Thread 96388638

I keep hearing about reading levels going down and ttrpgs are usually spread through text. Even if it's a game you could explain in 10 minutes, chances are most people found it as a "single page game", a lot of people learn about D&D from youtube videos but once you're playing you're gonna need to be able to read a couple long paragraphs.

So the literacy crisis should make the hobby smaller and more niche than it used to be, not only because we can't read but because someone reading around you became weirder and less cool. But it isn't the case. Maybe it's just the internet and communication, and D&D with these tools in the 80's would had taken over the world, but those are the things causing the crisis. So what's the deal? Are ttrpgs saving the world and bringing a new generation to reading? Is the solution to the crisis giving kids a reason to read something longer that a twit? Is the crisis an exaggeration? Are the solutions? How to make the world a better place?

can I get a tldr

bro is writting an essay

>>96388638 (OP)
Think about the sort of people attacking libraries and librarians and education and come back with the result.

>>96388638 (OP)
Reading has become too hard for the average normoid, and normoids getting into ttrpgs and refusing to read are destroying the hobby, not being saved by it.

>>96388673
Stop pushing weird ideologies and you'll stop getting pushback.

>>96388638 (OP)
Doubtful. Nieche hobbies aren't generally impacted by things like this, especially when you've got a bar to entry.

Think of it this way: the shrinking middle class doesn't hurt yacht racing because they were never racing yachts.

>>96388680
>>96388638 (OP)
The amount of people in the hobby and producing creative things have massively increased. Like it or not this is a golden age for ttrpgs. However the proportion of people who won't put the effort in and treat the hobby as passive entrainment like TV or the slop they endless scroll pass has also increased exponentially. The ratio of the people who put the effort in compared to lazy/incompetent players has shifted dramatically and becomes apparent when you try to interact with the general rpg population. Even though are many more creative and great people in the hobby.

tldr: Hobby is more mainstream now.

>>96388673
is it a book banning on the left, on the right, or a budget kinda take?

>>96388638 (OP)
You don't need a high reading level to play an RPG.

>>96388873
it varies a lot.
You do for WoD, Glorantha is worse. Anything with a complex original setting will be as demanding as a novel or more because it abandoned the pretense of a plot.

Obviously I'm not saying those are better books, I'm saying they expect you to read less pragmatic stuff for longer stretches.

>>96388722
>The ratio of the people who put the effort in compared to lazy/incompetent players
Oh please. That's always been the case. If you wanna make that claim I'd like to see something to back it up. In the 90s there were plenty of spergs, half-autists and downright dipshits in our hobby. If anything, I see its becoming more mainstream as, anecdotally, resulting in more people with normal-ass, decent social skills becoming more common. Most people learn ttrpgs by being taught before they ever bother reading anything. Blanket statements about "oh woe is me, everything is getting worse!" might conform to some bias you develop as you get older towards your nostalgia for the "good ole days," but they are suspect as shit.

>>96388868
It's a stupid people thing. Sorta like trying to attribute every evil in the world to fit your identity politics.

I run a public ttrpg table and while talking about a Sword & Sorcery book one of the players said "Oh I can read the comic of that"
People have demolished their own attention spans.

>>96389080
I don't know, I read the Corum comic book before reading the book. Narratively it was way worse, condensed to the point of affecting the story, but visually it was really cool and it's the only way to access the illustrations an artist made for it. It was one of those comics made to leave a record playing and stare at the images for hours.

>>96389080
What book?

>>96389080
What a new and terrible phenomenon that sounds like.

>>96388638 (OP)
Yes I do believe that declining reading levels are a problem, and while reading your post I think I may be part of that problem.

What's your best advice to individuals that are part of the problem?
So far I think sitting down and reading would help a lot, but is there more to it than that?

>>96388638 (OP)
I play regularly with a group that ranges in age from 26-40. These are all working adults with masters degrees and one has a doctorate. Almost none of them know what their characters can do because they won’t fucking read anything. It isn’t even a literacy issue, they just refuse to read…

>>96389242
>pick up a book or download an epub
>read it
>repeat
And don't restrict yourself to reading just one genre or type of literature.

I fucking hate readers and their sense of elitism.

>>96389242
Read harder stuff and spend time thinking about what you just read, things you missed or intentions the text had. Children learn to read faster because they don't have that much to do, so they can spend time thinking about what they just absorbed and wonder what things could mean.

Most appendix N stuff is fine. If you don't like fantasy Raymond Carver is pretty good, easy to read harder to get. If you want something more fun the beats are popular with 20 something lit students for a reasson, Hunter Thompson is much better than the cliche would make you think. You also have comedies, stuff like A Confederacy of Dunces that predicted being a frogposter decades before the internet was a thing.

>>96389319
That's a joke or bait, right? People who read genuinely are smarter and better than other people. That's just fact.

>>96389242
Other anon here:
A year ago I was so fed up with everyone online and the shitty state of video games that I decided that it was time to start reading books again. I hadn't done that in decades.
It was irritatingly hard at first (especially since I pretty much was ashamed at myself because of how spoiled I was) but eventually it got better, and now I love reading. It didn't even take long to get over my "short attention span", just a few months

1. Make sure you are interested in what you are reading BUT make sure the book is not too easy. If it's just one of those easy-to-read, constant excitement types of books you won't improve much as those kinds of books are written for people who already aren't great at reading. So at least pick something that's somewhere in the middle
2. Hate yourself whenever you find yourself scrolling WITHOUT PURPOSE on your phone/computer, checking your "flow" or whatever on youtube, instagram, discord, 4chan or anything similar. It's obviously fine to read things or search for information but if you are trying to read and then go all like "gee-whiz I wonder what /tg/ is up to" whilst proceeding to scroll, you are making it even harder to do something about your problem. It's the equivalence of a fat guy eating snacks "just this once".

>>96388638 (OP)
>the literacy crisis should make the hobby smaller and more niche than it used to be
It should, but instead it will only get worse because zoomers and alphas are literally retarded.

>>96389242
>What's your best advice to individuals that are part of the problem?
That they kill themselves.

>>96389294
It is a literacy issue tho. It's like lifting. Reading a lore blurb is hard for them like lifiting the minimum weight can be challenging to someone who refused to move more than absolutely vital up to that point. It's a part of their brain that can work, but they have atrophied.

>>96388638 (OP)
The big problem with TTRPGs is writing, not reading. RPG players are often not great writers (thus the constant stream of DMs complaining about reading pages-long backstories). However, they would at least put effort into making a backstory and thinking through their characters, which would in turn affect the way they play.

These days, AI use is so prevalent that a lot of players, and even some DMs, will default to it. However, that cripples their writing abilities because they don't practice writing, and it also means they don't think through things. As a result, the half-baked stream-of-consciousness essays of old have been replaced by AI slop.
While technically easier to read, they take thought away from the table and thus cripple creativity and expression on the table.

>>96389328
There it is right there.

>>96389294
This, people are just fucking lazy and know you will answer any rules questions they have so they don't bother trying to learn it themselves. Modern DMs don't feel like reading through a 200 page dry as fuck DMG, so they just watch a couple of youtube live-plays and "how to play" videos and think they're good to go. The rules aren't concrete enough that you can get away with getting them wrong every once in awhile, and eventually it all just turns into a big mess that burns people out. It has nothing to do with the inability to read, it's the fact that nobody wants to.

>>96389355
But that's always been the case. Been playing ttrpgs for over 30 years. The number of people who sit down and read the rules all the way through has always been the tiniest fraction. Because of the availability of online tutorials and summaries, I'd say people actually know the rules better, these days.

>>96389349
I had a DM that was very into generating awful pictures supposed to be our characters who around that time started having very negative reactions to things that came out of left field. If a players wanted to do something unexpected, if we showed over the top enthusiasm for an NPC or quest, if the table formed a plan that made sense under very specific conditions, stuff like that, he'd get sincerely angry. Slowly with time anything that demanded improvisation that went beyond any possible prep was turning into a presonal attack.

I have no reason to think it was AI turning into a crutch for all his thinking, but it is what I tell myself because I'd rather see him as an internet junkie than a retard.

>>96389307
>>96389324
>>96389334
Thanks guys!
I'll get to reading then.

>>96389390
>BUT THAT'S ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE
>EVERYTHING AS ALWAYS BEEN TERRIBLE

>>96389355
not wanting to read is a low literacy issue, like fearing having to make a physical effort is a low strength issue.

