Something is wrong with us 40 y/o plus adventure gamers. What is wrong is that the hobby that we have created has turned into a cottage industry for people that don't like escapism. The problem with most of the 40 plus crowd is that either they have been in the business too long or that they haven't gotten out enough into the infantalized culture that is fantasy fandom because of video games and porn. And the problem with that is the people that seek to control our tabletop game culture need a growth market that requires the brand names of anything from the 80s, 90s, Oughts, Tweens, Teens, and Tuesday to pay for their mothers' Netflix account and crates full of Hot Pockets while living in her basement, with their spouses and three kids, the adopted "shelter" piranha, and a throw pillow that looks like Allee Bodily the pornstar, all while being on probation for downloading kiddy porn when they were young and dumb, three weeks ago.
Okay the image above might not be the case. No. I am wrong. 30 something moral and upstanding people with Masters of Business and International Financing, are running conventions for morally upstanding people that want to possibly roll 12-sided dice to hack and slash orks from shiny helm to jewel-encrusted codpiece and steal their imaginary gold pieces. Better yet, there are tons of European paper product and plastics from east Asia adorned by North American artists and authors and packaged in Brazil, Mexico, and Israel to be bought. Oh yeah enjoy all the cosplayers in mini-skirts and kilts that are there because the weather is nice in the air conditioned convention center. Bring the kids because we have face painting. How can people in Indianapolis not get how to sign in on Pacific Time Zone schedules? Gahhh! Peasants! Crappy pizza anybody?
Okay both situations are probably true. Let's just say, what used to be organized by dyed in the wool fantastists is now the milk from a Golden Calf for others that don't have much else to do with their time or to make moneys. Now marketing slips into the mix. Forget the money being made from 2-65 thousand people wanting to show up at table-top game conventions at nice places, where the attendees tip local staff at about 65% higher rates than most other customers. Investors, not fans, require a growth expedient or they want to start capitalizing instead of, you know, invest. So know it's time for KIDS, KIDS, KIDS! Did I forget something? Oh yeah, K-I-D-S. Kids and kid. Even if you don't have kids (anymore), your taste are childish so you must be a CHILD!
Everyone, by law, loves KIDS. Even if there is no one under 18 in your group, you still must be aware of the effect of your fantasy visions on people that are still wanting to be childish. Childish not through roleplaying in your crafted game at a table, but childish on social media accounts on their phones. Your content may be too shocking for them, and therefore they may need to call for ambiguously qualified and officious-minded people to raise some ruckus among strangers and convention coordinators to help their inner child heal. Is there any way to sue a GM? There really ought to be some money involved. The KID should be able to get a Worker's Comp claim for attending a game festival. Pain and suffering assholes! You need some money to dull the pain.
Failing that, there is ostracism. Yeah because tabletop gamers never had to deal with that themselves for their bad ideas ever. They won all the social trophies in High School I hear. I wouldn't know myself, because I became a serious tabletop gamer near college only to get laid by hot chicks all the time. It might've had to do more with the bottle of vodka than that dice bag I had in my hand, but hey. All these D&D-players are nothing but privileged assholes who everyone fawned over in their adolescent yeas, right? So social scorn is totally appropriate by a culture that is treated as always cool to say NFL football fans and Harley Davidson enthusiasts. Makes total sense right?
Okay. It doesn't.
At the same time, I am arguing for some sort of special waiver for pointlessly offensive expression suffering the recourse of its performer's actions. So I am in the wrong. While I don't give a damn that you have kids, if you bring your 9 y/o to my horror game at 11pm, I don't need to lay it on thick-- at least until they're asleep under the table at 12:15am. Even more luckily for me, I already have a lot of females in my life in various roles. I don't have to go all "I don't get out much" every time a woman sits at my table. My older sister, wife, and daughter might find it hilarious, but my mother wouldn't. My games might include sex as a scene closer but don't revolve around the act as the impetus. This is kind of the case even when I don't have a kid or a female at my session anyway. It's just not that hard for me to be creepy without being a creep in a session of Delta Green, COC.
The recrimination of the less than enlightened, though, is not occurring in a mature and reasoned sort of way . It should not be that since people have used the excuse that fantasy is essentially childish, all fantasy should be family friendly. We should remember that fantasy and fantasists existed even before Vampire: the Masquerade LARPers had children or Peter Jacksom made JRR Tolkien a staple for video gamer man-children every where. Old people expressing the most juvenile daydreams has sold short stories, books, comic books, and daytime TV soap operas since... since... well since before Juvenal (He liked Digorno microwavable pizza before it was French). So what if someone is not bound by the constraints of good tastes. There is a fine line between art and camp, and people going on Kickstarter to fund "games" that are essentially single scenarios is as campy as things have ever gotten in our hobby. Very few of those will achieve the brand name recognition or fanfare of all those politically incorrect RPGs (and their authors!) of 1979-1999. The hobby is not anybody's babysitter.
On top of all of the it's time to stop it with this "community" crap in our hobby. We have a sub-culture of American-derived (north American not native) fantasy that came about as parlor games versus map-driven war gaming. The game structure would be more play-pretend than "scenario simulation" (despite what every 'Nard swears). Folks that like it tend to be very well read in various fictional works and fantastic movies and TV series. Outside of brand names though, we don't have that much in common in our values and tastes. That is mostly because the brand names that we developed our tastes on were sold to those unfamiliar with us as an audience to begin with.
Done for now. I'll stop regurgitating this sort rant when people stop trying to be the final say in our shared hobby.
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