Windows and contiguous worlds

22 Jan, 2026

Recently the NSR Cauldron had one of periodic descents into the taxonomy of what the NSR even is and what an NSR game is. As usual the topic prompted a wave of imposter syndrome in me, as a moderator it's hard sometimes to reconcile my values and motivations to the community when I don't actually play the sorts of games many believe to be synonymous with the server name, and when do I don't believe play them "correctly". RPGS are fun games and a powerful way to tell stories, they vary greatly across genres and play styles. This moment of personal crisis dovetails with some notes that I've been taking recently about the taxonomy of RPGs. What I hope to do here is set out one reason that separating a game’s genre from a group’s play style is important.

In his recent article Turning the Dials Yochai Gal talks eloquently about a concept he calls Dials which serve the needs of groups who enjoy RPGs ”primarily as engineered systems”. The framing of dials is a great way of conceptualising the axis of the rules weight of systems without judgement. I've been thinking about a different axis somewhat which locates play preference in a place between contiguous worlds to explore and windows into a world in support of storytelling. For my part this is an expansion of work started back in 2023¹. It's worth starting with playing games incorrectly and the concept of what I’m calling Complete Games are closely linked. In RPGS it’s extremely difficult to present a Complete Game in the text. Even with examples of play, covering play assumptions is more likely to be something for a GM to manage with their table² than for the designer to coordinate with a reader. The exception to this is the branch of Story Games that would include works like Alice is Missing. These games push closest to board games or boxed experiences and are often GMless giving the designer a more direct relationship with play at the table. The relevance of this is that GMs can bring vastly different styles to the same game text. To some extent this will lead to the sorts of preemptive hacking without playing games first Gal discusses.

My particular focus in this instance is on traversal of spaces. There are two extremes that I want to look at, a contiguous real world to explore step by step, inhabiting characters and living as them at one end. At the other end players act as storytellers using the world as a backdrop for drama. In both cases play at the table may be fully immersive and the world may be concrete it's how they're viewed that matters in this discussion. The OSR tends towards the first of these styles where the physicality of spaces has primacy. Characters must look in the right corner of the right room to discover what's there. Story Games tend towards the latter where scenes are set as in a film with no time being spent on the interstitial spaces between the things that matter to the players as directors. It is useful to consider a work like Delicious in Dungeon³ here to provide an example. The titular dungeon's specific layout is absolutely immaterial to the story as it’s presented. We know from context that the space incorporates the tropes of a dungeon in an RPG context such as traps, secret rooms, monsters etc. but the bulk of the work is not concerned with their physicality. What we are shown as an audience are the times those elements are incorporated into the drama of the story being told. This dichotomy in an RPG context is agnostic to the game being played, a GM can just as easily present a space to explore or frame a scene then use any system to manage the detail. This is why I'm presenting it here as a tool for categorising styles of play and not games.

The discourse around RPGS spends a lot of effort attempting to put games in boxes. This system agnostic framework highlights the need to reconsider the link between a game’s genre and how it might be played at the table. GMs are very used to building their own games out of the words in their books but this should be taken as an invitation to give more context not less. People who don't want it will skip it but designers could open their work up significantly through its inclusion. As we talk about RPGs its important to remember that the context of one group playing a game might be vastly different to the context of another and be mindful of how that might effect the reception of the work. As gamers it’s important that we read broadly and play works as written so that we can try to get closer to the designer’s context. As designers we can present our context as clearly as possible to help players get the most from our work. As the hobby grows it becomes more important to present our assumptions and reflect on them.