>>96389402
It's never been terrible. It has always been the case. And posting pictures on the internet is a stupid way of pretending to argue.

>>96388638 (OP)
reading is not the issue, attention is.

>>96389393
I had the same thing happen with a DM who used AI. He ended up getting upset every time players did something that he hadn't planned, and viewed it as trying to steal the spotlight. I left, and the game died a couple weeks later.

>>96389324
>A Confederacy of Dunces that predicted being a frogposter decades before the internet was a thing.
I would like to know more.

>>96389519
>I would like to know more.
You're in a thread talking about people reading less. It's a book. Wanna know how you can find out more about it?

>>96389550
Download an opinion from Youtube?

>>96389580
Perfect.

>>96388689
But enough about Christianity!

>>96389519
The main character is an extremely disgusting person, but you can tell the author was exaggerating to the absurd things he saw in himself so it's awful in a very particular and sincere way. A dude in his 40's who thinks of himself as an intellectual but is a loser who lives off his mom and can't hold a sane conversation with anyone.
In the first chapter or two he gets out of bed in the afternoon, writes an extensive devastating critique of a child singing in a talent show on TV on his favorite notebook, eats the food his mom was preparing for dinner with her friends, chastises her for keeping shit company, and goes outside to see the horrors of the world and take notes on what he knows will become the greatest treaty of catholic dogma once he's done. Once we're settled with him and the side characters horror happens: His mom makes him get a job. He ruins every place that hires him, eventually becomes a gay political icon without noticing.

>>96389580
I was waiting for an anon to explain it to me in concise, easily-digestible terms, because reading the whole book would be time-consuming and my time is better spent mindlessly browsing threads on 4chan.

>>96388722
>The ratio of the people who put the effort in compared to lazy/incompetent players has shifted dramatically and becomes apparent when you try to interact with the general rpg population.
I remember a time when you had to deal with the fat creepy slob being your GM because he was the only guy in town that ran games. There are plenty of nightmare stories from the 90s that associated DnD with, "end-stage loser nerddom" before it became mainstream. I can't emphasize how nasty people used to see DnD.

>>96389850
It's the same faux golden age crap that had our parents thinking that everyone in the 50s owned their own house, had perfect nuclear families and barbeques every weekend. They think that the ttrpgs in the 80s and 90s were like Stranger Things. It's hard to blame them for it, but it's also hard not to sneer at.

>>96388638 (OP)
Literacy problems are becoming a thing. All of that is real and Americans in general were already pretty dumb and illiterate so it's idiocracy on steroids.

However it isnt going to change ttrpg's. These things have an IQ filter. Normies do not play ttrpg's. Yea, some of them play 5e and dont know any other game exists. Of course if you enter any 5e space the IQ drops 40 points right off the bat and everything becomes awful. There's also an insane number of terminally online mentally ill weirdos who love 5e and ttrpgs in general. They are a minority despite feeling like a majority on the internet. Still dont really matter because even those are 100-120 IQ not 60-100.

Normies still love sports and other boring emptyheaded hobbies. They are the ones with literacy problems. Literacy itself isnt hard to obtain so even 100 IQ is safe. The destruction of society and all kinds of education safety nets are for the room temp IQ people. They are falling down hard. They are better off as potatoe farmers. And they will never ever want to play ttrpg's because they're too into sports or the kardashians.

>>96388638 (OP)
>>96389242
Remove distractions. Hike out into the woods and isolate yourself in the middle of nowhere with nothing but your reading material, if need be. When there's nothing else to stimulate you, you will naturally find enjoyment in even the most mundane things, and be able to focus far better. That's what I do.

If attention span isn't a problem and you have genuine trouble with actual reading comprehension, then you might have to go back to the basics:
>understand the individual words on the page
>string together words to extract ideas from sentences
>connect those ideas across those sentences
>integrate ideas within a model to answer questions
To be fair, a lot of people fail at Step 2. They're not able to point out obvious contradictions in a paragraph. Hell, people misunderstand fucking Tweets. If you're not reading at a level where you can even catch obvious contradictions, then you're going to struggle when reading sets of instructions or complicated forms, which are pretty much what TRPGs are. This is called "functional illiteracy" in the academic world, and it's a big problem in the States.

>>96388722
>However the proportion of people who won't put the effort in and treat the hobby as passive entrainment like TV or the slop they endless scroll pass has also increased exponentially
Impossible btw. You cant play ttrpgs passively. It isnt passive entertainment like TV and isnt semi-passive like dimwitted video games. It's a serious social storytelling experience. If people are passive about it, they will get kicked out.
>All my players are always on their phones
I read these stories often, but they're always high school kids who force their normie friends to play. It's never a group of nerds who all love ttrpgs playing ttrpgs. It's one nerd trying to shoehorn normies into his hobby and they only go bc theyre bored and the kid doesnt realize yet they dont want to play.
>yOu cAnT bAn LaPtOpS aNd pHonEs tHaT iS aBlEiSt!1!1!1!1
I hear this a lot too. Mental illness is a real problem online but not in real life. These people? You just stop inviting them. When your friend asks why they dont come anymore you just say "Because theyre fucking weird/retarded/mentally-ill" and your friend will just chuckle in agreement and not gaf.

>>96388673
Go back to /pol/ please.

Yes. Smartphones fucked up everyone's attention spans.

It's funny. I definitely feel like I had the opposite problem in the 2000's. I'd say I wanted to run a certain TTRPG and my players would run out and buy/pirate all the books and end up knowing more about the setting than me and have insane combos I hadn't anticipated. Now it feels like people really want their hand held through in-game tutorials(and then they complain about being bored or still feeling lost because they can't be bothered to do any homework). I even had one guy get mad I didn't prompt him to buy better gear. There's tons of lore, tutorial, and actual play stuff on YouTube but good luck getting people to use any of it.

>>96389349
>As a result, the half-baked stream-of-consciousness essays of old have been replaced by AI slop.
Or in other words
>slop replaced by slop
So no change. So no problem.

>>96390407
Everything you say is true in theory but it rarely works out that way in practice

>>96390570
It's not (just) the attention spans. It's executive function. People aren't just finding it hard to focus over time - they are getting used to spending time entirely without exerting will. Mindless flow state activities, rote tasks where the effort:reward ratio has been carefully tailored (looter shooters, comfy farming games, etc.), using AI to write prompts to use AI.
RPGs are ALL executive function. Making choices, prioritising concerns, setting goals.

>>96389405
>not wanting to read is a low literacy issue, like fearing having to make a physical effort is a low strength issue
I have always been a prolific writer. My normal posts on forums in the 1990's would be considered long even by those standards. Although anyone capable of reading never had any issue since even the longest forum posts arent even close to a single page in a book or a quarter of a good internet article. There might be a few tldr's but they would be understandable. However most people skimmed which is expected and fine when discussions were deep and long on forums. Even when arguing or trolling, you read extensively.

Now, it is infinitely worse. People are incredibly illiterate and the younger generations are adhd and illiterate, which is just double illiterate.

I used to be able to have conversations with anyone online. Rarely someone might be a tldr troll but meh. No biggie and they were still literate, and there would be like 5 other ppl talking over them anyway so easily ignored. Many often were just honest "[sorry,] I just got off work I dont want to read a novel." or "i have attention issues so I need it summarized".

Now a days? Holy shit it is bad. People see 140 characters as excessively long. Not hyperbole either. I learned to shorten everything I say to people to be as brief as possible. I can write 1 paragraph and people will call it a bible length novel. Uses to take 4 full pages for that remark.

It is even worse though. You get about ONE sentence max before you can actually see people's faces hurt with pain bc you arent slapping them with dopamine. I stopped talking to people entirely for the most part bc of this.

It effects RL too. I used to be able to have endless back and forths in high school. Adults now who are of 1 generation younger than me, who grew up with social media? One fucking sentence IF you are lucky. Many ppl cut each other off mid-sentence now or get bored after more than 5 words
All of society is collapsing

>>96390733
I didnt adapt. I just gave up on anyone born after 1990.
It is even worse though.
I started paying attention to the people who still talk with each other. Those who adapted. It's endless one-shot boomer tier jokes and two sentence monologues that they then express intense emotions on their face like "oh my god he actually just listened to my ted talk in full."

It is fucking weird. I havent talked to people outside of my literate family in over 10 years. Even RL has become Discord/Twitter level illiteracy.

