Ah I see. I sit corrected.

I have been away from the RPG world for over a decade now and this sort of thing does nothing to make me wish I had time to return to it.

This is the old problem with freedom of speech appearing again, plus people forgetting that a set of RPG mechanics is not the same as an RPG setting.

If you like the mechanics but don’t like the designer’s world then that is fine. Use the mechanics in your own world.

Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom to insist someone listens to you.
Freedom of speech requires the ability to say “I disagree with you and I will not act the way you do. I suggest this way of doing things would be better, because [fill in why], but I accept you are free to ignore this advice.”

RPGs are about a group of people spinning a tale together. There are lots of tales, many of which I am not interested in sharing. I like Space Opera, and that frame of reference requires moments where lines like “Flash, Flash, I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth” just have to be said. If you don’t like worlds with heroines like that play in a different frame of reference. We can both use the same set of mechanics, be they Pacesetter or TORG.

If you do like the same frame of reference then we can share a game world, but that does not mean I approve of your lifestyle outside that game. If we are in an online world then I would rather your lifestyle, profession and everything else never get mentioned because they have nothing to do with the game. If you cannot keep fantasy and reality separate I suggest you need a different hobby, and you are not going to be happy sharing a game with me.

Small press or independently-released games (and by implication, their designers) would routinely be denounced as racist or sexist, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. There was a loud faction who wanted to police and bowdlerise the content of other people’s games, and far too much of the performative outrage we’ve seen in other contexts.

To make a game you needed to walk on eggshells and bland-down your game if you wanted to publish.

It’s one of several reasons I never actually joined that club, despite spending a lot of time hanging out and playing. I always preferred free-form games because the fewer rules to argue about, the better.

You’ve written before on the propensity of nerds to be overly combative and critical. To a certain extent I think a lot of it comes from the creation of a personal narrative that casts the nerd as the hero in their own personal story of toughing it out against the mainstream.