D&D 4E Ron Edwards on D&D 4e

[Charlaquin]

The brain damage thing reminds me of another essay on the topic I recently read: Abused Gamer Syndrome on The Alexandrian.

Yeah, I think he’s making a similar point to the one Ron was trying to make, and likewise being too flippant with some pretty loaded language.

 

[Malmuria]

The brain damage thing reminds me of another essay on the topic I recently read: Abused Gamer Syndrome on The Alexandrian.

Though I do think Alexander keeps his discussion more within the bounds of rpgs rather than bringing in literal comparisons to child abuse and trauma. Like, playing a railroaded game might suck and be a unfun experience, but it's probably not going to be a source of a deep, persistent trauma affecting all aspects of your life.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Though I do think Alexander keeps his discussion more within the bounds of rpgs rather than bringing in literal comparisons to child abuse and trauma. Like, playing a railroaded game might suck and be a unfun experience, but it's probably not going to be a source of a deep, persistent trauma affecting all aspects of your life.

Ron's hyperbole was because he teaches storytelling and values it greatly, so seeing people being trained into not being able to engage with stories well was something that distressed him. It's worth noting that he came to this from his classroom experiences and noting a pattern there. In that context, it's still hyperbole, but it's easier to understand that he was seeing something that deeply frustrated both his professional engagement and his closely held value system.

Again, I think the piece is too provocative to be useful to anyone not coming at it from exactly the right angle, just like trying to reenter the atmosphere from space. (I got more out of the reread I just did than at any time prior to that because I was already inured to the provocations.) Anyone else not coming in at exactly the right angle is going to bounce off or burn up in reentry.

However, the genetic argument being leveled is one that annoys me, because it's used to shut down discussion rather than enhance it. Ron's comments on 4e linked in the OP are worth discussing, because he's got interesting takes on things (that you don't have to agree with but should at least engage - I have plenty of disagreements with Ron). However, this thread has been more about the Forge and one of Ron's old posts rather than the topic. This appears intentional to me.

 

[niklinna]

Ron's comments on 4e linked in the OP are worth discussing, because he's got interesting takes on things (that you don't have to agree with but should at least engage - I have plenty of disagreements with Ron). However, this thread has been more about the Forge and one of Ron's old posts rather than the topic. This appears intentional to me.

Yes I would like to hear more thoughts about the videos. But, this topic might be too derailed now to get traction on that.

 

[Charlaquin]

The last one? What did you think of it? Where he admitted he likely screwed up, apologized for causing harm to others, promised to think upon it, and shut down the discussion?

That seems like a pretty generous interpretation of the last post to me. Looked more like “John convinced me I had stepped in it and I should probably shut the discussion down to avoid digging myself deeper.” What I don’t see there is the makings of a genuine apology: an expression of contrition, an explanation of what was done and why it was wrong, and a statement of future plans to amend the harm caused. And, even if it did contain those things, an apology doesn’t automatically entitle a person to forgiveness.

I don’t have any personal beef with the guy, but I’m really not interested in his opinions, given that the main things he’s known for are GNS theory and its follow-up, the Big Model (which I find to mostly be waffle), and the brain damage thing. I appreciate what the Forge did for RPG analysis and discourse though.

 

[Marc_C]

I mean, saying D&D causes brain damage is probably a good reason to dismiss him.

Indeed. I read his Brain Damage post a while back. It's not based on any kind of empirical data. An anecdotal theory that suffers from confirmation bias.

 

[Cadence]

The last one? What did you think of it? Where he admitted he likely screwed up, apologized for causing harm to others, promised to think upon it, and shut down the discussion?

He admitted he had no idea he would get that kind of reaction. He said he'd think it over. And he shut down the discussion.

Where was the apology?

In any case, thank you for pointing out the last post was there. I stopped on page two when he said.

Apparently some of you are under the impression that I care about how you react, in terms of emotions. I don't.

Some of you also apparently think that I have some desire, or am under some obligation (!) to make myself liked, to make myself understood to the maximum possible audience, or to represent some sort of community or generalized interest. None of these are the case.

What about my goals in posting this? To "save gamers?" To "make people change?" Hardly. Guessing about my goals and then responding to your own guesses is waste of time. All you can do is make whatever you will out of what I've posted, if anything, somewhere else. Don't expect my goals to be explained or defended; if they're not obvious to you from my personal history of posting, site management, and publication, so be it.

