Reinventing Roleplaying Games

[Psion]

No, dammit, it doesn't meet with my approval. When it limits its potential audience, when it limits choice of action for all intents and purposes (and don't tell me it doesn't), when it gives people a skewed vision of what it's all about, and all that it could be, I disapprove.

You prefer it as a game. Fine, I hope you have tons of fun with it. But don't tell me I have to.

As far as I am seeing it, you are the one making prescriptions for the hobby as a whole.

Don't tell me I can't point out the many and various flaws that, as a game, keep it from a greater audience.

I'm not sure retuning RPGs to "appeal to a greater audience" is a good thing for me. Doing so has a tendency to alienate existing fans with no guarantee of bringing in many new fans.

Just look at the recently demised Marvel RPG. What a mess that was. It had almost zero appeal to me. Give me the old TSR Marvel RPG any day of the week.

I also think back to when they (slightly different venue here) tried to get B5 crusade to appeal to a wider audience, and the execs suggest a character on the show that was a space slut out to have new sexual experiences with aliens. Bleah! Things like this make me starkly aware that what works for the wider (and dumber, really) audience doesn't work for me.

Might I suggesting finding an amatuer theater group if you don't want "G" in your "RP"? As for me, I like it just where it is.

That may be a bit extreme; you don't need to leave the hobby to find what you are looking for. There are lots of people (self described narrativists and rules light fans) who don't particularly like a lot of mechanics. Hook up with some of them. LARP might also do the trick for you.

But then, your last thread you started seemed to imply you wanted simulationism too. So I'm not sure what to tell you. Whatever the case, I'd suggest finding a game that fits what you want, and finding a group to play it with. There is a lot of variety in the hobby, but trying to change the hobby as a whole -- especially when many other gamers are happy where they are -- is tilting at windmills.

But you really should know this. IIRC, I remember seeing you a long time ago on usenet. You've been around the hobby a while. You know the score. Now you know what you want. Find people who agree with you instead of trying to change those who don't and you should be much happier.

 

[Psion]

Al, come on back to rgfd. Burke has gone, and we need the sport.

As long as the Brown stain remains of RGFD, I wouldn't see a reason to go back.

 

[hong]

As long as the Brown stain remains of RGFD, I wouldn't see a reason to go back.

That's "Al" as in Al Kellogg, not Al Kohler, of course.

Speaking of which, I love your columns in the Sydney Morning Herald, mang.

 

[Psion]

That's "Al" as in Al Kellogg, not Al Kohler, of course.

I know. I was speaking as a fellow reformed RFGD-ite, not as a fellow "Al".

Speaking of which, I love your columns in the Sydney Morning Herald, mang.

Thanks. I'm still waiting for a check.

(It's pretty sad, really. Someone else with my name had to be a news figure. Google me and my first entry is on the second page...)

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

falls to his knees

Seriously, though, I have read both threads now and I am still confused. I feel like I am at church being taught about my sinful ways.

I agree and I am giving up on any of mythusmage's threads I think. All I see are these grand proclamations of gaming doom and that if we follow him we can be led to enlightenment and salvation. Of course like any good preacher, he does not give us any specifics as to how to go about it, he just promises that the Word of Mythusmage is coming.

Repent now so you can be open to the new Word! That new Word is "Hobby!" (hmm, anytime I think of hobby I keep conjuring up images of bird-carving and fly-tying).

I'm no shrink and I've never met the person behind mythusmage, but his rantings about the Game behind RPGs makes me wonder if he was attacked by a game as a child and has devloped an irrational fear of all games...

 

[Tom Cashel]

That's why I propose to reinvent, not rename.

Does this reinvention involve any concrete suggestions, or just metaphorical claptrap like "let's use this turbine to power a jet, not a biplane"?

 

[takyris]

Y'know, this writing reads familiar. It sounds almost exactly like this guy in the writing community who talks really big about making paradigm shifts and getting rid of all the old stale stuff and really reinventing science fiction so that it'll gain huge mass-market appeal. He is always playing his cards close to his chest, always dangling tidbits that don't really mean anything and get promptly shot down by people (although he defends them as "Part of something that makes much better sense in context"), and always talking about what's just around the corner.

He's been doing this for years now. Periodically, he gets a website or anthology going, gets a few stories up there, and then gets bored and lets it die, while always claiming that it's just retinkering in order to make it even better.

