While the Eberron setting doesn't directly tie dragonmarks to the Sorcerer class, it does explore hereditary magic as a privilege. In general, if you're not of the bloodlines who are "supposed to" get particular constructive magic and want to go into business using that magic, you need to either sign a contract with the appropriate Dragonmarked House or they'll go Pinkerton on your ass. This cuts the other way, too, where anyone in the House with such powers is pressured to participate.

I'm not saying that lore is unnecessary or undesirable. I'm saying that historically, it was never included as part of what counted as "crunch", and at the time was even taken to be its opposite.

Or willing to, y'know, use stock art or not include art, and damn the people who think TTRPG books only have value insofar as they have lots of new pictures.

@sirblastalot
Probably calls for an exception for specifically discussing when a large company (mis)uses "AI", so as not to silence outcry against it.

Concerning those advocating that people "just downvote it"... 1) not everyone who participates in this community does so through a system that allows downvotes (Mastodon doesn't), and 2) IME, people who post "AI" content willy-nilly tend to be so bad at people that they don't understand when they're being told off, even directly.

This also relates to my mention elsewhere in this discussion of what used to be called "special snowflakes" (before the birdsite ruined the word "snowflake"). Some people want novelty and creativity above all in their RP, and that doesn't always come with a sense for how to balance that with intended theme or tone. And as you point out, if *no one* is playing things remotely straight, things can become farcical, or at least like an "Oops! All Foils" situation with no requisite normal.

It used to be that the opposite of "crunch" was "fluff". These days, instead of "fluff", people say "lore" — definitely a more respectful term for worldbuilding, metaplot, and the like than "fluff", which has implications of filler.

Nowadays, rather than contracting "crunch" with "fluff/lore", people are more likely to contrast it with being rules-lite.

It could also be applied to the "Chaotic Stupid" interpretation of Chaotic Neutral.

...Which does bring up the "stupid" alignments topic in general. There's also "Lawful Stupid" (being an asshole enforcer of rules and laws beyond all reason; one of the more infamous ways to play a paladin), "Stupid Good" ("I'm sure the dark lord is just lonely and needs a friend!"), and "Stupid Evil" (being malicious and destructive in ways that don't serve one's interests and might even endanger oneself).

Not everyone "in our hobby" is actually deep into it like us, nor do non-D&D games have multi-million-dollar marketing machines so people outside of the inner circle actually understand that these games exist. And remember, this was before it was common knowledge that EVERYTHING has a community online. They might well have honestly thought that if it's not advertised, it doesn't exist, and therefore their game was totally the first competition for D&D EVAR (when it absolutely wasn't).

Given that almost no games other than D&D, Vampire (and perhaps other WoD games), and *maybe* Call of Cthulhu made it into general public awareness, and that indeed many people didn't (and still don't!) recognize that there is an actual category of analog games called "RPGs", it's not so weird in context.

I'll note that the 90s is also when the fight over the term "RPG" between CRPGs and TTRPGs really started causing our hobby problems.

@Shkshkshk @196 Suffice it to say that I suffered through over a decade of "bad classroom management", a lot of which went above and beyond mere attempts at containing screaming and crying... and meanwhile, the "teasers" (the teachers insisted that the verbal bullying be called "teasing") got away scot-free.

I ultimately dropped out of school because of the way the teachers treated me, even two years after they actually finally decided putting the bullies on notice was a worthwhile step.

@Shkshkshk @196 Do you also have an excuse for why the bullying victim gets punished by teachers instead of the bully?

@Shkshkshk @196 Do you have means by which to report potential bullies? Because I can only imagine a bully thinking this way.