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Daggerheart has a similar sort of system; whenever a PC looses all their HP, they can choose to not "die" and instead receive a scar. Each scar lowers their maximum Hope by 1, and when they go to down to a maximum of zero, the character must retire. Characters only have 6 Hope to start, so...

Players who start asking things like "What are the names of the books on the cluttered shelf?" are going to be asked "Tell me some of the titles of the books you see", no exceptions.

I generally think of "thespian play" as play that prioritizes participant dialogue (both players and GMs), both inter-PC and PC to NPC. There's generally an expectation that relatively little stakes will be established or consequences endured, as the bulk of play isn't mediated by any...

Great suggestions. Metaphor: Refantazio is also a really good modern take on JRPGs.

Hmm. Halving the population every month for a year would lower the population by a factor of 2^12, or 4096. Current world population estimate is in the low 8 billions, so that would put the final population at just over 2 million.

I think a GM has pretty wide latitude to start a game by framing the players into a specific situation, as long as the players are aware of this. None of that power is railroading. I almost always start my games in medias res, with a group of PCs who already know each other and are comfortable...

Shadow of the Weird Wizard is easily my favorite. Similar crunch levels to 5e but with so much less friction.

My wife did describe me as the human equivalent of a Beyond burger. Maybe that wasn't the compliment I thought it was.

Because time spent discussing rules options and tactical complexity is time that you aren't speaking in character.

I think the communication issue is that rules complexity will, by necessity, conflict with freeform dialogue and thespianism; these are the practices at the table that people often label as "roleplaying". The conflict is that expressing your character through character design and actions taken...

Sure, but even within the OSR, there's higher crunch and lower crunch variations. The closest thing to a "baseline" that exists in the OSR is the B/X engine, which I would personally as "rules-medium".

Some of their other classes do as well; the Alternate Rogue and the Shaman both have limited versions of wildshape.

"One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires." -The Lost Boys

I’m sure the players enjoy them, but the way they’ve been described to me, I don’t think would really be what I’m looking for.

“I believe what I want, damn the evidence” doesn’t make one a very good debate partner.

Just to be clear, if you think I’m having a discussion around “most people don’t play good”, you’re misreading my posts. My interest is purely in how we categorize and talk around different play styles. I have no interest in normative talk around “the right way to play”.

Yes. That's the way I'm generally advocating for. And as soon as you do that, you've gone from "playing the module" to "using the module as a campaign seed." I'm much more positively inclined towards the latter. Now, if the "political fallout" is just a detour, and the module goes right...

You really don't. Being a passive, receptive player compared to being a player with stronger authorial control (note: this is not a binary, it's a spectrum) are two different experiences; both are worth experiencing if you haven't tried one or the other.