We always had gaming tournaments but it was a 90s thing when we were organising cons, and the scoring was cross player and GMs, not the TSR tournaments things. It was very much a few scraps of "who did well at your table"

and in the case of Qcon 97, "did the writer of the CoC Scenario later marry the overall winner to much scowling at said author"

@RogerBW @Taskerland

This is what the Frankfurt school were on about when they talked about fear of freedom and authoritarian personalities.

You have a structurally horizontalist and creatively decentralised hobby, add the Internet, and people immediately sign up for rigid social hierarchies. They *hurl* their freedom and equality away in order to belong on someone else's terms.

@Printdevil @Taskerland My first question is did they have a prior relationship or did the writer use it as a means of picking a potential spouse? 🤨

@Taskerland So there weren't Luminaries who were Getting It Right, and the people who were competitive about their gaming were over there in the tournament rooms, so it was all give and take. By the time I got onto USENET my habits were formed, and I was never on Twitbook.

@Taskerland One of the structured things I've noticed is people's inability to see gaming as a tool kit. Doom Clocks, etc etc. Yes, they have a place, but you shouldn't need to design a game around them. If it suits *a scenario* use it, if you want to track inventory because it's a survival precise game, go ahead. I don't get why the "this is a good trick for that one time" has become the cornerstone of whole games. There's a definite authority fear going on with all of that. Lack of agency .

@Taskerland Maybe that's what I find odd about current gaming. The lack of horizontalism. There's lots of "BeardMinge says he does this in his youtube" vs "Our group gets its snacks in a rota"

@Printdevil @Taskerland the comfort in obeying instructions from a voice of authority is a big thing these days, I wonder if it's due to the influx of new people to the hobby or a generational change or what.

It's like authorial permission for ficton being a selling point for so many games, where they go, say, "this playbook has an off-hand remark that you can be a mushroom orc" and people will go "yooo, all shroomheads must get it, easy recommendation for your fungalpunk needs" despite /1

@Taskerland I'm glad. But also, I'm not going to upsell you on Premium Whartson or whatever.
I think my history helps here - largely playing in one extended group, White Dwarf, saw occasional issues of Dragon some years later, but that was all "here's what other people are doing, I'll take this and leave that". Gary was already a bit of a joke by the time I became aware of him as having a distinct style of gaming; I went along to Reading Games Fairs, and there were Official! tournaments, but they seemed to be a completely separate group of people from the ones I was playing with in the open gaming.

@RogerBW @Taskerland

@Printdevil Yes... Rather 25 very precisely tailored games than a suite of techniques that get deployed as appropriate

@Printdevil @Taskerland it really having no special frameworks or mechanics on sporing and other mushroom shit, it doesn't have some elaborate mushroom lore because it's anti-canon play-to-find-out setup, it merely told you that you can play as a mushroom and apparently you can't just pretend you're a fungus in any other game for some reason. /2

The idea of travelling and paying to *watch* and applaud someone I have never heard of play D&D is wild.

@Printdevil @Taskerland the comfort in obeying instructions from a voice of authority is a big thing these days, I wonder if it's due to the influx of new people to the hobby or a generational change or what.

It's like authorial permission for ficton being a selling point for so many games, where they go, say, "this playbook has an off-hand remark that you can be a mushroom orc" and people will go "yooo, all shroomheads must get it, easy recommendation for your fungalpunk needs" despite /1

@Printdevil @Taskerland the comfort in obeying instructions from a voice of authority is a big thing these days, I wonder if it's due to the influx of new people to the hobby or a generational change or what.

It's like authorial permission for ficton being a selling point for so many games, where they go, say, "this playbook has an off-hand remark that you can be a mushroom orc" and people will go "yooo, all shroomheads must get it, easy recommendation for your fungalpunk needs" despite /1

@Taskerland Recently it occurred to me that, when observing rpg discussions, we could draw paralels with sex. In normal groups people talk about their weird fetishes by starting with "I like when..." but if you're in some patriarchal bullshit group, everyone starts with "your group is doing sex wrong" because apparently adding jenga to an RPG is the same as non-consensually abusing your players

@Taskerland Recently it occurred to me that, when observing rpg discussions, we could draw paralels with sex. In normal groups people talk about their weird fetishes by starting with "I like when..." but if you're in some patriarchal bullshit group, everyone starts with "your group is doing sex wrong" because apparently adding jenga to an RPG is the same as non-consensually abusing your players

@lichtenstein I think that we went from a state of cultural and economic collapse to thousands of new people piling into the hobby.

So much had been forgotten and so many good people had moved on. The advice being offered was a range of tedious and blinkered nerds who have done very well out of it to the broader detriment of the hobby.

They present running games as something technical that needs to be done *right* rather than something creative where you find your voice.

@Printdevil

@viktorTheBoar These people present running games as though you are fixing a leaking toilet.

There are no right answers.

This is a creative and collaborative hobby.

Find your own voice.

To be fair if I had a leaky toilet I'd phone Brendan, but I don't know if he does a youtube channel about gaming.

@Taskerland @viktorTheBoar

@RogerBW I remember going to a gaming club in the mid-90s and someone announced that they had levelled up in the RPGA and everyone just laughed at them.