Quote from: Werekoala;389114Also, yes, I have met and gamed with smelly neckbeards. One of my friends is borderline, in fact, but that's just the way he is after all these years - he ain't gonna change. IT nerd, you know the type.

Then there's times like this: A regular showed up at the store to browse for an hour or so  - and he smelled, noticeably.
That was very unusual.
 My face must have scrunched up .
 He noticed my reasction and I discreetly informed him that he had an odor and that he doesn't usually doesn't have an offensive ...um smell.
His reaction? "Oh man, I'm sorry. I slept at the girlfriend's place last night I didn't get a chance to shower this morning. "
He wasn't lying - I knew he had recently started dating someone. He was also honestly apologetic about it.


- Ed C.

Quote from: RPGPundit;389043.................
Not a huge surprise given how gaming has intentionally driven itself further from the mainstream of normal society at a steady pace. ...................


RPGPundit

I know I've said a version of this in other threads - however.....

Pundit, you're wrong on this one.

 If anything RPGs and gaming is actually closer to the mainstream or has even merged with it.

More and more people have either tried D&D/RPGs or have been in a campaign at some point in their lives.

The problem crops up when some news media and some gamers do not recognize this fact and are still reacting to things based on the out-of-date cliches and stereotypes.

When I see "overweight neckbeards" in the store, they are not the RPG players and purchasers - they are the miniatures gamers for the most part. We're talking the ones that play WARHAMMER 40K, WARMACHINE, BATTLETECH, Star Wars Miniatures, etc..


Most of the D&D and Role playing gamers are clean, mostly normal looking people with good hygiene.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Seanchai;389163You're right. Mea culpa. My apologies.

Seanchai

Thank you, man.

Quote from: jeff37923;389140Had to deal with a creep who acted like this last year. Had a woman join our Labyrinth Lord group

Wait. You've been playing LL lately?

Quote from: mhensley;389175So that's what happened to him.  I knew he had some kind of melt down, but I didn't know the details.  Still, this sort of thing happens outside of games all the time too.

It probably does, but what I am willing to write about is the edited version of events. It got extremely creepy for everyone involved.

Quote from: Benoist;389190Wait. You've been playing LL lately?

Yeah....

Quote from: jeff37923;389199Yeah....

Sorry. Just came back from the kids' grad so, my brains might just be dead right now and I don't remember. How is it working for you?

Quote from: Benoist;389202Sorry. Just came back from the kids' grad so, my brains might just be dead right now and I don't remember. How is it working for you?

We like it. Works well for our games for the group.

I love the system. It is simple and elegant, is very compatible with B/X, BECMI, and RC. It lets you create a character in about 5 minutes by hand (Look ma! No computer needed!). Seems to be more attractive for casual gamers and useful for pick up games.

I have to admit, a portion of my enthusiasm for Labyrinth Lord may be because I am going through a period of rejecting how common sense and some basic small unit tactics have been replaced with Feats and Powers in 3.5/Pathfinder and 4E in Players I've encountered recently. No amount of awesome special abilities will be able to take the place of some sound planning in game.

Quote from: jeff37923;389213No amount of awesome special abilities will be able to take the place of some sound planning in game.

You know it's bad when they start asking for jars of oil instead of flasks.

Wasn't even running D&D at the time...but at least it lets me know my players are still capable of thinking outside the box.

Older article by Malcolm Sheppard on the same topic.

http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/03/21/where-did-you-go-tabletop-joe/

Quote from: ggroy;389235Older article by Malcolm Sheppard on the same topic.

http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/03/21/where-did-you-go-tabletop-joe/

QuotePeople who just want you to know how much sparkly vampires suck, repeatedly, and use the words “Gygaxian” to describe pulp with extra goalpost shifting, or “Narrativism” to try and jazz up inane Tinkertoy story structures are really boring. Game companies should start ignoring them.

