The Gaming Den has an Attitude Problem

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 4:41 am

No. Not that one.

Or that one.

Or, well, all those other ones.

It's Elitism. It's happening in several threads right now, and indeed it's been brewing up for a while now.

It's going on in the textrinum thread, and thanks to Frank's continued thread shitting it is now plaguing my tiny organic character thread.

Koumei has kindly given us a very nice example.

koumei wrote:If you really view character creation/development as homework, then I wouldn't want to play with you anyway. Games are better off without people who think of it like that

We are getting a lot of this bullshit lately.

It is getting worse.

It has reached a point where I can't even talk about TRYING to find ways to stream line and integrate character advancement in interesting ways without having people coming in saying "We refuse to even let you talk about rules for people who don't spend multiple hours of time alone before hand doing research and prep work for their RPGs just as players rather than as GMs".

What. The. Fuck?

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:04 am

So you're just noticing that this board has a lot of elitism? To me it's a feature not a bug, you can expect a level of intellectual rigor from the posters here and ridicule those who fail to live up to it. If you want a more inviting board where you can propose your ideas, those exist.

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:21 am

We also have a problem recently where every thread is homogenized into talking about the same things. The Ninth Level Wizard thread is a direct reference to the Textrinum thread which was a mere transplant of the Winning at D&D thread, which itself was from another thread.

Now, normally threads spin off from other threads on tangential topics, and that's normal and healthy. But this is the same thread, repeated three times. I think that's a bigger nuisance than elitism, simply because I know better than to actually play with anyone on the Den.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:23 am

Juton. I think you missed the bit where the elitism is "we only design for or play with players who spend multiple hours between games researching rules and developing their character".

That is NOT the same thing as "intellectual rigor". It isn't even particularly relevant to intellectual rigor, aside from the fact you would have to have pretty poor intellectual rigor in order to accept that as a good design principle.

That is actual exclusionary self aggrandizing bullshit that actually hurts game design and gaming as a hobby. "We are better than mere casual players who just turn up to gaming night and do their gaming then, fuck those guys, they don't deserve to play" is a way of pretending you are better than other people and a way of avoiding actual intellectual rigor.

If you need some more examples there are plenty around. But that one seems like a pretty spectacular representative so if you can't figure it out from that, well then I WILL pull some ACTUAL intellectual rigor based elitism on you.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:35 am

I don't post much nowadays, but I agree that character generation and advancement should be simple to do decently well.

Actually, I think it should be simple enough that one can literally roll up a viable, interesting character with dice, the books, and no human decisions necessary.

Also, GC and Mistborn are the only posters I remember considering excessively elitist, and that's because they (were? are?) complaining about people who are bad at the game playing the game, rather than about people who are bad at the game changing the game (generally for the worse, because improving the game generally requires understanding the game).

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:43 am

What? People who aren't going to learn the fucking rules of the game, and who waste everyone else's game time doing the stuff that competent people can do in their own time, are ruining everyone else's fun. Yes, I demand a certain level of interest in the game, and a certain amount of intelligence in the field of "how to make a character and play the game". Yes, people who can't meet these simple requirements are going to make it less fun for me and for others.

I don't think that's too much to ask. You might just want to lure absolutely everyone into your games, but I only like to game with people who won't ruin it for me. It's not even a particularly high hurdle. I'm not asking them to display a grasp of foreign languages, or advanced math, or animal handling techniques.

Also, casual passersby who saw your post laughed at how ridiculous you are.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:46 am

One of the people with the biggest attitude problems complains about the board having an attitude problem. News at 11.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:47 am

PhoneLobster wrote:Juton. I think you missed the bit where the elitism is "we only design for or play with players who spend multiple hours between games researching rules and developing their character".

That is NOT the same thing as "intellectual rigor". It isn't even particularly relevant to intellectual rigor, aside from the fact you would have to have pretty poor intellectual rigor in order to accept that as a good design principle.

That is actual exclusionary self aggrandizing bullshit that actually hurts game design and gaming as a hobby. "We are better than mere casual players who just turn up to gaming night and do their gaming then, fuck those guys, they don't deserve to play" is a way of pretending you are better than other people and a way of avoiding actual intellectual rigor.

If you need some more examples there are plenty around. But that one seems like a pretty spectacular representative so if you can't figure it out from that, well then I WILL pull some ACTUAL intellectual rigor based elitism on you.

That is too good an offer to turn down.

