Quote from: noisms;565661I love these conversations.

Have you checked around the hobby lately? Most GMs of 'traditional' RPGs are frustrated novelist shit heads who plot out the entire story arc of every campaign and adventure in advance. They design villains and quests and create set-piece fights and narrowly constrain outcomes. There is far more obsession with 'story' amongst D&D players in the modern age than there is amongst people at story-games.

Blame Dragonlance, blame 2nd edition or whatever, but it's been the state of play in traditional RPGs since at the very least 1989. Anybody who claims that story games are not RPGs because they are "about stories rather than about the game" has had their head up their own arse for at least 23 years.

This was actually my point. You don't even need to have something planned out in advance, really, all you got to have to turn D&D into a "story" game is one motherfucking GMPC.

Beyond that, I've been here since 2006 and the conversation has never moved past: Swine, Batpenis, GNS, Lizard Folk are covertly taking over the hobby. fucking ever.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;565664I just know I'm going to regret asking this, but...

the fuck is grognards.txt? I see it mentioned a lot, and I've gathered it has something to do with Something Awful. Other than that... no clue.

So, anyone up for a quick recap? You know, just for us newbs?

It's a thread devoted to posting grog quotes from B.T., Benoist, the Pundit and half a dozen other... guys, spiced up with any kind of creepy sex related RPG stuff that the posters can find. The only problem I have with it is that it's very repetitive, much like many of its targets.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;565664I just know I'm going to regret asking this, but...

the fuck is grognards.txt? I see it mentioned a lot, and I've gathered it has something to do with Something Awful. Other than that... no clue.

So, anyone up for a quick recap? You know, just for us newbs?

A giant thread (or more precisely, a series of threads: current version apparently here) over at the Something Awful forums picking the worst of our community: racism, homophobia, misogyny or just particularly vitriolic displays of nerdrage. TheRPGsite is a common source of grognards.txt material, though we share that "honor" with ENWorld and sundry other boards and blogs. They even have a tumblr and a podcast where they read some opf the best/worst posts out loud to the sound of Bach (I shit you not).

therpgsite and 4chan are considered cheating by the posters at grog.txt. these days, like shooting fish in a barrel.

Quote from: Gib;565675This was actually my point. You don't even need to have something planned out in advance, really, all you got to have to turn D&D into a "story" game is one motherfucking GMPC.

Beyond that, I've been here since 2006 and the conversation has never moved past: Swine, Batpenis, GNS, Lizard Folk are covertly taking over the hobby. fucking ever.

The way some RPGers organise themselves is sort of reminiscent of those left-wing revolutionary cliques who are at the absolute extreme of human political thought, and in a tiny minority to boot, and yet manage to divide themselves into even smaller groups who despise each other more than anything else. Like those Jewish revolutionaries in The Life of Brian.

I run a game of straight-up classic D&D right now, after closing up a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign, but in the past year have also played Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Ghost/Echo, and other games from the forge and story-games. So I think I'm fairly well placed to say IT IS THE SAME HOBBY.

Quote from: noisms;565689The way some RPGers organise themselves is sort of reminiscent of those left-wing revolutionary cliques who are at the absolute extreme of human political thought, and in a tiny minority to boot, and yet manage to divide themselves into even smaller groups who despise each other more than anything else. Like those Jewish revolutionaries in The Life of Brian.

I run a game of straight-up classic D&D right now, after closing up a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign, but in the past year have also played Lady Blackbird, Apocalypse World, Ghost/Echo, and other games from the forge and story-games. So I think I'm fairly well placed to say IT IS THE SAME HOBBY.

The whole phenomenon, and to a lesser extent the reaction people get when they ask the 'wrong' sorts of questions about AD&D 1e, reminds me of something I learned long ago: when you're mad you are the center of the universe, everything revolves around you and your anger. If you like the taste of self-importance, you gots to have something to be mad about. Forever.

Quote from: The Butcher;565679and a podcast where they read some opf the best/worst posts out loud to the sound of Bach (I shit you not).

...what...

Quote from: Gib;565685therpgsite and 4chan are considered cheating by the posters at grog.txt. these days, like shooting fish in a barrel.

