Curse you RPGpundit, curse you! (A fairy tale in 3 parts, #3)

Part 3. ...But a champion nonetheless
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

So, gentle reader, by now you will know how the RPGpundit's rants at TheUruguayanGamer led to our aging gamer shouldering the burden of his own blog, and of providing a more subtle critique of the 'swine' than the pundit's own pungent denunciations. And you might remember that, even as he felt that the pundit was losing his touch, JMcL63 began to appreciate just how much easier it is simply to denounce the roleplaying theorists as a bunch of wankers than it is actually to subject their thinking to a thorough-going refutation. Moreover JMcL63 was only too aware of how the whole issue was a storm in a teacup's teacup, of surpassing little interest outside a tiny circle of gamers, and of even less consequence than that. In short, our aging gamer felt that his own self-appointed quest was quixotic, to say the very least.

Our noble aging gamer pondered this dilemma long and hard even as he remained a regular reader of the infamous pundit's pithy column. And then, in a twist of fate of the sort beloved of storytellers everywhere, the pundit himself unwittingly retrieved the situation that bedevilled our scrivener.

The self-appointed 'Wielder of the Flaming Keystrokes of Truth' made one of his occasional forays into a new gaming ecommunity where he thought he might be able to find a new home. The place was Nutkinland: The RPG Site. A revival of an old forum, the RPGpundit himself called the place "The Last Best Hope of the RPG Community Online".

It wasn't long before the RPGpundit- with the help of his new 'proxy army'- was waxing scatological about his by now familiar betes noires, and demonstrating his ever unerring ability to get right up some people's noses. And it wasn't long before the owners of Nutkinland saw- in the pundit's self-appointed mission- the makings of a ruse which they could use to generate interest in and traffic through their newly revived old haunt. And so they co-opted the RPGpundit and his most vocal antagonist into 2 opposing camps, hoping that setting them against each other like cocks in a fighting pit would lead to a prodigious flamefest the memory of which would live long in the annals of the gaming ecommunity.

The Nutkins' ploy proved a damp squib and would've been long forgotten, save for one lasting consequence: the thread Pistols at dawn, in which the RPGpundit engaged in a lengthy debate with one Levi Kornelsen. Here, surprise, surprise, the pundit proved that he could indeed engage in a prolonged exchange of opinion without resorting to cheap shots and ad hominem abuse (although good old Anglo-Saxon scatology was another matter!).

And so dear reader, our little tale approaches its conclusion.

It dawned on JMcL63 that the RPGpundit had largely succeeded in his self-appointed mission to rally opposition to the swine- our aging gamer's determination to scratch his own itch in his own way in his own good time was sufficient proof of that. Our noble aging gamer soon even accepted that, however quixotic his personal quest might seem, and no matter how surpassingly irrelevant the entire debate might be to the wider world of roleplaying; that these simple facts aside, the paradoxical truth was that the RPGpundit had largely picked the right targets, and had dealt with them appropriately. Strange to relate, foul-mouthed abuse had been precisely the order of the day, and the world of roleplaying did indeed seem to be a better place for the pundit's scatological tirades.

So, for getting in there first to set out your stall with the 'f**k you, you wankers' tirades; and for leaving those who come after you with the more complicated (and far drearier) task of rational refutation, I say, "Curse you, RPGpundit, curse you!" ;)

Related@RD/KA!
- Part 1. There came a questing knight
- Part 2. A flawed champion...