I hope none of these examples involve Mr. GC, Mistborn, shadzar or any of the other troll posters who frequent here. They are not elitists, they are trolls and if you are responding to them you are making the situation worse.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:49 am

I think that Koumei's post there pretty much demonstrates what I'm talking about and why it's a problem.

In all seriousness, thank you for providing a VERY clear example of the specific problem around here I was talking about.

edit: wait, am I not allowed to count that as an example because Koumei posted it, I don't know who Juton counts as trolls around here...

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:55 am

Despite my flippant post about the other attitude problem, PL does have a point. Getting new blood into any hobby, gaming included, is pretty important.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:04 am

PhoneLobster wrote:I think that Koumei's post there pretty much demonstrates what I'm talking about and why it's a problem.

In all seriousness, thank you for providing a VERY clear example of the specific problem around here I was talking about.

edit: wait, am I not allowed to count that as an example because Koumei posted it, I don't know who Juton counts as trolls around here...

So you can't tell if Mr GC or shadzer is trolling? That's pretty fucking disingenuous.

Let's look at Koumei's statement:

What? People who aren't going to learn the fucking rules of the game, and who waste everyone else's game time doing the stuff that competent people can do in their own time, are ruining everyone else's fun. Yes, I demand a certain level of interest in the game, and a certain amount of intelligence in the field of "how to make a character and play the game". Yes, people who can't meet these simple requirements are going to make it less fun for me and for others.

I've had a lot of Thursday evenings ruined by having to give up game time so that people can do chargen or circle jerk about how great their dragon disciples are going to be. So I think Koumei is right, experienced players should do mundane tasks away from the game, so that not everyone is bogged down with them having to finish their accounting. That's common courtesy, not elitism. Now if you demanded that even new players do this, or if players make characters to some not obvious and very high standard then that could very well be elitism.

I don't think that's too much to ask. You might just want to lure absolutely everyone into your games, but I only like to game with people who won't ruin it for me. It's not even a particularly high hurdle. I'm not asking them to display a grasp of foreign languages, or advanced math, or animal handling techniques.

Also, casual passersby who saw your post laughed at how ridiculous you are.

It's not too much to ask. I have not enjoyed playing with everyone I've ever played with, in certain cases I've gone out of my way not to game with certain people. Does that make me elitist? If I don't want to date someone that's too unpleasant or hire someone who's too unskilled am I being an elitist? Being discriminating doesn't make you and elitist, being unreasonable about it make you one.

EDIT:Spelling

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:06 am

But even amongst new blood the most important characteristic I've seen is interest. At least a mild interest in learning the game and engaging with it. You can't -make- someone play a game and enjoy it and since one persons lack of enjoyment in a group can effect the entire group I would say requiring a base level of interest from new blood was a good idea.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:13 am

Surgo wrote:Despite my flippant post about the other attitude problem, PL does have a point. Getting new blood into any hobby, gaming included, is pretty important.

It's important to the continuation of the hobby as a whole. It doesn't benefit me if two hundred fuckheads I don't like join the hobby. It doesn't even benefit me if a million perfectly pleasant people join the hobby over in Venezuela. For it to be a good thing to me that someone joins the hobby:

1. They'd have to live here.
2. I'd have to like them enough to game with them.

Seriously, inviting a bunch of fuckwads into the hobby just adds more chaff to cut through in order to find anyone I'd actually enjoy gaming with. I don't give a shit how well the hobby does when I'm asleep, or in countries I'm not in, or when I die. That is not my problem. My problem is one of making it more enjoyable for me personally.

So no. It's not important to any individual person - and more specifically, me - if the hobby gets literally no new life in it, and roleplaying just becomes something us old people do, and then in a couple of hundred years when we're all dead the hobby dies out forever. That's okay. The future generations will manage by dint of having other things to entertain them instead.

PL just has the problem where he needs a constant supply of new people because, if he is in real life anything like the way he acts online, nobody can stand to be around him a second time.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:14 am

People play for different reasons, and every group I've been in has at least one person in it who games, not because of any great love of D&D specifically or RPGs in general, but because a large number of their friends game and while they may enjoy roleplaying for the most part, it's mostly just to be social. When they are told "We're going to start at level 12", and they bring to the table a straight-classed human fighter, trying to convince them that Weapon Specialization and Weapon Focus aren't feats they should take is not going to get you anywhere you're trying to go.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:27 am

Koumei wrote:PL just has the problem where he needs a constant supply of new people because, if he is in real life anything like the way he acts online, nobody can stand to be around him a second time.

Three out of four of my oldest (still) running gaming group have been gaming with me since I started 20 years ago.

