[Rant] Am I the only one to be tired of extreme opinions related to RPGs?
- Thread starter Odhanan
- Start date
But to my knowledge, I've never had to bash anyone for liking anything other than Scarred Lands.Mishihari Lord
First Post
Odhanan said:
This would be a really boring message board if all it was was people agreeing with each other. Give me a spirited discussion any day - much more entertaining.
Odhanan said:
From this thread, it's clear you're not: and I'm in your camp as well. ;-)
I can't really stand people who ramble on about how much they like or loathe whatever it is, drowning us in hyperbole. There are a few posters on this board whose appearance means an inevitably reference to how wonderful their pet system/setting is: and I often feal that, you know, once you've read one of their posts, you've basically read all they'll ever post on his board. Further more, eeven if they don't start out as negative of others, the thread seems to inevitably go that way: when you say, for example, "I think XRPG 5th Ed has far and away the best character gen rules" seems to me to often lead to people questioning why it's better than their system, and when the XRPG 5th Ed-Junkie replies honestly all hell linevitably breaks loose. Or the people who are having a discussion about YRPG Revised don't care about XRPG and instead have every 3rd post chewed up with "The point buy in 5th Ed just makes more sense."
People with extreme likes/dislikes on the net just get ignored by me, most times. Specifically, when offered multiple reviews on here and other sites (and not just for RPGs: I do the same for computer games as well, for example) I will usually6 ignore the "Best book evar!" and "Worst book evar!" reviews and pay more attention to the "3 Stars" or "7/10" reviews. I tend to find a lower percentage of people with personal axes to grind or fanboyish worship going on here. I mean, sure, a book might actually be great or dire and justify all those ratings, but I go into such reviews slightly skeptical. ;-)
Of course, we've all got our favourites, and it's no surprise that online we will gravcitate towards threads where we can talk about them. For example, I quite like Transformers, so a thread about RPGs involving giant robots is likely to get me to wander in and perhaps mention by love of Transforemrs and how I think Cartoon Action Hour's Metal Wars setting is the best I've seen for playing Transformers. But there's a difference between that and all I ever post, each day, is about my love of Transformers. Furthermore, if you suggest another RPG that might make Transformers and I acknowledge, then congratulations! We're having a conversation and we both walk away different, which is the intention. If, however, every responce slams against my I LIKE CARTOON ACTION HOUR WITH ALL MY SPARK, then what exactly is your point in posting it on a forum where other people will foolishly try to reply?
In summary: It's a little unfiar to complain at people honestly saying what they think the best/worst of some RPG thing is, because I don't think most of them do it out of badness: but when it's constant, other people are gonna start to tune you out.
JediSoth said:
I sometimes wonder if extreme opinions are the norm, or if overstatement of opinion is the norm.
Especially here, in a text-only (and otherwise fairly low-bandwidth) medium, you don't have a lot of time to get things across. The fastest way to deal is with hyperbole, going with the theory that if you trhow your information against the wall a bit harder, more of it will stick.
Discussion boards can seem to be full of extreme opinions, but this is merely the nature of discussion.
When discussing a point, I'm not going to load my prose up with lots of extraneous text in order to provide a balanced view. That would merely obscure the point.
(Although, actually--having been at this online discussion things since c. 1984--I do tend to load my post up with lots of qualifiers & such. So many people still rush to assume the worst instead of the best.)
(Grumpy old man rant: Sometimes I think I was the last person to read the nettiquette before posting. Heck, how sad is it that I learned to assume bona fides from a document on the net instead of in school? & I even took 3 years of Latin. (^_^))
When discussing a point, I'm not going to load my prose up with lots of extraneous text in order to provide a balanced view. That would merely obscure the point.
(Although, actually--having been at this online discussion things since c. 1984--I do tend to load my post up with lots of qualifiers & such. So many people still rush to assume the worst instead of the best.)
(Grumpy old man rant: Sometimes I think I was the last person to read the nettiquette before posting. Heck, how sad is it that I learned to assume bona fides from a document on the net instead of in school? & I even took 3 years of Latin. (^_^))
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