# The OSR is NOT a Balanced Solution tags: #thoughts ![[The OSR and the Continuum (cover).jpg]] It's been a while since I felt motivated to put one of my extended replies over here into thoughts. This month has been busy with [[RPG a Day 2026]] after all, but sometimes you just hit one of those points. By and large, [Chubby Funster](https://x.com/ChubbyFunsterGC) is one of the writers in the OSR space that I actually respect. He's analytical, self-reflective, generally on top of being aware of the weaknesses of classically designed RPGs and understanding how they evolve and get better. This is me being positive about someone, which happens about once every 625 years. Don't expect it again for a while. Unfortunately, in this video he kind of steps in it from a poorly designed spectrum to an ill-informed discussion of story games in general. Sometimes you just have to put it out there, and so I have. This also exists as a reply under the video because I'm a completist and like to keep track of things. --- ![The OSR is a Balanced Solution](https://youtu.be/1vSs1qyKpec) Okay, first, the elephant in the room. Do I agree that you've described the evolutionary process of **D&D** over the last many editions? Yes, I think you absolutely have. The problem is that you've spent too much time in the OSR territories on the accounting side of things, and not enough time on the story game side of things. Your story game contribution doesn't actually reflect the reality of it. Story games are not about accumulating tokens so that you can narrate whatever you want to. That is how they are painted by people who are trapped in the world of accounting, but it's not part and parcel of how they actually function. In fact, it's because of another element that you haven't brought out: the fiction. Why do you not just narrate anything that you want to? Because it needs to fit into the architecture of the fiction. If things don't make sense, if they can't be explained within the framework of the world, if you can't make a good argument for them, then they don't happen. This is how you can get such a strong and aggressive GM-less movement over the last 25 years, and such a strong solo movement over the last 5 to 10 that doesn't rely on a GM to dictate terms. It's because the fiction, the shared space of narrative (thus Narrativism), guides the players into making those kinds of judgments. The irony here is that the first example that came to mind was Star Wars, which is very clearly space opera with elements of classic fantasy alongside science fiction. That led immediately to a clear concept. Recent Star Wars hasn't been particularly popular with the fandom because the authors avoid engaging with *the fiction*. The narrative makes no sense within the world established. This is exactly how story games work without a single voice deciding what's going on and with a focus on minimalist systems. By and large, when you leave the story out of talking about story games, you do it no service, and you do your discussion a great disservice from an analytical point of view. It also does story gaming a disservice to say that it is devoted to spectacle. We both know that there is a large swath of OSR games that is *very* focused on the spectacle of their play. There wouldn't be so many third-party supplements that are nothing but big piles of spells and classes, all of which are trying to outdo the rest if there wasn't a desire for demonstrable spectacle in the OSR space. I think spectacle is the wrong thing here entirely to have as the other end's anchor. (This ignores completely the fact that there are story games that are heavy on the accounting. Are they particularly *popular* story games? No, but they do exist.[^1] Accounting versus spectacle is a bad spectrum. Story games are not about the spectacle of doing things. In fact, one could argue that there's too much dwelling on the minutiae of mundanity across quite a large swath of them. That you can actually *do* mundane stories that are narratively meaningful captures the interest of a significant portion of those games' audiences.) This is one of my problems. When people in and around the OSR talk about story games, they make a reasonable argument that people from outside their circle don't actually understand what they're about. Fine, I'm willing to accept that. But then they make the exact same mistake when they talk about story gaming or, in fact, any other "non-OSR" mode of play. They forget when they point fingers, more are coming back at them than are going away. Let's go on to talk about this idea of player skill and how apparently OSR gaming has a lock on that. Certainly, there's no player skill needed to understand how to navigate fictional spaces and fictional positioning, nor to comprehend pacing or the mechanisms of persuading the other players at the table that your desired outcome is the best one. Certainly not! I hate this discussion of player skill because it's inane. All games beyond pure randomness require player skill. Requiring player skill is an aspect of simply being a game at all. It's an arbitrary term typically deployed to denigrate people who do things any other way than the way you choose, with the implication that it doesn't require skill. It's a weak argument, but worse than that, it's lazy. Let's consider the illustration you've provided around 9:54. On the one hand, you've got huge character builds, combats take forever, and excessively complex rules under realism. Fair, I'd say that lies on the side of accounting. But on the other side, the side you've associated with story gaming, are "worlds that don't make sense," "GMs trying to tell their special story," and "low player agency." All things that I associate with classic D&D and the OSR, particularly the GM trying to tell their special story with scenarios and modules and low player agency, which really only manifests through getting to hit things. In fairness to everyone, worlds that don't make sense is a curse on every house. Everyone always thinks their ideas are in the middle of any spectrum they care to name when they're talking about "the extremes of two sides." That's almost never the case, and it's definitely not the case here. It's a hollow representation. Part of the problem, at least from my perspective, is that while I can probably name 8 or 9 OSR games, you can probably name 20 or more. Some of which have been successful, most of which haven't. I can name 20 or more story games, and I'm not sure that you are familiar with the mechanics of 7 or 8 games that would be classified on the story game side of things. This is in part because there's a vast variety and diversity of games over there, as opposed to those specifically within the OSR purview. It doesn't feel like you've done the research over there, whereas it's almost impossible to avoid having knowledge of the OSR forced on you no matter where you go. I don't mean to call you out specifically in this. It's always what happens when the OSR attempts to be defined and "defend itself" against the presence of any other form of play. It always gets self-defined as superior, not as an equally valid choice among others, but as inherently superior, as the centroid of desirability, the middle of the best neighborhood. It does everything right, and when it doesn't, it's just individual variation, right? At this point, I'd kind of like to see you actually take on the analysis of some of the pivotal story games of the last 15 to 20 years. Not from the perspective of, "this isn't OSR, so I don't like it," or, "this is a story game, so I don't like it," but actually looking at the mechanics and seeking out things that you do like about it. If nothing else, it would be the first time I ever saw someone involved in the OSR do such a thing, so it would have novelty going for it. Don't mind me. I've been fighting this fight for 30 years. I don't expect it to ever go away. [^1]: See **[[Aria - Canticle of the Monomyth|Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth]]** that I'd, perversely, classify as a story game written by sociopathic sociologists.