Wednesday 30 December 2020

The Best of 2020

Ok, let's do this. 

Best Blog: The age of the dinosaurs has ended, and the blogosphere is now roamed only by furtive ancestral mammals and scraggy feathered things that will one day approximate birds. Still, Age of Dusk promises the dawn of a new age of mighty beasts whose size may one day rival the titans of yore. This year was a good one for him.

Best Review: The aforementioned's review of Veins of the Earth, which manages to be both readable, detailed, fair, and constructive in critique. (Part I is here; there are two others.)

Best Blog Entry by Somebody Else: It might actually be this, although making it a recent one feels like cheating.

Best Entry of Mine: I have to be honest: this was not a vintage year for my blog. Looking back at the entries I wrote this year, I have the feeling that I was phoning it in half of the time. I'm sorry for that. I quite like this entry though, and this one.

Best RPG Product: The only game product I think I bought and actually read and used in 2020 was Ryuutama, so it wins by default, even though I found it disappointing.

Best SF, Fantasy or Horror Book Read: Jack Vance's The Palace of Love. I read all of the Demon Princes series this year; I liked this one best. Here is my Goodreads review (add me if you like):

There is something profound at work in this book, which like all of Vance's fiction is a deliciously sweet slice of pulp that hints at something much deeper. A meditation on love, identity, sex, power, insecurity, vanity, monomania, and meaning? It's all of those things, and the fact that you can never quite see the results of that meditation - just glimpse them from behind an opaque glass screen, like Falusche's face itself - makes them all the more important. (*What*, though, to those who have read the book, is the meaning of the druids and their tree?)
Best SF, Fantasy or Horror Viewing: Does 'The Inner Light' count? 

Best Gaming Experience: Without doubt it has to be my 'Riding A Giant Tadpole Over a Massive Waterfall and Falling Into a Plunge Pool Full of Giant Pikes' mini-game which I created for Ryuutama (I will put up the rules for this onto the blog one day). Sometimes something you create for next week's session really just pays off. 

Best Cancellation: It has to be the Adam Koebel thing, which even I heard about. I am not a fan of the concept of cancellation, but there is just something too precious about a self-righteous proponent of 'safety tools' in games live-streaming a session in which one of the PCs is sexually assaulted and the entire group quits in disgust. To quote GK Chesterton's introduction to Aesop's Fables: "[S]uperiority is always insolent...pride goes before a fall...and [there] is such a thing as being too clever by half. You will not find any other legend but this written upon the rocks of any hand of man. There is every type and time of fable: but there is only one moral to the fable; because there is only one moral to everything."

23 comments:

  1. I guess I’ve been meandoin the shallows, I hadn’t heard of “Age of Dust”. The writing is stunning, I look forward to digging in.

    Re: Koebal, my wife would say he “put it into his vortex” with his sanctimony. Being decent shouldn’t mean you have to bellow on about it all the time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The more somebody bellows about being virtuous the more suspicious of them you have to be. An awful lot of the Gospels is Jesus trying to emphasise that point.

      Delete
    2. Adam was never decent though.

      His first response to a bad review of Dungeon World was namecalling, he trashed (Mike Pondsmith's) Cyberpunk 2020 for having (gasp) sex in it, he repeatedly backed up every alarmist hate-take against any random designer you care to name, he financially supported harassers for years.

      Adam wasn't "decent" he was just the popularly acceptable kind of terrible.

      Delete
    3. It’s worth mentioning that neither I (nor the words I’m putting in my spouse’s mouth, especially) make any claims of who is or isn’t “decent”.
      For all the good that this community has done for me creatively over the years, I don’t look to it for life advice.

      Delete
    4. Yeah, I think if there is a defining characteristic of online RPG nerds it's that one should not use them as models for how to do well in the world.

      Delete
    5. That's a weird confusion:

      Decency -isn't about- ambition or trying to "do well" it's about trying to the right thing. Unrelated things.

      -Performative morality- like Sage LaTorra and his business partner Adam Koebel practiced are about trying to "do well" with certain people. But they'd never admit that.

      Delete
    6. I’m probably not smart enough to have this conversation. It no longer feels productive.

