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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 3h

I try and keep up with politics that isn't UK/US and stuff like who the Prime Minister is elsewhere in Europe. Have to say France, you aren't making it easy.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 5h

Also, ESOL funding has been cut massively over the past 20 years, which one would think was a more effective way of tackling this supposed issue.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 7h

My favourite bits from Palladium are when they try to sound like hip goth kids in 90s products.

"Sit back and strap in, because there ain't no red pill/blue pill crap on this adventure. You are already down the rabbit-hole, kid,and Kansas got nuked when you weren't looking."

Groove it, Daddio.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 7h

Do I repeat myself? Well then, so doth the discourse.

Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · Jun 12

1/ Thoughts on book recommendations and books being from previous eras. Especially kid's books. Partly inspired by the complaint that recommendations of different magical world books don't work because people are recommending older books. #booksky

Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 8h

I find it outrageous that every RPG publisher apart from Palladium promotes the occult, the practice of magic, the
use of drugs, or violence.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 8h

Shout out to the person defending Ayn Rand's prose style though. That's the kind of off the wall wtfuckery I was hoping for.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 8h

Fuck, I posted this than checked the quotes and everyone else is posting "unhinged opinions" like "Comics are really good" and "if you buy a book you aren't morally obliged to read it".

Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

Calling 14 year olds "young adults" has strong "libertarian who's memorised the age of consent laws in every country" vibes.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 10h

Define your music taste in 8 artists:

1. Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine
2. New Model Army
3. Half Man Half Biscuit
4. Kris Kristofferson
5. Leon Rosselson
6. The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing
7. Hawkwind
8. Daphne & Celeste

Obi-Tom Kenobi @popeoldham.bsky.social · 1d

Define your music taste in 8 artists:

This is a hard one.

1. Metallica
2. Parl Jam
3. NIN
4. Kalandra
5. Thomas Newman
6. Ithaca
7. Leprous
8. Tool

Unruly Arcana @handle.invalid · 1d

Define your music taste in 8 artists:

Impossible... But I'll give it a shot, lol.

1. Sublime
2. Tom Petty
3. Godsmack
4. Jesse Wells
5. James Taylor
6. Chris Stapleton
7. The Goo Goo Dolls
8. Cross Canadian Ragweed

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 20h

You can't tell me the designers of 50 Parsecs or Reign in Hell aren't openly aware of RPGs and happily borrowing from them. They quite obviously are. It's just RPG designers who seem to have fetishised a willful ignorance about other game genres.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 20h

It's not that I necessarily think RPGers who like combat should play wargames instead. It's that I think RPG designers making games with a lot of combat should take influence from wargames. (I would say this works both ways, if not for the fact wargame designers learnt this years ago).

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 20h

Bad GM advice that people actually thought should be put out as published books rather than restricted to the fringes of the fanzine scene at that! (I'm guessing you deliberately aren't naming names so I'll refrain)

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

Calling 14 year olds "young adults" has strong "libertarian who's memorised the age of consent laws in every country" vibes.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

I've been known to argue that Bunnies & Burrows is the first actual RPG rather than a wargame variant like OD&D. Which is partly me being deliberately contrarian, but I also think there's a pretty strong case.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

Hah, snap, I just said something very similar.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

Also a weird thing where people will still hold onto early D&Dism like the focus on combat, but will be utterly appalled by the idea of competitive PvP in RPGs or adversarial GMing.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

Ooo, time for the fun game of "see which of my followers I gain from RPGposting drop off when I start politics posting" again.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

But the idea that's all that games can be about feels like a weird modern devolution from even the broadness of early RPGs. Dallas is from 1980, ffs.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

I think you've also got the weird situation where a lot of RPGers (including designers) have shifted from RPGs being "fantasy wargaming" to terror of being compared to wargames at all. And if your game *is* about violence, then yeah, you're probably wargame adjacent and should embrace that.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

I also think that picking and choosing which rules you're working with actually goes far better if you design for it. A lot of boardwargames have "advanced" and possibly "optional" rules, especially earlier ones. But they're designed to use or drop those AND I can just go "which optionals?"

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

I think it's also broader than D&D, often in subtler ways. The idea that "rules light" is objectively better design, the antipathy to anything resembling "simulationism" (reasonably common among some of the early storygame people although most of the ones I know now accept that was a misstep) etc.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

The really funny thing here is that a significant number of RPG people seem to have a real aversion for taking inspiration directly from wargames for their tactical combat focused games. Whereas wargames have been shamelessly stealing from RPGs since the start.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

I think this is one of the things where the aversion to saying that some things aren't RPGs comes back to bite us. I've done freeform tabletop rp. I had a fantastic amount of fun doing it. While it's a close relation, it isn't quite the same thing as playing a ttrpg.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

On top of that, there's the fact it toploads the majority of the work onto the DM, both mechanically and culturally. (I've heard a lot of 5e DMs bitch about this so it's not a simple case of 5e bashing; it's a structural issue in the long term I think).

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

Whereas I'll absolutely defend GURPS as a brilliant design I'm not interested in playing. It knows exactly what it wants to be (a modular generic high simulationist system) and refuses to deviate from that goal.

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Flintlock but scary or something dunno not feeling it this year @flintlock.bsky.social · 1d

AD&D is an odd beast because its simulationist elements are utterly superficial (300 polearms with near identical stats) but it's also really bad at simulationism in general.

There's a reason the vast majority OSR games use B/X instead.

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