Recent content by pemerton

I don't know what you mean by "secondary source" here. Do you mean the accounts of historians? Or do you mean contemporaneous documents? I'm not a trained historian, but the people/colleagues I know who do historical work rely on the latter - they visit archives etc. For instance, I've never...

I also don't see how "D&D General" = trad gamers/trad gaming. I have played D&D quite a bit, and am likely to play it again before I die. I use RPGing books that have "D&D" on the cover (eg my beloved World of Greyhawk folio and maps; modules like T1 with classic NPCs like Lareth the Beautiful...

Given that systems of law in which precedent is authoritative have devices for departing from, and/or overturning, precedents that are (i) obviously wrong, and/or (ii) no longer workable, it would be odd to adopt a more rigid approach in a hobby activity.

You can explain why you don't like something without saying that it is wrong. I don't tell you that you're wrong, do I? Perhaps also not telling people that what they're doing is wrong?

I was talking about the sort of RPGing that I experience. Even when I've played in "trad" games, the experience has been as I described. Sometimes that can cause power-struggle issues with a "trad" GM.

Generally, at least where knowledge is concerned, expertise can be judged against an external standard (even expertise in a skill - eg an expert pianist - can probably be judged against an external standard, but I put that case to one side in this post). The fact that an author has authority...

Even here, tensions can easily emerge. Part of what makes fencing what it is, is the nature of the human body. And also the nature of the sword. The bodies of mice have different properties from the bodies of humans. "Swords" the size of sewing pins will have different properties from actual...

Are you saying that you think I'm wrong about my experience of RPGing? Or that your experiences are different. The first I don't accept. But in respect of the second, obviously I defer to your account of your experiences.

And who is doing that? Who are you remonstrating with? Where have I ever suggested this? I don't even know what it would mean - as in, what would it mean for gaming culture to "suit me". What is an "unsuitable" gaming culture?

Because I am frustrated by being told that the play was wrong: The runes examples was not wrong from the perspective of the play of MHRP or a variant thereof. Nor was it wrong in general. And as I said, it makes no sense to say that "It was wrong from the perspective of D&D". If all you are...

I don't like this formulation at all. The GM is not an entertainer, a storyteller, etc - at least not in my experience of RPGing. The GM is a participant in a game, along with other participants. Whether the game is fun or not depends on the intersection between how it plays and the tastes of...

As far as I can tell, what's at stake is telling people who don't enjoy GM-driven RPGing (whether as players or GMs) that they have deviant or unreasonable tastes. Or are among the rare outliers who had "bad GMs:. The idea that someone might have had a good GM in a trad approach to play, and...

This claim isn't true at all, in my view. Trying to infer to social life from nothing but archaeological information is very fraught.

What percentage of people who play soccer do you think chose that because of a bad experience at a cricket club? What percentage of people who really enjoy backgammon do so because of a bad experience playing canasta? Completely bizarre questions!

And for someone who is reasonably well trained in the scholarly study and analysis of human cultures, this often produces utterly implausible and ridiculous fiction.