I Hate Fun- One Year Later

The original.

Has it been a year already?

All this time later, I still get many hits from the TVTropes website, and a couple weeks back the SomethingAwful forums seemed to be interested as well (interested in ridiculing it, to be exact). The thing has gotten all sorts of people linking to it, and even many people emailing me to tell me how wrong I am... almost like they're pleading with me to change my mind.

The original essay was first written in 2007 to be the intro of an issue of my heavy metal zine, decrying the download culture and 'that album was great... but what will I listen to tomorrow?' transitory nature of a fanbase that seemed to put no real value in the music forming the basis for their scene and in many cases their lifestyle. My marriage was dying fast at the time of the first writing, and that surely impacted how it came across. (Oh hell, I've already told a couple people so I might as well say it... that first part was about my ex.)

One year later, seeing the arguments about 4e and how the edition wars were raging, I saw similarities in the fanbases of metal and RPGs. The two seem to share quite a bit. Rewriting the second half of the essay to turn it into a rant about RPGs instead of heavy metal was easy. The I Hate Fun name was invented at this time and it was nothing more than a catchy title for the post. At that time, I had just moved to Helsinki and was effectively homeless, sleeping on a married couple's floor in a one room apartment. That surely impacted how it came across.

So here we go. I've not looked at I Hate Fun in many months, and so I will see it with fresh eyes, putting another wild year's perspective on it, maybe explaining things that were not well explained the first time around, and perhaps even noting where my views now differ.

Ready?

I do not hate fun, and I have to think that anyone that really took the title literally is a moron, and I suspect that many of the people trying to argue with me about it and ridicule me for it didn't read much more than the title and maybe a couple paragraphs.

What I do hate is the use of "fun" as any sort of objective thing, as many do when discussing RPGs. "Fun" does not mean anything in a universal sense; saying something is fun, or not fun, is as objective as saying, "I like peas." Yet people, especially online, will argue about things that are fun, or not fun, as if making the proclamation that something is fun somehow wins an argument. It does not - it kills discussion and argument. Invoking "fun" in any explanation or reasoning equals sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "I'M NOT LISTENING I KNOW BETTER THAN EVERYONE LALALALALALALALALA."

Using the word "fun" in any meaningful way requires quite an explanation of what is meant by fun. The original I Hate Fun is in a lot of ways simply an essay describing what it is I do, and do not, mean by fun.

The very idea of wanting to be entertained is an exercise in self-nullification.

Perhaps a better way of putting this is, "The very idea of wanting to be passively entertained is an exercise in self-nullification." I do believe that things you put effort into doing are far more rewarding than things that you just sit back and receive. And the things that really excite me compel me to get more and more involved in them. I can't play an instrument, but I couldn't very well just be a metal listener. I had to do more, be involved, and thus I started my zine. Role-playing is quite work and time-intensive on its own, but I couldn't just stand to be a player. I had to referee. And beyond that, become a commentator and a writer and a publisher.

I can’t socialize. I won’t.

This is not true. I can. I just hate doing it. It's probably worse these past three and a half years in Finland, since I haven't picked up either of the languages all that well (curse the ubiquity of English!). But I can go out and hang out and enjoy myself, but after it's done I feel like I've wasted my time. Nothing's been accomplished. I just need a few people to bounce ideas off of and to tell wild stories to (and to hear wild stories back). After that, other people are kind of... superfluous? Thinking about it from 'outside,' it sounds horrible, but I've long said that "Good music is better than people," and certainly I'd rather curl up with a good book than have a social life. And for the last six months I've been living with someone I care for very much so that makes it easier to not seek more companionship... but let me tell you, never having a day alone is very frustrating.

But I don't consider gaming to be "socializing," because it's not just idle conversation (not supposed to be, anyway... I know I go on about irrelevant shit at the start of sessions here, but that's mainly to repeat stories that have already amused Maria, and far be it from me to only tell an amusing story once...), but actually doing something.

Now more about fun:

People want to be entertained by their role-playing, people want to sit down and get what they want out of it every time, and they want it quickly. They don’t want to work for it, and they don’t want to risk that it won’t happen when they try to play.

This is how I’ve come to interpret people when they use the word “fun” in relation to role-playing games. People wanting quick-fix, feel good entertainment exactly as they like it with as little effort as possible.

And I hate it.

Well that's all defined right there, isn't it?

A lot of the post at this point was basically being against the idea that role-playing was all about wish-fulfillment power fantasy. As I later wrote, "I'm in a different hobby than all these other folks." To me, sitting down playing pretend in order to compensate for inadequacies in real life is very, very sad.

