http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=973231I wholeheartedly agree to the post above, esp. the bit about people dropping RPGs because the general mood/tone/way of dealing with issues gets on their nerves. Being an old fart and RPG fossil, I remember the early internet days when EVERY RPG article got huzzahs – and if they sucked, they got a "Huzzah, but have you considered approaching this item a little differently, like this". It started with flames against publishers, continued with flames against people sharing their ideas in forums, and flames against RPG bloggers are starting.
In another forum (non-RPG, FPS) people whine about the weak participation of members in the forum, yet whenever I try to get the ball rolling they hammer me down because of some little aspect. So naturally I stopped posting, and ultimately: caring.
After all, this is me free time. Do I really need other people bashing me? I think not.
Often, we argue about what is the most important aspect for a game to be fun. In most cases, we all agree that it's not about the game itself, or the rules, or the setting, not even the GM: It's about the gaming group at the table. You can have GREAT fun playing a game that is, basically, trash – WHEN playing with the right people.
What is true for the gaming table is also true for a roleplaying game system, and ultimately: P&P gaming itself.
Us old farts that started with "1st editions", we had GREAT times playing these, even though games like SR1 or VtM1 or CP2013 or BL23C1 or D&D1 had rules that were broken beyond belief. When the internet came and gave us the chance to get into contact with the publishers and each other, we helped each other fixing our games and systems.
Nowadays, we demand perfect games and wont accept anything less. The publishers are our enemies, and we are not fans, we're angry customers demanding our books get fixed, because we paid for them, ALTHOUGH a growing number of us is NOT paying for them and everybody knows it!! Being accused of all kinds of crimes (errors being the worst of it, apparently), many publishers get defensive – and who can blame them? They try to stay in the business – because it IS a business, please understand and accept that – even though a large number of players see errors as an EXCUSE to download everything for free ("It's not wrong to steal from a corp whose books have bad editing or one that DARES to not speak to the fans!!").
I'm not saying that I have the solution, but I am saying that each and every flame war raging out there or within here is another coffin nail to P&P gaming – because reading just ONE thread like that often will be quite enough to scare an interested n00b away ("I thought about starting to play SR, but the game seems to be totally bad and awful and broken and all fans hate it").
Broken rules will not kill a game or setting.
Otherwise SR would have NEVER survived 1st edition!!!
AAS