Coffee Ramble 6 - Mr. Deville (Patreon)

Recently I was talking with a couple people about 'the good ol' days' when we got together and played games.  Life sometimes winds into a spiral of just work and then crashing for a lot of us.  And as we age, we start taking care of relatives, or people in the family pass away, and time and energy get devoured by all of it.

I had mentioned that I missed running 'adventures' most of all.  It was one of the things that focused me on actually writing things, gave me an end-goal and a time constraint to work towards, and had the result of social bonding as well.

The games I ran weren't terribly good, but that's not really the point of this whole ramble.  They were, at least, a structure.  

So it was mentioned that there was software that made running things online a lot easier, and groups were desperate for DMs.  I had a look at some of the resources I was sent, and honestly, I'm kind of wowwed by how much has changed since I last gave online games a shot.

First was that finding games that aren't D&D 5e are rare.  Like extremely rare.  If I were to run anything close to D&D again it would be either an OSR like Castles & Crusades, or Pathfinder 2e.  Unfortunately the former seems to bring with it an.. unfortunate type of angry  person, who plays more for 'spite' of the new editions than they do for fun.  The amount of "None of that woke shit here" listings I'd seen was discouraging, because that's a huge red flag of "These neckbeards are on a vendetta and aren't interested in 'fun', they're interested in being 'right'"

Age is supposed to bring wisdom, but I swear it's the opposite for some TTRPG enthusiasts.

The latter, while slightly more plentiful, had a huge problem of it's own though: So  many of them required cameras, and wanted to 'stream' these games.

While I have no real beef with wanting to see the player's you are running things with, I have zero interest in being on camera.  I have fairly severe body dysmorphia, which is why there are very few photos of me both online and off, and the thought of being on camera makes me want to just writhe.  Couple that with the fact that many of them wanted to 'stream' this to the world meant that these would be a big nope for me.

Streaming tabletop games, to me, is a very weird thing.  I get the basics of why some folks stream them, especially if they're already established on Twitch or similar spaces for doing other content, but there's an underlying problem with it that people swear doesn't happen, but actually always does happen:  Streaming changes the game you play fundamentally.

I've touched on this before, I know, but streaming any tabletop game completely changes it's play-style.  The moment you are aware of, and are performing for an audience, you change how you act.  That NPC you might spare the sword suddenly has to die, because you worry about the 20 people in chat screaming that they had to die.

It truly surprised me how many of the listed games were stating that it would be streamed by at least one of the players.  Which is their right, if all parties agree to it.  I wouldn't though, and really, it's a different landscape than what I was used to.

I don't know if this is people are scrambling to be the next Critical Role.  Personally I can't imagine why anyone would want that.  The amount of vitriol and opinion and false 'community' that shows like that foster are frankly stunning, and having that many people scrutinizing not just in-game activity, but your life out of game would probably make me want to leave the planet forever, no matter the amount of money it brought in.  

But I guess it's the new thing.  I fully admit that by internet standards, I'm a corpse.  When you hit 30, you are considered a walking amalgam of dust and decaying flesh that flense from you in 1's and 0's and I hit that number nearly 2 decades ago.  I'm digital bit-rot in online terms.  I don't get the masochistic need to subject oneself to social media at all, but it is a very real thing, be it addiction, loneliness, or actual need to feel awful each day.

In all likelihood I wouldn't be able to run 'math-rocks' for a group anyway.  My schedule is a dumpster fire these days, caught between hiring companies to haul junk, and trying to keep the house standing long enough to escape it.  Coupled with 10 hour work-days and I'm not entirely sure when I'd have the ability to write anything let alone play.

And that's okay.  Sometimes you just move on.

Yes, there's a certain loneliness that comes from it all.  I've lost touch with nearly all of my online and offline 'groups' over the years.  From artists, to gamers, to fandoms, they all drift away sometimes.  But at the same time, there is sometimes a serenity to it.  A weird sense of peace that you don't have to connect up on a set day to  'raid' for four hours in some MMO.  Especially those days when you weren't feeling particularly interested in socializing or being in front of a computer screen.

It was suggested that I could still 'write as if it was all a TTRPG' to add to my world, which is a fair point, but I think right now I have enough  projects going to worry about.  The graphic novel is supposed to be my swan-song to Felwroth.  The way to show a bit of the world by means of a group of people's trials and victories through it's weird features and landscapes.  And there are images of Ellythistle and her crew poking about dark and web-covered places.  I may just have to write about those places more perhaps.

I would like to do a revised 'ancestries' series though.  A comparison of the races on Felwroth.  I'll have to ponder on that more as it's been a long time since I thought of who all existed on the world.  It's more on the work-plate, but it would be a 'light meal' since it's just sketches of what people look like.

Today's ramble was extra rambly, I note.  But it was interesting to see how much the landscape of TTRPG's have changed.  They feel like a bit more 'work' to get into these days.

Remember to eat your sponge, folks.  You don't get any pudding until you eat your sponge.

Another brick in the skull.

o.o

-T.J.