Academic Plague in gaming

Hmm, were I to parse that definition of Academic Plague it would run:

Some people are having wrong bad fun. Some people are not. This is bad, cause its wrong bad fun.

No offense, but if you are working on a definition of Academic Plague the argument's lost a lot of its Ethos.

Oh, I'm sorry credibility.

Whoops, integrity.

Um, merit?

huh, value?

gee, uh, purty sheen?

Was the point to talk about the theory or the problem? Cause we can talk about the problems of the RPG industry or we can bad-mouth pseudo intellectuals. One of them seems to be useful the other not so much. Particularly since pseudo-intellectuals do seem to buy RPGs. One might argue that some form of intellectual is the only kind of person who ever has.

RPGs don't exactly have the universal appeal of snap-bracelets.

'Cause it would certainly be impossible to describe DnD to someone without at some point without using jargon like attack rolls, do those go with dinner or breakfast, or armor class, 101 or graduate level? registration's on Friday, challenge rating, sounds like a reality show, and lord forbid the kid actually shows up and hears a word like 'eldritch.' A word 'made up' by an author who never made the New York Times list until long after his death. Obviously a failed novelist and thus an orginal carrier of the plague.

Good gawd, best call the doctor the kid's been infected. If left untreated he could do things like score above 600 on the verbal portion of the SAT.

Or is the problem that you can't actually be infected by an Academic Plague* so changing the words to something simple would draw a lot away from the argument?


*Unless of course, you subscribe to mimetism. In which case you should certainly apply to graduate school. Or go off to live in a pseudo-intellectual colony, they're sort of like Leper colonies except the rent is really high and the jazz is slightly better.
 
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Nisarg said:
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

No, he did it because a flip answer like the above is generic to the point if being worthless. It doesn't explain what Nobilis is, or why you'd want to play it, any more than "There are nine good guys on a quest to destroy a ring, and they have to fight a bunch of monsters" explains what the Lord of the Rings is, or why it's a classic, or "At the end of the Meiji era, seven samurai warriors defend a village from bandits, even though they and the villagers don't trust each other" explains why someone would want to watch the Seven Samurai.*

His "huge" paragraphs (which add up to, what, half of the length of your explanation about storytelling games?) give the details of the game, what make it different from a dozen other games where you could be a god, and fight gods.

It's the difference between simple and simplistic. The first answer is pretty simple, the second one is really simplistic - both are accurate, but the second doesn't really tell you a damn thing.


*or is this too "pretentious"? Maybe "Seven japanese guys fight bandits" would be better?

Patrick Y.
 

Teflon Billy said:
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.

Well, it would make it "good"; if the Exalted fans would just acknowledge that, and not try to push it as a deeply philosophical game vastly superior to the "mere hack n' slash" of D20..

Nisarg
 

Acid_crash said:
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...

And the point is... that if you came to the store and sat down with them you would merely be a GURPS player, unless you behaved in the same fashion that these yahoos do, They are and forever will be, in the stillness of my heart, the GURPS players. They have gone so far as to pull a game out of a child's hands in their quest to promote GURPS. The kid was looking at the new boxed D&D introductory game. But if you still want to identify with them go right ahead. I have enough room in my heart to dislike you too... :p (This last is, I hope a joke.)

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* And I suspect that after sitting with the seven of them for more than half an hour you might well reach the point where you never want to play GURPS again. Or chew your arm off to get away.
 
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Arcane Runes Press said:
No, he did it because a flip answer like the above is generic to the point if being worthless. It doesn't explain what Nobilis is, or why you'd want to play it, any more than "There are nine good guys on a quest to destroy a ring, and they have to fight a bunch of monsters" explains what the Lord of the Rings is, or why it's a classic, or "At the end of the Meiji era, seven samurai warriors defend a village from bandits, even though they and the villagers don't trust each other" explains why someone would want to watch the Seven Samurai.*
.

