@ReaperOscuro I want to be able to play Matsuri as a D&D character. Also, Frederika is the cutest Tsundere ever.

From some old-school blog: Monte Cook and Tracy Hickman arguing about showboat-y proactive players back in 2001. I am kinda entertained.

I want to throw Making the Tough Decisions at both of them.

I want to throw their own strawmen of each other's positions at both of them. ;)

Mmm. It does have that lovely petulant quality peculiar to argument rather than discussion.

The comments are like 40% people going, "Tracy Hickman, you wrote the Dragonlance modules and now you are saying don't railroad!!?" I'm not sure that's entirely fair.

(Also, I want to scour that blog's typography formatting choices with a chunk of steel wool.)

@AlexP Four comments in and we've started 4e-bashing. WOOOOH, AGENDAS! [waves "you're a #2" foam finger]

@BESW 4/6 comments, in fairness. But, yeah, OSR blogs have this problem pretty often.

@AlexP Well, the second comment is bashing 3e, but I'm not sure exactly HOW.

I think I'm more on Monte's side in the sense that I find his stance more coherent. I don't quite want to play the game he's describing, but it's a clear "We are doing this now, together. Don't ruin it for everyone."

Calling 3e "outdated" in the context of a conversation about 3e, and implying that OSR attitudes are LESS "outdated" (whatever that means in the context of a game that doesn't expire) than 3e, doesn't make much sense.

Hickman kinda comes off as describing a particular (simulationist in some sense?) ADVENTURE! style that's awkwardly shoehorned into a place it doesn't fit. Like you're actually sitting around doing slow-and-steady solve-the-puzzle dungeon stuff and then it's time to unleash your DRAMATIC HEROISM!

I strongly disagree with both of them, because they're both leveraging game-level solutions to address table-level problems.

When they rise up out of the game to look at the group dynamics, both of them have a "kill it with fire if I can't fix it in-game" attitude.

@BESW I think the whole "player typology" thing they're talking about is kinda the "Here's how the GM manipulates the players" version of it. But maybe I am reading that into the text because, well, I am judgey. :/

Nobody's saying anything about talking with the players to make sure everyone's on the same page.

@AlexP That's an in-game solution: how the GM alters the game experience to manipulate the players.

There's no dialogue, no attempt to communication directly, just changing the in-game narrative landscape to try to change the players without telling them what the goal is or wondering what they think of it.

That's, ultimately, the problem: I don't see any indication that it occurs to either of them to talk to their players.

Heck, even kicking the player out is done by not inviting him to return.

@BESW Yes, this is a hilarious observation.

These are not games among friends, these are passive-aggressive dictatorships.

If you don't tell your players what you want (much less ask them what THEY want), then of course there's going to be problems.

It's like trying to teach a dog how to play dead by randomly smacking it with a newspaper and nothing else.

And Hickman's advocating that players respond in the same way: by running amok when they don't like what's going on, rather than speaking up.

@BESW If we were talking about this 10 or 20 years ago, I'm pretty sure someone would've been along to rebut that with "Well, a good GM..."

@AlexP And nine years ago when I first started GMing with nothing except the DMG 3.5 and my gut instinct, I would've said "A good GM should be interested in what his players are interested in."

A good GM can teach a dog how to play dead by randomly smacking it with a newspaper and nothing else.

A good GM doesn't speak to players. He only nods at them, lightly. They've been trained to understand his every microscoping gesture by the pile of dead character sheets lining the floor of the game room.

I find it very interesting that Hickman uses "revolution" as his metaphor.

> "When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right." -Victor Hugo

@BESW But not anarchy! It's kinda confusing.

> "Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." -Kafka

Revolution isn't about ending rule, it's about changing rule.

Hickman perceived that (at the time of writing, at least) the Great Evil in Gaming (at the tables he knew about) was GM tyranny: railroading, and adhering to the letter of rules rather than the spirit in order to crush innovation.

Because he was (for some strange reason) unable to conceive of GMs and players sitting down and talking about their goals and reaching a mutual understanding about their desired gameplay experience, he instead advocated that players rebel and force GMs out of this "rut."

Does dragons blood (blood not the herb) do anything in pathfinder? I can't find anything.

Which is just turning the problem around so that players are smacking their GM with the newspaper.

I'm curious what it was like when he and Weis worked together to write stuff.

Like, what kind of dialogue they had and how they came to agreement on things.

@AlexP NEWSPAPER DUEL.

