the only presidents of the united states of america i respect are the guys who ate all those peaches
this is what happens right before the “mmm i think i’ll adopt it” part. warning for sudden scream (and horrible voice acting)
*nuns glide on floor like they’re sith lords*
highly cursed baby: [unidentified bird noises, pauses in-between to look at the viewer] Yiaah yeeeeiiiiih. ye. iaaaaaaah
nuns: *stare in silence for 3 seconds* HHHOOOAA
nun 1 (british accent): H O L Y M A R Y. I dont know much about children, but., i am Sure. that it’s a SSSSin. to look. upon this.. child
nun 2: thismydearsister is no Chiiild, but a misshapen Ape hh!
nun 1: It,,, is a horror to behold. it, Cant be Chris-tian ??? it should be THRRRRRRROWN. in. to the FFFFFFFIRE;;, im shure.
nun 2: howrightyouaremy sister,,,
IT BELONGS IN A GREAT BIG FFFFFFFFIYAH!;;yee
(via sahonithereadwolf)
the second anyone starts throwing a tantrum about placing badly in an event i lose all preliminary respect i had for them…
i should write but instead i’m doing horse jumping
what if i watched firefly
i’m at a point with the term “found family” where i only wanna hear about it from trusted friends tbh.
Reminded of this ask and specifically the phrasing “narrative cruft.”
Folks, I’m something of a fan of RPGs. I think RPGs are a pretty neat marriage of narrative and gameplay. I think the two are pretty neatly intertwined. If the fiction and mechanics of an RPG are in tune, I would hesitate to call the fiction “narrative cruft.” It would do a huge disservice to the game.
So what is being called “narrative cruft” here? I can’t say for sure but I believe the source of this ask was the recently resurfaced really smart post by yours truly where I talk about how trying to reframe the action of D&D (killing creatures and taking their stuff either as amoral tomb robbers or basically a posse of vigilantes under the blessing of those in power) as somehow aspirational may be a lost cause and how people would do a lot better to just accept the gameplay of D&D for what it is because the game itself will suffer for attempts to turn it into something it very much isn’t.
Here’s the thing though: D&D is very much a game about dungeons and also dragons. And I feel a lot of modern D&D players already reject that premise. Simply looking at what D&D, by its rules, says:
- All characters will have to take part in some degree of resource management. At the very least they will have to track hit points throughout the day. Depending on edition and class they will have to take part in managing class-based resources. Even equipment is often consumable.
- When it comes to resource management during the gameplay these games are the most opinionated about (combat and exploration) depletion of resources is very much the name of the game. You can, throughout the day, recover some resources, but often at the cost of another. Characters will generally not be gaining more resources throughout the day.
- Looking at the types of creatures that are represented as adversaries in the game, most of them occupy the fictional space of “the dungeons,” a type of nebulous mishmash of underground complexes, often implying some kind of underworld, or the wilderness.
I won’t go further than that but these three things are actually pretty harmonious with the traditional gameplay of Town -> Wilderness -> Dungeon that is pretty much part of the game’s DNA. Even D&D 5e is at its core still a dungeon game. It is very opinionated about things like “the adventuring day.”
This is no coincidence. D&D is very much a resource management game, a “trying to survive in a hostile space while your resources get depleted” game. The interplay of having to make meaningful decisions between when to move out of the dungeon and back into civilization to rest and recuperate is an important part of the game. The game itself tells you this by asking the GM to take the shape of the adventuring day as a whole into account as a consideration in adventure design.
And there’s a lot to criticize there: some people don’t want to engage with that gameplay loop. Thankfully there are games other than D&D out there! Some people may see the gameplay loop as problematic. True, and I do think that the division of the world into effectively conflict zones and “civilization” is deeply ideological, but it’s as txttletale said in that post of hers that my post was a reaction to: you can either take the media at its own word (“for the duration of Return of the King we are monarchists”) or twist yourself into a pretzel shape trying to argue that the things that the text itself says about the world and game it is trying to get across aren’t actually meaningful and no no the core gameplay of D&D is clearly about a plucky little found family just doing goodness.
Anyway, the way I personally reconcile is by not bringing moralism into it. At least in my opinion, “Amoral tomb robbers” and “sell-swords working for the highest bidder” are infinitely preferable to any of the ways that try to frame the action of D&D as somehow heroic, because now that there is no attempt to sell it as somehow aspirational we can actually have a discussion, during gameplay, about how the way of things in the fictional setting of the game are actually kinda fucked up.
Also if I wanted a queer take on dungeon fantasy I would play a game built with that as part of the text from the ground up, like Dungeon Bitches, and even Dungeon Bitches doesn’t try to frame its dungeon-crawling disaster lesbians as somehow aspirational: they are fucked up women in a fucked up situation forced into a lifestyle that is violent and dangerous because they have chosen it over the comforts of a civilization that often doesn’t treat women and especially queer women well.
Anyway the point is that the so-called “narrative cruft” of D&D is actually pretty integral to the game itself. How much can you change the assumptions at the core of the game without hurting the game itself and at what point would you be better off just playing a different game?
(via imsobadatnicknames2)