There was also discussion about encouraging more "lifers" and less casual players. Now I'm not against casual players. I'm against them setting the tone for games. But of course what that means can become clouded. I would certainly never consider D&D, as it's been published for the past 10 years, as being aimed at a casual gamer. Not with all those expensive books and ridiculous list of character powers and detail to be kept track of. But undoubtedly the focus on temporary effects, healing surges, and other features of the 4e system are to encourage a certain sort of faster-paced play that's more generally appealing.

Take the introduction to Mentzer’s Basic Set. It is the finest introduction for D&D that was ever penned, explaining the basics of everything from classes and their abilities to combat in just seven pages – of storyform prose, not rules blather. And the first-time D&D player has an 80% chance to fail that saving throw against Bargle’s spell. An 80% chance of losing. Aleena dies. You can’t save her. You must run from the ghouls or you die. Some would say that traditional Dungeons and Dragons was poorly designed because first level characters were weak and that there was an uneven playing experience. It never seems to occur to these people that traditional Dungeons and Dragons was designed perfectly and that play experience was intentional. Mentzer’s introduction shows what Dungeons and Dragons is all about, and it’s not flashy heroism. It was never about that until Gygax was removed.

I spent a lot of time talking about and around this, but this sums up my feelings on danger, success, and the D&D experience. This is a statement of fact as far as I'm concerned, and not an invitation to discussion.

I've been accused of One True Wayism. Well... it's my blog. My way. If it's really that offensive to you... stop coming here!

It's a pain in the ass to deal with people who have a "been there, done that, and found it immature" attitude when they don't even know where there is or what that even entails. Fucking hell, it's like someone not wanting to visit China for the Olympics for fear of the fallout from the two atomic bombs that got dropped there during World War II.

Yes, I know that China was not the country that got nuked in World War II. I typed this bit correctly and purposefully. People seriously used that line as evidence that I am a fool, when they are the ones completely missing the point of what is being said here.

Gosh, looking back there's so much good stuff here. I was half-expecting to look back on this and cringe a lot. But while the original post does jump from point to point a bit, and some of the wording isn't so flattering, I will stand behind the original post and its meaning 100%. And I love this bit:

The purpose of standing up and making noise is for the silent crowd that watches from the sidelines. We need to make sure our game isn't defined by people who don't like it, we have to be visible and make noise so these people see the earlier versions of the game are being played and are perfectly viable options for them. We have to make sure they know there is a history and a legacy and a depth to this hobby which can be explored. That there is life in this hobby beyond the shiny new release, which is to be given up once the trademark overlords decide it has outlived its usefulness and decides to create an even shinier, newer release. The silent crowd should always be reminded that the "industry" can never dictate the possibilities at their game table.

So I guess I don't understand the uproar. I defined my terms and made my argument. Why are people so threatened by the idea that someone will have a firm opinion on a subjective matter and then say so in their own space?

I ended with song lyrics last time, but I can't think of a good whole song to end with this time. So... here are bits of two!

When time is ripe to revive the past
Let us see who stands triumphant

"A Tale of Pagan Tongue" from Borknagar's The Olden Domain

We're fighting by the dawn
We're fighting after sunrise
We fighting for a chance to see our life to be
And you won't take us alive

We're fighting in the dark
We're fighting after midnight
We're fighting for a fantasy reality
In case our dreams are right

On we fight!

"Fighting" from Pharaoh's The Longest Night

"(awaiting your quote to be inserted after you read the post, just like last year, Matt...)" - Matt Johnsen

It Begins Again - One Year Later

A year ago, I had just moved to Helsinki from Vaasa and I made a flyer to gather up a group in my new city. It took a little bit of time before play began, but the campaign continues... we just had our latest session this past Sunday.

Is This How D&D Is Supposed to Be Played? - One Year Later

This post was one of my first "famous" (as in, linked and talked about elsewhere) blog posts, done just four days after starting the blog. It got nominated and accepted for the Open Game Table anthology before I even knew that the project existed, so somebody thought it was more than fodder for that day's boredom-breaking flame wars. Hell, it ended up being discussed on Paizo's message board last week!

It's been a long year of odd living situations and personal weirdness, not to mention a lot of reading, discussing, and arguing about role-playing matters. I'm going to go through and quote bits from the original article and give my thoughts on them... ONE YEAR LATER!

One of the positive effects of Gary's passing was that many were inspired to play old versions of D&D as a tribute and memorial to him. I think that opened a few eyes to how good the old games actually are.

