Now I’m hungry.

As another aside in terms of the RPG affect on developement…
http://thetorchonline.com/2009/05/25/everything-i-know-i-learned-from-dungeons-dragons/

This was a great article, and the responses may be even better. Wax, to bring it full circle, you’ll note one of those ‘First Generation guys’, Ken St. Andre, about half way down responding.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Igbar, Capital of Trabler =-.

Yes, the peda/andragogical aspects of RPGs is phenomenal. Like you, had I not played RPGs I would have been a vastly different person, probably with underdeveloped social skills.

But that’s an entirely other subject… one that I mark for my future series on Kids and RPGs.

As for gaming together, I’m seriously planning a Boston gathering of friends later this year or early next one. You are on the invitee list for sure.

@WhitDnd: I think our perceptions shift all the time. My range of perception really lies from Phil to Tony (but then again, I’m a bit crazy)… so it wasn’t much of a stretch to write as either.

I don’t feel I was insulting… however, I feel that had I gone through with the Review as planned, it could have been construed as relentless bashing since after this post, my favorite one… in spite of my critics, everything else of the book had little to no relevance for me.

So my call wasn’t ‘This book is so bad I’ll stop reviewing’ but rather ‘I can’t find nice things to say about the rest so the comedy routine loses all it’s relevance”

Thanks for the kind words though…

With the review i have no prior knowledge of the Hickman’s so i can’t really comment, however reading it didn’t come across as harsh or insulting. More informative and opinionated.

I know opinionated can sound insulting but if i meant it that way i wouldn’t be reading chatty’s blog, i come here for his opinion.

Thanks Chatty

Whit

Vis-a-vis fanfic, my self-preservation instinct is too strong for that nonsense! As a ‘professional writer’ I’m way too arrogant and disgust-prone to countenance that horrific shit.

Also drunk at moment.

Also: just finished winter-eladrin adventure from about 2/3 of way through Pyramid of Shadows. Excellent encounter! Roleplay light but flavour-heavy. Afterward one of the players complimented my story sense, admonished me to nail down the numerical (simulative) aspects in order to better engage the numbers-inclined players. I said RPGs had taught me more about classroom teaching than any reading in educational theory. He (a classroom teacher) lit up to think on it. If I’d picked up this hobby as a kid I’d be a completely different person; what a fucking shame to have played in my first campaign at age 29!
.-= Wax Banks´s last blog ..Scattered, spoilery thoughts on Felix Gilman’s excellent novel Thunderer. =-.

You don’t read much fan fic do you?

Have you read the posts on Arneson’s participation in Major Wesley’s Braunstein? From what I gather of the Ars Ludi post in the subject, Dave was very much the storytelling fiend.

Alas, I heard of him much later in my RPG career and never sought out his writing on RPGs.

Here, have a look.

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/104/braunstein-the-roots-of-roleplaying-games/

Oh and I also note your gameplay preferences. You know, should we ever play together in the next few months.

Your argument of the progenitors of our hobby ‘not seeing the future’ is the same that could be made about Herbert and Tolkien. When you create a genre, you can’t be expected to make it evolve to what it will be 20 years later.

I’m making a narrower claim than that – I just haven’t read anything by old-school RPG guys, the ones responsible for the RPGs of the 70′s/early 80′s, that indicates any engagement with the narrative complexities that would arise from RPGs in the 90′s. Which is, sure, a bit like saying Jane Austen’s rubbish because she didn’t anticipate literary modernism. But then no Literary Grognards (ahem) are venerating Jane Austen as the One True Story Designer Whose Works Must Be Slavishly Emulated, y’know?

Admittedly I’m very, very biased. But to me, what’s interesting about roleplaying games is dramatic/narrative stuff that didn’t really enter into the hobby for a few years, and not just because the D&D audience got younger. Quite the contrary! The military-simulationist types who constituted early roleplaying circles just didn’t play games that way.

I’ve read way more than my share of Dragonlance books (and even some Death Gate…), and I think Hickman’s D&D work stands right at the border between cod-simulationist OD&D/AD&D material and the really good stuff. He had some good ideas about what D&D could be, narrativewise. But with all due respect to him, when it comes to actually pushing outward at the boundaries of what roleplaying games can accomplish, I would never expect those early D&D guys to be innovators. (And what little I’ve read on the XDM website fails to dispel that preconception.)

