dd.stevenson
Super KY
The clip is not a defense of any design approach.
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Colin McComb issues apology for the Complete Book of Elves
- Thread starter Jiggawatts
- Start date
The clip is not a defense of any design approach.
the Jester
Legend
He seems to stick by his guns that it's a good, or at least okay, idea to balance mechanical advantage with rp restrictions.
Agreed. Folks, you're allowed to dislike games, books, movies, TV shows, cars, foods, comics, and so on. That's fine. You are NOT owed an apology for everything you don't like. I'm not owed an apology for The Godfather Pt III, the AvP franchise, Spiderman 3, or the rubbish Batman movies. Or every novel TSR and then WotC published. Or Star Trek: Voyager.
You get to not like stuff. You don't get to demand sincere apologies from the people who wrote it. That makes you a dick.
This video is a joke about a book 20-years old. If you feel you were owed a real apology for a book an author wrote 20-years ago because you didn't like it -- you're out of luck. You are not owed it. I actually feel 20 IQ points more stupid having to explain this.
So, yes. It's insincere. Because if it was sincere, it would mean Colin McComb was suffering from some kind of unfortunate mental illness. Which I feel safe in assuming he's not.
It's a joke. As it should be. If you don't get the joke - sorry, but that's just unfortunate.
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Iosue
Legend
He's not sticking by his guns, because the whole thing is in no way serious.
Celebrim
Legend
Yes. Profoundly so.
dd.stevenson
Super KY
In your defense, this isn't the first time that tongue-in-cheek has been misunderstood on the internet.
It's not an apology. It's a joke about a 20-yr old book. You're allowed to not find jokes funny.
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Celebrim
Legend
Oddly, I did laugh the first time a friend showed me the complete book of elves. And, perhaps not so oddly, the friend didn't (he'd paid for it). He was rather ... unhappy, although that doesn't capture the strength of it. It wasn't just the mechanics that were a problem. It wasn't the product that lost me as a TSR customer (that would have been Haunted Halls of Evenstar), but it was about that time that the group began to explore different system options because we started noticing other companies were offering up material that was just so...much... better....written.
I expected some humor in this, but maybe of the more self-deprecating sort. I also expected some understanding and explanation of what was wrong, why it went wrong, and how he'd matured as a writer and designer since one of his very first projects as a 22 old writer with a deadline given a filler book to fill out a line with pretty tight content restraints and burdened not just with the limitations of the 2e system, but more than a decade of less that stellar content and Mary Sue-isms poured into elves generally and the elvish subraces especially. It's not like I don't understand (I don't even try to publish my stuff), or that I hold it against him or that I don't think he's more than paid back that early outing. It's that I can't fathom how his relationship to the text isn't similar to the relationship of say Arnold Schwarzenegger to 'Hercules in New York'. I kinda expected him to act more like an actor does when shown a clip of thier first on screen bit part or role when they are on the tonight show.
Like I said, you're allowed to not find jokes funny. I found it amusing. No joke is universal. Message board posts declaring that you don't find a joke funny never reflect well on the poster.
Celebrim
Legend
I'm not pretending it wasn't a joke. I'm just well...
Let's just say I wish I'd never watched it. My ardor for the project fell like 30 degrees F by the end of it. I was like, "Is it cold in here?"
