slept with his girlfriend once and since then he's been determined to show us sweaty nerds how terrible we were by having a hobby and liking a game. Instead we should surrender to the fatalistic precepts of his grim and joyless creed, that all opinions are equally valid, that god is dead and that there is no D&D.

Sure, Lich is an elderly liberal and clearly an early exponent of what became trad trying to engage in myth-making about the early days so he can feel good about himself. I am neo-Aristotelian following in the shadow of MacIntyre. My goal is to organise the domains so that the different possibilities of excellence can be cultivated within each one in as straightforwardly as possible. Like all Runequest players, I desire straightforward and distinct cults to suit all desires.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I guess I mean the universal standard of writing a post that says "there are X number of different styles of gameplay in D&D; trad which is like this, neo-trad which is like that, etc." When you categorize something (for example, playstyles being trad etc.) you are slapping a definitive label on it, which is sub-textually claiming a universal standard of things - i.e. Gameplay style "X" is considered "neo-trad" because it adheres to these universally-recognized criteria which have been identified as hallmarks of neo-trad gameplay. My question more accurately boils down to "how can you identify the hallmarks of a style if there is no standardization across game groups"?

It's not that I object to the conversation... I just question it's ability to accomplish anything definitive when the entirety of its subject matter is wholly subjective.

HOWEVER

I recognize what you're trying to do here; to try and connect dots between styles to see if there are emergent patterns, and to do all this as a way of developing an introspection towards commonalities across comparable styles. It's definitely churning up some good food for thought.

Think of it like dog breeds. I'm trying to say "What breeds exist? Why are they different breeds and not the same breed of dog? Here are the breeds I think exist, and what I think distinguishes each breed from the others." The universal standard / definitive label stuff is an idea that's going to mislead more than it clarifies. It turns us into the AKC desperately trying to insist that if a specific dog's haunches are an inch too short it fails to conform to blah blah. I think there's a comfortable and productive middle-ground in talking about chihuahuas vs. mastiffs without needed to measure anyone's rump.

Your question about styles is a fair one. There are two answers, both procedures, and I think they get us to the same place by different routes.

The first to look for overlapping sets of shared values and problems that practitioners feel must be addressed. Each individual's set of decisions about how to address them is a style (that's why styles derive from cultural groupings). They don't need to address those values and problems positively - they can even explicitly set them aside - but even when they are dismissing them that dismissal has to be framed as in line with the greater system of values and problems.

The second procedure is to look for shared conceptions of excellence, which I think is relatively self-explanatory but can also go on for several books worth of text about if it's not.

 

[Beoric]

Provided to me by a neo-trad player as a self-characterisation of their style within neo-trad, tho' written by someone other than the person providing it to me. I'm trying to get the exact source. Still, extremely interesting.

View attachment 1016

Edit: The source: https://imbrattabit.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-neotrad-role-playing-game/

I came back to this after reading the followup posts. @DangerousPuhson, I think you are misinterpreting the section on asymmetric gameplay (easy to do, since the original author doesn't use particularly precise language. But I want to be sure I am interpreting it correctly.

I'm taking the phrase "The game master doesn't roll dices [sic] for png actions (ahe can still roll for random effects) so she can focus on managing the scene rather than calculations" to mean that the DM doesn't roll reactions for NPCs, or roll to determine random actions in combat, including morale rolls. Rather, the DM makes decisions for the NPC according to the character and knowledge of the NPC.

This probably makes sense in these sorts of games because (a) a good general rule is to only roll the dice when the outcome is uncertain, and with well defined NPC personalities they DM usually knows how they would react, and (b) I suspect in these games, the functions of morale rules, which I see as removing DM bias in reactions and dealing with large numbers of NPCs without defined personalities, such as with bodies of retainers or mass combat situations (20 orcs in a room counts as mass combat for these purposes), are not a concern.

So I suspect several regular posters would play this way, including DP.

Also, if DP's gamestyle is neotrad, then neotrad is an awfully big tent, because I see DP as maybe a smidge closer to EOTB and squeen in playstyle than he is to the player you quote. I'm not sure a category that diverse is all that meaningful.