This thread was 50 years in the making.

@blacklodgegames remarked the other day that the Elusive Shift establishes that all of our arguments about rpgs were already had within a couple years of D&D's release, but this turns out not to be the case.

https://twitter.com/DreadedGug/status/1750998127870349604

It is the case that Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom seized D&D, repurposed it, redefined it, and ultimately set the course for what we now call "conventional play." It's surprising how fast that happened, too.

But there is also something very big that DIDN'T happen back then.

The main place where James goes off the rails here is (a) he prepped a dungeon and then (b) the players actually went to the place he prepped. Which is to say, he goes off the rails because his players don't. Go off the rails that is.

https://twitter.com/RubeJelly/status/1718730774478782910

Nobody in the brosr is doing Dyson Logos type drawings of their hand-crafted adventure locations. They also don't use computers to generate mazes. Standard procedure is the "crappy one page dungeon." It is ugly. It is sloppy. It is amateurish. And it is enough.

When you roll up a new character, don't forget to determine your age and also check for attribute bonuses for being young, mature, etc. Your character's birthdate is the day you created him. Splash damage for flaming oil is not automatic. Those that are within the burst radius only take damage if they fail to save versus poison. This rule is obviously VERY IMPORTANT for anyone throwing vials of holy water, poison, acid, etc.

Running an rpg without 20 level megadungeon generators, countless detailed monster writeups, wilderness travel rules, extensive wilderness encounter tables, independent high level characters, and domain scale warfare is not just boring, it is a huge strain on the DM. The thing about all those tools and systems is they are what allow you to wing it no matter what is happening. Without them, everything is pretty well up to referee fiat. I mean EVERYTHING. There is less to explore. The game is not much else besides the DM making stuff up.

Someone once tried to session 0 their way into Trollopulous. They kept asking things about their character that they were getting carried away with and kept saying that he really needs to check in with the other players because we won't know what they need until they need it. Their next move was to then try to persuade me that everyone does session zero things even if they say they don't. I disagreed and said he really needs to spend time with the group and he will get a sense of where he can fit into things.

Why is it that Weird Tales authors had such a propensity to nab the cover story when they did decide to dip in to the burgeoning science fiction scene?

BECAUSE THEY WERE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BETTER THAN THE ARCHETYPAL SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR OF THE DAY. "The City of the Singing Flame" opens with a Burroughs style "I found this journal and it might be true" framing device... but goes the full Lovecraft shortly thereafter. Thankfully, the terseness of Hemingway has no sway on the poet Clark Ashton Smith. So good!

This piece by @wastelandJD unearths details about the time the H. P. Lovecraft and Clarke Ashton Smith crammed Forest J. Ackerman into a locker.
wastelandandsky.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-la… Here is the Clark Aston Smith story that Forest J. Ackerman claimed was "a sorry example of science fiction." Let's read it!
eldritchdark.com/writings/short…

This is the point in rpg history where the medium turns to complete sludge-- trading in the specific objectives and concise requirements of campaign play with "eh, just... uh... have fun." Man, if you don't embrace ludicrous names that do not mesh with character background, can you really say you've ever had fun playing an rpg?

It's come to my attention that some of you meatheads lack a critical appreciation for the beauty of the Chainmail game that spawned not just D&D, but also all of modern gaming. Well I am here to help. Also to insult you a little. Because this stuff really should be obvious. If you grew up playing any TSR edition of the D&D game, you have ALREADY BEEN PLAYING THIS GAME YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Exposure to Chainmail should therefore be like meeting with an old friend and having a revelation he's had a rich double life no one ever told you about.

I have seen a lot of wisecracks among my mutuals regarding the Omicron/Botswana thing the past few days. All of you are so discerning! Not easily fooled! I love you guys. I want to share with you how this transparent scam causes regular people to just completely fold. So I'm visiting this church last week. I am impressed because the pastor there correctly calls out the fact that loneliness is a huge problem, even more so in the gay apocalypse that is post-Covid America. He is going wield his modest institutional powers to do something!

