TTRPGs & D&D

[jonaskane]

Yeah, Gygax (a lot of the early designers, really) was problematic. Nits make lice and all that sort of utter nonsense.

 

[altcunningham]

I'll check it out, thanks.

 

[Damien]

I am pathologically driven to dislike the people that everyone claims are important 'authorities' on something, or integral to something. But Gygax legitimately was a fucking twat. Everything I ever read by him sounded in my brain like it was echoing through his own colon. I can't stand him. And it's nice that other people are fully on board with what a twat he was.

 

[docsilence]

Gary falls into that category of "I'm okay with enjoying something he did cos he's gone" category of awful people for me. Never heard a story that made me think the other stories weren't true.

 

[Damien]

Unlike a lot of other people - most other people - I barely even identify D&D with Gary. He didn't create the entire game single-handedly, and the game he created barely has anything to do with the game we play today. In fact, Gary seemed to fucking hate modern D&D (mostly because he was an arrogant piece of shit that couldn't fathom that his version wasn't the greatest version to ever be made).

 

[docsilence]

Unlike a lot of other people - most other people - I barely even identify D&D with Gary. He didn't create the entire game single-handedly, and the game he created barely has anything to do with the game we play today. In fact, Gary seemed to fucking hate modern D&D (mostly because he was an arrogant piece of shit that couldn't fathom that his version wasn't the greatest version to ever be made).

I'll be honest, Gary's not even a consideration. When I think of modern D&D from a design perspective I think more of Perkins, Crawford, Meals, newer designers like Dan Dillon or McKenzie D'armis... The game is barely recognizable from when Gary made it and I'm okay with that. Hell the best WOTC book on my shelf was headed up by Kate Welch who doesn't even work in TTRPGs anymore, I think.

I forget which creator it was, but someone with a gender-neutral name was working with a D&D project and Gary didn't know she was a woman. Apparently the first time they talked Gary was so shocked she wasn't a man he just said 'But you're a woman" four times on the line, then hung up. She still got paid but what a weird, weird dude.

Speaking of Dan Dillon, I highly recommend Critical Lit - four game designers breaking down old modules and talking about problems and good parts of each. They did Tomb of Horrors already and are looking at Strahd right now and it's become my "this show does not stress me out at ALL" podcast to listen to on my run.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

I'm a huge critic of the great man theory. I believe D&D is one of those things, like the lightbulb and most everything else, that would've been invented by someone else had Gygax not come along. Given the game's evolution, someone else might've even done it better. I don't know that much about Gygax, but his quotes about women were more than enough for me.

I'm putting together my own Halloween one-shot for the year. This time, I'm running Brindlewood Bay. It's a Powered by the Apocalypse system where the PCs are a group of elderly widows—members of the local Murder Mavens mystery book club—who find themselves solving actual murder mysteries in their quaint New England town. It's basically Murder, She Wrote with the lightest dash of Lovecraftian horror. For those unfamiliar, PbtA games require relatively little prep. The "plot" is written in real time by players and the DM.

Brindlewood Bay is particularly interesting because each adventure (or mystery, in its case) gives you a murder, a list of suspects, and a list of clues. How players discover and connect those clues is entirely up to them. There is no canonical solution. It's figured out on the fly between players and DM. I'm not going in with a single suspect in mind. The exciting part for me is watching the players hyper-fixate on something I say during RP or a random clue I throw out. I've never run anything like this before, but I'm hoping to keep it light and fun.

I ran my Halloween one-shot in Brindlewood Bay today. From what I gleaned, my players loved it. It was low stakes and a little silly. I ran it with four people: two of my usual crew, one of their girlfriends, and my wife. It was my wife's first experience with a TTRPG. I think she enjoyed it, though I doubt she'll become a regular. I might get her for a few games a year, but RP isn't her thing. Fantasy settings aren't, either.

I haven't fully DMed in almost six months, which led to some extreme early-game jitters. It didn't help that I was DMing for my wife, whom I was trying to impress, in a game system I'd never run before. Worse, as an anxious person, I try to avoid parties at all costs. Well, today's one-shot was a murder at a Halloween party. I realized while prepping that I backed myself into a corner. I'd be making small talk as eight different NPCs. I can't make small talk as me, in real life. Thankfully, once the murder happened, the small talk ended and my DM muscle took control. It was a choppy start, though.

It was my first experience with a Powered by the Apocalypse game system. I liked it more than I expected, though I can't imagine running a long-term campaign (20+ sessions) in the system. I would try Masks in an abbreviated campaign (maybe 5 or 10 sessions). Same for Blades in the Dark, which isn't a PbtA game, but similar.

In any case, my players liked it enough to request a second session. Miraculously, Brindlewood Bay has a Christmas-themed mystery, so I'm going to run my first (and maybe last) Christmas special later this year.

 

[jonaskane]