I think the penny has dropped about something.
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@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)
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@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.
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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.
@Taskerland Out of curiosity, what is your favoured style?
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@Taskerland Out of curiosity, what is your favoured style?
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@Taskerland you are Trad for OSR gamers but OSR to Ess John xd
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@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.
@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
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@Taskerland you are Trad for OSR gamers but OSR to Ess John xd
@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.
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@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
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I think the penny has dropped about something.
One of my recurring whines is that ttrpg culture has zero institutional memory and that without institutional memory, shit gets forgotten remarkably quickly.
What I have realised is that each crash causes people to leave the hobby never to return and that is a loss of expertise, sensibility, and cultural memory.
So if I look at ttrpg bluesky or reddit, I am looking at people who are disconnected from history.
@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.
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@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 @Printdevil @Taskerland this reminds me that I really need to back up my external drives again
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@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
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@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
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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.
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@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.
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Youtube is awash with radicalised opinion froth about games.
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@Taskerland I'm split down the middle. In many cases I like trad with GM (although I don't like adversarial GMs, but rather prefer facilitator of even collaborative ones). I agree that overall I like rules-light (or at least rules-consistent: C&S5 is not rules **light** but it has two, very simple to describe, core mechanisms to learn instead of dozens) over rules-heavy/inconsistent because nothing drags me out of character faster than rolling endless dice and consulting endless tables.
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@Taskerland I'm split down the middle. In many cases I like trad with GM (although I don't like adversarial GMs, but rather prefer facilitator of even collaborative ones). I agree that overall I like rules-light (or at least rules-consistent: C&S5 is not rules **light** but it has two, very simple to describe, core mechanisms to learn instead of dozens) over rules-heavy/inconsistent because nothing drags me out of character faster than rolling endless dice and consulting endless tables.
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๏ธ@Taskerland But, too, I sometimes find the simulationist/trad world a bit stifling in terms of actually getting an interesting story out of them. So even in those games I like having some form of metaprocedure (like the best-named "ass-saver points" from CORPS at minimum).
And I'm unabashedly a fan of games like the FU-derived ones, or FATE or the Spark-derived ones.
But I can't stand the PbtA/FitD/whatever ones, both from what I can understand of the design and for the paired culture.
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@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.
@Taskerland @vdonnut I could not find a coherent definition of what NSR even meant, to be honest.
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@Taskerland @vdonnut I could not find a coherent definition of what NSR even meant, to be honest.
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I think the penny has dropped about something.
One of my recurring whines is that ttrpg culture has zero institutional memory and that without institutional memory, shit gets forgotten remarkably quickly.
What I have realised is that each crash causes people to leave the hobby never to return and that is a loss of expertise, sensibility, and cultural memory.
So if I look at ttrpg bluesky or reddit, I am looking at people who are disconnected from history.
Moreau Vazh What I find really fascinating about this is the endemic belief among TTRPG fans who know that multiple systems exist, that those systems are built for specific styles or genres of play. 5e and Pathfinder for high fantasy โcrunchyโ play, KitD and Dungeon World for โnarrativeโ play, and OSR for dark,edgy, gritty play. The idea of a generic system seems to be reserved for GURPS enthusiasts.
Modern players conflate system with setting and aesthetic to such a high degree, itโs kind of paralyzing.
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