I recently found this free e-book, Quick Primer for Old School Gaming. It's full of ideas that go directly against a lot of modern game design, yet really struck home for me. It's got these four "Zen Moments:"

1. Rulings, not Rules
2. Player Skill, not Character Abilities
3. Heroic, not Superhero
4. Forget "Game Balance"

I dig this paragraph:

Most of the time in old-style gaming, you don’t use a rule; you make a ruling. It’s easy to understand that sentence, but it takes a flash of insight to really “get it.” The players can describe any action, without needing to look at a character sheet to see if they “can” do it. The referee, in turn, uses common sense to decide what happens or rolls a die if he thinks there’s some random element involved, and then the game moves on. This is why characters have so few numbers on the character sheet, and why they have so few specified abilities.

When I first read this, I cringed, thinking about the idea of hard GM fiat. Reading it again, though, I realized it's kind of player-empowering. The people I play with are cool, and we don't screw each other over. I'd trust any of them to be the arbitrator for an in-game event, and in reality, we do this every week. If looking up a rule is taking too long or is boring, we skip it and use an extrapolation from the rules we do know.

Something about this pamphlet scratched an itch I'd been having a lot recently. I'd be curious to know what your reaction to it is.

I liked it when I read it some time back. I've for a long time been a big fan of many of the things the author identifies as typical of old-school gaming. I raved about this stuff in my blog last winter a bit, and now I'm running a D&D campaign of sorts that works pretty much like this. Old modes of adventure gaming have lots to teach us here in the modernity, as long as somebody takes the time to actively look and see what they can adapt and really verbalize from the murky accounts of yesteryear.

I'd write more about individual points such as game balance, but really it would devolve into a demented rant against and for many things I'm passionate about in fantasy adventure rpgs. I'd rather save that stuff for my blog, where I'm not actively annoying people and "harshing the zen" as they call it here.

The "heroic not super heroic" one is the one that rang loudest for me. I mean, I love, love, love superheroic games... but I've also been recently frustrated with the seep of superheroes into everything, all the time.

I also loved the line "The rules aren’t fragile, and the game doesn’t collapse if someone makes a little mistake or one character is temporarily more powerful than the others, or an encounter is “too hard.” Sometimes the referee will make a bad call. These aren’t tragedies."

Shit man, fuck yes. Too much seriousness and whining and constant attention to system can be just as bad as too little.

At the same time, I remember how much, how very much, I used to hate the "no, your thief doesn't know about traps, you the player have to figure that shit out" of the old days. Too far in either direction annoys the fuck out of me.

Wow, that illustration is pretty amazing. Kind of like some sort of dungeon crawling fever dream.

This "primer" also reminds me of many good things about "old school" gaming. For instance, I really, really didn't like how D&D 3e and onwards classifies all the cool stuff you can do as special abilities... in such a way that most people can't do them or try them. Want to trip someone? You need to buy an ability. Yuck. I agree with the author of this Primer that giving latitude to creative actions can be more interesting than just participating in a tactical game with well-drawn boundaries.

I'm looking forward, though, to games like Red Box Hack and Storming the Wizard's Tower, which give you some actual ways to deal with those things without it all coming down to fiat.

Posted By: Number6intheVillageI would only agree about very young players - where they really see things only in black and white and are extremely egotistic and competitive. Even slightly mature ones recognize that gaming (even Monopoly) is a collaborative experience.

The irony is that it requires the authority of a book to get gamers to question the authority of another book.

I used a bigger spread of ten years that I thought covered the majority of times where that attitude is most prevalent. I don't think the bolded part is by any means universal, just more likely to occur in that age group.

The irony is that it requires the authority of a book to get gamers to question the authority of another book.

I think it's important to have context here though: Most D&Der's entered the scene by AD&D 1E or 2E, which was filled with Gygaxian advice about how the GM is god and must control the players and books filled with idiosyncratic house rules and charts for everything.

And, as far as anyone knew, it was -how roleplaying was done- unless you were exposed to a group who did otherwise OR stumbled upon it yourself. Can't blame people for not following game advice which wasn't included in the manuals (and, probably, the opposite was written).

So yay. Crucial rules 30 years later. I feel like between "Say yes or roll the dice" and Beast Hunters there's really nothing here modern design hasn't already kicked out the water.

