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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8268001" data-attributes="member: 6801252">Personally, Story Now games do work for me, they just hit differently such that they couldn't replace other kinds of games, Edwards dream of a world in which I just engage in a series of tightly designed, low buy-in, fun-now-rather-than-fun-later games just doesn't sound that appealing to me, like something would genuinely be lost. I'll enjoy them in their own right though, especially as games that don't take as much time or effort as my regular games.[SPOILER="Content Warning: Racism, Supermacist Language, H.P. Lovecraft's Horrible Views"]A big part of the debate though, is that my viewpoint on them having their place but not necessarily being able to replace other games is treated with contempt by adherents to Edwards thinking and the Story Now Indie RPG Movement. I know that someone is going to take issue with that, but I realized it when I found <a href="https://rpgmuseum.fandom.com/wiki/Brain_damage" target="_blank">these posts</a> by Edwards, where he kind of breaks down and says the quiet part out loud.I wasn't exaggerating when I discussed him using supremacist tactics:He uses intentionally offensive jargon but claims that those who take his language seriously are in the wrong, forcing his defenders to normalize it under the pretense that he means something different, which we now identify as a primary tactic of the alt right. People like me who identify this are likely to be viewed as unreasonable or hyperbolic, while he's given the benefit of the doubt for his language. The use and protection of this language makes the spaces where Game Design being discussed deliberately less welcoming to his ideological opposition.He identifies those who haven't bought into his thinking as damaged and dirty, and discussed those who have as being on a path of awakening in terms real supremacists do. Those who don't adhere are compared to children who can't consent to sex, and he insists that they need Story Now games as a form of therapy to be able to do so again. This is a common tactic of colonizers, establishing that the peoples they're colonizing are as children who need to be taught before they can be considered to have the rights of adults, a common justification most of us would know as 'the white man's burden' or as a facet of the spread of Christianity into Indigenous cultures, though here it's obviously used outside  a racial or religious context.He insists that in reality everyone knows he's right, and they just won't admit it, and that this psychological self-deception is intended to protect their illness and the status quo itself, a common refrain the right uses against defenders of multiculturalism. Insisting that everyone else is just too scared to tell it how it is, or just too brainwashed.The Alt-Right Playbook Series by Innuendo Studios, and their Autopsy of Gamergate Series breaks down a lot of these techniques and comes highly recommended for navigating today's political climate and the presence of the alt-right in spaces like the RPG hobby too, so its worth it outside the context of Story Now gaming-- its a big part of what was happening in the OSR movement in terms of conservatism, here I'm more focused on Ron Edwards tactics, rather than purpose.But don't believe me? Compare:to this:Edwards language is a lot lighter, but the full posts on Brain Damage above, specifically the second one reinforce its presence. You can see a similar contempt, and the overlap in word usage, it honestly wasn't until I quoted it that I noticed they both described their targets with the 'stumped' verbiage. Ugliness ("too horrible to look upon, much less describe") and 'wrong psychology' are freely conflated.[/SPOILER]The point is, that I think that Edwards Ideological framework, and the fact that we think in terms of it, makes it difficult to discuss Story Now without attempting to police other styles or place Story Now on a kind of ontological pedestal. The radicalization and creation of a community that doesn't play well with others (in the microcosm of RPG Game Design) is very much the point of his framing. It gives it a missionary character where adherents treat their opposition with paternalistic contempt-- they aren't equals or peers, but problems to be solved.</blockquote>

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