Thursday, September 16, 2021

The D&D Castrati

Over at B/X Blackrazor, JB has his finger in the dike trying to deconstruct what the OSR claims are tenets of early D&D and what early D&D really is, supported by this subsequent post.  Frankly, I'd weigh in with a post of my own but, sigh, I can't say I give a fuck what D&D was 45 years ago.  There's far too much pretentious bullshit surrounding the question, such as this pile of horse pucky cleaned from a stable by one Adam Dickstein, writer of the blog, Barking Alien, who claims to have been playing RPGs for 44 years, but sounds like he has yet to crack a book.

Amidst the disparaging of various internet voices (we know how these things go), JB explains exactly why wading into this kind of discussion is a waste of our time:

"... I am more than a little fatigued by individuals who started playing D&D in the last 20 years telling me how and what "old school" D&D is ... or even just what ANY kind of D&D is. But you try to correct someone's ignorance and they just tell you to fuck off because, you know, it's just an opinion and you're telling them how their particular brand of fun is bad-wrong-dumb. Please let us NOT be preached to."

Well, yes.  To someone with 20 years experience, that seems like a long time.  To a high school student, 3 years of high school seems like a long time.  I'm sure that to anyone with 62 years of experience in D&D, I sound quite ignorant.  That's how it goes.  You can't explain to a millennial that when actors used to play a sex or a nationality or a race that was not their own, that was acting, not racism.  You can't explain to a Gen-Xer that when, after the sex act, if the sex partner LIKED what happened, then it wasn't rape, by definition, because no one involved thought so.  People with limited comprehension due to their limited time on the planet will be annoyingly ignorant of how ignorant they are, and there's nothing to be done about it.  Eventually, the world will hit them in the face often enough they'll get wise, so they can roll their eyes at people dumber still.

Far more interesting is the question JB asks: "have people forgotten how to play D&D?" ... and in relation to this a list of four "usual elements":  a group of players, peril, a responsible DM and a set of rules.  JB then spends two posts infering that these things are under siege ... while the comments section of both posts he's written (with a third to come) seems to support that yes, game culture is busy shattering our former conception of the game.

Uh huh.

Okay, agreed.  People out there aren't playing D&D the way we used to.  On this front, unquestionably, 5e was a literal gamechanger.  But then, not because it's all that different a game, but because the politics of "friendly gaming" were ruthlessly beaten into the heads of 7-12 year olds, the demographic the company decided to focus on in 2014 ... a demographic that's starting to graduate high school today.  This focus included drastically changing norms regarding social interactions between gamers at game cons and stores, on a draconian level, if you'll forgive the pun.  Anyone who disagreed with the policies of safe cards and game league conduct rules were — and are — ostracized according to the ancient Greek model.  Should we wonder that these children, just now entering young adulthood, should view the game very differently, especially when their authority model dictated that any and all negativity must be expunged from a game traditionally full of negativity?  

The present generation of new players have been warped by a meat grinder that viciously slams individualism unless it follows approved guidelines ... and we're well aware that those guidelines include that EVERYONE must be included and NO ONE should ever be hurt by the activity.  So much for rules, a DM's judgment or peril.  The only thing left is "group play" ... which is mediocritized to the kindergarten level of human communication.

The fish has been caught, gutted, speared and roasted until it looks nothing like a fish.  This was the company's agenda.

And you motherfuckers, with your shock and surprise and confusion, wondering what happened to the dear old game, and oh gosh it isn't like it used to be, argued tooth and nail with me for 12 years when I told you, repeatedly and at length, that it was happening.

"Oh no," you said.  "5e is just like the old game.  5e is rich and wonderful and filled with new things."

Yep.  Wonderful and new.  Arranged for singing high-C.

Well, it doesn't matter.  Because none of these "experience-not-play" participants will have the least influence over what the game is ten, twenty or fifty years from now.  They have no creditable knowledge to adapt, no intellectual principles upon which to expand, no sense of self-advancement that's been gained, no wisdom to share, no purpose to reveal and nothing of interest to say.  They are political creatures.  Expect them to gather together and form a clique of some kind that demands "Equal Respect among Other D&D Players" or some other such bullshit, like their other political peers raised in the same infantile political atmosphere.

They certainly have nothing to do with me or what I'm doing.


7 comments:

  1. LOL. Well, if I wasn't castrated before, this post is a real kick to the balls.
    : )

    ReplyDelete
  2. I read your third post, JB, The "Drift", and I don't see how you can speak of the company as "laissez faire." This may be what they pretend to be, but their presence on the internet, and in every public official event, is like an elephant jumping into a pool. Add other groups with similar agendas, such as the L.A. Production company sponsoring Critical Role, and it must be taken that the MESSAGE is as laissez faire as a Disney movie.

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    Replies
    1. They’re only laissez faire when it comes to teaching the game. They’re very involved when it comes to “brand management” and promoting their investment.

      Delete
  3. Yep, and at the moment, "brand management" is the agenda associated with their "Adventurer's League" brainwashing experiment - effectively sabotaging any idea of going it alone and making up your own mind about what the game is or how it's played.

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  4. Alexis, I'm not sure if you're throwing up your hands in exasperation or settling smugly into a fatalistic view of winning the long game, but I'm finding your take on the future of the game comforting and encouraging. I'm even hopeful that the in between generations are not lost, but that some might find their way to playing the game as well.

    to anyone with 62 years of experience in D&D, I sound quite ignorant

    It was very clever of you to restrict those who would find you ignorant to the null set. ;)


    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh you caught that, did you?

    Adam Dickstein has 2 years of experience more than me, but somehow he can't figure out "what happened" that made D&D what it is today ... despite the mountains of evidence to be found in every word he writes on his blog. He, incidentally, considers me too ignorant to include in his blog roll. So, see, the set isn't quite null.

    Let me be comforting and encouraging. All that's needed to ensure D&D survives into the next ten generations is for some of this generation to keep teaching it the way we play it. IF our way has merit, then that merit will be felt, respected and carried forward, this being the only way anything survives generation after generation. If we're wrong, and the way we play isn't good enough to survive, then we're wrong. In the long run, we'll all be dead anyway.

    I don't think we're wrong, because there's far too much legitimate research and conclusion in other studies to support what we're doing, and none at all to support the "D&D as Event" nonsense the company promotes. And frankly, to paraphrase a favourite movie of mine,

    This isn't a lost cause. Some of us know about lost causes; we've watched others fight for them and lose, and we've learned that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for. Some of you think that D&D, the one we played, is licked. Well, it's not licked. And I'm going to stay here and fight for D&D, even if the world gets filled with lies and bullshit about what the game is, or was, or ought to be. And all the actors and company shills and shitholes, and all their armies, come marching into this place. Someone will listen. Someone will learn from what I have to say.

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  6. "...5e was a literal gamechanger. But then, not because it's all that different a game, but because the politics of "friendly gaming" were ruthlessly beaten into the heads..."

    This. I play 5e primarily and find it's rule set not significantly better or worse than any other edition. They all have pros and cons, rules that make sense and those that don't. But the absolute poison that is infecting the game is the atmosphere and environment that the company is pushing, and that is displayed in the inane YouTube shows. This I can't stand and will fight at every opportunity.

    ReplyDelete

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