Posted By: GeorgiosThe only thing I dislike is the ridiculous strawman of "modern gaming" that is used to contrast it to the awesome and fun of "old school". I think at its core it's really just some rock solid advice on playing roleplaying games, and there's really no need to attribute it to one "school" or the other.

My very first exposure to roleplaying was with the very first edition (second printing) of D&D in 1974 - but the guy who ran it was anything but "old school." It was almost completely free form.

PLAYER SKILL NOT CHARACTER ABILITIES

The interesting thing that comes up here is what the Creative Agenda of the play is here. Is this a form of Gamism, where the player is encouraged to try and keep their character alive against a hostile background (hostile in the sense of not coddling the PCs, not in the sense of directly seeking their deaths)? But can Gamist challenges work when the rules are somewhat arbitrary?

The temptation is to call this Simulationism - the idea being to heighten Exploration of a fantasy world, with the GM there to act as its physics, providing an impartial perspective on "what would actually happen". But then, that seems at odds with the idea that the player is encouraged to step on up to keep their character alive, even if this entails their low-intelligence character having sudden attacks of caution and good sense.

Yes, as far as I can tell, this is pure gamism.

Rulings not Rules and the GM: In actuality, players DO have input. Baring the GM using an actual gun to force his players, players do always have a choice. A good GM and good players will work together and the players will actually contribute quite a lot.

I'm not concerned by the lines about challenges being inappropriate for party level, as I think you can perfectly well play Gamist games where deciding whether to run away and what challenges you can actually face is part of the overall challenge.

Yes. That said, in my mind, there is a sense to game balance. We just don't expect it to be perfect, or for the GM to not throw a curve ball occasionally.

I've recently started an OD&D campaign, and this essay certainly informed my play. Our first session resulted in a TPK. The players were very disappointed, and since then, we've still had a high death rate, but other than some initial suggestions of starting higher than 1st level, the players are embracing the play.

Frank

"Rulings not rules"

In a Dread First Book Of Pandemonium game I ran, one player wanted his character to have a wooden peg. There are no rules for that and it didn't matter, we just rolled with the concept. It wasn't an Aspect to summon with a Fate point or a 15 points Flaw. It was just the character concept and that was all that mattered. He could as well have played a blind samurai à la Zatoichi.

So "Gamist" ? I don't think so...

Who cares whether it's 'Gamist' or not? I mean really, what does it matter where OD&D fits in the GNS model? I don't understand why it's an issue.

I agree the primer seems to be a reaction against post-TSR D&D rather than modern gaming per se, and the author perhaps should have been more nuanced in his portrayal. But it works extremely well for what it is: an argument as to why 'old school gaming' deserves another look from people who've passed it over.

Posted By: noismsWho cares whether it's 'Gamist' or not? I mean really, what does it matter where OD&D fits in the GNS model? I don't understand why it's an issue.

Idle interest, mostly. And because in represented a somewhat interesting diagnostic problem in GNS terms. It's not any kind of an "issue", whatever that would mean, I was just curious.

I agree the primer seems to be a reaction against post-TSR D&D rather than modern gaming per se, and the author perhaps should have been more nuanced in his portrayal. But it works extremely well for what it is: an argument as to why 'old school gaming' deserves another look from people who've passed it over.

I don't feel the authour really needed to be any more nuanced - it's clear that the scope of what he's talking about encompasses only a very few games, and a subset of the philosophical approaches to said games. Viewed within that scope, it is is indeed a cogent argument in favour of its own philosophy.

I think I came across as more snippy than I meant to! I was just puzzled as to why it was being discussed, since the author of the piece didn't mention it. I'm sometimes concerned that people make excuses not to give a game a chance because it seems too 'Gamist' or too 'Narrativist' and that's a huge shame.

Regarding GNS, I think, as Jeff Rients once said, D&D is the point at which all theories about role playing collapse. The centre of the vortex, if you will. This is especially true of OD&D.

Here's the thing:

This kind of game can be a LOT of fun, given the right GM. Since the GM has practically 100% of the rules and authority in her hands, she is almost entirely responsible for the fun that results. A great GM can make a game like this a lot of fun! A terrible one will make it terrible. But it's, like, a high-level expert skill set that very few people master (in my experience).

