#140: What Kind Of Critic Are You Anyway

The long-delayed answer to why I'm doing this newsletter.

I. Dear Reader,

I think I like the idea of being a critic. It feels like a role that comes with respect, maybe even power. But when I think of this critic, I’m imagining a taste-maker, someone who is an arbiter of value. Someone who decides what is good and what is bad. But just one deep breath later: wow, that sounds like a terrible idea. It feels like a terrible idea to want to be that person. Especially when it comes to the invisible art of tabletop roleplaying games.

When I imagine the critic I don’t want to be, I imagine The Contrarian. The Contrarian is a romantic figure - a lonesome, brave voice refusing to be swept along by the masses. But the RPG Contrarian is less romantic. Take the simple statement: “D&D 5e is a bad game.” This is a statement that is simultaneously a contrarian opinion and a conformist one. D&D is the most popular RPG in the world. Thus, criticising it goes against mainstream wisdom, and is therefore, by definition, contrarian. But in indie game circles, there is no horse, living or dead, that has been more beaten. Within that minority group, it is a majority opinion. 

This is not caused by social media but it’s definitely exaggerated by it. On twitter, it’s very possible for someone who loves D&D to feel like “the people who hate D&D” are everywhere. It’s objectively not true but the architectures of social media allow for this situation. Maybe they were even designed for it. There are innumerable contexts - vital contexts - in which being the Contrarian is essential. I’m just not sure RPGs need another one. And if they did, I’m happy to let someone else have the spot.

Now the hard question: If that’s what I don’t want to be, what do I want to be?

Like the Contrarian is a kind of simplified archetype, there are other kinds of critics. We could embark on some elaborate taxonomy, some review of criticism through the ages, and if I was being paid for this article by the word, I might’ve done that. But I’m not. So I won’t.

Instead I’ll skip straight to the words of Anatole France, a fascinating writer and political figure from the 19th/early 20th century. He won a Nobel Prize for literature - I think they were just handing them out in those days. In his opinion, the critic is someone who “relates the adventures of their soul among masterpieces.” 

I think that should resonate with all of us. I mean, after all, it has the word “adventures” in it. It definitely resonates with me. Instead of focusing on whether something is good or bad, it feels like a healthier deployment of my energy to focus on “this is why this wonderful thing is wonderful”. And this is not only because, unlike a professional reviewer, I can choose what I write about. It’s not only because social media slaps us in the face with other people’s opinions all the time when we never asked for it. 

It’s also because, to me, it’s the only honest way to talk about RPGs. 

RPGs are, as the designer Paul Czege describes them, “fragile social constructs”. In a twitter thread that I read every year, Czege writes:

They're dependent on hitting a certain, difficult chord of combined creativity, and group inspiration, and mechanical engagement, and thematic engagement, so that the best of them are hardly different than the worst in failing to deliver on their envisioned play experience for group after group after group.

And so critique after critique of game after game across the hobby are the same - "We were pretty excited about this game; here's the ways it let us down" … And I don't really accept the argument that designers need this kind of critique … Because even say it works, my next game is still going to fail for group after group after group, because of the nature and challenges of social architectures, and will still warrant a "here's the ways it let us down" critique.

Now, at first blush, this might seem pessimistic. But it’s not saying, “It’s a miracle that TTRPGs work at all. By default, the alchemy of fleshy human, written rules, and complex social interaction should result in failure”. It’s saying that because there are so many factors that contribute to how a game session plays out, it’s not a surprise when they don’t meet our expectations.

Basically, if I spent my energy articulating why every game session didn’t meet my envisioned ideal game session, I’d have a lot to write about and be very angry. Wait a minute, this might just explain RPG forums, I might’ve just cracked the whole internet discussion case wide open.

Anyway, jokes aside, France and Czege both end up in similar places: one of the most valuable things you can say about something is how to get the most out of it. By doing this, you attract people to the hobby. You create spaces for existing people to come together and discuss and make sense of their own experiences with games. You move the default narrative away from all the ways the hobby fails - which saps enthusiasm from everyone involved -  and instead mount a deep, generous, passionate defense of the hobby as something worth engaging with.

Yours critically,

Thomas

PS.  This is far from the “toxic positivity” that can sometimes creep up on hobby spaces. Because it’s not positivity that’s the problem. It’s the refusal to engage in anything other than superficial qualities. It’s very hard for genuine engagement with a topic to be saccharine-ly positive.

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II. Media of the Week

• Girl by Moonlight, the long awaited magical girl game from Evil Hat, is coming soon. And Good Enough Games has a nice interview with the designer, Andrew Gillis.

• The Inside The table podcast discusses various things every episode. This particular one has some good stuff about the various ways games create bonds and connections between characters.

• Over on the Yes Indie’d Podcast, I speak to Tan Shao Han, a game designer from Singapore who has worked on Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark’s Dagger Isles supplement, and more. There’s a great story about Shao Han learning D&D from photocopied manuals of old Dragonlance videogames.

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III. Links of the Week

• On the Black Armada Games blog (publisher of Lovecraftesque and Bite Marks, amongst others), a nice article about being a cooperative player: “I personally think that cooperation is the apex skill for roleplayers.”

• An interview that teases some of the design of Guns Blazing, Basheer Ghouse’s game of anti-colonial dieselpunk action.

• On the Mythoi newsletter, a spooky post about Crybaby Bridges: “It’s the witching hour, and you’re standing on a bridge. In theory, disused bridges are a great place to loiter after dark. You feel safe knowing you’d be able to see anyone approaching from either direction… Then, as you stare out into the inky blackness of the night water, you hear a noise.”

• Neat article about using “racing clocks” for a climactic battle i.e. one clock that the players want to fill and one clock they don’t want to fill. Which will fill first - the good clock or the bad clock?

• Kieron Gillen teases apart the design of Trophy Gold in their latest newsletter.

  • The newsletter is primarily about Gillen’s comics (Wicked +Divine, among lots of other good stuff) but has a lot of RPG stuff recently, especially about the DIE RPG (which I am playing a campaign of right now).

  • But apparently, every time RPGs are even mentioned, people unsubscribe! Which is a travesty! Please remedy!

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IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

• Mitosis is a Mothership pamphlet adventure and in-universe board game. Back now on Kickstarter to get your own copy of the “family friendly” game of biological warfare.

• This Mortal Coil, a standalone necromantic space horror setting for Liminal Horror, is 50% off while in public beta. 136 pages of necromantic fun await!

This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.

• A bundle for Hillfolk, the game by Robin D Laws and Pelgrane Press. It’s got the core rulebook and a whole truckload of campaign starters.

• A bundle of Mongoose’s d20 fantasy system, Classic Play.

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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!