Why are we letting our hobby (and civilization) be destroyed?

9-17-25

Why are we letting our hobby (and civilization) be destroyed?

First, I would like to express my sorrow for the unjust, insane, and evil slaying of Charlie Kirk. May God rest his soul and give his family strength in this dark time.

He did not deserve this untimely end by a mentally disturbed coward who felt violence was an appropriate response to his inability to debate in the most basic, civilized, intellectual fashion.

When I was first introduced to roleplaying games (TTRPG, as it is referred to these days), I was about twelve years old. It was 1980. My cousin and a friend at school - two different occasions/sources - opened up for me the amazing fantasy world of AD&D, D&D (the red box), and Villains & Vigilantes. I actually think V&V might have been the next summer. It all gets a little blurry after so many years.
Anyway, before good special effects in movies and tv (not all shows were bad, but the immersion was just not there), before non-basic pixel video games (I am talking PRE-Mario Bros.), all we really had were things like books, sports, Atari, boardgames, cards, darts, pool, pinball, music, rollerskates, bikes, our imaginations in the backyard, ...and D&D.

I still remember the smell of a new book or module at Walden Books, in the mall. The thrill of opening it up for the first time. Excitedly skimming through the pages before settling down on the sofa or my bed, a Faygo Rock & Rye soda on the endtable, to begin reading from cover to cover. The maps, the traps, the monsters
(yes, Orcs were and still are monsters. They were created by an evil deity and are beyond redemption or compassion. Period. Hunt them down wherever they dwell, whenever they breed, whatever they do. They are basically demons made manifest),

and once in awhile... the plot. While, in my opinion, some stories were just dumb (and in the case of Barrier Peaks, didn't really have any place in a fantasy game), others were pretty good. Prime example - Ravenloft.

We used to play every weekend. Sometimes, during the week, too. A few friends, a few pizzas, way too much soda and crackerjack, and we had the makings of a fun night that transported us into a realm of danger, excitement, treasure, achievements, and glory. Hunting orcs, infiltrating thieves' guilds, spelunking into deep dark caverns, tomb raiding, sailing against pirates, sailing For pirates, taking on quests to find religious artifacts, save the noble's daughter, find that Holy Defender sword for the Paladin, or (trying) to slay the black dragon terrorizing the peaceful farming valley. It was a non-stop ride through adventure after adventure.

Now add other genres to the mix. TTRPGs about superheroes, superspies, an apocalyptic future of wars fought by tribes of bikers and cars, giant battle robots you pilot from inside, investigating Lovecraftian horror mysteries, actual space operas, cowboys and marshals, psionics, you name it. Most of them very enjoyable games, depending on your personal tastes. Many of those RPGs actually improved our skills in math, language, writing, accounting, cartography, public speaking, teambuilding, tactics, history, engineering, or a few dozen other fields. These weren't video games. We had to work at it for success. Or just to learn the game. But most importantly, it helped us to make friends and be part of a community that welcomed outcasts, geeks, nerds, spazzes, and all the rest of the awkwardites. Then companies like Wizard of the (Left) Coast bought some of the RPGs. At first, we were pleased (well, maybe half of us). TSR had a bad falling out. 2e AD&D was not the hit they were hoping for. The company had been sued some years prior and was struggling. We really thought one day soon, they would be done and we'd only have our books and nothing new ever again.

Then 3rd edition came out. I admit, I was cautious at first, but then I came to really like it. I think they fixed a lot of grey areas and conflicts in the old rules. They added a fair amount to character building and flavor. It just seemed like an upgrade that was long overdue. I mean, the diehard BECMI guys hated it, but my counter argument is that we were already using damned near everything out of Dragon Magazine anyway - from new classes to crit charts to skills and feats - so why not just officially bundle it all up into some revised hardback books and get the party restarted?

And that's what they did. Next they printed a fair amount of decently good content over the next several years, which also sparked a creative restart by third parties like Mongoose, Green Ronin, Paizo, and other companies back in the day. In my opinion, they made some really good stuff.

