Warning: Contains Abusive Language

"This is a role-playing game. It takes place entirely in our collective imagination. I tell a story and you make choices in the story. Let's begin. You are all standing on a country road. Legend has it, the evil dragon Draconis dwells nearby, guarding a massive pile of treasure.  Working as a team, your goal is to track down the dragon, kill him, and then claim the treasure as your own.  Jeff, your turn."

Abed Nadir, Community S02 E14

Community was an infantile, facile, poorly written angst fest for miserable people desperately seeking a program that depicted characters more pathetic than themselves.  I did not watch it past, I think, about halfway through the second episode.  I just wanted to be sure we understood my perspective on the show.

On July 7th, Netflix and Hulu pulled the episode quoted above.  I could give a shit, both for the loss and for the reasons they pulled it.  The brief snippets I've seen of the show make it appear a deliberate civilization-wrecking shit-show, using approximately the same logics regarding free speech that made Larry Flynt's Hustler so prominent and profitable.  The fact that society has chosen to arbitrarily die on the hill of stopping one or two particular egregious improprieties the taste of the month does not justify the hundreds of other sickening degeneracies present in this and many other present shows that pass unnoticed.

However, the linked article above turned up on my feed, and as it was about Dungeons and Dragons (and yes, I had previously heard of the "infamous, beloved" episode), I chose to read it.  It is the first time I've seen a piece of this episode and ... well, it was obviously a post waiting to be written.  Since I am bored enough to be reading shit off my feed, I might as well write it now, though I am not scheduled to write a post on this blog until the 20th.

I've seen a lot of stuff over the years take a dump on my passion, but this steamed.

"Your turn"?  Huh?  That's not even accurate to the way the word is used in the game.  It is never anybody's fucking turn.  The DM does not turn to a particular player and say, "your turn."  Not in any game I've ever seen or heard about.  Jeebus.

"Working as a team," I am now going to give you a job, because I'm your employer here.  I am offering you pay in the form of a make-believe dragon horde.  Now do as I tell you because my version of "collective imagination" is that you're a bunch of pawns and I'm your gawddamned master.

The reader might have noticed, I'm pretty angry just now.

It would probably be best if I deleted everything I've written so far and started again.  I have no doubt I've offended people (since Community was so-so popular, in the way that television shows would have been taken off the air for piss-poor ratings when television had social relevance, like in the 1990s).  No doubt, there are those who will argue that the show "gets better" following this obscene introduction to the game.  This is the kind of post I keep saying I'm going to stop writing, because it's extremely negative and obverse to the process of teaching people how to expand and improve their D&D games.

Here's a clue.  Don't tell your players what to do.  Tell them where they are and pick something more interesting than a crossroads.

D&D does not "take place in our collective imagination."  If you believe that, then you don't know a damn thing about preparing for a game, managing your skills or your equipment, using a character sheet or reading the emotional state of other people in the room who are real and NOT imaginary.  What we choose to talk about may be imaginary, but the process of talking and playing the game is concrete and definitely real.  No doubt, however, some readers here don't know what I'm talking about.

"Our collective imagination" is a bullshit phrase that doesn't actually mean anything.  Try writing 300 words defining the concept without talking about any fixed game element, and without descending into meaningless purple prose that isn't just more of the same manure.  How is our imagination "collective"?  Discourse and planning are collective, but those things aren't done with our imagination, they are done according to established rules which the game defines.  Or, at least, that a game prior to 5e defines.  For our imagination to be "collective," we'd all need to be telepathic and we'd have to not be individuals.  The words sound fun and coercive, but that's just because you're a dumb human.  You're easily distracted by things that sound like they ought to be possible.

As an aside, I'm finding "cancel culture" very interesting.  I'm old, so my perspective is a little different from the younger folks.  Long, long ago, when the world was new and I was very young, if I wanted to see porn I had to go to a bookstore and ask quietly to see what was "under the counter."  This would enable me to buy a video from a choice of two options.  Anti-porn legislation, and all the legislation in existence that banned virtually everything considered a "vice" in the late 1970s and early 80s, that was a "cancel culture" far more rigorous and absolute than this one.

Only things that aren't worth hiding under a counter truly get cancelled.