@Printdevil @RogerBW @Taskerland I never see The Traveller in Black referenced in discussions of gaming influences. Too weird and impersonal?

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.