Recently there's been a bit of a tendency for people to claim that 4e is the major cause and booster for the Old School Renaissance. Well, they claim that dissatisfaction with it has driven people to the old games. While some of that is obviously going on (although I suspect any backsliders who were expecting to enjoy 4e are more likely to stick with 3.x or move to Pathfinder than come our way), I think Gygax's death is a more important catalyst. Boards like Dragonsfoot and Knights'n'Knaves have been around forever, and all the major simulacra were around or announced long before Gygax died or 4e was even announced, but it was Gygax's death that pushed the blogging into high gear (... inspired Grognardia anyway, which seems to be both a direct inspiration for others to start their own blogs, as well as being the best place to find them), resulting in a greater visibility for the whole thing. I don't think it's wrong to say that the established old-school boards aren't the best environments for newcomers to jump in and splash around, nor the most constructive place to present ponderings of a more philosophical or experimental nature.

I really wish that these modules had been designed and released with less consideration as to how nice they'd be for a session or three's adventuring, and more consideration for what they displayed concerning the game as a whole.

Modules are a tricky beast. They have to be self-contained, but at the same time the good ones have to communicate the "campaign" factor. I've been trying to reconcile the two with my own projects as they come closer to release. I see that others (although this is not an absolute) still release adventures in the "self-contained good for one-shotting" mindset, which is not productive in the long run.

Ryan Dancey's "20 minutes of fun packed into four hours"

I still don't know which 20 minutes were supposed to be the fun. Looking at how 3.x is set up, I have my suspicions, and that stuff has never been the fun for me, and I tend to design adventures to turn that sort of fun on its head. But we'll have more reminiscing about fun in a couple weeks, won't we?

Matthew Finch's The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom

I was rather unkind to this module, and I should address that. In the past year, I've run this module for my group, so my opinions on it are far more credible than they were last year. Finch is a master of presenting weird situations and ideas that really get players involved and interested. There are plenty of individual bits of Pod-Caverns that had them quite invested in the situation (and one of the characters, months of real time later, still has to speak in rhymes). Many of Finch's Eldritch Weirdness spells prove his talent at coming up with odd yet eminently gamable ideas, and his City Encounters has much the same flavor.

But the Pod-Caverns as a whole just didn't come together for me. It seemed like a lot of the weird stuff was in there just to be weird, and all these great individual details didn't make sense as part of the same environment. Not to mention that the Shroom didn't seem to have a tight grip on his own home caves so believing he was a threat to outside communities (as briefly offered in the module's intro) didn't seem right... so in my game, I made the Pod-Caverns the connecting point between a cavern where a brownie was trying to protect his fox-coup from the giant chicken in the mushroom forest, and a rip-off of SSOC's Valley of Howling Shadows (talk about a diverse selection off odd...), with no pod-men territorial encroachment.

And I still think that dwarf gag is frickin dumb!

That said, I am very interested in The Spire of Iron and Crystal, since the bit of buzz about it I've heard makes it sound like it's full of the odd stuff that Finch does well, and just might all be housed in an environment to make it all ring true as a package. Now to find it in a way that doesn't involve Lulu or an upcharge. :P

(not that fully-described locations are anything to sneeze at - it's the only reason why I haven't released module after module yet... but I can make up something marked "Location 10. Kitchen" just fine in play with no written text, I just have trouble sitting down and writing a publishable and complete description for such a room... shit... I wonder if I should just release modules without all that description? 38746238742638742 releases in the next month, here I come!)

I still believe that a published adventure should flesh out its location descriptions (and relationship between various entities therein), popularity of the one-page dungeon notwithstanding.

B1 In Search of the Unknown

You know... I would run this today, and it was a location in my Olden Domain game... at least until someone figured out my thinly-veiled rumors about it and informed me they know the module.

B4 The Lost City

I've seen it since then, and it really does look like a lot of work to make it live up to its potential. Just as-is, it is far too simplistic and small to really evoke the atmosphere it could. Again, I feel providing all that detail is the entire utility of a module... else why not put that effort into my own creation?

Hmm. There was a lot less commentary on that old post than I'd have thought. Perhaps I was more clear-headed writing that post than certain others. I'll just reproduce the final bits from one year ago, because I still believe they are very true today:

To focus on reproducing the worst and most cliche elements of traditional gaming is not a celebration of days gone by, but a bastardization of it, and it plays right into the hands of what the detractors ignorantly claim the game is all about.

With the attention that traditional gaming has gotten from the passing of the progenitors, and the division caused by the new edition of what claims to be D&D these days, there is a chance here for a renaissance of commercially feasible and creatively vibrant products. If we don't take advantage of that, then all we have is nostalgia and if all we're doing is reminiscing about a "better time" then the only place we'll go is away.