Lamenting? I'm sitting here with chai green tea and a lovely pipe, petting a cat, laughing with my fiancee, and idly hitting F5 here and at TTO to see how the chatter is developing at both.

At the end of the day, I can happily chat here or at rpg.net. I can play d20 (I'd rather not, it's got too much fiddly shit) or Heroquest or Burning Wheel or WFRP or CP2020 or DiTV (I'd rather not, it only tells one story) or Exalted or just about anything I want. My hobby isn't in jeopardy, my fun isn't being ruined, and I have no awful memories of the time the mods badtouched my bathing suit area. I have nothing invested in this.

In short? Pretty clearly the fool.

QuoteIn short? Pretty clearly the fool.

So, you are crying around here, while actually being totally relaxed, and emotionally stable?
Why do you assume others do otherwise?
Do you really think our beloveth and superiormost maximo lider actually is writing his stuff in a fit, instead of *hint* smoking a pipe?

Some self elevation, Mr. Ape. Maybe you dislike him for the right reasons. Maybe he`s just against bigot double-standardistas like your high and mighty selfness.

EDIT: So the question is the same as the thread`s:

Why the Angst? What do you fear? Is he threatening you?

Ape, you're wrong about me being a fundamentalist. If I was a fundamentalist, I don't think I'd be running, reading, or owning the number of different games I do. Nor would I be willing to criticize D&D or Wizards the way I often do.

What I am is a guy who is really fucking sick and tired of pretentious twats trying to show off how cool or superior they are by what RPGs they play. I was, in fact, sick and tired of that years before the Forge even existed.

RPGPundit

Quote from: ImperatorHaving read those games, I don't understand how on earth you get to such a conclusions as you frequently express around here. :confused: Sincerely. I don't think of you as an idiot, so it totally amazes me.

I have read them, and I've concluded what I've concluded.  As astounding as it might be to you, those of us who have some few critical faculties can actually read a Forge book and not be astounded by the "wisdom" of the "leader", or impressed by cheap pretentious posturing, which as far as I can see are the only things that would make someone a convert by virtue of reading these games, since the games themselves aren't any good.

QuoteOn the Gygax comments, I'm pretty sure about the statements I'm referring to. I'll agree with you that they're outdated with other things he said after them (and I have a great deal of respect for the guy, don't get me wrong), but the point I try to make is this: when people started roleplaying (meaning inmersion in character, non powergaming, and such things that are usually called by 'roleplaying'), they did it by playing the game wrong, and against the game designers' intent. Mr. Gygax may have changed his mind since them, that's for sure, but I try to show how, if we were to be 'true roleplayers' in the most original meaning of the game, we should stop... well... roleplaying!

No, here you are misreading what Gygax had said.  Dude, what do you think Gygax and Arneson were doing?? do you really think that they were just playing with the stats and not actually roleplaying at all? Were Mordenkainen and Tenser and Rary all just their dogs' (really wierd) names?  THEY WERE ROLEPLAYING.  If not, they would have just continued on with Chainmail, or have just made D&D into a skirmish-level version of Chainmail.  They didn't.  So it doesn't make any fucking sense for Gary Gygax, the guy who invented the ROLEPLAYING game, to be (in your fantasy scenario) telling people not to roleplay. You and others just choose to interpret those very old words totally out of context to mean that, when in fact he was talking about the same sort of pretentiousness/Swine issues I was talking about.

And if you wonder why traditional roleplayers despise the Forge players, THIS IS IT. Its because you fuckers think that we don't roleplay. You think that you are the ones who've invented the concept, and that we are just a gang of clods who couldn't roleplay to save our life, or that when we say "roleplay" we really mean "dungeon crawling" or "combat", as if that's all we know what to do. You talk to us like we were retarded (and, in fact, have literally said we're brain damaged). When the reality is that WE roleplay far better than YOU do because we don't use the fucking CRUTCHES of cheap fashionable gimmicky mechanics to roleplay. If we don't talk about it as much its because we're not as SMUG and PRETENTIOUS about it as you fuckers are, acting as though you're goddamned fucking artistes for doing exactly what Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were doing 30 years ago, only doing it worse.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditWhat I am is a guy who is really fucking sick and tired of pretentious twats trying to show off how cool or superior they are by what RPGs they play.

Pot, meet kettle.

-O

Quote from: RPGPunditJudging by what you write about D&D later on in your entry, I have at least as much if not more experience with indie games than you do with D&D.

