@Taskerland To quote my bio, "I started playing RPGs in the 1980s, when the only form of social media was White Dwarf magazine."

In the early days (first ~100 issues), it was a magazine written by gamers, for gamers. Articles, reviews, a scenario or two, fan-contributed content. There is nothing like that any more.

The observations of Rascal are interesting case in point:

Writer views their crowd-funding coverage as an attempt to cover new releases but the fact that the coverage is never critical and never involves seeing the actual games means that it comes across to me mire as an attempt to court favour with designers.

For me, this sits in tension with their fondness for producing 'industry watchdog' pieces that you have to pay to read.

Early WD was such a glorious shambles. There were fantastically weird articles. It was nice reading it back to back with Imagine as well. I remember never finding Dragon half as interesting because the professionalism diminished the mentalism

@strangequark @Taskerland

@Printdevil Yes. White Dwarf was a beautiful painted cover wrapped around 36 pages of text set in a 5 point font with no margins. Some of the scenarios were genius (Albie Fiore's The Lichway is still my personal favourite) while others were just bonkers. You always had to sift through the dirt to find the gold.

@Taskerland

@Taskerland It appears I've been ignoring emails from Rascal for months having completely forgotten who they were or why I signed up for that. I don't feel I'm missing out tbh.

It also covered whatever games were on the go without favouritism beyond what people wrote. I quite liked their Barbarian class which always seemed more interesting than the Unearthed Arcana one. Much shouting in the D&D over that.

Dragon always seemed so bland. A pabulum of gaming.

@strangequark @Taskerland

I've seen that dynamic and it lead to a group split, with the experimentalists on one side and a "we play DnD, and CoC" on the other.

It was quite amicable, but a lot of it was about people's investment of their time in what they perceived as worthwhile. Some people who only gamed once a week didn't want to play a "might be absolutely trash" game with their one session, and I'm not ill disposed to that reasoning in a short life*

*this is a lie, screw them

@pteryx @Taskerland

@Printdevil @pteryx @Taskerland I think this has been a basic split in the TTRPG scene since nearly the beginning, though I think indie games have become significantly more popular in recent years.

There was the "D20" period, in which they made an earnest effort to generalize D&D's core mechanics. But through most of its history, I think D&D has tended to emphasize its specific or idiosyncratic features. "System mastery" is closely related, but it also plays into something like nostalgia.

@Printdevil @pteryx @Taskerland I saw a general gaming news site feature an article about potential changes to the ranger class in a future D&D edition. That's a big deal if you only play D&D and rangers are your favorite class. From the perspective of most indie games, I think it's kind of assumed that you'll tweak things on the fly and borrow ideas from other games; it wouldn't even make sense to write about a minor change in the text.

"Changes to Rangers" is the sort of thing that youtubers thrive on, and that feeds back into the problem with the hobby.

@foolishowl @pteryx @Taskerland

@Printdevil @foolishowl @Taskerland
It's worth noting that these sorts tend to also specifically insist that the "ranger problem" is a combat effectiveness problem, and lack both the historical perspective on D&D specifically and the critical mindset generally to question this simplistic view.

So even if I played 5e or "5e", most of D&Dtube *still* wouldn't even be that valuable to me.

@Printdevil @pteryx @Taskerland I think this has been a basic split in the TTRPG scene since nearly the beginning, though I think indie games have become significantly more popular in recent years.

There was the "D20" period, in which they made an earnest effort to generalize D&D's core mechanics. But through most of its history, I think D&D has tended to emphasize its specific or idiosyncratic features. "System mastery" is closely related, but it also plays into something like nostalgia.

The whole combat effectiveness type approach to gaming is why I find it hard to chat to local gamers, in a gaming shop, who are gaming.

Because it just looks like an RPG

But it isn't.

@pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland

@Printdevil @foolishowl @Taskerland
I've run into that issue too, where despite having *met someone through a freeform RP community*, I *still* couldn't really talk with him about D&D because he was frankly off on another planet as far as what the basic nature of the game was. (I could talk with his *husband*, but then he died, so...)

@foolishowl @Printdevil @Taskerland
It seems to me like after "d20 System" proved to be an untrustworthy brand, people who just wanted to make a game without caring about the system started seeking out indie systems to hang their game idea on instead (FATE for a time, then PbtA). After that, there was a parallel "just make it 5e" trend. The kinds of idiosyncratic game system options from the '90s never really came back.

I killed most of my friends irl as well. I'm working on @devilsjunkshop and @strangequark at the moment...

@pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland

@Printdevil @devilsjunkshop @strangequark @foolishowl @Taskerland
Look, the only person I ever joke about having killed I've never even *met* IRL (the "leader and detective" player from my Eberron superhero campaign back in the day, if you've read that blog post).

This guy was wheelchair-bound and very accident-prone (as in people tended to ram into him with cars), though oddly it was other medical complications that killed him. Wish I could've gotten to know him more, but...

The whole combat effectiveness type approach to gaming is why I find it hard to chat to local gamers, in a gaming shop, who are gaming.

Because it just looks like an RPG

But it isn't.

@pteryx @foolishowl @Taskerland

@Printdevil @pteryx @Taskerland I don't want to object to people enjoying that style of gaming. I just feel sad that some people don't know about the broader range of possibilities, especially when they clearly want to play in a way D&D doesn't accommodate well.

It also covered whatever games were on the go without favouritism beyond what people wrote. I quite liked their Barbarian class which always seemed more interesting than the Unearthed Arcana one. Much shouting in the D&D over that.

Dragon always seemed so bland. A pabulum of gaming.

@strangequark @Taskerland