Forums don't even exist anymore. And if you post more than 140 characters on discord, people will get visibly angry and emotional, like you are causing them physical pain. Their reactions are like you are actually hurting them IRL. They will call the police (mods) who will ban you immediately. Or they will block after replying. They will message their friends for "emotional support" bc they dared read your 140 characters before replying so they could "destroy you properly".

Ask anyone if theyve read a book recently? 99% say no.

Last year I actually met someone who didnt have cellphone brainrot. I was shocked I was able to say 4 full sentences, and they actually listened and cared. It was about nothing.

Also the boomers are the worst btw. It isnt an age thing. It's a cellphone thing. On the internet it's the kids who are the worst, but IRL it is the boomers. They have the most adhd extreme attention span problems and cellphone dopa.ine brainrot. Plus cringe convo every time.

>>96390407
>>yOu cAnT bAn LaPtOpS aNd pHonEs tHaT iS aBlEiSt!1!1!1!1
>I hear this a lot too.
not banning them is ableist
so much people has some degree of adhd that makes concentrating harder, so many others some degree of autism that pushes them into a single track at a time. Having distractions around them is like having some beers in the AA meeting doorsteps. You're being an asshole for your own convenience, if you personally need to fidget just fidget. If you need some fidgeting product for some reasson get one that doesn't come with lights and sounds and a constant flood of gatcha tier attention seeking material.

>>96390732
not just being mindless, because meditation is good for focus and response, being mindless helps you think. It's being stuck in a casino of constant tiny dopamine rewards in a state of constant light acceleration, never allowed to rest and think things, always moving, amusing ourselves to death.

>>96390733
>It effects RL too.
affects

>>96390889
And 'nowadays' not 'now a days'
You'd think a prolific writer would do better.

>>96388638 (OP)
Not really, the declining literacy levels are due to the impact of a larger portion of students who are at no literacy levels. Ie don't participate at school or don't speak or read in English. It's equally parts a migration, schooling and cultural issue.

The most interesting thing about it is states like Mississippi are actually rising through the average rankings for literacy while California has dropped, however that's the student's average scores with the median scores for California still being higher than Mississippi (though still declining).

So you are very unlikely to experience any issues at the table when playing unless you're going out of your way to play with people with no English skill or minimal engagement with the schooling system.

>>96388642
Clever.

>>96389351
I've never encountered an elitist reader irl, but I've net plenty of dipshits proudly proclaim how reading is a waste of time

>>96390592
The problem is that the old slop could be used productively by a good DM or an eager player. The new slop is less than worthless.
It's like exchanging food analogies for shit analogies. Say what you will about the former, you can do more with it than with the latter.

>>96388722
>Like it or not this is a golden age for ttrpgs. However the proportion of people who won't put the effort in and treat the hobby as passive entrainment like TV or the slop they endless scroll pass has also increased exponentially.
In which case it's not a fucking golden age, mate. An increase in the popularity of the hobby does not mean an increase in quality.

>>96391713
There is a ton of quality stuff being released today compared to any other time in the industry's history. This is the golden age of the hobby.

>>96391713
If you think that the quality of RPGs has gone down over the years, you simply have not read old ttrpgs. I suggest that you do so and discover that yes: this is an absolute golden age.

>>96391403
>I've never encountered an elitist reader irl
What does that even mean? I don't think I know anyone who simply doesn't read. Like sure: maybe only one book a month but like... not at all? Not even on accident? Do they just never get curious about anything?

>>96391739
A lot of people don't read books anon, I don't know what to tell you. They'll count social media or listicles as reading but they don't pick up books. But like I said. I've met people who read regularly, I've never talked to one who thought they were a better person because of it, but I've seen plebty of people that are proud about not reading books.

>>96391603
not at all
stream of conciousness said something about that person, it was unfiltered thoughts. Rarely a good read or made them look good, but it was them. If they use chatGPT they might as well not do anything, I don't care about a computer's take on a vague idea you hid under paragraphs of unrelated text. Copy and past an encyclopeda if you want, just as useful to know what you're going to do during the session.

>>96390570
>>96390732
This. The actual brain rot is real and a lot of new generations have it

>>96388638 (OP)
Yes. Tracking rations or encumbrance? Care about timekeeping? Reading a note? Taking notes? Caring about coins? Having to use your brain aside from “tell me what to roll, DM”? You get screeching.

I blame:
>Anime
>Mental illness
>Video games
>Dopamine starved man children
>Social media addiction
>”Celebrity” livestreams like Critical Role and Dimension 20
>Lack of gatekeeping
>Slop rulesets, story gaming (looking at you PbtA)
>Boomers/GenXers vanishing to safety caves
>Allowing women and gays- they are overly consumed with drama and identity politics
>the influence of the Seattle/PNW on the hobby over based Midwestern roots
>Fostering the “everyone can roleplay” mentality

I hate to say it but I feel like the fucking last one in the lifeboat. I have based autist and normal nerd friends to game with. But we have no desire to let any normies or FLGS slop join our table.

Stay selective

>>96391739
It's fairly commonplace for people to go years or decades without reading a novel in the USA. Personally, I blame public education for this. Almost all required reading was dog shit. Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet, and Johnny Trumain all come to mind as required reads and they were all slow, boring, bullshit. Hilariously though, the same people getting mad that schools want to remove books that tell preteens how to make a grinder account for anonymous gay sex from teaching curriculums are the same ones that demanded To Kill A Mockingbird be removed for having the word nigger in it.

How about instead of reading about gay niggers making pottery for two weeks, you put Robert E Howard on the curriculum?

>>96391984
Great Gatsby is a wonderful novel. Maybe having to read it swayed you.

>>96391984
I actually liked all the books you listed. Just not during school when I had to read them. I didn't learn to appreciate them until much later in life, when I had the leisure to read them on my own terms and the necessary perspective to make actual mental connections while reading. The public education system just makes everything dogshit, regardless of anything.

>>96392022
It's great, but it's not a good choice for teenagers.

My people grow small and they grow stupid. Soon they will be nothing more than squealing game...

There's no way everyone getting more retarded every year could make things worse, you're just crazy.

>>96392086
I think youtube videos and sport anime have proved that people can enjoy things more when someone explains them properly. How awful reading HS material feels is partially because the teaching is bad.

>>96391984
REH should be on the curriculum, definitely. But the focus and discipline you build reading a pretentious novel, and writing an entire report on it, will equip you to read anything in the same language. So we should still force all high schoolers to read a boring, objectively bad book at least once. Especially with everyone bemoaning the death of attention spans.

>>96388638 (OP)
I played D&D with Zoomers and they had no issue reading rules or paying attention. Granted, they were older Zoomers, so maybe they enjoyed the last gasp of functional literacy and iPad babies are worse?

>>96388638 (OP)
5e has been around for 10 years and it really does seem like quite a lot of players haven't read or learned the rules. There was even that thing not too long ago where some major D&D youtuber girl made a video about how she finally read the DMG and it was mind-blowing to her. She makes her entire living off camwhoring about D&D exclusively, and she didn't even read the fucking book about running the game. I imagine the situation is far more dire for the average table who are not financially incentivized to care about D&D.

This sort of laziness made D&D Beyond massively successful, because paying up front to have all the features and spells and feats available in a hand-holding character builder is more enticing to the average player than simply reading the books they own. They don't have the attention span for it anyways, and depending on how young they are, they may be able to read words, but not retain any information. There's a growing problem with kids broadly recognizing incorrect context clues, making up a sentence in their head, and then telling themselves that what they've done is the same as reading, even though they have a completely wrong interpretation of the words in front of them.

I read regularly up until university through the litany of western classics and modern works. I intentionally would choose long books because they felt hard, but realistically I don't know if Atlas Shrugged and Les Mis were that hard to comprehend even as a teen. I've almost exclusively enjoyed audiobook productions of biography and comedy books, podcasts, and light reading since then. While I don't skip cutscenes in video games and enjoy many CRPGs and run TTRPG I often feel like I am the most well read amongst my peers, but I'm not doing anything to help them out really and often feel frustrated when someone else can't devour a rulebook in a weekend or two like I can. I'm also the GM though for every game we play and introduce every board game to the group.

Any books for this feel?

>>96388638 (OP)
i'm at a point where declining reading levels are about to drive me off of social communication sites entirely.

But yeah, the literacy problem is a problem for TTRPGs too. That's why people buy the book, but then never actually read it and just play using what they've heard and what they imagine the rules say.

