Is this group alive?
Joachim Schipper
There seemed to be some discussion on this board when I arrived, but it also
seems it has died down. Is the board still alive?
Joachim
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Halzebier
<_remove.this.to.resp...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>Well... read the subject...
>
>There seemed to be some discussion on this board when I arrived, but it also
>seems it has died down. Is the board still alive?
I hope it's just hibernating for a while.
(It wouldn't be the first time, though a few posters which could be
relied upon to make well-thought out and intriguing contributions seem
to have left for good.)
I check back daily because I treasure many of the discussions, advice,
war-stories and theories I've found in this newsgroup in the past.
(In fact, it's my all-time favorite newsgroup, hands down.)
I've been a lurker more often than not, but these days, even the
occasional RPG post is beyond me - I just don't have the time anymore.
Come to think of it, I still occasionally post on r.g.f.dnd.
Hmm...
I think one reason why I hardly post on .advocacy anymore is that I
wouldn't want to post something half-baked here... .advocacy has such
a history of excellence that I find it a wee bit intimidating.
</worship mode>
;-)
Regards,
Hal
Chuck
>
>There seemed to be some discussion on this board when I arrived, but it also
>seems it has died down. Is the board still alive?
Not Board, Group. Small thing, but geaks can be rather uppity about
that sort of ting. <Shrug>
When a good topic with legs shows up, you will notice that the group
will start humming again. I guess that no good subjects have shown up
lately.
-Chuck.
_____________________________________________________
Spread love and understanding...
but don't be afraid to bloody your knuckles doing it.
-Alex Ross
Robert Scott Clark
wrote in news:3e8566ab$0$1778$1b62...@news.wanadoo.nl:
> Well... read the subject...
>
> There seemed to be some discussion on this board when I arrived, but
> it also seems it has died down. Is the board still alive?
>
> Joachim
>
Traffic is always sporadic here.
I have the magical ability to cause lots of posts, but it's not pretty.
Master Cougar
<cla...@mindspring.com> posted news:Xns934D5B75E6Cclarkrsmindspringcom@
65.82.44.187:
> I have the magical ability to cause lots of posts, but it's not pretty.
>
Too true.
--
Marc da Puma
Boudewijn Rempt
>>Well... read the subject...
>>
>>There seemed to be some discussion on this board when I arrived, but it
>>also seems it has died down. Is the board still alive?
>
> Not Board, Group. Small thing, but geaks can be rather uppity about
> that sort of ting. <Shrug>
>
As they can be about the spelling of 'geek' :-). There used to be a time
when rgfa was almost too busy to follow. More posts than can be read. And
then some ugliness happened, and people disappeared. Read google groups to
see what it was like. Always interesting, though not always _that_ polite.
But interesting.
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Silvered Glass
<_remove.this.to.resp...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>Well... read the subject...
>
>There seemed to be some discussion on this board when I arrived, but it also
>seems it has died down. Is the board still alive?
I still drop in to read occasionally, but I've hardly engaged in
roleplaying in the last four years -- life's been rocky, to put it
mildly -- and the more remote my practical experience becomes, the
less useful it is for me to comment on anybody else's observations. I
haven't got anything insightful to add.
I've been missing gamemastering lately, but I'm not sure I want to try
putting a new group together yet.
Boudewijn Rempt
> I've been missing gamemastering lately, but I'm not sure I want to try
> putting a new group together yet.
I've just got a new group together. All of them, except for Irina, complete
first-timers. And it really works again. The magic is there -- people keep
asking why the next session can't be sooner. No very advanced psychological
in-depth exploration of anything, just adventuring, hacking and playing a
role. It's a very refreshing experience.
Silvered Glass
wrote:
Neat!
I thrived mostly on the in-depth psychological exploration, and on
world-building. I suppose part of what holds me back is that it's a
big commitment of energy and imaginative resources to run a satisfying
game, rather than something I do casually. And at this point I've got
fairly good reasons to suspect that if I run a good campaign in a
given setting, I'll forever have it too thoroughly entangled with
other people's creations to be able to write about it.
Now that I think about it, I don't see any reason to believe that the
reverse is true, though. Having successfully written about a world
could well make it easier to run.
My old campaign world, Ao, isn't especially satisfactory to run
without the presence of a particular player who's almost certainly
unavailable. His character carried a goodly portion of what turned
out to be the most interesting issue in that setting. So I'd want to
set the game somewhere else.
Hmm. I wonder if any of the other Night Land hangers-on would have
the time and inclination -- certainly they're interested in, and
familiar with, the setting, and it looks like a playable one. I
should have finished revising blasted story comparatively soon, and
I'm not going to write another one (unless it's a Pegana-style piece,
which doesn't count).
Boudewijn Rempt
> I thrived mostly on the in-depth psychological exploration, and on
> world-building. I suppose part of what holds me back is that it's a
> big commitment of energy and imaginative resources to run a satisfying
> game, rather than something I do casually. And at this point I've got
> fairly good reasons to suspect that if I run a good campaign in a
> given setting, I'll forever have it too thoroughly entangled with
> other people's creations to be able to write about it.
>
I sort of swing back and forth. I started worldbuilding when I was about
twelve years old, and six years later I hosted my first game in it. Then
there was a period when I wrote lots of short stories set in that world; a
shorter period with some very intense games. And then I started writing
novels set in that world, two or three years ago. The intense campaign
still exists as a writeup that may form the outline for a third novel, and
some of the things that happened even in the very first game I GM'ed in the
world still play a minor role in the writing.
The campaign I'm GM'ing now is outside that world; it's Queeste, which is
the first native Dutch roleplaying game, and very charming in all its
primitive naivete :-).
> Now that I think about it, I don't see any reason to believe that the
> reverse is true, though. Having successfully written about a world
> could well make it easier to run.
For a while I had problems exactly because I was writing about the world. I
tended to get impatient with the players for not recognizing narrative
necessity or even fluffing their lines. That's what told me that writing
might be a better idea.
That, and losing most of the players through a spat that had nothing to do
with playing, but more with growing apart.
>
> My old campaign world, Ao, isn't especially satisfactory to run
> without the presence of a particular player who's almost certainly
> unavailable. His character carried a goodly portion of what turned
> out to be the most interesting issue in that setting. So I'd want to
> set the game somewhere else.
I - what do you call that? emphatize? Anyway, I've got a campaign world like
that. Zabrus without Jago isn't fun anymore. And that was a world unrelated
to my own world-building project, a collective world designed for gaming.
>
> Hmm. I wonder if any of the other Night Land hangers-on would have
> the time and inclination -- certainly they're interested in, and
> familiar with, the setting, and it looks like a playable one. I
> should have finished revising blasted story comparatively soon, and
> I'm not going to write another one (unless it's a Pegana-style piece,
> which doesn't count).
Have fun!
Silvered Glass
wrote:
>For a while I had problems exactly because I was writing about the world. I
>tended to get impatient with the players for not recognizing narrative
>necessity or even fluffing their lines. That's what told me that writing
>might be a better idea.
I think something similar happened to me, in that, as time went on, I
started to want a level of well-formedness and apt wording that's not
readily achievable in an improvised form like RP. With any luck, the
writing I'm doing now will satisfy that urge.
I'm still going to want a certain level of psychological intensity; I
always played for that.
>That, and losing most of the players through a spat that had nothing to do
>with playing, but more with growing apart.
Real life has pulled the old Ao players apart, too. But I never had
serious rows with any of the ones who faded out because of slow
change. (I had rows with a few others, but not with them.)
Jeff Heikkinen
>
> There used to be a time
> when rgfa was almost too busy to follow. More posts than can be read. And
> then some ugliness happened, and people disappeared. Read google groups to
> see what it was like. Always interesting, though not always _that_ polite.
> But interesting.
What sort of ugliness, and when did it happen? I can't seem to find
the relevant threads, or else I have a much thicker skin than whomever
found them worth leaving over. The "ugliest" thing I've seen from my
(otherwise fascinating) raeding back in the group's history is Peter
Knutsen's *pathetic* need to turn every thread into "simulationism is
the one true style, end of story", which he's STILL doing. Just a few
days ago he posted a non sequiter to a months-dead thread just so he
could do it again...
(I even agree with a lot of what he says, but still find the way he
frames it very obnoxious).
I take it whatever you're referring to was a lot worse than that.
Robert Scott Clark
>
> (I even agree with a lot of what he says, but still find the way he
> frames it very obnoxious).
>
Great description of Peter.
Halzebier
[Incidents of people leaving RGFA]
>What sort of ugliness, and when did it happen? I can't seem to find
>the relevant threads, or else I have a much thicker skin than whomever
>found them worth leaving over.
I don't remember things getting ugly in the sense of flamewars. But
Brett Evill and Brian Gleichmann eventually left because their
favoured style was not really understood or supported by enough people
(i.e., they constantly had to re-defend it). At least that's been my
impression - I may well be wrong, so please correct me if necessary.
Both were a big loss to RGFA.
As for David Berkmann, Sarah Kahn, 'the Intrepid Kornelsen' and a few
other prolific posters of old, I don't remember anymore why they left.
(As for your critique of Peter Knutsen, I think you are overreacting,
particularly in light of this subthread's new topic of things turning
'ugly'. You raise a valid point IMO, but the way you do so borders on
adding 'ugliness' itself.)
Regards,
Hal
Larry D. Hols
Halzebier wrote:
>
> As for David Berkmann, Sarah Kahn, 'the Intrepid Kornelsen' and a few
> other prolific posters of old, I don't remember anymore why they left.
Ah, I remember remember Berkman's habit of contradicting himself at
every turn and then wondering why folks took issue with him....
I imagine the prolific folks drifted away as other things changed in
their lives. Several years ago this was my primary group on Usenet. When
I got crunched for time and had to step back from Usenet for a while, I
got out of the habit. I've only wandered in on occasion in the time
since. I come back to it now and find many of the familiar names missing.
I would find it interesting to know why they wandered off.
Larry
Mary K. Kuhner
Jeff Heikkinen <jef...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>What sort of ugliness, and when did it happen? I can't seem to find
>the relevant threads, or else I have a much thicker skin than whomever
>found them worth leaving over.
For a long time, the newsgroup had an unwritten but strongly enforced
rule. Posters were supposed to at least pretend to accept the two
following statements:
--different games aim for different effects; strategies that work for
one type don't necessarily work for others.
--different players enjoy different kinds of games.
I'm going to call this the "difference rule." Its history on the
newsgroup began, I think, with efforts to convince David Berkman that
his way was not the One True Way.
A lot of the group's internal watchdogging or "net-cop" behavior was
directed to enforcing the difference rule. This allowed us to discuss
many kinds of games without (many) flame wars, and a community grew
up.
Unfortunately, the difference rule became closely tied with the Threefold
theory of games. The Threefold is one way to look at the "different
games, different players" idea, but not everyone finds it helpful.
When we slid into using the Threefold as the main way to criticize
violations of the difference rule, people who disliked the Threefold
had reason and opportunity to protest enforcement of the difference rule.
Eventually the people who had been playing net-cop became exhausted
and demoralized. It isn't possible to defend the Threefold; it's a model
that is clearly useful to some and not others. But since the two
had been coupled, the group gave up defending the difference rule as
well.
This was, in my opinion, disasterous to the newsgroup community. Without
the difference rule there is little point in posting detailed analysis
as it will only lead to flame wars from people who want to cut down the
style you're using. Such threads escalate rapidly to personal attacks;
try "circle jerk" as a Google keyword.
I don't know how many of the original posters still keep tabs on this
group at all; I suspect many lurk, but there is no longer much incentive
to post. I'm not going to post "how do I accomplish X?" discussion
starters if the main response is "you're stupid to want X." I'm
certainly not going to post anything at all personal if the probable
response involves being called ugly names in public. And the
enforcement mechanisms that prevented, or at least reduced, this kind
of behavior are gone.
Things weren't perfect even at the newsgroup's heydey, but they worked
well enough to allow interesting discussions. The people who destroyed
enforcement of the difference rule often argued that we'd get better,
freer, more valid and realistic discussions without it. I think the
results speak for themselves. (Yes, I'm bitter. I really miss the old
newsgroup.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Larry D. Hols
"Mary K. Kuhner" wrote:
I see your name and immediately think of the "diced vs diceless"
debates and the little adventure with Fancy we were running via email. I
wonder if I have any of those messages stored anywhere.... I don't even
remember why I asked you to play that; I think it had to do with
providing a game narrative that illustrated some point I wished to make.
