Revisiting "100 Colors for a Belt-Pouch," the work for which I will be remembered (if there's any justice), and it occurs to me that "pencil shavings," one of the table's many shades of brown/tan/yellowish-brown/no-really-just-brown, is more than a little GenX of me to have included. 😂 I think pencil shavings are fading to the status of archaeology, at least outside of an art supplies context.

Ah well. I am indeed an Old Guy. It is the truth.

And "Fried Silt" is _timeless._

#TTRPG #RPGFogey

I skip any RPG book where the pitch seems proud that it's _selling me the permission to do something_ or the _ability to play a certain way._

Thing is, I don't need a publisher's permission, and I could already play in every possible way yesterday, before I knew this book existed.

I do understand that there are gamers who swoon for that kind of pitch and that kind of book. I avoid _them,_ too. 😮

#TTRPG #RPGFogey

There was a line RPG publishing crossed ... and I don't think VTTs are to blame, though they certainly aren't slowing it down any ... where typical interior plans went from "home printer friendly and evocative of a fantasy world" to "screencap from a videogame strategy guide designed to ruin your immersion and clog your printer" and I'm feeling very _fogey_ about it right now.

#TTRPG #RPGFogey

The last time I participated in an itch.io design jam was for the Fingertips interactive fiction jam in 2012 (my entry game was The Day That Love Came to Play). So that's a decade ago. Jesus. But most of the jams aren't really built for old #RPGFogey types like me 😅

2023 is also the 20th Anniversary of the Risus Companion, which is a good book GMs should have.

#RisusRPG #TTRPG #RPGFogey

Back in the ancient times, a single GURPS book written in essentially plain text (with manual markup for italics and such) spread across two whole floppies 😅 #RPGFogey #TTRPG #GURPS

For every RPG that makes my "SJR100" list, there are 14 or 15 RPGs I've had some experience with that I wouldn't put on any polite list at all ... but some of those have also been a positive influence, in a way. Just about any RPG is a chance to learn something about what I like in RPGs, and how to make them myself. #TTRPG #RPGFogey

Sometimes I read RPG Designer's Notes just for the warm fuzzies. I think I've read the ones in 1st Edition DC Heroes like 80 times. #TTRPG #RPGFogey

Some of my RPG loves are pure, irrational nostalgia, especially my fondness for boxed sets. They boosted costs needlessly, caused taxation issues in some markets, and were often fragile to the point of silliness. That said, I still regret that I arrived just a bit too late to help make one. It was cool to have a place to stash the graph paper 😅 #TTRPG #RPGFogey

Of all the old magazines, Space Gamer is a fascinating study because it manages to have a "world-weary game-industry veterans" vibe by 1979. And that's not _wrong._ 😅 When I worked at SJ Games, I edited the 2nd (I think) edition of the collected Murphy's Rules, and got to rummage through a lot of the old Space Gamer mailer-covers for additional cartoons (the mailer cover would have some tiny thing that wasn't found inside the magazine, as a kind of subscriber bonus). #TTRPG #RPGFogey

@SJohnRoss 100%. A few years back I reread every issue of Dragon up to the early 90s. Before that, White Wolf, Space Gamer and a few others (I don't have access to those as easily and so many old mags only had a handful of issues). The reviews, the articles, and so on taken as a whole provide an interesting zeitgeist for what people valued in games and how that changed over time. #TTRPG #RPGFogey

I've always loved immersing in old RPG magazines (I've been immersing in some of them since the days when they weren't even old) but lately I've been doing so specifically to re-read old reviews, which become more fascinating with the passage of time, as works that have endured as classics get shrugs of "meh; it's okay" and works that vanished after 6 months are hailed as The Future of Gaming. Not unlike reading old film or music reviews! But gamier, in every sense of the word. #TTRPG #RPGFogey

One of my RPG fogey habits: When I've finished reading an ordinary/mediocre RPG book, it leaves me feeling sad, empty, lonely and a bit bleak ... so, every time this happens, I chase it down with a _brilliant_ one I've read before, to lift my spirits and remind me that there will always be excellent books coming down the pike eventually. #TTRPG #RPGFogey

A lot of my Toots probably need some kind of #RPGFogey hashtag. #TTRPG