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October 28, 2006
THAT Doesn't Happen Every Day
I just stumbled upon Malcolm Sheppard's blog, Shooting Dice, yesterday. I found it so compelling that between then and now I read
The whole.
Goddam.
Blog.
That has never happened to me before.
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Comments
I'm deeply sorry for your loss.
Posted by: Buzz at Oct 29, 2006 9:40:14 AM
I found it worth about 10 other gaming blogs.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Oct 29, 2006 10:59:04 AM
Even posts like "Fun Later, You Selfish Git" and neologisms like "consumerist"?
Posted by: Buzz at Oct 29, 2006 12:45:01 PM
No, that was good stuff. Problematic jargon coinages are practically de riguer in RPG theory. And there are two entries that I think really add something to the discussion, the one where he talks about the moral and esthetic vacuity of "thematic gaming" in the absence of character identification/immersion, and the other where he says that the Forge movement's singular achievement is what he calls "session-based design," and identifies this as a genuine revolution in approach to game design.
Obviously how much one can bear the tone of an opinionated blogger is a matter of individual taste. Frex, I find the blogging personae of Chris Chinn and RPGPundit/Nisarg to be too unpleasant, in their different ways, for me to read them. Sheppard doesn't push MY buttons in a way that makes him unreadable for me, but I'm sure he pushes some people's.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Oct 29, 2006 8:50:00 PM
See, I find it amazing anyone could mention Chris and the Pundit in the same sentence. Chris is someone I've found compelling enough to read his whole blog archive *twice*. Pundit is on my ignore list. :) (Mearls' is the other blog I've read from start to finish.)
Malcolm... has rubbed me wrong way since back before he was exiled from RPG.net and ENworld. His perspective on gaming is at odds with my own and those of the designers I respect. I feel like he wants to drag the hobby kicking and screaming back into the early '90s. I'd love it if he'd get over his Forge-hate already, too. (That includes the "No, really, some of my best friends are Forge games," posts, too.)
But, hey, if you've found value in his stuff, more power to you.
Posted by: Buzz at Oct 30, 2006 8:46:36 AM
No question that Chinn and Nisarg are two different kinds of obnoxious. But I think what we're dealing with here is the universal tendency of people to cut members of their own in-group slack they won't cut others. I see people who are relatively Forge-hostile excuse Nisarg as "entertaining," when in fact he's vicious, inexcusably so. And I see some ardent Forgies minimize or excuse an awful lot of rudeness or tendentiousness on the parts of other Forgies.
Meanwhile, "dragging the hobby back to the 90s" seems to betray an awful lot of insecurity about what "designers you respect" have actually managed to accomplish. Plume and John Snead aren't going to pry your copy of Mountain Witch from your cold, dead fingers are they?
Posted by: Jim Henley at Oct 30, 2006 2:18:44 PM
Malcolm is very high on my list of friends who reliably stimulate me to fresh insights, particularly about matters I'd thought were settled but turn out to have new dimensions.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh at Oct 30, 2006 11:54:21 PM
Jim, if you want to write me off as an "insecure Forgie" because I enjoy Chinn, don't care for Sheppard, and could really care less about Nisarg, I can't stop you.
Bruce, that's cool.
Posted by: Buzz at Oct 31, 2006 10:20:51 AM
Bruce, FWIW I read Malcolm mainly because of your good opinion of him -- a lot of his turns of phrase just plain rub me the wrong way, and it was your good report that gave me the willingness to keep going despite that.
I think comparing Chris or Malcolm to Nisarg is nuts; they both write with a degree of honest good faith that I have never seen him demonstrate.
Plume is one of the treasures of the rpg discussion universe, IMO. In addition to writing with honesty and intelligence, she also reads with charity and an active sympathetic imagination.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Oct 31, 2006 4:03:34 PM
Buzz, it's just that your anxiety surprised me. You do realize your first comment was kind of a threadcrap, right?
Neel, bro, I was comparing my reactions to the styles of each. Switching genres for a minute, if I say "I find Jane Hamsher and the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler each unreadable in their different ways" I'm not saying "They are both genocidal sociopaths with a Wordpress install."
Posted by: Jim Henley at Oct 31, 2006 8:37:47 PM
Malcolm already knows that I think his zealous pursuit of the edge leads him to unwise thoughts and phrasing, Neel, for what it's worth. Sometimes he discharges anger in useful ways, sometimes very much not so, in my opinion. We remain friends, though - sometimes he later changes his mind, sometimes I do, but in either case, the good stuff is worth the rough spots.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh at Oct 31, 2006 9:56:04 PM
Jim: yeah, I know, and I regret being quite so harsh. That's the kind of reaction Malcolm creates in me, though. Granted, I also have years of dealing with him on fora adding baggage.