I doubt that. 1 AD&D 1e campaign, 7 years of AD&D 2e almost weekly, and 3 years in various weekly d20 D&D/Conan OGL/d20 Modern/The End d20/d20 Homebrew campaigns (all with different groups, and probably dozens if not almost hundreds of players). Whereas you "read some indie books". I smell someone talking out their ass.

QuoteBut you see, REAL D20, and indeed most real RPGs... depend on the players actually ROLEPLAYING... and it depends on having a DM who's responsible and powerful enough to allow that roleplaying to affect the game...

I smell someone who's never played D&D at a convention. Conventions are where "Real D&D", "Pure D&D", "D&D to the Letter of the Law", happens (or should happen). I've played in no fewer than 25 D&D sessions over 7 years at GenCon and other cons (including RPGA, which prides itself on being "really true to the rules"). And what you describe above completely misses the mark of what I've experienced firsthand with the majority of gamers.

I don't believe that deep down gamers are an unhappy lot. But Players Actually Roleplaying... DMs who are Responsible and Powerful? I've only played one of dozens of D&D convention games, at cons far and wide, where I saw both at one table (Some Birthright adventure back at GenCon in 95 or so).

Sure, maybe you and your four friends, and a couple other dudes on the Net, play the game in your own special "Roleplaying matters guys, c'mon! And I'll be responsible, m'kay?" way. But the "Majority of Gamers", which you just love to appeal to authority to, they are NOT playing the way you and your four buddies play. If there's anything I've learned in 20 years of playing the game, You (and me, but that's another story) are in the Minority of D&D players.

There's tens of thousands of enlightened D&Ders between ENWorld, TheRPGSite and RPGNet: Responsible DMs, Players Who Roleplay. But if you think you're playing D&D the way that the majority of the millions of people play, you're fooling yourself.

-Andy

I've never ever met someone who wasn`t practicing character assumption as a technique in D&D or any other game.
I know several RPGA long time players, and their reports do support this.

If what you say is true, german gaming is even more different than I thought.
Hard to believe, to be honest.

And the textual artifacts of D&D lead to a totally different conclusion. KeepotB, for example mentions character assumption several and conflict resolution through roleplay severaltimes.

Quote from: RPGPunditApe, you're wrong about me being a fundamentalist. If I was a fundamentalist, I don't think I'd be running, reading, or owning the number of different games I do. Nor would I be willing to criticize D&D or Wizards the way I often do.

I may have been unclear; I do not consider you a d20 fundamentalist. You are, however, a rather clearly...passionate...adherent of a particular style of gaming, rejecting the very idea that things can be learned from people exploring the border country of the hobby. It's a little crazy, honestly. That you find no value in something - personality mechanics, player input to the setting - does not mean that is without value for everyone, nor does it invalidate something using it as an RPG, any more than introducing pads and helmets ruined the game of hockey.

There are a lot of points I'm with you. Sorceror is a steaming loaf in your slipper first thing in the morning, not helped in the slightest by the requirement to digest thousands of pages of Big Ron Edwards screaming "You just don't get it!" when people tell him his game appears to have been hacked together by a sub-literate tunnel-dweller, and thinking about My Life With Master makes me want to gouge my eyes out. I agree that a strong and fair GM is the second greatest gift to a role-playing session, following only a group of players who bring their 'A' game every damn night; adventure is the point of the game and story is a by-product - my players like to say it's not about "telling" a story, but "discovering" one.

But then you froth, and you overstate, and you basically Ron it up. Somebody didn't enjoy playing D&D? Cite child abuse or some other kind of "damage"! WH40K is going to be sold as three seperate books about intensely segregated categories of adventure-ready characters? The Forge's all-pervasive but totally irrelevant tentacles are rotting the hobby from within! A game doesn't feature total narrative control in the GM's hands? Not even related to role-playing games (despite being a game in which players spend the vast majority of their time playing a role.

Call it gonzo journalism - which near as I can tell is either dead or firmly in the hands of O'Reilly and kin - or whatever you like, but the fact is it doesn't help your case in any realistic way. Maybe a couple people yell a little louder in your favor, but far more people are driven off by the unnecessary tone of the polemic. I don't think you're gonna change one bit in response to this, of course, but since this entire thing got rolling I felt it would be polite to come in and close this off.

QuoteWhat I am is a guy who is really fucking sick and tired of pretentious twats trying to show off how cool or superior they are by what RPGs they play. I was, in fact, sick and tired of that years before the Forge even existed.