It's been too long.
> For a long time, the newsgroup had an unwritten but strongly enforced
> rule. Posters were supposed to at least pretend to accept the two
> following statements:
>
> --different games aim for different effects; strategies that work for
> one type don't necessarily work for others.
>
> --different players enjoy different kinds of games.
>
> I'm going to call this the "difference rule." Its history on the
> newsgroup began, I think, with efforts to convince David Berkman that
> his way was not the One True Way.
Yes. "Diversity is good" was a watchword, now that I think about it.
Different strokes for different players, so those wanting a definite
"game" feel had just as valid an approach as Peter's simulationism and
Berkman's style of narrativist play.
> A lot of the group's internal watchdogging or "net-cop" behavior was
> directed to enforcing the difference rule. This allowed us to discuss
> many kinds of games without (many) flame wars, and a community grew
> up.
True. I learned a great deal about other approaches to play and
expanded my understanding of gaming because of that.
> Unfortunately, the difference rule became closely tied with the Threefold
> theory of games. The Threefold is one way to look at the "different
> games, different players" idea, but not everyone finds it helpful.
> When we slid into using the Threefold as the main way to criticize
> violations of the difference rule, people who disliked the Threefold
> had reason and opportunity to protest enforcement of the difference rule.
> Eventually the people who had been playing net-cop became exhausted
> and demoralized. It isn't possible to defend the Threefold; it's a model
> that is clearly useful to some and not others. But since the two
> had been coupled, the group gave up defending the difference rule as
> well.
It's difficult to use the Threefold these days, also. There are varying
versions of it, and discussions involving the Threefold now have to
include clarification of which version each participant uses and how
they differ. There are also folks who fail to understand that even
within each general approach there are different styles, so one
narrativist approach is not identical to all narrativist approaches.
> This was, in my opinion, disasterous to the newsgroup community. Without
> the difference rule there is little point in posting detailed analysis
> as it will only lead to flame wars from people who want to cut down the
> style you're using. Such threads escalate rapidly to personal attacks;
> try "circle jerk" as a Google keyword.
I've become accustomed to using killfiles over the past few years.
Folks simply determined to be jerks get killfiled and the
signal-to-noise ration improves for me. I imagine if more people ignored
or killfiled messages of that sort, the discussions would prove as
useful as at any time in the past and using the group wouldn't be so frustrating.
> I don't know how many of the original posters still keep tabs on this
> group at all; I suspect many lurk, but there is no longer much incentive
> to post.
From a purely selfish point of view, I find that sad. You were always
an important part of conversations. From a group-oriented point of view,
I think that's sad because regular posters who concentrate on providing
quality discussion are necessary for useful newsgroups.
> Things weren't perfect even at the newsgroup's heydey, but they worked
> well enough to allow interesting discussions. The people who destroyed
> enforcement of the difference rule often argued that we'd get better,
> freer, more valid and realistic discussions without it. I think the
> results speak for themselves.
I think they got what they deserve. Too bad everybody else has to
suffer alongside.
> (Yes, I'm bitter. I really miss the old newsgroup.)
Larry
Boudewijn Rempt
> I would find it interesting to know why they wandered off.
I got fed up -- not because of Peter (whose posts I seldom read
fully, anywhere), but because-- No, I won't even say the name...
And then, a little later, I started playing rather less, lost the
main group I played with, and then I picked up writing again. Rasfc
occupies most of my time, now.
Actually, even more fully than I ever imagined. Must be something
wrong with my searches.
Of about 3100 Usenet postings of mine, Google archives
year number mostly posted to
1994 1
1996 31
1997 51
1998 193 rgfa
1999 321 rgfa/clpy -- This is when rgfa quit being interesting...
2000 172 clpy
2001 292 rasfc
2002 1580 rasfc
2003 554 rasfc
Anyway, I've got the task of teaching a group full of new players that
being the good guys means not taking advantage of every helpless woman,
wolf or chimera they encounter.
Mary K. Kuhner
Larry D. Hols <crkd...@terraworld.net> wrote:
> I've become accustomed to using killfiles over the past few years.
>Folks simply determined to be jerks get killfiled and the
>signal-to-noise ration improves for me. I imagine if more people ignored
>or killfiled messages of that sort, the discussions would prove as
>useful as at any time in the past and using the group wouldn't be so frustrating.
I use killfiles too, but there are limits to their usefulness. They
screen out the original problem poster, but they don't screen out
replies--unless you kill the whole thread, which can rapidly lead to
seeing no threads at all. They don't recover the wasted energy
and opportunities lost when other posters reply to the flamebait
instead of posting something good, and they don't help much with the
general tone of the newsgroup unless everyone uses them. Finally,
it is hard to attract new posters when your newsgroup is a cesspool,
and they may not stick it out long enough to develop a working killfile.
An interesting comparison/contrast would be rec.arts.sf.written, which
I find painful to read even with a killfile that catches 50% or more
of all posts, and rec.arts.sf.composition, on a related topic, which
I read without any killfile at all. rasfc has a strong "netcop" tradition
the way rgfa used to, and while this causes some friction on its own,
the net result is a more viable (to me) community and a more useful
group.
But having indulged in meta-discussion, I'll try to post something more
useful here.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Larry D. Hols
> I use killfiles too, but there are limits to their usefulness. They
> screen out the original problem poster, but they don't screen out
> replies--unless you kill the whole thread, which can rapidly lead to
> seeing no threads at all. They don't recover the wasted energy
> and opportunities lost when other posters reply to the flamebait
> instead of posting something good, and they don't help much with the
> general tone of the newsgroup unless everyone uses them. Finally,
> it is hard to attract new posters when your newsgroup is a cesspool,
> and they may not stick it out long enough to develop a working killfile.
One group I wandered into for a brief time had a pseudo-FAQ posted
regularly that involved suggestions for killfile settings for new
visitors. I thought it extremely odd at first; then I discovered that
the poster of the killfile recommendation was doing newcomers a favor. I
think that's too extreme for most groups, although it proved useful there.
The experience of newcomers to a group is a valid concern. I'm a
regular in alt.psychology.nlp and there are a small handful of
semi-regulars who show up mainly to engage in boorish behavior. The real
regulars ignore much of their noise, although we still do post digs at
them for the benefit of new readers who get sucked into threads gone
awry. I have to wonder about the reactions of newbies to both their
excesses and the nasty reframing I inject with some regularity. I can
only hope that the good threads are attractive enough to the newbies to
keep them around long enough to figure out the group dynamics--and set killfiles.
> An interesting comparison/contrast would be rec.arts.sf.written, which
> I find painful to read even with a killfile that catches 50% or more
> of all posts, and rec.arts.sf.composition, on a related topic, which
> I read without any killfile at all. rasfc has a strong "netcop" tradition
> the way rgfa used to, and while this causes some friction on its own,
> the net result is a more viable (to me) community and a more useful
> group.
So you're saying we need to establish a new netcop tradition? I can
agree with that. I'm willing to work at it.
> But having indulged in meta-discussion, I'll try to post something more
> useful here.
Heh. That's the best response to trollery and those who choose to be
general antagonists. How very functional of you! An example in the land
of dysfunction....
Larry
Lee Short
> I don't know how many of the original posters still keep tabs on this
> group at all; I suspect many lurk, but there is no longer much incentive
> to post.
I've lurked on and off for the past few years.
More off than on, really. Sheer luck that I saw
this post.
> I'm not going to post "how do I accomplish X?" discussion
> starters if the main response is "you're stupid to want X." I'm
> certainly not going to post anything at all personal if the probable
> response involves being called ugly names in public. And the
> enforcement mechanisms that prevented, or at least reduced, this kind
> of behavior are gone.
Yep. Last time I tried posting something here, that's
what happened to me. My original posting could have been
a bit clearer, but the thread was quickly hijacked by someone
with no interest at all in *discussion* and lots of interest
in *argument*.
> I really miss the old newsgroup.)
I do too, but I frankly don't have the time on any kind of
regular basis.
The community over at The Forge (www.indie-rpgs.com) has,
IMO, a very interesting discussion going on that has some
relation to a lot of the stuff we used to talk about. Ron
Edwards' essay on The Threefold, where he renames it GNS,
has some very good analysis. That's probably the best place
to talk about some of the things we used to talk about here;
but the overall focus is quite different.
Chuck
>I find painful to read even with a killfile that catches 50% or more
>of all posts, and rec.arts.sf.composition, on a related topic, which
>I read without any killfile at all. rasfc has a strong "netcop" tradition
You might try rec.arts.sf.science if you have a question about the
science part of science fiction. I've found it really useful, even if
there are a few people that like to be obnoxious.
I know that you weren't asking for a recommendation, just pointing out
a contrast, but I like to share knowledge of good groups out there.
Charlton Wilbur
> I've just got a new group together. All of them, except for Irina,
> complete first-timers. And it really works again. The magic is there
> -- people keep asking why the next session can't be sooner. No very
> advanced psychological in-depth exploration of anything, just
> adventuring, hacking and playing a role. It's a very refreshing
> experience.
I'm doing this too, and it's remarkable how much fun it is.
I think I fell out of fantasy (as in swords-and-sorcery) roleplaying
for a couple of reasons. I got involved in fantasy LARPing, which is
a very different beast, and which can leech the savor out of paper
fantasy gaming: once you've been involved in a great battle in a LARP,
paper gaming doesn't have the same adrenaline level or the same
instinctive fight-or-flight response. So in my paper-gaming I wanted
meat and complexity and angst and symbolism, all the things I didn't
get from my LARPs. And then I went off to graduate school, and left
my entire gaming group behind....
And now I'm running a D&D game again. It only meets monthly; the
characters are very simple, and there's no real angst (though there's
a lot of good-natured in-party rivalry), and there's no real symbolism
or depth -- but by gosh, it's an awful lot of fun.
Charlton
Mary K. Kuhner
Larry D. Hols <crkd...@terraworld.net> wrote:
> The experience of newcomers to a group is a valid concern. I'm a
>regular in alt.psychology.nlp and there are a small handful of
>semi-regulars who show up mainly to engage in boorish behavior. The real
>regulars ignore much of their noise, although we still do post digs at
>them for the benefit of new readers who get sucked into threads gone
>awry. I have to wonder about the reactions of newbies to both their
>excesses and the nasty reframing I inject with some regularity. I can
>only hope that the good threads are attractive enough to the newbies to
>keep them around long enough to figure out the group dynamics--and set
>killfiles.
I dipped in, and I have to say that I would be unlikely to stay (but
my tolerance level is quite low). Ads; personal attacks; and it's
hard to tell the sheep from the goats when the sheep are engaged in
goat-baiting. I wouldn't know what to killfile.
> So you're saying we need to establish a new netcop tradition? I can
>agree with that. I'm willing to work at it.
It doesn't work unless the group supports it--Usenet really has
"government by the consent of the governed"--so I'd suggest that the
first step has to be generating enough useful content that there
is something worth protecting.
(hint, hint)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Warren J. Dew
I don't remember things getting ugly in the sense of flamewars. But
Brett Evill and Brian Gleichmann eventually left because their
favoured style was not really understood or supported by enough people
(i.e., they constantly had to re-defend it).
In Brett's case I believe a flamewar was the proverbial straw that broke the
camel's back. Brian stated that he had problems interacting with two other
people on the newsgroup, neither of whom has posted much since; in fact, I
believe the only posts I've seen from them were from a brief period when Brian
returned to the newsgroup.
As for David Berkmann ...
Heh.
Mary has a good description of why the newsgroup became quiescent, but it's
also possible to look at it from a different point of view. Newgroups, to have
continuity, seem to need a small group of regulars; these regulars need to be
identifiable to newcomers for the latter to fit into the existing newsgroup
culture. For them to be identifiable, there needs to be fairly continuous
traffic.
When I first came to the newsgroup, David Berkman kept the traffic going with
his continuous 'diceless' threads. He didn't add much in the way of content,
but others' responses often spun off interesting discussions. For those who
remember Terry Austin, he used to have a similar effect in r.g.f.misc; I
sometimes think that it's easier to keep newsgroups alive with a resident
troll, despite their disadvantages.
After David left, there was a period when Brian's monthly reviews helped keep
discussion going as long as there were a sufficient number of other regulars
present to provide commentary.
