On Discourse.
I’ve been writing bits and pieces for tabletop role-playing games for just over a year now and if there’s a single piece of advice I’d pass on to anyone starting anew it’s this: don’t bother with the Discourse.
Capital D Discourse, that is. Discussing, debating, and arguing with fellow creators is part of any art form (especially one so early in its development) but Discourse takes on a very specific meaning in rpgs: Tired, played out discussions and arguments over short form social media platforms that swirl around for months and years, spawning entrenched camps who squabble for so long they can barely remember the original point of division. An exhaustive definition is difficult but once you’ve been around long enough, it’s a bit like porn or fascism - you know it when you see it.
I take the stance that capital D Discourse is, at best, basically never worth engaging in and, at worst, actively damaging to the hobby. This might be an uphill battle persuasively - everyone seems to love the mud pit, popular creators notwithstanding - but hopefully I can provide some alternatives to where we’re at now.
Nothing good comes from Discourse.
I’d like to start off by telling a little story. About 8 (?) months ago, another writer in the industry was being dogpiled on for a poorly phrased tweet that seemed to criticise another game when they really intended to praise it. A number of well known creators joined in on this, even past the point that the original poster had clarified what they had meant. I felt that they had been unfairly maligned and responded to the thread that had been the catalyst for the dogpile. During the same period, I had been talking to a distributor about getting print copies of one of my games sold in their store. Shortly after the response tweet went up, I found that they had blocked me on twitter and from that point they stopped responding to my emails. Clearly they didn’t feel the same way that I did about the situation. As the week passed, the drama faded into obscurity but the bridge remained burned.
The point of this tale is not to say “don’t share what you think for fear of being blacklisted by other people in the industry” but to highlight how easily even a minor infraction can have significant consequences for a small creator. Most distribution operations in the indie ttrpg space are run by one or two people so getting on their bad books can limit you significantly. And I understand that a lot of you upon hearing this will go “well, screw them. I shouldn’t have to limit my speech for their sake” and I agree with you but, fuck it man, I was out of a job at the time and that money would have been really useful to pay bills. Losing out on that just wasn’t worth commenting on a drama that everyone forgot about within the month.
Ultimately, you just have to weigh up what you’re getting out of participating in stuff like this. At best, you might get a bit of clout, which you can achieve anyway by just writing good books. At worst, if someone is having a bad day, misreads what you’re trying to say, or has decided that your opinion on a niche topic within a niche field is worth not engaging with you permanently, you might lose out on future opportunity
(Obviously if you don’t give a shit about trying to make a living from this stuff then this doesn’t really matter and you can go nuts. YMMV, weigh it up yourself).
All Discourse is performative.
Here are three topics that I have seen rotate around twittersphere repeatedly and constantly:
Which ideology produces better roleplaying games, Storygames or OSR/Trad Games?
Is railroading bad gamemastering and/or morally evil?
Does system matter?
These discussions have gone on for so long, have been passed around so many times that I’d stake that almost everything there has to be said about them, has already been said. At this point, the phrase “system matters” may as well be a sleeper agent activation phrase for the majority of internet-brained games writers. Except, instead of doing cool spy shit, they just get really annoying for half an hour. Let’s face it, even if there was more to be said on these topics, you probably won’t be the one saying them.
For my money, these recurring arguments are no longer about advancing discussion in any meaningful way. Rather, participating in them is a form of belief signalling. If I’m an osr/trad creator, for example, I’m likely to extol the virtues of sandbox play and how it produces more meaningful roleplaying experiences because that’s what’s going to play well to my audience (and also because my products reflect these values). It’s marketing, basically.
The easiest litmus test for me on the genuinity of someone trying to push a specific game theory position is to see if they’ve bothered to write anything about it in a more structured, longform medium. Most tabletop creators call themselves writers, so, if they’re committed to discussing these specific topics ad nauseam, why won’t they write an essay about them?
This, I think, may be my biggest concern when it comes to the way that Discourse generally functions. If we want to have serious, ongoing debates about this medium, it makes no sense to host them on short form social media websites that could literally fall apart any day. Blog posts and essays are easy to source, cite, and archive but barely anyone will bother to save twitter/tik tok posts unless they’re looking to call someone out. We can find a topical example of this issue with a recently disgraced creator, Noora Rose. Noora was highly involved in rpg Discourse and, regardless of anyone’s personal opinion of her, it’d be disingenuous to say that she hadn’t made significant contributions to the conversation. Now, post-controversy, her account has been wiped. Everything she ever said on her page, every joke, insult, interaction is gone. Living only in the fallible memories of those who had witnessed them. And this is just a single creator, what happens when Musk fucks up for the last time and the whole website goes under? It happened before with google plus and mark my words it will happen again. Write. Essays.
There is always more happening than meets the eye.
Beef. Ttrpg folks love getting into it almost as much as they hate writing full paragraphs. I’m not entirely sure what makes people in this space so eager to get into flame wars with each other (my working theory is that it’s the explosive combination that so many of them are a) very online, b) queer and, c) leftists) but it seems more common than other niche communities. The trouble you run into, as a new person in the space, is that it’s very difficult to figure out who doesn’t like who, doubly so if you’re not neurotypical or not on the internet as often. There is a web of drama and division that runs across many years, personas, and websites. Some of which no longer exist.
I’m not sure if I can evidence this position, but I’d estimate that a 40% of Discourse begins not because of any legitimate disagreement occurring but because two groups of people who don’t like each other (often for very stupid reasons) have found an excuse to publicly brawl under a proxy argument. Inevitably, unaware spectators get dragged into the mudslinging without the wider context, throwing more kindling on the fire. It’s a mess.
Final thoughts.
Discourse sux. Please write essays. If you do, I will read them and other people will too. If what you write is sufficiently invigorating, they might even write their own in response. I may have failed my English courses but I’m pretty sure that’s how An Academia happens.
Happy holidays and stay frosty.