Quote from: Nexus;807850this is an era of shame and outrage which is ironically mostly hammered home by cries for inclusiveness, understanding and acceptance.

Ain't that the truth.

Quote from: Ladybird;807855Yeah, I'd agree with that - it's got a clickbait title. I don't feel that detracts from the actual content of the article, though.

Sadly, accurate titling on the internet is a lost art.

I don't think you can say that accurate titling is a lost art. The author/publisher used exactly the titling they intended for their purpose - which was a cynical ploy to gain clicks via scare titles and manufactured controversy.

"Use your White Privilege, Luke."

(thanks to The New Yorker)

I think the big problem is that the internet has validaed the hobby of talking and theorizing about RPGs over and separate from the hobby of playing RPGs, leading to an influx in the RPG online communities of people who don't actually play RPGs and understand them only as a social exercise.

Couple this with the rise in popularity in the school systems of marxist pseudo-feminists and you have online geek communication as it stands.


I hate the term "geek culture" btw. I don't feel that because I happen to play the same game or enjoy the same film or TV as someone else that equals a "culture". Especially when an artform as a whole (like comicbooks) is being equated to single monogamous culture, which would be as absurd as claiming music, as a whole, engenders "music culture", or anyone who reads books is a part of "book culture". There is literally nothing binding together someone who reads Vertigo comics, Strangers in Paradise and Concrete to someone who reads JLA, Superman and Batman or someone who exclusively reads Manga.

In the same vein, every rpg group is a unique entity and a midwestern died-in-the-wool classic D&D group is not going to bear any resemblance to a group in Oregon playing Call of Cthulhu. And that's completely Americano-centric.

Ther eis also, on top of all of this, the WAY too common fallacy that online internet forums are representative of a hobby. My estimate based on experience is that 90% or more of roleplyers have never set foot in an online forum group, let alone become an active poster.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;807786This describes most fandoms really.

I wish that were not so very very true.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;807788In the past I'd say ignore this crap, but I'm becoming more convinced that you can't afford that luxury anymore, because these people are actively trying to run people who don't agree with them out of the hobby. They do that by trying to control the narrative, and silence just concedes the battleground to them.

Welcome to subculture fandom.

Seriously, this is not remotely anything new.  No doubt partisans of gladiatorial combat in Rome believed the paradigms and tribulations of the Colosseum to permeate the entire Empire, if not the entire world.

I'm with Zak S: if the author had written a screed about common RPG tropes that bored him, yay, great, carry on.  But inferring that our weird little hobby's responsible for perpetuating the Great Man myth?  Seriously?  There are only three possibilities: that he's drunk, stupid or trolling us all.  The guy really, badly needs to get laid, stop working the night shift at Kinko's, and move out of his parents' basement.

One of my biggest issues with that article is with their mentioning of the Great Man school of thought.  It's something for historians to debate (inasmuch as there's much debate left to be had), not for gamers to worry about;  you can't bitch about Great Man theory leaking into your game session and bitch about deprotagonization at the same time.

So yeah.  Your Jedi, your Gray Warden, your Spectre, your secret agent, your archmage, your superhero, your whatever?  They're a big deal.  It's not because, historically speaking and in the real world, individual people really alter the course of history all by themselves, it's because in a fucking game, especially one based on certain tropes from popular fiction, individual people do all the time, and, in fact, one could argue that's the whole damned point.

Quote from: Critias;807940One of my biggest issues with that article is with their mentioning of the Great Man school of thought.  It's something for historians to debate (inasmuch as there's much debate left to be had), not for gamers to worry about;  you can't bitch about Great Man theory leaking into your game session and bitch about deprotagonization at the same time.
.

This part of the article has been bugging me more and more. I think part of the issue is that point #1 is really about having a fully realized setting where your PCs actions have impact beyond themselves (so the GM is to encouraged to think about the consequences of their actions on the local villagers for example and eventually the PCs should know about that). This is all reasonable, but I am not sure what it has to do with Great Man Theory. Great Many Theory is about history, not the present, and what the writer is describing is more dealing with your setting's present not its past (in fact there is no real talk of setting history I can see there). I am also getting the contradiction to point to here. Also, it is worth pointing out that Great Man theory is really quite old and not something that has been taken seriously for a long, long time (individuals can still be important, historians just no longer reduce historical causes to the actions of a few great men).

I love it when people who express disdain for broad generalizations use terms like "RPG Culture". I am not part of any geek "culture". My hobby is not my culture. I actually find the term offensive.

Also, I don't understand #1. He wants us to be aware of the Great Man theory and how it is mostly false. Okay? Sure, and magic, lightsabers and Cthulhu aren't real either.

This guy must really hate the hero's journey too.

EDIT: he's coming off like the villain from the Baron Munchausen, who has a war hero (Sting) executed because his greater-than-life actions are impossible to follow by the regular troops and are thus poor for morale.

Quote from: Necrozius;807952EDIT: he's coming off like the villain from the Baron Munchausen, who has a war hero (Sting) executed because his greater-than-life actions are impossible to follow by the regular troops and are thus poor for morale.

That was Sting?!

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;807962That was Sting?!

Quote from: Omega;807964

I never noticed.

TO be fair, it was a Gilliam film, so A LOT going on...visually. To this day I'm still noticing new things in Time Bandits.