Black Elk
Habitué
- Messages
- 193
So I don't know why, but just I felt like tossing a can of exploding wyrms right quick hehe
Even from the second it first was announced, I've hated just everything about DnD "One" and DnD "Beyond." It's not just that I can't stand the names, but I truly dislike them, and then also feel somehow personally burned by the idea that they wouldn't do a full print run for a 6th edition, that it'd just be a PDF sub or whatever. Something about that, it just makes my skin crawl - even beyond that, but I'm trying to unpack the why... So just to riff, like why do I dig BG/NWN so much, but find the whole idea of a VTT totally underwhelming and off-putting?
The more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to the Amp as emblematic of something broader. Now I know the history, it's not about that. I can appreciate the elegance and simplicity and user friendliness of the most common abbreviations. But I think it says something, that the one is clearly print media and physical - it's what you'll see on the boxes and on the book covers, whereas the other is what you'll see basically if it's digital. I'm rational, I get that it's because the amp has a special function in HTML, speech to text, unicode formalism for anything that has to live primarily online in that format. I'm a kid of the digital era too, so you'd think I'd be all amenable and at least somewhat sensible on this score, but for some reason I'm extra stubborn whenever it comes to the official regalia.
Kinda open ended, but I'm wondering what it is about these things... specifically, why I am so positively disposed towards the former, and just can't really stand anything about the latter, especially in situations where they seem categorically so similar?
It's kind of a puzzle I haven't really figured it out yet, but also just an excuse to post this one heheh. It could have gone in the industry news thread or whatever, but I decided to just go wild instead and post what he said here, in a stand alone but together thread...
My knock on idea, and I'm not sure what it's worth, but just to float it, the reason to dig a cRPG is that it's actually possible to learn how to play the game without really needing to be able to read at first, but also with that goal in mind, eventually. I played my first D&D computer game before I could ever have hoped to open and actually read a rulebook. A BG game has saved D&D's ass twice now in my lifetime, and the new one does give me some hope. This runs a bit at odds with the whole idea of say "Ages 12+" and up on the cover of the box - BG1 is rated T, BG3 is rated M, but then when it came to weighty tomes, part of the way I actually learned how to read anything at all was (in part) using those books too! Also I think people will ignore ratings silliness the same why I did for VHS tapes and compact discs with their explicit advisory labels when I was young. How did I first learn what an ampersand was?
I think I know the answer there haha. It was D&D for me!
So I don't know, just felt like it deserved it's own special spot somehow. Hence... a thread
en.wikipedia.org
www.etymonline.com
"ampersand (n.)
1797, contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself is 'and' " (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English). An earlier form of it was colloquial ampassy (1706). The distinction is to avoid confusion with & in such formations as &c., a once-common way of writing etc. (the et in et cetera is Latin for "and"). The letters a, I, and o also formerly (15c.-16c.) sometimes were written a per se, etc., especially when standing alone as words.
The symbol is based on the Latin word et "and," and comes from an old Roman system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti, and not (as sometimes stated) from the Tironian Notes, a different system of shorthand, probably invented by Cicero's companion Marcus Tullius Tiro. It used a different symbol, something like a reversed capital gamma, to indicate et. This Tironian symbol was maintained by some medieval scribes, including Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, in whose works a symbol resembling a numeral 7 indicates the word and.
In old schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and thus by 1880s the word ampersand had acquired a slang sense of "posterior, rear end, hindquarters."
Have a great week all!
Even from the second it first was announced, I've hated just everything about DnD "One" and DnD "Beyond." It's not just that I can't stand the names, but I truly dislike them, and then also feel somehow personally burned by the idea that they wouldn't do a full print run for a 6th edition, that it'd just be a PDF sub or whatever. Something about that, it just makes my skin crawl - even beyond that, but I'm trying to unpack the why... So just to riff, like why do I dig BG/NWN so much, but find the whole idea of a VTT totally underwhelming and off-putting?
The more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to the Amp as emblematic of something broader. Now I know the history, it's not about that. I can appreciate the elegance and simplicity and user friendliness of the most common abbreviations. But I think it says something, that the one is clearly print media and physical - it's what you'll see on the boxes and on the book covers, whereas the other is what you'll see basically if it's digital. I'm rational, I get that it's because the amp has a special function in HTML, speech to text, unicode formalism for anything that has to live primarily online in that format. I'm a kid of the digital era too, so you'd think I'd be all amenable and at least somewhat sensible on this score, but for some reason I'm extra stubborn whenever it comes to the official regalia.
Kinda open ended, but I'm wondering what it is about these things... specifically, why I am so positively disposed towards the former, and just can't really stand anything about the latter, especially in situations where they seem categorically so similar?
It's kind of a puzzle I haven't really figured it out yet, but also just an excuse to post this one heheh. It could have gone in the industry news thread or whatever, but I decided to just go wild instead and post what he said here, in a stand alone but together thread...
My knock on idea, and I'm not sure what it's worth, but just to float it, the reason to dig a cRPG is that it's actually possible to learn how to play the game without really needing to be able to read at first, but also with that goal in mind, eventually. I played my first D&D computer game before I could ever have hoped to open and actually read a rulebook. A BG game has saved D&D's ass twice now in my lifetime, and the new one does give me some hope. This runs a bit at odds with the whole idea of say "Ages 12+" and up on the cover of the box - BG1 is rated T, BG3 is rated M, but then when it came to weighty tomes, part of the way I actually learned how to read anything at all was (in part) using those books too! Also I think people will ignore ratings silliness the same why I did for VHS tapes and compact discs with their explicit advisory labels when I was young. How did I first learn what an ampersand was?
I think I know the answer there haha. It was D&D for me!
So I don't know, just felt like it deserved it's own special spot somehow. Hence... a thread
Ampersand - Wikipedia
ampersand | Etymology of ampersand by etymonline
"(the character) '&' by itself is 'and' " (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly… See origin and meaning of ampersand.
www.etymonline.com
"ampersand (n.)
1797, contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself is 'and' " (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English). An earlier form of it was colloquial ampassy (1706). The distinction is to avoid confusion with & in such formations as &c., a once-common way of writing etc. (the et in et cetera is Latin for "and"). The letters a, I, and o also formerly (15c.-16c.) sometimes were written a per se, etc., especially when standing alone as words.
The symbol is based on the Latin word et "and," and comes from an old Roman system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti, and not (as sometimes stated) from the Tironian Notes, a different system of shorthand, probably invented by Cicero's companion Marcus Tullius Tiro. It used a different symbol, something like a reversed capital gamma, to indicate et. This Tironian symbol was maintained by some medieval scribes, including Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, in whose works a symbol resembling a numeral 7 indicates the word and.
In old schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and thus by 1880s the word ampersand had acquired a slang sense of "posterior, rear end, hindquarters."
Have a great week all!
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