@BESW W-well... the attitude of solving all problems in-game and not occurring to anyone to just talk about it seems to be a common theme in D&D issues here

@JonathanHobbs And this baffles me.

so there is something culturally there, maybe because the rulebooks never really talk about just talking to the players and instead say: "here's what you do, DM, and here's what the players do, and here's all the in-game solutions to your problems"

It just talks so much about what to do in the game itself that it maybe just never occurs to anyone to just ask or talk to each other.

If there is anything which justifies the "socially retarded man-child" trope gamers have been saddled with, it is that our culture seems historically determined to make us forget we can communicate with each other out of character in any way except through arguments.

Well, many of these issues are ones you don't normally have in other things that are called "games." It's not like you'll sit down to play poker and someone makes you solve a puzzle instead of getting to cut up draconians with your sword.

@AlexP No, because you had that discussion when you chose to play poker instead of Monopoly or going to a movie. It is basic social interaction.

"I thought we were going to watch Snakes on a Plane. Who put Prospero's Books in the DVD player instead?"

@BESW nobody in D&D goes into D&D with a common agreement they're going to see snakes on a plane

they go into D&D with a common understanding they'll play what the GM puts there

@JonathanHobbs or not, apparently.

Of course! But you can largely handle that stuff before "play" in those situations. Snakes on a Plane just is Snakes on a Plane while you are watching it. There's no element of trying to maintain that. Or someone suddenly wanting Prospero's Books after 1.5 hours.

RPGs are a weird little sidebar to social interaction, but the idea that you put social interaction on hold as soon as you agree on the general gist of what you're doing baffles me.

@BESW Not social interaction. Negotiation about the activity.

When I was first shown Fight Club, my friend was very excited about sharing it with me, but he made sure I would be okay with the violence before we started watching it.

About a quarter of the way in he suddenly remembered that it also had graphic sex.

So he paused the film to double-check whether I'd be okay with that too, and offered to skip the scenes if that would make me more comfortable.

We have questions on this site which indicate that kind of behavior is not a common standard in RPGs.

Well, watching the movie also doesn't give you any mechanics for interacting with your space other than "sit there and watch it" or "press pause and talk for a bit."

I don't think it's entirely surprising that people see a wealth of structured tools (the levers the game gives you to operate within its space) and develop tunnel-vision.

@AlexP And that makes me think of the Stanford prison experiment.

How, for example, does the GM-vs-player (not vs PC, vs player) attitude develop? Or the paladin-as-moral-authority attitude, or the idea that all plot hooks must be custom tailored to the druid?

They don't rise naturally from the activity, they are artificially cultivated by that "tunnel vision" which delegates roles and authority unequally.

@BESW I read Hickman's article and thought, "I kinda want anarchy."

@AlexP Whereas I read it and thought "I never thought he was a very interesting villain for Batman."

I dunno where Beware the Batman is going with Anarchy, but so far I'm as unimpressed as ever.

I guess my conclusion from those letters and this conversation is that Cook and Hickman were both operating in a culture which so devalued dynamic interaction between players as mutual participants that basic communication stopped being an obvious option for dealing with conflicting expectations.

Which is tragic, because we see developers of the culture's flagship --people with their hands on the tiller of the industry in very real ways-- failing to notice something which they were in a unique position to rectify. Instead they dug in deeper, reinforcing the rivalry between participants and the idea that solutions should be found in the game rather than among those playing it.

Yeah, the fact that the "proactive" side of the conversation is basically "Yell SURPRISE! and run off."

I wonder if they might have been more likely to recognize the culture-level issues if they hadn't both approached the discussion itself from a similar attitude of rivalry in which one must triumph and one must fail?

And, building on that into Elseworlds territory, what would gaming be like now if the last ten years had seen the RPG flagship product supporting an ethos of mutual participation?

@AlexP Concept: a character with Int as a dump stat and an Amulet of the Planes.

I call it "The Game-Changer."

@BESW Hahahaha.

"Bored now." [Int check]

(I was hoping to find an "alternate-dimension-vampire" bored!Willow, actually. The prime-dimension evil Willow is so... thematically messy.)

@BESW Evil witch Willow is... meh.

Also her costuming is kinda awful.

Whedon should not be allowed to use any given metaphor for more than one season.

I mean, like, her clothes just don't fit.

(Marry a person with a garment construction degree and, well, this is what happens to all TV you watch. You just notice.)

Heh.

Whereas my background and family makes me keenly aware of how stupid the theme of that whole thing was.

Well, yes also, too.

"I thought witchcraft was a metaphor for self-confidence and female empowerment. No? It's interchangeable with lesbianism now? Wait, now it's drug abuse? Or lesbianism? Or... it's just neopagan pablum? I'm confused."

I can see why Willow was, like, a fan-favorite character, but the actual story stuff focused around her was pretty awful.

