What do you think are the most damaging ideas in the hobby?

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My position, then as now, is that the knives that MacLennan, Sartin and their brainless acolytes were sharpening have been aimed at all of us. From Egbert to Dark Dungeons to Mazes and Monsters to Patricia Pulling to the Secret Service raid and forward, outsiders have wanted to serve us out in the same way. We have no business being censors ourselves.
Personally I don't think it's an outsider or censor thing because MacLennan et al are (Or at least were at the time) gamers too. But so many people at the time wanted to be like Maddox, without wanting to learn how to be funny, understand why what he did worked, or do the work that he did to find their own voice; instead, we ended up with a drearily long period of people all doing the same "caps lock as cruise control for comedy" schtick.

As regards criticising of gaming content, I think it's a perfectly fine activity. I see no reason why anything should get a free pass, or why we should hold back just because outside influences went for us in the past. But there's nothing magical about criticism either, if someone doesn't like something that you like then oh well, no biggie, that hasn't taken anything away from you, and criticizing something is not the same as censoring something.

And as for having arguments based on differences of opinion, well, that's kinda what forums are for :grin:
 
Personally I don't think it's an outsider or censor thing because MacLennan et al are (Or at least were at the time) gamers too. But so many people at the time wanted to be like Maddox, without wanting to learn how to be funny, understand why what he did worked, or do the work that he did to find their own voice; instead, we ended up with a drearily long period of people all doing the same "caps lock as cruise control for comedy" schtick.

As regards criticising of gaming content, I think it's a perfectly fine activity. I see no reason why anything should get a free pass, or why we should hold back just because outside influences went for us in the past. But there's nothing magical about criticism either, if someone doesn't like something that you like then oh well, no biggie, that hasn't taken anything away from you, and criticizing something is not the same as censoring something.

And as for having arguments based on differences of opinion, well, that's kinda what forums are for :grin:
Yeah, agreed. Calling something "shit" isn't censorship. Down that road lies the idea that we should be positive about games at all times which is an absolute dead end. I could point you to some absolutely vicious stuff I've said in music reviews. Not censorship. I wouldn't want to censor and I wouldn't have the ability if I did. Part of the issue is that a significant gamers have their favourite games as a core part of their self image that they can't hear them being insulted without it feeling like a direct insult to them. (At a level I've not seen outside old school My Chemical Romance fans).

Aside from anything else, if that was censorship I'd hazard a guess that it has had the exact opposite effect in terms of the game being distributed far beyond its original potential audience.
 
I think Ron is a bit of a blowhard and he is often not very diplomatic in how he says things.

Clearly.

Unfortunately that causes him to be misunderstood. From my reading and participating in the site, he really has nothing against D&D despite many claims to the contrary.
His target seems to be more White Wolf than D&D. I mean, Sorceror is basically his version of "White Wolf Done Right".

The whole "fantasy heartbreaker" thing wasn't about D&D being bad, or even the games necessarily being bad, but as much that people poured their heart and soul and hard cash into publishing these games that then didn't pay off because so much was put into something that had some neat ideas, but wasn't enough different from D&D (thankfully today's PDF market makes it easy for folks to publish WITHOUT putting up so much cash).
Also uncritically using a D&D structure for any and all games, regardless of how well it actually fit the intended game experience. Which is a pretty fair statement, really.

The brain damage thing, yea, that was an awful essay. But what he was trying to get at did actually make some sense.
Agreed.

But the delivery of that was so colossally bad, and then his follow-up, that it's hard to really just get past it.

I also tend to think that he overestimates how much the average person understands "story" in the sense he means it.
Now the GNS theory, it's an interesting theory, and I see how it applies to gaming. But I think it does miss on what people actually have fun playing. I think incoherent play can actually be fun. But lots of theory about creative stuff dismisses very popular and enjoyable creative output.
There's some useful bits. The idea that your game should more-or-less line up behind the intended experience is pretty strong, if a bit obvious. The problem is that he decided on the specific "creative agendas" in advance, using it to push his desired play experience to a primary position, while simultaneously clumping things together that were very unlike each other.

It's basically a Confirmation Bias theory. There's basically no evidence that any of its tenets actually make for games that people like, and it's really more of an explanation of Stuff Ron Likes. The issue I have with it is frankly the amount that it is referred to even now, though thankfully that seems to be tapering. People use "GNS" widely, even though they're typically addressing something that's far closer to GDS (not understanding the Edwardsian definition of "Narrativism".)
 
