I noted someone sharing a Sly Flourish thing and it occurs to me that there is a whole layer of introductory D&D influencers whose work I view in similar terms to that of children's entertainers.

@Taskerland You think they'll all eventually get bit parts in Dr Who?

@Printdevil I once met a bloke who was convinced he was going to be cast as the Doctor based on him getting loads of views doing fan videos in which he ran around Brighton in a trenchcoat.

@Taskerland "but fate had other things in store for Keir.."

@Printdevil Alexa, show me someone who is "high on their own supply"

Occasionally I will click on a link to his blog and the ideas are so simple and the content so thin that I suspect his output would improve significantly if he just asked an AI to produce a blog post every few days.

I guess that his audience is mostly beginners? That he's like a do-nothing porn game developer who is sustained by a churn of people subscribing to his patreon and then realising that they're not going to get anything for their money and moving on.

@Taskerland I honestly think that if I was starting out in the hobby now, the sheer volume of often contradictory GM advice pumped out online would completely put me off.

I noted someone sharing a Sly Flourish thing and it occurs to me that there is a whole layer of introductory D&D influencers whose work I view in similar terms to that of children's entertainers.

@Taskerland I honestly think that if I was starting out in the hobby now, the sheer volume of often contradictory GM advice pumped out online would completely put me off.

How does one even start out in the hobby now? What's the point of ignition?

Do people meet someone who games? Or is there a sort of cultural background radiation that these games have always existed and you can choose to find out more. Like Pétanque

@icosacade @Taskerland

@Printdevil I imagine you watch Critical Role, or you play Baldur's Gate, and then you spend a fortune on hundreds of pages of rules and regret your life decisions. @icosacade

@Taskerland I actually used to be a big fan of him back when I was a D&D player, he even convinced me to buy the Dungeon World book (though I didn't play it). But at some point his advice started to become repetitive and eventually irrelevant for the kind of games I like to play now.

@icosacade Yes. "And if you do any of this wrong... it's abuse"

@dregntael He's been around for ages. I think he has quite a narrow view of the hobby and now just repeats and re-iterates based upon broader trends in the hobby.

@Taskerland I was reading his blog back when I first started with D&D 4E, so I know he's been around for a while

@dregntael I often confuse him with Mike Shea, the Angry GM who I think predates him a bit.

@Taskerland Wait, Mike Shae *is* Sly Flourish, isn't he? Angry GM is Scott Rehm.

@dregntael Case in point haha

@Taskerland @dregntael
Scott Rehm/Angry GM used to be a case of "I don't always agree with him but he always gives me something to think about". ...Then he went off on this bullshit "actually *roleplaying* in your roleplaying is wrong, you should have no dialogue and all action and people should infer your character from that" trend and I haven't read him since.

@pteryx That would definitely place him in the 'I have nothing to learn from paying attention to this person' bracket as far as I am concerned but I suspect he may be right with regards to the hobby's general direction of travel.

Turn up at a game with strangers wanting exclusively to roll dice and you'll find it a lot easier socially than turning up and wanting to perform your character.

@dregntael