Dear Whedon: when writing a story about female empowerment with a strong subtheme about nontraditional gendering, please don't use the same metaphor for lesbianism and nihilistic drug abuse. This is what we call "mixed messages" in polite company.

I think a big part of that came from the writers' image of Willow being mostly, like, static things rather than story-things. Like the way someone can draw or describe a character who feels badass but then draw a blank as to what that character should do.

I have a similar problem with Buffy as I do with Doctor Who: the best individual episodes come from eras that I can't stand.

Everything about the character arcs and the direction of the show in post-high-school Buffy feels wrong, but the show was hitting its stride in terms of skill, style, and production values.

I honestly don't mind muddled themes, to an extent. They can create interesting ambiguity. But the witchcraft thing isn't a good example.

Buffy was at its strongest when it remembered its roots: the schlocky horror film where the cute blonde chick is the first to die, re-imagined with the girl as the hero. A deliberate and conscious inversion or affectionate parody of traditional horror motifs.

Whenever it took itself too seriously, or tried to be its own story without paying homage to those origins, or tried to draw from a different genre, the show was weaker for it.

Then, of course, it fell prey to Whedon Syndrome and I can't stand that. Evil Willow is made of Whedon Syndrome.

You'll need to be more specific, I think.

I could see Whedon Syndrome being so many different things.

Whedon Syndrome is what I call it when a show with a wide variety of interesting and engaging storytelling devices stops using them, and instead repeats this one formula: Choose a popular character. Make her happy. Take away her happiness as brutally as possible. Linger on her misery.

Bonus points if the happy/misery dynamic is romance-based.

I am so happy that Firefly got cancelled when it did, because it was already setting up for Mal and Inara to get Syndromed.

Syndromed?

Oh.

[Reads up]

@BESW Yeah.

I feel like this Whedon Syndrome goes together with his other syndrome. Call it Whedon Fails Feminism, I suppose.

I like Whedon's writing. It's a bit repetitive, but he's got good ideas and witty dialogue... until at some point he gets--I dunno? Bored? Runs out of ideas? Thinks that audiences want to see Buffy/Willow/Wesley/Mal/etc endure an endless conga-line of misery and dashed hopes?

If I drank, I'd be making up an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. drinking game.

We tried to watch that. My wife kinda liked the first episode but then just gave up immediately.

Coulson's great. Everyone else is cardboard.

And there's nothing super.

As monster-of-the-week as Buffy's first season was, at least we knew that The Master was squatting in his Evil Lair making an Evil Finger Tent and Smirking At His Minions.

Firefly didn't have a recurring villain as such: its villain was the crew's own inability to score a true victory against the cruel, uncaring world. Bleak, but each Struggle of the Week had continuity.

Agents has some lukewarm "team not getting along" tension that really just fizzles because it has no teeth.

"Will they be friends or just ambivalent coworkers? You can cut the tension with a knife!"

Agents doesn't revel in its superheroic setting like it ought to, and the only other continuity, the only interesting domino that's been set up to get knocked down later, is Coulson's "vacation" in Tahiti.

Yeah, Tina said something about how the second episode just wasn't about anything, sorta.

We tried out a bunch of new shows this fall and the only ones we're really watching are Coven and Young Doctor's Notebook (well, that's new in the US).

Agents feels like Alphas with better dialogue but weaker characters and plot. And when you've got weaker characters than Alphas you're in trouble.

I think I've seen Alphas. Maybe? Not sure? How does it compare to, erm, Heroes? Or that other superhero show that was neither of them?

Yeah, most of the current TV shows I'm watching are mostly so-bad-it's-good (Arrow) and what-will-they-pull-out-of-their-rears-this-time? (Haven).

@AlexP I didn't watch Heroes, and probably didn't watch the other one too.

@BESW Didn't miss much. Not that I really watched them all the way, though.

Alphas is... it's the X-Men if Alan Moore's Watchmen universe had put them together.

A covert semi-government-approved group composed of a guy with great strength (until he gives himself a heart attack), a guy with the TV version of Asperger syndrome who can see wireless signals, a woman who can hypnotize people and is a pathological manipulator, and so forth. Instead of Professor Xavier, they have a shrink leading the team. Because goodness, do they need it.

But they hardly ever did anything interesting or thematic with that setup, so it was just "Will they solve the problem of the week without getting themselves killed, committed, or arrested?" until the season plot arcs kicked in, and then things just got stupid.

The TV versions of "spectrum disorders" are rubbing me the wrong way lately. The Bridge was supposed to have an autistic cop, and it did a passable job of having an autistic character, but it made no sense for her to be a cop. (Also I kinda hated the show in a bunch of other ways.)

