(you load) 16 Tons of ...

Luke Stratton: I want to talk a little bit about kind of what you're tapping on here with the communities. I feel like all of our brands, if you will, the communities are such a big part of it, and they're the thing that is different between, say, big corporate D&D, right? I mean, there are communities for those, but that's very like the two entities are very separated. You've got the corporate official stuff and then this like kind of back corner, illegal, you know, third-party stuff. Whereas, we're making stuff where they're putting our logos on the products. We're uplifting them. We back all the Kickstarter projects for Pirateborg and sell them in our store. (to Kelsey Dionne) I know you back all the Shadowdark stuff. Like Kelsey, tell us about your community. What about your community is like so vibrant and important to the Shadowdark brand?

Dionne: Yeah, it is kind of, it's become sort of a brand like an ecosystem. They, the community, is the most enthusiastic evangelists of the game, and we've kind of hit a critical mass where because there's enough of them, they're spreading sort of uncontrollably amongst... like, you know, 'cause like word of mouth for us is huge. Like, that's kind of how we make our first entry is through word of mouth, and so, we just have a really engaged enthusiastic community.

I was sent a video by the OSR by a colleague, which he did not want to post a link to, not wishing to give these people free advertising. Myself, I don't think it makes a difference. This group of dolts is what happens when a vaguely motivated vapid creators find a market in slightly more vapid consumers, creating opportunities for the savagery of the English language one can read above. The video features "members of the OSR" Luke Stratton, Kelsey Dionne, Brad Kerr, Matt Finch and Yochai Gal.

Luke Stratton created Pirate Borg and publishes pirate-horror OSR material through Limithron; Kelsey Dionne created Shadowdark RPG and runs The Arcane Library; Brad Kerr writes concise, atmospheric adventures such as Hideous Daylight; Matt Finch co-authored OSRIC and created Swords & Wizardry; and Yochai Gal created Cairn and co-hosts Between Two Cairns with Brad Kerr.

This blog blasted Matt Finch in January for his OSRIC, deservedly so. Otherwise, I don't know who these people are, nor do I give a fuck. I could tell, just spending a half hour with them, that I don't want to know them. Ever. I would find it difficult to be in a room with them.

I've worked a number of office jobs. There's always that up-and-comer who has learned all the corporate speak, is utterly oblivious to how ridiculous they sound to "normal" people, is incredibly sychophantic to upper management and is always to ready to make the minions "cheerful" about their commitment to the company. That is, just these up-and-comers down-and-implode, ending their fabulous trajectory and finding work in a warehouse. Maybe, if you've worked office jobs, you've met them.

Now, imagine that person has designed a role-playing game.

It's plain from the way these people speak about their products, which they are trying to sell, that they're not artists, players or hobbyists. They're small-brand operators who have absorbed a small, scattered and barely-understood corporate marketing language which they're amateurishly fitting into their speech in a desperate attempt to sound like they have a clue what they're doing or saying. Underneath the veneer, with the exception of Matt Finch, who is old enough to have done this so long that he's now competently slimy, it's more than evident that the other four are poster children for "imposter syndrome." They trip over their words, they change verb tense mid sentence, they fail to end sentences, they cram in phrasing like "critical mass" and "uplifting" that do not quite say what they want it to say, while using "community" as a word that miraculously launders their ill-conceived and probably misunderstood business position. I'd guess that none of them, Matt Finch included, though by now that part of his brain has suffocated along with his legal comprehension, have the slightest clue why their stuff is popular, why they have a lot of money and what they need to do to keep the money rolling is. Their speech patterns suggest that fear and doubt. Just to be clear, this is Luke Stratton's 17th Pirateborg podcast episode and he still talks like this. Constantly.

If they were genuinely passionate about their products, they would demonstrate passion. If they were in the last bit self-aware, they'd be so embarrassed by this level of performance that they would never appear on a podcast again. Not only can these people not speak casually, or for one moment appear to be authentic at all, every sentence literally feels like they're veering off a cliff of some kind, that they they have to keep pulling themselves back from.