They have NEVER made characters in down time between games. Only one of them has ever bought a players hand book.

In the mean time I DO play with a lot of NEW people all the time. It's called getting out and being social. Or rather the gamer equivalent of it. Give it a shot, you clearly need it since you've developed a remarkably insular view of what gamers are or should be.

And if so much of one of your existing group gets a job interstate or something simple like that your totally imaginary permanency of your seeming security in not ever needing or wanting anyone new ever is going to hurt you pretty fucking fast.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:35 am

Let me ask you something PhoneLobster. When Koumei says you have have a repulsive personality, do you think replying with the insistence that you have friends and are social will change anyone's opinion?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:41 am

PhoneLobster wrote:It's called getting out and being social. Or rather the gamer equivalent of it.

When I go out and be social, I don't game, I have sex. This isn't "hur hur you a nerd I have more sex", this is "I have other priorities. Gaming is just one of various interests, and goes to the sidelines when better things are on offer".

And if so much of one of your existing group gets a job interstate or something simple like that your totally imaginary permanency of your seeming security in not ever needing or wanting anyone new ever is going to hurt you pretty fucking fast.

Yeah actually, I moved interstate for work, I'd change my profile to show the location if I could be bothered doing that. Literally all my gaming is via forum or IRC. Yeah, I stay in touch with my friends, but we don't game together. And that's a shame, but given I'm in the South now, and not in the city, getting a gaming group together would require the amount of effort needed to get a wrestling team together.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:42 am

The signal-to-noise ratio on this board has taken a sharp downward turn. very visible to a newcomer, over the last two months or so. Engaging with trolls, acting like levels 16-20 are the baseline for all D&D games, shit like that.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:09 am

There is room for demos. Conventions, pickup games, and one-shots. These are all things that exist, and the world is richer for it. But the thing about demos is that they are not the complete game. You don't go through the complete character generation process during a demo, you have some pre-mades who have pre-written backstories that fit in with the world and hopefully the other pre-made characters.

Even a short modern RPG like After Sundown is over 150,000 words. It is not reasonable to expect someone to read through and understand it at the table during a demo. The player who shows up to the demo cannot be expected to grok character generation, or all the options in the game, or the entire game world. They have a little piece of the rules to work with and a little piece of the world to work with, and if they like those things they can go read the full game at some time when they are not literally sitting at the table with other people waiting for them to do something.

That Phone Lobster made an entire thread whose apparent purpose was to brainstorm how to give people the full version of a game during a demo shows how deeply out of touch he is with fundamental problems of "text length". Short of making your entire game a six page rules-lite, it is is not possible to provide the full game to people who are playing a demo version. Or to put it another way: if you can deliver the full game during a demo, that means that your game is literally just the demo.

That Phone Lobster then got mad at people and made a whole new thread because it turns out they like to play the "full game" with other people who are also playing the "full game" of whatever game they happen to be playing is not surprising. Phone Lobster is still Phone Lobster. But I think it's very weird, even for Phone Lobster, that he would classify the desire to play the full game by having all the players read the whole book to be a form of "elitism". I thought he was always ranting about player empowerment and shit. I guess right now he's arguing for the power to not have the slightest fucking idea what is going on because you've never read the game book(s)?

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:27 am

rasmuswagner wrote:The signal-to-noise ratio on this board has taken a sharp downward turn. very visible to a newcomer, over the last two months or so. Engaging with trolls, acting like levels 16-20 are the baseline for all D&D games, shit like that.

I dunno about that. If you ignore GC and Mistborn and the surrounding whatthefuckfest, is there really anything that terrible going on?

Oh. That's right. There's this thread. "You have no friends!" "Yes I do!" "I have sex!" There's... definitely substantial noise here.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:37 am

Rasmus is kind of correct, if you ignore the noise of GC/Mistborn, this board has been kind of quite for the last little while. Maybe that's because the gaming world seems a bit quite right now, other than shitting on D&D Next their doesn't seem like much going on.

K · Post by K » Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:51 am

Juton wrote:Rasmus is kind of correct, if you ignore the noise of GC/Mistborn, this board has been kind of quite for the last little while. Maybe that's because the gaming world seems a bit quite right now, other than shitting on D&D Next their doesn't seem like much going on.

Yeh, I think that engaging the trolls has been out of boredom and not out of some fundamental decay in the discourse.

