Here I'm interviewed by Al and co-host Chad Knight on DrivethruRPG. As usual, I go off the rails while we discuss early D&D, the Satanic Panic, Edition Wars, where the game has been and where it's going, while I slam the company, belittle the mainstream media, talk about early convention in the 1980s, berate the poor hosts for caring about the publication of game modules and make as many solid, factual arguments as I can about the potential of role-playing games and D&D and why we're not reaching it.
That was awesome. I could almost hear the brains opening up to the new concepts.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I stuck it out through the too long "Satanic Panic" discussion to get to your points late in the podcast. I was shocked and amazed that these apparently serious, dedicated, experienced DMs had such a prescriptive view of how the game works. I was completely floored by the one who mentioned liking 5e, but having as primary objection the format in which the publisher is putting out adventures. How can someone who's been playing the game for more than 20 years think like that?
ReplyDeleteI hope your point about abolishing "official" works it's way into their thinking and that of everyone who listens.
... small detail, but the platform is Podbean. DriveThruRPG is a website for .PDF files.
ReplyDeleteI'm only repeating the description on the podcast link.
ReplyDeleteYou mention how GMs in the past have blocked things you’ve wanted to do in-game as a player. Could you give some examples of this?
ReplyDeleteMost everything, really. When I used to play, I would want to set about doing things such as the following:
ReplyDeleteSet up an isolated location and set up a religious cult similar to the moonies, where I would bring serfs into the religion, use my clerical abilities to create bliss and orgiastic rites, which I could then use as a way to obtain local power, particularly as I began to entice persons of power into the joy of experiencing free love, the use of drugs and whatever things I could enhance with my clerical spells.
Setting up a trading town, where I would raise capital from outsiders in exchange for a percentage of each purchase, while using varying tactics, both legal and illegal, in order to ensure success.
Using my adventuring income to buy up land in an area legally, in order to create an estate that I would eventually use as a taxable revenue once my character had managed name level. In the meantime, setting up manufacturing and food producing concerns, then insisting we should be entitled to wait on our land and adventure only in the fall, after the crops had come in.
In each case, the DM would never play the circumstances, but would ALWAYS simply flip over the board, by having something impossible to deal with come in and ruin my plans: such as the king deciding ad hoc that the lands were all now crown lands, so that I could no longer work them; or having the whole town come out to put a stop to the cult; or insisting that no one, NO ONE, had any interest in going to my trade town. Things for which there was no answer, because the DM was defacto putting a stop to my ideas.
As a DM, I'd have loved those ideas to the bone - and probably had needed a break and some research to come up with rules about that. And despair of not having your world & trade system at hand, I guess ^^ .
ReplyDeleteBut really, I dig this. Any one of my players coming up with something like that will get my attention, my interest and my goodwill. That's some serious investment in the game, a deepening of the interaction, and a golden occasion to bring more to the table.
Of course, it'd probably also render more obvious the lack of a coherent trade environment ... But that I'd discuss with the player, explaining my shortcomings and seeing how we can work it out.
Can't understand those narrow-minded DMs ... If they don't want to manage this, at least they can say it. If they want to just use those as seed for adventures, that too they can say it. They could feel unable to cope with the ideas, but some communication is needed.
ReplyDeleteJust listened to this, today. You are a jewel.
: )
Listening to this again today, I'm extraordinarily frustrated that there were so few follow-up questions or evidence of curiosity about a single thing I said. At the time it left me with the impression that I was just there to fill air-time. I don't know if I've ever talked with two people who had such little interest in expanding their viewpoint.
ReplyDelete