Posted by: Buzz at Nov 1, 2006 12:27:32 PM
That's very flattering.
You have to understand that at this point, any structured ideas I have about RPGs seem to be pretty inaccessible to people. This isn't because people are dumb -- I just haven't put together a way of talking about it yet. I'm starting to get a little more open about the Big Ideas, but at this point I still think the community is better off with scatterbrained content, because structure is (in my opinion) seriously limiting the kinds of things that can be talked about, either by reinventing the wheel for the sake of supporting that structure or by only speaking within its context.
Posted by: Malcolm Sheppard at Nov 7, 2006 2:13:29 AM
You know, I just typed up a really long reply in which a lot of rage came boiling out of me in a torrent.
Then I read down and saw that Malcom had come here and shown some real class. (Which, for the record, is NOT a rare thing.) And that Buzz had sort of appologized.
So I deleted it.
But let me just say that the sort of divisivness that started off the comments in this thread is the leading cause of why I'm growing more and more distant from all of the various interent game-discussion communities.
It may be worth thinking, for many of us (as I'm not immune to it myself) that there are many, many times when our zealousness to defend our cause may be doing more harm to our cause than anything the other side could ever say.
I know the moments I've most been disgusted with the Forge, or with the anti-Forge, or with any group is when they've been shit talking about other groups. I've yet to see a single argument by one group about another that makes me less respectful of the group being attacked, but I've seen a lot that have made me less respectful of the group doing the attacking.
Posted by: Brand Robins at Nov 9, 2006 6:01:03 AM
Brand, let me be clear then: I was being a jackass, and I apologize. Whatever my attitude towards Malcolm's online persona, leading off the comments that way was inappropriate.
Posted by: Buzz at Nov 9, 2006 9:58:03 AM
I don't feel I conducted myself well either, and I thought Buzz's apology was very classy.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 9, 2006 10:55:13 AM
Wow.
That doesn't happen every day either (that a thread that's gone awry manages to come back OK).
Glad I read to the end. :)
Posted by: Mo at Nov 9, 2006 1:44:17 PM
Jim, Buzz,
That showed some class, both of you.
Posted by: Brand Robins at Nov 9, 2006 2:23:54 PM
20x20 Room: Your happy funtime gaming blog.
Anyway, this whole thing in combination with recent reading does suggest a great exercise. It's my current notion that it would do us all some good to look in the mirror and repeat, "My personal preferences make me ill-suited to support people who like X in their games." Too often we frame our contributions to theory and agenda threads in terms of "the problems your preferences cause the style of gaming I like." A moment's reflection reveals that, of course, it works the other way around too.
I'm thinking all the way back to the "DIP and DAS in Indie Games" thread on this blog, plus endless immersion flameouts, but it is as true of people whose complaints against proponents of contested-credibility Forgie play amounts to "I wouldn't enjoy that at all!"
(Reading that contributed: the end of the "Masks and Trance" chapter in Johnstone's IMPRO, which I've finally been reading, where he talks about the importance of a supportive environment for productive trance work.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 9, 2006 2:57:22 PM
Jim,
Word.
Posted by: Brand Robins at Nov 9, 2006 3:13:55 PM
Absolutely, Jim. I've turned down some work because I don't have fun with the kind of thing the project is supposed to do, and when I do that, I try to recommend a friend or colleague I know does like it. And when I'm working on wide-ranging advice-type products like GM's guides, I make a serious effort to find authors whose tastes overlap with mine but go places I don't, on the theory that GMs doing things I personally wouldn't deserve just as much high-quality support as my buddies. I'm also blessed with friends who can look over a draft and tell me about my blind spots in action.
Even so, I know I let down deserving customers sometimes simply because of the limits of my perspective, just like every creator does. I think it's very healthy to regard this as a problem on creators' end as well as (and sometimes instead of) gamers'.
Posted by: Bruce Baugh at Nov 10, 2006 3:28:50 PM
(The flip side is, I try to declare as clearly as I can, up front and throughout, what it is a project is trying to do, and I think gamers have an obligation to look for those sorts of things and take them seriously. Creators must provide. Gamers must avail.)
Posted by: Bruce Baugh at Nov 10, 2006 3:35:02 PM