However, when r.g.f.moderated was created, a number of our regulars spent some
of their effort there, and with Terry Austin focusing on trolling .moderated
instead of .misc, others, including myself, diverted some of our attention to
.misc. I believe that as a result, the effort devoted to .advocacy fell below
critical mass. Newcomers started outnumbering oldsters, which prevented the
latter from indoctrinating the former into the tenet that there is no 'one true
way' in roleplaying - which, whether true or not, was essential to the previous
mode of productive discussion here.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
Warren J. Dew
It doesn't work unless the group supports it--Usenet
really has "government by the consent of the
governed"--so I'd suggest that the first step has to
be generating enough useful content that there is
something worth protecting.
(hint, hint)
How far are we willing to go?
In particular, while I've continued to run my game, most of my actual play in
the last few years has been in online roleplaying games. In the past, when
I've mentioned online games, it has seemed like even the others here who played
them didn't want to discuss them here - are we ready to accept online games
under the "different players enjoy different kinds of games" umbrella?
Robert Scott Clark
news:20030403204003...@mb-fo.aol.com:
Unless someone clings to the idea that anything involving a computer
can't also involve role-playing, it's hard to say why they wouldn't fit
here.
Are you talking mainly about a P&P like experience using a chat channel
or game client, MUD/MUSH gaming, free-form role-playing via
irc/something, roleplaying within the constraints of a multiplayer
pseudo-roleplaying game (any of the mass produced D&D games - NWN, BG,
etc), MMORPGs, or something else?
Larry D. Hols
> (hint, hint)
Were you hinting at something?
Larry
OK, OK, I get it...quit poking me!
Jeff Heikkinen
(lots of good stuff)
Thanks for the very thorough and insightful answer, Mary.
Jeff Heikkinen
> (As for your critique of Peter Knutsen, I think you are overreacting,
> particularly in light of this subthread's new topic of things turning
> 'ugly'. You raise a valid point IMO, but the way you do so borders on
> adding 'ugliness' itself.)
----------
-shrug-
See above re "Skin, Relative thickness of", I guess.
Though I'll admit it was not the most appropriate statement to be
posting given the context. I was irritated at him over something of
his I'd just been reading on Google, and there was no point replying
directly to it since it was from over a year ago.
Peter Knutsen
Warren J. Dew wrote:
> How far are we willing to go?
>
> In particular, while I've continued to run my game, most of my actual play in
> the last few years has been in online roleplaying games. In the past, when
> I've mentioned online games, it has seemed like even the others here who played
> them didn't want to discuss them here - are we ready to accept online games
> under the "different players enjoy different kinds of games" umbrella?
Human-moderated or computer-moderated online games? As far as I'
converned, roleplaying gaming is when you have a human GM and an
objective explicit rules system. Whether you play face to face, using
cell phones or whatever, is irrelevant.
> Warren J. Dew
--
Peter Knutsen
Brett Evill
<Halzebi...@gmx.de> wrote:
> I don't remember things getting ugly in the sense of flamewars. But
> Brett Evill and Brian Gleichmann eventually left because their
> favoured style was not really understood or supported by enough people
> (i.e., they constantly had to re-defend it).
I didn't so much mind the need to re-state and re-formulate my opinions,
even though in some cases I thought some posters were deliberately
misconstruing what I had written so as to be able to contradict me. What put
me off was that the defenders of diversity were so ferocious that they would
not permit discussion of things that contributors thought all styles might
have in common. It was not acceptable to suggest that "even though some
people prefer X and others Y or Z, all games involve A, B, and C", or "Have
you noticed that X, Y, and Z are all forms of aleph?". Towards the end of my
involvement, even for me to say "X, Y, and Z are not entirely rivals--to a
certain extent they are necessary for each other" brought down a storm of
controversy.
Without some generalisation to balance the classification, the group's
orthodoxy seemed to be useful for only a narrow range of purposes. And the
continual re-use of a scant handful of pieces of analysis (sound though they
were) came to seem both repetitious and self-congratulatory.
The hostility to my areas of interest was wearing, it is true. But I might
have put up with it, treated it as an opportunity to refine my formulations
to the point where even malicious miscontruction could not pervert their
meanings. Fierce criticism is a useful element of pre-publication review,
right? The straw that broke the camel's back was when I started getting hate
e-mail, even threatening e-mail, from the 'net-cops'. That was too
exasperating.
By the way, my apologies if me change of e-mail address since I last posted
here has evaded someone's kill-file.
Regards,
Brett Evill
George W. Harris
<ev...@gibberish.edu.au> wrote:
:I didn't so much mind the need to re-state and re-formulate my opinions,
:even though in some cases I thought some posters were deliberately
:misconstruing what I had written so as to be able to contradict me. What put
:me off was that the defenders of diversity were so ferocious that they would
:not permit discussion of things that contributors thought all styles might
:have in common. It was not acceptable to suggest that "even though some
:people prefer X and others Y or Z, all games involve A, B, and C", or "Have
:you noticed that X, Y, and Z are all forms of aleph?".
Did it occur to you that the reason people disagreed
with these statements might have been that their preferred
style of gaming did *not* include A, B and C?
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they
taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." -Groucho Marx
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
talysman
> On Sun, 06 Apr 2003 05:11:56 GMT, "Brett Evill"
> <ev...@gibberish.edu.au> wrote:
>
> :I didn't so much mind the need to re-state and re-formulate my opinions,
> :even though in some cases I thought some posters were deliberately
> :misconstruing what I had written so as to be able to contradict me. What put
> :me off was that the defenders of diversity were so ferocious that they would
> :not permit discussion of things that contributors thought all styles might
> :have in common. It was not acceptable to suggest that "even though some
> :people prefer X and others Y or Z, all games involve A, B, and C", or "Have
> :you noticed that X, Y, and Z are all forms of aleph?".
>
> Did it occur to you that the reason people disagreed
> with these statements might have been that their preferred
> style of gaming did *not* include A, B and C?
if that was the case, perhaps, in the interest of open discussion,
they could have provided examples of their style of gaming as a
counterexample?
it's one thing to say "don't diss other people's styles of play",
but quite another to say "don't try to figure out various styles
of play."
Brett Evill
> with these statements might have been that their preferred
> style of gaming did *not* include A, B and C?
Yes, certainly. There were definitely people whose games did not include
elements that I enjoy in mine. And there were others who reported that for
them the main point of playing was something that for me was mere process, a
mere means to some further goal. Which was interesting. But I remained
convinced to the end that there were things that gamists, simulationists,
and dramatists have in common, and specifically that games of all three
kinds have some simple, basic things in common with stories, movies, and
plays. I guess I hold those opinions still, though I am no longer convinced
that RPG theorists stand to profit by trawling literary theory for
suggestions that might help in gaming.
Anyway, I have no desire whatsoever to take things up where I left them off
four and a half years ago. You must therefore forgive me (or condemn me) for
not listing any examples, and for declining to argue over whether specific
commonalities are worth investigating, or rather trivial and obvious and
non-existent anyway. I already regret having said anything.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Halzebier
<ev...@gibberish.edu.au> wrote:
>What put
>me off was that the defenders of diversity were so ferocious that they would
>not permit discussion of things that contributors thought all styles might
>have in common. It was not acceptable to suggest that "even though some
>people prefer X and others Y or Z, all games involve A, B, and C", or "Have
>you noticed that X, Y, and Z are all forms of aleph?". Towards the end of my
>involvement, even for me to say "X, Y, and Z are not entirely rivals--to a
>certain extent they are necessary for each other" brought down a storm of
>controversy.
People are often quite touchy about their preferences to begin with,
particularly if these are not shared by many others. If they are given
a corner and label of their own, they are often quite happy -- but woe
to him who tries to put them in a category they don't feel at home in.
I'm not saying that you did that, mind you -- I merely think that this
is a touchy subject and, moreover, that some people may have been
traumatized by earlier events.
For instance, if you told David Berkman that you were not aiming for
X, but its opposite, Y, he might tell you that Y was really a subset
of X.
Talk about adding insult to injury in such a case: Not only is your
preference not understood, but moreover you're told that you don't
even know what you want yourself.
>The straw that broke the camel's back was when I started getting hate
>e-mail, even threatening e-mail, from the 'net-cops'. That was too
>exasperating.
That's appalling. I had no idea it had come to this (or don't
remember, perhaps).
*-*-*
In any case, I think it's an interesting endeavour to step back and
look at the discussions of the past in an abstract way.
Regards,
Hal
Halzebier
<ev...@gibberish.edu.au> wrote:
> I already regret having said anything.
Nah, take it easy. I (inadvertently) misrepresented your reasons for
leaving, so setting the record straight was a natural thing to do.
There's no obligation to join a new debate.
Regards,
Hal
Warren J. Dew
if that was the case, perhaps, in the interest of open
discussion, they could have provided examples of their
style of gaming as a counterexample?
Er, they did. The problem was that individual examples of play don't
demonstrate the absence of a factor from an entire campaign, and providing the
entire campaign as an example necessarily involves a lack of detail, so that
the failure to include certain details can be argued to be unconvincing proof
of their absence.
In that particular argument, I believe there was plenty of lack of
understanding going on on both sides.
A couple of corollaries to the discussion methods described by Mary:
(a) You might as well trust people on factual descriptions of their own
campaigns, since they are after all your only source of information.
(b) Whether an activity is "roleplaying" is decided by those participating in
it, not by those analyzing it. (The latter are free to ignore discussion on
types of roleplaying that they're uninterested in, of course.)
The problem is that statements of the form of "all roleplaying contains X" is
logically equivalent to "if it doesn't contain X, it isn't roleplaying". This
is a threatening statement to any players who do something they consider to be
roleplaying that doesn't contain X, which is not conducive to cooperative
discussion and analysis.
Peter Knutsen
Warren J. Dew wrote:
> The problem is that statements of the form of "all roleplaying contains X" is
> logically equivalent to "if it doesn't contain X, it isn't roleplaying". This
> is a threatening statement to any players who do something they consider to be
[...]
It's particularly threatening to minority style players. Majority
style players aren't as much threatened (unless, of course, the
statement comes from someone taking an elitist stance <self-referetial
cough>) as confused.
Silvered Glass
<ev...@gibberish.edu.au> wrote:
<snip>
>Without some generalisation to balance the classification, the group's
>orthodoxy seemed to be useful for only a narrow range of purposes. And the
>continual re-use of a scant handful of pieces of analysis (sound though they
>were) came to seem both repetitious and self-congratulatory.
>
>The hostility to my areas of interest was wearing, it is true. But I might
>have put up with it, treated it as an opportunity to refine my formulations
>to the point where even malicious miscontruction could not pervert their
>meanings. Fierce criticism is a useful element of pre-publication review,
>right? The straw that broke the camel's back was when I started getting hate
>e-mail, even threatening e-mail, from the 'net-cops'. That was too
>exasperating.
<snip>
I appreciated your posts even though your style was one that I never
easily wrapped my head around. I think I might understand it a little
better today; since the last time we were both around, I have come to
regard the notions of the art of the story that prevailed in rgfa as
exceedingly strange, and my acceptance of the reigning orthodoxy has
consequently lapsed.
I regret to hear of the hate mail; unfortunately, I'm not surprised by
it. My view of what happened to rgfa is much closer to the idea that
the 'net cops' succeeded entirely too well than that they quit
successfully net-copping.
When I look at Google's archives, it seems to me that rgfa saw most of
the observations that produced useful insights before my time, during
a period in which some of the debate was civil, but it was often
heated, and was very far from being controlled by *any* reigning
orthodoxy -- including 'diversity is good.' When I arrived, it was
settling into a reigning orthodoxy, which I went along with for some
time.
In retrospect, it seems to me that the eventual end of useful
discussion was inevitable because of that transition. It was -- true
enough -- a comfortable place then for posters who found the reigning
orthodoxy congenial. But we had enough obscure and exacting jargon to
deter some newcomers, and to produce rounds of not-terribly-productive
and, as time went on, increasingly snappish discussion with all the
newcomers who were inclined to debate (as well as with dissident
old-timers). Later, it increasingly seemed to me that the many of the
old guard viewed newcomers' attempts to contribute as wastes of time,
more often than not.
That -- regardless of the merit, or lack of same, in any given
newcomer's position -- is a recipe for the stagnation and ossification
of any online group. Attrition will wear away the old members; and,
beyond that, eventually they run out of new things to say to each
other. This pattern's not, by any means, unique to rgfa: it's easy to
observe in the posting patterns of any number of moderately-sized
mailing lists.
