Quote from: CRKrueger;968619See here's the problem...

You probably think something like "Of course having Gary's literary background would help you understand his frame of reference better and therefore understand his game better."  It's kind of obvious, right, almost axiomatic.

People who "study" Appendix N are doing that for that very reason.

Then there's the "Boy who cries Talmud" crowd.  They are saying that these people aren't looking into Appendix N.  They are doing some form of Talmudic Exegesis, {insert the most overblown, hyperbolic and idiotic academic word you can find here}.

So naturally you say "What a bunch of idiots."

The problem is NO ONE IS ACTUALLY DOING THAT.

Maybe Jmal got close, and sure, he had sycophants, he's been off the blog for 5 fucking years.

Yeah, Goodman's got an Appendix N vibe going, they also have guys with afros and bell bottoms, it's a gonzo retro marketing gag.

Is this Jeffro Johnson guy some pseudo-academic idiot?  Who knows?  People don't have to actually read his book to make accusations about the content, only if they want to factcheck themselves (yeah right).

Jmal - there's one.
Jeffro - someone actually reads his book, maybe we can call him two.
Anyone have an actual name of the rest of these Talmudic, colon-gazing Exegetic Textologists?  According to the way the name gets thrown around, you shouldn't be able to swing a dice bag without hitting 20 of them.

Actually, now that I think about it.... I have seen one person do the "Talmudic dissection" of Appendix N.  As in, "each book maps directly to some rule in D&D."  Nobody took him seriously, but he was as noisy as hell for a while.  don't remember which forum.

I have seen more of the "search for ur-D&D in the rulebooks", especially over at ODD74.  Again, though, it's a fairly small group even there, and again the biggest problem is they add to the background noise.

I don't hang around on the Tekumel forums any more, but there is also some of that in the "search for the real Tekumel."  But Tekumel fandom is so small that they are the batshit insane lunatic fringe of a batshit insane lunatic fringe.

I have used the phrase "like a bunch of drunk high school students doing Midrash."  So they exist but I don't think anybody actually takes them seriously.  I suppose those who continue to rail against them like to use them as a strawman to whip up indignation.

I get more pissed off by people's poor reading comprehension.  CHAINMAIL is a prime example of this.  People try to make that game WAY too fucking complicated, and then ignore the plain written word.  It's a game about lining up two little armies and fighting a battle.

For instance, somebody actually said "The turn order says that movement occurs and then melee is after all movement.  Does that mean that you don't do melee until both sides have moved their figures"?   Um... what the fuck?  As Tim Kask once said, "If you can't understand CHAINMAIL, you need to improve your reading comprehension."

My particular ire goes to a small but noisy subgroup that plays "definition shuffle."

For some reason, especially strange considering his sesquipedalian tendencies elsewhere, that in OD&D Gary didn't disambiguate terms very well; "level" has at least four meanings, and "hit dice" means both "dice needed to score a hit" and "dice rolled to determine how many hit points you have."

Usually, this thing called "context" covers it.  But it's the people who refuse to acknowledge context that piss me off.  For instance, in the combat section it says that trolls, having 6 + 3 hd, get 6 attacks against normal men and the sixth gets a +3 on the "hit dice."  From context it seems obvious that it's +3 to hit.  But there are dark corners of the grease trap of the internet where people insist that an equally valid interpretation is that the troll gets three more hit points when attacking the sixth figure.  And they insist the negative must be proved; "we don't know that that isn't the way he meant it."

It's annoying, and they tend to be loud and persistant.  It's a fucking game; if one interpretation of the rules works and/or is clear, and the other interpretation of the rules doesn't work and/or makes no fucking sense at all, go with the one that works.

This is the origin of my phrase "assume Gygax wasn't an utter fucking imbecile."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968789...people's poor reading comprehension.  

We appreciate your patience.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968789It's a fucking game; if one interpretation of the rules works and/or is clear, and the other interpretation of the rules doesn't work and/or makes no fucking sense at all, go with the one that works.