I feel like one of the most damaging ideas in the industry is that game design has become advanced and is better than it ever was, when I have seen plenty of newer games that prove this statement is only a matter of individual taste and is not by any means a fact. I’ve seen this idea used to propagate a lot of snotty elitist attitudes among game designers and gamers that isn’t at all warranted.

Each individual game out there is representative of a certain flavor that some might prefer and some might not. But sorry, none of these games are objectively better than any other. They are all simply just games.
 
There's some useful bits. The idea that your game should more-or-less line up behind the intended experience is pretty strong, if a bit obvious. The problem is that he decided on the specific "creative agendas" in advance, using it to push his desired play experience to a primary position, while simultaneously clumping things together that were very unlike each other.

You should be aware of what your players are hoping to get out of the game - Obviously a good point, if a bit of a truism.

Games can only cater to one playstyle or be declared incoherent - The worst thing that came out of the Forge.

Ron had a bad Vampire GM and is still bitching about it - Dude, move on.
 
I keep telling myself that "Incoherent" was meant in the optics sense, not the literary sense (Incoherent light is anything that is not a laser). It doesn't help. Mainly because Ron.

Back when I was a forgie, I was part of the cohort who argued that incoherent play was not inherently a bad thing, and I particularly was trying to build up a theory around Creative Agenda Transactions, where the macro "instance of play" scale could look incoherent in agenda, but the micro "technique applied" level was a series of compromises and transactions which would give portions of the table fulfilment of their agenda at any given time. Instead, we got "agenda skewers." *sigh*
 
Did the Big Purple (and other forums, now that I think of it) ban humor at some point in the last ten years?

Yeah. Moderation at TBP screwed up to 10, and posts that no one blinked an eye at in 2005, say, were blocking offenses by 2010 and permaban offenses by 2015. Beyond that, the mods got increasingly nasty themselves, and several set themselves beyond questioning or reason. Go back and read any large thread from ten years ago, say, and a quarter of the posters then being banned now is by no means unusual.

Personally I don't think it's an outsider or censor thing because MacLennan et al are (Or at least were at the time) gamers too.

There were absolutely calls to censor FATAL. Hell, those were some of the milder reactions: more than one poster advocated getting law enforcement agencies involved. I am really not making this up.
 
I think the best thing that probably came out of it was "storygames" and I say that as someone who doesn't generally like the fullon examples of that. But it recognised that there were a subset of gamers out there not really served by what was on the market and helped change that.
 
Yeah. Moderation at TBP screwed up to 10, and posts that no one blinked an eye at in 2005, say, were blocking offenses by 2010 and permaban offenses by 2015. Beyond that, the mods got increasingly nasty themselves, and several set themselves beyond questioning or reason. Go back and read any large thread from ten years ago, say, and a quarter of the posters then being banned now is by no means unusual.
From my experience, it seemed that the real turning point to crazy land at RPGnet was the discovery that one person they had made a mod was a rapist and his wife, also a mod, was his enabler.
 
There were absolutely calls to censor FATAL. Hell, those were some of the milder reactions: more than one poster advocated getting law enforcement agencies involved. I am really not making this up.

"Criticism" never happens in a vacuum and people who become invested in a particularly angle of criticism rarely stick to just voicing that criticism in the spirit of understanding and the exchange of ideas, but often start demanding social change, government control or for companies to make changes (or else), in order to conform to that criticism. As can be found in plenty of examples across different kinds of media in recent years. But getting too deep into that probably leads us down into the forbidden subject in this boards.
 
There were absolutely calls to censor FATAL. Hell, those were some of the milder reactions: more than one poster advocated getting law enforcement agencies involved. I am really not making this up.
Prudes gonna prude. The only things FATAL is guilty of are bad taste and S-tier level trolling. Last I heard neither of those was a crime.
 
People really get power trips on the internet. Self-righteous indignation can take many forms and degrees of harm on others.

Revenge against an uncaring and (seemingly or truly) hostile world.

Nerds and geeks are just getting their fill of bullying people (which they may or may not have done in their youth when THEY were targets of such bullying.

It is sad and scary.
 
I’d rather have an A-Team thread than whatever they do over there.

Is an A-Game thread where you have to check in with a mod to make sure your post conforms to their standards before it’s posted?
I'd like an A-Team thread, especially when it comes together...

