Refreshing Comments

I don't want this comment buried back in 2017.

Jim Davis has left a new comment on your post "A Rundown on What Advice Exists":

Alexis,

I appreciate the feedback, even though I'm only just now reading it. I've been an intermittent reader of your blog for a few years now and think How to Run is superb DM advice, so I take "not too bad" and "wouldn't be the worst DM I've had" as compliments. I'm genuinely curious about the times I've gone up my own asshole (you're not the first to observe that) but I understand if I'm a little late in soliciting that level of feedback.

Thank you for your honesty; it's refreshing to get anything resembling a genuine critique.

And yes, I was looking through your backlog to see if you'd watched any Web DM. I wanted to know what you thought of our videos. I'm very glad you didn't think they were terrible.

-Jim "punchable demeanor" Davis

Jim,

Your comment was refreshing also.

I kicked a lot of people that day.  I've reread my post; I confess the knife was just as sharp as I could grind it.  I don't take it back.  I will, however, be positive.  You've been either genuine or sarcastic.  Either would be understandable and I deserve the response you've given.  In return, I'm anxious to be genuine, and write in a manner that won't be understood as sarcasm.

By my count and the internet's, you and Pruitt are significantly popular.  You're long lived; your last video was yesterday.  You receive 100,000 or more views per video; I receive nothing like that kind of traffic.  You have 24,000 followers on twitter and by the looks of their comments, they genuinely love you.  You're interviewing Luke Gygax, you're in the heart of the community, your words are listened to and treasured.  That's not sarcasm.  That's what I see as an honest evaluation of how others feel towards you.

Which leaves me puzzled as to why you would comment on a blog post I wrote three years ago.  I am just as puzzled as to why you would be an intermittent reader of my blog at all.  I don't write the sort of content you produce, at all.  There isn't a glimmer in anything I've seen in any video you've produced -- though I admit, it's been a couple of years since I watched anything -- of the least influence I've had on your material.  You say that my How to Run is superb DM advice; but there's no evidence that you've taken it, and as far as I know, you've never told any of your viewers this.  If you had, no evidence of it has ever materialized as visitors to my site from yours.

My content is ... critical.  Sometimes viciously, sometimes academic ... but always deconstructive and always critical.  I was taught to be so and I embraced it with both arms.   The content of your programming is motivational.  Your method is to inspire your audience; to encourage them to believe in themselves.  You present the game as something that's fun, and you try to helpfully simplify the game processes, so that your listeners will feel confident.  Your advice devotes itself to reminding the players to "don't stress" and play the game however they want to play it.  That sentiment is uplifting, cheerful and fortifying.

If you do read me, and this spirit of incentivising promise is indeed your genuine feeling, then I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to see the brutal, negative hatchet job I commit against the game you support and believe in, day in and day out, mercilessly.  I should think it would be the kind of thing that would make you sigh, shake your head slowly, and mutter to yourself, "That poor guy.  He just doesn't get it.  He doesn't see how simple and how much fun this game could be.  He's so smart; he's so comprehensive about the game; but he just can't seem to take his hand off the downer stick.  Hopefully, someday, he'll see the light and come out of this dark place he's stuck in."

If I believed in what you say on your videos; if I wrote the kind of things you say; and if I stood by them as right and legitimate ... then that is what I would think about me.  I would feel sorry for me.

On the other hand, if you were to read this blog, and really believe that How to Run was a bit of superb DM advice, given how it guts the sentimentality of role-playing with a fish knife ... then, I don't know.  That book argues that good game play can't be brought into being through motivation and simplification.  It can't be brought into being by believing in yourself.  If that's what you think is "superb" ...

Then I am sorry for you, that you've chosen to spew pretentious bullshit for years on the internet in order to make a buck.

Understand.  I'm not saying this last is what you're doing.  But I am saying that if this last isn't what you're doing, then your praise of my book was a lie; and that probably, you've never read my book.

As a bit of genuine criticism.  It's the way you lift your chin as you're getting into character, knowing that you're about to speak.  In film making, it's a self-conscious tic that a good director would point out, and that an acting coach would address, spending a couple of afternoons to get you past the habit of doing that.  People in film-making, particularly in video journalism, take is as evidence of an amateur; which you're not, obviously, having done this for so long.  But it is, nevertheless, amateurish, at least in the eyes of anyone who's spent any time doing this sort of thing for a living.  The good news is that it's fixable.  Find a good acting coach; they're pretty much everywhere; if you talk to some community documentary filmmakers, you can fix that habit right up in no time.  Think of it like not quite having a good poker face.  Once you sort that out, your face will be far less punchable, and in general people with more money will find you more reassuring and fundable.  Good luck.