>But it isn't the case.
Wishful thinking will get you nowhere. You're in a minor bubble caused by minor renaissance. The equivalent of the people saying "we had a record low this year so global warming is fake."
>So what's the deal? Are ttrpgs saving the world and bringing a new generation to reading?
Hell no, they're dying.
>Is the solution to the crisis giving kids a reason to read something longer that a twit? Are there solutions?
I doubt it. this is being orchestrated from on high. The elite don't want a literate populace. Control the information, control the masses. Been the gameplan for decades you're just seeing the final tightening of the noose. There's nothing us average schmoes with at most a 7 figure budget can do to stop it.

>declining reading levels

But people are reading more than ever before? Where are you getting this data from, OP?

>>96390889
>>96391208
I said I'm prolific not that I am good and not that I dont use spellcheck. Idk why but affect and effect has always fucked with me. But their they're there is super easy but fucks with most people so idk. Maybe we are all a little bit retarded.

Btw prolific just means I write a lot. Nothing more.
Prolific - present in large numbers or quantities; plentiful.

>>96392555
Are you talking about ginny or someone else I dont know about?

>>96391208
>You'd think a prolific writer would do better.
Nta but here you are proving OP right about the decline of literacy. Anon says he wrotes a lot of text and you fabricate in some fantasyland that he is comparing himself to Stephen King. You are clearly part of the decline so it is at least more real than you specifically think.

>>96392766
writes*
Reeeeeeee!!!!! The absence of typos does not prove literacy!!!

>>96392605
>i'm at a point where declining reading levels are about to drive me off of social communication sites entirely
Why? Can you give an example? I am curious if it's the same as what I experience or something else resulting from the same problem.

>>96392602
>often feel frustrated when someone else can't devour a rulebook in a weekend or two like I can
This is a very common thing for every GM. Players are lazy as shit and dumb as fuck. I literally lived with one player and between the 4 of us, we each had to spend 15 minutes max on our own looking at a handful of items to spend our money on. They had 2 weeks and we get to the table and first thing 2 of them say is "Oh, I didnt spend my money. What can I get?" This was literally after every other day both guys talking about how they cant wait for the next session bc it's the funnest thing ever and their favorite game theyve ever played. I looked at my other roommate who did her homework and we were just dumbfounded because we told the guy that lived with us constantly throughout the week to remember to spend his money. And I texted the other guy twice, and he said sure both times. Nope.

>>96391945
>>i blame ”Celebrity” livestreams like Critical Role and Dimension 20
No one tell him that's the same thing now.

>>96391945
>>Allowing women and gays- they are overly consumed with drama and identity politics
Women and gays have always been in the bobby. Even trans have been a big part of it. Jennell Jaquays was a trans man and one of the legends of super early dnd. He said he was always trans just didnt come out or show it until later.
>>the influence of the Seattle/PNW on the hobby
Seattle has ALWAYS been the capital of ttrpgs. Wtf are you even talking about? Gygax wasnt the only designer. In fact dnd had its lunch eaten by other games like Shadowrun, Runemaster, and GURPS for awhile.
>inclusivity and wokeness
This is the result of normies entering the hobby and thus attracting the terminally online mentally ill control freaks who sought to take over. Which they unironically did. Now half of all ttrpg devs who make it big are trans blue haired men with severe mental illness and a deep necrophiliac desire to destroy the hobby and every other developer.

>>96392383
>iPad babies are worse?
you have no idea.
That said it's also a case of some members of older generations losing their literacy.

>>96392555
>There was even that thing not too long ago where some major D&D youtuber girl made a video about how she finally read the DMG and it was mind-blowing to her. She makes her entire living off camwhoring about D&D exclusively, and she didn't even read the fucking book about running the game. I imagine the situation is far more dire for the average table who are not financially incentivized to care about D&D.
Pointyhat has never said as much, but it's visible in most of his "I fix D&D" videos where he just ends up reinventing the wheel because he's never once actually touched a monster manual or any setting wiki, just watched other people's summary videos of specifically the 5e MM.

And I've caught "optimizer" channels ripping their content straight from reddit posts or /5eg/.

The only people reading the books anymore are whatever WotC employee first wrote it down (the editors are all laid off, there's no QA testing except community for UA, and the suits sure as hell aren't reading any of it) and a handful of hyperautists on 4chan.

>>96389593
Yeah because Christianity books are flying off the shelves at your public school library
Groomer anon

>>96392881
I don't watch PointyHat, but the youtuber I was referencing was GinnyD. But I know the exact kind of behavior you mean. The sort of faggot who goes:
>hey guys I invented rules for Guns in D&D because so many people have been demanding it and WotC never listens!
meanwhile, the 5e DMG has had rules for guns and so many of the other things people try to reinvent since day 1, but no one knows because they don't read their fucking books.

>>96392966
>but the youtuber I was referencing was GinnyD.
I knew it! >>96392732
I remember seeing her video.
Dont hate on me for knowing this. I am a hardcore gooner and think she is smoking hot so I love watching her and am one of those guys where if a guy said it I'd roast him making fun of him for being so illiterate and adhd but since she is hot I'm like "oh yea no that's totally fine ginny we love you here's a tip on top of my monthly patreon sub". Dont judge. If she had an OnlyFans alrd GinnyDD she'd be a millionaire and I'd have donated atleast 5k/year myself. Gooners gonna goon. Better than killing myself out of loneliness so fuck off. But yea she's probably not too literate if that's the case. So fucking hot tho.

>>96388638 (OP)
People being unable to read is a huge problem in literally every area. AI chat bots are making it worse. We are rapidly becoming a species of morons. Also, you're asking how to solve the literacy crisis on /tg/. If anybody in this thread figures it out make sure to let someone know.

>>96392790
>Why?
Because I'm sick of talking to people who only process like 3 words out of an entire paragraph. Why keep typing if I'm basically just addressing the void?
Especially after one of them tried to come after my job, when we were literally on the same side of the issue.

>>96393043
>Dont judge.
All I feel is pity.

>>96393043
I'm judging a little bit. She's not that hot, my guy.

>>96393043
>ProfessorDM
>Old school boomer with a huge love for the craft. Hardcore capitalist with an iphone and pension phone.
>141k subs
>GinnyD illiterate but a young woman
>818k subs

>>96393043
Brother, you could find a girl of her caliber at pretty much any anime convention or ren faire. Stop simping for somebody who doesn't know you exist and find something real.

>>96393043
>I am a hardcore gooner and think she is smoking hot
different strokes (ha) for different folks i guess.

>If she had an OnlyFans already "GinnyDD" she'd be a millionaire
Eh, give it 5 years for her current revenue and attention to dry up. She'll make one. They always do.

>>96389080
With their multi-modal presentation, comics can actively engage the memory and provide non-verbal prompts that increase comprehension.

The median word rank (most common word "the" is rank 1, "it" is rank 10) of comic books double that of university graduate adult speech, and contains more than three times as many rare words. The median word rank for comics is about 75% that of adult books, and the rare word count is higher in comics.

Preschool books have a superior median word rank than university educated adult speech and a similar rare word amount. (Sitting around talking about your little game of make believe may be less linguistically challenging than reading a bunch of preschool books.)

Reading graphic novels improves reading comprehension and encourages sustained reading practise. This directly targets your (wrong) accusation that reading comics demolishes attention span.

When compared, both experimental groups (one using only the graphic adaptation, the other using both the graphic adaptation and the original text) showed better comprehension than the control group (using original text only). No significant difference was found between the experimental groups which says that having the original text made no significant difference to comprehension of the story.

Many neurodivergrent readers are known to have difficulty reading and paying attention, the regular panel structure of some comics may be of benefit to them.

Sorry you have such a low opinion of comics. They're actually very cool.

>>96392383
People exaggerate how much a generation affects people. Just because they are zoomers it doesn't mean anything.

>>96392555
The 5e DMG is not a good manual tho
DMG style books are hard to read, I've always apreciated them way more after running the game a few times. They are more like advice or a commentary track.

>>96392605
>The elite don't want a literate populace. Control the information, control the masses. Been the gameplan for decades you're just seeing the final tightening of the noose.
I'm pretty sure a lot of literacy was born from novels being the trash entertainment of the time. Dumas basically wrote soap operas with more filler than content, melodrama was super popular with the early printing press and Doyle had crazy fans sending him Sherlock fanfiction as if he gave a fuck.
But I feel it was a more complex hobby, the tools that you got from reading Dumas helped you read newspapers and history books, it opened doors. There wasn't a design to simplify and demand as little as possible from the reader. Even during the pulp era you had really awful writers pumping shit to every magazine, but among the slop you had Bradbury working for a paycheck while he slowly completed short stories that will forever be impactful.

