Yak-Hack

for reasons yet unknown, I will not capitalize the first letter in any of these sentences, unless I want to. calm down. have a snack. call a friend. have you been on RPG social media for more than 3 hours? have you ever seen one of those hot-take thread wherein people list obvious truisms as if they were controversial? have you ever seen one of those people who will spend their days arguing against fictional people? then you've probably heard some version of the following: you don't HAVE to play dnd. there are OTHER games, that do what you want BETTER. they're not really wrong. there isn't a sentiment there that we can make any normative claim against. so what's the problem? it follows a narrative we've discussed previously - the design centric perspective . It's follies are as follows: 1. it gives us a value judgement that tells us that specifically curated, "optimized" experiences, that carries with it the intentions of its authors, ...

The Ideal Games Debater Hey, you there! Are you into debating, reviewing or designing games? Do you find yourself alienating everyone you talk to or engage with? Are the people who agree with you all gigantic assholes? I get it, taking a stance and defending it is fun, exhilarating even, especially in those moments where you've really humiliated and "destroyed" another person because of how "good" you are at debating. Maybe it reflects badly on you as a person in some circles, but why should you care? You won, you were correct, and at the end of the day, the truth is what matters. Except, of course, that we aren't really talking about truth at all, but a set of assumptions that bad-faith debaters are making about what roleplaying games are, how they exist in the real world and how to evaluate them. Those assumptions can be challenged, and circumvent a lot of toxic, divisive debate. Challenging those assumption might be hard, because you've built yo...