Let's have a cross-forum thread that starts with something posted at RPGnet, and that is not about RPGnet sucking, for a change.

Over at the "OSR and 5e, should they fuck and have babies and will their babies RULE THE MULTIVERSE" (or whatever it's called now) thread, Blacky the Blackball (notoriously underrated retro-clone writer) brought up this 2012 post by Armchair Gamer which I found awesome. Seriously. Go read it. Now.

Now, probably because I'm a science nerd before being a pop-culture nerd, I'm a sucker for taxonomies. I'm also well-acquainted enough with them to realize that they're cognitive instruments to talk in general terms about large collections and categories of things, and that individuals might not necessarily conform to only one (or any one, for that matter) of the proposed classifications. I had to come back and edit this one because apparently no one was reading this sentence.

So we have a poll, and a thread. I propose we vote at the poll, and proceed to gush and/or articulate our tastes (or distastes if it needs be, theRPGsite has a reputation to maintain) for one or more of these play styles.

And if you're a play-anything D&D whore like myself, man up and choose 2 or 3 flavors, tops. You can do it with ice cream, you can do it with D&D.

God dammit, Butch.

How do I add a poll again? Mods, could you help? Thanks.

Here, I'll start.

I have a soft spot for Knaves & Kobolds on account of getting my start with a Basic D&D (1991 black box) and holding on to the D&D RC during the height of AD&D 2e. My last D&D game was an OD&D-powered crawl through Benoist's Marmoreal Tomb dungeon, and it felt very Knaves & Kobolds-ish. I am also endlessly fascinated by the barony/domain/stronghold endgame which has become something of a "white whale" for me, and tend to favor editions .

Dungeoncrawling & Demons was next for me. I played a bit with this style but not nearly as much as I'd like. Even today I wouldn't rank AD&D 1e among my "top three" (I'm more of a B/X and BECMI/RC guy) but I remember being in awe of it because "fuck yeah, DEMONS" (in my defense, I was 14 or 15).

Galactic Dragons & God Wars is a style of D&D that I only encountered via OSR. I've read a lot about it but I have yet to bring it to the table, where I expect it'll be met with some mild perplexity from my gaming group (who were also introduced to D&D in the early 1990s).

Paladins & Princess was done to death during my AD&D 2e days. I like it well enough in other media but honestly, for my D&D, I'm strongly inclined towards a more sword-and-sorcery vibe nowadays, even when I do use Medieval trappings.

The two others aren't really my thing. I'll play along, but I'd never run a campaign founded solely or mostly on one of these.

Before I vote on a category, it's worth looking at the categories.

Let's break it down...

Knaves and Kobolds - Ok, good category.
Galactic Dragons and Godwars - Heh, wordy way to say Gonzo, but sufficiently 70's metal to get the point across.
Paladins & Princesses - "Clean Fantasy" I think nails this better, but good category.
Dungeoncrawling and Demons - Decent category, some overlap, plus the reuse of D&D itself is bad, should just be Dungeoncrawl.

Once we leave TSR D&D, we kind of eliminate the ability to play different flavors with the same system as things go on.

Simulation and Spellcasters - Here the wheels fly off the wagon at relativistic speeds.  First of all S&S is Sword and Sorcery, so bad shorthand.  Second if you think 3rd edition is a good descriptor of "simulationist rules" or "rules as physics engines" then you don't really know what the terms mean.  3rd Edition was the start of the tactical game focus which frequently meant NOT simulationism or physics engine because the rules weren't simulating a real process in the game world, they were placed there for tactical challenge.  3rd edition flavor is tactical crunch and charop.  "Grids & Gishes", or better yet, just "3rd Edition".

Warlords and Warlocks - Naming the two signature classes points out the focus on character class design of 4th.  As someone said on purple "Characters and Encounters" seems to point more toward the actual playstyle differences, but again, this is really just "4th Edition" as you can't do much else with it.

My D&D usually is a long-term campaign approach.  
So you start out Knaves and Kobolds.
If you survive, you get some adventure opportunities which might be Dungeoncrawling and Demons.
If the campaign lasts that long, Godwars may start.
Paladins and Princesses not really my thing.  You can play a Paladin who defends a Princess, but it won't be out of Mallory.

Grids & Gishes, Characters & Encounters - I thought we were talking about D&D?

I was unable to choose between Warlord & Warlocks and Knaves & Kobolds. As unlikely as it sounds, those two styles usually find a way of hybridizing at my table, sometimes without my intent, usually via video game logic on the part of me and my players. Call it the Final Fantasy style I suppose, only without the battle against God at the end and no save states.

I like all of them save the last two.

My ideal campaign (both as a player and as a DM) starts with Knaves and Kobolds at low level, but quickly shifts gear into Galactic Dragons and Godwars once the PCs have a few levels under their belts.

That's the intended playstyle of Dark Dungeons, which should be obvious to those who have played it since it not only emulates the BE parts of BECMI, but also the CMI parts and also most of SpellJammer. So you can start as a first level scum barely holding your own against giant rats and stirges, and end up as a level 30+ adventurer flying from star to star while you quest for Immortality.

