Saturday, February 4, 2023

My Life In Fandom: The Gab Talks Jack Ryan, D&D And More!

Daddy Warpig and Dorrinal catch up on Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime) and D&D and everything else this week on the Gab. Jeffro and Yours Truly get shoutouts.

I'll be in the chat if you catch this live or watch the replay. There's also another post coming today, so watch for that in your feeds.

Warpig's rant about good rules explanation is a good one. Tabletop RPGs have long had a problem with technical writing competence.

The hobby has long had a problem with incompetence in technical writing. It is a notable event in itself when a game's rules manual is an exception to that norm.

The rules of a game--any game--is a technical manual. It exists to instruct the reader on how to use the product (i.e. to play the game).

Competent user manuals do not tolerate ambiguity of language. Competent user manuals do not say more than is strictly necessary to instruct the user properly.

This is entirely at odds with the desires of frustrated novelists, chronic Theater Kids, and similar problem personality profiles in the hobby.

The way out of the present pozzing requires this insistence of competent technical writing from those publishing product. Until that standard is met across the board.

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