Your game is bad and you should feel bad.
On the Rpg.net forums, a review by Louis Catchet of Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition is posted. The review has since been pulled (EDIT: reeve has found us a copy, but going by the comments it seems to have been pretty negative and badly written. Some of it may be replicated here. Both his grammar and his ideas are criticized until the man himself shows up on page 2. And that's where the crazy starts.



I do not have a simulationist bias. I think games should be balanced, between playability and realism, and a game like MERP did that well, I think - to give You an example.

The imaturity bit; I think D&D is a tasteless product when it comes to the content. Besides, the authors are taking real mythic creatures and turning them into silly looking cartoons that does not resemble the myths whatsoever. This is an insult to the cultures from whence these myths comes. Now, that's my opinion.

You should differ between "simulation" and "feasible". Big difference. Magic is by the way feasible; our forefathers believed in it for tens and thousands of years.

For the "you" not "You" part. In most languages one addresses strangers with in a polite form, German "Sie" rather than "du", Danish "De" rather than "du", and so forth. I am sorry if my use of this politeness is a problem to the English speaking world.

Realism in the pretendy fun time magic games is also at stake here.

My point was that magic is feasible because intelligent human beings believed in it for a very long time. They believed in spirits, and that they could manipulate these spirits by the help of sorcery (spells, basically). This belief was very intellignet (reasonable), actually, but of course built on ignorance.

A flying eye, like the beholder, is not feasible. Spirits are, because there is no way to know they don't exist. We don't see them. Nor do we see any beholders, but we know that we never will, because we are familiar with the laws of nature. Therefore they are not feasible.

The thread continues in a likewise fashion, with posters protesting his opinions and Mr. Cachet coming up with some extremely random responses. Claims include the traditional get a life fallacy, claims that the sky is not actually blue, some bizarre infatuation with capitalizing You, claims they are interpreting the text from the wrong perspective and fantasy monsters not being called by the right names.

Then around page sixteen things take a weird diversion.


Well, mainstream showing does not drive me nut, but it did make me write a crappy review of D&D...

I think I already was a nut, by the way, even before fantasy was made mainstream by Peter jackson... :-p

When it comes to vampires; sure, I can argue that "vampires are not like that", but I have never bothered to play vampire games. It is too gay for me, really. I think the vampire thing is a lesbian thing. It's like an exchange of bodily fluids without involving any male body parts, so to speak. Colours are usually black and red = feminine colours.

The belief in vampires is indeed ancient, by the way, from Antiquity, and we can actually find remains of bodies in Northern Europe that are nailed to the ground in their graves with wooden poles. Not to kill the vampires, but to prevent the dead from rising from the graves (if possessed by trolls =evil spirits) to drink the blood of the living. The modern vampire myth on the other hand is... just a lesbian fantasy, I guess.

Oh deary me. So in between the wild claims that mythical creatures are only realistic if they cling to the original myths (and Christian myths don't count), we have red as a feminine color. Always. Throughout history.

In addition to laying extreme doubts that he's ever slept with a woman, he seems to have some very strange beliefs about what is real.

You are right, and I feel like a guy who left the cave, in the analogy of the cave. I know the shadows we are watching (in D&D and other games) are just shadows, and I have seen what created these shadows, but when I return to tell the others about what I saw, I face only mockery.

A game with a beholder.

Why not? But not a game with a beholder and mythic creatures, unless it was made perfectly clear that "a" is not a mythic creature, but "b" is. Please don't mix fact and fiction without letting us know what is fact and what is fiction.

Personally I play RPGs for the atmosphere, and need -- or want -- the atmoshpere to be authentic (whatever I mean by that...). My narrow mind refuses me to stay thrilled and excited when anacronisms occur all the time, when soemthing is plain wrong or stupid, and I am sure one can (easily) create an RPG without such problems. Our (not my own only) home brew does it well. (But creating everything from scratch is kind of time consuming, so I'd prefer it if some professionals were doing it instead).

The wrong continues and continues until the inevitable personal attack, the flounce, and the banning. Such is the cycle of wank.

Varyar

You don't have a clue do you?

Hey! I am speaking to ignorant fools... I don't know why I bother.

I thought RPGers were more intelligent than others. Maybe they are too, but certainly many of you aren't...

Thanks to those who had the brains and will to understand what I was saying.

Farewell.

Godspeed, you silly silly person.