3 ms·

I haven't been engaged in the discourse as long but I figured as such. That doesn't excuse the current state of the discourse as good however. There are lots o

I haven't been engaged in the discourse as long but I figured as such. That doesn't excuse the current state of the discourse as good however. There are lots of media fandoms out there where certain parts of the fandom get much, much more fan interest than others. There have always been popular blockbuster movies, books are dominated by bestsellers, anime and manga have always been dominated by shounen works which have fandoms much larger than all the other anime and manga debuting in the year combined. Those fandoms don't seem to have their hackles raised permanently when discussing the popular properties. Instead fans of the broader medium recognize that they are a fan of the medium as a whole instead of the most popular properties. The TTRPG space seems uniquely bitter. Even aside from the silly 5E spat, the loudest TTRPG voices tend to strongly prefer story games and the old Forge forum had a legacy of using hyperbolic language to criticize adjacent styles that were mostly a matter of taste. In my experience, TTRPG discourse is quite bad and mostly involves talking up your preferences and criticizing others'. I enjoy the hobby but really hate the childish, camp-obsessed discourse. I tend to stick to the spaces of systems I like because there's less us-vs-them going on. The anti-D&D snark at the NASA adventure is a great example. I can think of 4 non-D&D-lineage (so non-OSR) systems that the adventure is trivial to convert to. But instead of producing translations of the adventure or thanking the NASA folks for releasing a free adventure, the TTRPG world seems to be yet again trying to find the smallest thing they can to get angry over.

BryantD 3y ago
It’s probably worth bringing the exact wording over here at this point: “It's... fine? I mean, it's pretty obviously written for D&D and games operating in the same space, with similar expectations for what a TTRPG adventure looks like (meet some fantasy people, go to a dungeon, dodge the traps, fight the enemies, beat up a boss, go home).” This doesn’t seem all that angry to me. It doesn’t say that D&D is bad. It doesn’t say that the adventure is useless for any non-D&D game; it says that the adventure is oriented towards the traditional and popular idea of what an adventure should look like. That’s true! Then they compliment all the images NASA has produced over the years and offer a way to do something else cool with them. That seems pretty cool to me.
cthalupa 3y ago
I would agree that it isn't a great place to be in, but I don't know that I necessarily agree with the comparison to movies/books/anime/etc. There's always been plenty of places to discuss smaller movies or shows without getting shit on. I guess the closest approximation I can think of might be the people who take Star Wars vs. Star Trek, or Marvel vs. DC, etc. too seriously, but in this case it's basically a subset of 5E players vs. the world, and the non-5E fanbase is significantly smaller so you don't quite have the similar sizing as you would in those examples. For anime, I don't know that I've ever seen the shounen crowd be vehemently against shoujo or seinen/josei. I would agree that, on the whole, there is more interest in alternate systems because D&D has gotten so popular.

BryantD 3y ago

It’s probably worth bringing the exact wording over here at this point: “It's... fine? I mean, it's pretty obviously written for D&D and games operating in the same space, with similar expectations for what a TTRPG adventure looks like (meet some fantasy people, go to a dungeon, dodge the traps, fight the enemies, beat up a boss, go home).” This doesn’t seem all that angry to me. It doesn’t say that D&D is bad. It doesn’t say that the adventure is useless for any non-D&D game; it says that the adventure is oriented towards the traditional and popular idea of what an adventure should look like. That’s true! Then they compliment all the images NASA has produced over the years and offer a way to do something else cool with them. That seems pretty cool to me.

cthalupa 3y ago

I would agree that it isn't a great place to be in, but I don't know that I necessarily agree with the comparison to movies/books/anime/etc. There's always been plenty of places to discuss smaller movies or shows without getting shit on. I guess the closest approximation I can think of might be the people who take Star Wars vs. Star Trek, or Marvel vs. DC, etc. too seriously, but in this case it's basically a subset of 5E players vs. the world, and the non-5E fanbase is significantly smaller so you don't quite have the similar sizing as you would in those examples. For anime, I don't know that I've ever seen the shounen crowd be vehemently against shoujo or seinen/josei. I would agree that, on the whole, there is more interest in alternate systems because D&D has gotten so popular.