I have strayed in fairly heretical directions since the last time we
were both around; and I'd be exceedingly reluctant to begin any
theoretical discussion here. There's an elsewhere I may repair to, if
I decide to run again; I've been thinking of it, but I don't have as
much time as I used to, and my approach always involved a lot of
extracurricular effort.
Wayne Shaw
wrote:
>For instance, if you told David Berkman that you were not aiming for
>X, but its opposite, Y, he might tell you that Y was really a subset
>of X.
>
>Talk about adding insult to injury in such a case: Not only is your
>preference not understood, but moreover you're told that you don't
>even know what you want yourself.
I'd suggest that this coumes up a lot; someone has such a strong view
of what they consider necessarily elements of an RPG that they will,
whether consciously or not, insert them in other people's games even
though told they aren't there, even if they have to essentially
redefine what the other person is doing to suit their hypothesis. The
even more annoying alternate is to flat out say they're doing it even
if they say they aren't. I know I finally end up killfiling one
participant on here because he was effectively telling multiple other
participants they were liars when reporting their games.
Irina Rempt
> Talk about adding insult to injury in such a case: Not only is your
> preference not understood, but moreover you're told that you don't
> even know what you want yourself.
That was what effectively made me leave; some people didn't seem to
*believe* me when I said my preference was X, from what I'd said
earlier it was clear that it could only be Y, why didn't I admit that?
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/foundobjects/ Latest: 11-Mar-2003
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>
> I didn't so much mind the need to re-state and re-formulate my
> opinions, even though in some cases I thought some posters were
> deliberately misconstruing what I had written so as to be able to
> contradict me. What put me off was that the defenders of diversity
> were so ferocious that they would not permit discussion of things
> that contributors thought all styles might have in common.
That's pretty much the opposite of the reason I stopped posting
regularly. The assumed context (it's overkill to call it "reigning
orthodoxy") was fairly hostile to the idea of games that didn't fit
comfortably into the existing theoretical frameworks.
--
Neel Krishnaswami
ne...@alum.mit.edu
Silvered Glass
wrote:
<snip>
>For instance, if you told David Berkman that you were not aiming for
>X, but its opposite, Y, he might tell you that Y was really a subset
>of X.
Which certainly exasperated some people. Yet I don't think most of
the serious discussion here would even have gotten started, if it
weren't for others determined to prove him wrong in a coherent way.
He'd mostly quit making his major arguments by the time I arrived, and
it's a little difficult to tell how I would have reacted to holding up
the opposite side of one myself. I can't say that his arguments got
on my nerves much when I read them.
The diced-diceless war got pretty darned fierce at times, and -- far
from killing the group -- it spawned most of the theoretical
discussion, as far as I can tell. It looks to me as if the group
later became fragile in a way in which it had not been, earlier; so
that debate of a sort which would have been readily weathered once
was weatherable no longer.
>Talk about adding insult to injury in such a case: Not only is your
>preference not understood, but moreover you're told that you don't
>even know what you want yourself.
That kind of remark tends to be a show-stopper for me, in the sense
that it tends to render further discussion pointless -- absent a good
argument that Y really /is/ a subset of X, of course: I can't think of
any good reason why anyone should consider someone else's
categorizations beyond argument. I think I only really took offense at
a series of comments like that once, and that was more because of the
way they were phrased than because of the content.
When I look at my own motives for not posting -- aside from the fact
that I haven't been playing, and that my life was most stressful for a
few years -- I see that I've developed the sense that certain ideas,
no matter /how/ they're phrased, will automatically stir up personal
animosity and deep defensiveness in certain directions -- I'd be
talking to people who considered the very concepts I raised
intrinsically threatening. If everyone who was likely to behave that
way was a mouthy boor, then I might well be likely to post anyway, on
the grounds that I have no hesitation in employing a killfile. The
problem is that the group of people I don't think it's safe to debate
with includes people I like.
I don't think I can fix this. I don't see how anybody else can fix
it, either. It's probably a permanent loss. I take it somewhat
philosophically.
Before this, I permanently lost the roleplaying community from which I
recruited my players -- the old service it was on couldn't stand the
competition from the then-new ISPs -- and I've never found a
satisfactory replacement for that potential player pool. I think I'd
probably be running now if I had; or at least I would have been
running up through a couple of years ago. In real life I've lost far
more important things lately; and I don't know how to express the sum
of my thoughts on the matter (which is off-topic anyway), except to
say that I think I've come to the point of being able to appreciate
relationships while I have them, knowing that sooner or later time
will tear them apart.
Charlton Wilbur
> When I look at my own motives for not posting -- aside from the fact
> that I haven't been playing, and that my life was most stressful for
> a few years -- I see that I've developed the sense that certain
> ideas, no matter /how/ they're phrased, will automatically stir up
> personal animosity and deep defensiveness in certain directions --
> I'd be talking to people who considered the very concepts I raised
> intrinsically threatening. If everyone who was likely to behave
> that way was a mouthy boor, then I might well be likely to post
> anyway, on the grounds that I have no hesitation in employing a
> killfile. The problem is that the group of people I don't think
> it's safe to debate with includes people I like.
There were a couple of recurring topics that just would not die, as
well; discussions of them had a tendency to get very heated very
quickly. There was a time in which I would immediately kill any
thread that mentioned the Threefold: a common pattern was that someone
would read the FAQ, decide that the Threefold didn't describe him or
her adequately, and attack the entire model. The regulars would
explain, increasingly tersely as time went on, that the Threefold
wasn't meant to be an all-encompassing model of all players at all
times, but as a way of discussing the motivations for making a
particular decision in a particular way. About the time I stopped
reading the group, pro-/anti-Threefold discussion dominated, and it
was usually acrimonious and unpleasant: much heat and little light.
And certain things aren't so much intrinsically threatening as sore
points. I've read and seen enough "Immersive roleplaying is
psychologically dangerous" discussions, for instance, that if a person
who doesn't play Immersively start trying to explore that area, I'm
going to be distrustful of his motives, axioms, and conclusions. It's
not so much that the concept itself threatens me, but that I've seen
one too many insulting discussions on the topic, and I'm not
especially interested in seeing another one unless I'm likely to be
enlightened by it -- and such enlightenment tends to come from the
people who enjoy Immersive play rather than from the people who think
it's a pathology.
Charlton
Larry D. Hols
> There was a time in which I would immediately kill any
> thread that mentioned the Threefold: a common pattern was that someone
> would read the FAQ, decide that the Threefold didn't describe him or
> her adequately, and attack the entire model.
There are multiple versions of the Threefold these days, too, so it's
difficult to even agree on what version is being discussed. That's too
bad, because the Threefold is something I'd like to revisit.
> I'm not
> especially interested in seeing another one unless I'm likely to be
> enlightened by it -- and such enlightenment tends to come from the
> people who enjoy Immersive play rather than from the people who think
> it's a pathology.
That's something else I'd like to understand better. I don't think it's
pathological, I think it would prove exhausting.
Larry
Silvered Glass
<cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
>And certain things aren't so much intrinsically threatening as sore
>points. I've read and seen enough "Immersive roleplaying is
>psychologically dangerous" discussions, for instance, that if a person
>who doesn't play Immersively start trying to explore that area, I'm
>going to be distrustful of his motives, axioms, and conclusions. It's
>not so much that the concept itself threatens me, but that I've seen
>one too many insulting discussions on the topic, and I'm not
>especially interested in seeing another one unless I'm likely to be
>enlightened by it -- and such enlightenment tends to come from the
>people who enjoy Immersive play rather than from the people who think
>it's a pathology.
Calling them sore points is probably more accurate in some cases. And
the group has accumulated too darned many of them. There are entirely
too many subjects it isn't safe to touch on anymore.
That's only natural and only human. But it also means that it's close
to impossible to break any new ground or come to any new
understanding, because -- of course -- the only place for a new
understanding is in a place where the old formulations don't work for
somebody.
Comparatively recently, I've seen some useful thought arise on one of
the subjects you just mentioned, which has practical applications and
is likely to be quite helpful in setting up my next campaign, if such
ever occurs. (It was also helpful for my writing.) Unfortunately,
said practical application involves an implicit criticism of
__________. At least if I describe where it came from. I don't much
want to bring up an implicit criticism of _________ around here,
particularly not /that/ implicit criticism of _________.
I'd probably be more upset about this if I thought this problem was
curable and we were failing to cure it. Actually, I think nothing
short of ...
Well, come to think of it, let's not go there either.
Silvered Glass
<crkd...@carrollsweb.com> wrote:
>> I'm not
>> especially interested in seeing another one unless I'm likely to be
>> enlightened by it -- and such enlightenment tends to come from the
>> people who enjoy Immersive play rather than from the people who think
>> it's a pathology.
>
> That's something else I'd like to understand better. I don't think it's
>pathological, I think it would prove exhausting.
I never found it exhausting per se, though I suppose some people
might; and I suppose it would be possible to immerse in an exhausting
character.
But I've always found it highly satisfying, and great escapism,
provided that the character isn't confronted with problems that look
too much like mine. At that point -- yeah, it can get nasty; I need
enough similarity so that I can get into the character's head, but
enough separation so that the character isn't me. Throwing an
emotionally loaded situation into play can break the separation. I
don't think that problem is peculiar to immersion, though.
Charlton Wilbur
> Calling them sore points is probably more accurate in some cases. And
> the group has accumulated too darned many of them. There are entirely
> too many subjects it isn't safe to touch on anymore.
Speaking for myself, the manner in which the subject is brought up
matters almost as much as what is said about it.
> Comparatively recently, I've seen some useful thought arise on one of
> the subjects you just mentioned, which has practical applications and
> is likely to be quite helpful in setting up my next campaign, if such
> ever occurs. (It was also helpful for my writing.) Unfortunately,
> said practical application involves an implicit criticism of
> __________. At least if I describe where it came from. I don't much
> want to bring up an implicit criticism of _________ around here,
> particularly not /that/ implicit criticism of _________.
Much depends on how you bring it up.
If you acknowledge the criticism and do it in a spirit of inquiry
rather than confrontation, I'd expect that people will be more
tolerant of it. The acrimony in this newsgroup arises when people are
told how they think or feel, or how they *should* think or feel; if
you offer your thoughts *without condemning a play style or the people
who like that play style* you should be all set.
In other words, suppose your criticism is of, to avoid using
unpronouncable punctuation, tigerism. (There's a poster of a Bengal
tiger within my field of vision.) If you approach the question by
taking the attitude that you might have an alternate approach for
tigerist play, but that this approach suggests a criticism of
digitalism (from the pile of CDs next to the computer), people will
discuss it; if you claim that digitalist play is the one true way and
anyone who claims to enjoy tigerist play is confused or misguided, or
really a digitalist who doesn't understand that what he's describing
is *really* digitalist and not tigerist, you'll kick off another
flamewar. It especially helps if you can frame the points in terms of
*your* reactions to games and *your* experiences, rather than
explaining other people's experiences.
Not bringing up topics *at all* because in the past there's been a
flamewar on the topic in rgfa is a recipe for perpetual silence.
Nobody will jump on you for saying "I tried approaching things as a
tigerist, and it just didn't work for me; but it seems to me that the
digitalist approach is a better match to what I look for in character
design." Avoid universal statements and telling people what they must
think or feel, and you won't poke people directly in the sore spot.
Charlton
Larry D. Hols
> I never found it exhausting per se, though I suppose some people
> might; and I suppose it would be possible to immerse in an exhausting
> character.
I think the first step in my education on that matter is to launch a
thread wherein immersive players describe their experience for me.
Prepare for liftoff....
Larry
Joachim Schipper
"Silvered Glass" <silvere...@mail.com.clip> schreef in bericht
news:kjo19vcjpsspvjqhd...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 06 Apr 2003 21:11:57 -0500, "Larry D. Hols"
> <crkd...@carrollsweb.com> wrote:
>
>
> >> I'm not
> >> especially interested in seeing another one unless I'm likely to be
> >> enlightened by it -- and such enlightenment tends to come from the
> >> people who enjoy Immersive play rather than from the people who think
> >> it's a pathology.
> >
> > That's something else I'd like to understand better. I don't think it's
> >pathological, I think it would prove exhausting.
>
> I never found it exhausting per se, though I suppose some people
> might; and I suppose it would be possible to immerse in an exhausting
> character.
As a newcomer to this group, but less so to immersive playing, I'm not sure
I can second that. I have just been involved in a drama week at school (it
was a sort of final exam), and that is, like immersive roleplaying, intense.
