Academic Plague in gaming

[fusangite]

I'm a little surprised by the degree to which people already seem to be talking acrimoniously at cross purposes here. I do not accept the view that the intellectual elite of the gaming world "lifting off" into occult and abstracted forms of play and discourse has no relationship to what is happening elsewhere.

If we, for a moment, expand our thinking to considering ourselves as a culture rather than simply a group of consumers, how our self-appointed cultural elite act and what they deem their objectives to be suddenly starts mattering a whole lot. I think the trendiness of certain games reflects a certain kind of introspective narcisism in our culture; even some positive developments reflect this. I recall my friend Philip observing that D&D 3.5's main function is to model itself.

So I just don't buy pogre's assertion that Nobilis being trendy can be so easily disassociated from 10 year olds not buying D&D books.

 

[Tuzenbach]

Nisarg, you've obviously contracted this "academic plague" of which you warn against and seem intent upon passing it along to anyone who wishes to endulge in arguing with you over Nobilis. However.......



This thread, if nothing else, *is* a brilliant example of irony.

 

[Turjan]

If we, for a moment, expand our thinking to considering ourselves as a culture rather than simply a group of consumers, how our self-appointed cultural elite act and what they deem their objectives to be suddenly starts mattering a whole lot. I think the trendiness of certain games reflects a certain kind of introspective narcisism in our culture; even some positive developments reflect this. I recall my friend Philip observing that D&D 3.5's main function is to model itself.

So I just don't buy pogre's assertion that Nobilis being trendy can be so easily disassociated from 10 year olds not buying D&D books.

I think it can . The reason is that the "self-appointed cultural elite" lost most its influence on society quite some time ago. The times when academics were looked up to are long gone. Today's "cultural elite" plays in movie theaters and TV shows.

D&D is a phenomenon on its own. Although it covers only half of the RPG market, for many people it is still "the RPG". Nobilis has a completely different target market. I don't think there's a cross section between both markets.

 

[Nisarg]

Nisarg, you've obviously contracted this "academic plague" of which you warn against and seem intent upon passing it along to anyone who wishes to endulge in arguing with you over Nobilis. However.......



This thread, if nothing else, *is* a brilliant example of irony.

This post (and turjans) is a brilliant example of one of the smarter defences of the academic plague... "anyone who argues that we're being pretentious must also be pretentious".

You guys can attack the messenger all you like, the point stands.

Nisarg

 

[Crothian]

This is nothing new, complex games in with either rules or concept have been around for a couple decades. People read them, and then move on. Wraith is arguible one of these games and it eventually failed. Look at the new games that have come out in the past year, most of them do not fall into this category. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Turjan]

This post (and turjans) is a brilliant example of one of the smarter defences of the academic plague... "anyone who argues that we're being pretentious must also be pretentious".

You guys can attack the messenger all you like, the point stands.

Nisarg

No, your posts are pretentious because you make connections that simply don't exist. Sorry, but I fail to see what a game that sold a few copies to some insider fans (= Nobilis) has to do with the state of the RPG market, which is dominated by WotC and White Wolf. The D&D manuals are the complete opposite of being pretentious; they are often criticised for being as dry as a law book.

 

[Nisarg]

I think it can . The reason is that the "self-appointed cultural elite" lost most its influence on society quite some time ago. The times when academics were looked up to are long gone. Today's "cultural elite" plays in movie theaters and TV shows.

D&D is a phenomenon on its own. Although it covers only half of the RPG market, for many people it is still "the RPG". Nobilis has a completely different target market. I don't think there's a cross section between both markets.

No one in 1990 would have thought that a white wolf game about vampires by a guy with a dot in his name with lots of pretentious words would unseat AD&D and end up causing everyone to (unsuccessfully) mimick its formula, either.

I have trouble with thinking that the kind of people who hang out at the forge or even the nobilis and exalted fanboys on RPGnet are the "gaming cultural elite".. more like the "self-appointed elite with a very bad concept of reality". The truth is that D&D/D20 is the dominant and majoritarian force by a landslide in gaming today, and the only people who think otherwise are self-deluded fools engaged in games of mental masturbation.

None of that means that those selfsame self-deluded fools won't get heard if the shout long and loud enough, or end up in positions of influence in the right places.
Today they take over the GoO Amber boards and destroy Amber to promote their pet game. Tomorrow one of the vociferous exalted-nuts from RPGnet gets a seat judging the Ennies. The day after that someone from the Forge gets a job at Wizards and convinces confused marketing guys that his revolutionary RPG about zombie housewives buying groceries is going to be the next big thing, and they all listen to him because he speaks with big words.

