Academic Plague in gaming

[Acid_crash]

And whie I don't like the GURPS players much......

The Auld Grump

So, you don't like GURPS players because.....?

Does this mean that if you never knew me, yet saw me playing GURPS, you'd automatically assume something of me simply because you are saying that you don't like GURPS players?

I think that is highly pretentious of you.

 

[Maggan]

Dislike of GURPS players

So, you don't like GURPS players because.....?

Does this mean that if you never knew me, yet saw me playing GURPS, you'd automatically assume something of me simply because you are saying that you don't like GURPS players?

I think that is highly pretentious of you.

I think he's referring to the local GURPS players that he's met in person i the store he's talking about. I didn't see it as a slam against all GURPS players.

Give him the benefit of the doubt!

Cheers!

Maggan

 

[Campbell]

Nisarg: I would honestly like to see you write an article on this subject. Unless you show a well documented argument I just don't see how we can possibly be satisfied with your explanations. What I'm seeing here is a lot of intelectual posturing on your part, but I do think you could present a valid arguement in support of your position. Your anecdotal evidence and the citation of one other person's words do very little to convince me. I'd like to see something more productive then the previous WoD thread come out of this conversation.

 

[Acid_crash]

I think he's referring to the local GURPS players that he's met in person i the store he's talking about. I didn't see it as a slam against all GURPS players.

Give him the benefit of the doubt!

Cheers!

Maggan

I'll give the benefit of the doubt, but the point is...if I walked into his store, sat down with the GURPS crowd, then he has an opinion of me simply because I am playing that particular game...

Or if I sat down with the RIFTS crowd...

or if I sat down with the d20 crowd...

and I think a lot of people on these boards, and many more on rpg.net, wizards boards, or any particular message board, are like this...

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

I'll give the benefit of the doubt, but the point is...if I walked into his store, sat down with the GURPS crowd, then he has an opinion of me simply because I am playing that particular game...

Or if I sat down with the RIFTS crowd...

or if I sat down with the d20 crowd...

and I think a lot of people on these boards, and many more on rpg.net, wizards boards, or any particular message board, are like this...

Given that you're trying to take him to task for something that he's been speaking against for several pages, you're severely barking up the wrong tree here.


And I'd like to take this opportunity to say that Nisarg's... issues are much funnier now that I don't have to waste a day moderating the aftermath on RPG.net

Patrick Y. (The horned mod on RPG.net. Mod Quandum, Modque Futurus).

 

[Turjan]

I am really surprised that this thread is still on page one of the board. While I've seen lots of insults against "failed novelists and failed grad students" and the "pseudointellectuals" of the Forge, I did not see a single line of evidence, let alone a proof for the claim made in the first post. On the other hand, this thread brought a lot of evidence for the opposite position, while the original poster shows a surprising degree of selective perception regarding the answers. What a waste of time!

If I then see that this whole mess has its origin in somebody on the GoO boards making a conversion of Amber for the Nobilis system, I can only shake my head.

 

[tarchon]

It's all gone downhill since the original two character classes, X and O.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

d00d, O was totally unbalanced.

Everyone I know agrees that X and 0 2ed really cleaned that up.



On a more serious note, it seems to me that the central fallacy of this thread is viewing RPGs in a vacuum.

I mean as much as RPGs are getting older so is the whole of America and the developed world in general. Before I bought any argument on the larger fate of the RPG industry I need to know more about how it interacts with real world demographic trends.

Toys R Us itself may be no more at the end of this year. At the least it may sell its toy division. The whole of the entertainment industry for children and teenagers is looking at a period of coming horror. Even sports. The only portion of that market I've heard to be expanding on any sort of long term basis is video games and that's getting older too.

On a more specific note, I would guess that the downfall of RPGs was MTV. Once the youth market became so effectively and coherently targetted and controlled, and really they only started to figure out how to do that in 90, there was very little room for a hobby that is both relatively unphotegenic and fraught with effort. Even John Hughes made being nerdy seem somewhat fun, post Real World there was no hope for it.