There isn't as much of a plan as a natural evolution of a shit system that hurts us but is already in too much control. It's like asking every citizen to quit smoking.

>>96393043
I think there shoud be D&D OF content.
I'm not entirely sure what it'd be, I guess skimpy dresses and erp? There has to be money there.

>>96393065
I stopped using facebook a couple years ago and convinced myself the issue was that I was talking with 12 year olds and expecting complex though. I feel better after doing that. Since then whenever I feel angry at someone being stupid I just tell myself that they are children and they'll learn better in a decade, and by then there's no way we'll meet again so I shouldn't be waiting for it.

>>96393131
>porn star telling you how to quit porn
>once she has an audience of acknowledged porn addicts she sets up an onlyfans
galaxy brain, she's clearly leagues ahead of all of us.

the average american has always been anywhere from literally illiterate to just getting by. not that we've ever been any kind of consistent at all about measuring this shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

and even among you faggots the difference between my ability to read and your own is probably fucking staggering.

>>96389328
I read porn on literotica, does that make me better than the vulgar masses?

>>96393999
you did get trips, but no, bad literature is still bad. Same reasson reading enough twits to match the word count of Moby Dick isn't healthy

>>96394070
So only the *right kind* of literature makes me better than other people?

>>96394079
i love how defensive illiterates get. like just read a book nigga it's not hard. keep doing it and your brain will get big enough for you to understand that your brain got bigger and why it happened. then it'll click it was never about superiority, but having a fucking goddamn brain.

>>96388638 (OP)
I run text based games and the amount of times a player gets the name of a creature or place wrong when they can literally scroll up or ctrl+F or refer to the discord channel with the summaries is pathetic. It's always the Americans of course. I also have issues with this kind of thing IRL due to decades and ongoing attitude of anti-intellectualism in Australia

My current Americans are enthusiastic and proactive in the game, they just seem to be allergic to taking their own notes or managing their attention span, it is like herding cats. I'm slowly encouraging them to take their own notes and the other players are now mentioning they made a note of something or showing their IRL notes. I think in this case it is because the Americans are actively in academia and spend enough time throughout the week making notes and writing shit to be graded, TTRPGs are meant to be more relaxed. In previous games it has not been that, the Americans don't read or think about things and joke about blue curtains

>>96394088
I do read actual books too. I just don't see how that elevates me above anyone else.

>>96388638 (OP)
>2025
>OP wants to talk dropping literacy
You are some 25-30 years too late.

Also, >>>/lit/, never-game

>>96394367
Lurk more.
/tg/ isn't just for games.

>>96392963
lmao, not that anon but you are such a dishonest dumbass.

>>96394136
Damned if you do damned if you don't. Play with Americans and they have low attention spans. Play with Australians and you can't understand a fucking word the silly cunts are saying.

>>96394383
I'm here since there is /tg/. Were you even old enough to learn how to read back then?
And this place isn't for utterly unrelated threads either.

>>96392086
Great Gatsby is a bunch of unlikable douchebags being unlikeable douchebags.
Catcher in the Rye had the biggest unlikable douchebag ever put in print.
Romeo and Juliet isn't the worst Shakespeare play, but it isn't his best and most of the time the subject matter is read like a book instead of treated as a play and it suffers for it.
Johnny Tremain was slow bullshit.

Hell, I think the only required reading I remember actually thinking was pretty solid was Where the Red Fern Grows because dogs are great, I could relate to losing them, and a mother fucker caught a hatchet to the throat.

>>96391731
Like what?

>>96392614
>But people are reading more than ever before?
They're not. Practice what you preach and give us the data.
>Where are you getting this data from, OP?
NTA but took me less than a minute:

https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/nations-report-card-decline-in-reading-progress-in-math.html

https://news.ufl.edu/2025/08/reading-for-pleasure-study/

>>96394457
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/peel-school-board-library-book-weeding-1.6964332

TLDR troonies are purging any books written before 2008 including classics in order to push exclusively leftist propaganda into schools and libraries.

>>96394079
yes
the right kind of food gives you gains if you excercise, and then you have the wrong kind of food which is something like plutonium. Similarly there is reading that is as healthy as eating plutonium.

>>96394367
the OP asks about how this affects ttrpgs and why we have more games now if that's the case.
if you could read you would had noticed this

>>96388638 (OP)
Im not sayin', Im just saying

>>96393725
>The 5e DMG is not a good manual tho
>DMG style books are hard to read, I've always apreciated them way more after running the game a few times. They are more like advice or a commentary track.
You haven't read them, have you? They're the only thing in 5e entire publication history that actually teaches new players how to put together and run a game, as well as how to properly homebrew new stuff for it.

>>96393999
That depends: How well written is it? And on the personal side of things, do you feel that you can properly understand what the author was conveying in their stories?

>>96396648
I read it before ever running a D&D game. Some stuff stuck with me, but reading it again after a year of playing it was like a different book. It's not structured for absolutely new players like some introductory manual starting with Hello World and slowly adding excercises, but it's not structured like an easy to access encyclopedia. If you try to read it in order you're stuck with crappy summarized world building, if you jump around you're bound to miss something because story hooks are called character motivations or some other choice that makes sense if you already know the game.

For example, imagine you're a new DM, do you think you'd find firearm or sanity optional rules when looking at this?
And don't say you could search the document, you can't search a document for something you have no reasson to think is there.

I'm not saying it's a bad resource, but it's not gonna make sense without game experience.

>>96392873
>Women and gays have always been in the bobby. Even trans have been a big part of it. Jennell Jaquays was a trans man and one of the legends of super early dnd. He said he was always trans just didnt come out or show it until later.
Let me put it this way: having a cluster of people from outgroups is fine. The hobby owes a lot to folks like Mike Pondsmith, Paul Jaquays, and Malia Arneson-Weinhagen. But once you reach a sort of threshold, the nature of the hobby culture begins to change. We cannot ignore the effect of "opening" the hobby has done to its deterioration.

>Seattle has ALWAYS been the capital of ttrpgs.
That's kind of my point. West Coast appropriation of TTRPGs with a desire to push a different style of play. However, not even Seattle has spawned the games its most famous for popularizing (that would be ... Georgia, LMAO). Seattle only made Green Ronin. Steve Jackson was in Texas, FASA was in Chicago. Do you mean Runequest? Chaosim started in Oakland and moved to Michigan. Rolemaster? Iron Crown Enterprises was Virginia.

The heart of roleplaying is always, and has always been, the Midwest.

>This is the result of normies entering the hobby and thus attracting the terminally online mentally ill control freaks who sought to take over.
Kind of my point. This was unhealthy.

>>96397360
>We cannot ignore the effect of "opening" the hobby has done to its deterioration.
fucking zoomer
no.
you don't need to interact with every single person who enjoys the same activity you do, you don't need to meassure yourself through them or even know they exist.
Back in the 90's this wasn't an issue, you just played with the people around you and maybe sent a letter to a magazine or made a correspondence friend or two. That's it.
Caring that strangers somewhere else are doing things you don't like is social media bullshit and as they slowly die out it'll go away. In 50 years it's gonna be a weird fad that lasted a couple decades. It's not a real issue, it's made up bullshit, you can and should walk away and live life ignoring what strangers do or what the megacorp wants you to think about.

>>96393999
There are plenty of published authors who post anonymously on Literotica. Some even openly. Go for it, anon. I like it, too. Reading is good for you for whatever reason you do it.

>>96390733
I ain't reading all that

>>96394088
>like just read a book nigga it's not hard.

I thought the point was to read "a" book but read a book that "has value".

>>96397780
you can read The Puppy Who Lost His Way over and over again if that's your thing. And if you weren't trying to force an absurd argument maybe that's a complex reading level for you.

>>96397661
I miss the 90s. I remember cutting my gaming teeth on 2e.

I wish a “live and let be” mentality had no consequences. I wish we could live on our little islands. It’s sort of like folks who like free speech. They like it until they define what constitutes harmful speech and then expand that definition to control your speech.

The new crop want your story to be told a specific way. They want your gaming developers to make specific rules and considerations. They want to drive traffic away from the indie scene. They’ve replaced folks who were passionate about this with…. Darrington Press. They want you to wear safety pins at GenCon. Being a Grog isn’t just a silly insult, it also means you are racist and transphobic. Young gamers are being inculcated in “habits” originating from Brennan Mulligan and Aabriya Ayengar. I wish it didn’t matter and used to think this. Then I grew up.

