A Dustup over the State of the Hobby

It seems that Joseph over at Greyhawk Grognard has gone ballistic over a new blog written by someone going by the handle of fugaros that is taking wild swings at the RPG Industry as a whole and the OSR specifically.

Joseph comes off more poorly than he should with the sadly typical ad hominem attacks. I wish people realized how much weaker such things make them appear. Fugaros on the other hand is of the RPGPundit school of blogging, i.e. foul language and insults are more common than logic and good writing. In fact, Fugaros is similar enough to Pundit that I wonder if he's a sock puppet or just a student of his.

From where I sit, it's not worth the word count spent so far.

Joseph is right, people are free to do what they want and they answer to only two masters- the Market and their own desires. If they don't care about the former, they're free to do the latter in any way they wish. But that being the case, others may comment on their activities however they want, and it's not worth covering yourself in mud when someone like Fugaros does comment.

Fugaros on the other hand does have good points. The Market is fragmented, and the OSR is stagnant, unimaginative and so badly designed that the OSR actually claims it to be a feature in order to justify it.

Neither conditions are good for the Industry or for the quality of gaming as a whole. But there is little point in being a jerk about it. From what I can tell that's the hobby's natural state. Very few quality games were ever produced and when they were, the Market ignored them for lowest common denominator products.

When the hobby was large enough (early 80s), it could turn out some quality work for those able to make use of it. Take the automobile market as an example. Most will be buying boring and plain cars and trucks, but the Market is big enough to support high quality niche products for those with the money, skill, and need to make use of them.

RPGs aren't big enough for the automobile model. So all you got is the basics these days, and if you despair of that- you can design your own (and be the only one playing it given or take a handful)

Fugaros goes off the rails by thinking he can change this natural state. He can't. No one can. Rather than attacking the OSR guys, or any of the gaming companies- he should be spending his time working on his own stuff.

Yes, I know the OSR stuff is deadly dull, yes I want to see good games too. But one can't change the world, only your own little part of it. Take it from me (as someone who's spent too much time online in the past), doing your stuff  is a lot more fun and more a worthwhile way to spend one's time