I make my own.

Quote from: WarthurNote that for the Pundit being snobby about other people's games is merely a symptom of Swinery, not the root cause. By the Pundit's defintion, the first step on the road to Swinery isn't denigrating other people's games, it's ascribing any importance or "meaningfulness" to RPGs at all.

In other words, this isn't a subjective thing about relative importance or unimportance. If you ascribe any meaning to games whatever, you are at the very least a proto-Swine if not a full-blown Swine.

I don't necessarily agree with the Pundit's assessment here, mind, but it's one of the more striking impressions I took away from the debate.

Call me crazy, but I'm disagreeing with Pundy on the definition.  I get what he's saying, but he makes the act of swinery something based on what kind of meaning/pleasure/enjoyment/importance some people get out of their games.  I think that's a mistake.

Look, I don't care if Tony wants to play Pixie Sticks: The Powdering with Mr. Edwards so that they can tackle the meangingful subject of sugar in kids diets.  And if they say they want to use DitV for its resolution because that will facilitate the kind of difficult decisions (Apples or Bullseyes for dessert?) they will have to face.  Bully for them.  And I'm not making that example up to be dergatory.  I'm making it up as an extreme example of someone playing  game for reasons that are so foreign to me it's alien.

But I would not make a value judgement on the importance or meaning they give it as long as they don't start saying d20 is not a real RPG because it doesn't support the ability to make a Pixie Sticks: The Powdering story they way they think it should.

I get what pundit hates - a kind of faux intellectualism that pervades theory discussions.  That's going to happen to any discussion of that nature. Either that or the angsty-nobody-understands-me behavior. To me, however, he has it backwards.  Those are the symptom of people trying to dismiss other games and play styles without being seen as assholes, not the other way around.

Which is why a part of me thinks the whole thing was a marketing ploy driven by a true disdain for a certain kind of gaming (not "role" playing enough to be real RPGers). And the faux grad student approach was to lend it an air of respectability; to obfuscate; to conceal that disdain so as to be able to defend it.

Just my take.

Quote from: Malcolm CraigI can confirm that in real life, Tony is a very enthusiastic, excited, engaging (and other positive things starting with 'e') guy, so I doubt his excitement is false!

Cheers
Malcolm

Yeah, he's a regular Mentos commercial.

I cal him "the Freshmaker".

Quote from: Thanatos02The problem with the whole argument is that one can define Swine to mean whatever you need it to mean.

That is not the problem. The problem is that the whole swine/anti-swine divide only exists on the internet. It only exists in the minds of people who've uploaded their brains and lives and experiences onto a message board and fight their imaginary wars in fucking pixelspace. None of this is real.

The actual reality as most of us--and all of the people I care to interact with--experience it looks totally different. Yesterday I was listening to the godzilla gaming podcast, one of whose hosts I happen to know.

At one point he recommends Carry, one of the most swinesque RPGs out there, but so persuasively that he almost won me over.

At another point, a propos filling new wine into old wineskins, he suggests running Twilight 2000 not at the grunt level but at the division level. You're in charge of 1000s of soldiers in postapoc Poland: now what do you do? Run home? Liberate Krakow?

And the 2300AD game he's running for us is straightforwardly exploratory.

So, right there you have a guy who has no problem shifting from swine to field marshal Settembrini to deliberately low-key sim at the drop of a hat.

The point being not that he's exceptional but that he's normal. A whole bunch of us are like that. That shouldn't be forgotten as we sit here, "commenting" on the "debate" between these weirdos.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThat is not the problem. The problem is that the whole swine/anti-swine divide only exists on the internet. It only exists in the minds of people who've uploaded their brains and lives and experiences onto a message board and fight their imaginary wars in fucking pixelspace. None of this is real.

The actual reality as most of us--and all of the people I care to interact with--experience it looks totally different. Yesterday I was listening to the godzilla gaming podcast, one of whose hosts I happen to know.

At one point he recommends Carry, one of the most swinesque RPGs out there, but so persuasively that he almost won me over.

At another point, a propos filling new wine into old wineskins, he suggests running Twilight 2000 not at the grunt level but at the division level. You're in charge of 1000s of soldiers in postapoc Poland: now what do you do? Run home? Liberate Krakow?

And the 2300AD game he's running for us is straightforwardly exploratory.

So, right there you have a guy who has no problem shifting from swine to field marshal Settembrini to deliberately low-key sim at the drop of a hat.

The point being not that he's exceptional but that he's normal. A whole bunch of us are like that. That shouldn't be forgotten as we sit here, "commenting" on the "debate" between these weirdos.

Amen - which is why I don't base my definition of Swine (if I was backed into a corner and told I had to give one or spend six months in solitary) on anything to do with what games or play styles people have.

Quote from: James J SkachAmen - which is why I don't base my definition of Swine

My definition of Swine: pretentious people.

Now those I do tend to annihilate.

"Story games" would be far better served without the internet. If you just walked into the LGS and saw those games without being aware of the whole baggage of it all, you'd be far more open to trying them out.

As it is, I see that rack in the store, and I have to make a real effort not to run in the opposite direction.

The new Pistols thread is so awesome, it has garners 13 posts here for every one there!

I'm reserving my thoughts until more posts are made there except for one thought.

"Swine" works better as an adjective than a noun.

As a noun, I just like to go with the simple "Pig".

Quote from: JamesV"Swine" works better as an adjective than a noun.

How 'bout as a gerund?

!i!

You mean as in "Dude, I just got the best Story Game ever! Anyone wanna play Pretention: The Swining?"

More like, "Imaginary War: the Swining", but yes, very close.  Gerunds are funny auf Anglais.

!i!

I'm just laughing at Pundits "it's just a fucking game" comment.  This from a guy who has based his entire popularity off of gaming.  So obviously he is a living example of the idea that it's more than just a game.  Really if it was truly 'just a game' then he wouldn't be here running a forum, running a gaming centric blog and argueing the greatness of his system of choice over anothers system of choice.

Ah well there's my two cents.

Peter, that's exactly right, and I've called him on that in the past myself.

Quote from: peteramthorI'm just laughing at Pundits "it's just a fucking game" comment.  This from a guy who has based his entire popularity off of gaming.  So obviously he is a living example of the idea that it's more than just a game.  Really if it was truly 'just a game' then he wouldn't be here running a forum, running a gaming centric blog and argueing the greatness of his system of choice over anothers system of choice.

Ah well there's my two cents.

If a gang didn't allow people into a public basketball court anymore, would you tell your kids to suck it up because "it's just a fucking game?" Or would you act to expel the gang from the neighborhood?

Dude.  I was just about to post a reply to that, but...I mean, seriously.  "A gang"?

You see?  This is why so many of us call this whole "War Against the Swine" thing paranoid hysteria.

!i!