#TTRPG Secrets That Will BLOW Your Mind! - Why games MATTER

In which I discuss why I think tabletop RPGs matter, and in which I get a little pretentious. Bite me.
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A lot of the time I use Teknoaxe music, so it's easier to put the attribution here all the time! teknoaxe.com/Home.php - Sometimes I use White Bat Audio as well.
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"See... I can get you what you want, I can. I can get you anything, you just have to talk to me, you have to trust me. You can trust me, 'cause I'm your priest, I'm your shrink... I am your main connection to the switchboard of the soul. I'm the magic man... Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it."
- Lenny Nero, Strange Days

[@docnecrotic]

Play is such a huge part of creativity in general, a huge foundation for art. A great and really inspiring video!

[@bobhill-ol7wp]

Absolutely adore your longer videos. Everytime I get the chance to hear from your deep well of ideas on the hobby, I always walking seeing it in a new and better light.

[@lisasagaser8850]

The value of Modern Art caught me off guard and I'm still grinning. Wonderful observations. Stirring. Well done Grim!

[@stochasticagency]

You've hit on some solid foundations regarding the combination of play and imagination. However, it does feel as though you only hit on another vital aspect of this form of play towards the end: communication. With our hobby's expression being executed via verbal communication, the why, what, when, and where is a continual learning process. I've often found that it has unconscious side effects, such as increased language precision and vocabulary.

[@Nyarlathoteps_Hamster]

18:00 Every Mage: The Ascension player just nodded in unison.

[@chriskirby9408]

One of your best and most thoughtful

[@MercutioUK2006]

Cosmic. There are a lot of positives that we need to focus on.....for some it's a social revelation, for others, it's essential in developing math and language skills, and I feel that in the right circumstances, RPGs can be akin to art. The stories are a group development along a common theme (or even trope) and along the way you craft lasting moments, friendships and even enjoy just exploring a world and rolling a huge fuck load of dice. Losing focus of the essentials leaves us with a lot of bitter interactions with those who are entirely against the idea of free reign and imagination - MANY of whom work in the hobby.

[@aceupinasleeve5031]

Probably my favorite video of yours. Keep playing.

[@juauke]

Clearly, one of the things that is extremely forgotten about TTRPGs! Thanks a lot for this video, this is clearly one of your very best!

[@MrBrothasky]

This video is great. I love this. It would be cool for you to revisit this subject after some time to see where your thoughts develop further on the subject.

[@Wraithing]

And this is why I need games to allow more possibilities than portraying self-involved travelling killers-no matter what their trappings. There is definitely a place for stories of intimidation, fear, violence, murder and blind vengeance, but there must also be capacity to generate more expressions of human experience that will infuse the shaping magic we're releasing into our discrete communions of ideas. If desire, betrayal, grief, affection, hope, desolation, jealousy, mercy or any of the gamut of other human emotional motivations are crushed by the mechanics, the game can easily become an exercise in repetition of the most emotionally sterile narratives. There's no wonder so many experience 'burnout' when, so often, their RPGs afford little scope for anything but a soul-deadening retread of the same characters and events.

[@troffle]

From "Star Trek: Shore Leave", original transmission 29 December 1966: CARETAKER: But none of this is permanent. Here you have to only imagine your fondest wishes, either old ones you wish to relive or new ones, anything at all. Battle, fear, love, triumph. Anything that pleases you can be made to happen. SPOCK: The term is amusement park. CARETAKER: Of course. SPOCK: An old Earth name for a place where people could go to see and do all sorts of fascinating things. CARETAKER: This entire planet was constructed for our race of people to come and play. SULU: Play? As advanced as you obviously are, and you still play? KIRK: Yes, play, Mister Sulu. The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play. CARETAKER: Exactly, Captain. How very perceptive of you. Seriously, the fledgling nerds of today's (yesterday's) generation learned this in 1966. The war nerds knew this since 1780: "The first wargame was invented in Prussia in 1780 by Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig. Hellwig's wargame was the first true wargame because it attempted to be realistic enough to teach useful lessons in military strategy to future army officers."

