Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Fear the Burning Crane

Yeah, ok, so I'm stretching on these titles. The Fear the Boot folks have an interview posted with Luke Crane, author of the Burning Wheel RPG. You have your choice of formats: the raw "Designers Gone Wild" version, or the censored-for-your-protection version.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi short time reader, first time commenter!

I got to listen to this interview over the weekend and what I really liked to hear from Crane was his impression of other game designers when he meets them at cons. He essentially noted that things seem at least polite of not consistently friendly.

I think being an internet participant in the RPG hobby exposes you to what (IIRC and paraphrasing) Mike Mearls described as "a low-level but persistent negativity". When it seems like your favorite forum is clogged with edition wars, theory wars, Story Game v. Trad play wars, it's nice to know that for most designers it's just a matter of tastes and they'd rather just support each other as just fellow designers.

All in all an interesting and entertaining interview.

trollsmyth said...

Good to have you, James! Do you remember how you found us?

I think it's important to keep in mind how few the grumps really are. When you count the number of people oozing negativity all over a community and then you look up how many people are actually signed up for a board, it puts things into perspective.

The grumps just look to be larger than their numbers because, for the most part, they've got nothing better to do with their time than complain. Their opposite number are generally too busy playing cool games or designing new ones to counter all the muck the grumps churn out.

- Brian

Anonymous said...

"Good to have you, James! Do you remember how you found us?"

Grognardia! Although I was never a OD&D player, B/X D&D was my first and dearest game, and rules wise they're close enough for me to enjoy the insights and inspirations around this old school - new wave.

trollsmyth said...

Good to know, thanks.

Yeah, I'm a young-un' among the grognards myself, also having started with the Moldvay/Cook B/X D&D. My next campaign is going to be a mildly hacked version of Moldvay/Cook/Labyrinth Lord (which is the simulacrum game based on the D&D OGL).

It's nice, as my hair thins and my memory begins to slip, to hang out with folks who call me a young punk whippersnapper. ;)

- Brian