      Delete
    7. Zak's argument style is designed to make you feel that way. He's also an abuser and sex offender! What a neat topic he's chosen to comment on.

      Delete
  2. First I've heard for the Adam Koebel thing; which means my 'completely avoid internet RPG bullshit' strategy for 2020 was a success. I'm going to get a drink to celebrate.

    Two thumbs up for your Age of Dusk awards. The blog is a fairly recent find for me and it's definitely one of the better ones out there in our little neck of the RPG inter-woods.

    And don't beat yourself up for any perceived lack of substantial posting on your own part. Even at the most vapid, your posts stand above the average. And you introduced me to Bret Devereaux's blog; that makes up for any other slacktitude.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just by not being on twitter you can avoid 99% of the bullshit I think.

      Delete
  3. I had to stop reading the Veins of the Earth review in the 2nd part when the reviewer decided that to best get their point across, they'd call Patrick "Fagrick" in all caps. Also went ahead and made sure their blog was no longer in my RSS feed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Splendid. I will to call upon you if my blog ever suffers from a dearth of rat-faced, squeemish, self-appointed moral busibodies.

      Delete
  4. I do not like the concept of cancellation either, and though I only have a superficial observation of this occurrence, the situation of Koebal appears to me a good example of why I think cancellation is bad. It appears that his career has suffered a hit from this and I don't exactly think that a bad slip up should ruin anyone's career. (This doesn't mean that what he did wasn't inappropriate,especially in a live-stream or that I have
    any sympathy with the guy, until now I haven't known about the guy so he could be a good person or totally full of hubris.)
    Yet we've all had times where we have been unintentionally inappropriate, screw up, or unpleasant, but those shouldn't define our lives or our relationships. (Again, it all depends on what the person has done.)
    Personally I find the entire concept of safety tools to be stupid, granted I haven't used them and I play with adults who are okay with mature subject matter so I might be speaking beyond my reach, but I feel instead of fiddling around with complex confusing social snafus that the referee needs to state what are the themes of the game and how intense it is going to be out front, like the rating system in movies. If you walk into a X-rated horror film,then you have a understanding that the movie could have things that could shock you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I basically agree, but there is poetic justice when the person being cancelled has made a point of being so self-righteous and so much a cheerleader for 'cancel culture' in the past.

      Delete
  5. Age of Dusks reviews always make me laugh, been a reader for years. The Kobel cancel was also a perfect example of the scene eating their own.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think I may have said this before but one of the (fair few) things that traditional conservatives and woke types can surely agree on is: just don't have sexual assault or rape appearing in games. It's not complicated.

      Delete
    2. I think in general DnD at least never needs sex or even explicit seduction "on screen", though of course there may be some game relevance to the latter. In some RPGs (thus Far Verona, the Koebel game), I guess you might want edgy content, but it seems like an inherently unstable social dynamic. "Let's get a group of emotionally sensitive arty types together to play a game where intense emotion and complex events are a big element" sounds dumb.

      Delete
    3. I agree sex in RPGs is madness, but I think love stories are SO full of drama/fun potential and SO common in myths/legends/fairytales that I’m surprised there isn’t a fantasy RPG that makes more use of them. (There’s probably some I haven’t played.) Though I don’t think I felt interested in RPing the topic, or remotely competent to DM/play it, till sometime in my 30s... 😂

      Delete
    4. Blue Rose, perhaps?

      I've got no problem with sex happening in an off-screen way but nobody has any business putting sexual assault or rape on or off screen in my view. It is never necessary.

      Delete
    5. I agree. Though it’s when you get into the edge cases of love & consent (the once ever so common bridenapping plots? Love potions? Unhappy arranged marriages?) that it becomes a big messy debate IMHO.

      Delete
  6. This is certainly one I did not see coming. Thank you for your praise sir (and other sirs), and a merry Christmas to you and yours.

    I am torn on Veins. The bestiary is undoubtedly brilliant but the cave generation and the systems that support its implementation seem akward to me.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The problem with your blog is the light gray text on a slightly darker gray background. Up the contrast, you silly Nederlander, so those of us with old man eyes can read it.

    ReplyDelete