It can be great fun, but it requires more of an energy inestment than some
other styles of play - for example, it's quite possible for me to play a
dungeon crawl in a system I know well when tired or distracted, but I have
great trouble doing immersive roleplaying in such circumstances.
I believe it's as with many joys in life; most of the best require quite a
deal of work to reach, and it's easier to settle for tv than go and watch
Shakespeare - but the latter might provide greater joy when savoured in the
proper way [without trying to imply immersive roleplaying is the best way -
it's just one of the harder ones].
> But I've always found it highly satisfying, and great escapism,
> provided that the character isn't confronted with problems that look
> too much like mine. At that point -- yeah, it can get nasty; I need
> enough similarity so that I can get into the character's head, but
> enough separation so that the character isn't me. Throwing an
> emotionally loaded situation into play can break the separation. I
> don't think that problem is peculiar to immersion, though.
---
My outgoing mail is checked for viruses.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.467 / Virus Database: 266 - Release Date: 1-4-03
talysman
> talysman posts, in part:
>
> if that was the case, perhaps, in the interest of open
> discussion, they could have provided examples of their
> style of gaming as a counterexample?
>
> Er, they did. The problem was that individual examples of play don't
> demonstrate the absence of a factor from an entire campaign, and providing the
> entire campaign as an example necessarily involves a lack of detail, so that
> the failure to include certain details can be argued to be unconvincing proof
> of their absence.
I would think it would be irrelevant... if someone says "all play must
contain X" and someone else describes an incident of play that doesn't
contain X, then there was a problem with the first statement. perhaps
the first person should not have used the word "all".
I'm certain some of the incidents you are referring to *did* misuse
the word "all" (or the equivalent) and then the discussion turned into
an argument between people who wouldn't back down from an absolute
statement versus people who couldn't "see" that their style of play
really did include whatever-it-is.
I think the problem is that people don't know when to say "ok, it is
obvious you don't see things my way and you can't convince me that
my way is wrong, so I'm NOT GOING TO ARGUE ABOUT IT ANYMORE."
this combines in a nasty manner with the "evangelism" tendency. that
may seem funny to say in rec.games.frp.ADVOCACY, but I think it's
assumed that neither "I'm right, you're wrong" nor "game X sucks, game
Y rules" are really what is meant by "advocacy".
it's really a matter of self-restraint. can you ask a question that
concentrates on specific conditions instead of expanding into gross
generalizations? can you step away from a discussion that turns into
an argument?
> The problem is that statements of the form of "all roleplaying contains X" is
> logically equivalent to "if it doesn't contain X, it isn't roleplaying". This
> is a threatening statement to any players who do something they consider to be
> roleplaying that doesn't contain X, which is not conducive to cooperative
> discussion and analysis.
perhaps. I can only think of a couple statements of that form I would
consider true, but I think they are obviously of such a general nature
that not many people would be excluded:
1. all roleplaying contains group imaginative behavior;
2. all roleplaying depends on agreements between the players
as to what they are playing about and how they will play it.
(2) is obviously true, because if it isn't, the play group breaks
apart. (1) might seem to be not true for solo roleplaying or for
single-player CRPGs, until you take into account that the "group"
in those instances consists of the player and the author(s).
Warren J. Dew
When I look at Google's archives, it seems to me that rgfa
saw most of the observations that produced useful insights
before my time, during a period in which some of the debate
was civil, but it was often heated, and was very far from
being controlled by *any* reigning orthodoxy -- including
'diversity is good.'
That's the problem with unwritten agreements - it's hard to see them in
archives and such.
Wayne Shaw
<_remove.this.to.resp...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>As a newcomer to this group, but less so to immersive playing, I'm not sure
>I can second that. I have just been involved in a drama week at school (it
>was a sort of final exam), and that is, like immersive roleplaying, intense.
>It can be great fun, but it requires more of an energy inestment than some
>other styles of play - for example, it's quite possible for me to play a
>dungeon crawl in a system I know well when tired or distracted, but I have
>great trouble doing immersive roleplaying in such circumstances.
Interesting enough, during my one period of significant immersive play
(back when I was still MUSHing), I often found the opposite problem
when tired; my immersion would resist my control to the point I got
what I considered excessive bleedover and inability to pull back when
I otherwise would have known it was a good idea.
Silvered Glass
<cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
<snip>
>Not bringing up topics *at all* because in the past there's been a
>flamewar on the topic in rgfa is a recipe for perpetual silence.
Well, yeah. Perpetual silence beats either a perpetual flamewar, or
perpetually distorting what I really think about the relationship
between tigerism and digitalism, if any, in order to avert one.
>Nobody will jump on you for saying "I tried approaching things as a
>tigerist, and it just didn't work for me; but it seems to me that the
>digitalist approach is a better match to what I look for in character
>design." Avoid universal statements and telling people what they must
>think or feel, and you won't poke people directly in the sore spot.
I think your assessment is optimistic. I don't want to go into the
details because they will become too identifiable no matter what I
call them.
Warren J. Dew
As a newcomer to this group, but less so to immersive playing,
I'm not sure I can second that. I have just been involved in
a drama week at school (it was a sort of final exam), and that
is, like immersive roleplaying, intense. It can be great fun,
but it requires more of an energy inestment than some other
styles of play - for example, it's quite possible for me to
play a dungeon crawl in a system I know well when tired or
distracted, but I have great trouble doing immersive
roleplaying in such circumstances.
Past discussion here indicates that it works differently for different people.
I find that the difficult part is the switch into the personality of the
character; if I don't have to switch too often, it's not a problem for me.
Others have said that they can switch back and forth more quickly.
On at least one occasion when I've been tired and distracted, playing a
character with fewer cares and a generally more relaxed personality than me was
a relief, rather than an investment requiring effort.
Arthur Boff
> psych...@aol.com (Warren J. Dew) writes:
>
> > talysman posts, in part:
> >
> > if that was the case, perhaps, in the interest of open
> > discussion, they could have provided examples of their
> > style of gaming as a counterexample?
> >
> > Er, they did. The problem was that individual examples of play don't
> > demonstrate the absence of a factor from an entire campaign, and providing the
> > entire campaign as an example necessarily involves a lack of detail, so that
> > the failure to include certain details can be argued to be unconvincing proof
> > of their absence.
>
> I would think it would be irrelevant... if someone says "all play must
> contain X" and someone else describes an incident of play that doesn't
> contain X, then there was a problem with the first statement. perhaps
> the first person should not have used the word "all".
Depends on the context of the first statement. If it was "All play
must contain X, constantly, throughout the entire course of the
campaign, with X never disappearing from sight", then fine, bringing
in an example of play (which can only ever be a brief snapshot of a
moment in a campaign) which does not contain X is an appropriate
response.
For most cases of X, however, the context is probably "All play sooner
or later involves X". In which case bringing up examples of play is
less helpful, *unless* it is possible to play an entire roleplaying
session/campaign consisting of such examples of play where X is not
present.
Silvered Glass
I wouldn't grant a general premise that unwritten agreements don't
leave behind detectable evidence of their existence. It seems rather
difficult to respond usefully to a general statement that doesn't
assert the existence of some specific unwritten agreement at some
specific time. A general denial of the existence of any unwritten
agreement of any sort would be going farther than I meant to go,
inasmuch as it would be a denial that the early group had any sort of
culture, which would be absurd.
Robert Scott Clark
news:slrnb91e6q...@h00045a4799d6.ne.client2.attbi.com:
And what's amazing is the threefold does both.
I've kind of been waiting for a discussion of the threefold to come up,
as I came up with a metaphor for how I view the threefold and I've been
waiting to use it...
Imagine having to answer the question "what I did for my vacation?" and
only being given the choices "I rode on a bus for 6 hours", "I went to
France", and "I went on a cruise".
Depending on what you did, you might need to pick one, two, all, or none.
The options splochily cover the potential answer space, with overlab and
uncovered areas.
The problem arises with the threefold from the fundamental question being
interpretable in many ways, and only the most common answer to each being
given.
Robert Scott Clark
> A couple of corollaries to the discussion methods described by Mary:
>
> (a) You might as well trust people on factual descriptions of their
> own campaigns, since they are after all your only source of
> information.
I have never found this to be true on any topic. People don't know when
they're dumb, people don't know when they are bad drivers, people don't
know when they are ot are not in love.
Being personally involved often makes you too close
>
> (b) Whether an activity is "roleplaying" is decided by those
> participating in it, not by those analyzing it. (The latter are free
> to ignore discussion on types of roleplaying that they're uninterested
> in, of course.)
It's comments like this that eventually lead to flamewars, as they are so
obviously false.
6 people stuffing themselves into a phone booth and farting alot is not
water polo no matter what those 6 people claim to be doing.
Words need to have meaning, and I don't see how you can expect to have
any kind of productive conversation with the attitude that terms can be
given any freeform definition.
I'll be the first to say that when I play a RPG, neither "gaming" or
"role-playing" is my primary motivation for being there, nor is either of
them what I do primarily while playing.
So, if someone says "that's not role-playing" about something I describe,
I can agree with them. The problem is people using "roleplaying" to
describe the activity as a whole when it naturally has a much more
limited meaning.
>
> The problem is that statements of the form of "all roleplaying
> contains X" is logically equivalent to "if it doesn't contain X, it
> isn't roleplaying".
Which I have seen several of the regulars say over the years because of
the "no bad styles" attitude - since it was not allowed to say that a
style was "wrong" they instead had to say that it wasn't an RPG in order
to criticize it.
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
> Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in
> news:slrnb91e6q...@h00045a4799d6.ne.client2.attbi.com:
> > Brett Evill <ev...@gibberish.edu.au> wrote:
> >>
> >> I didn't so much mind the need to re-state and re-formulate my
> >> opinions, even though in some cases I thought some posters were
> >> deliberately misconstruing what I had written so as to be able to
> >> contradict me. What put me off was that the defenders of diversity
> >> were so ferocious that they would not permit discussion of things
> >> that contributors thought all styles might have in common.
> >
> > That's pretty much the opposite of the reason I stopped posting
> > regularly. The assumed context (it's overkill to call it "reigning
> > orthodoxy") was fairly hostile to the idea of games that didn't fit
> > comfortably into the existing theoretical frameworks.
> >
>
> And what's amazing is the threefold does both.
>
> I've kind of been waiting for a discussion of the threefold to come
> up, as I came up with a metaphor for how I view the threefold and
> I've been waiting to use it...
Well, I deliberately didn't mention it. Early in 1999 I tried to
explain why I didn't find it useful, and got stuck in a giant and
largely un-illuminating argument. Since then I have carefully avoided
describing games in those terms, since I would rather talk about
things I find interesting than about things I don't.
As a general rule, I think it's better to write about neat stuff you
are doing, than writing technical criticism about other peoples' ideas.
Eg, I have no memory at all of any of the arguments you've made about
the threefold, but I still remember that you're the guy who ran a
Call of Cthulhu game in a retirement home full of geriatric
investigators. This isn't sound scholarly practice, yeah, but then
we aren't doing scholarship here.
--
Neel Krishnaswami
ne...@alum.mit.edu
Larry D. Hols
Robert Scott Clark wrote:
>
> > (a) You might as well trust people on factual descriptions of their
> > own campaigns, since they are after all your only source of
> > information.
>
> I have never found this to be true on any topic. People don't know when
> they're dumb, people don't know when they are bad drivers, people don't
> know when they are ot are not in love.
So where will you find a more accurate representation of what happens
in a person's campaign? If, for example, you refuse to believe what I
report concerning my campaigns, where do you propose to find a more
accurate source of information about my games?
Are you positing that whatever a reader of my posts would choose to
hallucinate about my campaigns is more accurate than what I hallucinate
about my campaigns?
Also, if you think what someone reports isn't accurate, what standards
would you use that other readers can also use to reach the same
conclusion?
Furthermore, if we can't trust what each other says, why are we
bothering to discuss anything, anyway? If you can't trust what I say to
be accurate, then I can't trust what you say to be accurate, and we
certainly can't trust what anybody else says to be accurate, so why are
we bothering to even attempt to talk?
> >
> > (b) Whether an activity is "roleplaying" is decided by those
> > participating in it, not by those analyzing it. (The latter are free
> > to ignore discussion on types of roleplaying that they're uninterested
> > in, of course.)
>
> It's comments like this that eventually lead to flamewars, as they are so
> obviously false.
Statements of extreme position presented as universals can prove
incendiary, can't they?
