None. The answer is none.
I have never, not once, improved my play by engaging in an argument about definitions.
I have only rarely improved my understanding of what’s happening at my table, with real people playing actual games, by getting into turf wars. I mean super-rarely as in maybe once.
These idiot turf wars are uniformly terrible. They’ve cost me friendships. They don’t even really earn anyone social cred — it’s a zero-sum game! While you’re busy circling the wagons and high-fiving each other, you’re actively hurting other people.
Either I don’t understand what the evergreen appeal of this fight is, or I understand it too well. The latter drove me to depression once (when I was a child and believed in “communities” based on shared hobbies), now it’s a handy shortcut to me knowing who I can and cannot relate to.
I learned a great acronym in one of Mikael Andersson’s threads recently: FNRE. And it’s true. Fucking nerds ruin everything.
Which is why I love this collection so much. What’s my rule about what to talk about in the Indie Game Reading Club? Any fucking thing I choose.
* * * * *
And now a word from IGRC World Headquarters.
Hold on to your butts for tomorrow’s round of answers. I would ask everyone in advance to listen with love and talk honestly, no matter how bad you want to wall yourself off with snark and bullshit.
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It’s going to start September 1, but to get your creative juices flowing, here’s the official Indie Game Reading Club’s list of questions to ponder.
Obviously this is needed because the #RPGaDAY list is so freighted with assumptions about RPGs that mostly it’s incomprehensible if you’re not in that scene any more.
1. When were you last deprotagonized? What happened and how did you reassert your agency?
2. What game created your most elaborate relationship map? How much of it did you actually use?
3. What’s your favorite behavioral incentive?
4. What’s your favorite perverse behavioral incentive?
5. Would you say rolling dice to have sex is hot, dirty, deprotagonizing, or all the above?
6. How many PbtA games do you own, and which one best captures its most clichéd genre tropes?
7. When did you last spend more time setting up a situation and talking about the situation after than actually playing in that situation?
8. What was your most awesome fight online about what does and does not constitute a story-game?
9. When was the last time an indie game made you feel guilty about your race, gender, or sexual identity? Were you more or less woke after you played it?
10. When did you most recently refuse to play a trad game because the central facilitation role was granted too much creative authority?
11. Best unwanted fictional input generated by procedural uncertainty?
12. Best story about waiting for players in a GMless game to finally get to the point in a scene they’ve called for but obviously had no idea why they wanted it in the first place?
13. What’s the most you’ve spent on a Kickstarter game relative to the amount of play it received?
14. What’s the most play-disruptive discovery you’ve made when you insist on playing by the actual printed rules?
15. When was the last time you unironically used the word “diegetic?”
16. GMs: abusers, control freaks or both? Best story explaining why this is so.
17. Do you buy your legal-sized paper by the ream or by the case? Do you ever try to reuse your playbooks or just start fresh every time?
18. What’s your best story about a precious snowflake character some trad player brought to the table because it was “clever?” How did you call them out?
19. What kind of shit-fit did you throw the last time someone tried to schedule your convention game in a ballroom like you’re playing fucking Pathfinder or something?
20. What’s your best story about falling all over yourself trying to rescue a bunch of awesome fiction that just got invalidated after making a fortune-at-the-end roll like some commoner?
21. What was the last OSR game you tried to play, but quit because you realized there’s literally no mechanical support for a storyline at all?
22. How many friendships have you terminated because they confessed they kind of like to play Fate games sometimes? It’s okay. Fate players have to hear the truth.
23. Tell your most scandalous story about getting X-carded.
24. What was the very saddest thing you wrote on an index card?
25. Do you like your scene framing hard, harder, or hardest? What’s the very hardest you’ve had your scene framed?
26. When you interrogate the nature of heroism in your game, do you prefer to directly or indirectly invoke Lacanianism?
27. What’s the very best playtest-stage game your friends probably haven’t heard of yet? How long ago did you play it and how much better was it than the current version?
28. What’s the most interesting period of obscure and unrelatable history you’d like to see a game set in? How would you do it?
29. What indie game tech do you most keenly miss when you play something more mainstream? And then do you denounce the game in person or do you save it for a social media rant?
30. What is your fondest memory of a game you thought was fun before you knew better?
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Trick question!
Let’s talk at length about what you mean by “definition wars” exactly, Paul Beakley, because I think you’re using the term wrong and it’s hampering my ability to convince you my argumentation style is superior.
Blocked, reported, doxxed.
I may be too young/new for this. Never really bumped into it (may be just my friends circles) so my answers are boring 🙂 I also don’t really see the distinction as hard? So I don’t really have a fight to pick?
Stras Acimovic lucky duckie. You dodged 15 years of bullets.
YOU’RE WELCOME!
—from all the grizzled Forge vets who died so there could be peace on the Internet
War.
War never changes.
Hahahahahahahaha.
Man, I tell you true, people I talk about with game often help me. People I play with help me a lot.
But arguments? Especially definition arguments, status plays, and us vs. them bullshit?
It is the end of all joy.
The End of All Joy
A Golden Cobra Game
(Also, the name of my sex tape)
Find a comfortable chair. Get either coffee, wine, or beer and set it close to hand. Sippable, leisurely.
Open a computer, or a notebook if you are determined to be that guy. Moleskine if you want double that guy points.
Think for a moment, fingers steepled before your face and 1000 yard stare in your eyes, about one of the most significant issues you have dealt with in your gaming life. This could be: not understanding a specific rule, or having trouble getting the group together weekly, or really liking Sorcerer and feeling alone in the world because you are the only one.
In the end, whatever it is not important, as long as it is something that actually matters to you and that you would like to improve in order to have more fun gaming.
Type out the question, the explanation, the statement. Or write it in your fucking notebook you goddamn hipster. Think on it a bit. Don’t write it too fast, take some time and try to get it just so. Sip your drink to slow your typing.
Once it’s ready, read it over one more time.
Now close your eyes. Imagine posting it to a public forum about roleplaying, filled with people you have never played with and will never play with, who will have opinions. So many opinions.
Think about what a helpful reply would look like. Imagine the opportunity for dialog that could both help you find answers to your question, and maybe make a new online friend as well.
Sip your drink. Taste that hope.
Now, consider how likely it is that you will get that reply. Think for a moment about how many people will subtly suggest you have brain damage. How many will tell you about how they have never had that problem. The ones who will deny that problem could possibly exist. Those who will ask you to define “game” and “fun” and “prep vs play time.”
Think about this until you delete the post or tear the page out of your notebook.
Sip your drink.
Remember the hope you had, for more fun games and human connection.
Sip your dink.
Bet you wish it was vodka now, don’t you sucker?
I have a bad back, no way am I risking sipping my dink.
LOL!
Okay, now I’m going to pretend that was deliberate.
It’s exceptionally on-point if we’re talking about nerd turf wars.
What is the definition of indie games? I mean with the huge followings of BW and Fate can we still consider it independant?
Micah, my favorite definition is that the designer has the power to order more copies, or not.
But the question is really, are you talking about games that come out of the Forge and its diasporatic scene, or do you mean a production method? The above is a definition I like for the latter.
I really cannot tell if we’re being trolled right now.
🙂
D’oh!
Never had the “story-game” fight. Have had the “That’s not a role playing game fight.” I was on the “what do you fucking care what it’s called?” side.
SPORTS!
I believe Joscelin le esqurel got banned for provoking “The Ewok Wars” on some board or other.