Category: General (Page 2 of 4)

Inspired by some recent discussion on what a dumpster fire Twitter RPG discourse is, I present the Questing Beast Theory of Fandom Toxicity.

Virtually all fandoms are toxic once they reach a certain size. The reason is pretty simple: fandoms are groups of thousands of people that only have a single interest in common. This means that wherever they hang out, members of that fandom will be constantly engaging with people who share their enthusiasm for the fandom’s topic, but whose worldviews are opposed to their own.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem (we run into people with incompatible worldviews all the time) except that modern fandoms are often very intent on uniting the fanbase under a single “community.” This creates several problems:

1. You’re part of the community whether you want to be or not.
2. You get the cognitive dissonance of being in a community full of people who don’t share your beliefs.
3. People within the community are upset at you when they see you in conflict with other members over basic issues.
4. You get the embarrassment of outsiders lumping you together with people you dislike.
5. If the fandom topic is a big part of your identity, you can feel that it (or you) is tainted by the presence of bad actors.

This situation causes the constant sniping, gatekeeping, and toxicity you find in fandom spaces. There are a couple ways to solve this.

1. Make a real community, but be very selective who you let in (preventing disparities in worldview).
2. Stop pretending that a shared interest group is a community and be very specific in what you allow people to talk about (preventing discussion of worldview disparities).
3. Ignore the communities question, and just keep the group very small (200 people at most). This is basically why G+ worked. Most people knew each other on a personal level (often playing in each other’s games), so they were able to overlook worldview conflicts.

Brendan (from the Necropraxis blog) and I have created a survey looking at DnD as a “gateway RPG” as well as the ways that people play it. There was a lot of debate about these topics recently, so we thought some data would be good for the hobby. Please share it widely! We want to get data from across the RPG landscape, not just the OSR.

Survey here: http://bit.do/dndgateway

Russ Nicholson

When I’m playing in an RPG and I can tell that the world is basically revolving around the party, I get claustrophobic. That’s the only word I can think of that really matches the sensation. The boundaries of the world shrink. What creatures lurk in this forest? The ones that drive the story forward! What do the major faction in this city want? To hire or kill the party, of course!

Along with this comes the implicit expectation that the DM has put a lot of work into this experience and it would be rude to just drop everything and establish a hog-wrestling arena, even if that would be more entertaining. In a “managed” campaign like this, it feels like the game world is always watching. Long lost relatives and villains from your backstory are always popping into existence at thematically appropriate times. Carefully laid plans are overturned or validated based on whether they “added to the narrative” rather than whether they made sense. Intangible themes and character development arcs hedge you in at every turn, even if only by social pressure.

Maybe what it comes down to is that I like exploring, understanding, and manipulating systems (like the rules of a fictional world), while in managed campaigns you’re really trying to understand and anticipate a person, the DM. I find that deeply off-putting, for reasons that probably reveal more about me than anything else. I like my game worlds as open, adventure-dense, and utterly uncaring as possible.

But I can’t be the only one who actively avoids the main quests in Elder Scrolls Games, right?

If you haven’t voted yet, today is the last day! There are more OSR products nominated this year than ever before! Questing Beast is nominated for “Best Online Content” so make sure to head to that category and give me a “1” if you like my stuff. http://www.ennie-awards.com/vote/2019/

I also just did a huge hangout/interview with most of the OSR creators who are nominated. Watch it below and give them a vote too!

Questing Beast has been nominated for Best Online Content and Fan Favorite Publisher at the 2019 Ennie Awards! If you’ve been following my work and enjoy the videos and games I produce, click here and give Questing Beast a “1” on those two categories. There’s a ton of excellent OSR products nominated this year as well, so make sure to look through all of the categories.

If you want to get a Questing Beast T-shirt, you can head over to the recently revamped merch store here.

Maze Rats is Deal of the Day on DrivethruRPG! Get my best-selling OSR intro game for just $1.49! Today only!

From the product description:

“The referee advice is gold. I know of few better sources for concisely explaining what to prioritize when running this sort of game.” – Brendan S, Necropraxis, Wonder and Wickedness

“I often quibble with RPG magic systems either being too complex or too restrictive, but this hit a great balance between flexibility and ease-of-use, while adding a special dash of creativity and Lady Luck.” – Ars Magisterii

“Maze Rats is a light, brutal roleplaying game of fantasy adventure which is supported by random inspiration aplenty, which lends itself to a lighter, slightly whimsical tone. It is quick to learn, quick to teach, and easy to play,relying on player ingenuity and cleverness rather than a reliance upon the mechanics.” – Reviews from R’lyeh

Maze Rats is an RPG and sandbox toolkit for old-school-style adventuring. It contains a single, compact page of rules, a one-page character creation guide, a hand-drawn character sheet, and eight pages of 36-item random tables, rollable with two six-sided dice. Each page contains 9-12 tables, covering spell generation, monster generation, NPCs, treasures, cities, wildernesses, and dungeons. If you run (or have always wanted to run) open sandbox adventures, Maze Rats offers everything you need in a compact, easily-referenced format. Also included is two pages of advice for preparing and running open-world games in the OSR style.

The game system itself is 2d6 based. Character are extremely quick to generate, making it great for convention games, one-shots, or introducing new players. The game is highly lethal, and assumes a style of play where caution is essential to long-term survival. It is technically classless, but the leveling options allow players to specialize in fighting, thievery or wizardry or some mixture of the three. Magic is simple and chaotic, with new randomly-generated spells filling the magic-user’s head each night. Everything about the game is designed to be as clean, fast, and intuitive as possible, while driving players towards creative solutions rather than brute force (though brute force is always an option).

Buy it here!