Funny thing is, I'm a generalist when it comes to types of games, but a specialist when it comes to genres within that. Like, I pretty much play nothing but tycoon games these days when it comes to video gaming.
The idea that wargaming and RPGs were entirely unrelated hobbies would have been news to my group who thought nothing of getting Kingmaker or Warrior Knights to the table, or playing both WFRP AND Warhammer Fantasy Battles.
I'm not saying this means people can't have an opinion, but I have found a trend where the people I see gushing about Triangle Agency aren't yet in a position to talk about how it actually plays at the table.
The split off of the Warhammer people came later; probably started around 1998 with the third edition of 40k.
I really starting to notice that the community was starting to silo off from each other with the rise of Eurogames (who were indifferent to hostile to what had been hobby gaming before) and MtG (who had a lot of people who only wanted to play MtG).
There's something to be said for the (pre Catan) days where "hobby gaming" generally included boardgames, RPGs and wargames (board and minis), later on CCGs and most gaming groups did at least two of those things. (Megagames, PBM and LRP were always more "hardcore" gaming geek).
I'm enough of a boardgame nerd to have taken sides in ye olde Ameritrash wars.
This is why I simply don't think that devolution works as a long term prospect. It's entirely reliant on the goodwill of Westminster and we have now seen both a Tory and Labour government commit to "muscular unionism" in short succession.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The Speccy still has an active programming community as well - itch.io/games/tag-zx...
I remember the brilliant but utterly confusing Captain Blood coming out of the French scene.
I think my problem is it looks like a really good game, but the bits it's streamlined and taken out from Pendragon are the very same bits that made me love Pendragon.
Also the 8 bit era invented the Sims genre (little computer people) and arguably the sandbox game (Skool Daze). As you can probably tell, I'm heavily involved in the ZX Spectrum community.
Even the stuff that didn't have the capacity is just glorious because of its ambition. Have you played The Hobbit? They tried to make a living breathing world with autonomous NPCs that did things in real time. Obviously, they didn't manage it, but what a spectacular failure.
I think my favourite thing about The Spider is how he flips from "I do this for the thrill and I will not let innocent policemen fall to their deaths" to "I will destroy all who oppose me and torture my minions for cheek" halfway through the comic strips without any explanation whatsoever.
Albion was the start of me really tumbling down the rabbit hole into reading classic comics rather than just rereading Misty again. I first discovered everyone from The Spider to Janus Stark in there. Highly recommend it.
(Guy Debord)
"Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his (sic) expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. "
One of many harmful effects of AI is that its malign nature has drowned out discussion of creative kinds of plagiarism and how they're actually a positive.
As an aside, I'd even argue that the constraints to old school video games frequently make them better made because designers had to have proper focus. Compare to "sandboxes" with fuck all to do. I still rate Gollop's tactical combat games over 90% of what's available now.
I'd say that with RPGs the rules say what you can do and the setting/genre says what you can't. It's that dichotomy that makes them what they are.
It's also why I don't argue for "rulings not rules", I argue for either "frameworks for rulings" or "codify everything as it arises".
As an aside, when I see 16 year olds outside the local college today I'm slightly terrified quite how young I was when I threw myself into all that stuff, although I didn't feel it at the time. (Looking back, I was definitely protected from the rough stuff by the 20 something activists.)
Notably, the Quakers never told me my abandonment of non violence meant I needed to leave. It was me that felt it incompatible (in a way my agnosticism never had been).
This is incredibly Quaker, but the Poll Tax Riot. Specifically realising that not only was I not sad the old bill had got a hiding, I was rather pleased about it. I was hanging round with Class War within six months of that, a signed up member of Anti Fascist Action within the year.
Termination Shock. An absolute gem of a sci fi game. About ordinary Joes and Janes, not spacefleet captains. Also about cultural misunderstandings and understandings. It's aliens are way more "alien" than in most games (not just humans with bumpy foreheads) and yet they're still *people*.
Advanced Fighting Fantasy. A worthy successor to the gamebooks, with rules that are straightforward but modular enough to make your own. An extensive support line solidifies this as one of my favourite high fantasy games.
Romance of the Perilous Land. A very nice game focused on British folklore. Lots of Arthurian legends and local tales. Remarkably heroic and optimistic without a shit covered peasant in site. I thought this @voxparlour.bsky.social chappie was supposed to be BOSR?
Making History. Lovely collection of three historical/alt historical scenarios. Comes with its own ruleset - narrative and focused on character development. A great introduction for those new to historical games.
Metagene. Superhero RPG with lots of options in character gen. It's solid enough, but there's nothing about it unusual or exciting either.
Comparing the practically cuddly Something Awful now to what they were like back then is telling as well.
I also previously did a thread on why I think the "progressive Vampire theater kids against reactionary old grognards" narrative is overly self serving - bsky.app/profile/flin...
Lost Souls. A dark comedy game about being dead. I like it a lot; it feels like a lost strip from 2000 AD or something. Wraith without the angst.
