Saturday, January 17, 2015

Indie Game Genius Wraps Head Around What Internet Has Been Telling Him For A Decade

"Maybe...People Don't Play Story Games Because They...Don't...Want...To?"

Longtime Story-Game diehard Alessandro Piroddi sent ripples throughout the Indie RPG community earlier this week with an article announcing that maybe people don't play games he likes because they like the games they like better.

Piroddi cited a variety of key differences between games his friends like and wrote and games they don't, including:

  • Games Alessandro likes require everyone to read the rules.
  • Better games don't.
  • Games Alessandro likes require everyone to learn whole new procedures just to play for a few hours only to find out the game is about milking a sheep.
  • Better games don't.
  • Games Alessandro likes require everyone to act like the GM or at least an Indie game nerd.
  • Better games let people relax and only take charge when they feel like it.
  • Games Alessandro likes are about bullshit like sad pirate choices.
  • Better games aren't.

terrified Indie scene reacted to Piroddi's announcement by continuing to be incredible assholes:

"...while from an armchair it looks like you'd only want to play rpgs if you were especially imaginative and had deep creative needs..." hypothesized one Eero Tuovinen, "in actual fact the people actually exercising the medium may simply be doing it out of habit, and due to accumulated experience overcoming personal leanings. Sort of like if you taught a child to play Chess at an early age, they might continue doing it despite it being out of character for their adult personality, simply because the game is so familiar and they're so good at it that the expertise enables them to enjoy it despite the natural handicap."

 "I think the question implicit here," said fellow Story Gamer Paul T "is not just "why don't modern games overtake older games", but "why don't modern overtake older games, given the well-known problems those games carry"?"

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

RPGnet Moderator Unsure If He Should Be Part of Hobby

"..there may in fact be no ethical way for me to pursue this hobby"