Personally?

I've had great experiences in this style, but ultimately found it to be too frustrating too often. Games with more distributed authority not only let me have more fun more consistently, but remove the burden from the GM-figure, which means no one is getting "burnt out" or exhausted by all that pressure and responsibility.

The document is a very good explanation of old-school gaming, I think, but it suggests that unfun things are the requirement for having fun.

It's fun to be clever and find/disarm traps wtih your own player-intelligence, but in order to have that moment of fun, you've got to spend five minutes pixel-bitching every 5 feet of hallway.

It's fun to be clever and find secret doors and such in a room, but in order to have that moment, you've got to spend half an hour poking, twisting, turning, shoving, tickling, polishing and licking every discernable feature.

Common sense tells you that eventually the players are going to write up a "standard operating procedure" for all of this anyway, so why not just skip that step and make that S.O.P. an assumption under the banner of "I search it"?

The bit about resource management was useful, though. At least, if you're playing this kind of game, there needs to be a penalty for wasting time on uneccessary fights or frequent rests.

EDIT: Oh, and for a game that's supposed to be challenging to the players rather than the characters, without rules it just boils down to social engineering. Instead of "who knows the loopholes in the rules best" it becomes "who knows the loopholes in the GM best".

The point of the moose head thing is that there is nothing that is crucial to find; helpful, rewarding, interesting, dangerous, or some combination thereof, not but necessary. It is a simulation wherein one tries to do his or her best, not a line of breadcrumbs to follow.

That's the vibe I have got from several old school blogs and some magedungeon-related threads in various fora, at least.

An interesting companion to this pamphlet is the also free-as-an-ebook Swords & Wizardy, which is a very clean repackaging of the 0E D&D rules as a retro-gaming resource by the same author. It's instructive to contrast the philosophy in the pamphlet with the style of rules it is meant to apply to.

I've been following along with this school for awhile from the perspective of James Maliszewski's excellent blog Grognardia. I don't always agree with everything said there, but I do find it food for though.

Posted By: komradebobMay I suggest that one of the overlooked skills of this style of GM is to incorporate ( or steal) ideas from players and work them back in? The difference between the great GM vs. terrible GM that Paul T is positing may well rest heavily on that skill.

The difference with ( some ) dirty-hippy gaming and this old-skool stuff, is that incorporation of player ideas ( and even understanding of game world "physics") is in the open.

I think there's also the fact that such a GM is not as "above the law" as one would think. I'd argue that any GM worth his salt in such a game, would put the consistency of the game world above his own whims or even the whims of the players. Even though he usually comes up with and plays the game world, the "physics" of that world limit his actions as much as the actions of the players.

Sure, he could re-write the "physics" if they'd keep him from doing what he wants to do, but then what's the point of playing?

But, I don't always want to do things the way the GM thinks they should be done.

In fact, I often don't want to do things the way the GM thinks they should be done.
Which goes back to the need for a long-established, culturally homogenized group.

And brings up the point: if everyone can contribute to the setting or components of "common sense" which the GM uses to make rulings, then you've got a lot better chance of having a system which focuses on your specific tastes and assumptions.

I feel like I'm insisting on something without putting up proof, but I don't think I have the time to write about this at length today, yet. Later in the week I will. Still, all this talk about hidden assumptions and being a good GM in some sort of transcending-the-system way is not correlating with my fresh experiences - when I do this stuff nowadays, I'm in constant meta-dialogue with the players about what they see and understand going on in the game, and I certainly feel constrained by a sort of system that I'm slowly starting to be able to verbalize. Perhaps something will come of that when I've played long enough. For example, in yesterday's session, I actually had this whole moose-head thing: the characters went into the dungeon, mapped what little of it they could reach and determined that they had no idea how to proceed further inside. The characters were a bit stumped, but the players, being in constant communication with me, never had any frustration, as they realized that this was a spot where they were supposed to pay attention and start trying different things. I don't off-hand remember if I said explicitly that this was a puzzle challenge event, but I think that the players realized it from the body language and the fact that I required lots of perception checks as I fed them snippets of description about the environment.

