Post by @SJohnRoss@dice.camp

Occasionally an #HTTRPG convo with a low-trust gamer goes well, in the sense that they come to understand what it's for. Then they reject it, on one or more of:

- Roleplaying is a burden.
- I like roleplaying but I love other game foci more.
- Roleplaying is an excuse jerky players use to excuse their jerkiness.

I get where those come from. But all they mean is that HTT isn't a style you'd personally groove on. I think that's okay. Sometimes this makes them mad, as if subjectivity is a fail.

#httrpg

Moreau Vazh

@[email protected] · 23 hours ago

@SJohnRoss There is definitely something about this hobby that appeals to the incurious.

I have never encountered a space with such knee-jerk hostility to different interests and modes of participation.

S. John Ross

@[email protected] · 23 hours ago

@Taskerland I do think it's, in part, because games designed to satisfy and entertain the incurious are pretty common these days, and the craft of making such games is well-developed. 😆

And I think that's okay, too. I never mind that other gamers, with other tastes, are being catered to.

I just get selfishly sad that nobody's left catering to me. 😁

But that's business, I guess. I'm hardly unique, but I'm oddball enough to represent very little capital. 😮

Moreau Vazh

@[email protected] · 23 hours ago

@SJohnRoss I am fine with not being pandered to by the market. I have games and really don't need to buy any more anyway.

It's the weird moralised hostility that I find difficult. Even video game people don't wander around the Internet going "adventure games? I've never played one and I can't imagine them working at all. Only abusers would be interested in that"

S. John Ross

@[email protected] · 19 hours ago

@Taskerland Yeah, I still recall someone calling me a "rules-light Nazi" just for making Risus. That's at least three rounds too early in a conversation to reach for "Nazi." 😆

1 more replies

DThoris

@[email protected] · yesterday

@SJohnRoss but, but, how can I be *right* if the answer is subjective?!?!

S. John Ross

@[email protected] · yesterday

@DejahEntendu That DOES seem to be somewhere at the gravitational core of it all, yeah. 😅

S. John Ross

@[email protected] · yesterday

@DejahEntendu There's another point of rejection I've noticed in recent years, and really _only_ in recent years:

- Roleplaying isn't an actual thing anyone can do.

I find it interesting to see that one gain traction (it's not common, but it exists). But it's not interesting enough to really want to talk further with those folks, since we have no common ground to meet on in good faith. 😮

Michael Newton

@mavnn · 19 hours ago

@[email protected] @[email protected] So, one thing I've learned in a couple of decades of software development - which, fundamentally, is the job of solving other people's problems - is that a lot of people are really, really, bad at understanding that there other people in the world who don't think like they do.

I mean: unbelieveably bad at it. And not just the devs, although it is enough of a problem among devs that I've been promoted several times on the basis of having been able to ask someone what they think and comprehend that the response implied they were thinking about the problem differently from me.

1 more replies