Mike Mearls decided to toss out a Tweet thread on game design, again, yesterday.
When designing a game, consider the personality traits and behaviors the game encourages in its player. Then ask yourself if you want to make a game for a community that embraces what you’re encouraging.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 15, 2018
That tweet is a nicer way of saying: If you make a game for assholes, be ready, willing, and able to deal with assholes.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 15, 2018
It’s also why D&D got out of the business of trying to “fix” obnoxious people.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) September 15, 2018
Mike, you might want to tell your peers that, because they are all about "fixing obnoxious people". Just because you say in public that the game should not do this doesn't mean that your peers believe you, because--by their behavior--they don't believe you. They're doing just that, socially engineering their audiences as best they can to "fix problematic people", using whatever means they have control over- all in the name of "social justice".
Yes, it's nice that you recognized that Mech Piloting doesn't actually work in social engineering, but it's dishonest to say that D&D got out of that business; your peers are all about that business--including your co-workers--and it comes out routinely in the SJW-friendly politics in Organized Play regimes, official setting material (or did you miss the Pundit's video on this), etc. as well as that by your "competition" at Paizo and the farm league that is so many of the SJW "companies" that exist solely to sucker support from gullible gamers.
Yes, it's nice that you acknowledged the truth. You also know that the shot-callers won't act on that acknowledgement because they're down with the cause and so will slam their heads against that wall for as long as it takes to make gaming "woke". That's why this thread is such a disingenuous line of bullshit.
So... what would be the personality traits D&D encourage?
ReplyDeleteYou play as self-reliant, weapons carrying, riches gathering, non-governmental agents that takes mater in their own hand and run towards danger to keep it away from civilisation.
Does that sound like the kind of people Mike Mearls and his ilks want in the "D&D community"?
Is Mikey shrugging and going "fuck it, our game is promoting Hoppean libertarian values, let just shut up and stop fixing those assholes attracted by those values" or is he saying that the game is gonna change a whole lot more, for the worst, if I'm not being clear.
He thinks he's giving up. He's really signalling for the SJWs to accelerate the pozzing.
DeleteDamn, that's probably the worst of both options!
DeleteConsider who they're cultivating to replace the original TRPG audience: people who watch Critical Role and other Let's Play series like them. Those people are not gamers; the game is going to cater to that audience over time so long as the SJWs can get away with it, and that means (a) gaslighting that audience to believe the SJW way is the only one and (b) driving out the true RPG audience to prevent effective narrative contradiction.
DeleteMearls is giving up because he knows he can't make the machine (the game itself) do the SJW's job; the SJWs will do it via social means instead, same as they have elsewhere, with Organized Play and setting gaslighting as the basis for that social engineering.
I wouldn't be surprised to see in the next book (or maybe a supplement dedicated to that), tips about playing to an audience. *shudders*
DeletePaizo did put "rules" in their PF2 material about not playing a wacist character and how every identity has a right to be represented in your game even if their not present at your table... I'm sure Mearls and Crawford are green with jealousy to not be on the forefront of virtue signaling.