What are you reading in 2025?

[Voadam]

because he would have been expected to be working against the players'/characters' interests;

I wouldn't say that it was because he was expected to be adversarially against their interests, rather that he was expected to be a neutral referee as the players gamed in the world. The ref breaking the rules in making their calls can be an issue.

 

[prabe]

I wouldn't say that it was because he was expected to be adversarially against their interests, rather that he was expected to be a neutral referee as the players gamed in the world. The ref breaking the rules in making their calls can be an issue.

I don't think people in the Pleistocene would have objected to the GM making an adjustment to a roll that was in the players' interests. The main objection I see to it, personally, is it interfering with their ability to get how the world works--but considering how little of the rules the players were supposed to know, then, that seems like a pretty thin complaint.

Anyway, back to books!

 

[trappedslider]

so I got my inter library loan of Code name Pale horse and I tried getting into it but It didn't really jive with me. I made it past the chapters of his undercover operations in some of the other groups like motorcycle clubs and such but after that I got bored with it lol.

 

[Autumnal]

Gaming inherited arguments from wargaming, science fiction fandom, and constructed language fandom, among others. Oh, and reenactment fandom. And…

As Clive Barker said at the opening of Weaveworld:

Nothing ever begins.

There is no moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.

The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.

Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.

Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter, woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world.

It must be arbitrary then, the place at which we choose to embark.

Somewhere between a past half forgotten and a future as yet only glimpsed.

 

[prabe]

Gaming inherited arguments from wargaming, science fiction fandom, and constructed language fandom, among others. Oh, and reenactment fandom. And…

As Clive Barker said at the opening of Weaveworld:

Barker's long had a gift for starting stories. Sometimes he gets mislaid on his way to finishing them, of course. His opening to The Great and Secret Show is similarly brilliant, and it's difficult to imagine a better start to a horror story than "There is no delight the equal of dread."

 

[trappedslider]

it's difficult to imagine a better start to a horror story than "There is no delight the equal of dread."

Picky any math book and look at the introduction

 

[Autumnal]

I will have more to say about this book later, but the end of chapter 54 and alll of chapter 55 of Christopher Ruocchio’s The Demon In White achieves Tolkien’s eucatastrophe in a way I haven’t encountered in a good while.

As Tolkien defines it in “On Fairy-Stories”, the eucatastrophe is the joy that comes unsought, un-hoped for, as poignant as tragic collapse but its opposite. In Tolkien’s own work, the fall of Barad-Dur and the arrival of the Eagles are examples.

Well, something happens in the middle of of The Demon In White that made me cry some tears of delight. This morning, I shed some tears of misery over aspects of Mom’s condition and care, and tears of frustration and anger over aspects of the crisis in Los Angeles. This chapter washed it all away for a little while, and even after the immediate impact faded, it’s left me feeling better.

No, I’m absolutely not going to tell you what it is. You can shoot me a private message if you need to know, and let me know if you’ve read the first book, Empire Of Silence, or not. If you haven’t, it won’t make sense anyway. Just…wow. What a delight.

 

[Mannahnin]

I can see that. Seems that in the Pleistocene, the GM ignoring a die roll or considering it to be one higher or lower or whatever would have been seen as cheating, because he would have been expected to be working against the players'/characters' interests; here in the Holocene, though, it might be more a matter of taste regarding whether the GM is expected to have a story in mind, or maybe even just a desire for any PC deaths to be relatively meaningful.

Interesting that a player doing any of that will probably still be considered to be cheating.

Yes, IME players cheating on rolls was a much bigger topic of concern back in the day. I still occasionally encountered it with younger players into the 2000s.

Gary explicitly endorses the DM fudging rolls in the 1979 DMG, in the interest of a more fun session. The specific example I'm thinking of is describing an expedition where the PCs have a long wilderness journey and have planned and equipped well for the dungeon at the end of it, and the possibility of that being derailed by a particularly bad random encounter roll in the wilderness. Gary advises pretending the encounter roll never occurred. I think Gary was the source of a later quote which we also see occasionally in old school circles about "The DM rolls the dice principally for the sound they make".