This is the origin of my phrase "assume Gygax wasn't an utter fucking imbecile."

And if both interpretations work, pick which ever one you like and play your game. Most of us really don't give a shit how you play your elfgames at home.

Quote from: CRKrueger;968619Jeffro - someone actually reads his book, maybe we can call him two.

Hey if you want to buy it for me I'll struggle throught it and let you know what I think.

When it comes to books on D&D I'm saving my pennies for this one:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1067[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Voros;968945Hey if you want to buy it for me I'll struggle throught it and let you know what I think.

When it comes to books on D&D I'm saving my pennies for this one:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1067[/ATTACH]

Why? What do you know about it?

Have you read it? I'm interested in D&D, the Satanic Panic and religion so this looks like a good book to me. Also looks to be properly researched.

Quote from: Voros;969314Have you read it? I'm interested in D&D, the Satanic Panic and religion so this looks like a good book to me. Also looks to be properly researched.

No, I haven't read it, from your post I assumed it was forthcoming. I thought maybe you knew something to recommend it.

It is out but since it is from an academic press it is a bit pricey as an ebook so I'll probably just order the hardcover. I did download a sample to my Kindle and it is written in clear English, it also has an interesting premise about the similarity between religion and rpgs as imaginative spaces that I'm intrigued enough about to check out.

Quote from: Voros;969338It is out but since it is from an academic press it is a bit pricey as an ebook so I'll probably just order the hardcover. I did download a sample to my Kindle and it is written in clear English, it also has an interesting premise about the similarity between religion and rpgs as imaginative spaces that I'm intrigued enough about to check out.

Maybe you could post a review (hint, hint).

Will do, it's on order!

I went to Catholic School in the 80s, and we certainly were not allowed to play D&D at school. So we played Marvel Superheroes. It's funny because the group I ended up playing with for 30 years came about when they had people from the local Boy's and Girls club come to the school and tell us about D&D night. So yeah, D&D in Catholic School bad. Inviting people from outside the school to tell us about D&D was somehow okay.

I also went to Catholic school in the early 80s and nobody cared a whit whether we played D&D or not. I'm always curious about where this "Satanic Panic" happened, as it never seemed to be anywhere I was. Was it a rural thing?

Quote from: Dumarest;969897I also went to Catholic school in the early 80s and nobody cared a whit whether we played D&D or not. I'm always curious about where this "Satanic Panic" happened, as it never seemed to be anywhere I was. Was it a rural thing?

It was mostly the same people who had all that free time to listen to rock albums backwards. You never heard that rhetoric from people who actually worked for a living.

Quote from: Krimson;969900It was mostly the same people who had all that free time to listen to rock albums backwards. You never heard that rhetoric from people who actually worked for a living.

Tipper Gore?

What I meant was, I was in the D.C. metro area and then San Diego and never encountered this "D&D = Satanism" stuff at all. Maybe because I've always been in large cities? Was it a small-town Bible-thumping hellfire-and-brimstone Baptist thing?

Quote from: Dumarest;969906Tipper Gore?

What I meant was, I was in the D.C. metro area and then San Diego and never encountered this "D&D = Satanism" stuff at all. Maybe because I've always been in large cities? Was it a small-town Bible-thumping hellfire-and-brimstone Baptist thing?

As I recall the local Baptists were the most vocal about it, but for the most part we Catholics weren't having any of their heresy. For the record, the two kids who taught me to play D&D were Mormon, and we were encouraged to play by their Father and his Mennonite girlfriend (who my family rented the house from). Honestly, it was a few kooks who were doing most of the screaming, though those kooks had names like Jack Chick and Pat Robertson. The problem was that consensual belief systems are consensual, and they had equally kooky followers who would regurgitate whatever they were fed. But really, you didn't hear from it too much, though I did hear it enough times to know that if you are going to stand your ground in a religion, then you have to learn Scripture and how to weaponize it so you can fight them on their own terms.