He's never really accomplished anything. He doesn't even write anymore. He's attempting to build a reputation for himself by declaring what he's going to do.

Also, he's really patronizing. There's a lot of "Hate to say it, but..." and "Listen, kids..." and stuff like that, the kind of rhetoric that attempts to set the playing field so that he's in the position of authority.

http://www.s1ngularity.net/

Knock yourself out.

Coming from my own writing angle, I realized that I went through a transition awhile back. I started out writing stuff that was like the stuff I wanted to read -- goofy adventure stories. Then, as I got better at writing, I tried to be original and inventive and new and different, and I wrote a whole bunch of anti-stories -- heroic stories from the point of view of the bad guy, stories where the hero completely loses or fails to change, stories entirely devoid of dialogue, stories that were too deep for anyone who wasn't me to understand, and so on. I didn't sell for awhile.

And then I realized that I was writing stuff I wouldn't actually want to read. I was writing in an attempt to please other writers, as opposed to trying to please readers. When I took my skills, which had indeed developed during that literary-snob phase, and went back to writing stuff that was fun for readers, I started selling again.

MythusMage, it sounds like you're trying to make a game that most beginning roleplayers wouldn't want to play, a game that only the roleplaying snobs would actually like. I could be wrong -- you haven't given enough actual information to make any kind of definitive statement -- but you might want to consider it.

 

[Bards R Us]

Y'know, this writing reads familiar. It sounds almost exactly like this guy in the writing community who talks really big about making paradigm shifts and getting rid of all the old stale stuff and really reinventing science fiction so that it'll gain huge mass-market appeal. He is always playing his cards close to his chest, always dangling tidbits that don't really mean anything and get promptly shot down by people (although he defends them as "Part of something that makes much better sense in context"), and always talking about what's just around the corner.

He's been doing this for years now. Periodically, he gets a website or anthology going, gets a few stories up there, and then gets bored and lets it die, while always claiming that it's just retinkering in order to make it even better.

He's never really accomplished anything. He doesn't even write anymore. He's attempting to build a reputation for himself by declaring what he's going to do.

Also, he's really patronizing. There's a lot of "Hate to say it, but..." and "Listen, kids..." and stuff like that, the kind of rhetoric that attempts to set the playing field so that he's in the position of authority.

http://www.s1ngularity.net/

Knock yourself out.

Coming from my own writing angle, I realized that I went through a transition awhile back. I started out writing stuff that was like the stuff I wanted to read -- goofy adventure stories. Then, as I got better at writing, I tried to be original and inventive and new and different, and I wrote a whole bunch of anti-stories -- heroic stories from the point of view of the bad guy, stories where the hero completely loses or fails to change, stories entirely devoid of dialogue, stories that were too deep for anyone who wasn't me to understand, and so on. I didn't sell for awhile.

And then I realized that I was writing stuff I wouldn't actually want to read. I was writing in an attempt to please other writers, as opposed to trying to please readers. When I took my skills, which had indeed developed during that literary-snob phase, and went back to writing stuff that was fun for readers, I started selling again.

MythusMage, it sounds like you're trying to make a game that most beginning roleplayers wouldn't want to play, a game that only the roleplaying snobs would actually like. I could be wrong -- you haven't given enough actual information to make any kind of definitive statement -- but you might want to consider it.

For myself, I'm happy with RPGs being comfortable in its own niche. Would I like it to be more popular? Oh yeah. But I could care less for making it "mainstream".

 

[Bards R Us]

Which is why I'm here. I've got ideas, but before they can become part on an hypotheses they must be vetted first. Where better than here? (Yes, I could've posted this to RPG.net or The Forge, but the posting paradigm on those boards seems to be more along the lines of 'win at all costs' and nothing like a fair evaluation of the merits of the case. With a few reactionary exceptions, when it comes to proposals such as mine the conversation tends to be more civil and more constructive here.)

Just mentioning the words "d20" or "DnD" on those sites is enough for people to pull out the pitchforks and torches

 

[Crothian]

Just mentioning the words "d20" or "DnD" on those sites is enough for people to pull out the pitchforks and torches

Why would people pull out a card game when comfronted by a RPG??

http://www.greenronin.com/card_board/torches_pitchforks.php