It's a shame that DnD Next has already turned off the playerbase and Monte has a good year before his next effort drops. Those seem to be the only promising games on the horizon.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:59 am

Hey, if people want the Den to be more active, they can come up with cool ideas and make threads out of them. I've gotten good advice every time I asked for help developing a new campaign or one-shot.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 8:31 am

Juton wrote:Rasmus is kind of correct, if you ignore the noise of GC/Mistborn, this board has been kind of quite for the last little while. Maybe that's because the gaming world seems a bit quite right now, other than shitting on D&D Next their doesn't seem like much going on.

Now that I actually noticed and totally agree with. But less signal and less noise doesn't mean a worse signal/noise ratio, it just means a boring lack of anything.

Anyway, someone correct me if I'm wrong (no, seriously, please, I didn't actually read the thread), but I was under the impression PL proposed a system that shifted downtime preparation to midgame preparation, and people had problems with that, and it got discussed in the typical TGD fashion ("that's really terrible, here's some reasons why" "no, that's stupid, you're being stupid, it's fine, here's why," "NO, YOU'RE WRONG, HERE'S WHY. LET ME HATEFUCK YOU WITH WORDS." "YOU AND EVERYONE YOU HAVE EVER LOVED ARE TERRIBLE PEOPLE AND ALSO YOU ARE VERY WRONG, HERE'S WHY.")

If you make the general statement "character preparation should be fast, simple, user-friendly, and not have trap options," I think everyone will agree with that up to the point of the system losing functionality they desire. If you make the statement, "character preparation should be made into a midgame process," people can legitimately have problems with that because downtime preparation is flexible while game time itself is limited to the block of time everyone has free and is willing to spend gaming. I don't know why Koumei is letting herself become a parody of a fairly reasonable position, and why she is having a tangential side rant about how how she believes strongly in her self-interest (not the Randian "HAHAHA I'M BURNING THE WORLD DOWN AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME! RATIONAL SELF-INTEREST!" type of self-interest, but actual honest self-interest).

Now, at the risk of being almost on topic, if I had one complaint about the Gaming Den's attitude... can we not take our animosity of eachother so seriously? Yes, we engage in a lot of angry rhetoric during our arguments. I have said mean, hateful things to a number of people and I apologize for nothing you insufferable fuckwits, but I don't actually hate any of you and I don't actually think you are insufferable fuckwits despite having just said so. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of you are significantly easier and more pleasant to socialize with outside the environment TGD lends itself toward (which is a fine environment really, I'm not complaining). And despite fbmf's insistence that it's suicidal madness (exaggeration) to game with anyone here, I actually disagree, and I'd probably give a game with any of you a shot. (There are some of you I would not want as my DM, can't lie there.) Hell, I'd even play with Mistborn, and there is absolutely no force on heaven or earth that would stop me from taking skill focus (basketweaving). Preferably as a rogue with basket bombs of alchemist's fire the core character concept, but I'm flexible.

Anyway, the point is: yeah. We have arguments and get fucking angry at eachother all the fucking time. We vent. That's cool. Can we remember that ultimately our disagreements are usually about TTRPG game design and not shit like whether or not it's okay to sleep with your best friend's wife and that most of us can probably pass as pretty decent human beings to eachother outside of the narrow context that is TGD? I'm going to continue insulting people in heated debates for being wrong (and by being wrong, I mean disagreeing with me, because even if those aren't the same thing what am I saying, that doesn't make any sense), but based on my incredibly limited knowledge most of you seem like likeable enough and interesting people.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 8:57 am

FrankTrollman wrote:But I think it's very weird, even for Phone Lobster, that he would classify the desire to play the full game by having all the players read the whole book to be a form of "elitism". I thought he was always ranting about player empowerment and shit.

And yet reading the WHOLE book is something people don't do.

Player empowerment is my thing, but only because it is an upshot of my main agenda, which is a practical attitude to gaming.

And if I put your "desire" that everyone read through the FULL rules set before playing into ACTUAL practice I would only know ONE gamer for sure I would ever have played with in the last 20 years. And one GM I would have played under... only I had not read (all) of HIS preferred rules set.

Simple fact is most players read the bits of rules sets they feel are relevant and interesting to them, and then they stop and rely on the GM or someone else or make up the rest if they are taking the role of GM or someone else. edit: and most of them do most of their reading AT THE TABLE.

If we kicked out all the 3.xers who had not personally read through all of the PH, MM and DMG from the hobby... we would be left with, well, probably about half the posters on the Gaming Den if we were LUCKY.

That IS elitism. You might wish it were otherwise, but that's just the nature of most gamers. More casual than you would like. Work with the practical reality or go cry alone in an elitist corner.