Consider this phrasing: "we've kind of hit a critical mass where because there's enough of them, they're spreading sort of uncontrollably amongst..."

At this point, I'm fairly sure that even Dionne has realised that she sounds like she's describing the spread of a disease, which is why this thought just stops dead and gets translated into a completely benign cliche about word of mouth. There's no question she knew her language was careening out of control... because it happens again, and again, with all of them. I could easily just give twenty examples. Watch the video. It's a drinking game. You have to take a shot every time a speaker changes the subject mid-sentence.

These speakers all sound like people trying to maintain a product that they infer is unstable, needs marketing language to make acceptable, while at the same time being actually unable to factually speak about the products they're making.

Matt Finch: It's solely I think the fact of the internet being out there that people nowadays are reading on screens and even on phones, which have you know have different... there's just a different physical interaction with what you're doing, and the best way to read something on a screen is to have all the... every discreet piece of information isolated from every other piece, because you're going to be scrolling up and down and you need to... it's much more importan that you need to know where your eyes gonna fall (sic), and so you know I-I-I think anyone who is-is-is younger or has been on the internet a lot is now much more familiar and expecting to see information broken out that way.

Okay. That was three shots... and maybe I don't know what he was trying to say there because I'm now drunker than I was 40 seconds ago (the time he took to say this; it was hard to pound them back at that speed), but, seriously... what the fuck.

A couple of things. First, the channel Limithon, which hosts to the podcast, felt this was such a valuable quote that they cut it from the five-person discussion and published it as its own video. Yeetch!

Secondly, OSRIC was published 20 years ago. After widespread use of the internet, by the way, that can no longer be described as something happening "these days." Nor can phones, for that matter, which have had interactive screens for 19 years. So... yeah. That. One would expect that Finch, after twenty years, could express himself better than this... especially with that constantly invoked legal background of his (he constantly invokes it, so I might as well). Again, yeetch.

You'd think after 20 years you'd have realised, "I'm not really very good at this public speaking thing. Maybe I shouldn't be doing it any more."

Then again, no doubt, he needs to believe he's still relevant.

Honest to gawd, all due service to my colleague who didn't want to link this, this is an excellent demonstration of what's happened to the community.

The Old School Renaissance emerged as a reaction to what many players saw as the increasing complexity of newer editions of D&D — particularly 3rd Edition and onward, which accentuated elaborate rules, point-buy systems, intricate character builds and heavy roleplaying structures. Enthusiasts wanted to return to a more streamlined, improvisational and often harsher playstyle of 1974 to 1981 D&D, where the rules existed primarily to support play rather than constrain it. This meant: simple mechanics, fast resolution, minimal bookkeeping and a focus on emergent interaction between the players that would inspire and increase immersion for the table's culture. Players could run adventures quickly, handle combat and treasure without extensive prep, and rely on improvisation instead of predefined character arcs or vocal performance.

Just so we're clear, a "renaissance" is not expected to adhere to the products of the original time; much was produced during "The Renaissance" of the mid-2nd Millenium that did not exist in ancient Greece or Rome. From what I've been able to learn about the products these persons have created (excepting the podcast presenter), at least three of them seem to be creating products that are in line with old school play. I can't say, because I have no personal experience, that Cairn, Shadowdark or the products produced by Kerr are "good" or "bad," because I haven't seen them. Some research suggests that they do provide what they promise to provide: a deviation away from 5e concepts (though with Shadowdark there is reason to think this deviation might be superficial, as the game does embrace concepts like character identity, campaign themes and player investment that reads 5e-adjacent).

I have, on the other hand, seen OSRIC, which is just plain shit. It's not a redesign, it's a butchering of the original source material which has been repackaged in a way that made it worse, which was sold during the "golden age" of new shiny youtube, when so many rubes existed for the taking that OSRIC lucked the fuck out. That's all that was.