In fact the last two Dark Dungeons campaigns I ran ended up just like that. Both of them finished with the PCs gaining Immortality after having reached level 30+, and both of them involved interstellar and interplanar adventures.

I know many people like slow advancement and consider getting to level 9 to be pretty much the endgame of D&D, but for me and my group that's where things start to get going, and far from being the endgame it's barely a quarter of the way through the campaign.

How should we call D&D 5 ? Reconciliation & reunion ? I had a game of D&D 5 as a player saturday night and it was a blast ! I also had a game of LotFp friday night as a GM and it was also quite cool ! And I have play 13th Age some months ago and had a very nice time !

Edit : I voted Knaves & Kobolds and Princesses & Paladins

Voted Knaves & Kobolds along with Dungeoncrawling & Demons.

Knaves & Kobolds: Looking back my games always tend to fall quite a bit into this spectrum from the very start. I guess that might explain why I have interest in oldschool play even though I'm from the 3e generation.

Galactic Dragons & Godwars: Call me intrigued. I hadn't considered this as a seperated playstyle before, but it sure sounds fun. However, I only ever played one very short planescape game remotely in this direction.

Dungeoncrawling & Demons: Not much to say about this. It seems to be the baseline to me and I always try to have some "essential" D&D in my games.

Paladins & Princesses: I like this one, though not all the time. Subconciously, I really pushed hard for this style when I was younger and it never worked. Even when everyone is on the same page of wanting a clean heroic game, the first captured humanoid can collapse the card house. If you have groupmembers who prefer a more pragmatic game, this can turn into an utter trainwreck.

Simulation and Spellcasters: Obviously, as I've played a lot of 3e, some of this has crept into my games. However, my games never reached the caster dominance of high levels. The inescapable simulationism was the reason I welcomed a new edition with open arms and felt relieved to say good by to 3e for good.

Warlords and Warlocks: High action, explosions and powers. I don't mind it to much, though it is not my prefered style. 4e admittedly does this style very well at the expense of others.

I voted k&k and only k&k because it's the only one I both recognize and like.

I can't make out the distinguishing characteristics of "D&D" (sic) or "S&S."

Did not find the referenced post particularly awesome. Then again my D&D started with uncontextualized dungeoncrawls, moved on to fantasy Wild West/Gold Rush once it left the dungeon, and then morphed heavily rules-wise and thematically into variations of picaresque S&S, low-magic medieval pastiche, and high-magic (but not high-level, let alone romanticized) quest. Somewhere in there was some moderately gonzo AD&D, which I suppose may have been a cross between "D&D" and GD&G. That last wasn't particularly fun and in retrospect was an unfortunate waste of time for most of the parties involved.

I don't much care for the category names but I like the things described in the first three. If GD&G is 'gonzo' (ala Gamma World and Arduin) then I'm good with it... if it's PCs as superheroes/demigods then I'm not so interested, not in the D&D version at least.
I'd rather do Paladins & Princesses with something like Pendragon.

I checked the first two. I think pigeon holes are probably not good even for pigeons, but those cover a range of figure levels and environments.

I find it a bit puzzling that the list makes sense only with an assumption that the game dictates thus-and-such character in the characters and their activities. We can't have knaves, paladins, princesses, warlords and warlocks in the same campaign?

Quote from: yabaziou;789023How should we call D&D 5 ? Reconciliation & reunion ? I had a game of D&D 5 as a player saturday night and it was a blast ! I also had a game of LotFp friday night as a GM and it was also quite cool ! And I have play 13th Age some months ago and had a very nice time !

I think that 5e, so far, is mainly a return to Dc&Dm, just like early 3.x was (with the ability to adjust into some of the other styles, but definitely not Si&Sp. Which suits me, because my personal tastes tend to be vary between Dc&Dm and P&P, and Si&Sp is my least favorite.

I went with the dungeons and demons. I lurves me a good dungeon crawl, and I like the monsters to have some oomph...both when they do things, and when they go down.

Also, the last few systems I've played haven't really supported knaves and kobold play...the players get too powerful, too quickly, for that to last beyond a session.

Whining aside, I think there are a few good points being raised about the taxonomy.

"Simulation & Spellcasters" and "Warlords & Warlocks" aren't really terrific categories. First, poor naming, I too like "Grids & Gishes" better. It better captures what set the 3.5e and 4e communities apart from the OSR and fans of previous editions; a lot of emphasis on "tactical" and dynamic combat, wioth movement and attacks of opportunity and whatnot, as well as the importance "character optimization" with builds and choosing right class at the right time, picking up the right feats, etc.

Second, I'm not sure they deserve consideration as separate categories. The above mentioned "new" gaming culture that always existed but became really, really vocal starting with 3e, was probably the driving force behind 3.5e and even more so for 4e.

Third, they superficially look like Dungeoncrawling & Demons (which is probably at least part of the reason why a lot of lapsed 1e players came back for 3e). I remember when 3e first came out and there was some feeling of "the good ol' days of dungeon crawling are back" in the air. Of course, the game did pick up a lot of cultural accretions on the way, such as the dungeonpunk aesthetic and elements from East Asian visual pop art (manga/anime) as well as video games. But those feel mostly aesthetic to me. It's the "grids & gishes" that really make "new school" (3e/4e) stand out to me.