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In lieu of me seeing “wargamer” be used as an insult for like the fifteenth time in two weeks, being used as a derogatory term for people who want to engage with combat mechanics in TTRPGs, I feel I need to bring attention to the fact that there is an idiotic culture war being fought in the space of TTRPGs and has been for several years.

Hanging out in “progressive” spaces mostly, and talking to an audience who would mostly consider themselves “progressive” and mostly hang out in “progressive” spaces, I’m going to talk about this as it is framed from the “progressive” side, but rest assured, everything I’m about to talk about is stupid as hell from both sides.

There are two sides in this war, not all people even know they’re fighting in it. There’s the “Progressive” side and the “Conservative” side. Now, one would think that the points over which these battles are fought would be matters of, like, racism, sexism, etc., and to some degree they are, but it gets much stupider than that. There is a perception that these factions’ holdings go beyond political ideology, which is how and where this war is actually being fought.

Each of these factions has holdings associated with them which essentially “dogwhistle” you as being one side or the other.

“Progressives”

Powered by the Apocalypse

Belonging Outside Belonging

“Narrative”

Diceless

“Story focused”

One page games

Solo journaling games

D&D5e

“Conservatives”

OSR

Trad (as in the structure of TTRPG, not like virgin tradwife trad.)

Combat

Rules

D&D3.5e

AD&D

Wargaming

Warhammer

D&D5e

(If any of the placements above seem like nonsense to you, it’s because they are, especially since I have argued many times “combat” and “rules” and “narrative” aren’t actually opposites, but those are the holdings on which you will be judged. I’ve personally been called an “OSR guy” several times as an insult for implying that TTRPG rules are something you’re not supposed to ignore, and I don’t even care that much for OSR games.)

Spending time in “progressive” spaces mostly I mostly bear the shots and venom from the “progressive” side who often ID me as a “conservative” from the stink of OSR and trad-TTRPGs and rules and Warhammer on me.

and however fucking dumb this is, it is incredibly pervasive, and I think everyone should be on the lookout for it so as to not perpetuate it, and to call it dumb whenever possible. Do not get swept up in this. Even if any of those holdings were based on reality, playing TTRPGs is not activism. Media consumption is not activism.

Because really all this is is jacked up bullying and rejection of media literacy. It’s just “roleplaying vs rollplaying” fart-sniffing pseudo-intellectual elitism from the 90s but dressed up in today's langage.

Worst of all for me and those like me, it is assigning moral failing to the notion that TTRPG rules matter, even (and perhaps especially) for “story” and that combat isn’t automatically bad and stupid gameplay. This is assigning moral failing to TTRPG design itself.

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oh hey it's the catness rating from IaMP making a return! I've not yet done Subterranean Animism with Mari/Patchie, for some reason, so I hadn't seen that before.

Secretly a deadbeat pet owner....

they're doing terrible and amazing things to Sakuya

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quick! Feed your local fumo! They need nutrients!

Idk what a fumo would eat though.

it turns out, an orange and sparkling sake.

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here's the question you gotta ask yourself:

if someone right clicked on you, what options would come up in the menu?

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Shadowrun: actually includes a spell that is functionally "Power Word: Cum." (They renamed it in 5e, cowards.) I could probably find more by looking through my library but that one needed to be added to the list

Actual Stupid Pointless Bullshit by Game System

D&D: There's a purely good aligned spell that only good people can use. It causes an extremely contagious disease that makes people so horny they straight up die.

World of Darkness: Scientists radiate an aura of pure boringness so strong it kills pixies and that's why you don't see pixies anymore.

Chronicles of Darkness: "Actually, the psychic abuse monsters spawned from our nightmares are doing us a favour by beaming our worst fears directly into our brains until we die."

Call of Cthulhu: Fetishes are on the Insanity Table that you randomly roll on when you lose sanity so there's a chance you see Cthulhu and immediately develop a foot fetish so intense you have to be hospitalised.