> 6 people stuffing themselves into a phone booth and farting alot is not
> water polo no matter what those 6 people claim to be doing.
Do we ever deal with anything near that extreme?
> Words need to have meaning, and I don't see how you can expect to have
> any kind of productive conversation with the attitude that terms can be
> given any freeform definition.
Well, we've already established that we can't have productive
conversation anyway because we can't believe what each other says. Why
worry about working definitions in light of that?
> So, if someone says "that's not role-playing" about something I describe,
> I can agree with them. The problem is people using "roleplaying" to
> describe the activity as a whole when it naturally has a much more
> limited meaning.
On what standard do you base that claim?
Role playing, in the context of role playing games, arose from play of
role playing games, so anything that falls within the normal scope of
play of those game is what is functionally involved in roleplaying, I
would say. How is play of a role playing game not role playing?
> > The problem is that statements of the form of "all roleplaying
> > contains X" is logically equivalent to "if it doesn't contain X, it
> > isn't roleplaying".
>
> Which I have seen several of the regulars say over the years because of
> the "no bad styles" attitude - since it was not allowed to say that a
> style was "wrong" they instead had to say that it wasn't an RPG in order
> to criticize it.
There is no bad style, as far as I can see. Does somebody play in that
fashion and enjoy it? If so, then it's good for them. I may not wish to
play in such fashion and I can criticize it based on standards I offer
as personal and perhaps a good discussion could break out surrounding
those comments.
The key, I believe, is to realize that criticism is based on standards
and to identify the source of the standards. One can posit standards
used by the majority of the role playing community, even, to show that a
particular style fails to meet--is "bad" according to--those standards.
In the final analysis, however, nobody has any obligation to meet those
standards, nor agree that the style isn't worth playing. Enjoyment is a
highly personal affair and criticism involves only measurement according
to one set of standards.
Larry
Larry D. Hols
Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
>
> Robert Scott Clark wrote:
> > I've kind of been waiting for a discussion of the threefold to come
> > up, as I came up with a metaphor for how I view the threefold and
> > I've been waiting to use it...
>
> Well, I deliberately didn't mention it. Early in 1999 I tried to
> explain why I didn't find it useful, and got stuck in a giant and
> largely un-illuminating argument.
Now's your chance to criticize and vent about it all you wish...only
not in this forum. Please feel free to send me email about your thoughts
on the Threefold.I'd like to hear it and I'd also like to avoid
flamewars about it mucking up the forum.
Larry
Chuk Goodin
Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk> wrote:
>> How far are we willing to go?
>>
>> In particular, while I've continued to run my game, most of my actual play in
>> the last few years has been in online roleplaying games. In the past, when
>> I've mentioned online games, it has seemed like even the others here
>who played
>> them didn't want to discuss them here - are we ready to accept online games
>> under the "different players enjoy different kinds of games" umbrella?
>
>Human-moderated or computer-moderated online games? As far as I'
>converned, roleplaying gaming is when you have a human GM and an
>objective explicit rules system. Whether you play face to face, using
>cell phones or whatever, is irrelevant.
I agree about the human GM, although I might quibble with the rules system
-- having some kind of system is important to me personally, but I could
also see discussions about "systemless" RP being on topic here.
--
chuk
Chuk Goodin
Warren J. Dew <psych...@aol.com> wrote:
>How far are we willing to go?
>
>In particular, while I've continued to run my game, most of my actual play in
>the last few years has been in online roleplaying games. In the past, when
>I've mentioned online games, it has seemed like even the others here who played
>them didn't want to discuss them here - are we ready to accept online games
>under the "different players enjoy different kinds of games" umbrella?
I'd be for it; lots of my gaming these days is online.
--
chuk
Silvered Glass
>I agree about the human GM, although I might quibble with the rules system
>-- having some kind of system is important to me personally, but I could
>also see discussions about "systemless" RP being on topic here.
Since the vast majority of my RP has been carried out without an
explicit rules system, and a sizable fraction of that took place
without a GM, I don't agree with either clause. Nor do I intend to
ask for anyone's permission about either style.
Silvered Glass
<silvere...@mail.com.clip> wrote:
Nor do I intend to
>ask for anyone's permission about either style.
That was supposed to be 'permission to post'.
Larry D. Hols
Well, I won't be able to offer much advice for a "My Little Pony"
campaign, but all the folks from the myriad play groups that enjoy such
are welcome, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe some of them will want to
slay dragons for a change of pace1
Larry
Chuk Goodin
Obviously, on usenet, you don't need permission for anything. But it
might be nice to know that, for example, you should be posting in
alt.daydreaming instead.
--
chuk
Silvered Glass
If any such thing were the case, it might be.
<Points at Google groups. Points especially at some ancient and
instructive discussions featuring Sarah Kahn as a major participant.
Notes own moderately extensive posting history, dating back to 1995 or
so.>
Anyone wishing to advocate the idea that the sort of roleplaying I
engage in is off-topic may, of course, do so, but the notion is
without historical foundation. It'd probably be a good idea for
anyone desiring to hold such a debate to seek out someone else to hold
up the other side of it: I only have limited time for posting, and
such a discussion doesn't impress me as a fruitful use of same.
George W. Harris
:In article <pbs89vg4mctihsfrl...@4ax.com>,
And you should be posting in alt.doesn't.know.squat.
When you've contributed one tenth as much to this group as
Sarah has, get back to us with your opinions as to what's on
topic.
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
Joachim Schipper
"George W. Harris" <gha...@mundsprung.com> schreef in bericht
news:fpgb9vgul4jkb0t7o...@4ax.com...
Ok, I think he gets the point now... though I have to admit he was asking
for it, a bit. Probably typed too quickly, or had too much/not enough
coffee.
Joachim
Halzebier
>Obviously, on usenet, you don't need permission for anything. But it
>might be nice to know that, for example, you should be posting in
>alt.daydreaming instead.
Even if you think that such things would be off-topic here: is this
worth quarreling over?* It's not as if RGFA is drowning in
'daydreaming' postings, so tolerance in this matter doesn't cost
anything.
Regards,
Hal
--
*I wouldn't mind a civilized discussion, personally.
Bradd W. Szonye
> What put me off was that the defenders of diversity were so ferocious
> that they would not permit discussion of things that contributors
> suggest that "even though some people prefer X and others Y or Z, all
> games involve A, B, and C", or "Have you noticed that X, Y, and Z are
> all forms of aleph?". Towards the end of my involvement, even for me
> to say "X, Y, and Z are not entirely rivals--to a certain extent they
> are necessary for each other" brought down a storm of controversy.
I stopped following rgfa for similar reasons. I think a good idea, that
you should respect the diversity of the RPG community, got turned into
bad dogma. Even worse, the nature of the dogma tended to polarize people
into one of a few camps. Instead of encouraging diversity, the group's
attitude encouraged pigeonholing: You're a dramatist, a simulationist, a
gamist, or a troll. The effect of the polarization was insidious: It
encouraged people to take extreme positions on one of the threefold
branches or to attack the threefold itself. The dogma, even though it
was rooted in diversity, ended up killing diversity.
In a way, I had exactly the opposite problem that Brett did. See, not
only did people polarize into different camps, but they started to
behave as though each camp was homogeneous and easily stereotyped. The
reality was that my "camp," the gamists, really weren't all that much
alike. In an attempt at solidarity, I tried to ally with Brian
Gleichman, which was disastrous. For one thing, our views of "gamism"
were actually quite different, but the polarization made it difficult to
see that, so we constantly bumped heads because of assumption clash.
Worse, in trying to "back him up," I ended up misinterpreting his
points, which severely upset him. Ironically, the Threefold model is
supposed to help people deal with assumption clash, not *cause* it.
> Without some generalisation to balance the classification, the group's
> orthodoxy seemed to be useful for only a narrow range of purposes. And
> the continual re-use of a scant handful of pieces of analysis (sound
> though they were) came to seem both repetitious and
> self-congratulatory.
Agreed.
--
Bradd W. Szonye
http://www.concentric.net/~Bradds
Bradd W. Szonye
> Much depends on how you bring it up. If you acknowledge the criticism
> and do it in a spirit of inquiry rather than confrontation, I'd expect
> that people will be more tolerant of it.
Maybe. If a group has become sufficiently paranoid about a topic,
there's a good chance that they'll misinterpret a "spirit of inquiry" as
a pointed criticism using the Socratic Method to provoke thought.
> The acrimony in this newsgroup arises when people are told how they
> think or feel, or how they *should* think or feel; if you offer your
> thoughts *without condemning a play style or the people who like that
> play style* you should be all set.
Unfortunately, some people are eager to find ulterior motives,
criticism, and other attacks hidden in your words. I've seen more than
one newbie get netcopped and called a "troll" for asking questions or
presenting arguments that go against conventional wisdom. It's worse in
some groups than in others.
Bradd W. Szonye
> In retrospect, it seems to me that the eventual end of useful
> discussion was inevitable because of that transition. It was -- true
> enough -- a comfortable place then for posters who found the reigning
> orthodoxy congenial. But we had enough obscure and exacting jargon to
> deter some newcomers, and to produce rounds of not-terribly-productive
> and, as time went on, increasingly snappish discussion with all the
> newcomers who were inclined to debate (as well as with dissident
> old-timers). Later, it increasingly seemed to me that the many of the
> old guard viewed newcomers' attempts to contribute as wastes of time,
> more often than not.
That's basically how I see it too. Note that it wasn't all bad -- even
at the height of the newbie/old-guard Threefold Wars, there was still
some good discussion. Unfortunately, that war seems to have driven away
most of the old guard, whose opinions I valued highly (when they weren't
too busy trying to smack around heretics and newbies).
Bradd W. Szonye
> A lot of the group's internal watchdogging or "net-cop" behavior was
> directed to enforcing the difference rule. This allowed us to discuss
> many kinds of games without (many) flame wars, and a community grew
> up.
And that was good.
> Unfortunately, the difference rule [i.e., RPG players are a diverse
> lot, with different tastes and many valid styles of play] became
> closely tied with the Threefold theory of games.
Agreed.
> When we slid into using the Threefold as the main way to criticize
> violations of the difference rule, people who disliked the Threefold
> had reason and opportunity to protest enforcement of the difference
> rule.
I think the difference rule is good; it's the close ties to the
Threefold which cause problems. I don't remember many people disputing
the difference rule, but lots of folks complained loudly and frequently
that the Threefold model was lousy. At its peak, the difference rule got
shoved aside by *both* sides.
> Without the difference rule there is little point in posting detailed
> analysis as it will only lead to flame wars from people who want to
> cut down the style you're using. Such threads escalate rapidly to
> personal attacks; try "circle jerk" as a Google keyword.
Agreed. You might not agree with this, though: I think the difference
rule died, not because of the newbies and trolls and flamewars, but
because the old regulars replaced it with the Threefold. Probably not
intentionally, but for a long time, the Threefold was so highly regarded
as the symbol of difference that the symbol replaced the actual ideal.
Summary: The difference rule was good. The Threefold was flawed, but it
was a pretty good symbol of the ideal. Over time, the actual ideal got
forgotten, replaced by the Threefold. Newcomers and dissidents pointed
out many flaws in the symbol, and old-timers took it as an attack on the
ideal. End result: Massive flame wars, mass exodus out of the group,
loss of both discussion and the original ideals.
> Things weren't perfect even at the newsgroup's heydey, but they worked
> well enough to allow interesting discussions. The people who
> destroyed enforcement of the difference rule often argued that we'd
> get better, freer, more valid and realistic discussions without it.
I think you're mixing up the difference rule and the Threefold still.
There was never a serious movement to get rid of the difference rule,
just the Threefold. The difference rule itself was collateral damage,
and I believe that the oldtimers did a lot of the damage themselves.
> I think the results speak for themselves. (Yes, I'm bitter. I really
> miss the old newsgroup.)
We see glimpses of it still. I miss the old group too, at least the
parts that weren't dominated by Threefold partisanship.
Wayne Shaw
<bra...@concentric.net> wrote:
>I think you're mixing up the difference rule and the Threefold still.
>There was never a serious movement to get rid of the difference rule,
>just the Threefold. The difference rule itself was collateral damage,
>and I believe that the oldtimers did a lot of the damage themselves.
I'm not convinced, Bradd. There were some people who seemed to me to
be deliberately trying to erode the difference rule. You can claim
it's my paranoia talking, but it sure looked that way to me.
