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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Autumnal" data-source="post: 9046304" data-attributes="member: 6671663">In the 1990s, the GEnie network - one of the self-contained services like America Online and CompuServe - gave free memberships to members of writers’ groups like Mystery Weiters of America, Romance Writers’ Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Association. They wanted to give GEnie a unique feature, and did; it was also the first time online for many authors. So you could hang out with writers (and editors and publishers) you liked, and watch them talk (and argue) with friends and colleagues about all kinds of stuff. Nothing like it since. Sorry for the long preamble, but I wanted to set the context. As you might imagine, professional writers think about writing, a lot. Most have tried a bunch of different methods on the way to finding what worked for them. Once they did, some keep experimenting and evolving their methods, while others stand pat. Out of several such threads came a pithy summation by, I think, Richard Kadrey:Work you love was made by methods you hate. And right now, someone is using the methods you love to produce work you’ll hate. The point, which I agree with, is that it’s a fandom trap for readers (by extension, any audience) to let obsessions with method overshadow engagement with the actual result. If a thing you love emerged from methods you hate…that means only that its creator isn’t you and did what’s appropriate for them. The result is just as capable of delighting and inspiring you to work in a way that’s good for you. Inspiration is like that. In that spirit, the last however many pages of this thread are making me wonder - I’m thinking out loud here, and thinking something I haven’t before - whether the campaign log isn’t the right starting point. All our actual play is first drafts, but we can at least see the experience of enjoyable play (or its lack, if the game didn’t work out) and go from there to what worked. I miss Glenn a lot, and I think you’re drawing lessons he’d be glad of here. But while he was much less an advocate for specific options than rec.games.frp.advocacy or the Forge, there’s a distinct element of shittalking powergamers and wishing they’d go away in the Fourfold Way. (I’ve never been to MIT, but having seen open gaming at Caltech, I can understand why. Still, his take on the style really stands out from his relaxed accommodation of the others.)</blockquote>

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