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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5371794" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm going to risk a political analogy.  In politics, particularly in the 20th century, one of the overriding issues is the idea of 'statism'.  That is to say, people in the 20th century began to feel that virtually all the problems experienced by humanity where the result of dysfunctional government, and as a result much of the 20th century became a prolonged argument over the best way to organize a government.  Everyone regardless of political inclination, from libertarian to socialist, from conservative to liberal, framed all of the world's problems as a problem of law and implied that these problems could be fixed or at least alleviated if only the right governmental structure was adopted.   Personally, I find all of this bunk that only shows to me how little either the libertarians or the socialists understand about humanity.   Please don't hear this and imagine you can explain to me how your particular government system fixes everything.   Not only have I already heard it before from more famous and influential people than you, but this isn't the place.I bring this up only because I want to use the definition of statism to reference what I think the real problem with PnP RPGs has been over the last 15-20 years.  Every one in this argument is engaging in a parallel form of 'systemism' and imaging that the real issue is that the systems generally in use are wrong, and that what really needs to happen to attract new players or to revitalize the RPG scene is to adopt new systems.  It just so happens that this thread is filled with people who think the problem is that we got away from the 'good old systems of the past' and that its these new fangled systems that are driving people from the hobby for whatever reasons ("Too much math!", says one linked to blogger).  To me, this is all wrong and self-evidently wrong, though I don't much expect anyone to listen to me.The real problem with the PnP RPG scene right now is not enough Game Masters.  In the linked to blog, Dave Morris attributes the success of the campaign to the system being used.   This is entirely wrong.  The success of the campaign is due to the imagination and effort being put into it by the Game Master.   The system is irrelevant.  They could be using just about any system whatsoever, and the game would be fun and the people involved would be eager for the "the face-to-face experience and real immersion in the story that an RPG can give you" pretty much regardless of the system involved.   The game is succeeding not because of the lack of rules, but despite them.  Freedom from the rules isn't an old school thing, because old school could be as cramped and heavy handed as anything stodgedly insisting that 'damn it, wizards can't use swords, clerics can't use daggers, and halflings can't be thieves'.   Freedom from the rules is a Game Mastery thing.   Emmersion is mainly the result of system, it's the result of Game Mastery.   Flights of imagination aren't mainly the results of rules, they are the result of Game Mastery.  So long as people go around looking for the simple solution to land in their laps in the form of the perfect set of rules, then the hobby will continue to wither.  The problem isn't with the rules.  If the hobby is withering, look in the mirror.   If you don't like the fact that you can't find a game, start one.   And if that's too much work, then we've in fact discovered or problem - we live in a world where the culture is such that it doesn't create good game masters any more.</blockquote>

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