Of Kaiju and Men

"Good Hunter... May you always remember: Even during the most violent, manic nights, one may find beauty all the same."

It’s a certified banger y’all!!

It's the start of a globetrotting adventure through the Monsterverse! Join Kevin and Kayla as they discuss Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - Episodes 1-2 (2023).

"I don't know this game super well"

"You don't have stats for missile?"

So in order to keep getting the full evil karma experience, every time I do something convenient or utilitarian that raises my karma I go back to Moriarty’s Saloon and just open his terminal over and over again.

The number of people willing to accept players who won't read the rules even though they come back week after week is bizarre - you wouldn't accept it for any other game, and RPGs are just a kind of game! If the rules of one game are 'too complex' just switch to a different game! If they claim they 'don't have time' - cancel one session. That 3 hour block is now dedicated game-learning time, and 3 hours is plenty. Easy.

See, "RPGs are [...] a kind of game" is where the disconnect lies. There's a large chunk of the present D&D fandom who don't think of tabletop RPGs as games; they think of them as performances being put on by the GM for the audience of the players, who – like any audience – are obliged only to be physically present. In this understanding, the "game-ness" of the activity is part of the performance – i.e., the GM is merely pretending to moderate a game with rules as an act of kayfabe; there's no point learning the rules because there aren't "really" rules to learn.

(Partly this is a product of folks coming to the hobby whose sole prior experience is with high-production-value podcasts, where the GM actually is an entertainer putting on a show for an audience, and often a professional actor to boot; partly it's a product of Hasbro attempting to market D&D as a zero-entry-barrier hobby by framing the GM not as a fellow player with special responsibilities, but as a volunteer service provider whose job is to facilitate other people playing D&D.)

City Council of Darkness, Episode 13: A Symposium and a Song

Beware a smiling Nixon.