This Modern Death

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Time: December 29, 2008, 6:50 pm

[...] was interviewed on the modern horror/dark future gaming podcast This Modern Death recently, and the episode was just [...]

Pingback from talkin’ about • Adam Jury
Time: December 29, 2008, 8:07 pm

[...] was interviewed on the modern horror/dark future gaming podcast This Modern Death recently, and the episode was just [...]

Comment from BG_Josh
Time: February 26, 2009, 5:50 am

There was some hullabaloo about this episode, so let me set the record straight now that I am back in the real world (I went to Vegas for a wedding).

I apologized because I did something wrong. And I always apologize when I make mistakes. The problem with my comments is that I was too much of a jerk. I made fun of the episode, and I took issue with the content. This was wrong of me.

You see you cannot poke fun at something that you don’t love. It follows the concept of a roast. I should only make comments about sleeping and masturbating if I enjoyed the episode.

I have not had time to review the episode, and will not any time soon, so this is from memory but then again…let me get on with it.

This episode is what I would call a naive interview, your basic type of interview carried out in gaming podcasting. You have a person on your show, lob slow balls at them and keep them happy. If they are interesting and the banter is good it is entertaining. It is also usually informative because generally they know something you the listener do not.

The problem that occurs here is if they are an authority or not. A true authority on a subject knows quite a bit about that subject, but the most important quality that they posses is in understanding the limits of their knowledge.

So take me and electronics. As an example I have a unit that is off frequency and it is not a harmonic. What is the problem? My first instinct would be to check the oscillator or the input signal. My second is to see if something else like an amplifier is generating some kind of signal. You get the basic idea. What I don’t think is that I know everything about electronics or that whatever I think the answer is will in turn be the answer. That concept seems silly when one is discussing electronics. Why then is that the prevalent attitude in writers of RPG’s? Or am I wrong? How much research does the average game designer do? How do you design a Sci Fi RPG if you could not define one?

Adam makes a few points about games that indicate he is not particularly knowledgeable about the subject. Thats fine. There are lots of things I don’t know about. The problem is that Adam presents himself as an authority (either genuinely or by inference).

A few obvious mistakes I will point out:

1) He refers to eclipse phase as a Science Fiction game. What is a science fiction game? This is important because he seems to indicate that there are a dearth of them on the market. So what is a sci fi game and how is eclipse phase one of them?

2) I hold a gun to your head and say “whats great about your game?” and you say that people can be backed up. First off, not really about the game, more about the setting. But second, how is that different from Transhuman Space by GURPS? Your big element is from an already existing game? What do you do in the game? Why should I play it? How does the game work?

Now an argument can be made that they can’t simply say everything. To that, I say listen here: http://independentinsurgency.com/index.php?post_id=422706 Luke Crane and Jared Sorenson are everything that Adam Jury is not. Intelligent, well educated and capable game designers. They tell you about their game while in turn not “giving it all away.” They know what Science Fiction is, they researched the topic and they designed and tested a game.

As a naive interview the product stands and falls on the quality of the guest. Entertaining? Moderately. Informative? Not particularly. Personally if you are going to have a layout guy on, I would like to hear about how RPG layouts are done.

In summation, I was a Jerk. Adam Jury is Adam Jury. You can hardly fault a guy for not being Luke Crane or Jared Sorenson. My advice to him is to stick to what you know and maybe look up what science fiction is before you start talking shit.

As for TMD, I find it ironic that you fault Adam from the Podgecast for not being skeptical but then fail to use skeptic style critical thinking on your own guest. I am reminded of This episode of skeptoid http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4134#