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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PHATsakk43" data-source="post: 9647746" data-attributes="member: 7041071">I'm 46 and started playing in 1990 and quit in late 1999 when I joined the US Navy. I made a lot of game product purchases during the 3E era, but only actually played once and that was circa 2011 or so and that session never made it out of the tavern we were all supposed to be meeting in. Also being deployed for the majority of the 2000s meant that I really didn't get into the TTRPG forums until sometime after 2012 or so when I started posting on Candlekeep, as I was and am a big FR nerd. Dragonsfoot was another thing I had no knowledge of until I became active on r/adnd around 2018 or so where I heard about THAC0s Hammer podcast. The only reason I even got that involved was that I had started DMing again with a group of much younger people in a 5E game that had lost their DM and I was selected as I had been a DM before. So, I guess there was a stalwart group that never left the old TSR era rules, but it seems like the "movement" part of OSR really established itself with the release of 4E, and oddly the way that Pathfinder became a physical embodiment of the rejection of that edition. To move from a broader discussion of the OSR and back to BrOSR, I'd like to make sort of a The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly take on it from what I can see. First, I'll try to narrow the definition of BrOSR as to being the Jeffro definition and the Brozer rules, which seems to be the current state of BrOSR.The Good: It does seem that when you take the gameplay elements that Jeffro discusses, specifically the idea that D&D is fundamentally not an RPG in the current context, nor that it ever was supposed to be, but instead that it has to be viewed in the context of a Braunstein style game and a more or less a method to develop the backstory for a larger wargaming campaign. In this perspective, a lot of stuff does seem like it starts to make more sense, particularly the "domain" level play aspects that were included in both versions of the AD&D game but never really properly addressed as to how these elements were to be employed in the game. There is actually a lot to this, but I don't want to make a wall of text and I think this is a sufficient starting point for discussion.The Bad: Given what relatively good linkages that Jeffro's observations seem to imply, it still feels like this may just be rather hypothetical. Or just seeing patterns in tea leaves that may or may not have any causality between the two aspects. It seems odd that if Braunstein play was the intended methodology, no one utilized much past the initial stuff from the Milwaukee group with Wesley and then Arneson. So, I'm leery of giving too much value to this theory solely based upon a myth of a "lost history" which is why games suck now and used to be so much better. And our games today would be so much better if only we knew how to play right. The Ugly: This is the subjective part where you have to separate the art from the artist if you want to delve into the stuff that Jeffro has done. I'm going to refrain from specifics as I've already been chastised once.</blockquote>

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