Then may I suggest not acting like playing d20 makes you some sort of hot shit? So the game is popular, so's American Idol - correlation is not causation. There's nothing special about being part of the many, any more than there's something special about being part of the few. I love the old school as much as the next guy, but it doesn't make me a better gamer. The fact my players have a fucking blast - and fight for it every step of the way - goes a lot further in that direction. Just run the games and roll the bones, man. As long as good GMs can offer adventure, the hobby will be fine.

Quote from: RPGPunditAnd if you wonder why traditional roleplayers despise the Forge players, THIS IS IT. Its because you fuckers think that we don't roleplay.

Oh, you know that "talking past other people" thing you like to do all the time, where someone says "I like strawberries", and you say "YOU HATE BLACK PEOPLE!?!?"

You're doing it again. It's be cute if it weren't so retarded.

And sorry, you might say "I'm not a fundamentalist/zealot" all you want. But you talk the talk and walk the walk. You use all the rhetoric, fallacies, hate speech patterns and tones of the Neo-Nazis over at Stormfront, or the speeches of Ann Coulter, or the rantings of Michael Moore.  

If you look like a duck, and quack like a duck, and smell like a big pile of duskshit... sorry, that makes you a goddamned duck.

Quote from: obrynPot, meet kettle.

Complete Absence of Light Found in the Center of a Black Hole, meet kettle."

-Andy

Quote from: Christmas ApeIt's about as valuable, in any objective sense of the word, as lipstick for cows.

I prefer the term "shoes for pidgeons" myself.

Quote from: BagpussI prefer the term "shoes for pidgeons" myself.

I made little led shoes for a whole flock of pidgeons. They stayed in my yard forever. They really must've loved them some shoes!

Quote from: beejazzI made little led shoes for a whole flock of pidgeons. They stayed in my yard forever. They really must've loved them some shoes!

Probably! When those LEDs light up, it's a really cool effect, especially at night. I know all little kids love their LED shoes!

-clash

Quote from: SettembriniI've never ever met someone who wasn`t practicing character assumption as a technique in D&D.

I'm not sure what you mean by "character assumption", unless you basically mean "playing a character" (or "playing IN character"). We're talking about "Real Role-playing", the actual act of talking, doing things in character.

Y'know, Talk up the elven wench at the tavern. Give a speech defending the peasant in front of the King. Talk two spies down from a gun duel. The GM reacts and changes the scenario accordingly. That sort of thing.

I see lots of people on ENWorld, RPGNet, TheRPGSite, etc doing that very thing, and I'm fucking thrilled.

Then I get into an exclusive d20 game* at a reputable Con, and there's like One "Drama Guy", 2 medium-autistic guys who rock back and forth in their chairs mumbling and holding their dice, only springing to life when it's time to Fight, and the guy who you forget is there because he doesn't say or do a damn thing. Maybe there's a second Drama Guy, but he's tainted because he's a lawncrapper who can't open his mouth half the time without quoting Monty Python, Black Adder or Buffy or whatever. And wash it all down with a DM who will not, can not, deviate from the adventure she/he wrote or was given: "Wow, Great Speech to the Bandits! They still attack you, though."

That's the majority of Real D&D play.

Then again, 300-point scoring bowlers are not the majority of the slack-jawed folks who throw a 36 point game.

I'm basically pointing out the absurdity of engaging in the fallacy of appealing to the majority... especially when that majority simply doesn't exist.

-Andy

* (I use one example here as an amalgam of dozens of games over several years. No, I wasn't burned on one bad table)

Dagnabit! I meant to fix that, but the edit button just ain't workin'!!!

Augh!!!

Ultimate typo: AJDJCDJFjufhdkhfakfADSJFAJFGHafhadfknkhe!!!!

^That was so not angst.

@Andy K: Isn't there a slight chance that con goers are disproportionally Fucktards and Lawncappers who don't get a regular game? I heard there are a lot of those in the USA, because of your high school system.

Seriously, if the gaming majority was like this nothing would help, no hip game ever could save us from those hordes of fucktarded diceheads. Then all would be lost, and the only thing left would be to feel superiour to those idiots.

Which smells a lot like WoD-D&D-hating-Swine-o-ganda.

Add to your data myy data point:

My experiences are totally different from yours.
if anything, there is too much emphasis on character assumption and in-character talk in mainstream german gaming.