Is he a fucking idiot?  High-school age and early 20-somethings fucking hate Twilight.  All of us do, even the "normal" or "non-gamer" people.  It's a fucking retarded teen girl and middle-aged woman phenomenon.  A flash-fire for a limited demographic, not a cultural marker.  Not exactly within any demographic any type of gaming would attract in the first place.

Talk about being out of touch...

Quote from: RandallS;389171I have to agree. The hobby doesn't benefit from attitudes like those above expressed by people in the industry. I don't even think the industry benefits in the long term. As I've said before the tabletop RPG hobby can survive without the industry, but the tabletop RPG industry can't survive without the hobby. I think attitudes like those you quoted do far more harm to the industry in the long run than all the neckbeards -- real and imagined -- at game stores.

I am more pessimistic about the long-term viability of the broader hobby without an industry to support it, but I have also become less and less generous about the parasitic relationship between the "book collector hobbyist" set and the people who deliver their content stream. It has lead to a distortion of emphases from play to non-play, and from active participation to passive reception.

We should recognise that different people want different degrees of DIY from their hobby, but in the end, it is about sitting down with friends and making up things. Someone on Knights&Knaves once put it as "creativity aid vs. creativity replacement", and I think the people who make games should heavily focus on the former. In the long term, that is the viable model, since the opportunities for passive entertainment have become much more accessible and numerous with the Internet and choose-your-own-content. The question for game companies is "is it a viable model for me?" - and I am pretty sure it is more viable for Paizo than Gareth. It will, of course, always be viable for outfits like Necromancer Games or collectives like the ones who drive Fight On! and Knockspell, at least as long as the social networks which sustain gaming hold strong.

Finally, here is one more remark I have made previously (not my revelation, but I try to live by it) but which I think is also relevant to the argument in this thread: RPGs are games about hospitality and getting together in an age where letting strangers into your personal space, let alone home is becoming a strange event. It is an inherently social hobby; in part I think this is why it magnifies social friction and conflicts between individuals. What gamers should realise, above all, is that they are not that different from the rest of society - they just practice a form of entertainment that requires informal socialisation.

Quote from: Peregrin;389237Is he a fucking idiot?

A pretentious wanker, perhaps, but not an idiot.

This whole thing makes my brain hurt.

Why exactly would anyone who's not in the RPG business want to specifically target RPG gamers? It's not a large demographic, so why focus on it?

GMS's "transmedia" rants seem predicated on the assumption that because RPG companies have the skills to create transmedia products (probably true, at least the ones who have done lots of work with metaplots), this must obviously mean the RPG gamers would make great transmedia customers and would engage actively in transmedia communities etc. Which is such an odd assumption I'm still confused as to how exactly he made it.

Sheppard, on the other hand, is so coy about his example that it's difficult to tell what the hell he's arguing. However, it does again feel a bit like he's making the same mistake as Skarka, and viewing RPGs as being about "delivering world content to consumers" rather than being simply "games". His bizarre side-rant where he lays in to games for being media idiots because they're prepared to talk to game creators directly just confuses things further.

Actually, I think Sheppard is best summed up by the previous post about "firing the fans" when he's all "how can people change to avoid being fired", and the very first response he gets is "actually, I don't think the fans care about being fired". Which, of course, they don't. Arguably, sections of the D&D fan base have been fired, repeatedly, which has resulted in the industry shrinking faster than the hobby. The OSR he derides is actually the first attempt to "monetise" that section of the hobby market in years.

Hmm. Now I've stopped to think about it for a while to write this post, the whole thing just seems to be another example in the long history of "RPG Industry fails to understand the difference between the industry and the hobby, and berates gamers for not supporting their business models".

Quote from: Grymbok;389244This whole thing makes my brain hurt.

Why exactly would anyone who's not in the RPG business want to specifically target RPG gamers? It's not a large demographic, so why focus on it?

Actually its VERY large demographic - some few people are starting to recognize that truth.


- Ed C.