Gatekeep your tables. Gatekeep the hobby

>>96397963
>I miss the 90s. I remember cutting my gaming teeth on 2e.
Post your AD&D PhB.

>>96397360
Speakiing as a midwesterner, it's a bit absurd to try and claim the hobby for a given region; even if Lake Geneva or U of M (depending on who you ask) was certainly where it all started and has a number of climate related circumstances that keep it popular.

>>96397979
Here are two of mine. For what it's worth: I think that guy is a jackass. It's awesome that our hobby is so popular and so much gets published for it, now. My 14 year old niece and her friends have a D&D night every other Saturday. They all get dressed up as their characters and their campaign has something to do with cats. More people being into it is good. Even when it's not the people I game with. More things being published for it are good. Even when it's not the things I play with.

>>96397963
I have a hard time imagining you run games at all
Free speech will never affect your table, be it someone saying things you don't like or telling you not to say things they don't like, even screaming "fire", you're allowed to say whatever and you manage the effect on your own. You can and should play with people you want to hang around with.

And even in open tables, most people can differentiate the internet from real life. I've never been victim of the mercer effect (remeber that bullshit buzzword?), I've never seen anyone force politics outisde of a random jab or open ended joke, if people want to have fun they'll make the effort. And if you always see issues wherever you go, then the thing in common is that you're the one there. Try relaxing and having fun.

>>96397963
The irony of someone wishing for a time before safety pins while also obviously upset for being called "grog".

>>96397963
holy fuck this is pathetic

>>96398184
you don't understand, they imply I'm homophobic and transphobic. I am, but still, how dare they?

>>96397696
>I ain't reading all that
Yea we know. We're talking about you. This entire thread is about you.

>>96399212
>The joke
>Your head

>>96399218
>lol just kidding im not retarded
pathetic

>>96399233
No one wants to engage with your screeds, anon. Doesn't matter how many names you call people. No one cares.

>Used to be able to read books without issues
>My attention span is so bad I find it really hard unless I concentrate making it feel like a chore.
How the fuck do I fix myself this is awful.

>>96401698
Literally just read books. How is that not obvious?
Put your phone in another room or turn it off, then read. Start with short stories and practise.

>>96401698

Read a short book that you liked when you were younger. It's kinda like going to the gym where it gets easier once you're in a good routine.

>>96401698
Read Hesse's Siddhartha. It's about a 1 day read for most people. That book has been fixing the brains of young men for about a century. I still reread it once a year or so, as a middle-aged man.

>>96388638 (OP)
The demographics that are effecting those averages are not ones that would traditionally engage with traditional games anyway.

>>96389850
>There are plenty of nightmare stories from the 90s that associated DnD with, "end-stage loser nerddom"
I would love to hear a few of those

>>96397963
>It’s sort of like folks who like free speech. They like it until they define what constitutes harmful speech and then expand that definition to control your speech.

The opinions I run into on this board astound me.

>>96395985
If you could read, you would realise this is a bullshit thread build on bullshit premise.
The actual problem with younger generation of players is that they don't interact with ANY media of any kind to such extreme proportions, it makes it near impossible to explain things to them at the table. Not just books, but also movies, TV shows or vidya. They are completely pop-culture (and regular culture) illiterate, to such absurd levels, you have to carefully explain what's a space opera or get blank stares when you namedrop Lovecraft. So are reading rates declining? Depends on a country. Is pop and cultural literacy dropping? Very fucking fast.
I mean fuck, I was a group supervisor on a summer camp entire July and first half of August. I started with running 2d20 Conan and kids had no clue not just who Conan is, but what's even S&S at large. Switched to Broken Compass and they had no clue about most basic adventure flick genre cliches (and name-dropping Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider or Uncharted also gave me blank stares) or what's a pulp. Moved ot Honor + Intrigue and their idea of swashbuckler was a Marvel movie (but at least here they had SOME general idea what's up)

>>96401698
Unirionically pick romantasy.
Fast, easy and basic, but you are over it within 3-5 hours.
Month of such conditioning and you are back in groove with actual, real books.
Also: reading when commuting. There is literally nothing else to do, so you get fixed on the text.

I notice a huge difference between a GM that reads and one who doesn't. I think everyone understands the words said by both most of the time, it's not that they know how to describe unique things. There's a speed to visualize a random space, an understanding of when and how to describe things to guide focus, jusy better technique when it comes to adding details or giving tips through description.
It could be that the people who likes expressing narratives like books and people who have zero imagination dislike books, pure correlation, but I personally think that books are pretty close to what a GM is doing so it's a better fuel than movies or comics that you still need to translate.

>>96401698
you do the chore. It's like asking how to make lifting or jogging hurt less.

>>96402813
>kids are no longer being fed standarized slop
>kids no longer play games trying to recreate the thing they just saw on TV
the world is healing

>>96402638
Dungeons and Dragons was a byword for “useless virgin” until very recently. It was full of pencil-necked nerds running around the forest croaking “magic missile!” While their parents had to hide their behavior from friends because everyone else was doing cool things like teenage pregnancy or getting into sports. I only caught the tail-end of DnDemonization since I got into the hobby around 2009, but well before that the idea of fantasizing as an epic warrior going off to kiss girls played by greasy men was incredibly cringe. Strangely, the worst of the fandom was contained in 3.5e and not earlier editions, likely due to 3.5e being more “quests and campaigns” than dungeon crawls.

>>96403056
This is pretty true on the US side, I'm sure there were some scenes where 3-4 dudes with basic charisma were running games and people didn't think so much about it because that happens with most hobbies. But in Britain they had a stronger fantasy lit culture so the hobby wasn't seen as such a shameful thing.

>>96388638 (OP)
>So the literacy crisis should make the hobby smaller and more niche than it used to be, not only because we can't read but because someone reading around you became weirder and less cool. But it isn't the case.
You're just describing selection bias. The sort of people who are actively learning to read are the sort of people who would enjoy TT games anyway, and the sort of people who aren't learning are usually the sort who wouldn't. Also helps that most illiterate people are lower-class so they spend most of their time working jobs that are very stingy with breaks and vacations while most literate people are middle-class and have jobs that give generous breaks and vacations. So such people have more time and money to spend on tt games.

>>96403021
And then you realize they're still doing the same shit as before but with TV replaced by some streamer or Tiktok "influencer".

>>96403229
What shithole are you from that actual illiteracy is even a consideration for the past, dunno, 80 years?

>>96403021
>Kids aren't fed anything at all
Here, ftfy, since you missed the point entirely
Also
>Play pretend
>Be utterly clueless about just about anything
Yeah, that's gonna work so great...

>>96403702
I don't think you could do 1 to 1 whatever streamers do in a game and make it fun tho

>>96403870
Nah, fuck it, this can be fixed even better
>Kids are fed nothing but slop, to the point they don't have time for quality slop
Because as the other anon pointed out, they replaced that with TikTok and streamers. They don't have time on anything, yet they are consuming nothing. The sheer irony

>>96403056
>until very recently
Past 25 years isn't "very recently".
That's half the time DnD is even a thing, you dumb shit

>>96403876
Streamers don't usually do tabletop games. The few that do are C-tier e-celebs that nobody but people already in the hobby ever heard about.
Just think for a second: what reason someone who DOESN'T play TTRPGs has to go watch a live stream of 6 people sitting around table, talking in funny voices and playing pretend, when fuck-all happens on the screen.

>>96403863
Kentucky. The hearland isn't called the brainland for a reason.

>>96403900
no, I was saying that you can't play a streamer in a ttrpg the same way you'd play Conan or Clint Eastwood.

>>96403906
Ah, America, home of the brave, land of the free
Not a word about basic litreracy, so I guess it checks out.
And ironically, the most read and worldly generation were the people who lived to that slogan - the WW2 and Korean vets. Because circumstances meant they a) traveled the world (to kill nazis/nips/commies) b) could only read and play cards as their free time, because no other entertainment was portable yet and c) got a buttload of post-war grants on college enrollment to "catch-up" for the time lost in the military (and resulting cushy jobs)

>>96403900
>6 people sitting around table, talking in funny voices and playing pretend, when fuck-all happens on the screen.
Vtubers are very popular

>>96403945
But... you actually can
Both in serious and comedic formats. I mean streamer-like characters are nowadays a staple of cyberpunk games, effectively replacing corpos and/or being cross-section with a party's face.
And kids do push those in contemporary games. I recently run Kids on Bikes for literal zoomers and other than it being Zoomers on Electric Scooters, it still worked out, streamer e-girl PC included

>>96403954
Which part of " what reason someone who DOESN'T play TTRPGs has to go watch [that]" you failed to grasp the first time around?