Not only is it possible, it happened before. TSR was in the hands of people who didn't really know what they were doing.
Vampire comes out and its a moderate success.
TSR; being intellectually bankrupt, see vampire's success and say "we have to copy what they did, instead of go with our own ideas or listen to our customers, and we're sure to succeed!".
Every other company on the market (just about) copies TSR or WW, the latter of whom have now stolen the industry leader position without so much as a single shot fired.
No one grasps that Vampires success was due to appealing to a non-gamer niche market, the new story-based games turn people off gaming by the thousands (in both numbers who leave, and those who simply never join) and the 99% of the gothkids who start playing vampire will never actually play another RPG, and grow out of vampire when they get over their wearing-black-and-being-sexually-ambiguous phase.
End result: RPGs are powerless to defend themselves against other hobby niches that have their head on right, and gaming almost dies out as a viable hobby until D20 shows up to rescue it.

Next time, there might not be a D20.

Nisarg

 

[Nisarg]

No, your posts are pretentious because you make connections that simply don't exist. Sorry, but I fail to see what a game that sold a few copies to some insider fans (= Nobilis) has to do with the state of the RPG market, which is dominated by WotC and White Wolf. The D&D manuals are the complete opposite of being pretentious; they are often criticised for being as dry as a law book.

Well, I'll give you a hint for starters.. half of the companies you quoted as "dominating" the RPG market, are highly pretentious, based their success on a cruder and more primitive form of this same academic plague, and nearly killed gaming.

That same half, of the companies you mentioned, tend to be run by people who listen to the extreme fringe of people like the Forge, Nobilis, etc. fanboys, in search of the next thing they can claim as "cool" to send down to us ignorant plebes as their message from on high.

Finally, that same half also produces D20 books, including some where the pretentiousness has already claimed at least one previously beloved setting (Gamma World, whose current D20 incarnation is an abomination).

Nisarg

 

[Darkness]

If we, for a moment, expand our thinking to considering ourselves as a culture rather than simply a group of consumers, how our self-appointed cultural elite act and what they deem their objectives to be suddenly starts mattering a whole lot. I think the trendiness of certain games reflects a certain kind of introspective narcisism in our culture; even some positive developments reflect this. I recall my friend Philip observing that D&D 3.5's main function is to model itself.

So I just don't buy pogre's assertion that Nobilis being trendy can be so easily disassociated from 10 year olds not buying D&D books.

I agree that D&D's function is to model itself. Beautifully put indeed...

Anyway, Nobilis likely is vastly more trendy on rpg.net than in your local gaming circle. Its influence on the 'typical' gamer is around zero.

As for new gamers... Nobilis is not known to 99.99% of 10-year-old potential gamers, nor does it at all influence the image D&D has to the outside world. The same goes for any Forge game - or for all taken together, really.

Computer RPGs, especially widely-known ones like the larger MMORPGs (e.g., EQ, UO; and WoW in the future), certainly have more of an influence on our hobby than all small 'pretentious' RPGs taken together.
Come to think of it, the internet has an influence on its own as well, if possibly not a huge one... (E.g., pbp gaming, locating people to game with more easily, etc.)

 

[Turjan]

Well, I'll give you a hint for starters.. half of the companies you quoted as "dominating" the RPG market, are highly pretentious, based their success on a cruder and more primitive form of this same academic plague, and nearly killed gaming.

That same half, of the companies you mentioned, tend to be run by people who listen to the extreme fringe of people like the Forge, Nobilis, etc. fanboys, in search of the next thing they can claim as "cool" to send down to us ignorant plebes as their message from on high.

Finally, that same half also produces D20 books, including some where the pretentiousness has already claimed at least one previously beloved setting (Gamma World, whose current D20 incarnation is an abomination).

Nisarg

White Wolf's liaison with the d20 market has considerably cooled down *shrug*. Some of the companies under the roof of their printing house fare still considerably well (e.g., Malhavoc). Anyway, your dislike of White Wolf goes a bit over the top. "Vampire" was an innovative game with a high appeal to a new target market. There's nothing wrong with that. If it were just pretense, Vampire would have long gone for good. The fact that it's still here and successful shows us that it's a viable model for a game.

The rest were mistakes by TSR, as I already mentioned further above. If WotC plays to its strengths, i.e., D&D, they should be fine. Simulating the newest toy of rpg.net is - there I agree - not a good idea.

Today they take over the GoO Amber boards and destroy Amber to promote their pet game.

I think you overestimate the importance of Amber. In a recent poll here on EN World regarding our favorite non-d20 games it was not mentioned even once. It's still a game that is fairly well known, but whatever happens to Amber won't really interest many people.