One of the consequences of historical ignorance is a lack of awareness that things can be different because they have been different.

So I look at discourse shaped by a hobby that is predominantly gamist and narrativist and, as far as they are concerned, other styles of play do not exist and if they did, they were toxic or wrong-headed.

As someone who remembers what gaming was like a) pre-D20 and b) outside the Anglo-sphere, I feel like I am being constantly gaslit by the broader hobby.

@Printdevil I think my cohort was singularly bad at storing our knowledge. First-generation gamers left behind fanzines, later bods had websites.

@Taskerland I think I can see that in my own stuff too. I have masses of files and folders still extant from the 80s, then they fade out in the 90s as I started to computerise and there's no records at all. Backups maybe on 5 1/4s and 3" Amstrads and stuff, unreadable. Old Apple hard drives. Maybe some print outs.. then a lot later there's an older me, taking better care of my documents life-cycles. But there's def a 10 year gap.

@Taskerland The thing I wish I'd written down was my reasoning.

Like I can see huge evolutionary leaps in PC design and rules crib sheets for homebrews. Iterations of worlds and plots for second versions and attempts, but I never wrote in the margins

"I have replaced HPs and Sanity with Mental and Physical Health because..."

(but imagine on a grandiose scale)

@Taskerland Most magazines still exist, archived, but it's impossible to get the sense of developing argument from binge reading them. They feel historical not living. Gaming culture isn't just forgotten though, it was actively conspired against. The GM as a concept to be sidelined is a definite corporate conspiracy.

@Taskerland The problem with a lot of my reasoning is when read back from even my more meticulous notes probably just sounds like the "Uullaaaaa" noise from Jeff Wayne's musical version of the War the Worlds.

@Taskerland Out of curiosity, what is your favoured style?

@Taskerland you are Trad for OSR gamers but OSR to Ess John xd

@ZDL

@Printdevil @Taskerland I once lost a trove of Polish RPG data because my hard drive said goodbye and I got scammed by a company that was supposed to fix it and never got it back. Now I keep thing in at least two devices at once. And some as physical stuff

@vdonnut I'm not really OSR... I was drawn to NSR stuff because it is rules-light and pays lip-service to the ideas of simulationism but I think either that window has closed or I imagined it being open in the first place.

With regards to EssJay, I think we are broadly aligned on practice (not surprising, Risus was my go-to game for years) if not on rhetoric.

I suspect if he ever puts out a list of high-trust adventures, I'd enjoy them more than I do modern OSR ones.

@ZDL

@Taskerland I ran games with no connection to the broader hobby for a decade. Going online never came with the expectation that anyone else's games might be similar.

The only mistake is searching for the truth of what games were like for 'Generation X, decade Y, system Z'. Those truths are American fables.

@vdonnut @Printdevil @Taskerland this reminds me that I really need to back up my external drives again

I think important RPG information should tattooed on Rod Steiger

@shimminbeg @vdonnut @Taskerland

@Taskerland @Printdevil no, I tried to move the case through official channels and had engaged "consumer ombudsman" - translator tells me i this is how they call it in your lands?

In the end the procedure was so complex and bureaucratic that I stopped at some point. Some pictures and documents were lost but it was a really bad time for me on many levels and I just couldn't engage in something requiring this much thought and energy. I just bashed them in every social media I had at the moment xd

I'd never use a recovery service here, there isn't a single one of my drives that wouldn't get me done for "possessing information likely to be of use to..."

And the PSNI love a quota.

@Taskerland @vdonnut