>>96403960
I'm a millenial and I find streamer type characters pretty fun. The new Mothership bounty module includes some material to play basically streaming manhunters doing it for fame and sponsorships and that's great.
I feel that there used to be a "blood thirsty news anchor" archetype that worked pretty much the same in practice.If it motivates them to play a role and engage it's pretty cool.

>>96403964
people who DON'T play TTRPGs what VTUBERS
and that's just two girls with a barely animated avatar reading superchats and sharing anecdotes.
For a thread about literacy levels you seem to have a hard time understanding when people bring up parallel topics.

>>96403954
Ironically, the few times that some of the big vtubers tried to do TTRPGs, they had a great time and fans responded well, but scheduling conflicts and drama made it all fall apart. Just like real life.

>>96404095
>we always make content together
>we all have managers keeping track of our schedules
>we work for a company that wants us to interact with each other to cement a brand identity
>this is a content making machine that most of us don't need to prepare while being fertile ground for memes and art and references that prompt going back through an archive
>scheduling issues still wreck it
TTRPGs are just that strong

>the hobby
Reddit speak, all opinions itt discarded.

>>96391945
>t. faggot nogames too retarded to play tabletop games.
>>96397360
The only deterioration here is of your brain from lack of use.

>>96394937
Source: a bunch of retard who probably never been in a library.

>>96397963
>I remember cutting my gaming teeth on 2e.
You say yet you posting that image shows you were born after 2010 and never played in your retarded life. There is no way for people outside your group to make you play one way or other, something you would know if you played tabletop games.

>>96403863
>>96403906
Fellow Kentuckian. Can corroborate.

I had a fully illiterate former coworker, and basically everyone else I currently work with is at a middle school reading level or below.

We regularly have customers who try to brute force shove their way through our loading doors which have not one but two signs that say "use other doors" on them.

But it's not just literacy. They don't know civics, history, arts, even basic earth or health science. I know multiple people who think aluminum is not a metal because it doesn't stick to magnets. More that didn't know we fought Japan in WW2. One of those aforementioned coworkers is a hollow earther, and tried to explain to me that the earth spinning would sling all the lava to the outside walls with holes at the poles. When I tried to common sense explain to him that if earth was spinning fast enough to sling lava it would also sling all the water off and be a barren rock, he just got supremely butthurt. Then months later tried to explain his esoteric wisdom to me again, with the only addition being "nuh uh, smart people with degrees says it's true" by which he meant Billy Carson.

Make no mistake, like I said in >>96392605 the political situation in the US right now was 100% socially engineered over decades. Make us ignorant, make us stupid, make us scared, make us poor, then make a grab for total control. Serfdom with a nice pretty illusion of freedom on top so there's no escape.

>>96404518
I consider myself pretty dumb, there's a shit ton of things I should know that I learn every day and struggle with things that were obvious in retrospect regularly.
And somehow having a certain level of language skills makes people think I should be listened to and take me in consideration, I've gotten jobs just because the other party convinced themselves I was smart no matter what I did.

It's a weird world.

>>96403056
>>96403171
>Dungeons and Dragons was a byword for “useless virgin”
If you only know of Dungeons and Dragons from shit you see in media. D&D always had all kinds of people.

>>96404581
media was pretty nice to D&D
I remember seeing it on stuff like Dexter's Lab and thinking I wanted to try that

>>96404622
Depends on time period.
The only, and I mean the only time when DnD was associated with dweebs was the tail end of the 90s and early 00s, corresponding to the marketing and then release of 3e. WotC literally imagined the target for their game and then pushed their own retarded narrative on everyone via ads

>>96388680
Sad but true.

>>96391739
Not necessarily reading, but I know college destroyed my love of writing. I used to write stories pretty frequently and was brainstorming them all the time. Then in college, I was just writing up essays and lab reports all the time. I can recall one class in which I was writing a 10-15 page lab report for it every single week. Once I got out of college, the desire to sit down and write/type, even if it was about something I liked, was gone. My brain now associates the act with those awful, dreadfully boring times.
Come to think of it, that's probably what happened with reading too. So much reading was just text books and tech manuals that the very act of reading gets to be sickening. It never hit me as hard as with writing, but I certainly read less than I did before college. I think the internet plays a part in it too. I could read a book, or I could go read shit on 4 chan. Well look where we both are right now?
As an aside though, I am trying to read some more again. Currently reading The Red Badge of Courage. I like it well enough, but it's not so gripping that I find myself unable to put it down. I'm not sure any book is able to grip me like that anymore.
To summarize, schools turn activities like reading and writing into painful chores that people find themselves unable to get joy from anymore, regardless of the content.

>>96388638 (OP)
Only among blacks and brown people.

>>96406737
>schools turn activities like reading and writing into painful chores that people find themselves unable to get joy from anymore
I think you're pretty far outside the norm. Most of us learn to love reading and writing because of college, rather than learning to hate it. I certainly did. Well, writing at least. I've always loved reading.

>>96406770
>Source: trust me, bro
The actual data meanwhile shows that browns are the only ones still reading. It's the white boys that are too busy with porn to read that are tanking the scores

>>96406737
What the other anon have said - you are an outliner, not a norm. If you went as far as uni-tier education, and you by then start hating reading or writing, that's on you.
What's always at fault are book reports kids have to do in elementary and mid school. It's the surest way to make reading and writing about reading a nuisance, rather than entertainment. Add to this compulsory reading of some boring bullshit and by high school, half of kids has to be forced to read anything at all... because they've been forced so far and thus it became a chore.

>>96401698
Reading is hard because you have distractions. You have to identify them and separate yourself from them. If your phone's the problem, put it in another room. If you want to browse videos, try to put on some music to listen to while reading (generally without lyrics or plot).

Your attention span is generally not the problem. It's your interest and your environment.

>>96404573
that just means you're past mount stupid, and are, in fact, above average in terms of intellect and self-awareness because you, as Socrates said, "know that you know nothing."

True idiots never know they're idiots, in the same way that crazies don't know they're crazy.

>>96406865
>Most of us learn to love reading and writing because of college
No, if you didn't like reading or writing before you got to college, I think you're the abnormal one.

>>96406874
>What's always at fault are book reports kids have to do in elementary and mid school.
Meanwhile your source is pure anecdotal for attempting to determine normality. Your entire hypothesis doesn't even make sense. You argue that hatred of writing and reading is instilled early and then magically reversed once one gets to college. Total nonsense. I suppose that's the level of quality that British colleges are putting out though.

>>96407206
He's the abnormal one for fa/tg/uys but not the abnormal one for greater population.

Of course greater population did not go to college nor would it make them like reading any more than they do, which is to say they don't.

>>96401698
There's always audiobooks. That's how most ADHD people get through them anyways. I used to read read books a lot as a kid, mom was a librarian and more or less handed me more as fast as I could read, but that rapidly ground to a halt for middle school because my post-highschool measured reading aptitude level meant I was basically being forced to read 3 heady-adult novels per quarter or flunk English while still managing all my other schoolwork, while everyone else only needed 1 10 chapter kid-lit. By highschool, I was struggling for the willpower. Heart of Darkness was what finally broke me, I ended up reading the same chapter 4 times losing my place over and over and couldn't remember what I had read and just gave up entirely and swapped methods to just listening to someone else read. Doesn't help that the book has parts intentionally written to be boring to emulate the boring parts of the river trip.

Or for some assignments, I just skimmed and used my over-active pattern recognition to fill in the rest, which was actually surprisingly effective and an ability I start to develop towards the end of middle school because I'd only ever get part way through book 3 before the final deadline. And I got my bachelor's without ever actually reading a single assigned thing as far as I can remember, not even as audio books. Some classmate's scripts I guess, that's it. I took notes in class, but never actually read the textbooks.

I think Homestuck was the last thing I actually read tip to tail that's more than a couple pages. What a sad fucking note to end on.

>>96407418
Oh no. I just bought Heart of Darkness. Is it not good? I thought it was known as a classic.

>>96407418
>Heart of Darkness was what finally broke me
were you 12? Heart of Darkness is a tiny book and super easy to read.

>>96407460
It's not the same as apocalypse now, it's pretty moody and chill. It's a short read tho, it's a novella.