Charlton Wilbur
> I think the difference rule is good; it's the close ties to the
> Threefold which cause problems. I don't remember many people disputing
> the difference rule, but lots of folks complained loudly and frequently
> that the Threefold model was lousy. At its peak, the difference rule got
> shoved aside by *both* sides.
Except that, at least as I remember it, a large number of the
highly-polarizing Threefold flamewars grew out of a misunderstanding
of what it really was. It wasn't so much that one camp was saying
"The Threefold is a lousy model," and the other camp was saying "No,
it's a wonderful model," but that one camp was saying "Well, the
Threefold is a lousy model, because I don't fall into any of the three
categories," and another camp was saying, "well, you might not, it's a
model of *one* dimension of the action-resolution thought process" --
and that all too quickly turned into "The Threefold is wrong, which
you'd see if you weren't a pigheaded theorist, and you are stupid!"
and "The Threefold is just fine, which you'd see if you would actually
read what we say about it, and you are stupid!" Although I might be
biased, because one of the things that stopped me from reading rgfa
for a long while was the perpetual Threefold flamewar.
> Agreed. You might not agree with this, though: I think the difference
> rule died, not because of the newbies and trolls and flamewars, but
> because the old regulars replaced it with the Threefold. Probably not
> intentionally, but for a long time, the Threefold was so highly regarded
> as the symbol of difference that the symbol replaced the actual ideal.
Again, I don't see it that way; it was more that the new posters kept
on trying to rehash the ground covered by the Threefold without
actually adding to it, and the old regulars' exasperation at this
perpetual pointless discussion turned into hostility. It's not a
perfect model, no; but it was frequently attacked for not being a
perfect Model of Everything when it wasn't really intended to be that
in the first place.
> Summary: The difference rule was good. The Threefold was flawed, but it
> was a pretty good symbol of the ideal. Over time, the actual ideal got
> forgotten, replaced by the Threefold. Newcomers and dissidents pointed
> out many flaws in the symbol, and old-timers took it as an attack on the
> ideal. End result: Massive flame wars, mass exodus out of the group,
> loss of both discussion and the original ideals.
My summary: The difference rule was good. The Threefold was a
workable model of part of the gaming experience. Over time, the
original purpose of the Threefold was forgotten, and largely due to a
misreading or non-reading of the FAQ, newcomers and dissidents pointed
out many flaws in the model, most of which were only flaws because of
the misperception that the Threefold was supposed to be a Theory of
Everything. The old-timers, eventually annoyed at having to explain
the point of the Threefold and that it *wasn't* a Theory of
Everything, eventually got snappish. End result: massive flame wars,
mass exodus, loss of discussion.
And I think a large part of this is due to the nature of Usenet; when
the same idea is in a printed-on-dead-tree form -- such as in
Everway's discussion of karma, fate, and drama -- it is clear to what
it refers. But on Usenet, where history seems more like oral history,
and discussion seems more like face-to-face discussion than (say)
written academic discourse, misunderstandings and misconstruings are
commonplace.
Charlton
Silvered Glass
<cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
>"Bradd W. Szonye" <bra...@concentric.net> writes:
>
>> I think the difference rule is good; it's the close ties to the
>> Threefold which cause problems. I don't remember many people disputing
>> the difference rule, but lots of folks complained loudly and frequently
>> that the Threefold model was lousy. At its peak, the difference rule got
>> shoved aside by *both* sides.
>
>Except that, at least as I remember it, a large number of the
>highly-polarizing Threefold flamewars grew out of a misunderstanding
>of what it really was.
<snip>
<watching people drift in the direction of assigning /blame/ for the
Threefold argument, as opposed to commenting on its undoubted ill
effects>
At this point I'm going to killfile this thread. Someone can let me
know if, by some miracle, it does *not* explode.
Warren J. Dew
Ok, I think he gets the point now... though I have to admit
he was asking for it, a bit. Probably typed too quickly, or
had too much/not enough coffee.
Didn't lurk for the requisite two weeks before posting? Actually, the way this
group has been going recently, two weeks would be far from enough.
In the old days, people would have just refrained from answering. Dumping on a
new poster isn't exactly the way to reinvigorate the newsgroup.
Warren J. Dew
I'm not convinced, Bradd. There were some people who seemed to
me to be deliberately trying to erode the difference rule. You
can claim it's my paranoia talking, but it sure looked that way
to me.
Bradd showed up after the number of regulars who adhered to what Mary calls the
'difference rule' had fallen below critical mass. As a result, he was one of
the first wave of those who never actually learned it.
I think it's amusing that Bradd talks about 'the old group', given that he
never experienced it.
George W. Harris
:Joachim Schipper posts, in part:
Well, in my defense the new poster was
being insultingly dismissive of a valued contributor.
:
:Warren J. Dew
:Powderhouse Software
--
Rupert Boleyn
onto a tablet of ether:
>Bradd showed up after the number of regulars who adhered to what Mary calls the
>'difference rule' had fallen below critical mass. As a result, he was one of
>the first wave of those who never actually learned it.
>
>I think it's amusing that Bradd talks about 'the old group', given that he
>never experienced it.
When would you say the 'old group' had effectively faded away? I've
always had the feeling that when I started lurking in 1997 (I think)
there were already elements of 'autumn', and that the group was well
into 'winter' by 2000.
--
Rupert Boleyn <rbo...@paradise.net.nz>
The media industry is a long, dark, narrow hallway where thieves and
pimps run free and good people die like dogs.
There's also a negative side.
Chuk Goodin
>
> Ok, I think he gets the point now... though I have to admit
> he was asking for it, a bit. Probably typed too quickly, or
> had too much/not enough coffee.
>
>Didn't lurk for the requisite two weeks before posting? Actually, the way this
>group has been going recently, two weeks would be far from enough.
I've only been lurking since about 1993 (at least that's the first post I
remember making that I knew was coming here, might have cross-posted
before that).
>In the old days, people would have just refrained from answering. Dumping on a
>new poster isn't exactly the way to reinvigorate the newsgroup.
Especially someone who's trying to be helpful after another poster gets
slammed for trying to discuss what's on topic.
--
chuk
Chuk Goodin
George W. Harris <gha...@mundsprung.com> wrote:
>On 11 Apr 2003 07:39:27 GMT, psych...@aol.com (Warren J. Dew) wrote:
>
>:Joachim Schipper posts, in part:
>:
>: Ok, I think he gets the point now... though I have to admit
>: he was asking for it, a bit. Probably typed too quickly, or
>: had too much/not enough coffee.
>:
>:Didn't lurk for the requisite two weeks before posting? Actually, the way this
>:group has been going recently, two weeks would be far from enough.
>:
>:In the old days, people would have just refrained from answering. Dumping on a
>:new poster isn't exactly the way to reinvigorate the newsgroup.
>
> Well, in my defense the new poster was
>being insultingly dismissive of a valued contributor.
No insult or dismissiveness involved -- just pointing out that the poster
I was replying to didn't need to act all offended just because people were
having discussions of what's on topic.
--
chuk
George W. Harris
:In article <ptuc9vsvplvh5fhfe...@4ax.com>,
I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret
>Obviously, on usenet, you don't need permission for anything. But it
>might be nice to know that, for example, you should be posting in
>alt.daydreaming instead.
>
as insulting and dismissive.
--
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV!
Chuk Goodin
George W. Harris <gha...@mundsprung.com> wrote:
>:No insult or dismissiveness involved -- just pointing out that the poster
>:I was replying to didn't need to act all offended just because people were
>:having discussions of what's on topic.
>
> I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret
>
>>Obviously, on usenet, you don't need permission for anything. But it
>>might be nice to know that, for example, you should be posting in
>>alt.daydreaming instead.
>>
> as insulting and dismissive.
No, not unreasonable, especially not in a text-only medium. Just not
accurate as to my actual point. I obviously should have phrased it
differently.
--
chuk
George W. Harris
:In article <omud9vc9chg5djqih...@4ax.com>,
Well, then; so long as we understand each other.
--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they
taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." -Groucho Marx
Bradd W. Szonye
>> I think you're mixing up the difference rule and the Threefold still.
>> There was never a serious movement to get rid of the difference rule,
>> just the Threefold. The difference rule itself was collateral damage,
>> and I believe that the oldtimers did a lot of the damage themselves.
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
> I'm not convinced, Bradd. There were some people who seemed to me to
> be deliberately trying to erode the difference rule. You can claim
> it's my paranoia talking, but it sure looked that way to me.
Oh, there certainly are a few folks who believe strongly in a One True
RPG Style. Jeff Heikkinen referred to one guy who comes across that way.
Bradd W. Szonye
> calls the 'difference rule' had fallen below critical mass. As a
> result, he was one of the first wave of those who never actually
> learned it.
According to Google, I first posted in early 1999. The group was quite
active then, and stylistic arguments were quite rare at that time, IIRC.
It wasn't until about 2001-02 that I noticed the heavy "threefold dogma"
in rgfa.
> I think it's amusing that Bradd talks about 'the old group', given
> that he never experienced it.
Somebody else suggested that Brian Gleichman's free RPG reviews started
around the same time that rgfa went into decline. My own recollection
was that the worst flame wars and the overthrow of the "difference rule"
came at about the same time that the reviews started attracting a large
influx of game designers and newbies who were interested in Brian's
reviews.
Before that, rgfa was very similar to my favorite mailing list, the
rpg-create Yahoo! group. Quite a few Berkman-era regulars had already
departed by that time, but there was still a significant community here.
I fondly remember excellent discussions of things like "why fate points
are bad for some styles of play" that have become an important part of
my game-design standards.
So that's what I mean when I refer to the "old group." The Threefold
issue hadn't ossified yet (or at least, it wasn't a big deal), and I
hardly noticed any netcopping at all, because it wasn't necessary.
Everyone seemed to intuitively understand that all systems and styles
were welcome in rgfa.
It may be that you think of the Berkman era as the "old group," but from
what I've heard of that, I have a hard time believing that people would
remember it fondly (for any reason other than pure nostalgia). That
would be like having fond memories of the Big Threefold War.
Bradd W. Szonye
>> Bradd showed up after the number of regulars who adhered to what Mary
>> calls the 'difference rule' had fallen below critical mass. As a
>> result, he was one of the first wave of those who never actually
>> learned it.
>>
>> I think it's amusing that Bradd talks about 'the old group', given
>> that he never experienced it.
Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn@.> wrote:
> When would you say the 'old group' had effectively faded away? I've
> always had the feeling that when I started lurking in 1997 (I think)
> there were already elements of 'autumn', and that the group was well
> into 'winter' by 2000.
It sounds like you and I are talking about the same "old group," at
least. I started participating in early 1999; back then, the group was
thriving. It may not have been *healthy* then, but the signs of decay
were pretty subtle. I would say that it ran into serious trouble around
the same time that Brian Gleichman's reviews were most popular, in
mid-to-late 2000.
I am definitely not part of the Berkman-era "old guard," but I think
that Warren may be underestimating my rgfa experience.
Bradd W. Szonye
>> I think the difference rule is good; it's the close ties to the
>> Threefold which cause problems. I don't remember many people
>> disputing the difference rule, but lots of folks complained loudly
>> and frequently that the Threefold model was lousy. At its peak, the
>> difference rule got shoved aside by *both* sides.
Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
> Except that, at least as I remember it, a large number of the
> highly-polarizing Threefold flamewars grew out of a misunderstanding
> of what it really was.
Yes, that's true.
> It wasn't so much that one camp was saying "The Threefold is a lousy
> model," and the other camp was saying "No, it's a wonderful model ..."
Agreed.
> ... but that one camp was saying "Well, the Threefold is a lousy
> model, because I don't fall into any of the three categories," and
> another camp was saying, "well, you might not, it's a model of *one*
> dimension of the action-resolution thought process" -- and that all
> too quickly turned into "The Threefold is wrong, which you'd see if
> you weren't a pigheaded theorist, and you are stupid!" and "The
> Threefold is just fine, which you'd see if you would actually read
> what we say about it, and you are stupid!"
I think there was more to it than that. Specifically, I think the
polarizing effect was more complex than that, and the results were
horrible. The argument you refer to above was one of the most vicious
and common, but the Threefold polarization caused more problems than
just that.
The most common newbie/dissident complaint was that the Threefold was
incomplete or misleading: "But I don't fit into any of those!" However,
I think that complaint is only superficial. Based on my observations, I
suspect that the root cause had more to do with the tendency of regulars
to identify too strongly with a particular corner of the Threefold. That
caused a few different kinds of problems.
