I would agree with you that it isn't exclusive to old games. I pretty much do this with any game I run, but it's a little odd to me how much modern players *expect* a plot to move them along.

However....

"I personally love that sort of all immersible, creative, interact-with-the-world game, but I don't think there's anything "old" about it."

I beg to differ. This kind of "sandbox" play was common between 1974 and 1977, and slowly got eroded by how the hobby changed. The fact that there are still people who like this kind of game doesn't take away from that, but merely adds to it.

I agree with you, however, when you say, "there are GMs out there trying to get people to play that sort of game, not cause they remember it from "way back when," but because it matches their concept of what roleplaying means."

So I think we're in agreement when you say that this style of play isn't exclusive to "old" games - but I think you may be mistaking "old" games for "old school" style of game-play - they aren't the same. You can take very recent games and run them in an old school way; World of Darkness sans background works pretty well this way, but 3rd Edition D&D breaks down because of the tight interlocking of the game mechanics.

If I'm mistaking you in any way, please let me know. There's a lot of discussion about these issues in a number of places, including the odd74 discussion board and James Maliszewski's blog; as you can imagine not everybody agrees about everything, but there's clearly an emerging sense of a different style of gaming.

"So I think we're in agreement when you say that this style of play isn't exclusive to "old" games - but I think you may be mistaking "old" games for "old school" style of game-play - they aren't the same."

So, what I probably should have said, was that I found your original comment a bit irritating, given that I did get what he is talking about and was trying to speak partly to a different section of his desires in the comment you replied to. Semantics is a really spiky minefield. People appropriate words like "old school" all the time and pull them into meaning different things (I'm pretty sure there are multiple "accepted" meanings running around gaming), so... I felt a little like you were taking a jab at my understanding because of the way you presented the link, to be honest. It seemed to me like the meaning was more important than the exact phrase.

In retrospect I do appreciate the resource you posted. It has neat examples and it'll be something good to throw at my husband who's not as acclimated to this style (but loves similar challenges in LARPs).

After thinking about it some more, you're right that all the examples I can think of do seem to grow out of older games from older gamers, but there are younger gamers who are making this sort of game style their own without a deep understanding of that part of history. That was what I was sort of trying to speak to. Things sometimes transcend history to live their own lives in the future.

My apologies - I wasn't taking a jab at you, at all. To be honest, I thought you might appreciate the link, as well, so I put it under your comment in the hope you would see it - and did not intend it as a criticism of what you were saying! (That'll teach me to be too cryptic.)

And you are right - older gamers and games don't have a corner on this market - younger gamers are doing this sort of thing, too, without having to be silverbacked grognards. And that's a good thing.