Eh the more of their lives they waste the funnier it gets as far as I'm concerned. Its like a cry for help, I just want to give them my spare change to help buy hooch to fuel their ongoing capering for my amusement. And if that makes me part of the problem, well that's just how I roll.

Quote from: noisms;565689So I think I'm fairly well placed to say IT IS THE SAME HOBBY.

My pendulous nutsatchel it is.

Dude, nobody posting multiple times a day on an RPG forum gets to accuse anyone else of wasting their life.

Quote from: The Traveller;565571That's an excellent explanation of the issue, I wish I had seen it when I first stumbled on the idea of "storygames" a couple of years back, would have saved myself a lot of hassle.

Basically roleplaying games are when you are the character, storygames are like a top down third person view of the game. Characters are pieces on a board, players operate many of them, and there is no GM effectively, since players are also involved in events beyond their characters' cognisance.

For me its not just the roleplaying that gets killed by storygaming, its surprise - its literally impossible to have surprise in storygames, and even if it were it wouldn't matter as you have far less attachment to your characters anyway. No surpise: no adventure, by definition.

I think its the fundamentally "godlike" perspective of storygames that attracts the kind of intensely self involved narccissistic sociopaths who adhere to these games. This also explains the shrieks whenever storygame threads are moved to "other games", a narccissistic sociopath would view that as a direct attack on their all-important self image of godlike status, relegating them to second stringers. The reality of course is that its just another friggin forum.

Well I've wandered a bit, but anyway that's my take on it.

Are you mental? Have you even played a "story game"? There's no surprise? What the fuck? That's just so far from the truth that you are, actually, just making stuff up.

As for this thing about "you are the character" - pull the other one. That makes me think you haven't played a traditional RPG either. Most true players of OD&D barely even give their character a name before they get to 2nd level. They're exacty like "pieces on the board".

My take on it is that you don't have a clue what you're talking about and are merely spewing baseless nonsense out of your arse. Which is an even worse waste of time than what people on 4chan do.

Quote from: Gib;565695Dude, nobody posting multiple times a day on an RPG forum gets to accuse anyone else of wasting their life.

Its the kind of behaviour you'd expect from late thirties/early forties types for whom life didn't work out quite the way they thought it would, so they're seeking validation via their mother's computer through nailing their flag to whatever mast will take it.

Dance monkeyboys, dance for The Traveller, maybe you'll eat tonight.

And maybe you won't.

The hurr durr barrier has just been breached.

Quote from: Gib;565709The hurr durr barrier has just been breached.

See this is why you never get quoted on grognards.txt. You really have to put your back into it, strike a chord. Run of the mill trollery is just pushing out product, man.

Trolling you would be completely fucking redundant.

Quote from: Gib;565712Trolling you would be completely fucking redundant.

You're learning.

Quote from: noisms;565698Are you mental? Have you even played a "story game"? There's no surprise? What the fuck? That's just so far from the truth that you are, actually, just making stuff up.

As for this thing about "you are the character" - pull the other one. That makes me think you haven't played a traditional RPG either. Most true players of OD&D barely even give their character a name before they get to 2nd level. They're exacty like "pieces on the board".

My take on it is that you don't have a clue what you're talking about and are merely spewing baseless nonsense out of your arse. Which is an even worse waste of time than what people on 4chan do.

I think he's just hyperfocused on the bit about (some) storygames he doesn't like. There was a bit of so-called Forge theory called "Stances" -- pawn, actor, author, director -- which was kind of useful. The only problem with it was that the Forgeoisie became extremely anti-pawn stance (the "pieces on the board" approach you mention) and overly enthusiastic about director stance, to the point of demanding that almost all games be 75 to 90% collaborative world-building. Granted, not even the Forgeoisie define "storygaming" as "predominately director stance", but it's a pretty damn common focus.

Me, I'm OK with light director or author stance in some games. I'd even allow a player to occasionally create some element of the world in standard OD&D. But I tend to dislike mechanics that draw attention away from the fiction and direct it to system mastery or metagame elements instead. Like, I'm OK with occasionally using some kind of counter to determine when an event occurs in the game, but I'm against games written so that most of the player activity is about taking control of that counter and coming up with strategies to move it in the direction you want. I don't want to play poker to determine whether my character gets to be the center of the story, or whether it's a tragedy or a comedy.