Really?
Because I can describe D&D as: "a fantasy game where you take on the role of wizards, warriors, elves, thieves, or other archetypes, and go on adventures in a made-up world".

I could probably detail a longer explanation, going into several paragraphs, all without having to resort to words like "chancel", "excrucians", "estates", "Imperators, or "Familiae".. or even words like "base attack bonus" or "dungeon master".

If you can't convincingly express the fundamentals of a game without resorting to jargon, I'd say either you or the game has a case of academic plague.

Nisarg
 

Nisarg said:
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:

That's what they call "pretty simple".

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

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.

Well, although I did not want to write here anymore, I cannot resist after this post, because it's a wonderful illustration of your completely nonsensical argumentation!

The first example is a concise description of Nobilis in less than 300 words. After reading this, everybody will have a pretty good understanding of what this game is about. It makes it nearly sound interesting, although I actually don't like it.

Your second example is a cartoon that fits numerous RPGs without really telling you anything about the game, except the fact that gods are involved; and fight, though the latter is true for nearly every RPG. This description tells you nothing about Nobilis but the dislike of the author for this game.

In this comparison, your so-called "Academic Plague" is the clearly superior description, but you vote for the slander. How typical!
 
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Well if I was going to describe Nobilis in my own words I guess I'd have to say - Imagine Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Clive Barker's Hellraiser on an absinthe bender. With flowers. That's Nobilis.

Imagine JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Jack Vance's Dying Earth on a Jolt-fuelled all-nighter. With lots of rules. That's Dungeons & Dragons.
 
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Dr. Strangemonkey said:
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.

Sorry, I just can't resist this.

...stupid kids and their music! ;)
 

Nisarg said:
If you can't convincingly express the fundamentals of a game without resorting to jargon, I'd say either you or the game has a case of academic plague.

Nisarg

So... if I describe the Lord of the Rings, and mention Sauron, Gandalf, the One Ring, Middle Earth, Hobbiton, and Moria, I've got the "academic plague".

How about if I utter the words "Curious George", or "big" "red" and "dog"? Is mentioning the words "Pooh bear" and "Christopher Robin" academic plague?

Sure, you can describe D&D's mechanics as you did, and it's fine. But D&D is a generic game, without a real built in setting.

The three paragraph example of "academic plague" is a description of the game, and of its setting, given on a gaming forum by a gamer to other gamers - people who've already seen games where "You play a god", and aren't likely to consider that a good explanation of what makes a game unique.

Imagine someone who's never roleplayed sees your Greyhawk Gazeteer and asks you "Hey, what's this book about?"

"It's a fantasy world for D&D" you say, "where you take on the role of wizards, warriors, elves, thieves, or other archetypes, and go on adventures."

Yep, true enough. It is those things. And that's going to be a good enough explanation for someone that doesn't game.

Now give the same answer to a gamer who plays in the Forgotten Realms. Still true, but what do you think his response is going to be? "So, it's just like the Forgotten Realms, then?"

The answer is too simplistic for him. It doesn't tell him what makes Greyhawk a unique setting. But the way you've been arguing, if you were to mention the words Vecna, Circle of Eight, the Great Kingdom, and so on, you'd be pretentious, and suffering from academic plague.

"You play gods" is a good, simple answer for a person who doesn't play roleplaying games, it's a simplistic answer to a gamer - good enough to let a person who doesn't play god-games know he won't be interested, but not near enough to describe it to someone who isn't automatically turned off by that sort of game.

Patrick Y.
 
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Arcane Runes Press said:
How about if I utter the words "Curious George", or "big" "red" and "dog"? Is mentioning the words "Pooh bear" and "Christopher Robin" academic plague?

No, but if you have to use the terms "ursine golden-hued avatar of bee-byproduct-hunting" and "ye man-childe of the wood of a hundred acres", then that probably would be.

Just like if you had to say "canus rubeus magnus" instead of "big red dog", or said curious george was a Zanathar, which means monkey, rather than just saying he's a monkey.

Nisarg
 

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