thread: 2006-01-26 : A Public Service Announcement
On 2006-01-30, kat miller wrote:
This makes me sad.
I was there with the thread that started this. Reading about playerless play, and I wasn't quite getting it. But instead of Vincent and others showing what I wasn't getting, they were busy deffending attacks, some written in marginalia. I don't read the Maginalia often so i missed the attack posts in the first read. So there was some ACK! for me too when I read Vincents responce to marginalia. But then I went back and re-read the thread carefully and I understood.
People were posting on this blog to tell Vincent his new design idea was bad and that a game supporting such an idea would be unfun for everybody because they don't like those kinds of games. Only Vincent hadn't even gotten to game design. He was still in idea exploration.
Instead of starting their own Blogs and writing essays on why player character ownership is essential to a fun game, some of us (and by us I mean guests of the blog) were judging Vincent over an idea.
So Vincent has to remind us that this space is where he explores ideas. Then other readers who also didn't read or recognize the attacks in marginalia got ruffled, fearing that Vincents rebuff was for everybody-or non designers.
The rebuff was for the few who were pissing in the thread. If you don't piss in the thread its not meant for you. Thats all.
The orginal dangerous idea thread is not there so i can only paraphraze this but someone even had the balls to tell the game desinger that games the follow the game design he wants to explore aren't RPGs.
I'm a tinkerer mostly, I don't identify myself as a game designer, but I do know that if someone said that about elements of game design that I was concidering I'd be rather defensive and a little angry.
Vincent tries again to offer up his shiney new idea.
That leads to this latest public service announcement.
where does it all come from?
MORE CRAP IN THE MARGINALIA
Look, I may not Agree with Ron Edwards Post about Gamers Being Brain Damaged, but he included himself in the "we" part of his statement. He wasn't saying that gamerz suck. He was commenting on the reaction to the idea of taking character ownership away.
I mean how come we can easily talk about no one owning setting? The idea that everything in the setting is shared doesn't bother anyone. But the idea that the character you play is also shared all the people you play with has made people react on emotional level rather than an analytical level. That responce is what I believe Ron was Commenting on. I must have read that comment 8 times so far. My name is not in that Passage.
Ron is not saying that He is better than me, that his games are better than games I like.
What I think he is saying is that the games that we are currently writing are being carefully designed for people who have "issues" because of past bad play experience.
I think he is also saying that it's going to be cool to see what people who have no such isues will feel about these games, and what will they want to play or design? I thought it was rather hopeful.
But he didn't say he was better than me. HOWEVER in the Maginalia not one but three different people took the time to tell Ron they think his ideas make him an elitist.
Did they send him an email, having been personally affronted by what he said? Did they quote the line that offended them to post it here were every one could read? Nope.
And the funnyest thing, (its almost worth crying over) They were Judging Ron and despite the whole "brain damaged" thing wasn't judging them - until after tehy called him an elitist.
Ofcourse as soon as we do that there in no more exploration or discussion. How can you feel free to post here if your afraid that someone might be offended and call you names?
The danger is that this blog could end up being a place where Vincent gets a shiney new Idea and then doesn't post about it because he doesn't want to be told that its not an rpg idea or that its unfun because I only like old timey fun, or because in defending hiself he has to wade through a barrage of panick from lazy readers-
(note yes, thats a judgement.)
And that would be sad.
This makes km go "cross posted w/ Troy"
This makes TC go "That's okay..."
Looks like we have a lot in agreement.
This makes Matt S go "Thanks for this post, Kat"
This makes VB go "yes, thank you."
