Am I a jerk? Are you?

I noted a short while ago that on some of the blogs I read, people were agitated because some guy somewhere had criticized the OSR gang for some kind of crime. Oddly enough nobody seemed to have bothered to link to the poor guy, probably because they didn't want to help him get any more hits in the visitor statistics.

Personally I think that is a bit rude. If you are bothering commenting upon something, I think it's just decent to acknowledge the existence of the guy standing in the same room as you, and whom you are talking about! Come on guys, you can do better than that.

So. I think I managed to find who it was everyone was up in arms against. One think this guy mentioned I found interesting, and I'm going to comment on that even if it wasn't what everyone found so infuriating.

Why do we speak of "educating" players, and "teaching" then proper play by playing rough? I know the idea of Player Skill, and I know all about brutal character killing adventures. I play T&T, remember? Take a look at those solos. Many of them are so deadly it's just silly. Quite a few are still fun. Most of the time. If you have read my blog some you also know I like that Player Skill part.

Now, imagine real physical people telling you about this cool kind of game where you play a scoundrel doing dirty deeds and some heroics for gold and glory in dank dungeons. Also, try to imagine those people acting like total jerks when you sit down to play and telling you they only stabbed your character in the back to "teach you" to become a better player.

I think we have a problem here.

While I think the idea is still valid, maybe the fact that some people tell you that "old school" just mean some jerks trying their best to rob you of fun means that we have a public relations problem.

While I don't think we need a OSR feel-good-ambassador or anything, I think that if a complaint comes up more than once, it might be a good idea to give the whiner the benefit of a doubt and see if there's something to be learnt. He might still be a whining moron, but you can learn something.

That's my two cents.