I also disagree about the need to gain a particularly high degree of group coherence before this sort of games can make sense; this campaign of which we played the fourth session yesterday is actually a pick-up game in which the players (and characters) change each and every session. So far we've had... nine different players play it, with a different composition to the group every time. Half of these players have been newbies who haven't ever played rpgs before, while another half have been playing story games for years; I think we have one player who's played a lot of D&D apart from myself.

But, while I think that my campaign just happens to be an excellent comparison for this discussion, I'd better desist from this until I have the time to write about it for real. Check out what I wrote in my blog about this campaign last week if you're interested in what we did in the first couple of sessions.

I ran a pretty fun game of generic D&D (basicfantasy.org) this weekend, keeping this document in my head the whole time. What I found was interesting: we definitely had a system, and it was tailored specifically for this group at this time.

Example: One of the players had never played D&D before, so she had no preconceptions of what she couldn't do. She was playing an elf, and so she was a spellcaster. The characters were entering a crypt and wanted to sense if there was any magic around. There's a spell for that - Detect Magic - but it's pretty specific, and makes magic stuff glow. So, we've got a new player who wants more information in order to make decisions, and a basic system framework which doesn't prohibit getting a weird feeling, but does have a Wisdom stat. So, I tell her to make a Wisdom check (with my own stat check system that I made up on the fly); she makes it; and I tell her that she gets a creepy feeling, like there's old malevolent magic here. This works great for us. I get to convey info; she gets info; and it's done at character level.

Yep. Clinton's got it. I am as "new school" as they come these days most of the time, but when I ran Basic D&D for my son and his friends, that's exactly the method I used most of the time. Lots of ability checks and improv, minimal use of formal rules.

It's high-trust gaming, that's for sure. But it also really facilitates a certain sort of roleplaying - the "solve problems with character resources" kind.

Groovy.

Posted By: Mark WIt's not so much about GM fiat (although there can be plenty of that). It's that the system is (1) almost entirely drama resolution based on the GM's world-model, and (2) initially totally obscured from the players, who must learn it through experimentation and research.

I prefer to call it "exploration". Mostly because it sounds interesting and engaging and not dull and pointless.

Posted By: Mark WWhile there is an appeal to "realistic", "common sense", "logical consequences" as principle, in practice these are contested things, often based more on "whatever the GM read this week" than anything objective.

It doesn't need to be objectively consistent. It just needs to be consistent enough for the players at the table. The main satisfaction one can get from exploring the game world is to master it, step by step. Learning and understanding the game world is what it's all about. Survival and levelling is really just proof that you know your way around the game world (and that you might have had some lucky dice rolls, too... but mainly the first bit.) It's not about figuring the GM out, but the world. And this distinction is only possible, if the GM does his part, too.

This means seperating the person from his position. As a person I'm of course interested in having a good time with my friends and helping them have a good time, too. (Provided I'm not socially inept and completely oblivious.) But as a GM it's my job to be dispassionate about what happens to the characters and how their players feel about it. As a GM I only answer to the game world and have to uphold its consistency. Only if I do that, can the players rely on their exploring the game world to have any value. Only then, is exploration actually fun.

Everything else, from dramatic storylines, three-dimensional characters to sophisticated character interplay is built on this foundation of a solid and consistent game world. Without it, exploration doesn't matter. And without exploration it's really just an abstract boardgame played with words.

Mark,

I've seen the same thing, many times. It's at its worst when the imaginary content is based in existing canon, like a book or a film. Everyone comes to the table with their experience of that setting and assumes the other players share it. But it's rarely the case.

My own experience with kind of "old school" play is something like this, both from the player's side and the GM's side:

--The GM presents some situation or problem, or environment.
--The players try to do stuff.
--Each attempt is judged by the GM, compared to some implicit standard of excellence in his or her head.
--Some things are pre-determined ("if you twist the moose's head to the right, the door opens"), but most things have to be ruled on the fly by the GM ("OK, I use my Telekinesis on the moose head. Does the door open?" --well, does Telekinesis twist the head to the right or not?).
--When the players' attempts to not meet the GM's "standards of excellence", they fail, and everyone must keep trying, looking for other ways to solve the problems or puzzles presented.
--When players' attempts and ideas meet the GM's "standard of excellence" or "standard of creativity", they succeed. The GM gets this impressed look on his face, and describes how the secret door opens. "Ooh, clever!" The other players high-five the clever player, and everyone feels good.

