The Nerd-Brain Problem

Hayao Miyazaki, regarded as the Walt Disney of Japan, said anime (animation) was a mistake and that Otaku (the Japanese word for nerd) ruined anime. I want you to think about that. Not because I want to comment on anime or Miyazaki, but because I want you to consider why an artist might think that fans spoiled art.

First, what does it mean to spoil something? Imagine going into a mystery story and trying to solve it yourself before the protagonist, then some thoughtless a-hole spoils the ending for you. You can't have fun solving the puzzle because someone gave the answer away already. The fun is spoiled.

So for some of us, we don't pursue art for the style alone, we pursue it for both the style and the substance. What nerds do is they enjoy art for what it is, both the style and the substance, and then they do what with it? What if they collectively misunderstand it and indulge in the wrong aspects of it. Then they want more of the style and don't appeciate the substance, or they appreciate the substance disproportionately less. For example, Gundam is an anime and its message is that war is bad, so it's ironic that everyone liked the mechs so much that they just wanted more mech stuff, and thus the original mech story that wanted to tell an anti-war message is known for being the first of the mech stuff. Mech stuff is commercialized, and the original artist and his message are left behind. There are several mech animes and video games and etc, now. It's not immoral but you could image how that artist could be disappointed.

Back to Miyazaki, he says anime used to be created by artists, now its created by nerds who only know how to imitate art but can't make it. And so nerds have spoiled anime for him by turning it into an art form known for imitation and that is slowly degrading in quality and substance. I think this is a fair observation because I watched all of Naruto and while it's admittedly really fun for a while, it's also really inane. Ninja fights for the sake of ninja fights. What's the substance? Believe in yourself? Never give up? OK, sure. That's fine. I guess. I didn't watch the other Naruto series and I won't. The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie was style over substance and I didn't enjoy it.

This is all leading to a point about playing D&D. I hate everything about modern D&D. Not because I find the lack of substance to be disturbing or sad, I mean it's D&D. Historically it's about killing monsters for treasure in a conflict of law vs chaos so you can build your own kingdom and rule as a hero-king and create fun and exciting stories of daring-do. The problem is partially when people bring their dumb nerdy OC to bear, and boy is that just the peak of what makes nerds nerdy and exhausting and embarassing.

But seriously, how pretentious is it to complain about D&D and a lack of high art? Or maybe isn't this just part of the hobby? If you're thinking that, you've missed the point. The point is that like nerds ruining anime for Miyazaki, the wrong crowd ruins D&D for others. There is an incompatibility. What modern D&D does is it encourages all manner of silliness and goofiness with its sanitized kitchen sink setting for everyone and wide, wide catalog of player character options for everything. Be anything you want. Imitate things you like. Bring multi-page backstories. Get tons of mechanics! Can't you just be an ordinary dude who falls on hard times and becomes an adventurer? I would like it if you could turn off your nerd-brains when you engage with the game. 

First Time GM Checklist

If you've never, ever been a Game Master (GM) before or maybe even never even played in a TTRPG before, here's a simple first-time GM checklist:

Starter Checklist

1. A place to play

2. People to play with

3. A beginner-friendly game to play (CairnRPG.com. Read it in your web browser!)

4. A beginner-friendly adventure to run (Tomb of The Serpent King)

5. Paper and pencils 

6. Dice (Google search for google dice and you can roll dice in your browser)

I'm going to assume you have items 1, 2, 5, and 6 under control and skip to item 3.

Beginner-Friendly Game to Play

There are a few games presented as easy, but Cairn is a combination of rules lite and free that makes it simple for absolute beginners. It's got a lot of good principles for playing and running games too which are a must-read. Reading the entire first edition (here) may take fifteen minutes.

Other beginner-friendly games that are free include Basic Fantasy RPG, Olde Swords Reign, and The Black Hack. I highly recommend Index Card RPG (ICRPG) which has a free QuickStart set of rules here! Any are good. They are all derived from one version of D&D or another. Basic Fantasy RPG is a retroclone of an D&D Basic from the 1980s. Olde Swords Reign is a combination of 5th edition and 0th edition D&D with some modern changes. The Black Hack is a hack of D&D, and I mean a hack. ICRPG is very rules-lite and DIY, and it is basically modern D&D stripped down to only the parts that matter and refined into a fast and intuitive game with new game design ideas and style. Pick one game, but definitely read the Principles in Cairn.

A Beginner-Friendly Adventure to Run

There may be many adventures marketed as starter adventures, but how many of them are actually beginner-friendly? I don't know. But I recommend Tomb of the Serpent King. It's a teaching dungeon, and it's free. You can download a pdf and you can view it on this blogger page at CoinsandScrolls.blogspot.com. In one game session, you won't be able to play the whole dungeon, so I would suggest only reading up to Room 19. End your game there, leave people wanting more.

Don't stress. Don't take it too seriously. Read your rules. Read your adventure. Get your people together. Make some characters. Play for two-three hours. Call it a night.

Bonus Checklist

Think mood. You want to set the mood if you can. It will improve the experience. You turn down the lights for a movie, right?

1. Something to look at

2. Something to listen to

3. Lightning

4. Food

Something to look at

If you've never done this before, if everyone has never done this before, it might be kind of awkward to have nothing to look at but each other's faces. Put something on your table as a visual. Make it a centerpiece, a piece of art. A big poster board with a crudely drawn map of the dungeon is good. I like to draw the map on a white board and put that down. Everyone can use coins or candies or chess pieces to track their characters. I also have Jinga Blocks. I can put two at a right angle and call that a corner. Get four corners and you suggest a room. Stack two next to each other and put a third block on top and that's a doorway. Get creative.

Something to listen to

Not rock n' roll, not hip hop. Think one of those four-hour long mood tracks you can listen to on Youtube. Commercials will spoil the mood, so if possible, find something ad-free.

Lighting

If you can get the lights down, do it. Just do it. Even if you're not playing a horror game. Candles or flashlights or lanterns. Set the mood.

Food

Get something that is simple, like pizza. If you have to use utensils and serve ware, that's too much. I think it's fair that the first time is on the host, after that everyone pitches in.

Good Riddance to Hot Woke Garbage

Got told to define woke.

If your counter to a critique of wokeness is to insist that there's no proper definition of woke therefore its somehow a nonsense word or it doesn't count, there's a logical fallacy in your argument. The fallacy is appeal to dictionary. It means that you are appealing to the authority of the dictionary (or even a textbook by scholars or academics) to define a concept.

That's not how concepts and ideas work.

If you put a hundred people in a room and show them a movie, then ask them to tell you what's woke about it, you'll get a consensus, with some margin of error.

Woke trash ultimately means art is passed on to new creators who have no respect for the source material, and they are the wrong creators for that art.

They:

1 don't actually like the art or source material, or sometimes the fans 

2 change the art in a way that makes it unrecognizable to the source material, and maybe incompatible with the source material

3 insert something new that's incompatible with the source material or focus on something minor from the source material and make it a predominant feature

Metaphorically speaking, they promise a breakfast of eggs and bacon, but they deliver waffles instead, and the waffles suck. Disney said they would make Star Wars and delivered something that is at best a bad imitation and at worse a mockery of it. 

Woke is ideas, beliefs, and values that oppose traditional ideas, beliefs, values. Most classic art has tradition in it. It's part of what makes something classic. Woke is a usurper that thinks it knows better and tries to invert and subvert everything. Woke is postmodernism and intersectionality. Those are incompatible ideologies with western culture. They are divisive and destructive. The spoil everything for people with traditional values while making nothing that will outlast them. They don't care about the art or the audience; they care about their message.