The state of Post-OSR content
- Thread starter Yora
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[thinks] I honestly dunno. I've been rereading Crossing the Chasm lately and one thing that strikes me is that in a lot of ways, neo-trad "Critical Role"-type players/DMs and classic/OSR players/GMs are really different markets, and they don't rely on each other for references. A neo-trad DM can make a post ( ) that bashes Arbiter of Worlds while recommending The Lazy Dungeon Master, and all it does to me is make me want to read Arbiter of Worlds more (since I know I disagree with The Lazy Dungeon Master's approach).
Since WotC is basically run by neo-trads, I wouldn't count on a renaissance coming from them. More likely they'll drop classic elements entirely: instead of doing a better job creating keyed dungeons, they may ask themselves, "if we don't need keys, do we even really need maps?" A market won't go unserved forever, so this doesn't mean there won't be a renaissance in another quarter--arguably it's happening already in the ACKS community, which is very big on simulationism--but it may look like fragmentation.
Side note: the ACKS community is also very big on VTT support and has a lot of guys interested in CRPGs and ACKS roguelikes, so... I see a lot of growth potential in the simulationist/ACKS market segment because they're not necessarily bottlenecked by word-of-mouth from existing GMs/Judges.
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Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Given that having a map doesn't hurt Trads, and it is essential for Classic/OSR, does it make sense to make products that can't be used by both communities? As someone who converts Trad-heavy modules for my Classic home game from time to time, I really don't think it would be that hard to make products that cater to both.
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
Oh yikes. I wish you hadn't sent me down that rabbit hole.
Milo, eh?...
yeah, no
fuckit, ACKS is still very cool. hatetheartistnottheart hatetheartistnottheart hatethe...
It would be difficult for me to respond to this in detail without saying negative things about a certain game company, which I'm trying to stop doing, so: you're right. It is very possible once you decide to do it.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Dude worked for a shitty person for a year. Without more, I'm not going to consider them tainted for life.Oh yikes. I wish you hadn't sent me down that rabbit hole.
Milo, eh?...
yeah, no
fuckit, ACKS is still very cool. hatetheartistnottheart hatetheartistnottheart hatethe...
Not even Milo, not really. Reading between the lines, Alex Macris (the ACKS guy) appears to have nothing good to say about Milo. Here's a quote:Oh yikes. I wish you hadn't sent me down that rabbit hole.
Milo, eh?...
I was hired in April 2017 by the investors creating MILO Inc. to manage the business operations of the start-up they were building. The investors hired me because I had previously run a $20M business division for Defy Media and they were aware of my libertarian leanings; however, I had not had any prior dealings with them nor have I had any since. While I was given the title CEO, it would be more accurate to describe me as CFO, as I did not have operational or editorial control. The stated objective of the business was for Milo to become a mainstream "right-wing Bill Maher," with the same sort of libertarian comedic-political commentary that Maher popularized with "Politically Incorrect."
This effort was, obviously, unsuccessful.
Despite many allegations to the contrary, I was never an investor or financier of Milo or MILO Inc, nor was I ever involved in any way in organizing, funding, or running his "Dangerous --------" tour. I was an employee under contract with MILO Inc. for 12 months, from April 2017 to April 2018. During that period, the company published the books "Dangerous" and "Fatwah," and attempted (but failed) to run a Free Speech Week with the Berkeley College Republicans.
Over the course of my tenure, Milo and I had many sharp disagreements about many issues that resulted in acrimony. I resigned at the end of my employment contract, waiving my severance pay and returning my equity. I remain under non-disclosure agreements so I can not and will not comment further.
I really enjoyed reading his thoughts on high level play: https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2023/01/29/on-high-level/
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
This discussion is definitely inviting the hammer. It's been pretty civilized so far though... But yeah, maybe back to our regularly scheduled dnd...
dammit Squeen!
No but seriously, you're not going to get me on this. Some truly shitty people got what they deserved at the beginning of this, but yes, like every marginalized group who has been picked on for centuries but finally gained the upper hand, these people have turned into the monsters they purport to despise.
Wait, we're still talking about students and gamers right?
Aaaaaanyhoo. Assumedly, culture will (over)correct sooner or later. As I've said before, I'm just glad my favourite game is still relevant and not a dusty old relic from the 70's like you and I.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Not at all.Wait, we're still talking about students and gamers right?
In case you think I am a confidently smug in my mean-streets beliefs, I am myself shocked at my own core conservatism and growing sense of panic as I start to see Western society and its values on the ropes. I want my kids to have a bright future and I'm starting to panic about that...feeling a sense of guilt that I was negligent in safe-guarding the homefront while crooks and anti-Western forces were secretly (and now overtly) plundering and burning. I don't feel informed enough to know where to point the finger, but something has seriously gone wonky. The town guards are no longer at the gates and there seem to be no adults left to right the ship. Perhaps we (Gen X) are at that inevitable generational inflection point where we need to step up and take on the miserable and zero-fun job of running the world. The days of youth and youthful pastimes may be over for us. I just don't know.
