Banned Wands

banned wands

I wish any time anyone went to post anything on any sort of social media, a little Jiminy Cricket would check it and then—if needed—physically hop up on their shoulder and go “That’s gonna be hurtful, y’know. Do you really wanna post it?”

Oh man there are so many reasons for this though.

First of all, the primary determining factor of whether or not you get to tabletop at all isn’t group cohesion, it’s pure logistics. When you’re still in school you typically have the most access to peers, but the least agency over those logistics. Your schedule and most spaces you have access to are controlled by adults: parents and school faculty/admin, both groups which have historically been biased against the hobby by stigma. Meanwhile third spaces have been vanishing since last century. So when you do manage to find that unicorn scenario where you have any group that can meet in a place and time accessible to you… if you wanna game, you take it.

Then there’s the social politics of nerd communities which is so, so often an absolute cesspool. None of us have time to unpack all of it, just. Voice any opinion about Star Wars in public, experience the fallout of that, and then remember that’s mainstream nerds. It’s a minefield of sexists, racists, queerphobes… finding people you like in that mess is already a Time. Let alone ones you actually game well with.

On top of all of that, the most ubiquitous and well known ttrpg is That Dragon Game. Which is not accessible or approachable to newbies and is heavily stigmatized. It’s a huge barrier of entry for the entire hobby, and the people most likely to get past that barrier are people interested in a wargame moreso than folks interested in narrative and roleplay. So a lot of folks who would enjoy the hobby never get into it and the crowd who does is often put through the very specific filter of a game that does nothing to actually foster group cohesion and mechanically incentivizes munchkin mentality.

So yeah. TL,DR: playing make believe but with dice is way harder than it should be and the best solutions I can see are to invest in third spaces and continue promoting other gaming options besides That One to appeal to a wider audience. The more accessible the hobby is, the better your options are for who to partake in it with will be.

it's always so alarming looking at the notes on posts about people's cool experiences with ttrpgs and seeing the sheer number of people saying something along the lines "unfortunately this relies on the assumption that the players aren't huge shithead assholes who are actively trying to fuck each other over and make sure their gm has a bad time."

like. yeah, it sure does. that's kind of a baseline assumption for me, the same way that when I invite friends to a potluck I feel perfectly safe assuming that no one is going to spit in the food. do you guys actually like the people you're doing recreational activities with? blink if you need help.

as a knitter, you start to notice how rare it is for characters in tv shows and movies to knit correctly. from worst to best, it ranges from:

- laughably incorrect, just flinging yarn around

- knitting the most basic scarf incredibly slowly because the actor Learned How To Do It For The Role

- old lady actresses casually knitting an intricate lace pattern while doing a monologue

- gromit from wallace and gromit

worrying is like worshipping the problem

Extra geezer points to me for reading this and thinking “it’s actually called Dragostea Din Tei…”

do kids these days know abt numa numa