But then WotC decided to try to create a whole new D&D (4e). It failed. Badly. It felt like someone who played too much World of Warcraft tried to dumb down D&D into a min/max build system. I read through a friend's copy of the player's handbook. That was enough for me. Total garbage. Most other folks in the hobby felt the same way. So, into the dustbin of history it quickly went. For most of us.
We continued playing 3/3.5e.

Next came D&D 5e, to which many of us older gamers asked "Why?"
They claimed it was streamlined, simplified, quicker to make characters, easier to understand, blah, blah, blah...
That was a lie. They just changed around some of the 3e mechanics, added some unnecessary gimmicks (like advantage rolls), and then began to slowly reshape the community itself. This is where the social engineering crap began. First quietly, by inches, forcing more ghey stuff on us, the normalizing of evil, reshaping the game into something more anime, gonzo, furry, perverted... and far less about honor, chivalry, good, righteousness, guardianship, and defending the weak.

Finally, over the last few years this was getting done far more loudly, obnoxiously, and with a whole lot of deceit, vitriol, and bigotry. The original outcasts have once again become the outcasts, but from their own subculture. Hence, the Grognard/OSR movement - our war against this insanity, to retain the greatness of our hobby, in the face of such mental illness and sick hatred.

Along the way, other games began to shift, too. Such as PathFinder (which is really just a D&D 3e ripoff but with added rules, spells, effects, gimmicks, etc.). It is a way over-encumbered version of D&D. Nothing more. The more I play PF 1e, the more I see it.
And lately, I have just been growing weary of their whole system. PF seems to train the DM (PM? GM? PFM?) to roll for EVERYTHING. Which is just dumb and lazy.
For example, Perception. This is a skill that was added first via Dragon magazine, I think, in 2nd edition? Then after 3rd edition. It has been used by many other RPGs since the 70s, though. Used correctly, it is a very useful skill. I discovered this playing Eden Systems games such as AFMBE (All Flesh Must Be Eaten), Buffy, and Conspiracy X.
Now, Perception is generally based on your wits. Your common sense intuition of your surroundings. In other words, it is a situational awareness skill. Are you as sharp as a Navy SEAL? Or as clueless as the Three Stooges? Specifically... what did you "notice"? That is what this skill is used for. To NOTICE something, at the edge of where your five senses and your subconscious meet.
Example, "You walk through a room. Nothing really amiss. But... (roll Perception, succeed) you back up a few steps and look closer at a bookshelf as something niggled at your attention and then you see it. The Necronomicon, shoved deep in the shelf between two larger books."
THAT is how you use Perception.
Now, do not mistake me. Some skills are 100% necessary. If you want to sail a ship, you need sailing. If you want to effectively ride a warhorse, you need Riding 'and' Handle Animal (in my games, at least). If you want to try and quickly figure out what some wizard is chanting, you must have knowledge arcana or spellcraft AND be a fellow MAGIC caster (not a cleric, shaman, etc.)(Clerics do not cast spells - they Pray for divine intervention). Now, it may be possible for a cleric to have studied arcana, in which case I would allow a tougher Knowledge Arcana roll (but not Spellcraft).
The same logic applies to spellcrafting a Cleric who is currently casting a divine spell. If you're a mage type without an aptitude for divine casting (ie, you have one or more levels in a cleric type class), or Knowledge Religion and Spellcraft, you won't be getting a roll to determine what (prayer) spell the cleric is casting.
See, some skills make sense. But you have to Use them sensibly. GMs are the ONLY anchor in RPGs that keep the games from becoming utter dogpiles of illogical, chaotic, nonsense. Most players hate nonsense. If the game sessions are already challenging, never make it harder (ie, worse) by tossing in the nonsensical without a damn good reason. "Because it's in the rules" is not a good reason if it contradicts logic, physics, reality, common sense. GMs must use the rules as a guideline and Think for Themselves. Make a smart decision. Use your own wisdom. Stand by it.
Here is another example of the subtleties that escape too many GMs these days. A player wants to 'climb' a wall. They do not have Climb or Athletics. But they do have Acrobatics. So... that's a no. No skill bonus to add. Acrobatics are not for wall "climbing." The player would just roll and add his Strength bonus, and hope for the best.
Same player wants to parkour (sp?) his way up a 10' wall. NOW you can use Acrobatics (or just Dex bonus). Do you see the difference?