If I understand things correctly--I haven't spent much time on TBP for the last couple of years--an 'A Game' thread is one on a sensitive topic, where posts will be examined stringently for adherence to site policies and for ideological purity.
 
EDIT: I just want to go on record as saying that, as easy as it is to complain about TBP for their completely different sensibilities to that of The Pub in many regards, I'm not in favour of it. I don't want there to be the concept of a rivalry between our forums (that's what Jennifer Anniston's forum is for), and I know we have posters that post both here and there, and don't want to risk alienating them.
 
Prudes gonna prude. The only things FATAL is guilty of are bad taste and S-tier level trolling. Last I heard neither of those was a crime.
Like I said, I think it's biggest sin is being boring. Like, a gonzo post-apocalypse game where you could potentially grow extra genitals on your body, or weaponize your piss? That shit's funny. One of my favourite videogames has a level where you have to get drunk and piss on fire monsters and it's awesome. A hypergrim setting where you're invaders and the the natives are basically toys for you to abuse at will, and the game just lets you do this as a route to advancement? Not my thing, but hey, go nuts. Table 14 refers to general orifice destruction, but consult tables b through d if the intruding manhood is within the parameters in table a... not so much.
 
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It's more like you can get banned instantly for making any sort of joke, not agreeing hard enough with the majority opinion of the thread, or the Mod decides that your opinions don't match with the Official Way of Thinking (even if this involves some incredibly creative reinterpretation of your post)

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Wait… Jennifer Anniston has a forum?!

Smell you later geeks! I’m outta here!

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EDIT: I just want to go on record as saying that, as easy as it is to complain about TBP for their completely different sensibilities to that of The Pub in many regards, I'm not in favour of it. I don't want there to be the concept of a rivalry between our forums (that's what Jennifer Anniston's forum is for), and I know we have posters that post both here and there, and don't want to risk alienating them.
Yeah and to be fair to them their representative who popped in here (Cessna) basically went "you're different than us, that's cool, we wish you luck with the forum".
 
The rest of you can speak for yourselves. I'm declaring war on the Steve Jackson Games forums because the new edition of Tribes is ten fucking years late.
 
I’ll be straight up honest here. I’m still a member of both the pipe and the purple forums. But neither feels like home. One’s too a bit too left for me, one’s a bit too right for me, and neither really seems to focus on games anymore as much as politics.

I’ll stay a member of both, in case discussion of an actual game I want to hear more about comes up on either, but I’m hoping to find something a bit different here that neither of them really provides. A respite from divisive politics.
 
Did the Big Purple (and other forums, now that I think of it) ban humor at some point in the last ten years?
I've never been one for the site over all. Mostly because every time I'd Google something about some rpg I was interested in and followed it to that site and would read the info, I'd also note quite often warnings, bans etc throughout the threads after reading the article I sought.

Sometimes I thought the warnings and bans were warranted. Overall though I felt that they were overly reactive, harsh, hypocritical and flat out nasty at times. I was searching for something to do with Delta Green the other day and my search led me to Big Purple, in the thread I found a few warnings and bans. Including one against Raleel Raleel which surprised the hell out of me.

Due to the warning against Raleel I got wild hair and went looking through the area dedicated to warnings and bans. I then spent the next hour reading through it and found the moderators actions often unacceptable, draconian, aggressive in a way that made them just as bad as those they were dealing with. It confirmed for me that I'll never want to belong to that forum community in any invested way.

Anyhow, I get that forum moderation isn't an easy job by far, I couldn't do it nor would I want to. What I saw there was absolutely unacceptable though and made me appreciate how well you all handle things here. I've been online since the start of the 90's (after returning from spending near a decade in Europe) mostly on GEnie, CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy in the early days with most of my focus being GEnie.

I've seen it all over the decades, the good and bad. I'd been practicing distancing with forums in later years (2005-15) until around five years ago. When I started being more active and interacting more in places like Reddit and EN. I'm glad that I listened to my gut in regards to Big Purple though.

TLDR: I truly appreciate the fair and consistent moderation done here.
 
EDIT: I just want to go on record as saying that, as easy as it is to complain about TBP for their completely different sensibilities to that of The Pub in many regards, I'm not in favour of it. I don't want there to be the concept of a rivalry between our forums (that's what Jennifer Anniston's forum is for), and I know we have posters that post both here and there, and don't want to risk alienating them.
I agree that it would be a mistake to make this a place for complaining about RPG.net and its moderators. Cross-forum drama never ends well.
 
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