Almost Every Argument About Indie Games For Almost 20 Years

God They Loved Their Indie Games

I once got dinged by the moderators on a popular general RPG forum for saying only that Death is the New Pink--a post-apocalyptic adventure RPG--is better than Apocalypse World--a post-apocalyptic adventure RPG.

This isn't one of those situations where someone describes an internet interaction second-hand in a way such as to make the other guy seem absurd--it was literally the entire content of my one-sentence comment. "This game is better than that game". 

The mods' argument for the punishment was "Zak, you know most people here like Game 1 and it will make them mad to say it is not as good as Game 2, so upsetting them by disagreeing with their taste is bad". (Details available via request in the comments, because, unlike said forum, I do not have a formal rule against asking for proof.)

This does not encapsulate everything bad about RPG discussion on the internet, but it does encapsulate everything uniquely bad about RPG discussion on the internet. The thing that makes the internet worse than real life.

On A Review of Fair Play

We fast forward now to many years later and we move entirely out of the cloister of the online RPG scene. To this weekend in fact.

A woman wrote a review of Fair Play from her feminist POV. It's a card game designed to point out (the obvious and true fact that) the average married mom does much more domestic work than her husband. It echoes misgivings about the game written by other women on much bigger platforms.

You can just go read it, but I'll pull out a few quotes for convenience:

That’s another point I want to make. Fair Play is ideal for one particular type of husband: a guy who genuinely wants to help his wife with more things, but doesn’t know where to start (the kind of guy who says “Just tell me what to do.”) This type of guy, ideally, will not think the game or any of the cards are stupid. It’s not ideal for men who think the concept of invisible labor is stupid, or men who go into the game with skepticism.

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This game is also not ideal for men who are already aware of all the tasks in the household. This wasn’t something Mr. CHH (the reviewer's husband) and I would have bought if I wasn’t writing about it, because even though my husband was sassy throughout the process, it’s obvious that he’s already pulling his weight around the house and wasn’t shocked by the existence my tasks

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I will say I should defend Fair Play against a rumor about two particular cards. From a previous critique of Fair Play (by someone who had researched it, but hadn’t actually played it) I was under the impression that there was a card for social media and a card for tracking interior decor trends. I felt that both of these were obviously frivolous, but there’s more to the story. The “social media” card actually refers to kids’ social media and managing kids’ friendships. The “interior decor” card isn’t about scrolling Pinterest; it’s about the purchasing of furniture, but presumably the tracking of trends is part of that. Funny enough, my husband took the furniture card. But here’s where I also think male-coded labor should have been separated: what about the person assembling furniture? This takes up a lot of time and effort, and for many couples the person assembling furniture doesn’t fall to the same person who buys the furniture. I also wanted this separated for selfish reasons: I am usually the one who assembles furniture.

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Basically she's saying:

I can see the noble thing this game is claiming to do but this game is not doing what it said on the box for us (subjectively). And it is not doing it because it failed to notice some important stuff (objectively).

This is basically every critique I wrote of every Indie-scene game outside the OSR since 2009, both here on the blog and anywhere else RPG discussion was to be had.

Basically...

It made people mad. So mad they eventually decided to lie about rape in order to make it stop, which is about as bad as a reaction can be, really, not to mention illegal.

Why was the reaction so bad? For so long?

None of them have ever been able to defend their reaction in detail in real time. If placed in a position to do so, they are always immediately conciliatory and apologize. (And, of course, in the more extreme cases of freaking out, when they sue or are asked to testify in court about the more extreme expressions of their distaste, they crumble--five times and counting.)

Like Fair Play, the conversation about game design didn't matter because these games were on the right team. Apocalypse World was supposed to be good because it was by Vincent Baker and did degrees-of-success in a way indie gamers could understand and Blades in the Dark was supposed to be good because it removed the awful cognitive burden of having to think of a plan and Dungeon World was supposed to be good because it wasn't D&D and Adam Koebel was so unproblematic and Fate was supposed to be good because Evil Hat said progressive things (and definitely didn't only pay 3 cents a word) and anything Olivia Hill or Ash Kreider made was supposed to be good because they were persecuted on the internet and etc.

Broadly, like all the people who are somewhere on the internet defending Fair Play, they felt (did not think, but felt) that any game that claimed to promote progressive values probably did, and:

• That any game by a personal online internet friend should be promoted just out of chumminess and self-interest, 
• That anyone being in any way negative about their games was probably evil because from the other team,
• That there was no point in thinking deeper about any of it because there isn't a person in front of you to make it obvious you're ignoring those deeper things, and
• There would be social and perhaps financial rewards for publicly attacking anyone perceived as an enemy. 

This last idea was accurate.

Fannishness, Incompleteness, Imperfection, Fascination

We all like lots of things. We only gab all day about certain things. This is about why that is.

 

Stimulating The Gene

If someone old me they were going to make a movie where Boba Fett fights The Predator I would want to see that.

If the same person told me they’d done one where Indiana Jones fights Ernst Stavro Blofeld (a villain in the Bond films, including my favorite, Diamonds Are Forever) I would be like “Whatever. Is the movie good?”

This has little to do with how much I like the source media: I don’t really even like the Predator movies that much*—and I love James Bond movies.

Somehow, Predator and Boba Fett activate the fan gene and Indiana Jones and Blofeld do not.

Two Things

I think this has to do with two things.

