Press The Beast

Stop It With the RPGs

You're a fan of RPGs eh? You want to write adventures, and dungeons, and run them for your friends?

BIG MISTAKE BUB

Instead, you should read, write poetry, or try prose if it suits you. RPGs are a kind of writing, but they are basically facile. The time you spend on RPGs gets you closer to your death with nothing to show for a life lived squandered. It is better to call your mom and inquire about her wellbeing than it is to write "2d6 Orcs" on an encounter table. RPGs are an immiseration of the mind.

"But Nathe," you object. "I like to play RPGs with my friends!" That's great, keep it up. That's the good part. Play the RPGs, but during the week give them only trifling thoughts. Do not prep more than you have to, and resist the sick gremlin that wriggles about the marrow of your bones begging you to stock a table of gear with associated prices or to write a new class which is really just a Fighter. Every time you give in to this gremlin you stray further from the light of God and weaken your own moral fibre. Most RPG hobbyists basically spend their time and energy indulging in their own neuroses and quibbling over little nothings. The hobby ought to be treated like whittling—it is a thing to do somewhat better than masturbation, yet worse than reading a good book.

Trust me... I've suffered for this cursed hobby. I've stayed up late, unable to dream for the haunting of chainmail—so many links ever-clinked to produce a song that rattles my skull; I cannot think or eat—and all this because I wondered about armour, and how it can be penetrated. This is, essentially, RPG derived mental illness, and the only cure is to cut thyself off from all manner of goblin, hobbed or not, orc, ogre, giant, troll, etc. Otherwise you will come to suffer like Tom Hanks, and be damned to a maze of your own devising.