Skip to main content

#RPGaDay2018 Day 8: How can we get more people playing?

I'm not sure I actually care about more people playing. Arguably, we have a problem where we have too many people playing, because it's clear that there are amazing shitlords that actively work to drive away others. I think rather the question is, how do we get good people playing? And the answer is, either explicitly or implicitly, to excise the toxicity currently present to make the gaming space welcoming to new people, especially women and People of Colour. Make gaming *un*welcome to people who are hurtful, either on purpose or on accident. Make it clear that gaming is only welcoming to people who are interested in being collaborative and friendly with others. That bad behaviour will not be tolerated, and bad actors aren't welcome until they get their shit together.

I'm not sure why we want more people playing. Because what I want is the people who want to be playing, playing. And the people who want to be shitlords, not playing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Organizing And You: Lessons from Labor History

    I made a joke on Twitter a while ago: Do I need to post the Thomas M Comeau Organizing Principles again? https://t.co/QQIrJ9Sd3i — Jerome Comeau says Defund The Police (@Heronymus) July 15, 2021 and it recently came back up because a member of my family got their first union job and was like "every job should be offering these sorts of benefits" and so I went ahead and wrote down what I remember of what my dad told me. My father had many jobs, but his profession was basically a labor union organizer, and he talked a lot about the bedrock foundation items needed to be serious about organizing collective action. Here's what I remember.    The Thomas M. Comeau Principles of Organizing -- a fundamental list for finding and building worker solidarity from 50 years of Union Involvement. This list is not ranked; all of the principles stated herein are coequal in their importance. Numbering is a rhetorical choice, not a valuation. 1) Be good at your job. Even in...

#RPGaDay 2018 Day 19: What music enhances your game?

Again, this really depends on the game and whether or not I'm playing or running or what have you. The RIFTS game I just storyran leaned heavily on Tell That Devil by Jill Andrews and Neko Case's Hold On, Hold On  for mood and setting. Sometimes, I think about themes for my characters. I had a dwarven knight that used to ride around humming Shostakovich's 5th . And there's a good chance that my newest character will hum chiptunes to themselves, since they're a robot.

#RPGaDay 2017 -- Day 7

What was your most impactful RPG session? This is actually pretty tough for me, because there are several issues around this question. Including the definition of "impactful", which I imagine is on purpose, to get the biggest response. The thing is, my table has always been a place for interesting things to happen to the player , rather than the characters. Sometimes interesting things happen to the characters, but that's not the point of playing -- the point is to make sure that the players are having a good time. So 'impactful', in my book, means moments when the players all sit up and gasp/cheer/react in some way. So I don't know about the "most", but I can tell you about the "latest": when one of my players, a normally-quiet and careful player, decided that his character would take center stage, make a speech, and pull everyone into talking  out of trouble, instead of fighting. Which, given we're playing RIFTS, was a pretty awe...