 

[Nisarg]

I think I should return to the original point of the thread, which has gotten fairly derailed into conversations about a number of interesting topics, but not central to this thread's point.

on another forum, someone said that evidence of intellectual plague is if a game cannot be easily explained. I don't believe that to be correct, but one of the nobilis fans took him up on the task, and this was the best he could do:

Well, for Nobilis, it's pretty simple. The PCs are humans given power over an aspect of reality (or sometimes two) - something like 'Revenge', 'Blades', 'Memory' or 'Obsession', that can be summed up in a word or short phrase. This is their 'Estate'. They are grouped into Familiae, and work for an Imperator, who is the embodiment of all their Estates. They live in a Chancel, which serves as their base of operations. They can perform 'miracles' based upon their superhuman abilities (Aspect), their Estate (Domain), or their link with their Chancel (Realm).

They spend their time 1) socialising and intriguing among themselves, 2) fighting the Excrucians - beautiful pale star-eyed beings who want to erase Creation one Estate at a time, 3) exploring Creation and the Ash (which is the big tree the various worlds in Creation hang from), 4) trying to promote their Estate and Code (their Code is their political / moral affiliation - there are six major codes - Heaven, Hell, the Wild, the Aaron's Serpents, the Dark and the Light), and 5) anything else cool they or their HG (GM) can think up.

Probably the only other thing that needs mentioning is the Prosaic / Mythic divide. Essentially, everything (literally everything - from a car, to the air in a room, to the individual molecules that make them both up) in Creation has a spirit, which can be talked to, asked to do things, or attacked and manipulated. Small and simple spirits are as monosyllabic as you'd expect, but larger spirits can be powerful, as well as providing a focal point for the miracles of Nobles (so a Noble can stop a river with his mighty strength by strangling the spirit, for example).

That's what they call "pretty simple".


In any case, my feeling is that being difficult to describe simply is not the real definition of academic plague. Rather, the real indication of academic plague is when a game that is really very simple is intentionally described in far more complex terms to make it sound like there's more going on than there really is. When lots of jargon and made up words cover up a concept that is not particularly original.

In the case of nobilis, the REAL explanation of what nobilis is as a game was provided by a different poster:

You play a god. There are these evil gods who want to destroy the world. Some of the gods on your side are pretty sketchy, too, for some of the same and some different reasons. Fight!

So why did the other guy have to do three huge paragraphs for his "simple" explanation?
Academic plague. He wants Nobilis to be complicated, even a "simple" explanation of it, because part of the "appeal" of nobilis is that its wordy and complex and people who play it feel like they're smart for being one of the chosen few who "get" it.

Nisarg

 

[Teflon Billy]

I'm not sure how anyone thinks that any game drives people away from the hobby. If you don't want to play a certain game, you won't.

Nobilis didn't drive me away from gaming, it drove me away from Nobilis.

I think complete jackasses will drive people away from gaming no matter what flavor you ascribe to them ("Self-styled Intellectual Elites" and "Kill-Everything-and-take-their-stuff pseudo brutes" piss me off about equally and would get equal booting from my games).

I know Fusangite in real life, and he once created a game system for Fantasy Roleplay with mechanics (not setting mind you) based on the works of poet William Blake (The characters had four stats that included Corpulence, Insight and a few others that tracked to Blake's feelings about human nature...or something) The climax of the game was that the world turned out to be in a valley on Eath's Moon, sometime in the distant future.

His game--though admittedly pseudo intellectual--was fun becasue it was played by fun people

My games are not as ambitious; I refuse to run a game that you can't play while drunk, and most problems you encounter can be solved by quick, decisive, violent action.

I'm told my weekly games are legend.

I don't think either Fusangite or myself are responsible for driving anyone away from the hobby, and I'm certain we are responsible (seperately) for bringing at least a dozen new Roleplayers into it.

We play in each others games because they are enjoyable. If they weren't then those games wouldn't get run. The "industry" can attemtp to provide the tools necessary for such gaming, but the existence of Amber the Roleplaying Game, thoug it is not to my taste, will not drive me away with it's very existence.

We both hated Nobilis, so who says there is no common ground amongst the differing play styles

And much as I love it, Exalted isn't anything more (or less!) than Feng Shui souped up for the D&D Crowd.

And that makes it good, not bad.