This came up today when someone asked a simple question about paid GMs in RPGs. Why do people pay for them? What’s the deal? It was a very easy question, one that apparently, there are no easy answers to.
Worse, of course, all of the paid GMs freaked the hell out and started screaming that they were being oppressed, because that’s always a thing these days.
But the question remains: why would anyone pay for such a thing? So let’s talk about it.
I’ve run into this a number of times of late and it always amuses me. There are people who will post in a video game subreddit about how unrealistic this is or how they don’t like that and they always want it changed.
Well guess what? It’s a game! It’s not supposed to be absolutely realistic!
Recently, 3-Minute Boardgames did a video on the impact of the global pandemic on game prices and all of the increases in costs and shipping delays associated with it. He begged people to be patient and understanding and while I agree, that’s good advice, I think it’s also a wake-up call to the entire board game industry.
Maybe you’re doing just about everything wrong.
This has become a problem of late, or maybe I’ve just noticed it, but on a lot of video game subreddits that I follow, lots of people have decided that they’re just going to whine about things they don’t like and demand that the devs fix it to match their expectations.
These people are idiots. It’s time they grew the hell up.
This is something that gets talked about a lot and there are a bunch of games that implement survival modes or hardcore modes and in absolutely every one of those cases, I simply opt out. I find no fun in any of that. Yet lots of people act like if you’re not playing the hardest of the hardcore modes, you’re doing something wrong.
Those people are idiots, but here’s why I don’t want to.
Have you noticed this? This seems to be commonplace across nearly all pursuits these days, but the one I want to talk about today especially is role playing. I’ve noticed this nearly every day on places like Reddit and I really don’t get it. For a hobby that relies on being creative, why can’t anyone actually be creative?