First thing is simpler:

Boba Fett and Predator are toyetic. That is: they look like they’d make good toys. They also—and this is more elusive—act more like toys. What is interesting about them in the movies is very much their physical actions, what they are capable of. Indiana Jones is capable of action of course but also he's an interesting guy incarnated by the arguably greatest heroic actor of all time with all the personality and complexity of facial expression that implies—it is interesting to hear him talk. Boba Fett talking is just a prelude to Boba Fett doing something cooler than talking with a wrist rocket or some shit. His whole body, character design, look, is built to do things on the screen—he wears the backpack that he will fly with. His entire visual image is defined by actions he will take, his body is a threat—the same goes for the Predator, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Gundam mecha, a space marine, a wizard, a dwarf barbarian with an axe.

While these characters suggest to you what they might do, Indiana Jones is someone where you would wait to see what he will do. His story is as much about (cliché incoming) whats inside as what’s outside—that’s why God doesn’t melt his face. I wouldn’t dream of telling Indiana Jones what to do—that’s the job of people who invented Indiana Jones and want to tell me what he’s like.

This leads into the second thing:

There is always some sense, with toyetic characters, that what has been done with them is wrong. Maybe not totally wrong, maybe just not enough or surely not everything they could do.

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and I was happy. To me, Indiana Jones was basically a real guy and that thing I saw up on the screen was his greatest adventure and he told me about it. I did not need him to have another adventure or fight another guy (though if he wanted to, I was happy to hear about it)--that seemed enough for me.

When I saw Empire Strikes Back I was also happy. And I could start thinking of other, cooler things they could have Boba Fett do in the next movie. And this wasn’t just because he isn’t in it much—I liked the first Iron Man and had the same reaction.

Indiana Jones' adventure seems complete because it is part of a good story where what is interesting about IJ is woven into and somewhat solved by the shape of that story—his possibilities are, if not exhausted, then explored thoroughly. While Tony Stark is similarly solved in the Iron Man movie, Iron Man’s not: there’s soooo many cool things they could do and didn’t.

Fascination

I would say that I love Raiders of the Lost Ark (and Julio Cortazar novels, and Wong-Kar Wai movies, and cheeseburgers), but I would say that not only do I love but also I am fascinated by games (and comic books, and giant robot cartoons). 

The things in the first category are great and satisfying. The things in the second category are great and unsatisfying. You not only always want more but somehow your brain just starts going “well what about..and what about…and what about…”. I am not going to blog about cheeseburgers—I am perfectly happy with cheeseburgers as they are and lack entirely the will to tinker with them.

There is something about the kind of media for children that also translates well for adults that is forever mysterious. Perhaps it is the point that—unlike a classically great work of art—it takes no arrogance to see the flaws, while still being wholeheartedly devoted to the result. These things work on your mind and should not. They are forever incomplete in an interesting way.

This week I went through every single comic Gil Kane ever drew looking for the really good ones. I read some really good ones. I came away happy and wishing he’d drawn the Flash more, and wishing that the scripts they gave him were better. It was great and unsatisfying—and fascinating. I can’t stop thinking about Gil Kane.

I feel the same way every time I open up an RPG. That was cool—why was it cool? How come it worked or didn’t? How can we do it better next time? 

I don’t know whether everyone in the RPG scene feels exactly this—but I think there’s a reason that we blog about some things and we just sit back and enjoy others.

*Except Prey, Prey rules).

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"I Have No Other Role-Playing Book That Looks Like It"

 

15 minute review of Nebulith by a German dude.

Notes:

-He's very kind. He says it looks like nothing else and smells nice and is a cool setting so that's cool and it is basically a glowing review so I shouldn't complain.

-"It feels like an artifact out of that culture"--Oh good! It took a lot of research, handcrafted trickery and multi-hour phone calls with Molly, the graphic designer, to get us there so I am glad that mission was accomplished.

This is an original, pre-graphic-designed
page from the bestiary

-The monster entries are hard to read. A little. That's kindaaaaa unavoidable in my opinion once I decided to try to make it look like an artifact out of that culture because I had to find a way to write in standard English-language text that didn't look out-of-place using Japanese Edo-period style graphic design. I made funny stick-letters. If anyone finds a better solution to writing modern English while feeling like old Japanese I will happily hand the crown to them. One could argue that I should've prioritized readability over aesthetics but most of the monster entries are not terribly complicated, so I made a choice. A giant bat is a giant bat, most people using this book know what to do with a giant bat and will just look at the book for confirmation.

-"Many of these classes are designed in a way that facilitate teamwork". Again, glad someone noticed.

-Flip through and decent summary if you're looking for that.

-He says the classes are hard to convert if you don't use LotFP. That is weird to me because they are things like "Ninja have shuriken style: The ninja can throw shuriken at up to 4 guys for d4 and, if successful, the next attack (by anybody) on a target hit by these shuriken will get +2 to hit" which converts to basically any D&D-derived system so idk. But what is easy for one person is difficult for another so yeah.

-He points out that if you strip away the superficials that you can use the martial arts abilities for Eurofantasy-style fencing schools. I'd say this is 100% true but also point out that these abilities do make combat take longer--which we considered appropriate to a wuxia-focused setting but piling them onto a slightly more exploration-focused game like you'd expect in a vanilla Western setting might not be everyone's cup of tea if you want fast-and-dirty, Godfather-baptism-scene life-or-death fights. 

-The fact that the introduction pages become 2 pages you never need to read again once you use the book is a weird take since this is a pretty standard thing in an RPG book this thick and a pretty minor inconvenience but being German has a price I guess.

-I do love the efficiency of the review itself. I find most videos like this barely watchable.

-"It comes with its own tone and style I honestly haven't seen anywhere before". Thanks!

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