Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nnms" data-source="post: 6263685" data-attributes="member: 83293">I think stance is a complete red herring.  The proposed stances muddle together a wide variety of separate phenomenon into arbitrary categories that only ever describe actual play of an OSR game by accident.  Like a stopped clock being right twice a day.As they are muddled combinations of what aspects different participants have authority over, what aspects are being explored through play and what different people are trying to experience in their game, we shouldn't be surprised that what game participants do straddles the lines.  Games and players straddle these categories because they are failures to categorize.For example, in the many of the earliest games in the hobby, you'll find absolutely nothing about in-character vs out-of-character knowledge.  No one is ever abjured to not act in a certain way because of what their characters would or wouldn't know or do until much later.  The common use of stances in talking about RPG theory is more about people playing games from the 1990s and having it fail to deliver what they thought it should and has nothing to do with the games of the late 70s and early 80s.  The only other categorization system that would be worse in talking about OSR play would be creative agenda.</blockquote>