The idea of travelling and paying to *watch* and applaud someone I have never heard of play D&D is wild.

@Printdevil @Taskerland the comfort in obeying instructions from a voice of authority is a big thing these days, I wonder if it's due to the influx of new people to the hobby or a generational change or what.

It's like authorial permission for ficton being a selling point for so many games, where they go, say, "this playbook has an off-hand remark that you can be a mushroom orc" and people will go "yooo, all shroomheads must get it, easy recommendation for your fungalpunk needs" despite /1

@Taskerland Recently it occurred to me that, when observing rpg discussions, we could draw paralels with sex. In normal groups people talk about their weird fetishes by starting with "I like when..." but if you're in some patriarchal bullshit group, everyone starts with "your group is doing sex wrong" because apparently adding jenga to an RPG is the same as non-consensually abusing your players

@Taskerland Recently it occurred to me that, when observing rpg discussions, we could draw paralels with sex. In normal groups people talk about their weird fetishes by starting with "I like when..." but if you're in some patriarchal bullshit group, everyone starts with "your group is doing sex wrong" because apparently adding jenga to an RPG is the same as non-consensually abusing your players

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@viktorTheBoar These people present running games as though you are fixing a leaking toilet.

There are no right answers.

This is a creative and collaborative hobby.

Find your own voice.

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@Taskerland @Printdevil

I feel seen.

@Taskerland I think there's a lot (and I say this incredibly rarely) to be learned from the Eddie "Babes" De Bono here, in his tool kit approach to thinking strategies, you could swap out his intro to six-hat-thinking or whatever and replace it with gaming tools and the advice of "use what works abandon what doesn't" is sage.

"keep your hands off your face while I'm etching"

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

@Taskerland I'm glad. But also, I'm not going to upsell you on Premium Whartson or whatever.
I think my history helps here - largely playing in one extended group, White Dwarf, saw occasional issues of Dragon some years later, but that was all "here's what other people are doing, I'll take this and leave that". Gary was already a bit of a joke by the time I became aware of him as having a distinct style of gaming; I went along to Reading Games Fairs, and there were Official! tournaments, but they seemed to be a completely separate group of people from the ones I was playing with in the open gaming.

Oddly the number of additional search terms required to get a picture of "man with beard and books" was quite whacky, when what I really should have been able to use there was "not Ai"

but noooooooooooo

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

I do actually have "Pre-Ai" as an extension but I never remember to use it and just prefer to complain out the window at seagulls.

@BOOKHOUSE @Taskerland

@Printdevil @Taskerland

Seagulls? Good choice. I favour the mardy jays in the garden.

This is what the Frankfurt school were on about when they talked about fear of freedom and authoritarian personalities.

You have a structurally horizontalist and creatively decentralised hobby, add the Internet, and people immediately sign up for rigid social hierarchies. They *hurl* their freedom and equality away in order to belong on someone else's terms.

@Taskerland I think there's something to be said here about how long people have played. When you're starting something, you're struggling to figure out how the rules work and boxing yourself in with looking it up. As you play more, and find those RAW vs intent discussions, you grow into seeing that RAW isn't the end all be all of the game. Eventually, you've tried enough games or found enough gaps to knock down the walls when you feel like it. We start out rigid, and expand into ease.

#ttrpg