alastor, martyna - thon/he/any - ๐ต๐ฑ / ๐ฌ๐ง
[learning ๐ซ๐ฎ]
aroace fagdyke dykefag
unbelievablyautistic about jake english
- the best blog on the website actually
art blog- @bundleofstyx
it’s always so alarming looking at the notes on posts about people’s cool experiences with ttrpgs and seeing the sheer number of people saying something along the lines “unfortunately this relies on the assumption that the players aren’t huge shithead assholes who are actively trying to fuck each other over and make sure their gm has a bad time.”
like. yeah, it sure does. that’s kind of a baseline assumption for me, the same way that when I invite friends to a potluck I feel perfectly safe assuming that no one is going to spit in the food. do you guys actually like the people you’re doing recreational activities with? blink if you need help.
Genuinely, I think that TTRPGs have a real problem with having normalized a particular kind of really shitty behavior, which comes from D&D’s earliest communities and kind of… infected… a lot of communities for a long time. I’m really grateful that we’re having this conversation now, because for a long time we just… didn’t. And it didn’t make any of us fun to be around, either because we were participating in the shitty behavior or we were stressed out by it or both.
For a long, long time, the game was treated as though it was a competition between players rather than a collaborative experience. In part this has its roots in D&D coming from war gaming, like, actually competitive gaming, and in part from this idea that “I can do more damage/take more shitty things happening to my character without complaining/kill more PCs as a DM” is a form of nerd machismo.
It fucking sucks. And for a long time, that was the environment a lot of people marinated in. Add on a layer that it was nearly socially impossible (or simply impermissible, depending on the venue) to tell someone, “No, I just don’t want to play with you,” and shit, like, really fucking sucked.
That attitude is changing, and that’s great for everybody, but a lot of places, from FLGS to RP servers, don’t let you just say, “Actually, I really don’t want to play pretend with you.” The sooner that becomes socially acceptable all around, the happier we all will be.
you have GOT to remember when watching the new doctor who that the question is not is this good. doctor who is only ever actually ‘good’ once a season at most. THE ONLY QUESTION IS is it fun, camp, and has aliens. also remember the worst doctor who showrunner is always the current doctor who showrunner. now go watch the new episodes as god intended like you’re ten years old and still remember how to experience joy and whimsy.
