An interesting piece about the #ttrpg media landscape: https://personable.blog/media-crowdfunding/
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@cy @foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland
Back when I played Magic, I never went for the whole "buy an entire box of boosters and hope" approach you seem to be referring to here. If I needed specific cards, I bought singles, which weren't particularly hard to come by if you weren't very, very specifically trying to build the "correct" competitive decks. So I still think equating enjoyment of CCGs to gambling addiction is just demonization, because *especially* casually, it's not a requirement.I suppose there's also the pay-to-win aspect of it. Like what are you even paying for? Either way it's kind of sleazy, and money always crowds out everything else, but it's true if you only buy cards you know then it's not gambling. Though each game is kind of gambly. Taking a gamble on what cards to include in your deck, and all. People see patterns where there are none, and there's money to be made in capitalizing on that illusion.
CC: @foolishowl@social.coop @Printdevil@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp -
I suppose there's also the pay-to-win aspect of it. Like what are you even paying for? Either way it's kind of sleazy, and money always crowds out everything else, but it's true if you only buy cards you know then it's not gambling. Though each game is kind of gambly. Taking a gamble on what cards to include in your deck, and all. People see patterns where there are none, and there's money to be made in capitalizing on that illusion.
CC: @foolishowl@social.coop @Printdevil@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.campPay to win is a big part of the allure
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An interesting piece about the #ttrpg media landscape: https://personable.blog/media-crowdfunding/
The elephant in the room is noticed quite early on: Why is so much rpg media designer-facing rather than ordinary gamer-facing?
Everyone seems to want to be in a conversation with designers (even when it doesn't make sense) and I think that's a social media hierarchy thing. In ttrpg social circles, designers matter. Everyone else is a feckless hog who exists purely as a source of monies.
@Taskerland The funniest part of all this is that about half the designers aren't designers in the first place. They're at best adapters: writing Yet Another PbtA Game( but this one is about squirrels in therapy!) or Yet Another D20 Game.
Of the remainder half are writers, not designers, and it shows in their games.
And of the final quarter, you see the usual spectrum of incompetent to sublime.
Fellow players are far more interesting to talk to most times.
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@Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland
I don't think the US ever had White Dwarf, but Dragon Magazine sustained me back during my teenage years when actually *getting to play the game* was pretty much only a dream.But even that eventually went through decay.
1/2
@pteryx @Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland The US was the base for, however, the most influential gaming rag you've never heard of: Alarums & Excursions. It was a giant of a 'zine in a world where most people in the scene had never heard of it, and it was where a whole lot of gaming theory (both design and praxis) was hashed out all the way ...
... get this ...
... to **today**.
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@pteryx @Printdevil @strangequark @Taskerland The US was the base for, however, the most influential gaming rag you've never heard of: Alarums & Excursions. It was a giant of a 'zine in a world where most people in the scene had never heard of it, and it was where a whole lot of gaming theory (both design and praxis) was hashed out all the way ...
... get this ...
... to **today**.
I remember it. I don't remember it particularly fondly though. I have masses of pdfs though maybe it's time for a re read. @ZDL @pteryx @strangequark @Taskerland
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I suppose there's also the pay-to-win aspect of it. Like what are you even paying for? Either way it's kind of sleazy, and money always crowds out everything else, but it's true if you only buy cards you know then it's not gambling. Though each game is kind of gambly. Taking a gamble on what cards to include in your deck, and all. People see patterns where there are none, and there's money to be made in capitalizing on that illusion.
CC: @foolishowl@social.coop @Printdevil@dice.camp @Taskerland@dice.camp@cy @foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland
See, now we're just cycling back around to "all card playing is gambling and therefore evil". Equating *deckbuilding* to gambling is especially disingenuous. What next, calling every video game in existence "gambling" because you have to buy a computer of some description to play them? Demonizing the use of dice in TTRPGs so Amber is the only one that passes your holiness test?Please take your crusade to people who are actually hurting themselves.
