thread: 2005-07-05 : Setting and Source Material
On 2005-07-07, Christopher Kubasik wrote:
Andrew,An excellent point. Yes, still, it's a little garbled in the RPG theory world because everyone's talking about RPGs. The fire walls aren't firm between different creative agendas yet. (Which is a good and bad thing.)
In other words:
When I go to the grocery store and see a magzine on the rack covering Daytime Soap Operas, I can be pretty certain there will be no articles talking about how stupid one hour Science Fiction shows are, or asking why Sitcoms can't be more like Daytime Soaps.
And if I pick up a magazine devoted to Science Fiction movies and tv, there wont' be rants from people saying, "But you're missing the point of how cool tv could be if it was always serialized!!!"
Not so with RPG blogs and sites. (Or the comic book world, for example, where Comics Journal, which has only editorial disdain for adventure comics makes sure to spend time on adventure comic books—only to complain aboiut them, of course).
In the world of TV, everybody gets to watch what they want to watch, focus on what they want to focus on, and for some reason, that's all okay. Same thing with video games. Somebody might not like Ghost Recon, but he's not going to say, "That's not a video game!"
In the worlds of RPGs, for reasons that might never be solved, one man's focus is another man's threat to the very existence of his fun! Why this is true, I don't know. But to say something about what I want to play seems to be a tarring of how everyone should play.... Even though I could happily say, "I only watch SF shows on TV" and no one would bat an eye.
Vincent may have laid out the rules to be specific. And in the article above he excluded a lot of the fun other people had while playing RPGs. In part, maybe, because there's not a big label at the top saying, "The Site for Thematic Driven Play!" I really don't know.
But when anyone talks about RPGs, no matter how contrary to their own experience or fun (or almost because it's contrary to their own experience or fun), someone's going to come charging in and say, "Moron!"—despite the fact that clearly the person wasn't talking about the new guys expereinces or fun.
It's tricky.
Christopher
[Tags fixed.—mgmt]