I've seen it be a lot of fun, even for teens playing together. But it's also a bit of a potential minefield. I cringed for this reason when I read through Beast Hunters--the GM "judges" each attempt for "coolness", which determines its effectiveness in play. However, Beast Hunters has a clever twist on this, since the players can always fall back on the "default" if they don't like the GM's offer. (That is as I understand it, anyway, not having actually played the game.)

For instance, Eero, I can't know exactly what your game is like, but I'd love to hear how and why you feel that some kind of objective standard or system is in play in your game. Based on my experience, I would interpret your account as, "Eero is being a good, fair, creative GM, and everyone's having fun as a result." But it sounds like you have some kind of interesting system based on out-of-game discussion, which you use to align your own standards and assumptions with those the players bring to the table.

I'd love to see a write-up of what the actual dialogue of your process looks like at the table!

Hmmmm... for what it's worth, the cases when I've seen these kinds of games work well over time correlate pretty strongly with groups in which at least a subset of the players + GM socialize a good deal outside of session, AND spend a fair part of that socializing talking about the game (or the topics that inform the game). There's a huge amount of (rarely-acknowledged) out-of-band work that seems to go into building that consensual model of the fiction that this kind of play depends on.

Well, you may be right by the spirit of the pamphlet. But that's not how I've experienced it. Generally, there was a certain degree of respect for precedent - if you gave somebody a roll in situation A, it was generally expected that either they'd get a roll in situation B, or you'd have some reason why not. Which put a significant burden on the GM not to set precedents casually... and in turn I think may have fed some of the more egregiously fiat-y and tyrannical GMing styles associated with the model. If you're worried about giving the players a precedent - a rule - that they can then count on exploiting in a future situation, but you also want to maintain an illusion of a consistent and logical world with predictable laws, you probably tend towards keeping as much as possible of your decision-making behind the curtain.

Posted By: Mark WCharacters who live in the world know more about it than their players. They understand its rules and "physics" intimately. However, this knowledge is only available to the player of that character through careful questioning of the GM.

I don't think that's accurate. It seems to assume that the GM would hold back information from the players that the characters would have. Imagine the GM actually describing the situation as they would appear to somebody who's (more or less) intimately familiar with the world. If I'm the GM it's in my interest to meet the players halfway.

I think this disjoint you mention only happens, when either the GM or the players are holding back vital information. If the GM doesn't tell the players what their characters would see (or how they might interpret it differently from the players) or if the players don't lay out their character's reasoning, then you end up with an SIS with some serious gaps in it. Gaps, which are filled with guesswork, which in turn can lead to misunderstandings and eventually one person has to put their foot down. This is usually the GM and sometimes his decisions are contested based on the players' interpretation of the source material, previous experiences, "common sense", etc.

But by then it's already too late. That's why such debates rarely, if ever work out well and always interrupt the flow of the game.

In my experience, it's not that anyone is *consciously* holding back information. It's naturalism (which prevents explicit spelling out of detailed reasoning/intent for actions) combined with a disjoint of assumptions (Noldor are beings of legend whose enterprises hold the promise of glory for heroes vs Noldor are cursed to have all their great undertakings end in horror... particularly for mere mortals).

I dont do Venn diagrams myself but in Big Model terms what you have is a type of gamism and techniques to achieve it. You have Step on up, where the players are expected to use their abilities to overcome dangerous situations and where they face the real possibility of failure and loss.

As we're going along in the campaign I'm running, I'm definitely learning some stuff about how old school play works.

An issue that's often raised is pixel bitching. I realized the cure to this is random encounters. Back in the day, I never understood the real purpose of random encounters. Their purpose isn't to be randomness that mucks with the player's plans. Their purpose is to put a cost on time. Without them, time is all too often abstract or there's some other strict time limit that threatens overall failure of the adventure because the players don't figure something out in time. With the random encounter system, players have to decide when it's worth spending the time to pixel bitch. They need to look for other clues, or consider the layout of the dungeon.

