The (at least) nine cultures of play (GLÅUGUST 2026 #3)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #3 is from a list by Purple - "Futility of categorization."

I have been gathering the various '... but also!' cultures of play people have articulated since Retired Adventurer wrote their touchstone post. In addition to those original six, we can add 'Optimizer' culture from Flourite Guillotine, Jeu d'Atmosphere from Taskerland and 'Common Sense Culture' from Elmcat.

My personal framing for this - as in why are some of these not the same thing - is that the culture expresses itself as why do folk sit to table. Trying to be very succinct about this we get:
Classic - play to get deeper into the dungeon / take on greater challenges
Trad (short for "traditional") - play to hear the DMs grand story
Nordic Larp - play to live the character
Story Games - play to collectively tell the story
The OSR ("Old School Renaissance / Revival") - play for the interesting decisions
OC / Neo-trad - play to actualise your characters story
Optimizer - play to "work the rules hard"
Games of Atmosphere - play to immerse in the world
Common Sense Culture - play to get the adventure done

And here is where we return to our topic of "Futility of categorization" in that there is almost certainly finer grades of distinction within Nordic LARP and Storygames - I am sure if I played more of either of those I would be able to offer thoughts on how they should be broken down.

This culture of play intersects with the preferences of the players at your table - take Matt Colvilles 9 Types of Players for just one example. Thow in the GNS model or whatever you like to try and articulate the type of fun your are having and things start to get really complicated.

Much like the exercise of trying to say how many communities are within the OSR is near-futile but expressing that there *are* multiple communities within it is useful; trying to nail down a definitive all encompassing categorisation is going to be very hard and of dubious use, but it is still useful to recognise that different groups sit to table with very different objectives in mind.