What kind of TTRPG player are you?

The 8 player styles

• The Dungeon DelverOld School Renaissance (OSR). Your wits against the dungeon. Bring a ten-foot pole.
• The StrategistTactical Neo-Trad. The build's a puzzle, and the fight's the payoff.
• The Questing HeroTraditional (Trad) play. Bite the hook, and play the hero to the end.
• The ProtagonistNeo-Trad play. Bring the backstory. Expect it to come back for you.
• The Co-AuthorStory games. Share the pen, and make your friends look great.
• The InhabitantNordic LARP. Live in the scene, and play to lose.
• The Freeform AdventurerFree Kriegsspiel Renaissance (FKR). No rules to learn. Say what you do.
• The RealistWorld simulation (simulationist). The world has physics. Your character has to survive them.

Glossary

Bleed

Emotion crossing between player and character, whichever way it goes. Narrowly, a risky blur of the two.

Creative agenda

What a group does together during a session or for the entire campaign. Ron Edwards, 2001.

Fan mail

When you love a moment from another player, you give that player a token. From Primetime Adventures (2004).

FKR

Free Kriegsspiel Renaissance. Most rules come from the referee's judgment. Your character sheet holds a few lines and some equipment.

Knives

A Tie, a Fear, an Obligation and a Secret are hooks given to the GM to use on your character.

Lines and veils

Boundaries set prior to play. Lines block content, and veils keep it off-screen. Ron Edwards, 2003.

Neo-Trad

Trad since roughly 2015, in two types: collaborative (shared point pool) or tactical (ability packages, rules-fluent GM).

Nordic LARP

Immersion is the point. Mechanics produce the feeling directly, like a tension tower or dying candles.

OSR

Old School Renaissance: classic dungeons, modern player-facing design. Players rely on their skill, referees on common sense, failure earns information.

Player skill

Solving problems using observation and description before consulting your sheet. "Player skill over character skill" is Matthew Finch's OSR slogan.

Plus-One rule

In another person's moment, add one element to it, and give it back to them.

Script Change

Film controls such as Pause or Fast Forward used for turning boundaries into edits. Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2013.

Session zero

A pre-game meeting where everyone sets expectations and limits, and often builds characters together.

Stars and Wishes

A closing ceremony: each participant says something they liked (the star) and something they want more of (the wish).

Steering

To make an out-of-character decision and after the fact rationalize it with an in-character explanation. Montola, Stenros and Saitta, 2015.

Story games

A culture built on player authority: players call for flashbacks, successes can grant narrative control, GMs often don't roll.

Trad

The GM is a storyteller with a plot. Mechanics mostly handle combat, with the story atop them.

X-Card

Anyone at the table can use it to cut content without question. John Stavropoulos, 2012.