Finarvyn Administrator Dungeon Master member is offline
Joined: Jun 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 4,674 Location: Near Chicago Karma: 178
Why so negative? « Thread Started on Dec 19, 2010, 8:58am »
Not this board. Posters here are cool.
[rant]
I was reading some other gaming boards today and I'm surprised at the percentage of the posts that just want to complain about one rules set or another. * 3E versus 4E D&D. * Old School versus New School * Why C&C is so bad * Why the OSR is so bad * Why "clone" games are so bad * How 4E "essentials" killed 4E * Why 4E is failing (lots of 4E bashing out there) * How poorly written OD&D was
...and so on.
It's surprising to me that folks are so angry about other people's gaming. My thought is this: 1. Find a game you like. Ignore the rest. 2. Find players and play the game you like. 3. Find online places where others like the game you like and discuss it.
I get tired of trying to explain to these clowns why I like to play the games I play. It's not like they even listen -- they just want me to convert from my games and embrace their viewpoint.
It's like some people have this huge cause to wander like nomads from board to board, dumping on games that they dislike. Hope none of them find this place!
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Joined: Jul 2010 Gender: Male Posts: 151 Karma: 15
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #1 on Dec 19, 2010, 10:32am »
Marv - that's why this board is special. And besides, we don't take kindly to that arguin' stuff 'round these parts. (hides shotgun and pitchforks marked "intruder suppression"....)
Joined: May 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 293 Karma: 21
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #2 on Dec 19, 2010, 11:37am »
I think it's an artifact of the internet format. It's hard to post something creative frequently. When someone does post something creative, it's often hard to say more than "cool, good job." But it's easy to post comparisons, and easy to disagree with minor points. And it's easy to slip into becoming annoyed with other people when dialogue takes that form. It's just a matter of water finding its lowest level. Without the "easier" conversations, there would be very little traffic on message boards.
Hence, rule-nitpicking, edition wars, and other threads/posts that make for easy participation. In a sense, these can actually support the existence of the much better threads.
Not that it's a good thing to have them, but there are at least some silver linings to them and they can't really be stamped out. What sucks is the people who live for these and contribute nothing else to the discussions. Those people have no business taking advantage of the boards - they would contribute more by just shutting up.
Boards that manage to keep creativity at such a high level that negative threads don't surface -- that's rare. Hard to maintain, but awesome when it happens.
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #3 on Dec 19, 2010, 12:42pm »
One of the reasons I frequent here and the S&W forums is the lack of the negativity. Sure there are games I don't like or have fallen out of my interest but, they only deserve a passing mention. I have nothing against 3e, 4e or any other game. They are what they are and many love them as much as I love S&W/OD&D. I find no fault in liking any of these games.
In all honesty, with today's gaming situation, all table-top players need to stay together to keep the hobby alive.
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #4 on Dec 19, 2010, 1:49pm »
It's not limited to D&D either, you should see the venom that spills over New World of Darkness vs Classic World of Darkness.
This is one of the many reasons I tend to haunt the few neutral sites around the web (here and the Piazza, seem to be the only safe havens these days.)
kenmeister Level 5 Thaumaturgist member is offline
Joined: Jun 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 337 Karma: 10
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #5 on Dec 19, 2010, 9:18pm »
I have this theory that people who dump on other systems do so because they know, deep down inside, that if the system has merit, then they should go out and buy every supplement ever made for it. You see, they're just trying to save money!
Joined: Sept 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 38 Location: Patagonia, Argentina Karma: 9
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #6 on Dec 19, 2010, 10:15pm »
What a coincidence. Just last week, I created a thread on another forum, DeRol. I just wanted to show everyone there the Old School Primer, because I think it sums up nicely why I, with only 19 winters over my shoulders, have chosen to DM my games this way, and not like most of my peers do.
What did I get? Sh itty responses,sarcasm and scorn. Oh, and a lot of "Old-School gaming doesn't exist, there aren't any differences between O.S. and New-School", "New games are better designed", "OD&D doesn't give rules for anything", "GNS gibberish blabla, Ron Edwards its the king of the universe" etc.
After that disaster, I decided to type "Old-school" in that site's search engine. I found a lot of old posts, nearly all by Zulgyan, where he got kicked in the jaw just for liking something very different than what is usually liked there.
(To be fair, some of the posters behaved nicely, even though they didn't like the philosophies of old-school gaming, and I got some possitive feedback.)
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #7 on Dec 19, 2010, 10:23pm »
I happen to fall into a weird place- I love TSR era D&D and I love 4E. so I often struggle even with myself
I came to grips with the fact that I just am not as "hardcore" as many gamers are- I see RPGs as what they are: silly make believe games and not really different than Stratego or Monopoly in the grand scheme of things. I play those games, have fun and don't go about dissecting the rules, or complaining about them on message boards, or hating on the new box vs. the box I had when I was a kid-and I try hard not to do the same with RPGs. EDIT-though thats not say, I have no criticisms of certain systems/variants. I have my likes/dislikes too, just like anyone else.
As long as a RPG doesn't require me to do tons of work- whether it's mega pre-game prep, reading volume after volume, or rules adjudication/lookup/mechanics taking up the majority of a session, I don't have too many problems with any RPG. Let me get on to the action & adventure. Its when certain systems become like work that I have a real problem with them.
And Yes- I don't post alot, but I love the community here, very laid back, and friendly. It's an anomaly
Joined: Sept 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 1,217 Location: Melbourne, Australia Karma: 195
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #8 on Dec 20, 2010, 1:52am »
I read this the other day...