If I wanted to invest five minutes in any of these products, a pretty big if, then that desire is butched by meeting these people in this video. This sort of thing is supposed to increase interest, not reveal that the designers are in fact a bunch of losers who also got lucky, right there with Finch. I don't know that to be the case... but when you hear them, and see their body language, and then you put them beside Finch, whom they clearly admire (not respect, I'd expect respect, it's not your podcast), then it lessens my motivation to have anything to do with their product.

This is not how marketing is supposed to work.

Someone should take these people aside — that is, Dionne, Kerr and Gal — and tell them to stop having one-on-ones with marketing analysts and try getting back to their real, authentic selves; what they personally see in the product, why they made they changes they did, what they'd like to do next... and just stop talking about the fans as objectified things they're so proud to possess now. Yes, I get it, it's great to have fans... and no doubt, they all pay marketing lipservice to "thanking" the fans every day, because fans do in fact like that pandering shit. But really, the fans aren't in it to be acknowledged as a sort of contagion that's spreading fast. They're in it because they want to know who you are, because in your eyes, you're pretty cool.

Therefore, get some lessons in not sounding like what you like is the money you're making, because that's what business speak is designed to convey. "Word of mouth for us is huge" means, in corporatese, "we are raking in tons of money and we love it."

That's not good. Don't talk that way.

I have no notes for Finch. He's irredeemable... an old word that says, in essence, his soul is so much in debt now that there's no way of paying it back.

And as far as Stratton goes, it's pretty clear he doesn't give a fuck. Limithron has 5,080 subscribers and after three days, it has 3,400 page views. Even subscribers aren't listening to this shit. But these are his best numbers since producing a like post a month ago with Dionne again and three other guests, which yielded 3,900 page views. Apart from the 3,700-view post with Mike Shea, the rest of his work generally doesn't top a thousand. But that's okay. He's found a button that works, so expect to see a lot more "panel" episodes of this cast.

Ten years from now, if my luck continues as it has in the past, Luke Stratton will be more popular than Mr. Beast. Because, well, that's how far I am from the way the rest of the world is.

Certainly, Stratton hopes this will be the case. I doubt he thinks about anything else.

The Silver Age Cometh

If you’re the kind of D&D player who wants your reading material intellectually rich and gooey, this is definitely the blog. Still, I’d just like to comment a little on the recent posts, which I know hasn’t left much room for light-hearted reading. And regarding that, I’ve been thinking about the scattergun posts that I began writing years ago, and how that has evolved into lengthy series posts and in-depth investigations into the core beliefs underlying D&D and other role-playing genres.

Truth is, my agenda from the beginning of this blog was to inform, to explain what I think D&D “is” … its measure, its potential, the fundamental methodology that underlies how it is run and how it is played.

Unquestionably, it was presumptuous of me to believe that I knew the answers to those questions. People said that I was flogging the "one true way" and that my whole approach was that I was right, and they were all wrong.

That's almost true. They're all wrong ... but so am I.

Which is why I keep trying to figure out how to be more right tomorrow than I am today.  It doesn't do any good to offer another subjective opinion on the substance of role-playing.  We've been offering that since the days of the Dragon Magazine and it hasn't moved the conversation forward in 35 years.  When I have a discussion about alignment today, I hear the same arguments, the same evasions, the same half-baked definitions that I heard when Boy George was singing Karma Chameleon.  The conversation is stuck in the Dark Ages and all the rationally considered personal rhetoric I can offer isn't going to change that.

That is why, increasingly, I've been trying to approach the game from established precepts outside the D&D community ... and trying to build a consensus among those actually playing, rather than those who want to profit from having us play.  Or from those who are turning liveplay into a business, so that film companies and celebrities who have never offered a thing to enhance the game can pollute the agenda and the format for at least a generation.  Whatever approach I'm here to offer now is on the verge of being completely washed away by sponsored louts in a way that will make the min-maxing of powergamers look like an appreciated characteristic of RPG's Golden Age.