And while charity and kindness are virtues, like the proverbial partying rock-star, its starting to feel like waking up one day and realizing at all your so-called new "friends" have just been robbing you blind and laughing about it. Tough decisions need to be made. Perhaps we (in the West) don't have the luxury of being "the nice guys to everyone and everything" anymore. If/when our generation steps up and tries it's best, we will inevitably be hated and labeled as villains by many. It's not going to be easy or pretty.
All the while, there is a fear of being manipulated by propaganda and the like....and a strong suspicion that today's "crucial turning point in history" and "most significant election ever" (etc) is actually the status-quo---meaning history shows, as Tolkien said, we are ALWAYS fighting that slow losing battle against evil. Every moment is a crisis, and the moment you realize how we are constantly close to losing everything we value (i.e. that which makes us relics from the 70s that are more alike than different) is also the moment lose your youth. Despite change being eternal, do we try to hold the line on anything?
Am I alone in feeling this way?
@Prince: Sorry.
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Two orcs
Officially better than you, according to PoN
I'll avoid off-topic discussions on this forum except for this: you are not crazy and don't let anyone convince you that you are.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I tend to agree that this is a reversion to form. We have had an unprecedented period of peace, in my view, for a few reasons:
1. The construction of a system of international order.
2. Advances in technology that allowed rapid dissemination of relatively accurate information by institutions. Technology was advanced enough to make it easy to record events, but not so advanced that you could fake those recordings. And it was sufficiently expensive to disseminate information that doing so was largely the purview of institutions.
3. The technology of war was so destructive that it discouraged wars of aggression between major powers, because it destroyed the value of the territory you wanted to gain.
4. Individuals who had lived in the previous period, and took seriously concepts of public service, the preservation of international order, norms in politics, responsible journalism, and the avoidance of pyrrhic wars.
But, to bring us back to fantasy tropes for a moment, it is the doom of men that they forget. There are very few people with meaningful memories of WW2 who are alive and in a position to influence policy. Things have been really easy for a long time, and for the last 20 years or so it really didn't matter who was in power in democracies, because nobody really thought policy could have serious, existential impacts. Serious people stopped going into politics, because politics wasn't serious; and voters allowed this because they also don't take it seriously. So now political parties are populated with profoundly unserious people, and an unserious electorate elects them anyway.
As a result, the system of international order has eroded, because nobody has treated it seriously. We seem to be entering a period of interstate anarchy, which is a return to the earlier period.
News became profitable, rather than being a money-losing public service (thanks 60 Minutes
), which changed its focus. Technology advanced to a point where any idiot could fake information and disseminate it at will, with broad reach. Not being able to rely on information is also a return to the earlier period.People have forgotten how mindlessly destructive conventional warfare is, having not waged one in almost 80 years; people actually seem to think that wars can be won relatively inexpensively. Moreover (and this is hypothesis on my part), I feel like the increased range of firepower encourages wars where a major power thinks it can wage war from a distance, without risking their own territory; this allows wars for domestic political purposes, because you don't really care how much destruction you are wreaking if you either (a) don't care to seize the territory of the nation you are bombing, or (b) don't really care what condition it is in when you get it. I also fear that our ability to construct things more quickly may make autocrats think it is no big deal to level cities they want to occupy. In any event, there is at least a perception among many that wars of aggression are worth the cost. This is also a return to the earlier period.
Unfortunately, our political institutions, and voter priorities, are still stuck in a period where democratic politics didn't really matter. And our governments have forgotten how to get anything done, because three years ago it didn't really matter. So we are ill equipped to manage the current situation. I don't know how people can look at the last three years and think that, for example, engaging in culture wars should be our top priority. But they do, and a lot of the electorate seems to agree. Why don't politicians do serious things and tell us hard truths? Because we punish them when they do.
So we are entering the FAFO phase of domestic and international politics. In democracies, either voters and politicians are going to figure out how to get serious, or they are going to cease to be functioning democracies; either by electing autocrats, or being forced by weakness to become clients of autocratic states.
Not being engaged in politics isn't an option anymore. To quote Trotsky, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
The Space Needle in Seattle was originally built in about a year (1962). Nowadays they can't even seem to upgrade a storm drain without taking several lanes of the street offline for a year. A new Space Needle today would probably take at least five years, and a new nuclear reactor takes decades of waiting now.
Is this good news that would make autocrats less warlike? I dunno, but it's a real trend.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Lack of state capacity hasn't hit everywhere. For instance, China can built military vessels at 20x the rate of the US.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Someone I don't know from Adam eloquently expressing my growing anxiety...