I remember when I was a young newbie learning to DM and assiduously reading BECMI and AD&D, coming to the conclusion that I had to fudge rolls behind the screen or the game would be too lethal. Of course, this was many years before I would learn the virtues of morale checks, reaction rolls, and rolling in the open.

 

[Koloth]

Rereading the Posleen books by John Ringo. Recently finished the current last book in Rebecca Yarros dragon flyer series. Got picked for jury duty a couple weeks ago. Turned out that one of the other prospective jurors is a published author. That book currently on order. https://www.amazon.com/Spaced-Out-Skid-Steer/dp/B0BP4CD23V
Figured I would give the local author a try. Oddly, the defense attorney is also a budding author but his book won't be out for a couple of years. Might show up in the "What are you reading in 2027" thread. Who knew that jury duty was a source of book recommendations?

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm still on the first chapter of Shared Fantasy (just reading casually on lunch breaks so far), but there's a great bit talking about the APA zines, and Gygax's feuds with them, with a Gary quote I don't remember reading before, expanding on and clarifying the venom he expressed in a famous The Dragon editorial. This comes up in the larger context of establishing the criteria for gamers being a subculture/subsociety, one of which requires internal communication vehicles for propagation of ideas and cultural norms.

Footnote 25: The quality of these magazines is a matter of heated debate. E. Gary Gygax has been the most forceful of their critics, feeling they harm the hobby. He comments: "Now APAs are generally beneath contempt, for they typify the lowest form of vanity press. There one finds pages and pages of banal chatter and inept writing from persons incapable of creating anything which is publishable elsewhere" (Gygax 1978b:16). Gygax explains the motivations for the attacks as stemming from a desire to have them control their excesses:

" I took out pretty heavily after fanzines and APAs because I'd really like to see them squared away. If hatred for my attacks upon them makes them clean up their acts, good. Then I think it's worthwhile... The way that they're currently structured now I think that they're quite destructive because all they're doing is propagating material which is generally detrimental to the campaign. And if there's one good, useful piece, there's probably nine destructive pieces to more than counterbalance it, and most of the DMs that are going to read it will not be capable of distinguishing what's good and what's bad. This wasn't initially true when the game first came out, 'cause most of the DMs were really top flight, they're sharp people, but the more people you get playing the game, the less discretion they're going to be able to show, the less judgement they'll be able to exercise." [Personal interview]

Fans hold their own in this dispute, painting Gygax as a diabolical figure. An editor of one 'zine returns the fire:

" TSR has claimed the role of protector of quality of fantasy role playing. They threaten legal action on the slightest pretext. They libel the entire hobby of amateur writers on fantasy role playing, many of whom are incapable of publishing anything so bad as Snit's Revenge! [a comical game published by TSR Hobbies], secure in the knowledge that there is no class action libel suit possible. And after crying bitterly how other companies and amateurs are harming fantasy role playing, they publish Snit's Revenge!, doing more harm than all their competitors and all the amateurs combined. It's almost as if the Pope has authorized a Satanic Rite within the Catholic church. He would soon be a pariah. "[Sacks 1979a:2]

When the acrimony is set aside, one recognizes that the apa 'zines do vary considerably in literacy and value. The difference in evaluation derives from the different perspectives of the principals of the debate. Hard-core gamers are interested in the range of variations developed by others, and do not care particularly about the sanctity of the game. Gygax has a product to protect, both in terms of copyright and in terms of the product's good reputation, and as a result wishes to ensure that quality control is maintained.

Aside from the amusement value of seeing a self-serious gamer up in arms over a classic Tom Wham humorous game, I appreciate how this clarifies/confirms and Gary acknowledges that his opinion on the APAs changed over time. Though I'm not 100% buying his rationalization.