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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 4757132" data-attributes="member: 77019">It doesn't.  You are writing with correct grammar now.  You also have the luxury of moving in and out of slang for fun, for emphasis etc., but can express yourself clearly if you need to.  If all you knew was Jerry Springer speak, nobody would read anything you wrote on this forum.Let me put it this way.  Lets imagine you were put in charge of designing a new RPG based on some kind of Guerilla war, say a Halo spinoff, at a pretty simple level of abstraction but it had to be fun.  You had 4 people to choose from that you could hire to write the game, 1) a 14 year old boy who had never been out of his suburb but played lots of Halo, 2) a 35 year old soldier with four tours in Iraq who had never played an RPG or a computer game, 3) a 25 year old soldier who had done one tour in Iraq and had some game design experience and played Halo, or 4) a 40 year old man who has never lived anywhere but his mothers basement or left the suburb where he grew up, but has played RPGs and Computer games 20 hours a week since he was 14.Personally I'd hire #3, I think he would design a better game than all the others combined that I think #1 and #2 would enjoy playing equally, though #4 may or may not like.  A lot of people would prefer the game made by #4 of course, YMMV.Half-assed research gives you half-assed results.  If you fully understand something, you will make a better system, not necessary with realistic elements that are visible on the surface, but built upon them as a firmanent.  Trying to over-reach by sporadically looking at a few things superfiicially won't help that much, because as you say you will put things in piecemeal and out of context.  Here is another analogy.  The guys who did the writing for Buggs Bunny knew a lot about the ways of the real world, that didn't make their cartoon a news show or a documentary, far from it!  But it informed how it was created, it's what gave it legs.  It's what made the humor bite.Well amigo, though they may not impress you those writers are the people who invented the conventions, clichés and tropes that DnD and the entire Fantasy genre are based on, and while you may not have heard of them, they are vastly more influential than all the Star Trek fanfic writers, anime writers, slash fiction authors, and throw-away fantasy series which line the shelves of most bookstores today (and are gone tomorrow).  These guys stuff is always in print, and probably always will be, because they created the genre.  What gave them the ability to do that was their deep knowledge of History and Mythology.  The deep familiarity is what allowed Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and yes, even Tolkein, to intelligently break these tropes and play with them resulting in stories that were still consistent and plausible enough for people to buy into.  Those who unintelligently play with these real sources create a muddle and are quickly forgotten.... whereas authors who have made up their own truly original Fantasy tropes, cliches etc. right out of thin air without basing them on History or Mythology are few and far between, if they exist at all.G.</blockquote>

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