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”! 😅
@kensanata@lemm.eei the reason why on reddit I did not hang out “generic” rpg spaces is because by sheer volume DnD 5e players dominate the conversation, and a large part of the DnD 5e conversation (at least on reddit) seems to focus on mechanics optimization, meta, and very DnD-specific things I am not interested about.
OSR/NSR/Indie spaces are more interesting for someone like me that prefers talking about adventuring, and the less boardgame-y or MMO-y aspects of the game.
To clarify: I have zero elitism or gatekeeping feelings towards DnD 5e, it’s a good game that opened up the hobby to many many people, and it’s a blessing, however I like having a space where to talk about rpgs that are not it.
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:
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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.
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Due to the invisibility in the large group, nobody knows how many will follow into the splinter group. That is the risk.
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.
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I think there’s a “safe spaces” element as well. It’s not just the system-- the system becomes a shorthand for a whole host of philosophies and genre conventions. Ideally, there’d be all sorts of communities at an atomic level and through federation (or something similar) we would join all the ones that interested us and crosspost things that extend over boundaries or confound the boundaries that we’ve drawn. That’s some of the promise of a Lemmy (or Reddit) but the reality is when end up in walled off silos instead of interconnected gardens.
I generally agree with you in that 1) I absolutely feel they have a lot of value as tags and 2) they shouldn’t be used to put people in camps.
But otoh, it’s human nature to group people together based on arbitrary tags. So I don’t see how you can avoid the in-group/out-group behaviour while still keeping the terms around as tags.
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@kensanata @GrumblingGM@lemm.ee
Tough one. When I’m running CWN, an OSR Cyberpunk, I’m honestly more interested in posts from BX players (regardless of setting), rather than posts from Sprawl or Shadowrun players - who are playing Cyberpunk but with very different sensibilties. The BX posts can help me run the game while Sprawl posts at best can serve as setting inspiration, which I don’t really need.
But it’s probably useful to always specify additional tags beside just OSR or Indie.
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@kensanata @GrumblingGM@lemm.ee Sorry. I wasn’t sure what the best way was to use Lemm.ee and Mastodon, so I made an account on both, but I guess it’s confusing if I’m using the same name and pic both places. :P Still learning how to Fediverse.
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Maybe I should add that I’m not trying to argue against “OSR/NSR Tabletop Roleplaying Games” being a group on the fediverse. It’s just the groups I joined because I was following Todd on fedi elsewhere. 😄
Nah, all RPGs are legit but having subcategories or “tags” is super useful to find what’s relevant to you, your play style, and your interests. I see no downside to this “split” because I can be part of a 5e server for 5e stuff and I can be part of a osr server for osr. But tbf I’m used to reddit so I dunno how things will work outside that.
Me too I like to mix things up and keep players guessing
