Well he did ask for it after all...

I've had something of a red flag waved in my face, and it was done with style and humor by Wyatts on The Spirits of Eden blog. I'm rather fond of the description he gives of me there, athough I must object to being thought of as a possible pet. Rather I'd like to think for a bit about what I'd consider awesome pets for myself- but then my wife would give me that evil (and deserved) look and I'd have to switch gears.

So. Red flag, check. Lots of things I can go over the top in expressing my opinion of, check.

Let's go. Let us review Wyatt's likes and dislikes shall we?


He starts off about as well as a hand cart would bolt off the line at a drag race. The White Wolf system? Really? Elegant huh? That's like saying you like the old Soviet five year plans because they had cool charts.

When first introduced, White Wolf proved to the world that you can have a successful game with mechanics that increase your chance of horrible failure as you increase your skill. Thus kicking off the 'style over substance', 'fluff over intelligence' design that has nearly ruled the industry since. Oh they improved on this point a few revisions down the line, but the mechanics are still a muddle mess and the best most players (without resorting to long cheat sheets, if they have them) are able to say with respect to the question "What is your success chance on that roll?" is "better than if I had less dice".

Things don't improve much as he goes from here to diss anything beyond the most general game systems, wishing to lump all weapons together with indentical stats and then extending that to basically everything. Just roll your dice and apply a 'good' or 'bad' modifier if you must seems to be the approach.

This is great, if you like boring games where the mechanics are a passing evil so you can get back to the more important White Wolf idea of whining in the blood you've just spilt about what a monster you are, as you eye the next cute chick you're about to take advantage of...

Wyatts now goes on to note that he likes lots of dice. He better, given that those dice rolling around the table are the most dynamic thing in otherwise bland game system. He furthers this by saying that he really doesn't care what the result is- liking randomly chosen modifiers better than defined methods.

So if he shows up at your table, hand him a bunch of dice and tell him to roll now and then. He'll be happy and you can play the game with players that actually like rpgs...

He was on a good roll with his blog post- but then ruins it with his dislike of behavior mechanics (like insanity systems). Putting something in that I agree with is a freakin' crime. It almost derailed my train of throught and had me saying nice things about him...

...almost.

But we're lucky as he then says he likes narrative techniques. Thus after he's gutted any meaningful game system above- he now goes on to gut the freedom of the GM and players to manage the story of the campaign. Basically leaving nobody any reason to play anymore. Unless they have a dice fetish of some type.

We're now at the end, and the sad thing is that there's no mojo here for me to drain. I may fly out and eat his head, just because.


Now for a more serious note:

I think it's actually worth while for people to do what Wyatt has done here. A overview of a blogger's tastes, likes and dislikes is very useful for readers as they define where the blogger is coming from. I'd like to see such on more sites, with a fixed link to them on the sidebar. One doesn't always have to agree with people to find worthwhile things in their work, but it always helps to know where they stand.

So while I had fun ripping into him above, I'd like to say that I approve of his effort here and hope that he takes it with the humor I intended. He's inspired me to copy him on this point in the future, and I'll be adding a RPG Profile section for myself here soon.