Everyone vs Just Us

 

   This silly title sums up the debate that goes on right now with things like Warhammer and The Rings of Power and TSR.

   Companies try to make stuff for Everyone. That’s just Economics 101. Nobody wants to make things for a niche — it’s bad for business.

   But some fans seem to think that those “things” and that “stuff” should be made exclusively for them.

   If you read more than 3 mangas, you are a fan; that is, you’re the same thing, the very same thing, as that Japanese teen who read five thousand mangas.

   If you drink kombucha at least once a month, you are a fan — the very same thing as that woman who drinks kombucha every day.

   A fan is a fan, period.

   If we try to make fandom more complex, it’s a very slippery slope. Indeed, who’s to decide if you’re a worthy or unworthy fan? Who is going to be the judge of that? It is gatekeeping.

   Someone who read The Hobbit when they were 10, but not any of the other books since then, and who haven’t seen any of the movies. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who only ever saw Ralph Bakshi’s movie, back in 1978, and only ever read the first half of The Silmarillion. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who saw the first two films of the Peter Jackson trilogy, but not the third one, and not The Hobbit trilogy. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who played a heck of a lot of MERP in the late eighties and early nineties, saw all the movies several times, but never read any of the books, because reading is hard. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who did a PhD in Fantasy literature with an emphasis on Tolkien, but only ever watched the first Peter Jackson movie and disliked it. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who’ve seen every movie 35 times, read every book 9 times, and have their own YouTube channel devoted to the realm of Lindon. Fan, or Not A Fan?

   Someone who named their open-source medical imaging service “Orthanc.” Fan, or Not A Fan?

*

   Fandom does not have levels. You can’t be a Level 5 fan or a Level 12 fan, or a Level 20 superfan. That is my opinion. Of course, lots of folks will disagree.

   My belief is that fandom is declarative, just like becoming a Muslim; if you say the words out loud, you automatically become the thing. There is no trial period, no probation, no test, and no prerequisites. For instance, if you say, “I am a huge fan of the Royal family!” you just became a fan of the Royal family — it really is as simple as that.

   Like saying you love something.

   “I love strawberries.”

   “No you don’t. You don’t KNOW strawberries like I do, and I love them WAY more than you ever will.”

   Preposterous, right?

   What we have here is a dad protecting his children from “everyone” and effectually keeping things “just between us.” Ernie Gygax got in trouble for that one, even though it was his business partner who posted the image.

   It means that TSR (that’s the sixth or seventh one) wants to keep playing tabletop role-playing games in the same style as before. But the picture here absolutely sent the wrong message.

   Same goes for this—

   Warhammer wants to keep its lore exactly as it was established in the beginning — but they still need Lyla Mev’s and Dana Howl’s and Senasuke’s and Sword ’n’ Steele’s business, as well as the countless other female gamers and hobbyists who don’t have YouTube channels but play the game and paint miniatures nonetheless.

   So, Just Us needs Everyone’s business, or else they’re gonna go bankrupt.

   “True” Tolkien fans still need everyone else to watch the movies and subscribe to Amazon Prime… or else there would be no movies or shows.

   If you remove all the people who don’t know Middle-earth all that well, and if you subtract the money they spent to see Peter Jackson’s movies or buy the DVDs, those trilogies would’ve flopped for sure.

   Amazon is making a show for everyone — your mom, your fourteen-year-old niece, your Sri Lankan landlord, people in retirement homes, et cetera.

   Hardcore fans will always disagree. Obviously.

   One YouTuber said that The Rings of Power is fake fan fiction. At first, I was puzzled by that. I’m a fan of Conan the Barbarian… I write a novella about Conan… but… it’s fake… so I didn’t really write it? WTF?

   Then I realized the guy didn’t mean [fake] fan fiction, but rather [fake fan] fiction. Okay, that makes more sense, sorta. But it brings us right back to: what in the name of God is a fake fan? Who decides if you’re worthy to love something? Who has that kind of authority?

   It is frightening.

   In MMORPGs, noobs are the Everyone to level 60 trolls’ Just Us.

   And, to a lesser extent, D&D is the Everyone to Pathfinder’s Just Us.

   But this is definitely not restricted to gaming and entertainment.

   The ultra-rich are the biggest of all Just Us clubs. Any society that allows 1% of its people to control more than 50% of the wealth is in R’lyeh-deep trouble.

   Again, Just Us needs Everyone’s business — and debt — in order to be able to remain “Just Us.”

   For the tip of the pyramid to remain the tip of a pyramid, it needs the rest of the pyramid, but for the base of a pyramid to remain the base of a pyramid, it doesn’t need the tip.

   That’s why I believe the base shall win. In the end, Everyone will prevail over Just Us.

Who Can Enter The City

 

   I wouldn’t have thought in-game gatekeeping was still an issue in D&D, but a recent episode on Twitter made me realize that it was still around indeed.

   Someone said that their DM wouldn’t allow one specific character to enter a big city, because of the character’s race. “One of my friends now plays an outcast Mind Flayer,” I replied, “and nobody bothers the party because of it.”

   I got some angry comments.

   One guy said that the townspeople were secretly preparing a bonfire for the entire party.

   Another guy essentially said that my parents should have beaten me when I was a kid. For real.

   I did not reply to such an offensive thing, of course.

   Next would have been something along the lines of “The Catholic priests at the private school you attended when you were 12 should have raped you.” I mean, what’s the difference between being way out of line and being way, way out of line? It’s just one more “way.”

   Yeah, those bois are intense. Don’t mess with their game.

   Are there haters like that in the Monopoly fandom?