..or perhaps I am falling for just another flavor of propaganda. Pick your poison? (Hey, you like drama?...well, we've got a media feed for you.)
Or is this what it might feel like in a a prison, before the riot? Or a country on the eve of war?
Is it even conceivable that someone (something!) might be pulling these strings? Ratching up global tension? To what purpose? Why now?
It's all very surreal since geopolitically, little has changed in the past 10 years. 20? 30? We haven't suddenly run out of resource. Did COVID break something?
I ramble.
..or perhaps I am falling for just another flavor of propaganda. Pick your poison? (Hey, you like drama?...well, we've got a media feed for you.)
Or is this what it might feel like in a a prison, before the riot? Or a country on the eve of war?
Is it even conceivable that someone (something!) might be pulling these strings? Ratching up global tension? To what purpose? Why now?
It's all very surreal since geopolitically, little has changed in the past 10 years. 20? 30? We haven't suddenly run out of resource. Did COVID break something?
I ramble.
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Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
Um, yes, there are state actors that have been doing this for years, and it is yielding fruit. Russia, China and Iran among them. They run troll farms that are intended to pit democratic factions against each other by boosting misinformation with artificial engagement (using a bunch of fake accounts to repost and like each other's posts). They targeting every political camp and special interest group by "confirming" their worst suspicions about each other until nobody trust each other. They use the same technique to undermine trust in journalism (any mistake a journalist makes will get amplified) and in democratic institutions. I don't think this is controversial.
They don't even have to make this stuff up, they just have to boost stuff people are already saying. Someone comes up with a conspiracy theory using open source information and an argument that superficially makes sense to the uninitiated; or a politician states a false statistic or says something controversial; or a journalist gets something wrong in a way that is inflammatory; and they just boost those messages to everyone who is susceptible. Which is almost everyone.
And once buzz is generated, some dishonest or lazy opinion columnist or politician picks it up to be offended by it, and then it looks like a real story (because nobody can tell the difference between an opinion columnist and an actual journalist) and the trolls boost that. And people one one side of that issue get upset. And then responsible journalists and columnists debunk the story, and then the trolls boost that to the people on the other side of the issue, and then they get upset. And each side doesn't trust the other, because each believes their source for news and thinks the other side is lying or stupid. If we are lucky, one side has correct information; often, neither side has entirely correct information.
Right now, if you want to be able to have accurate information, you need to actively curate your sources. Which is a lot of work. Or you need to find sources that have done a good job of curating their own sources. Even that is a certain amount of work, because a lot of journalists, opinion writers and even whole newsrooms are actually pretty shit at navigating the current information environment.
EDIT: And you can't even hedge your bets by going to different mainstream media sources, because a lot of the time they are just recycling material from a wire service like AP or Reuters. Because nobody has functional newsrooms that do their own reporting any more. So if the wire service makes a mistake, it is repeated by dozens of outlets.
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The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I thought the other day; wouldn't it be great if some monolithic AI could do real time fact checking and shut bullshit down or pause it before it spreads. But, I guess even if they could build such a thing and it didn't turn into some dystopian censorbot, crapped up with the biases and predispositions of its creators (like the new Chinese ChatGPT), I guess rogue states would just build their own AI to create and hurl lies at the web at a rate that inevitably overwhelms it anyway.
Seriously though. I've lost good friends to the culture wars and I miss them. They were. They ARE good guys. They love their families. They respect the rule of law. They take care of the people around them. But then they go and say shit online that makes me want them erased from the face of the Earth. It's a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hate it. I hate whatever made me feel this way. It's no wonder that more and more moderate people see the sense in some vast and horrible reset. I remember the peace and serenity of that first, big, total shut down of the pandemic. Like whatever happens, happens. Suddenly, it seemed like there were a lot fewer people in the world and it was great! I know I wasn't alone in that, and that should be bloody terrifying.
We've lost the ability to talk to each other, and we're way to willing to 'other' people and wish them gone. That's why I love this place and keep coming back, even when it's quiet for months. I know this conversation is inviting the ire of our absentee
Seriously though. I've lost good friends to the culture wars and I miss them. They were. They ARE good guys. They love their families. They respect the rule of law. They take care of the people around them. But then they go and say shit online that makes me want them erased from the face of the Earth. It's a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hate it. I hate whatever made me feel this way. It's no wonder that more and more moderate people see the sense in some vast and horrible reset. I remember the peace and serenity of that first, big, total shut down of the pandemic. Like whatever happens, happens. Suddenly, it seemed like there were a lot fewer people in the world and it was great! I know I wasn't alone in that, and that should be bloody terrifying.
We've lost the ability to talk to each other, and we're way to willing to 'other' people and wish them gone. That's why I love this place and keep coming back, even when it's quiet for months. I know this conversation is inviting the ire of our absentee
You're right. I was underthinking the issue.