Like, she'd be a decent representation of an autistic person in general. But she's not someone who actually ever learned adaptive behaviors that fit her career. Despite, well, having that career.

They started out doing an okay job with this guy, except that disability superpowers are problematic at the best of times.

In this case, his distraction and disengagement was increasingly the result of his superpower and Not Being Understood rather than an actual disability-based impairment.

@BESW I remember the X-Men cartoon show. Prof. X and Magneto end up in Mr. Sinister's antarctic prehistoric magic land. Which suppresses their mutant powers and also now Xavier can walk.

Which means his disability was... also a mutant power?

@AlexP Classy.

@AlexP That's one thing I liked about Bones in the first season or two. Her social quirks were believable in scope and function.

She wasn't diagnosed with anything, which helped, but her profession and her quirks fit together reasonably well and she did actually have the socially skills she'd have needed to cultivate.

Later on it just got silly, as she became increasingly cuckoo.

Bones isn't the only "Aspie" on Bones, pretty much.

Autistic-Cop-Lady was remarkably well-done for, well, a typical TV show. But I kinda expected this show not to suck and then it did, so I was extra-judgey. Because it came on as all, like, serious.

(Also, the show blew all its interesting character developments in the first couple seasons and has been scrambling to invent new ones since.)

This season, the Serial Killer For This Story Arc actually went meta and forced one character to call off the wedding with another character but not tell her why, just to create some artificial drama.

My wife and I just stopped watching it for a bit. We'd keep DVRing it and then delete 'em when the description said "Pelant."

He got headshot an episode or two ago.

She was so happy when that was done.

I cheered for all the wrong reasons.

Yeah, we saw that one.

My wife says Bones and Dexter are both interesting because the authors of the source material had amazing blind spots that are reflected interestingly in the TV shows.

Heh.

I rather enjoyed the first season of Dexter, and felt that it needed to stop right there.

The story was over.

Like, Hal Lindsay didn't really seem to realize he was writing a character who wasn't really a true sociopath.

Which is what makes his internal monologue on the TV show so compelling at times.

I thought the "thinks he's a sociopath but isn't" dynamic was one of the only truly interesting things about Dexter.

I wish that show was more consistent.

When it's on, it's on. But it wasn't on a lot.

Eh. The psycho girlfriend killed the show for me.

Anyway, must go!

Lola or whatever her name was?

ttfn

Later.

@BESW "You rolled... the elemental plane of fire, outside of the City of Brass. Sorry guys, I told you it was a bad idea." Then, they changed game.

@Zachiel One way or another, the Amulet of the Planes CAN change the game.

;)

I only ever used it at epic levels with a wizard who couldn't fail.

@BESW That's how you're supposed to use it

But the potential abuses did not escape me, and I once made a villain who kept one around as an emergency exit.

So, tonight Trogdor and I did an opening session of The City before watching The Curse of Fenric and Green Isn't Your Color.

"Teddy" the Homeless Ex-P.I. Shaman was approached by one of his Friends in the City Watch to unofficially help investigate a mysterious theft: a not-particularly-notable family heirloom is missing from a safe without any sign of a break-in or safe-cracking, and without waking the couple sleeping in the same room.

The only lead was a local thief known for putting together "exactly the right crew" for any given job. Teddy was pretty sure "Seven-Fingers" didn't do it, so he tracked Old Fingy down for a chat.

Teddy bought Seven-Eff a drink and offered to get the City Watch off his back if the thief could provide a more plausible suspect for their attention. It worked, mostly by insulting his abilities until his pride forced him to prove he knew what was going on.

But 7F had some "friends" who'd been keeping an eye on him and making him nervous, so when a convenient brawl broke out Teddy used his new-found spiritual powers to use the anger and excitement in the room to set some bottles of booze on fire, giving both 7F and Teddy a chance to slip out unnoticed.

Unfortunately an interested party had gotten wind of Teddy's searching for 7F, and a local brass-knuckles-for-hire was waiting in the back alley. Teddy hoped to provoke the thug into spilling something about his employer, but got dropped with a sucker punch and spent most of their "conversation" curled around his kidneys.

And that's the session. Trogdor did a great job on his first night as a Fate GM.

Rawr.

@Metool Frrrrr! Meow!

Good Morning Metool

Time to make cookies!

> "We grow." -Grandma

@Alyksandrei That kind of cookies?

@Zachiel ???

@Zachiel gotta test the oven ... so it's time to make a batch of molasses cookies. with chocolate chips.

cookieclicker.org

ok I completely botched the sitename but it redirects, so...

@Zachiel oh.

mmmm, fresh-baked cookies are tasty!