>>96407491
>were you 12?
14. I did say it was highschool.

But yeah, it's funny, I went from Crichton and Stoker and Asimov to barely eeking my way through Shakespeare nothing to do with the Elizabethan English I can practically speak it just couldn't focus through it, to completely hard walled about 30 pages into an 80 page novella do not pass go do not collect $200.

>>96407646
Doing most things against your will is hard.
When I was a teen I really wanted to read Neuromancer but every time I tried it wasn't available, read the Bridge trilogy and the newer books. Now I have Neuromancer and it filtered me like 3 times, I can't be bothered to care about it. I know it gets better but my mind just refuses to push through.

>>96402613
nta Read it, not impressed. What do you find so good about it?

>>96407679
>I know it gets better
It doesn't. And since you've never read it I don't think you're qualified to say it does, even less than I'm qualified to offer an opinion on what you'll like.

I read it years after it came out. It was very dated, not all that well written, and I really don't think you're missing out. At the time it would have been worth reading because it did offer something fresh, but it's been superseded by both real world technology, changes in human culture, and by other stories in cyberpunk and even mainstream sf. Don't torture yourself over not reading it, read something you think you'll like.

>>96407679
>Doing most things against your will is hard.
sure, but that also constitutes large portions of my life. why can i power through it for adulting but not reading?

Or am I just using it all up getting through the day and fulfilling all my obligations?

>>96388722
This take is pretty funny. Nobody on the planet would say the movie industry is in a golden age, or that videogames are in a golden age just because they're at their peak of mainstream appeal.

>>96407418
I think audiobooks are different. Not badwrongfun, but particularly in terms of training yourself to sit and concentrate I doubt they will help. It's a lot easier to just "follow along" with an audiobook and just pay enough attention to know what's going on.

>>96407245
>and then magically reversed
Nice lack of reading comprehension.
So which grade did you dropped out?

>>96389334
>It was irritatingly hard at first
I never stopped reading, so the fact it can be hard as an adult is mind boggling to me. I mean it makes sense, but I genuinely can't imagine what's it like. Actually, I assume it's close to how it felt reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, with all the weird slang and accents in it

>>96389699
I like that his theory of world peace amounts to the inverse of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Also one of the few cases I'd recommend an audiobook due to how much the southern drawl ads to everything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQudlUHN7hU&ab_channel=KarinMathews

>>96388722
>a golden age for ttrpgs
Can I get some recommendation for "gold" produced in the last 5 years?
Because clearly I only look at the wrong places for news since every single RPG book I own (Or pdf I acquired) has been made at least 6 years ago.
I think the most recent thing I have is genesys.

>>96409085
>I don't participate
>But this is the hobby's fault I'm behind the curve
Also, another great case of lacking reading comprehension, but there is a solid chance you are obtuse on purpose

>>96409095
Rather than being snarky you could have mentioned something you considered gold.
I promise I won't go "lol it's shit I knew it"

>>96404447
You're actually the retard who doesn't read, if you did you would know that the source in the link I gave is the CBC, which is the Canadian government's own news network.

@gork summarize this thread

>>96408430
Because those industries aren't community oriented

>>96402588
>Read 5/7
Feels good.
Though I'll say I liked "My Side of the Mountain" more than "Hatchet" as a wee lad.

>>96409246
I did read what was linked and it was retarded just like you.

>>96388638 (OP)
I learned to accept that most players are retarded in that area and just expect to have the GM memorize everything years ago.
Last RPG we started I read out the entire player rules section to them over several hours like it was fucking story time. Annoying sure but it lowered the amount of stupid questions significantly.
>>96389080
Sounds fair honestly. I am more of a book guy but fantasy book comic adaptations tend to be pretty good primers on books that are often a bit too long winded.
>>96401698
I got back into reading by mostly reading Ebooks at night with all the lights off as I am getting ready for bed. It makes it far easier to focus and gives you a sense of routine.
>>96402588
This also helps.

>>96408266
>It doesn't. And since you've never read it I don't think you're qualified to say it does,
I meant it as
>I trust it will get better
I still like Gibson's short stories, but Spook Country was so bad I gave up on his newer stuff.

>>96408318
I don't think you're using it all up, it's not a limited daily resource. But powering through cleaning or interacting with your partner's family has a direct reward, reading is supposed to be a reward in itself so it's harder to put effort in it. In that regard it's closer to going to the gym than fulfilling responsibilities. Once you have some inertia it becomes a nice part of your day, but until then it can feel like a stupid idea that isn't for you and you shouldn't had started.

>>96408605
yeah
I do like audiobooks and there's so much stuff out there that I'm not ruining experiences by going for the audio version, but it's more like a podcast. You retain much less, it all goes straight through your head and you get the gist of it in autopilot. Same way a lecture doesn't do as much as sitting down and studying for class.

>>96408836
That wasn't a rebuttal.

>>96393090
If there is a woman in the thumbnail, a horny indian will click the video.

>>96410513
Jesus fucking christ. Mankind needs to genocide all of asia or the internet will be irrevocably fucked. And everything that works using it will be fucked as well. I mean look at war thunder.

>>96409085
Have you checked all the ennie stuff? Not saying it's proof of worth, just that it's the popular thing each year. I'm looking at the 2023 winners and we have Swords of the Serpentine, Vaesen, FL's Blade Runner, Brindlewood Bay, Rivers of London. Maybe you don't like any of those, but there's way more variety than any year of the 80's and much more consistency than any year of the 90's. People complain about the FL sameness (BR does have a multiple success increasing die value system that I like) but it doesn't compare to the 3E OGL boom.

But I believe anon's point related to how much stuff that would be thrown away or abandoned ina tiny circle back in the 90's can now be shared. I recently joined a Mothership jam and while my module sucked, there were 5 or 6 that I loved. Really well made, right for my type of game, and they wouldn't had been made nor shared with me if there wasn't a small corporation prompting the event. And there are dozens of jams all the time making stuff we'll miss until we stumble upon it. The Troika people are expanding into publishing international comics while turning them into settings. We have more translated japanese games than ever, even if it's from amateur translators it's still happening now.
The basic argument here is that we have more stuff now. Is it all good? No, surely it couldn't be. But is the good/bad ratio better when it's randos making things they think are cool than it was when it was randos making things they think will sell and become the D&D killer? I think it is. A lot of 90's bizarro games had great ideas or settings, but needing to be big enough for publishing and bombastic enough for the audience to pick them at a store for full price ruined them.

>>96393043
>smoking hot
bro
find literally any camwhore and they'll look better.

>>96410513
If an indian clicked a video, there's a good chance he was payed to do that.

>>96410579
>payed
sar?

No. The massive decline of RPGs is because normoids seized control of the industry and that's why it's just been repeatedly shit for the past decade. Idiots constantly use it as a therapy session instead of a way to explore new worlds.

>>96410418
>I meant it as
>>I trust it will get better
I know. That's why I wrote what I wrote.

>>96402588
I had 6/7 of these growing up. Twas a good a time.

>>96410513
They must kindly do the needful.

>>96388638 (OP)
Literacy has always been low throughout history. Its a return to the norm.
Do you want the average thirdie reading Tolkien and Frank Herbert and then opining? Do you want the over-educated masses taking up the pages of Alexandre Dumas, Shakespeare and Cervantes to saturate discourse with pseudo-intellectual takes?

Who cares if reading levels are going down, being literate and educated should be for the worthy and becoming worthy is filtered for by an interest in knowledge that guides them towards becoming literate in the first place.

Let it go down so that when the literate meet others who are literate they find kindred spirits instead of the lowest common denominator.

>>96410579
>payed

>>96389319
Uh, it's "readas", cool it with the hard R.

>>96389294
This begs the question:
Why are ttrpg books just so boring to read?

>>96414763
Most ttrpgs try to justify themselves by filling the pages with nonsense fluff.

Almost every ttrpg can be summarized in 3-4 sheets of quick rules which is what a GM's screen usually has on it, though maybe you generally will want a few clarifying details here and there.

But then it wouldn't be a book anymore, and you can't justify selling it for 40 dollars.

>>96414220
Yes, as in making them waterproof. It's a perfectly cromulent sentence.

>>96414804
>autistic take
reducing something doesn't make it easier to read, no one sits down to read instructions to pass the time. Good game manuals nake the reader imagine themselves play the game and get hyped, a difficult balance between being a clear reference guide and being someone's novel/artpunk zine.