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Filling in the words in a Mad Lib is both "contributing to the fiction" and a railroad.

Exactly. Which is why I generally don't look for that sort of gameplay in the TTRPG space, and scratch that itch with boardgames and computer games instead. Negotiation-heavy story generation play is much more strongly suited to TTRPG play, on the other hand, and boardgames and computer games...

Maybe not in your D&D games. I've been doing that for a long time. How else am I supposed to know if there's a cleric in the town? I certainly don't bother to do that prep ahead of time.

I'm not sure I'm following the argument. As long as there's no deception as to the premise, the players are agreeing to the terms. The relative degree of enthusiasm is immaterial. There's no normative force to the idea that the GM must lower their "agreement" to the premise from 100% to...

A "mutually-pleasing agreement" is a far cry away from 100% happiness. We all routinely settle for things that are only moderately enjoyable for the sake of group consensus.

Yea, but that's just how social things work. The minute two people have to choose one option for both of them, you're going to have a case where people aren't 100% happy.

Just going by the summary I posted a few days ago, that sort of game does kind of seem like an underserved niche? Like it's the type of style I could see a fair amount of players in the more traditional camp wanting to pursue. "Lighter than 5e but still crunchy" does seem roughly like...

Cracking the code of a game that will fit Retreater's entire group requires a Rosetta Stone I do not have. :)

Sometimes, yes. Not all the time, of course, but it's silly to think anyone can find one game that perfectly serves all of their needs. You play the game that's in front of you, and you try to play it with the mentality it's meant to be played with.

Oh, it's not too much for me. I binged the series in the summer of '21 during a slow period at work, read probably 4-6 hours a day and it still took me about 2 months to get through. And I loved every minute of it.

Sure, I agree with all that. It's fairly obvious that the OSR principles written up in the '00s and '10s were codifying a prevalent strain of play that existed during the '70s-'80s. The only time it causes confusion is when people say things like "But we didn't play that way back then at...

Sure, but I think what we can generally accept is that play back then wasn't really animated by design principles as much as it was by experimentation. Which is exactly what would you expect from a game form that was still pretty novel! Some groups played the game as a set of scenarios/puzzles...

As much as I would love to recommend Wandering Inn to people, I can't, simply because it's much too big of a series to recommend to all but the most dedicated readers/listeners. It's currently approaching a 15 million word count; for comparison, the entire Wheel of Time is 4.4M and the entire...

Exactly. “Combat is a fail state” is just a pithy phrase to capture the idea that fights shouldn’t be entered just for the fighting; the goal should generally be to bypass the encounter or use environmental effects to give the PCs a marked advantage as much as possible. The “fail state” is...

Yea, but those are actual old-school retro games, not principled OSR style games. Those are two different categories.

Sure, combat as a natural consequence of failing at some other goal. If you want moderate amounts of combat to be a regular feature in your fantasy gaming, than you probably shouldn't use a game organized around principled OSR play as your main game. Always match the right game to the group...

I’m unclear what game or type of game you think I mean. I was explaining core concepts behind OSR games, specifically ones designed around Old School Primer and Principia principles.

Makes sense. That combination is definitely a tasty stew that I think quite a few players want; unfortunately, no one can seem to agree exactly what ingredients go in the stew pot.