Unpopular opinions go here

[Reynard]

If the system/software/etc. doesn't provide clear enough instructions to allow a halfway-knowledgeable reviewer to understand it then that's more than enough reason to give it the worst review possible; because if the halfway-knowledgeable reviewer can't understand it, how the hell is the average end user supposed to?

It's nice of you to give the reviewer the benefit of the doubt, but chances are they were just a potato.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I would push back on this a little. For the record, I hated grunge, because at the time I perceived it as affecting peoples' attitudes towards heavy metal. But I distinctly remember how big grunge was after stuff like Smells like Teen Spirit. It was unmistakably huge and completely altered youth culture. And it had lingering effects, which is what I think allowed for stuff like Ska to gain the traction they did. Before grunge people looked a lot more clean cut and preppy. After the youth culture felt like a 70s resurgence to me. It is just there were other things going on and other things that also were popular with people (and not everyone was into grunge).

I'm not sure what you think you are pushing back upon. My point was that grunge is often treated as synonymous with the 90s, but that's because that's the decade it came of age, and that there were plenty of other musical forms that had heydays in the 90s (so the same as your last sentence).

Unpopular opinion (sometimes ): Whether you use the mechanics to inform the fiction or something else - it is all good as long as the table is having fun!

It's been stated too many times to really be unpopular, but it does bear repeating that all the complaining, navel-gazing, turf wars, and peeing on trees are exercises in making big deals about the margins. Most RPGs (particularly those with any kind of shelf life) are perfectly capable of creating enjoyable experiences for a table full of players (who out rarely have trouble solving incongruities or disagreeable rules all by themselves). It'd just be nice if a system did all the things we want right from the jump and so we overanalyze, complain, and compare it to other systems (or iterations of the same one), often emphatically disagreeing with people more alike to us in passions and background than 90% of the people we meet over whether the latest version of Bunions and Baggins sucks or is better for having replaced the old second breakfast rules. Hardly unique to (online) gamers -- my dad is on a number of pony car appreciation sites, and you will not believe the lengths the owners/fans of 1968 Ford Mustang will go to explain to the owners/fans of 1966 Mustangs just how much better their preferred model is.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The 90s also had Ska reach new heights, and revivals for jam bands (Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, The Why Store), blues acts (Kid Johnny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, lots of Stevie Ray Vaughan remembrance), and New Orleans influenced bands (The Subdudes, Aaron Neville solo career). Grunge gets remembered because it came of age in the 90s, not because it was the only thing there.

I would say that there is a little more to it than this. I think that it is common for there to be a zeitgeist-y feedback loop. Certain eras become identified with fashions and music because they came of age, or because they were important to the culture (or counter-culture), especially for the youth of that time, or were distinctive in some certain way ... and then as time passes, that gets reinforced by the media reflecting that time back to us.

In other words, a particular aspect of a time becomes a shortcut or synecdoche to refer to the time itself. If a television program or movie today want to "evoke" the 90s quickly, you just have some people in flannel and Nirvana (or similar) music.

This is fairly common- the '60s are hippies and Woodstock music, even though that is a tiny bit of a tiny part of the decade. The '70s are disco and gritty urbanism. The '80s are yuppies and (usually) new wave / pop 80s. And so on.

Note that this isn't true with all signifiers; if you're looking to evoke specific subcultures, it will be different (the hip hop subculture in the '90s was definitely not grunge). More complex period pieces will obviously go into a lot more than the short-hand.

But you want to quickly tell the audience that Captain Marvel is in the '90s without doing the work? Have her steal a Nine Inch Nails T-Shirt, put Garbage on the soundtrack, and have Nick Fury tell her to "Lose the flannel."

 

[Willie the Duck]

I would say that there is a little more to it than this. I think that it is common for there to be a zeitgeist-y feedback loop. Certain eras become identified with fashions and music because they came of age, or because they were important to the culture (or counter-culture), especially for the youth of that time, or were distinctive in some certain way ... and then as time passes, that gets reinforced by the media reflecting that time back to us.

That's certainly true*. I guess I should qualify that grunge is remembered for overall notability for a number of reasons, and only part of the notability is it coming of age. To the zeitgeist-shorthand issue, in situations like a period piece movie, it certainly 1) is a thing that happens, and 2) is useful for the movie to be able to do. In the context of the current sub-topic, it's something of a double-edged sword. It focuses on the most... I guess unusual (I could re-use 'notable' as well)... part of the cultural landscape and can perhaps skew the impression of what was actually going on in the decade away from any of the things that wouldn't look all-that out-of-place elsewhere (the aforementioned Michael Bolton or Counting Crows songs, etc.). It certainly has for the 60s (here not sticking strictly to music discussion) -- I certainly have had a lot of discussions with people my own age and younger that treat the whole of the 60s as Woodstock, hippies, and early Boomers who turned 18 in ~1965-69 and missing out on the Beach Boys, the space race, and those Boomer's parents and older siblings who were on the picket lines for the civil rights movement and such**. *although wow, two freaking posts now on this one sentence while completely missing the actual primary point being made (that there was plenty of other music having moments in the 90s we tend to gloss over) **totally not part of personal family history, I swear.

I guess that raises an (maybe) interesting point about the main-main sub-topic (most 90s song) -- is the criteria the song that ninetied the most ninetidly back in the 90s, or the one that speaks the most ninetally to us now (kinda the primary source document question, applied to cultural zeitgeist)?

 

[Maxperson]

Unpopular opinion (sometimes ): Whether you use the mechanics to inform the fiction or something else - it is all good as long as the table is having fun!

 

[Reynard]

A real unpopular opinion that I legitimately hold:

The universe is meaningless, along with all things in it. There is neither plan nor point, and only broken human pattern recognition software creates the illusion of meaning. Our limited perception has allowed us to convince ourselves that any of this makes sense, on any level. And I am not just speaking metaphorically or spiritually. I mean it scientifically, too. Physics isn't "real" in any meaningful sense. it is an approximation we must have in order to keep from going mad. There is no bottom. If you look deep enough, it stops making sense. It is just chaos that we, being what we are, force into coherent shapes in our heads.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

A real unpopular opinion that I legitimately hold:

The universe is meaningless, along with all things in it. There is neither plan nor point, and only broken human pattern recognition software creates the illusion of meaning. Our limited perception has allowed us to convince ourselves that any of this makes sense, on any level. And I am not just speaking metaphorically or spiritually. I mean it scientifically, too. Physics isn't "real" in any meaningful sense. it is an approximation we must have in order to keep from going mad. There is no bottom. If you look deep enough, it stops making sense. It is just chaos that we, being what we are, force into coherent shapes in our heads.

Well, alright-y then!

 

[Reynard]

Well, alright-y then!

Yup. That's how I do it...

 

[Gradine]

Well, alright-y then!

I prefer

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not sure what you think you are pushing back upon. My point was that grunge is often treated as synonymous with the 90s, but that's because that's the decade it came of age, and that there were plenty of other musical forms that had heydays in the 90s (so the same as your last sentence).

Maybe we don't disagree. I just think it is very likely, had grunge not exploded in the early 90s, that ska and many of these other musical genres wouldn't have had a 90s heyday