Sunday, 25 May 2008

• RPGPundit Draws a Line in the Sand
  
  So Ron Edwards says gamers are brain damaged. Well, I'm more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about one single gamer: himself.  And, by default, as his gaming experiences have left him brain damaged, you cannot take any of the rest of his nonsense theories at any value.  Someone who is braindamaged is not clearly aware of reality, and is certainly in no position to be able to declare himself recovered, or even create his own treatment.
  
  Fuck, Chris Reeve said he'd walk again. That doesn't mean he ever did.
  
  So Ronnie boy is in no position to play doctor to himself. And in classic bit of evidence in favour of Ron's brain damage, he suffers from the delusion of projection: assuming that because he is brain damaged, sexually abused, and a miserable cunt about his gaming experiences, the rest of us must be too.  He's paranoid too; he thinks if we say we're not, we must be lying. Or he thinks we must be stupid, which would make him megalomaniacal.
  
  Brain damaged, megalomaniacal, paranoid, sexually abused, delusional to the nth degree. Poor fucker.
  
  Certain people have made a big deal about the "Bitter Non-gamer": But I have to say this, there is one thing far far worse than the bitter non-gamer, and that's the Bitter Gamer. Bitter about gaming, or bitter about something else in his life, that leads him to try to take it out on the rest of the gaming community. In other words, the Bitter Gamers are the Swine.
  
  I hope that's the end of that; we can now definitively dismiss Ron Edwards as someone to be pitied, and his theories to be utterly and completely dismissed as the delusional and retarded rantings of someone who by his own standard is mentally damaged and thus incapable of even judging his own best interests, much less the best interests of gaming as a whole. This means we can also discount as brain-damaged the opinions and theories of anyone who supports him or who has created a theory with his nonsensical assertions as their foundation.
  
  So what would you have to do instead, to create a gaming theory that is not based on the delusional rantings of an utter fuckwad with no sense of reality?  That's what we're going to try to construct today, kiddies.
  
  I think there are certain "Landmarks" that one can use, as the foundational basis by which you establish what can be legitimate gaming theory and what is explicitly to be discounted. A Landmark is a go/no-go test. If it violates the Landmark, it is automatically illegitimate, with no debate.  So the Landmarks themselves need to be not hypotheses, but self-evident statements about reality that are absolute and defining. In this case, defining of what the Gaming community is like and how it works.
  
  Here are my proposed "Landmarks of Gaming Theory":
  
  1. The vast majority of gamers are having fun gaming.
  
  2. The vast majority of gamers are satisfied with the majority of their game as it is played.
  
  3. D&D is the model of what most people define as an RPG, and therefore also the model for a successfully-designed RPG.  It can be improved upon or changed, but any theory that suggests that D&D in any of its versions was an example of a "bad" RPG is by definition in violation of the Landmarks.
  
  4. Given number 3 above, it is self-evident that games that have a broad spectrum of playstyles (as D&D does) are by definition successful games. Any theory that speculates that games must be narrowly-focused to be "good" games is automatically in violation of the Landmarks.
  
  5. Even so, conflicts do arise in gaming groups; these conflicts are usually the product of social interaction between the players and not a problem with the rules themselves. The solution to these problems is not to "Narrow the rules", but to broaden the playstyle of a group to accomodate what the complaining players are missing.  Thus, it is a Landmark that all correct gaming theories, if they deal with "player dis-satisfaction" at all, must focus the nature of that dissatisfaction on the rules ONLY to suggest that a given rules-set is too narrow; and even then only because it is a symptom of an interpersonal social conflict within a group.
  
  6. Given point #3, above, any gaming theory that suggest that the GM should get disproportionately more or less power than they do in D&D in order for a game to be "good" is inherently in violation of the Landmarks.  The vast majority of players enjoy a game where the GM has power over the world and the players over their characters; and while a theory can suggest ways that GMs and Players can experiment with interactively creating the setting, it cannot suggest that the Players should have the power to tell the GM what to do (except for the "power" to walk away from a game).
  
  7. Any gaming theory that tries to divide gamers into specific criteria of "types" must make it clear that this is only one kind of categorization, and not an absolutist and literal interpretation that is a universal truth; it is only one form of categorizing gamers.
  
  8. Any theory that suggests, therefore, that its "types" are mutually exclusionary in gaming groups is in violation of the Landmarks.  Individual people can end up being mutually exclusive to each other, unable to play in the same group, etc; but that is because of individual personal issues, not because of an issue of playstyle.
  
  9. Any gaming theory that suggests that a significant element of what many players find entertaining is in fact a "delusion" or unreal, or that the gamers themselves don't know what they're doing or what they're thinking, or what they want from gaming, is in violation of the landmarks.
  
  10. Given points #9 and #1, the suggestion that so-called "immersion" is not a real or viable goal in an RPG, or that "genre emulation" is not a viable priority in a game, is in violation of the Landmarks.
  
  So there are my 10 Landmarks. That's it, fuckers, game over.  From now on any future gaming theory should be designed with them in mind, and any existing or future gaming theory that is in violation of those landmarks should be instantly rejected as a product of a brain-damaged mind.  The clear line in the sand has been marked, on the level.
  
  RPGPundit
  
  Currently Smoking: Reina De La Vega Corona Extra (cigar)
  
  (Originally posted August 10, 2006)
  

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