There has never been a better time to be a gamer. Never. Having taken an unsuspecting world by storm in the mid/late 70's, the modern gaming hobby we know and love has suffered trials and tribulations, but is now stronger than ever. On top of all the great games of all kinds being played by more and more people, we also have ICT: the most powerful technology that everyday bozos like ourselves have ever had at our fingertips.
More than that, I have a theory that it is this very ICT which actually makes rpgs capable of being what they really are. Let me put that another way: I believe that rpgs are one of the great popular cultural advances since rock and roll, a true sign of our times; and that it is the same ICT technology that makes this blog possible that will allow this still youthful cultural phenomenon to fully mature. That might seem an odd thing to say about 'pencil and paper' rpgs, but it is a theory of mine all the same.
So I have been really, really irritated by the 'debate' occasioned by Ryan Dancey's review of WFRP2 to which I referred the other day: 3 days of hysteria demonstrating all that is worst about life in cyberspace; including a 44-page thread of 438(!) posts at RPGnet, a place whose name can still send shivers down my spine when I think of the images- of Hammer horror peasant mobs armed with sharp farm implements and torches- conjured up by their past reactions to people trying to talk about the HERO system. I am not going to bother surveying this material here; check it out if you dare, but don't send me your therapy bills, because you have been warned!
Here though, are some choice remarks made in reply to Dancey's original review on GamingReport.com itself (got to find a fix for that URL problem)
"what a load of rot. games workshop have NEVER had anything to do with TSR. WFRP is NOTHING like D&D. NEXT TIME YOU THINK ABOUT DOING A REVIEW, DON''T! you have no idea what your on about!"
This anonymous poster clearly hasn't been reading his White Dwarfs, which have [the rest of this post got lost somehow?!]. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment