cavegirl

oooh, elaborate?

Other systems solve this problem. Go read/play Pasion de las Pasiones for a masterclass on this: pvp becomes *fun* because getting successfully PvP'd *gives you stuff to do* rather than cutting you out of play.

So! the conventional wisdom becomes "don't do PvP", because *in this system* the mechanics don't support PvP having fun outcomes.

when these tools are used against NPCs? all is well. But the consequences when used by PCs on each other are far less fun, because - when you use the mechanical tools the game gives you for conflict resolution - the result is somebody no longer gets to play the game. Which is unfun.

basically, rpg players want to resolve conflicts using the mechanical tools the game gives them. so, in a game where the mechanical tools are mostly 'kill them' or 'remove their agency', that's the go-to.

i have suspicions as to why this is:

poster for a larp i'm co-running (and co-designed)

fucking this
safety tools are there to facilitate good faithcommunication. You can communicate without using them, and you can use them and not communicate in good faith.

lets swing a bat at a hornet's nest today

tabletop rpgs sit in a middle-ground between text rp, larp and miniature wargaming and the medium benefits from experience with the other forms that its drawing from. (this is true of both designers and players).

0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself *sad*. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov *fucked him over* personally with his socio-economic theory.

gettin real tired of everyone following journalism's sacred duty for the last decade or so

a setting can feature social ills without condoning them, and without being bleakly depressing.
be like discworld.

but i also don't want to play in some sort of cozy coffeeshop au, that sounds both insufferably twee and totally lacking fascists to shoot.

this isn't to say that i always want settings that go all in on racism, sexism, etc and ratchet the grimdark up until we're playing in a ken loach film or something. that sounds quite depressing.

honestly i find 'nice' settings for games kinda offputting. a world without social ills is one i struggle to relate to, which always strikes me as weirdly sanitised.
besides, i like having absolute bastards to kill. that bit's important.

Like you want to talk conspiracies? I do in fact believe that the modern coordinated blowback against trans women specifically is because one trans woman had the audacity to try to out the person who sex trafficked her as a child. And it worked cause y'all cissies are cooler with pedos than trannies

i am a british osr writer and i am also obsessed with vampire and larping so its only one data point but i think you might be onto something

In Which We Discuss Snake Genitalia: A conversation with Josh McCrowell & Emily Allen: Ep 88

I finally got to meet Emily Allen (@cavegirl.bsky.social), a long-time RPG influence, on Reading D&D Aloud

You can check out our discussion of hemipenes and how they relate to player information and LARPs in the latest episode.

or the old classic, They Sue Regularly

I think the bosr scene is in quite close communication with the oldhammer scene, tbh, which is a Good Thing

you know what i might write one of those ttrpg manifesto thingies
unlike all the others, mine will be obviously correct

Of course, other factos also play into which option gets to be the Favourite, such as miniatures sales being why 40k is Like That about space marines.

Another good example of this is Blue in magic the gathering, which is both the colour of Being A Nerd, and also the one that has most often been horribly OP.

"magic classes" often get this treatment, because they're being designed in the context of mainstream nerd culture, where one of the base assumptions is that knowing enough trivia makes you Special And Important. So the classes associated with that (ie spellcasters) end up favoured by the game.

i mean sure, but this isn't about magic per se, it's about whichever splat the game treats as a privileged class, which tends to reflect the values of the culture designing it. The example of the Sidhe in CtD hilights this; they aren't a 'magic' splat at all, they're a social one.

i mean think about it, the game wasn't being made by a company called Fighters Of The Coast, was it?
of course the class balance ended up like that

(See also: historically Blue has been the most broken colour in magic the gathering, because its set up to be the colour that reflects the values that the dominant nerd-culture most values)

I think in terms of market dynamics, this is very true.
For good mechanics to matter, people need to have actually sat down and played the damn thing, which those mechanics won't have convinced them to do. Good design might retain players, but presentation gets them in the door to begin with.

one would argue that caster suppremacy is a reflection of the cishet white nerd-boy fantasy of Special Knowledge Making You Powerful. I think an argument can be made that it reflects a lot of what mainstream nerd culture privileges.