In last night's session, they pixel bitched in a short corridor they found after penetrating two rooms of a complex. Sure enough, there was a pit trap (too bad they didn't examine it closer and try to bypass it - they turned down a sequence leading up to a good treasure). Shortly after that, they did miss a sliding wall that trapped them. They did actually quickly change to look for a way out. One attempt led into another complex of tough monsters but good treasure. That was a dead end, so then they looked in the next most likely direction, and found the way past the sliding wall (which also was on a timer to reset in 24 turns, they took about 15 turns to get out).

What surprised me is that given the evidence of sliding walls they didn't look for some dwarf henchmen. They have three elves in the party which makes finding secret doors pretty easy. I don't tell them where the secret door is when an elf makes his 1-2 in 6 chance to sense secret doors when passing, instead I just tell them they sensed a door, then they need to search (but I don't make them search too hard), getting their 1-4 in 6 rolls for elves and 1-2 in 6 for everyone else.

There definitely is a learning curve, but I don't see that as a problem as long as the learning is reasonably fun. When you think about the best board games, most of them have a learning curve, and I think that's part of the lasting appeal of those games.

I'm not sure how I'd deal with something like the sense magic attempt, but I think that's a cool ruling Clinton made. Rafial does have a good point about things like this being systematized. The way the game has evolved through the editions, with much of that evolution being driven by systematizing these things is part of why a lot of old schoolers are saying "let's return to the original rules, before all this stuff got piled on." This allows each GM to tune these rulings to the group's preferences (sure, mostly the GM's preference, but I think players do weigh in a lot).

As to age of players, I think high school kids are capable of reaching functional play. It may take them a bit longer, and some individuals may never get it, and perhaps having older mentors helps. I saw functional play when I was in high school, though much of it was after I joined MIT's game club with it's range of members from junior high school aged kids through people at least in their 30s if not 40s. 90% of my play was with high school kids though. And before I joined the club, almost all of my play was with high school kids (the player who convinced me to go to MIT's game convention and thus introduced me to the club was a college student, and I got some mentorship from a college student and from Glen Blacow [but most of my mentorship from Glen was after I joined the club]).

That does point out that my experience was not of getting into the game in isolation. In fact, my best friend got the Basic D&D set because his older brother had been playing the game. But see nothing wrong with an activity being most functional when it is part of a tradition that gets passed down. None of my major interests were evolved in isolation (model railroading, SF book reading, caving, and church are my other interests, all evolved with mentoring from others).

Frank

Rust, I think the reference to Gamism is inspired by the fact that old-school gaming seems to most reward displays of player skill over attempts to explore theme or revel in setting/genre.

Gamism is behind almost everything in the primer.

Consider the playstyle this is aimed at creating. A group of characters goes into a dungeon, fights monsters, avoids traps, comes out with loot and works their way up from peon to mighty hero. This process relies upon a gm acting as an impartial judge and the players using their skills in assessing the situation and making decision that will get them loot and keep them alive. It's all a test of the players ability which is the heart of gamism.

One of the main points of the article, as I understand it, then is saying:

You get less and less gamism when you have specific skills spelled out (e.g., Diplomacy, Sneak etc...).
Or rather, the gamism shifts from "how good am I at manipulating the GM and arguing a point to let my character do stuff (i.e, old school gaming)", to "how good am I at assigning skill points (i.e, new school gaming)."

My current group keeps waxing nostalgic about the old 1st ed DD games and such. I've been asked to produce a campaign in the next three weeks to bring back the good old times.

I think this Primer describes sort of what we did back then. But the hippy-indie gamer in me just cringes at having that much power at the table, I'm not sure I want that sort of "gamism" where it is the Players vs. me as impartial judge. It just feels so.. .paternal.

I don't see a clear creative agenda in the Primer. I see possibilities for any kind of play, with strong technique support for Gamist play, not invisible technique support for Simulationist play, and no explicit support for Narrativist play.

You could (and many people did) play a perfectly good Sim game this way. Don't let the leveling up and player-knowledge elements fool you. Those don't make it Gamist. For instance, those techniques might show up in a Purist-for-System Sim game.

If we've learned nothing else from years of discussing creative agenda on the internet, I hope we've learned that it's very difficult to guess creative agenda from a transcript of play. This isn't even a transcript of play; it's a discussion of some techniques for play. I don't think the author's creative agenda is apparent, or even necessarily fully realized in the author's mind. Who says the author's games even have a clear creative agenda?

