An Answer to Lance

This is an answer to Lance in the previous post, who wrote:

It's just that you would probably get more readers if you weren't so abrasive.

But then again, sometimes people need to be called out on their stupidity/childishness before they can change. I wouldn't have stopped fudging or using the screen if it weren't for your blog specifically. I had been reading his blog and others long before I discovered you, but none of those other blogs fundamentally changed how I run games.

This is why I'm not "nice."  I've heard from the beginning of this blog that I would get more readers if I wasn't so abrasive ... but what kind of readers?  For what purpose?  Is my goal to get readers in order to entertain them with interesting stuff that they can conveniently forget later on?  Or is my goal to remind readers, and those who won't read, but find it difficult to ignore me because I'm always there on the blog rolls of people who do read, that SOMEONE on the internet does not buy the bullshit.  And that someone isn't going away, he isn't cowed by criticism ... and worst of all, he is obviously not stupid.

Whatever my detractors might say about my former vitriol (and it IS much reduced from five years ago), they can't say that I don't understand the game, that I don't think about what I'm saying or that I can't write.  This means, they have to detract me for being, yes you guessed it, "abrasive."  As though this alone is a crime.

And why do they want me to be less abrasive?  Is it for the benefit of my message?  No, they get the message anyway.  They wouldn't know I was abrasive if they weren't here, reading me.  No, they want me to be less abrasive because that would make THEM more comfortable.  But Lance ... I don't want you to be comfortable.  I want you to be uncomfortable, for the reason you just gave.  So that you will change.  Hopefully, for the better.

I read the Alexandrian's post about fudging.  Justin's is friendlier and more polite, and his points are just, and many of them are points I had considered making in the future.  But none of the points are particularly pursued, are they?  He skirts the edge of the subject.  He gives the surface reasons for why people fudge, but he doesn't actually come out wholly against fudging, does he?  He actually supports it, in some degree.  And he certainly doesn't call out anyone for being a bad DM, or selfishly glomming onto power; these things are there, but they're not specifically called out.  He doesn't want to offend anyone.  It's a problem of mechanics, or misunderstandings, or treasuring the wrong aspects of play, or the result of a mistake.  And he's not wrong.

His post is something like the old commercial that told us that this egg is your brain; and that this egg in this pan is your brain on drugs.  The commercial was very memorable, it still is, though it is more than 30 years old.  It spawned hundreds of comedian's jokes and parodies, it is instantly recognizeable as a commercial and it's been picked by TV Guide as one of the top 100 television advertisements of all time.  It's cute, it's direct, it's doesn't offend anyone on television with images of people suffering from drug use or the deaths resulting from using drugs.

Does it work?  I can't find anyone who says so.  And that is the problem.

I did not grow up in the internet world, I grew up in the one of that commercial.  Justin, who is a way smarter businessman than me, charges $1 per post if you want to read his post a month before it comes out on his blog ... I would never, ever think of that.  Justin is cooler, he's way more popular and he's connected with the role-playing culture like I never will be.  But his writing is bland paste.  There is not one person in the comments that unreservedly agrees with his position ~ and he makes no attempt whatsoever to suggest his opinion is more than just another asshole in the room.  He doesn't believe what he's saying to the point where he is willing to fight for the principle he's arguing.  It is all just air to him.  One word strung after the one before.  He won't mention the subject again for months ~ and when he does, he won't have anything new to say.

I'm angry because fudging is fucking wrong.  It isn't just a little bit wrong, it isn't acceptable in "some" circumstances, it doesn't serve as a useful technique sometimes, it is absolutely and unequivocably wrong.  And those who practice it do so because they a) Can't see that it's wrong because they have willfully deluded themselves and b) They don't care that it is fucking wrong because they have willfully deluded themselves.  Every argument for fudging is a textbook case in moral deficiency.

I'm not gray on this issue.  I'm not hesitant on this issue.  I don't give a fuck if this inconveniences what liars and self-promoted autocrats want to believe, or think they have a right to believe, because this isn't about finding reasons for why lying to people who trust you is "sometimes" okay.  A liar is a liar.  If a DM will lie about a die roll, they will lie about anything.

And I know that you know this Lance. Your own comments say so.  But I feel I must stress that in some things, abrasion is the right fucking response.  In some things, especially with things where people brazenly argue their privilege to be entitled, judgemental assholes, it is time to stop qualifying your statements and start punching them in the face.

If I'm going to be honest, that's what I think is an appropriate response.  IF your DM deliberately lies to you, because he thinks he has that privilege, punch him right in the face.  Because that's what it takes with some people.

And ... because this is the internet, where rhetoric is far too often taken as exact intention, I'll say that no, I don't want anyone punching anyone in the face.  But I want to express that at some point, mere argument won't work.  It simply won't.