The Dungeon Master: A short story in the New Yorker

[Wycen]

I read about a third of the way thru and then started skimming. What am I supposed to make of it? Don't know, don't care.

And I didn't get the cartoon either.

Whatever.

 

[Mallus]

I finally read the story, in the actual glossy-paper-and-ink magazine, while on a plane to Reno last week. Thought it was a terrific piece, outside of few nitpicks.

(the author *almost* get's a way w/that "nothing is harder than feelings" line... almost... it's just too clever, too workshop-perfect)

Good stuff.

 

[PulpCruciFiction]

The folks at Story Games miss the author's implicit criticism of privilege's effect on the imagination (and identify with its limits); they only detect Lypsite's rough rendering of the damaged Dungeon Master and his group. They reproduce Lypsite's own limitations as a writer while ignoring the piece's subtler strengths, because exalting the shallow -- reducing complex contexts to simple codes -- is a basic part of indie dogma.

Can you elaborate on this a little? Your point about RPGs that devolve into power-trip fantasies of privileged people who think they're entitled to run things being less interesting is well taken, but I'm wondering how you see that as being tied to indie game design philosophy.

 

[Wik]

Maybe I'm just crazy here, but I didn't even really think it was about D&D. I mean, they played D&D and all, but it was more a story about sadness, loss, and, really, the losers.

He doesn't like playing in Eric's group has nothing to do with the system, or how the game was run. In the context of the story, Eric's game IS better, and this has nothing to do with GM styles or anything. It's the fact that the people our protagonist is playing with are normal, middle-of-the-road people... which is not what draws him to the game.

I dunno. My two cents.