Those were some of my favourite fantasy writings growing up, I am always surprised how little they get referenced by RPG peeps.

The pay off at the very end. You knew it was coming but... ooof...

@Taskerland @BigJackBrass @RogerBW

Is it that long? I must have read that when I was very young really.

A staff of curdled light...

@Taskerland @BigJackBrass @RogerBW

@Taskerland @Printdevil @BigJackBrass I don't think that can be quite right; ISFDB lists various editions of The Compleat Traveller in Black through the 1980s (and an ebook in 2014).

@RogerBW @Taskerland @Printdevil The collection I had was certainly an eighties paperback.

Either way I was certainly very young reading it. I just love the concept of the instigator, the one who turns the wheel in it all.

@Taskerland @BigJackBrass @RogerBW

The Traveller has a goal, and an end, and the whole thing sort of ages in seasons. It's quite sad really. Certainly if you're 13

@Taskerland @BigJackBrass @RogerBW

S. John Ross The idological thing feels very real and accurate to me, it’s just that the idologies aren’t “D&D” or “Blades/Apocalypse”. From what I’ve seen, it’s “tell me how to resolve this” vs “let me decide how to resolves this”. And while this often gets broken down as “rules-light” vs “rules-heavy”, or “rulings” vs “rules”, so many people play crunchier games like D&D in the latter way (and I play PF2e in the latter way) that it doesn’t quite break down in the prescribed way.

But treating a very systematic game like Pathfinder 2 as a playground has caused me to run against the grain of that community so thoroughly that I can’t help but view it as being made up of people who don’t see tools or toolboxes, but orders and mandates. And I think those are the idologies at play here. The ideology of “high trust” tables vs “low trust” tables.

S. John Ross I’m gonna need you to describe what, exactly, is inflationary about it. Because the only thing I’m seeing here that’s even remotely inflationary is your aggressively haughty dismissiveness.