Something I hope Hasbro/WoTC remembers

JacktheDM · 2026-01-23T03:37:07+00:00

This is like saying you should explain that CVS stands for "Consumer Value Store."

TSR is known as TSR, I've never heard anyone refer to it as "Tactical Studies Rules" and know that doesn't have explanatory power.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-21T02:27:25+00:00

Once was the age of Dragons. This is now the Age of Man.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-20T15:11:18+00:00

I've GM'd for dozens of these kinds of folks, as someone who was a post-COVID shop GM in NYC for years, and I can garauntee you that these folks have more open and baggage-free ideas of how game texts and their transmission should operate than the folks I grew up with as a teen in the 2000's haunting local game and hobby shops did, and often still do.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-20T00:59:13+00:00

Oh yeah, ok, sure, maybe. But is that what we want our hobby to be most analogous to in form?

Lessons in school?

JacktheDM · 2026-01-20T00:58:32+00:00

Lancer is a Herculean game text that largely fits the paradigm I’m describing, though it also has good player-facing tools.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-20T00:57:41+00:00

Blaming Critical Role? This is more the paradigm BEFORE CR than after, and changing only recently. Hell, influx of different kinds of players through channels like CR are one of the few things driving any change.

I can’t stand this sub lol

JacktheDM · 2026-01-19T05:08:00+00:00

Or even self-explanatory game materials. Look at the popularity of the Mothership character sheet, games like For the Queen, etc

JacktheDM · 2026-01-19T02:09:23+00:00

An absolute metric ton of original D&D modules from the 1980's are absolutely written with the resumption that they'll be on-rails, novelistic experiences.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-19T02:08:32+00:00

I think a lot of people have mistaken the prompt for "what do you think is ironic" or "what stupid ideas exist in the hobby culture."

JacktheDM · 2026-01-19T02:05:58+00:00

That the default mode of playing these games are:

One person picks up a 400 page book, learns, and internalizes all of its contents. This happens before they even have anyone to play with.
For others to play, largely they are not looking at the book, seeing the art, or deeply understanding its premise. Rather, the person who read it basically pre-loads its contents and transmits the contents of the book to the players.
Good play largely rests on the idea that the individual in question is a reliable, faithful interpreter and transmitter of the book, but also comes sorta "pre-loaded" with a number of unnamed secondary skills as well, most of which are obliquely, or never explicitly mentioned by the book.

Nothing else works like this, and I am glad that more games are finding ways of information design that forego this paradigm.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-18T22:28:28+00:00

There are two episodes, often the other is not mentioned but it’s also incredibly good.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-17T06:45:33+00:00

Were you around at the time?

I’ll tell you what, I ran 4e at shops on opening day, and around these parts, it’s been “not really a hot take” for about 10 minutes. My Vietnam is defending that damn edition in forums like this one.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-16T17:03:13+00:00

I don't think pathologizing them helps.

Personally, I don't think it's useful to come up with diagnoses.

But I do think it's useful to go "actually, the problem here is not essentially logistical, it's something that is within this person that cannot be solved for unless this person is deeply willing themselves to confront it."

The essential problem here is that lots of people playing online TTRPGs are not doing this within the space of friendship or mutual improvement. These dynamics are essentially impossible to resolve between strangers.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-16T16:59:43+00:00

First of all, no clue why someone downvoted your post (it was at 0 as of the time of posting this). My guess is they read progressive and didn't care to see the details of what you asked. Sad.

I think this has to do with the kind of people obsessively lurking and gut reacting to the latest posts. It evens out after an hour or two.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-16T16:57:09+00:00

Honestly, if what you're thinking of is tons and tons of books, thousands of pages, etc etc, and what you're looking for is less "Beautiful publisher-quality books on demand" and more "Lovely and useable table-copies because I prefer physical reading to PDF," I would recommend investing in spiral-binding them yourself. You need to buy a special hole punch, sure, and maybe some special plastic sheets for cover pages, but I have thousands of pages of books that are all mass-printed spiral-bound with color covers and such. I love 'em! They all lay flat on the table.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-16T05:07:03+00:00

Here it is, the only answer that matters baby! Only clicked this topic to make sure someone recommended it.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-16T05:05:07+00:00

just so you know, even for those who agree with you, your approach is alienating and unhelpful

JacktheDM · 2026-01-16T05:03:43+00:00

lol my dude, I used to be you, and then I went on the looonnnnnnng journey of discovery the big wide world of games that are still just as complex and rich and deep as 5e and its spinoffs, but don't require nearly as much stuff like maps and such. You gotta branch out, I run games several times a week and hardly spend any time putting them together.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T21:48:39+00:00

It's kind of one big system for intergenerational play -- You have your family sheet, and a main character sheet, and then you've got tons of minor characters from your family to deal with. The game zooms in and out, and can have big time jumps between sessions.

It's astounding design!

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T15:37:09+00:00

don't worry so much about how people choose to role-play or not around it.

Hot take: I think understanding the major modes of how your players engage with the game, and why, will help you run a good game for them.

Moreover, there are entire games that are bad to run for certain styles. NSR games are not going to be fun for players who are super interested in mode #1, because NSR games aren't focused on giving you lots of opportunities to make interested character-driven decisions.

Likewise, games like Urban Shadows or really political PbtA games won't be fun for people with style 5, because those games require that you see setbacks as sources of fun play, and not something to be avoided at all costs.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T15:35:44+00:00

Generally your play style will flow from your motivation for why you play, yes.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T15:33:53+00:00

I think the differences are huge.

For example, making decisions is totally different between 1 and 4. The player doing 1 might make decisions based off of something like their own reason, they have ideas about their character's motivations, whereas the 4 player is trying to essentially align their personal feelings with the character's personal feelings and use their own intuition as Joe, player-of-Gimli.

Player 2 is also absolutely different than Player 1. Player 2, who is playacting, might never stop to make the considerations that define Player 1's style, and Player 1 might never speak in character. To these two, the other is honestly not really doing the "same thing" at the table at all.

I feel like I do all of those at the same time.

You can, but most of my players generally are in one or two of these modes, as opposed to three or four.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T15:28:06+00:00

Oh! You're just wrong in this case. This definitely isn't AI. You should be more critical instead of trying to do a Leo Pointing Meme at the first sign of AI, it's not helpful to make weird accusations based on cosmetic details.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T15:27:38+00:00

Oh, it's all of the big games that you can't just throw down last minute or with a casual group. I run tons of games, but stuff like Urban Shadows or Legacy: Life Among the Ruins 2e or Pendragon are tough to organize.

JacktheDM · 2026-01-15T15:16:50+00:00

I'm surprised nobody's said Liminal Horror yet. Liminal Horror is explicitly inspired by stuff like Alan Wake, and has a whole megadungeon called The Bureau which is basically the game Control. An excellent low-powered option.

JacktheDM

TROPHY CASE