Against splitting RPGs into OSR, DIY, Indie, Story Games, etc.
Re: rec.games.frp.* hierarchy
https://campaignwiki.org/news/article/rec.games.frp.misc/8
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"! 😅
@GrumblingGM Yeah, you're right. The things I see as "actionable" in a way are things like the following (addressed at myself as much as to everybody else):
If we create a social space to discuss role-playing games, let's consider not putting OSR, Indie, or another such tag into the title.
If we tag a blog post, let's consider not just using OSR, Indie, or another such tag on to the post.
Both of which I have done and which I now regret.
An alternative would be to use tags that refer to genre (science fiction, sword & sandal), play style (hex crawl, domain game, dungeon bash), product (D&D, Powered by the Apocalypse, Band of Blades), or have no such differentiation at all. Like the old rec.games.frp.misc newsgroup: miscellaneous was everything else, or the RPG tag or TTRPG tag for blog posts.
@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.