Powered By The Apocalypse: Mechanically, everyone is pansexual. Everyone has to be pansexual. If you don't want to be pansexual, tough! We're married and you're in love.

Pathfinder: Inexplicable archfiend who specifically embodies the act of luring children into dark alleyways with candy to kidnap them.

Mutants and Mastermind: "So, we need enemies for a silver age superhero comic book game. What we got?" "Well, I've statted up a super-scientist gorilla, and an evil clown, and the vengeful souls of everyone killed in the very real Hiroshima Bombings. How's that?" "Yeah, that all seems tonally consistent."

Warhammer 40k: Hoo boy, how much time you got?

Warhammer: I don't think I can top vaporizing the fucking setting and killing everyone in the world for copyright reasons.

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girls go to college to meet patchouli knowledge

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what did I do to deserve this? Was it something I spellcarded?

listening to the pcb soundtrack and imagining bad things happening to youmu

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ooh, Touhou hits this one really hard! In fact you start to recognize the little motifs of shot types and patterns, you can see reflections of spellcards past in spellcards present, just like you hear reflections of the previous soundtracks. The very musical nature of the games, the character-describing boss BGM, and the physically dancelike pattern of dodging required by the mechanics of danmaku really hammers this in.

I've experienced it in other games; Doom's monsters also teach you the dance to avoid their hits, required to use your resources efficiently, for example. Fighting games are built around it almost as clearly as bullet hell is. RPGs are also fond of it, particularly with repeated classes of boss. But it's Touhou that immediately smacked me in the face when reading this, because it's the core construction of the gameplay.

Y'all ever think about the way video game bosses are designed to lose? How the bombastic soundtracks, the impressive displays of villainy, the teeth-rattling power of their attacks, are at once engineered not just to sell you on how unfathomably strong and vile they are, but also to make the player's inevitable victory all the sweeter?

Viewed this way, a boss battle is more like a choreographed dance - they call, you respond and counter-call. The trick is to learn the steps - once you know where to move, when to strike, when to defend and how to best allocate your resources, victory is not just achievable but actually almost impossible to avoid. You cannot help but recite the winning plays, over and again, because that is what the dance demands of you both - and is there not a savage sort of beauty in such a thing?

Is it any wonder then that we look back on these bosses so fondly, almost as if they were old friends? We danced together once, and oh what fun we had while doing it!

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Some have characterised it as a poor business decision when George Lucas started handing out copies of the West End Games Star Wars tabletop RPG to authors of licensed Star Wars media because he didn't feel like writing the setting bible they kept asking for, then proceeded to simply rubber stamp every supplement West End Games put out with minimal review because he couldn't be bothered to read them, thereby creating a situation where, between 1987 and 1998, the canon of the largest transmedia franchise on the planet was essentially being dictated by an unsupervised pack of tabletop RPG nerds from Pennsylvania, but to this I counter: it was also extremely funny.

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size difference

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Hurry! Name ten random touhou songs or Gensokyo gains an ocean!

(Idk, I’m tired and am running on like 4 hours of sleep or somthin)

Vessel of Stars ~ Casket of Star Girl who Played with People's Shapes Dollmaker of Bucuresti The Capital City of Flowers in the Sky Himorogi, Burn in Violet Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Until When? A Tiny, Tiny, Clever Commander Paradise ~ Deep Mountain Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke Crystallized Silver no particular order, just the first ten I thought of; a lot of PCB in there because I was playing it earlier before a friend's distraction got me a continue on Chen and I called it for the night. Edit: wait, wouldn't Gensokyo gaining ocean access be really good for the kappa and also that random seal who shows up in Horned Hermit?

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[sees art of patchouli knowledge where she doesn't look exhausted or angry] what the hell? is this some kind of crazy AU?

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Unfair Frustrating Object do be like that.

UFO is PISSING ME OFF

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this popped in my head

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i mean she did program her

its probably not javascript tho

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statistically, probably Marisa's; everyone else only has one that gets remembered.

Ah yes the age old touhou experience of

WHOSE FUCKING SONG WAS THAT?!?!??