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1. OSR and The Lack of Freedom in the RPG Hobby
2. Coming Soon — World building as creative practice without a home.
3. Coming Soon — Contrarian assholes rules lawyering as a form of narcissism not to gain a player an advantage but as some warped desire to affect the very nature of reality; the problem of too many people watching Lawyer Shows. — See "Assholes trying to exploit the rules of reality" for a slightly expaneded thought on this in the Musings section below.
4. Vulnerability, Games and Emotions — A Case Study
5. Coming soon — They lunacy of "It's not my job to educate you" meets "Well I couldn't be fucked going out and learning." — Constructivist theories of education and learning.
6. Already happened but I haven't written about it, yet! — The evils of Google, the standardisation of language, the importance of art as record of culture and life. Vis a vis trying to find a photograph of an aged Japanese businessman looking stylish as fuck in a suit, smoking a cigarette stylishly while probably walking to a tiny bar to get roaring drunk.
a. Maybe the combat encounter isn't a random normality and assumed background of the setting? Maybe the combat encounter is indicative of something hyper local. Or part of a 'quest.' An example would be the party encountering more bandits because the bandits are preying on the commoners fleeing a village facing some sort of military strife?
b. Something that's striking me about games, and a lot of society, in fact, is how many people are outright contrarian and want to be contrarian in a 'justified' manner where the 'rules' grant them support and immunity.
It's like rules lawyering but weaponised. Not to gain your character an advantage, not because you disagree with the implementation of the rules, but as some narcissistic play with the very structure of reality. There's no good faith anywhere in these actions. There's no acceptance that we are all in this together for a generally agreed reason (to enjoy playing a game.) No, people are looking at technicalities, being pedantic, using things out of context, and trying to use what's necessarily an incomplete system that has to involve personal judgment in an exploitative way. They're not trying to play a game, they're trying to break and exploit a system for their own personal gain and amusement. Then you look at real life...
Coming soon — Listening to football I realised I'm not in it for the art of football but for the community of football. I was listening to crowd sounds, and commentators, and realised I really just wanted to be a part of something. There something is happening. I have the sports channel subscription. It's important enough I pay for it. it's not who I am, however. Football is 100% something I enjot. But it's just like feeling involved.
But the thing isn't important rather being part of the thing. This is ideas of loneliness. And maybe letting your guard down? Possibly to invite others in. I am very drunk writing this and it feels really important to me. That's letting your guard down, which is what drinking does to me. I am drunk.