   I once played Monopoly with the Arkham Horror monsters and gates active on the board, and no one took offense to that. I once played Munchkin without the curse cards, because my nephew was bummed by those, having drawn five or six in a row. Again, no reprimands from the community, and no threats.

*

   Back in ’85 or ’86 my friend Thierry insisted on playing a Drow magic-user. They all told him he was crazy — although nobody said his parents didn’t beat him enough.

   Three years later, the first Drizzt novel hit the shelves; suddenly, Thierry wasn’t that crazy after all.

   Same goes for Illithids.

   Nowadays, Drows can pretty much go wherever they want. And what about Tieflings? They literally look like little devils — no bonfire for them? Kill the squid man, but the devils are okay? It’s absurd. Try to be coherent in your bigotry, at the very least.

   In Gloomhaven, nobody bothers you at the city gates. Inox have three colossal horns on their heads, like demons. Valraths look terrifying. And what about those Harrowers? They’re just like Mind Flayers! What are the city guards doing?

   I’ll tell you what they’re doing — they’re not discriminating based on physical appearance. Horns? Tentacles? Green skin? Welcome to Gloomhaven, as long as you’re not EVIL.

   Burning strangers at the stake just because they don’t look like everybody else: are we still there? And who is “everybody else” exactly?

   Maybe in Warhammer Fantasy, with the mistrust and paranoia and zealous Witch Hunters everywhere, I get it — the militia won’t let you through Nuln’s gates if you have tentacles on your face. But D&D? This is a game that has Aasimars and Loxodons and Dragonborn and Autognomes, for crying out loud!

   Anyway, if a fantasy city is ever attacked from within, OF COURSE the culprits are gonna be people who look perfectly innocuous. So.

   Since you have no way of telling who’s dangerous and who isn’t, why not let everyone in? What’s the use of stopping some races and not the others?

   Who even makes that call? The city guards? They’re not experts—

   What about all the spells like polymorph or alter self? Perhaps this person is just a Grey Elf who missed their save and were polymorphed into something vaguely resembling an Illithid. Do the guards manning the city gates have any idea what an Illithid actually is? A level 14 wizard, sure — but a city guard?

   What if a Duodrone shows up with three Monodrones in tow? I’m sure they have their reasons, since the One and the Prime works in mysterious ways… but what will the city guards decide? They have probably never even heard of Modrons. Allow these baffling beings into the city, or not?

   And while we’re at it, why do people role-play the actual “entering the city” part? Just say, “You get to Waterdeep, you settle in the usual tavern / inn, and the next morning, right on time, your contact shows up with the map and the advance payment agreed upon.”

   You just saved three hours there.

   Seriously, how much time do you have on your hands? Cut to the chase.

   My friends and I only play about 8 hours of D&D per year.

   The Tomb of Horrors begins with the lines, “The party has arrived at the site of the demi-lich’s last haunt. Before them is a low, flat topped hill, about 200 yards wide and 300 yards long. Only ugly weeds, thorns, and briars grow upon the steep sides and bald top of the 60' high mound.” Have you any idea how much longer that adventure would have been if it actually began in a big city like Irongate or Greyhawk? The ranger needs new arrows, but the arrowmaker is a Montague, and the ranger is a Capulet… It’ll never end. You’ll never get to that Tomb.

   The Illithid homeworld is the size of the rings of Saturn. How many North Americas and South Americas and Africas and Europes and Asias and Australias can you fit on the rings of Saturn? Hundreds of them. So there must be trillions of Illithids living there. D&D adventurers only ever encounter the ruling class — privileged, high-psionics Illithids — the ones who get to sail out into space aboard Nautiloid ships, and the ones who get to probability travel.

   But there ought to be so many, many, many others.

   You’ve got your Illithid Leonardos da Vinci, your Illithid Oprahs, your Illithid Confuciuses, your Illithid Kanye Wests, your Illithid Angela Merkels… And any one of those might leave their homeworld unbeknownst to their Elder Brain or Illithid Putin, because random rifts happen and freak wormholes happen. If your Tabaxi rogue went from Faerûn to Khorvaire just by stepping through a weird light, it can happen to Illithids, too. And perhaps some of them are quite glad to leave their hive world. Statistically, not all of them like it there.

   I said it before in my August 2019 post: if a race is monolithic, if each and every member of a race is exactly the same, then it’s not a race but a caricature.

   Gith led a slave revolt a long time ago. Why wouldn’t it happen again? Those low-psionics Illithids can — and will — be pissed at some point, won’t they?

   The Illithid in my game is such an outcast; he led an all-too-brief thrall uprising, but the whole thing was quashed in a matter of days.

   You have Jarlaxle and Drizzt, a Drow rebel and a Drow heretic; they exist, and nobody denies that, not even the guy who wants parents to spank their kids. So why not an Illithid Spartacus?

   Bottom line is, I don’t care what Venger Baphomet thinks. It’s the fun that matters, not the rules and not even the lore.

   If one of my players wants to play friggin’ Asmodeus, I’ll find a way to make it happen. Maybe there was a coup — a hostile takeover of Asmodeus’ physical form. The real Asmodeus is now trapped in a puny Human body — someone named Junko — while Mephistopheles himself now occupies Asmodeus’ body. “Junko” needs the help of the PCs to expose the usurper and reclaim his throne. Something like that.

   Forty years ago, they wouldn’t allow a Drow to enter any city or town.

   Now you’ve got K’thriss working for one of the Masked Lords of Waterdeep.

   Stay ahead of the curve. Let the people in.

   (Further reading: Flintlocks and Witchery has a great article titled “Evil or Something Like It,” published August 28, 2019.)