You Don't Need a Game System Before You Play — Prismatic Wasteland
www.prismaticwasteland.com
I played a 3ish-month campaign where we made up the rules as we went along. Here are the rules we came up with and my impressions of this experiment.
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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/PrismaticWarren on 2025-07-14 12:53:25+00:00.

I wrote this a couple of months ago, but late last year I ran an experimental game where we did not start out with any rules other than an agreement to come up with rules by consensus when the need arises.

Sometimes the rules of a game directs players toward certain actions so they can engage with those rules. The OSR has long chaffed against this, which can be seen in the popular maxim “the answer isn’t on your character sheet”. While in this specific experiment, some of the rules (especially the token spending ideas) are more story gamey than OSR while others (like the thief skills roll) would feel right at home in an OSR ruleset.

I would love to see more people perform these type of experiments and see what the resulting rules have in common. My guess: each table would vary drastically. And that’s cool.