They were just making another kind of game entirely.
.-= Wax Banks´s last blog ..Scattered, spoilery thoughts on Felix Gilman’s excellent novel Thunderer. =-.

So basically, it was a reference as to when kids/adults start playing RPGs, and a curiousity as to how this affects the creative mindset of a roleplayer. It may sound basic, but order of acquistion has a lot to do with how we utilize our skillsets.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Basic History and Information of Igbar =-.

Nice analysis there. I’m not enough of a 70′s RPG scholar to add anything to it… I was born a few months before Gary published 0th edition

@Wax Banks, it matters when you look at their quotes. Ken St. Andre, in his 4th ed T&T intro, is clearly setting T&T as the ‘less-constrained’ rule system option in 1975.
As early as 1978, I’d say that Gary started to see some of the issues that the gamer culture is still grappling with, but not before that. Even then, the root issues of game design and target demographic were starting to rear their heads.

That demographic issue has a lot to do with where the different games went, and how they changed. Who were Gary and Dave writing for at first? Their peers, Grad students and other Wargamers, which is where Chatty’s excellent Literature analogy falls short. As I said, they were writing for Adult wargamers. Gary was 37, I think, in 1975. Herbert and Tolkien’s High Fantasy targeted a similar demographic when compared to today’s authors.
I really believe that the changes in the target deomgraphic blindsided any ability to predeict many of the changes the game would go through.
Much of the audience game systems are trying to include into their systems today are way under anything Gary, Dave, and the rest were looking at early on.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Game Schedule =-.

@Wax: It really depends what you consider 1st Gen. If you mean Gygax, Arneson, St-Andre and their entourage (Blumes and others I don’t know) then I can’t say, I haven’t read anything they published post AD&D.

Having played S&W straight up, I can attest though that it delivers a gaming experience that, while far from modern games, remains highly enjoyable for an exploration based game.

Your argument of the progenitors of our hobby ‘not seeing the future’ is the same that could be made about Herbert and Tolkien. When you create a genre, you can’t be expected to make it evolve to what it will be 20 years later.
Heck, I dislike Tolkien, but love later High Fantasy epics so can I say that JRR saw none of the future?

I’d get freaking killed.

I’ll look up ‘See page XX’ thanks!

Finally, the book ends with a XD20 roleplaying game, a minimalist 20 pages RPG.

It wasn’t entitled Savage Worlds, was it?

I picked up a copy of that rulebook the other day and love it. It’s like a stripped-down version of 3e with a good skill system, richer chargen, fast-n-loose combat, and no misplaced ‘simulationist’ pretension. All hail!

Out of curiosity, have you read anything by those first-generation RPG guys that’s anywhere near the state of the art in contemporary roleplaying? Every time I flip over to Grognardia or the like I realize that I don’t mind ‘OSR’ types rejecting the excesses of modern fantasy gaming, but Christ, as near as I can tell Gygax et al. saw none of the future of roleplaying in their wargaming-derived zeal. At least Hickman aspired to narrative seriousness with the Dragonlance stuff, but all that old D&D shit reads as very primitive, given what’s understood now about the medium itself…

Also, have you read Laws’s ‘See pg XX’ columns yet? You’ll like ‘em.
.-= Wax Banks´s last blog ..Scattered, spoilery thoughts on Felix Gilman’s excellent novel Thunderer. =-.

And then I’d have made their website have a premium membership where additional articles are available that tread the grounds of the book with more depth.

Hell… maybe that’s exactly what the book is. If it is… I would have said so on the can.

But I just don’t get the whole censored play with fire thing… why the hell did we recycle paper for this? It baffles me!

@Wyatt: I did chuckle quite often while reading the book but it wasn’t the book’s main focus… I’m at a loss to try to pinpoint it except to attribute the whole thing to an insider book.

Heck on the XDM website there’s a few post about a decoder ring this week… I’M telling you the whole thing is based on kid clubs Tropes. I’m baffled beyond belief.

I’m not sure why, but I also get that impression. That’s not a criticism; more a considered statement based on the fact that I don’t believe the book would have been published if your review was all there was to it.

Is it possible that the book is meant to be some sort of inside joke for the gaming community inspired by the (possibly overly-) serious approach taken to DMing lately? Or akin to the Daily Show (an American TV show lampooning current affairs journalism)?

Some of the examples you give strike me as terribly similar to the Deja Vu joke in the 3.5 DMG.

Either way, it doesn’t strike me as a book I’d pay money for, but I acknowledge there are probably others out there who would.