@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.

@Printdevil @viktorTheBoar "Matt Colville, come fix my toilet!"

@Printdevil We have much to learn from venerable men who mutter into their beards while compulsively touching their faces.

@Taskerland @Printdevil

I feel seen.

@Taskerland I think there's a lot (and I say this incredibly rarely) to be learned from the Eddie "Babes" De Bono here, in his tool kit approach to thinking strategies, you could swap out his intro to six-hat-thinking or whatever and replace it with gaming tools and the advice of "use what works abandon what doesn't" is sage.

"keep your hands off your face while I'm etching"

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

@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.

Oddly the number of additional search terms required to get a picture of "man with beard and books" was quite whacky, when what I really should have been able to use there was "not Ai"

but noooooooooooo

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

I do actually have "Pre-Ai" as an extension but I never remember to use it and just prefer to complain out the window at seagulls.

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

@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 .