Disclaimer: I'm talking about my impressions and observations here. Some
of what I write below may not actually be true, but it sure *seemed*
that way to me at the time.
In theory, the Threefold lists three common factors used when making
decisions in RPGs. In practice, it was treated more as a continuum of
play styles, with a different style in each "corner." Most Threefold
advocates seemed to identify very strongly with one of those corners.
That interpretation and self-identification led to a few other problems.
First, each corner developed its own advocates. They still believed in
the "difference rule," but they developed a strange quirk. It goes
something like this: "There's no One True Playing Style. However, there
is such a thing as Pure Xism. You claim to be an Xist, but you don't
agree with Z, so obviously you're not an Xist at all." That's the
polarization I was talking about. It was the same old argument, but it
was shifted from general play styles to specific styles.
For example, there were a few vocal "gamists" on rgfa, me among them. We
could never get along, because we really weren't all that similar. Heck,
we couldn't even agree on what "gamism" really meant; for example, Brian
Gleichman and I frequently argued about the relationship between gamism
and challenge. Why? Because we ignored the difference rule. It didn't
apply to us, because we were supposedly both "gamists."
It also caused fights between people in different camps. The
simulationists were especially nasty about trying to keep people out of
"their" camp. They kept saying that most people use a mixture of the
same style, are middle-of-the-road, blah blah blah, but when it came
down to it, they mostly came across as elitists. I always felt like they
were trying to keep out the riff-raff; if they sniffed a hint of
meta-game thinking within 100 yards of your discussion, they would shun
you or mock your claim that you had simulationist tendencies. And if you
questioned their motives, many would call you a troll (or call you a
scion of Berkman, which is rgfa's version of "go away, troll").
And, finally, it caused fights between newbies and the regulars. The
Threefold advocates ended up identifying very strongly with the model,
because it did such a good job of describing their play styles. Or, more
often IMO, they visualized the model so that their styles were the ideal
upon which Pure Xism was based. I think that's why the Threefold
advocates were so vicious and aggressive about defending the model; they
saw attacks on the model as attacks on their own play styles. (That's
not entirely true. Some folks, like Mary Kuhner, don't seem to suffer
from the "my corner" problem. Unfortunately, they tend to conflate the
Threefold and the "difference rule," and so they still overreacted to
criticism of the model. I noticed that in Mary's earlier post, where she
seems to talk about the model and the rule as if they're the same
thing.)
End result: People invest way too much into the Threefold for one reason
or another, which leads to arguments. Arguments between "allies" who
don't actually have much in common. Fights between camps and attempts to
label other people as "like me" or "one of them." Flame wars with
newbies who don't really like the model and who don't understand why the
regulars are so passionate about it.
>> Agreed. You might not agree with this, though: I think the difference
>> rule died, not because of the newbies and trolls and flamewars, but
>> because the old regulars replaced it with the Threefold. Probably not
>> intentionally, but for a long time, the Threefold was so highly
>> regarded as the symbol of difference that the symbol replaced the
>> actual ideal.
> Again, I don't see it that way; it was more that the new posters kept
> on trying to rehash the ground covered by the Threefold without
> actually adding to it, and the old regulars' exasperation at this
> perpetual pointless discussion turned into hostility.
See, I think that's a late development. More precisely, it's only a
symptom of the underlying problem, which is that people invested way too
much emotional attachment into the model, either because it was a symbol
of the difference rule or because they identified strongly with one of
the "corners."
Also, I think it's unfair to say that new posters weren't really trying
to add anything to the model. Some of the more vicious flamewars sprung
up because people did want to add to the model. Specifically, it looks
like "social" or "casual" roleplayers are at least as common as
"gamists." In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if social relationships were
the most common reason for decisionmaking by far, even though the
"social gamers" have almost no voice on rgfa. The last big Threefold war
I followed was basically a bunch of social players fighting with
Berkman-era simulationists. It was full of personal attacks, including
many claims of lying, "you don't understand your own style," and
brush-offs aimed at keeping out riff-raff.
> It's not a perfect model, no; but it was frequently attacked for not
> being a perfect Model of Everything when it wasn't really intended to
> be that in the first place.
I've often gotten the impression that the "not a perfect model"
disclaimer is just lip service. The people who like the Threefold
typically talk is if it *is* a Model of Everything; they ignore or
downplay factors that don't fit into the model. One one level, they
realize that there's more to RPG style than the Threefold, but
emotionally they seem to view things through Threefold-colored glasses.
> My summary: The difference rule was good. The Threefold was a
> workable model of part of the gaming experience. Over time, the
> original purpose of the Threefold was forgotten, and largely due to a
> misreading or non-reading of the FAQ, newcomers and dissidents pointed
> out many flaws in the model, most of which were only flaws because of
> the misperception that the Threefold was supposed to be a Theory of
> Everything.
I have a couple of objections: First, reading the FAQ isn't much help
when it comes to understanding the Threefold. For example, nothing in
the FAQ can prepare a newbie for the quirks of the simulationist camp --
and it doesn't help that the style is poorly named.
Second, the "newbies" saw it that way because just about everybody does
treat the Threefold as a Theory of Everything in practice.
> The old-timers, eventually annoyed at having to explain the point of
> the Threefold and that it *wasn't* a Theory of Everything, eventually
> got snappish.
They also got snappish when you suggested changes to the model that
might make it work better. I think there was too much fear that any
change would endanger everyone's "favorite corner" or the model's
connection to the difference rule. The addition of game-oriented
decisions was the last major change to the model, and that happened a
*long* time ago.
I've long seen complaints that it isn't supposed to be a Theory of
Everything, that the FAQ description isn't perfect, that the regulars
are tired of re-explaining it, etc. So why didn't anybody ever try to
make it better? Why was there so much foot-dragging and flaming when
people did try to improve it? Your summary makes it sound like the
clueless noobs were at fault, but I think old-guard elitism had just as
much to do with it.
> End result: massive flame wars, mass exodus, loss of discussion.
Agreed again.
> And I think a large part of this is due to the nature of Usenet; when
> the same idea is in a printed-on-dead-tree form -- such as in
> Everway's discussion of karma, fate, and drama -- it is clear to what
> it refers. But on Usenet, where history seems more like oral history,
> and discussion seems more like face-to-face discussion than (say)
> written academic discourse, misunderstandings and misconstruings are
> commonplace.
Hm, perhaps. Usenet does often seem to share the worst traits of written
and oral communication combined.
Wayne Shaw
<bra...@concentric.net> wrote:
In particular, I recall one person who had some broad slams toward
anyone farther out toward either gamism or dramatism than he was; got
into pretty much a flame war with the entire group because a number of
people didn't like his attitude, and took particular issue with some
unwarrented rudeness directed at Mary. One of the first people I ever
killfiled as I recall.
Larry D. Hols
> Somebody else suggested that Brian Gleichman's free RPG reviews started
> around the same time that rgfa went into decline. My own recollection
> was that the worst flame wars and the overthrow of the "difference rule"
> came at about the same time that the reviews started attracting a large
> influx of game designers and newbies who were interested in Brian's
> reviews.
Hmmm. One of the things I want to do is post reviews of games and ask
for commentary from other viewpoints. That could prove troublesome,
although I don't plan on advertising the practice outside this forum.
> It may be that you think of the Berkman era as the "old group," but from
> what I've heard of that, I have a hard time believing that people would
> remember it fondly (for any reason other than pure nostalgia). That
> would be like having fond memories of the Big Threefold War.
I remember some really good stuff and enjoying discussions among the
regulars at the time. Berkman could be a major pain in the ass, yes; he
didn't define the group experience for me in any way, though, so I
remember the group as being good.
Larry
Rupert Boleyn
<bra...@concentric.net> carved onto a tablet of ether:
>It may be that you think of the Berkman era as the "old group," but from
>what I've heard of that, I have a hard time believing that people would
>remember it fondly (for any reason other than pure nostalgia). That
>would be like having fond memories of the Big Threefold War.
That's the group I think of as the 'old group', and aside from the
Berkman issues, there was considerable discussion of stances,
immersive play (at that time not clearly distinguished from
In-Character stance). There was also a lot of talk about develop in
play as opposed to develop at start chargen and so on.
Bradd W. Szonye
>> Somebody else suggested that Brian Gleichman's free RPG reviews started
>> around the same time that rgfa went into decline. My own recollection
>> was that the worst flame wars and the overthrow of the "difference rule"
>> came at about the same time that the reviews started attracting a large
>> influx of game designers and newbies who were interested in Brian's
>> reviews.
Larry D. Hols <crkd...@carrollsweb.com> wrote:
> Hmmm. One of the things I want to do is post reviews of games and ask
> for commentary from other viewpoints. That could prove troublesome,
> although I don't plan on advertising the practice outside this forum.
Just in case it wasn't clear: I'm not trying to pin the decline and fall
of rgfa on Brian Gleichman. We didn't get along very well, but I respect
the guy's ideas, and I don't mean to speak ill of him.
However, he did invite the game designers to comment on his reviews, and
the designers were usually rgfa newbies. Worse, (1) few of them knew how
to deal with critics, and (2) Brian's review criteria were a bit
unusual, which resulted in a *lot* of arguments. Those arguments
typically sucked in Brian's allies, fans of the game being criticized,
and the usual peanut gallery. Because of the heavily-gamist review
criteria, the Threefold often got dragged into the discussion too, and
that's when things really got interesting. I sincerely doubt that Brian
was trying to stir up trouble, but a lot of trouble did come from it.
Not long after that, we had a big influx of newbies and occasionals from
rgf.dnd and rgf.misc, including some "dramatists" and "social gamers."
That wan't pretty either.
>> It may be that you think of the Berkman era as the "old group," but
>> from what I've heard of that, I have a hard time believing that
>> people would remember it fondly (for any reason other than pure
>> nostalgia). That would be like having fond memories of the Big
>> Threefold War.
> I remember some really good stuff and enjoying discussions among the
> regulars at the time. Berkman could be a major pain in the ass, yes;
> he didn't define the group experience for me in any way, though, so I
> remember the group as being good.
OK, that makes sense. I guess that would be like hanging out in rgf.dnd
with a killfile that filters out the words "alignment" and "paladin."
Larry D. Hols
Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
>
> Well, I deliberately didn't mention it. Early in 1999 I tried to
> explain why I didn't find it useful, and got stuck in a giant and
> largely un-illuminating argument. Since then I have carefully avoided
> describing games in those terms, since I would rather talk about
> things I find interesting than about things I don't.
I'd love to hear your take on the Threefold--in private mail. I think
there are some useful things to be found in the Threefold, though for it
to be usable it needs to find a new home. Any critique of the Threefold
is thus of use to me and I'm trying to track down reasonable folks to
provide comments on it.
I'd appreciate it a great deal.
Larry
Rupert Boleyn
<bra...@concentric.net> carved onto a tablet of ether:
>However, he did invite the game designers to comment on his reviews, and
>the designers were usually rgfa newbies. Worse, (1) few of them knew how
>to deal with critics, and (2) Brian's review criteria were a bit
>unusual, which resulted in a *lot* of arguments. Those arguments
>typically sucked in Brian's allies, fans of the game being criticized,
>and the usual peanut gallery. Because of the heavily-gamist review
>criteria, the Threefold often got dragged into the discussion too, and
>that's when things really got interesting. I sincerely doubt that Brian
>was trying to stir up trouble, but a lot of trouble did come from it.
>
>Not long after that, we had a big influx of newbies and occasionals from
>rgf.dnd and rgf.misc, including some "dramatists" and "social gamers."
>That wan't pretty either.
It probably didn't help that Brain did a review of D&D3, and said
something along the lines of "not suitable for long-term campaigns".
As most of the non-regulars didn't know (and in many cases didn't care
to know) just what exactly Brain meant by that it got rather nasty.
IIRC that was when Brain left permanently.
James Quick
Rupert Boleyn <rboleyn@.paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> It probably didn't help that Brain did a review of D&D3, and said
> something along the lines of "not suitable for long-term campaigns".
> As most of the non-regulars didn't know (and in many cases didn't care
> to know) just what exactly Brain meant by that it got rather nasty.
> IIRC that was when Brain left permanently.
Which begs the question, "What _did_ he mean by that?"
And I promise not to start a flame war, just curious how such a
straightforward assessment could mean other than what it seems to, to me.
--
James Quick
jamesqu...@hotmail.com
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing
the world he didn't exist. -- Roger Kint
<http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html>