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@cy @foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland
See, now we're just cycling back around to "all card playing is gambling and therefore evil". Equating *deckbuilding* to gambling is especially disingenuous. What next, calling every video game in existence "gambling" because you have to buy a computer of some description to play them? Demonizing the use of dice in TTRPGs so Amber is the only one that passes your holiness test?Please take your crusade to people who are actually hurting themselves.
On the topic of demonizing things, my headmaster in the 80s, banished cards and RPGs, calling them the devil's picture books. Which is a lot more demony than most of our criticism
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I remember it. I don't remember it particularly fondly though. I have masses of pdfs though maybe it's time for a re read. @ZDL @pteryx @strangequark @Taskerland
@Printdevil @pteryx @strangequark @Taskerland When reading it, think of it as a low-tech BBS, not a magazine, and it makes a lot more sense. It was very much a place of **conversation** (at a snail's pace) not bloviation.
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@cy @foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland
See, now we're just cycling back around to "all card playing is gambling and therefore evil". Equating *deckbuilding* to gambling is especially disingenuous. What next, calling every video game in existence "gambling" because you have to buy a computer of some description to play them? Demonizing the use of dice in TTRPGs so Amber is the only one that passes your holiness test?Please take your crusade to people who are actually hurting themselves.
@pteryx @cy @Printdevil @Taskerland That seems unnecessarily heated.
Buying cards when you don't know the value of the cards you receive does seem to me to be a kind of low-key gambling.
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@Printdevil @pteryx @strangequark @Taskerland When reading it, think of it as a low-tech BBS, not a magazine, and it makes a lot more sense. It was very much a place of **conversation** (at a snail's pace) not bloviation.
I just have no fond memories of it and that's unusual for me. @ZDL @pteryx @strangequark @Taskerland
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@pteryx @cy @Printdevil @Taskerland That seems unnecessarily heated.
Buying cards when you don't know the value of the cards you receive does seem to me to be a kind of low-key gambling.
@foolishowl @cy @Printdevil @Taskerland
That part, sure, but then he insisted that assembling decks for a card game out of known singles still meant doing something "sleazy" (paying money for *known* equipment) for the sake of engaging with a game that was itself "gambly" because card draws are random. Hence my turning up the heat. -
On the topic of demonizing things, my headmaster in the 80s, banished cards and RPGs, calling them the devil's picture books. Which is a lot more demony than most of our criticism
@Printdevil @cy @foolishowl @Taskerland
Yeah, and many parts of the US had it a lot worse. D&D book burnings and such.Even after the Satanic Panic passed, this *still* affected D&D's reputation, and therefore the kinds of people who played it, for years. It's quite possible that a part of what affected the game's trajectory in the 90s, outside of market share being stolen by more efficient combat games, was it having a disproportionate number of "bad boys" in its player base.
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@Printdevil @cy @foolishowl @Taskerland
Yeah, and many parts of the US had it a lot worse. D&D book burnings and such.Even after the Satanic Panic passed, this *still* affected D&D's reputation, and therefore the kinds of people who played it, for years. It's quite possible that a part of what affected the game's trajectory in the 90s, outside of market share being stolen by more efficient combat games, was it having a disproportionate number of "bad boys" in its player base.
I just thought it was on reflection rather funny to have my DMs guide denounced as a material artefact, and not for instance my even then quite capacious library of occult works
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I just have no fond memories of it and that's unusual for me. @ZDL @pteryx @strangequark @Taskerland
@Printdevil @ZDL @strangequark @Taskerland
Makes it sound like a magazine of nothing but the Forum feature of old Dragon Magazine. Which was basically the place where all the whining happened up until they decided with the 3.0 revamp that said whining should go online instead. -
I just thought it was on reflection rather funny to have my DMs guide denounced as a material artefact, and not for instance my even then quite capacious library of occult works
@Printdevil @cy @foolishowl @Taskerland
...I suppose another piece of context needs explaining: the kinds of people taking the Satanic Panic seriously in the US back then are the same kinds of people who think what's happening here *now* is God's will being done.