Logic Must have a place in RPG mechanics. Just rolling dice cannot resolve everything. And some skills are just not suitable for what players might think they are. And sometimes, you don't need to roll at all. Unless they are blind, just tell them what they see. If they want to do a simple action, like climb up a sturdy 8' ladder, unless they are being attacked or in an earthquake or something similar, the player should NOT need to make a climb check to go up a short ladder. Yes... that happened to me once.
In the last decade and a half, many GMs have gotten very lazy and have players roll for everything. Perception is the worst of the lazy.
Example, "Hey, GM. I am looking at that bookshelf across the room (bookshelf only contains maybe a dozen books). What books do I see?" GM, "Roll Perception."
No! That is not how you use that skill. That's just stupid. You either tell the player exactly what they see, or you tell them they cannot make out the titles or see well enough from where they are - which necessitates the character moving Closer to the bookshelf. You don't roll a Perception.
Perception essentially replaced Spot and Listen, but vaguely. It really is just situational awareness. Spot and Listen were separate skills because they are, well, separate skills. You might have great hearing and sucky eyesight. Or vice versa. You might have good peripheral vision, but are tone deaf. So Listen and Spot were separate. Now, I never agreed with the OD&D concept that you had to be a thief type to have these skills. But, thief types should have a class bonus to those skills. In my opinion, so should Rangers. Any class that truly relies heavily on hearing and/or sight, like rogues, hunters, certain sailing professions (just sight for those guys), should have a bonus to that basic skill because they use it more. The distant sense-perception, I mean. And strolling around in jingling, clinking armor and a ruck should reduce the Listen skill. Common sense logic.
Another example is in a modern game I played recently. Driving a car. The character is American, early 30s, grew up around cars, has an automotive repair skill, and a driving skill. Now... the driving skill (in any other game) is for difficult maneuvers. Drifting, bootleggers, hard 90 or 180 turns, driving 90 thru a narrow residential zone, offroad in a hurry (or just in bad conditions like mud or sand). Stuff like that. The drive skill is Not intended to roll a check when driving 30 mph, slowing down, and making a normal left hand turn onto another street. That's dumb. It happened.
So... the overuse of skills has bogged down games. It has made GMs (and players) lazy. I have seen games where literally everything is rolled on the dice. Even the player unable to decide if they want to eat in a tavern. "Barwench ask you if you would like food or just ale." Player rolls a 6-sided, "I guess I'm hungry."
/facepalm
This is where the game stops being an RPG and just because a weird boardgame that looks like an RPG. Too much rolling... not enough 'role'ing. in other words, RPGs are Roleplaying games, not Rollplaying games. Yes, we roll dice to determine outcomes when necessary, but the emphasis is on the Roles we assume, in the game, to make our way through that world and accomplish whatever goals or quests we need to. Otherwise, if you roll for everything... you're really just playing a video game on paper. AND it slows the game down. Combat is sluggish enough. We don't need extra, unnecessary, and sometimes utterly useless dice rolls.
And when you couple the excessive rolling dice for every single thing your character needs to do with a nonstop combat agenda, it turns the game into a bogged down merderhobo (*misspelled intentionally - blame the leftist nanny filters) slugfest. And when you have gamers start their RPG careers in games like that, it adversely affects their ability to eventually run good games (unless they recognize the errors of those types of games). The sessions end up becoming a semi-railroady hack-n-slash marathon. Those are truly the worst kinds of game sessions/campaigns (not even sure if it can be called a campaign). They cause burnout quick and sour the experience. They rob the players of immersion, story, adventure, and true character development. I truly loathe "games" like that.
Our TTRPGs (Table Top Role Playing Games) are meant to be immersive and grandiose to everyone's imagination.
They are Not video games. Our goal is not supposed to be blast/hack your way through scenes in order to reach the end of said scenes, just to gain new levels, in order to immediately go back out and hack/blast your way to the next goalpost. That is what video games are for.
An RPG game session is a story. An inquiry. A mystery. An exploration. A quest. A journey. An adventure.
This is the purpose. This is the point.

