Looking Up Rules Is Part Of The Fun!

This notion of rulings not rules...

It is not being applied properly.

It doesn't mean NEVER LOOK UP THE RULES, it means make up your own rules when rules for something don't exist! Then... you make a ruling.

Somehow this has turned into, "Put that book down!"

I believe this is a symptom of the storyteller DM. Egotistical DMs so concerned about their narrative, this grand story they've been dreaming up, oh no, don't you dare interrupt it! I'm on a roll, I'm flowing, don't you dare touch that book!

No, I say pick that beautiful book up!

Reference it damn it. You wouldn't be sitting around playing without it.

The books are great. They are artifacts; wonderous things that got us into the game in the first place. They are fonts of knowledge and inspiration -- especially the one pictured above.

For some gamers the only time they ever got to look at the books was when we were playing. We were always surrounded by D&D books, and other games, it was part of the culture to look at them as we played... and any time we had (or have) a question about the rules you're damn right we looked it up!

Wizards have spell books and gamers have rule books.

This modern notion that rules can't be looked up during play is pure garbage.

The notion that it's not the "OSR way" is also garbage. Although maybe it's true in the sense that the OSR is a modern creation; a modern reinterpretation of the old. There are a lot of myths involved. 

The way people play now is not the way they played then.

It is older people rereading the rules and perhaps coming to a better understanding of them (technically) and then playing the game now, not as they did, but as they wish they had, or as they feel they "should have" and then imposing this falsely as something that always was.

Nope.

There were, and always have been, pauses and interruptions to consult the books; the aversion to it now is repulsive to me. Consulting the very books that the games are based on is an essential part of the experience. I would want it no other way.

In the desire to save the past, the past is being revised.