So Pitch Black, y'all. Might seem like a decent movie today given what you have to endure now. SEEMS like a fair story devoid of the usual ugly propaganda notes. But, no. Could have been neat given what they had, but the intent of the film is to do the opposite of inspiring you. Open with strong female character with elite STEM skills and a clear head in a crisis situation. But then immediately make her unlikable due to a brazenly selfish and unheroic action. You can't like her. You can't really root for her. But she gets feelz over this stuff. I don't.

Your party's movement rate is 6". They have kicked down the door of a 20'x30' room and two Sons of Kyuss with a move of 9" attack. If the players collectively describe their actions before initiative is rolled for the 1 minute round, how necessary is any sort of miniatures use? Each player's movement rate will tell you where they are in relation to each other WHEN THEY RUN AWAY IN ABJECT TERROR. For the ones who remain to fight, the actual positioning of the figures within the room is irrelevant. The fact that they are IN MELEE is all you need to know.

When I say not reading pre-1980 fiction makes you unimaginative, classic Traveller is a case in point. Turning players loose on a sprawling sector map certainly scared the heck out of me for a long time. Read a few Dumarest novels, though, and suddenly everything makes sense! Most Traveller supplements are dragged down with unnecessarily complex rules systems and more elaborate and "realistic" descriptions of future societies. Every referee has their own clever explanation for the strange relics that are baked into the rules.

I don't have the attention span to make a serious GURPS character. As soon as I tried, I got distracted by wanting to see what you could do by taking 6-point ally advantages (75% of your points, appears on 12 or less.) HENCHMAN: ST 16, DX 12, IQ 8, HT 12. Broadsword 15, Shield 14, Hard to Kill - 2. Broadsword 2d+3 cut/1d+2 cr, Medium Shield DB 2, Light Scale Armor DR 3, Leather Pants DR 1, Pot Helm DR 4, Boots DR 2, $70. No encumbrance. 100 Points.

Objectively bad DMing. The players ended up with a very rare and very unlikely resource, and rather than let them enjoy it and see how far they can push it, he wants to change the rules after the fact. Most players are too stupid to leverage the windfall to a significant degree. 1:1 rules would of course strictly regulate the potential for upsetting the status quo, though-- even if they leveled every session, the party with the super psi would still have to train.

Okay, I kinda dig these freaky attribute improvement rules for the cavalier. Just a good, solid and STUPID rule. The ability of cavaliers to survive negative hit points is huge. Remember, it's not everyone survives to -10. In AD&D it's people that hit 0 exactly (or optionally down to -3) that can be brought back to town to recover.

The second edition AD&D DMG lacks 1:1 time, so multiple characters per player goes from being inevitable to being something that is assumed to be troublesome and difficult to manage. It's a less sophisticated game, with fewer real tools that solve actual problems. The rationale behind restricting multiple characters per player is (surprise, surprise!) due to the assumed need to accommodate adventures that run across multiple sessions. Sad!

Around 1980 or so, pop culture ceased to be an expression of culture, but instead because a SUBSTITUTE for culture. With each succeeding decade, it has become more infiltrated, more subverted, and more demoralizing. It's past time to unplug and start over.
@aaron_clarey bemoans the destruction of ballroom dance by freaks that have decided to arbitrarily repudiate sexual dimorphism. If you want to perpetuate this element of culture, you literally have to start your own dance and gatekeep out the weirdos. EVERYTHING IS LIKE THIS NOW.

Another gem from module X4. The first thing you do in this encounter is talk a long long time about the player characters' dreams. Because everyone knows that players love to let the DM talk talk talk as much as he feels like. Next up, there is some stray random hints about what is coming however the players will not notice them unless they specifically ask for information about the random details that they won't know about unless SPECIFICALLY ASK ABOUT THEM. Players love this stuff!

Skeledjinn has had it with you guys. He casts "Rocks Fall, You Die!" If you make your save, you only take half of a million points of damage. Really have a hard time understanding how anyone can seriously play this way.

The party met two barbarians at the Octogon society's Adventurer's Aid Hostile. Fagor threw the tall one out the window and has persuaded them to join the party. Party is filling out waiver forms before entering the dungeon.