Gatekeeping Part II: The OG (Original Gatekeeping)

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[pogre]

Not sure I have much to add. I will say I am encouraged the high school D&D club I run has great attendance and 50% or more are young women.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

Which brings us back to the original point. I was duly shocked to see someone saying that D&D has to be complex, and real D&D can't be TOTM, not just because it's the type of gatekeeping I thought was abandoned long ago, but it's just another iteration of the impulse toward needless excluding new generations of players. I mean, I wish I was the future of the game, but I'm not. The best I (and many of the people reading this) is to act as a good steward to attract even more new people to the game so that, in the end:

This kind of strikes me as a semantic debate as much as a gatekeeping debate (although enforcing linguistic standards is also a good way to gatekeep!) Assuming one doesn't formally adopt another system, can one drift D&D so far so as not to be D&D? Or does any TTRPG activity loosely derived from D&D still count? Or is this a case where trying to derive a formal definition doesn't even matter? (This is what I lean towards.)

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

Mmm... I think the more interesting question (for me) is what is the impulse that causes people to need to classify what other people do as either D&D or not D&D?

I posted about this briefly in one of the other threads, but I think the desire to fix language into strictly defined meanings comes from a psychological desire for authority and purity.

 

[Beleriphon]

Mmm... I think the more interesting question (for me) is what is the impulse that causes people to need to classify what other people do as either D&D or not D&D?

True Scotsmanism I think.

I actually think I hit upon something in another thread that never registered to me before I thought of it. Gatekeeping is the moral guardianship of D&D.

 

[prabe]

Mmm... I think the more interesting question (for me) is what is the impulse that causes people to need to classify what other people do as either D&D or not D&D?

In my case, it's not about other people Doing It Wrong, or excluding anyone. I've played enough TTRPGs to know there are many ways to skin the various necessary cats. If people talk about "playing D&D" and it turns out they're not using what is arguably the core mechanic of D&D (rolling dice), I'm probably going to feel as though they aren't, in fact, playing D&D. Once we (or at least I) know what we're talking about, there can be a conversation that can accomplish something. It doesn't feel like True Scotsmanism to me, but YMMV.

 

[Fenris-77]

I posted about this briefly in one of the other threads, but I think the desire to fix language into strictly defined meanings comes from a psychological desire for authority and purity.

Fixed definitions very much index authority when youre the one doing the fixing. Authority equals control, and from thence gatekeeping. Those definitions are slippery buggers though and they tend to shift under argumentative weight at the worst moments. I'm trying to stick to you do you and I'll do me for these convos.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*