@Printdevil @Taskerland

Seagulls? Good choice. I favour the mardy jays in the garden.

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.

@Taskerland I think there's something to be said here about how long people have played. When you're starting something, you're struggling to figure out how the rules work and boxing yourself in with looking it up. As you play more, and find those RAW vs intent discussions, you grow into seeing that RAW isn't the end all be all of the game. Eventually, you've tried enough games or found enough gaps to knock down the walls when you feel like it. We start out rigid, and expand into ease.

#ttrpg

@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 .

@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

@Taskerland @lichtenstein @Printdevil I think you are forgetting too the pernicious impact of capitalism on the hobby. A single book of simple rules that can be easily modified to suit your needs is utter anathema to commercial interest. Why sell you one book once when they can sell you fifty books a hundred times (once "editions" get factored in)?

Much of this ever-narrower specificity of IP in gaming is, I think, the result of capitalism being the ugly stain on humanity that it is.

@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

@Taskerland I wrote a single blog post on finding my voice just to show it wasn't useful. Generic advice to storytellers is weak, but specific advice is pointless to most people.

'Speak up'/ 'listen more'
'Plan better'/'improvise more'

The best advice for some is also what most people don't need to hear.
@lichtenstein @Printdevil

I think that's where the crossover with creative thinking/management/PR etc etc becomes more interesting. There are oceans of books written about team building and "how to be heard in a team" and I'm sure at least three of them are good. Those are probably gold mines for gaming advice. I would seriously doubt any of the chinstroking beardlords would ever bother to mine for it though.

Same with textbook design and game layout. Blinding lack of insight there.

@malin @Taskerland @lichtenstein

I think that's where the crossover with creative thinking/management/PR etc etc becomes more interesting. There are oceans of books written about team building and "how to be heard in a team" and I'm sure at least three of them are good. Those are probably gold mines for gaming advice. I would seriously doubt any of the chinstroking beardlords would ever bother to mine for it though.

Same with textbook design and game layout. Blinding lack of insight there.

@malin @Taskerland @lichtenstein

I mean there are really good books about "How to write a history book and lay it out for 12-16 year olds" and the graphics levels to use etc etc. Centuries of work texts and education in fact, and yet for some reason RPGs tend to go "that other RPG looked nice" or "I read this one book about game design that came out specifically about Chess and It seemed relevant"

Gamers have a terrible tendency either to copy wholesale or start from first principles

@malin @Taskerland @lichtenstein

@Printdevil the only layout chat I hear is a) have an index, and b) don't make people use it (e.g. keep statblocks where you use them).

Is there something new in typography? Surely not!
@Taskerland @lichtenstein

@Printdevil @malin @Taskerland @lichtenstein I always model my documents off of something masterfully done before

for example when i write intrigue adventures i usually reference The Midnight Mirror

some of the advice out there for TTRPG writers is astoundingly bad, there's an essay in one of the Kobold books that operates entirely from the premise that dungeons are an invention of fantasy fiction

I think for your own use, you write and layout for yourself, and for other people you need a step back and seek appraisal a bit. If I was writing fiction I honestly could not give a fuck what an editor thought, because my voice is specifically mine and if I want to use adverbs and constantly refer to people as "basically tinfoil with eyes" I bloody will.

However when I'm writing a text book, I would pay heed to my audience not my jagged inner voice

@bigtuffal @malin @Taskerland @lichtenstein

Well the seagulls are ever present here given my position overlooking the sea.

Although if I squinted I could shout at a guillemot.

Shout at a Guillemot is of course one of Harper Lee's least well known books.

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

Image Search for "Surprised Guillemot" was not a productive one.

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

Image Search for "Surprised Guillemot" was not a productive one.

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

Image Search for "Surprised Guillemot" was not a productive one.

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

@Printdevil @Taskerland

If i ever open an artisan micro-brewery, my first pale ale is going to be “Surprised Guillemot".