Some of you apparently never learned the primary lesson of dealing with me and my posts - which is, bluntly, I could be mad as a hatter. You are perfectly free, at all times, to say, "That guy is a mad old man mumbling in a corner. There is paper litter stuck to his clothes by substances that I do not want to identify." Letting me know that this is your assessment is futile. Announcing it to others is your prerogative - but you can do it somewhere naughty word else. People who fit this description are not predictable in their actions and I can assure you, that if it applies to me, that I will be intractable to any such announcement. In this forum, I don't obey Forge rules. Instead, my rules, and I make them up.

I had taken his advice about reading him as mumbling in the corner and stopped well before the last page

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Have you read that thread, or did you just hear about it/skim it? Did you read the last post in that thread? I highly recommend reading the initial four posts, thinking about it, and then reading the last post in that thread. Skip the rest -- it's almost all noise.

Alright, I have also read that post too. It's...sort of a non-pology, but it at least it recognizes, "Hey, maybe I screwed up in how I presented this?" The question mark is important there. It's entirely possible that he genuinely, truly did not think that saying certain game-styles cause pervasive brain damage (to any degree comparable to horrifically traumatic events), though given his background in biology and behavior I find his (apparent) naive eagerness to use these terms surprising. His comparison of rollplaying vs roleplaying to having one's legs blown off and choosing between dragging yourself via your left arm vs your right is a little harder to explain as naivete.

That final post did shape my opinion somewhat. But whether it was malicious attention-seeking or naive stupidity, neither reflects well on him. The notable lack of a real apology (even of the "Some responded positively, but that doesn't justify what I said" variety) weakens the impact from "okay, sure, I messed up" to "maybe I messed up, maybe I didn't?"

This is pretty much exactly what Ron was saying, just less provocatively phrased and absent the narrativism angle. Definitely a much better intro to the concept.

Haven't read the Alexandrian article yet, but...well. I'm a 4e fan. I don't think it should surprise you that I rather dislike the Alexandrian overall (not solely for the statements about 4e, but certainly in large part due to them).

 

[Charlaquin]

Haven't read the Alexandrian article yet, but...well. I'm a 4e fan. I don't think it should surprise you that I rather dislike the Alexandrian overall (not solely for the statements about 4e, but certainly in large part due to them).

I didn’t know he’d said anything about 4e. I found him via his Dragon Heist remix and have found many of his other 5e articles enlightening. Bummer he apparently had some bad 4e takes though.

 

[Malmuria]

The last one? What did you think of it? Where he admitted he likely screwed up, apologized for causing harm to others, promised to think upon it, and shut down the discussion?

it's a little bit, "I'm sorry that people were offended by my comments," rather than really understanding why his comments were problematic.

I'll quote the offending passage, but, big content warning: child abuse

Spoiler: Content Warning: child abuse analogy, the forge

Now for the discussion of brain damage. I'll begin with a closer analogy. Consider that there's a reason I and most other people call an adult having sex with a, say, twelve-year-old, to be abusive. Never mind if it's, technically speaking, consensual. It's still abuse. Why? Because the younger person's mind is currently developing - these experiences are going to be formative in ways that experiences ten years later will not be. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the characteristic behaviors of someone with this history, but I am very familiar with them - and they are not constructive or happiness-oriented behaviors at all. The person's mind has been damaged while it was forming, and it takes a hell of a lot of re-orientation even for functional repairs (which is not the same as undoing the damage).

If someone wants to take issue with my use of the term "brain" when I'm talking about the "mind," I just shrug. As I see it, the mind is the physiological outcome of a working brain. Mess around with the input as the brain/mind forms, and you short-circuit it, messing up steps which themselves would have been the foundation of further steps. You could be talking about an experience such as I mention above, or you could be talking about sticking a needle into someone's head and wiggling it around. Brain, mind, damage. I don't distinguish.

All that is the foundation for my point: that the routine human capacity for understanding, enjoying, and creating stories is damaged in this fashion by repeated "storytelling role-playing" as promulgated through many role-playing games of a specific type. This type is only one game in terms of procedures, but it's represented across several dozens of titles and about fifteen to twenty years, peaking about ten years ago. Think of it as a "way" to role-play rather than any single title.

Spoiler: Content Warning: child abuse analogy, the forge

- he compares playing a trad rpg to sexual assault of a minor

• he asserts that both experiences causes not just damage to a person's self consciousness, but literal damage to one's physical brain
• he evidence for this is his anecdotal experience in the classroom (as opposed to anything resembling a psychological study)

The thread as whole indicates for me why some people who were around and engaged in these discussions during that time find the Forge to be so toxic. Many people responding simply pick up on Edwards' thoughtless analogy and either declare themselves to be "brain damaged" in this way, or describe people who like trad rpgs as brain damaged and therefore sadly incapable of understanding narrativist design. It's deeply condescending and cringe-inducing.