Anyway, please, when discussing GNS crap like this, use much caution and don't jump to conclusions.

I think we're all saying the same things Adam just in different ways. I entirely agree it is possible to take this advice and drift it to any agenda, however it's pretty clear what the style of play is aimed towards is if you know what to look for. It's the same thing as looking at the text of Primetime Adventures or Dogs in the Vineyard and seeing that they support narrativism.

You see strong support for gamism, less support for sim and nothing for nar, we're in total agreement there. But it's not just in the techniques, there are also plenty of value judgements in the primer that shows what the author values about the game and what they feel this style of play offers. Those are where the real indicators of CA are.

No one is saying that if you play this way you will be playing gamist. Just using these techniques wont guarantee that, but if you take them and use them in the spirit the author intends you likely will be.

This whole discussion is why I think GNS is fun but basically bankrupt as a way of categorising games. Old D&D is at the same time Gamist (test the player not the character), Simulationist (cohesive fantasy world in which everything is explanable through stats) and Narrativist (sandbox play entirely governed by player direction, with a strong story arc from level 1 to 20 [or 36]). It all depends on what the mood of the players is, as to which particular point they emphasise. So why put it in one box or another?

If you label me you negate me, etc.

The reason for putting it into a box is because it doesnt fit in the others. It's a quick and easy short hand that makes sense. Which in this case is very true.

Take a look at the suggestions the primer makes about running an old school game. It's trying to create a playstyle that wont work well with an agenda other than gamist. It has no support for narrativism, it doesnt really allow for characters having goals beyond attaining power and doesnt expect the gm to bring that persuit of power into question. As for simulationism check out this quote from the player skill not character ability zen moment section.

"Also: these games aren’t simulations of what a dwarf raised in a particular society, and having a particular level of intelligence, would do when faced with certain challenges. Old-style play is about keeping your character alive and making him into a legend."

It has a very specific goal for play and one that precludes any other if it's fully applied. It does matchup well with Simulationism as defined by the threefold model but that is at the technique level and not as an agenda for the game as a whole. Sure there is a lot of talk of having a detailed world that acts in a rational manner but that is all in service to the agenda of the game, the gm will create challenging encounter that the players will strive to take their characters through and come out with rewards and gain in power if they are successful. If they fail there characters wont gain as much xp or loot at best and at worst the character could die.

I think the labels fit and I find them both meaningful and helpful, YMMV.

Ok let's drop the Jargon. The problem with trying to apply the techniques is that they wont work with every intended play style or for every person.

Let's say your playstyle leans more to playing that dwarf with a certain level of intelligence from a certain culture and react in the way you feel he should react in the situation. The player makes suboptimal choices in situations where he feels it would be appropriate for the dwarf. According to the primer the GM should not respect those choices but should instead hammer the player for them and quite possibly kill the character and possibly the whole group.

A lot of people would see that as bad play on the part of the GM but it's a base assumption of this style of play. If you go in and try to use these techniques without taking that into account you can end up with a game session that could destroy your group. If you are up front about it and everyone signs on and understands the implications of that base assumption then it may work, but people will have to be flexible and agree to change their playstyle.

So can you take bits and pieces of this advice and use it in a game where you have a different playstyle? Possibly but I think it's likely to cause frustration and problems more than it will help your game. I know in my games if we were left to pixelbitch out the answer to how to find a secret door or open a trap we're more likely to get bored give up on the answer and go shoot something or start it on fire. Likewise I wouldnt expect anyone in my group to go through the motions of trying to talk their way past a guard and basing it on how well they do when in my mind those things come down to not what you say but how you say it. Meaning I value the characters ability in diplomacy or fast talk more than I do a physics professors ability to be charming.

In my mind the best thing to do with the primer is look at it (and the author's intent), consider if it sounds like something fun to you. If so play it pretty much straight as is. Pick up one of the OD&D knock offs this is intended to support and go for it.

I'm inspired. I've read the Quick Primer and downloaded Swords and Wizardry. I think I'll run the Tomb of the Iron God at the Emerald City gamefest Nov 15. Roll to hit!