And if that is not frustrating enough, many of these RPG "tourists" have tried to equate (in their approach to) games like D&D with a diversity lecture, a rainbow bake sale,

a pseudo-intellectual trip to the local cafe for a soy latte, or a radical protest in order to destroy what D&D is (was)(in their deluded minds) in order to turn it into something it isn't (wasn't meant to be) and further muddling the gaming experience, particularly for the new and/or younger players who do not have an old skool baseline with which to compare.
The "tourists" have inserted their own imagined slights and "microaggressions" (w/e t f those are) into our subculture and beloved RPGs, and in some cases have turned a wonderful fantasy gaming framework into a unicorn battleshriek against white men or some troon flagwaving cry for blood.

They have used false equivalency, strawman, red herring, and half a dozen other logical fallacies in order to smear gaming, plant racism, pretend they see misogynism, and utterly lie to the consumer base as to why the founders of D&D (Thank you Gary, Dave, Rob, and the rest of the early Geneva crew) were (a few actual genderconfused within the industry in the early days notwithstanding) evil and fascist.
All the while literally acting racist, misandric, bigoted, dishonest, and violently hateful themselves. They are so deranged that instead of sitting down and having a rational discussion, they would rather burn cars and buildings, scream/shout/blare airhorns to prevent us from speaking, assault us, dox us, stalk us, fire us, try to shame us, come after our kids, attack our churches, use lawfare against us, steal our work, help flood our communities with hostiles and illegals... the list goes on and on.

And it's not just in gaming. It's in every aspect of our current society. It has become a cancer that has festered and rotted our broader western culture, and especially our gaming culture. Nerds and Geeks used to be relatively safe within their own subculture. Now, if you are white, straight, male, and (GASP) Christian - Or even any two or more of those categories - you are a target for the raging loonies that cannot even confirm what gender they are, let alone if reality is really real.

I will bring this to a close by stating a few things, so there is no confusion. If you wanna be ghey, that is your business and that is between you and Christ. I had ghey friends in the past. Had because they are no longer with us. But I never got on them about their choice of partners. AND they never shoved it in my face or became radicalized and tried to force in on children or into our places it didn't belong in a displayed fashion. In other words, it is about attraction and sex and has no place being a primary pillar of an RPG. I loved my friends, but considered their nocturnal habits rather disgusting, abnormal, and an abomination. But again... that was between them and God. As far as troons (I use that word because I cannot use the normal word without getting flagged unfairly), I do not hate them. They anger me with their behavior and threats. They really angered me last week with the erasure of an important intellect and Christian voice (Charlie Kirk) for GenZ and Gen Alpha. He was about half a step away from becoming Catholic, like his wife, and I believe that is why the Adversary had him removed from this world. Kirk, being who he is And leading more of our young back to the true Church... that would have done a lot of damage to the evil agenda of this world. As it is, he became a martyr and will affect change in a slightly different way, but hopefully nearly as potent. Anyway... I don't hate troons. I pity them. I feel sorry for them. I have prayed for them. They are obviously mentally ill and belong in an institution where they can receive proper care. Thinking you are the opposite sex (gender is a socially constructed word/concept - it has no value beyond its deceptive nature) is clearly mentally unwell. It's akin to thinking you are Napoleon. Or a dog. It has the highest self-deletion ratio of all the unnormals walking around in society today. And after meatball surgery, the ratio actually inches up. Normalization is not the answer. A mental hospital is. And as they become more violent (with boomsticks and sidearms, anyway), the realization of this well-known fact of old is finally becoming refamiliar, cutting through the crazy leftist propaganda machine one centimeter at a time. I pray this understanding finally reaches everyone before we have another Children's Mass or Kirk incident.

As you can see, this (RPG tourist diversity/rainbow agenda) is clearly a bigger problem than just our hobby. It cuts across every aspect of our lives, our children's lives, our grandchildren's lives... this is about an evil that has crept into our nation nearly two hundred years ago. One that was reinforced and emboldened almost a hundred years ago, by inundating our centers of higher learning with radical staff from Germany and Eastern Europe after WWII ended. When the hippies started fomenting their unrest, our society became pretty much broken, it just didn't know it yet.
This is all just above and beyond (or really just an appendage of) the age old evil we've been warring with for two thousand years.
I'll have more thoughts soon. For now... enjoy the memes.