Not a fancy description...a detailed one. It is fairly common.
Despite you saying it is common, myself and no one else who has responded to you, has indicated they have heard of this. In fact, we have all said the opposite. It may be common in your area, but it is not common in the larger communities most of us are aware of.
True, vague actions are not acceptable in most OSG.
It is a different type of fun. This is the fun of using your real world knowledge in the game, and quite often getting an advantage or effect.
And I would note that googling information is a skill. A real life person player skill. It's not like you can type a couple words in google and get the perfect answer every time. Worse, google sticks to (paid) sites. And the more obscure the information, the harder it is to find. And a lot of information does not make it to the top of search results. So...it's not a magic oracle.
But you have to acknowledge that if you are going to reward people for a real life skill, you often end up punishing them for the lack of a real life skill or knowledge as well, correct? And what happens when the player's real life knowledge contradicts the DM?
I am not only talking hypothetically here, because I have experience with this. I had a convention game where I was trying to play a super hero RPG, don't remember what the system was or who the character I had was, because the majority of the session involved playing with toys and puzzles meant for 6 year olds. Literally, six and up toys, because the plot the GM planned was some intra-dimensional toddler throwing their toys into our reality. We went to confront the toddler, and I immediately noticed that the GM had no idea how kids worked. I noticed this because my mother had run a daycare out of our house for decades, and I was a teacher who often had to deal with young children. I am an expert in the field, and in trying to use my real-world knowledge, it was rebuffed because the GM didn't seem to know how kids work.
I'm sure the game sounded fun to them on paper, the concept and the props sounded good... but the execution just left me frustrated. I came to play a superhero game and solve a mystery, not play with legos and twelve piece puzzles.
You can play any character you want. If you want to play a hyper intelligent wizard, and can role play that, no one will stop you.
They are not as haphazard as they seem. A real fighter knows things about fighting, combat and related things. The average player does not. The average player just has their fighter "attack!".
Every character class, background, specialization, and on has a ton of "real life common sense" that the character would know.....but the average player does not know.
A New School player with a 'criminal' character just uses the ability on their character sheet that "gives them advantage when contacting people in the criminal underworld". And then they just play the character in whatever way they want.
The Old School player with a criminal character will be deeply immersed in fictional criminal lore and culture and play their character accordingly.
Role playing and abilities are separate. It's near real life simulation vs only playing a game.
But if I am limited to my real-world knowledge of thievery and criminals, then I can't play a great thief, only a bad thief. And what if I don't want to play an incompetent criminal? Then I either need to learn how to be a better criminal IRL, or I play something else.
But a great wizard can be played by anyone, because no one knows anything about wizardry. IF a fighter has good stats, then someone who knows nothing about how to fight, can still be a great fighter. You want a simulation, but only in the places where you have personal knowledge or expectations that allow a simulation to happen, in places where it is too hard for you to simulate, then you let it pass.
Again, an Old School DM is not some sort of wise mystical teacher trying to make players better and more skilled.
It does depend on the players a lot. There is a group of people that play the game that possess an at least average level of common sense, wisdom, skill, intelligence, knowledge, and drive. This type of person does not need to be taught by a DM on such things.
Now, there is a group of people that play the game.......that have none of the above. So yes this type of person does need to be taught somethings...
They sure act like a wise mystical teacher when they declare your character dead because you described something the wrong way, or didn't know something they expected you to know. And considering that it is often stated that people who advocate for old school feel that new school players are incapable, right here is sounds like you are saying we lack "
at least average level of common sense, wisdom, skill, intelligence, knowledge, and drive" Which, again, is rather insulting.
This is the Major Flaw with this New School approach: You have the DM tell you what to do and then "feel" like your playing your character.
What are you even talking about? What flaw is there here? Do you think just because a rogue can't describe how to pick a lock they are only "feeling" like they are playing their character if the DM describes them picking the lock? This makes no sense to me at all.
Not exactly. Just by playing a warrior character you don't just learn things about being a warrior. Though, yes you will learn a lot of common sense things you should already know, like a warrior is never far from their weapon. Though this is mostly for the that one group of people.
That one group of people who lack "
at least average level of common sense, wisdom, skill, intelligence, knowledge, and drive"
And, no, they won't learn that. They will learn that they
need to state that they are never far from their weapon. Most of my characters over the last decade have had a boot dagger, just in case, for this reason. I usually have a few daggers on my character sheet, but I don't tell the DM where they are. Because having a boot dagger has only mattered like... twice. But I know for a fact that with certain DMs if I was in a situation like a fancy party, and pulled that dagger, I would get told I can't do that. Not because my character doesn't know to keep a weapon handy, not because I don't know to keep a weapon handy, but because I didn't declare to the DM that I had a weapon handy.
This is what leads to lists of standard operating procedures, not that the player's don't know the things, but that they simply assumed such things could go unspoken as obvious.
No. But I'm looking at it from the neutral perspective.
There are a million ways to have fun. No way of having fun is "better" then any other. Rock climbing is hard and floating in a pool is easy: but they are both valid ways to have fun.
Well, we are talking about in general, not any one persons specific game.
You claim neutrality, then consistently stack positively conotated words on your side, and negatively conotated words on the opposing side. Just as a baseline example, you claim your way is exciting and engaging, and my way is a way were no one really cares about the game. That isn't a neutral position to take.
Though I would wonder if your game is fully New School? Were your players really panicked that character death might happen...when that is uncommon in NS games? How did your players 'outmaneuver" their foes? It does not sound like they did it the NS way of "The DM tells the player what the character knows about how to out maneuver foes".
And you are simply showing that you don't understand how the New School games are run. Yes, my players were panicked about death. I rarely kill characters off, but there are far far worse things I can do to a PC than kill them. This idea that no death = easier game is just silly from my perspective.
Also, no, we don't just tell people how to play the game. I even gave an example of this with the commander character. The player asked, the DM gave them the KNOWLEDGE of what their character would know. The actions they decide to take with that knowledge are entirely theirs. Which brings up another point. Quite often many of the threats presented as instant-death in old school are only instant death if you don't know the trick. Which is something that gets brought up all the time with traps and puzzles. If they are only challenging because of ignorance, they aren't challenging. A puzzle where the solution is written on the ceiling, but the DM doesn't tell the party because "no one said they were looking up" isn't a challenge. It is a gotcha of "you didn't declare the correct action, so you lose". Not every challenge is defeated simply by knowing the silver bullet answer.
