https://vsca.blog/2020/02/12/bugging-out/

Anybody know why anybody should care? It reads like a typical cry for attention online and whiney as fuck. All I kept hearing in my head as I read it was "Doing things is haaaaard..." in a nasally voice. This guy can be tits on toast but my Spider Sense makes me believe he's deeply invested in SJW culture and won't be a loss. Please feel free to say otherwise.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1122264https://vsca.blog/2020/02/12/bugging-out/

Anybody know why anybody should care? It reads like a typical cry for attention online and whiney as fuck. All I kept hearing in my head as I read it was "Doing things is haaaaard..." in a nasally voice. This guy can be tits on toast but my Spider Sense makes me believe he's deeply invested in SJW culture and won't be a loss. Please feel free to say otherwise.

Someone mentioned on rpg.net that means nothing for $800, Alex?

Someone there mentioned Diaspora.

That's what I gathered. I wasn't sure if he had some "SJW Gygaxian" godhood or something. Given the gripes about FFG lay-offs and RPG writers not getting paid "what they're worth", it stick out.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1122264https://vsca.blog/2020/02/12/bugging-out/

Anybody know why anybody should care? It reads like a typical cry for attention online and whiney as fuck. All I kept hearing in my head as I read it was "Doing things is haaaaard..." in a nasally voice. This guy can be tits on toast but my Spider Sense makes me believe he's deeply invested in SJW culture and won't be a loss. Please feel free to say otherwise.

Well, I always liked his game designs. He was an Indy game designer the last couple of decades or so and did work on Diaspora, and I think SWN as well. I get where he comes from and that he laments that murder-hoboes have pretty much taken over the Role-Playing Games hobby these days, and that no one makes games that focus on well, ...role-playing instead of say, killing stuff and looting the dead. Actual RPGs was not something that the mainstream population was really into, or digging, and of course there are the designers that just want to cater to the mainstream and write trashy "Slay em' all and let God sort them out" roleplaying games, that are commercially successful.

His market has always been too small to sustain a large number of designers, I think now he actually realized this, and is hanging up his designer hat.

He also has no stomach for the endless social media pimping that is necessary for creators to be noticed these days.

If the industry is no longer enjoyable for him, that's a shame and I wish him well.

The endless moralizing in the RPG.net thread of it, about how Violence in RPG's is deplorable and how we should all be trying to get away from it on the other hand, is laughable.

Seems like another person who tried to turn their hobby into a business and got burned out.

I can sympathize with him over the distaste for violence in RPGs... the cover images where everyone is holding weapons of some sort, the game sessions that are just a string of combats, Players that can only engage with the game through their gear and 'powerz'. But that's always only been one corner of the hobby... there were always people playing games where very little combat took place, where people weren't playing to 'win' solely in terms of stats and equipment. I'm not sure why he's not seeing that, focusing on those folks.

Otherwise, I always though Mr. Murray had some interesting ideas... but took himself and the hobby WAAAAAAY too seriously.

"One thing that bothers me about these games and that has increasingly depressed me is the focus on violence. It's gone from discomfort to disgust. I can't even look at most game artwork without reflexively despising the fact that everyone on the cover is threatening me with a weapon or behaving as through the dismemberment of a foe was the pinnacle expression of healthy comraderie."

It's okay to be a murder hobo.  
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Quote from: DocJones;1122294It's okay to be a murder hobo.  
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I agree... but I think Mr. Murray has fallen into the trap of being bothered that other people want to play differently than he does... or mistaking their trees for the whole forest. Deciding you don't care for having a strong focus on combat in your games shouldn't necessitate a crusade to get the violence out of gaming... but I'm not sure that's what HE is saying (regardless of what other nonsense might follow from folks reading him).

Quote from: Simlasa;1122291Seems like another person who tried to turn their hobby into a business and got burned out.

Exactly.

I recently interviewed a potential client who had just sold his bar. He loved bars, and he bought a place that was bar + live music venue. What should of been his dream became his nightmare because "loving to hang out in bars" isn't "loving to deal with all the issues of owning a bar".

Hobby-as-business might be a fun side gig for beer money, but hobby-as-livelihood is a rough path. And when the fun part drops from the side gig and the beer money isn't worth the effort, its definitely time to walk away.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1122264https://vsca.blog/2020/02/12/bugging-out/

Anybody know why anybody should care? It reads like a typical cry for attention online and whiney as fuck. All I kept hearing in my head as I read it was "Doing things is haaaaard..." in a nasally voice. This guy can be tits on toast but my Spider Sense makes me believe he's deeply invested in SJW culture and won't be a loss. Please feel free to say otherwise.

If you're an SJW like he is, no amount of social media is going to help sell your RPG or comic book. Such people tend to cancel themselves.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1122285He also has no stomach for the endless social media pimping that is necessary for creators to be noticed these days.

More and more designers are getting tired of that. I think we are going to see more burnout, quiet or not over the next few years.

You need a YouTube channel and a personality in order to do well selling books, unless you already have a Facebook group with 1,000s of fans of your IP already. Because blogs won't cut it.

Dude's seriously overreacting. I mean, sure, if he was hoping to make a living at this then that's one thing. But if he loves all that other stuff, there's no reason once he's got a product he's happy with not to take a few minutes to upload to DTRPG or something and maybe get a few bucks out of it. If he gets some beer & pretzel money out of it, yay. If not, well, he wasn't counting on the income anyway so no harm done. And a Twitter post takes like 10 seconds, so even if his estimates about the bots are right that's still like 300-something people he can reach with next to no extra work. No need to do more than that unless he really feels like it. But yeah, if he's going to make these games anyway, taking a few minutes to do something that might net a few bucks seems easy enough. But if he sees it as "make a living" or "why bother," . . . yeah, can't help that.

I find this part super funny, though, but more in a sad way than a ha-ha way:

QuoteI can't even look at most game artwork without reflexively despising the fact that everyone on the cover is threatening me with a weapon . . . .

I get not wanting much, if any, combat in your games. I'm fine with all kinds of games and styles of play, so sometimes I get lots of combat and sometimes I get none and often I get something somewhere in-between. But "depressed," "discomfort," "disgust," and then "despising?" Chillax, dude, you don't have to buy/play those games if you don't want to. But I have trouble understanding the mindset where someone would see a picture of characters brandishing weapons and somehow come to the conclusion that they're threatening him. That takes a special kind of narcissism and/or paranoia. Just wow . . .

If he's a cool dude, then great for that but sad he's lost the love for creating in his hobby. I stand by that his tone seems more like a cry for "Stop me! Please?" than a noble exit. As far as violence in games, that's how it is. Conflict is fun and combat is a type of conflict that's in RPG DNA. I find it so odd that the very people who practically masturbate over ANTIFA violence and applaud 3rd trimester abortions are so squeamish about imaginary violence. They're so easily offended and afraid of everything, seeing rapists and racists around every corner, but create and play...practically live in...the misery tourism of hyper-sexualized and violent RPGs centered on very personal and touchy topics.

I believe many of them balk at violence because it's so close to their emotional and mental surfaces and they blur the lines enough that it upsets them. Or not. I'm not a psychologist.