Make no mistake, we are definitely moving into role-playing's Silver Age and it is going to be ... an unholy mess.  Those readers who talk about playing D&D until they live in a retirement home are going to find themselves increasingly isolated and made into dinosaurs by the wave of fanboys and girls who don't play, don't understand why anyone would play, when the liveplaying by their heroes is so ... much ... better.

But then, there are so few of us around anyway, who would care?

I have no wish to watch my active game be transformed into a passive experience, where I watch others play, no matter how charismatic.  We've seen the process before.  Where once we had shows that taught how to cook, now we have shows where cooking has been transformed into a sport, where the actual cooking is never explained or even reasonably demonstrated, in order to make room for infantilised adults to express their anxieties and ultimately their blubbering tears when they fail to "win" ... as though knowing how to cook isn't itself an achievement.  Where once we had shows that explained how to make furniture or rebuild your house, now we watch people argue with each other in houses that are being remodeled in the background and off camera, presumedly by a crew of someones who come in when the main personalities stop arguing and go to bed.  Because while tens of thousands might be interested in cooking and renovation, millions are interested in watching people they will never be fight arguments they will never have, during experiences that they will never experience, because it is easier than rising to the bar of having to do something.

For a lot of people ~ a hundred times more than those who have ever DM'd or played in an RPG ~ the Silver Age is going to be a wonderful thing.  They're going to love their personalities, their favorite shows, their most cherished moments and their re-enactments of episodes and adventures, spotted with actual attempts at role-playing but mostly their attempts at producing their own liveplay theatres, which have already exploded across the web.  What they won't like is the inevitable Bronze Age that follows ~ and more quickly than it did for comic books ~ when efforts to create more and more interesting liveplay events drift into the "dark age" of attention-seeking.  But I won't have to write about that for a few years.

My only refuge ~ the only one I can see ~ is to drift myself into academia.  There's a chance that actual role-playing can be preserved ... but I admit, not much of a chance.  I see no chance at all if it isn't grounded in some kind of legitimacy; an examination that will stand the test of time and the shattering of gameplay as "doing it like the heroes on our game channel" becomes more important than playing the game.  Sometimes I feel like a monk in Ireland, glad to have a hovel near the coast where it's quiet and we can think clearly about things that really matter.

Of course, that's my presumption again.  Who says I'm good enough to be a monk?  I'm probably what they say I am: just a boring guy who doesn't understand that the game is just about having fun.

My plan is to produce 36 classes in the RPG 201 course, if I can.  I do plan to present a mid-term exam, and then a final exam, though I'll be surprised if more than a handful try either.  I intend to grade the exams, just as though I were a professor, and I intend to be quite clear on what the exams will be graded upon, so that I can demonstrate after the fact to anyone why this effort got a 'D' and why this effort got an 'A.'  I've been trying to come up with some meaningful artifact that can be gained by those who pass the course (a C- will be sufficient), as proof and for "bragging rights," but I can't think of anything that satisfies my standards ~ meaning, something I would be proud of having if I participated and someone else was grading.

Once I've finished the full course, I intend to reproduce the work as a book, with expanded passages, more examples, fixed passages and a better construction for the overall work.  Afterwards, if I can think of a 300-level course that would follow, I will work on that.  And so on until I choke on my bedsheets at the age of 90+, if I can manage to live that long.

I expect to do most of this in obscurity, watching millions get thrilled as they pay $75 to have their picture taken next to the celebrity of their choice, who can't seem to remember their spell list and needs to read it over again every time it is their turn to cast magic.  Or perhaps I'll watch a movie with the smug bastard who, after preening through nine years of being a DMing celebrity, will finally be given the lead role in a Rom-Com.

It'll probably win an Oscar.