There are always people like the pope. They serve a certain function, of course. They subsidize us. But, they don't create anything and they must never be allowed to stop the artist from creating.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Mite Makes Right, 1994
And thought the second half seemed relevant here. Sort of
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #9 on Dec 20, 2010, 5:56am »
I notice that folks around here are - vary - relaxed. I think it the Exalt - its like good wine! Folks pass it around for meaningful achievements, and people are content with this, nor are people judged by their Karma rating. I would say "more forums should have them", but we are responsible with it. When other sites use it, they become crazy karma junkies, and get drunk with power!
It's hard to post something creative frequently. When someone does post something creative, it's often hard to say more than "cool, good job."
This sums it up nicely. Being creative is hard work! And others may or may not like what you've done because their style of play may differ a lot. If you like it, "good job" may be all you can say, but if you don't like it then it's hard not to spend three paragraphs trying to convince the author why he's wrong.
But it's easy to post comparisons, and easy to disagree with minor points.
An it's not the comparisons or minor disagreements that I find annoying. It's the entire "blast everything about your game" mentality. You mean you can't find anything good about the game? Seriously?
I find that for almost any game out there I can find something interesting. Maybe not enough to make me want to play it, but maybe something I can absorb into my campaign or my style of play.
For example I know that the mention of Ron Edwards' name pushes buttons for some people, but I find his games interesting and his style of play interesting even if I don't quite "get it" and may not play the way he does. I love the concept of his "relationship map" and have used it for many of my own campaigns to encourage folks to work together. If I just trashed Ron and/or his games without thought, I'd have never found this nugget of coolness.
I happen to fall into a weird place- I love TSR era D&D and I love 4E. so I often struggle even with myself
I'm basically in that same place, except that I don't quite "love" 4E yet. I'm intriqued by it, don't quite understand it, want to enjoy it. Maybe I'll get there someday.
Marv / Finarvyn DCC playtester (2011) C&C playtester (2003) I'm partly responsible for the S&W WhiteBox Builder of the TrollBridge Master of Mutants; MA since 1976 OD&D Player since 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" - Dave Arneson
Joined: Mar 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 571 Location: NYC Karma: 34
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #11 on Dec 20, 2010, 9:28am »
I think that a big source of negativity is the human superiority/inferiority thing, which we get from primate dominance behavior. As kids, lots of us were told that people who played sports were better than we were because we played with books and dice and miniature mans. This kind of message is so pervasive in our cultures that it's hard to say "no that's crazy, you like one thing, I like another, we both like to play so let's either find something in common or agree to disagree."
Instead, we tend to buy into the basic assumption and react to being made to feel inferior by trying to make what we like into an assertion of superiority: "no actually I'm better than you because books are mind-expanding and dice are oracular and nerds make more money than sports stars." It's great to celebrate what's unique and awesome about RPGs, but when it becomes a superiority thing:
- focusing on the us vs. them aspect erodes common ground; I want games that I can play with people who also like sports. I suspect that a reason many of us as kids abandoned "basic" for "Advanced" D&D and now are in a market dominated by games that are 576+ pages long is we want to feel superior to those who aren't bookish enough to master all this complexity; having been excluded from sports etc. we now want revenge by making our games exclude all but an initiated elite.
- when we're amongst ourselves, the behaviors we learned from this history - of being made to feel bad about the games we play, and responding to that by asserting that our games actually make us superior - continues even outside the context in which it sorta made sense. We're all gamers, so it's crazy to still do this us vs. them thing amongst ourselves! I think Ron Edward's name pushes buttons because people think he's saying his way of playing is better than theirs, so now they're not interested in engaging with his ideas, they're defending and counter-attacking. (Note that it is often the case that people are in fact saying they're better than you; I'm not denying this at all, just saying that the non-crazy reaction is "yeah whatever, let's talk about this cool thing instead" and maybe deciding to hang out someplace where the discussion isn't dominated by assertions of superiority, such as here!)
I happen to fall into a weird place- I love TSR era D&D and I love 4E. so I often struggle even with myself
Me too! Recently I've found that an idea by Roger Callois, that games fall on a continuum between "the taste for gratuitious difficulty" and "the power of improvisation and joy", has been helping me make sense of this weird place. I think 4E's procedural complexity satisfies my taste for gratuitious difficulty: by Crom, I really feel like I earned this victory over a pack of hill giants, because look at all the numbers I had to add up to do it!. Storygames inspire me by revealing ways to access the power of improvisation & joy, but sometimes feel empty: it's too easy to just make stuff up, I want more gratuitous difficulty. Knowing that I like OD&D because it hits the right balance for me is useful because it can guide me to house-rule it in ways that suit my taste, like how rolling magic armor saves when you're hit and rolling hit dice when you're hurt introduce gratuitious difficulty to the process of resolving combat - which I like because it causes us to slow down and focus at just the kinds of life-or-death situations I like to have rules for, just as I like to not have rules for the places where improvisation and joy can flourish.
Joined: Dec 2009 Gender: Male Posts: 52 Location: Seattle, WA Karma: 3
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #12 on Dec 20, 2010, 12:34pm »
@tavis, the first part of your post:
it's a sad fact, but nerds eat their own. As you touched on, the need to continue the pecking order can become even stronger in marginalized groups. The need to feel superior to someone is probably just part of human nature. Hell, the internet is practically built on it.
Re: Why so negative? « Reply #14 on Dec 20, 2010, 2:15pm »
Bored people locked in cubicle at work/school with nothing to talk about looking for something exciting to gripe about for a quick thrill. If they were having fun they'd be elsewhere, not posting.
I'm looking around at gaming to keep up with people. But, I'll go offline soon and find something more useful to do.
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And besides, we don't take kindly to that arguin' stuff 'round these parts. (hides shotgun and pitchforks marked "intruder suppression"....)
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