[@herbertwilliam3348]

Man... You're incredible, just got another subscriber, deep content just as I need it. Those thumbnails are too psychodelic tho... Wavy bright color words are not the recipy for legibility. Go weird in the content but play a little more conservative on thumbs and Graphic Design. A business idea upgrade that can spill some coin in your lap is just linking every comics, book, product, amazon book link about or written by a person you mention in your videos. Use that lateral thinking to pull some afilliate links from the hat. It's a win win win transaction: market wins, your followers win (by enriching their culture) and off course you win, the bucks you get convert in freedom, including freedom of speaking niche personal intimate subjects that are dear to your heart.

[@LittleJohnnyBrown]

I always hated the notion that games are escapism. It is extremely limiting. Games are their own category, but they can also be so much more than just escapism. They are amazing medium for story telling and some stories you rather escape from than into.

[@Demane69]

Escapism isn't a bad word. It's the core concept of role play. A lack of it is a reversion and threat to the genre seeing how so many today projects themselves into anything, and lack the capacity to role play. The inability to "play" an entirely different perspective used to be a measure of mental maturity. The inability to do this is psychologically stunted and typically a stage of childhood or an extreme lack of life experience through isolation.

[@Demane69]

RPGs when I was young was played nearly entirely by kids who were not overly social or outspoken. It became an outlet of expression for them. With games like D&D becoming very mainstream, I now see such children finding barriers to play as the landscape is taken over attention seeking, type A personality streamers and event organizers. This mainly in social media spheres I'd say, and I still see some local games with, dare I say socially stunted players (a larger issue beyond these games), but I always only ever see D&D, which is still a result of it's mainstream reach. Perhaps another topic in itself.

[@pnptcn]

Yes indeed, good talk

[@juliantheapostate8295]

Excellent, modern art is money laundering. Well said

[@sirguy6678]

Excellent video! Although, didn’t Kieragaurd (sp) the Swedish Philosopher who felt that fiction “was a waste of time”? What would he say about RPGs?

[@liberalhyena9760]

I have no idea what Kierkegaard would have had to say about RPG’s but I’m reasonably sure he would have taken exception to being called Swedish.

[@PostmortemVideo]

Good. Philosophers should be regularly insulted.

[@juliantheapostate8295]

I think Thomas Carlyle would have found RPGs to be most valuable. Certainly I can see C S Lewis thinking so

[@juliantheapostate8295]

​@@liberalhyena9760I love the malt loaf he invented which is now marketed under his first name. Yummy

[@liberalhyena9760]

That, for me, is the fundamental problem with his philosophy: too many raisins, giving rise to the dilemma of whether to pick them out before hand (messy) or spit them out (unsightly and not really feasible in all circumstances). The less well known banana version is a vast improvement, to my mind.

[@Hunrakku3]

OK, no judgement... but did you use AI to help you write this? I think it's totally OK if you did... but I just kept thinking I detected something in the structure of essay.

[@PostmortemVideo]

No, but I overworked it and it's much more scripted than I normally do.

[@PostmortemVideo]

Oh, and to be clear, I have no particular moral objection to AI. I think it has its legitimate and ethical uses.

[@Demane69]

People over 40 know how to write with structure. They were taught it. Hearing that AI must be used if structured writing is detected is a sad reflection of the current state of education.

[@Hunrakku3]

@@Demane69 It's not that there was structure that had me thinking there might be AI involved, it was the 'feel' of that structure. It didn't feel like the usual Grim Jim to me. It was just a guess. Students in school are still taught to write with structure, and, like always, some students will pay attention and learn it... and other's won't care and won't bother.

[@troffle]

@@PostmortemVideo > No, but I overworked it and it's much more scripted than I normally do. You mean you wrote a well-re-reviewed, well-structured, carefully thought out essay.