Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Umbran]

Some people get so angry about silly things. I get that we are here to discuss our hobby, and take it seriously, but I don't understand the anger?

For many of them, it is a matter of identity.

If you spend enough time and resources on a thing, you begin to associate it with your identity. Our self-definitions include "I am a gamer".

When you challenge how they game, you challenge core aspects of their identity, and they become Not Happy.

 

[trappedslider]

 

[RealAlHazred]

(Not directed at you, just using this as a springboard.)

It's not a novel--it's not even writing a novel--so why do people persist in expecting it to provide all the same pleasures as reading a novel?

I have come to the conclusion that many of the issues I've had over the last 30-40 years with published scenarios are that they are written by novelists. The requirements of an enjoyable novel and an good scenario are very different, even diametrically opposed in some places. But, you know, there were some really, really successful D&D novels in the 80s, and the money guys decided to listen to the guys making them money. It led to scenarios that were incredibly tightly railroaded so that all participants would reach the exact same final decision-point, in the exact same way, and experience the thing the author wanted them to experience.

You won't get the same experience you did reading a novel, if you play a scenario based on that novel. You can't, because you come into the scenario with foreknowledge. But authors persist in trying to achieve homogeneity of experience in a scenario. Madness.

 

[Ryujin]

To avoid all risk, I will just say.

People overcomplicate things. All things. When this is applied to a game, and people try and read the tea leaves and make it deeper than it is?

Wasted effort. Navel gazing, for nothing.

Its an Elf Game. We pretend to be magical beings. On its face, its absurd, so just let it be.

They all play 1e Barbarians. Magic = EVIL!

 

[prabe]

I have come to the conclusion that many of the issues I've had over the last 30-40 years with published scenarios are that they are written by novelists. The requirements of an enjoyable novel and an good scenario are very different, even diametrically opposed in some places. But, you know, there were some really, really successful D&D novels in the 80s, and the money guys decided to listen to the guys making them money. It led to scenarios that were incredibly tightly railroaded so that all participants would reach the exact same final decision-point, in the exact same way, and experience the thing the author wanted them to experience.

You won't get the same experience you did reading a novel, if you play a scenario based on that novel. You can't, because you come into the scenario with foreknowledge. But authors persist in trying to achieve homogeneity of experience in a scenario. Madness.

I think it's more than just the scenarios. I think there are a lot of TRPGs that are looking to provide the same experience as some other medium--movie, novel, TV show--and failing. I can see a TRPG inspired by (for instance) a novel working, if it wasn't trying or promising to deliver the same set of pleasures as the novel, but that's not the way most TRPGs based on other media are marketed, or written, and because--as you say, the experiences are radically and subtly different--those games almost always fail to deliver.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think it's more than just the scenarios. I think there are a lot of TRPGs that are looking to provide the same experience as some other medium--movie, novel, TV show--and failing. I can see a TRPG inspired by (for instance) a novel working, if it wasn't trying or promising to deliver the same set of pleasures as the novel, but that's not the way most TRPGs based on other media are marketed, or written, and because--as you say, the experiences are radically and subtly different--those games almost always fail to deliver.

I am going to make a TTRPG based on Game of Thrones.

To make it fully reflective of the source material, I'll release a massive volume that contains most of the rules, but not all of them.

And then instead of releasing the remaining rules, Ima go party. SUCK IT!

You might want pages, but GRRM needs to get his par-tay on!

 

[prabe]

I am going to make a TTRPG based on Game of Thrones.

To make it fully reflective of the source material, I'll release a massive volume that contains most of the rules, but not all of them.

And then instead of releasing the remaining rules, Ima go party. SUCK IT!

You might want pages, but GRRM needs to get his par-tay on!

I don't see why anyone would choose to read any GRRM other than "Sandkings" and "The Way of Cross and Dragon."

 

[RealAlHazred]

I don't see why anyone would choose to read any GRRM other than "Sandkings" and "The Way of Cross and Dragon."

"Sandkings" was really, really good, and I can't wait for him to finish this Song of Ice and Fire nonsense so he can write the followup to "Sandkings" that he promised me at a convention back in the 80s!

 

[prabe]

"Sandkings" was really, really good, and I can't wait for him to finish this Song of Ice and Fire nonsense so he can write the followup to "Sandkings" that he promised me at a convention back in the 80s!

In his defense, he did write more fiction in that SF setting. I haven't read much of it (most of what I've read of it's not very good) so it's possible there's some indirect follow-up I don't know of.

 

[Staffan]

I have come to the conclusion that many of the issues I've had over the last 30-40 years with published scenarios are that they are written by novelists.

Worse. They are written by people who want to be novelists.