A Chat With The Basic Expert

I had an...interesting exchange a few days ago with The Basic Expert (so-called) over the fact that arbitrary kinda-sorta-but-not-really 1:1 timekeeping is merely a recommendation, not a rule.

And that's because it is:

Armed with the same evidence that Brosr tourists like to ironically employ, I responded to DM Bluddworth's Tweet thusly:

This prompted BE to disingenuously chime in:

He conveniently didn't state that this is from one of the OD&D books, which I thought strange because the Brosr tourists only go on about pretending to play AD&D the "right" way (ie, the way they happen to interpret), but even if BE is correct and AD&D is merely repackaged OD&D, none of the above appears in AD&D so it doesn't even matter.

He also omitted the previous page, which also states that it's a suggestion:

But let's assume that it's not a suggestion. Let's pretend that it's a hard rule and there are words that explicitly state that you must abide by this convention or the game will break or something.

This is still in an OD&D book. It cannot apply to AD&D, unless BE suffers from a delusion that in order to play AD&D you must also own OD&D, read both and, I dunno, cross-reference the rules, filling in gaps of the former with the latter? 

Of course not. It's utterly absurd so I just asked BE an even simpler question: why do Brosr tourists only ever cite page 37 of the AD&D DMG when talking about arbitrary kinda-sorta-but-not-really 1:1 timekeeping. Instead of an actual answer I got this:

Assuming BE is correct and that AD&D is just repackaged OD&D, why did they omit that entire section and replace it with something else that is admittedly only slightly more sensible?

I'm guessing there are a bunch of other changes, but that's not the focus, here. I try to point out again that by the book it is a suggestion and get this:

BE sees the word suggestion in a game, still decides to perceive it as a rule, and thinks that this magically makes it applicable to a different game, even though that game has an entirely different recommendation.

I do agree that keeping time records can be useful (I never say they aren't, or that you shouldn't, or that I dislike them, something to note because near the end BE will lie about it). Not necessarily strict, though if you are running multiple groups and they can interact (positively or negatively), the more detailed and precise, the better.

Mainly I keep at least a rough record to help determine how long the players have been out and about adventuring, which can help determine if any noteworthy NPCs or bad guys are doing stuff, as well as passage of time, seasons, years, etc.

But that's not what we're talking about: my initial assertion was that the arbitrary kinda-sorta-but-not-really 1:1 timekeeping bit in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide is a recommendation, not a rule, because Brosr tourists insist that it's a rule and if you don't play the way they want you to you are "doing it wrong".

BE has no way to refute this, so attempts to change strategies:

To BE, understanding that a recommendation isn't a rule just means you have an aversion to...something. He intentionally keeps it vague as to what I might dislike, even though all I've said is that arbitrary kinda-sorta-but-not-really 1:1 timekeeping as the Brosr tourists define it is a recommendation, not a rule.

Remember:

Though we get no explanation for why it is "the best", nothing says you have to. Nothing in the game stops working if you don't do this. Hell, the wording implies that you can use any ratio you'd like. It's a recommendation, and pointing that out for some reason upsets the Brosr tourists and their supporters.

BE's slippery slope fallacy is especially hilarious to me, because while no one is coming anywhere close to even suggesting throwing anything out, gold for XP absolutely should be thrown out. He then says "Time is there in the book", even though no one said it wasn't. Maybe he's trying to argue with multiple people and getting the Twitter threads confused?

Right there he implies that it's only particularly useful if you have an abnormally large player base, comprising multiple groups, which all partake in the same shared game world. The rules don't mandate that you have to utilize arbitrary kinda-sorta-but-not-really 1:1 timekeeping, but recommend a method that presumably worked well enough for Gary (even though people have said he didn't do that).

The book doesn't even mandate strict time records, instead warning that the campaign will be meaningless without them. I'm not opposed to time records, but it's important to note that it is also not a rule. So of course BE again states that he sees it as a rule, not because anything in the text supports his opinion but because, according to him, it supports strict time.

Which also isn't a rule.

Something I didn't catch or didn't remember is the last Tweet up there, where he states that "many games" had different ratios of real-time to game time. Don't know how he knows this, but if accurate he just admitted that "many groups" didn't abide by what he claims is a rule.

This was hilarious not just because it proves my point, but also because I already mentioned precisely this, even stating which page it was on (DMG, page 37). Took him long enough, but at least he moved on from using OD&D as a defense. For now. He'll roll back to it later.

It's at this point that my suspicion that BE wasn't even attempting to argue in good faith is confirmed. I point out actual words, he ignores them. He shifts focus from a rule being a recommendation to me not liking the words. He's already proved my point but just won't admit that he's wrong, and so on and on it goes.

This is where I seriously began to consider that BE might just be retarded. 

The passage I posted is taken from AD&D, so the discerning reader might be wondering why the hell BE again hid behind the pages of OD&D as some sort of defense. Does he not realize that they are different games? Does he think that, if you're playing AD&D, that OD&D rules and recommendations still take precedence?

Imagine he's running a game of AD&D, and you decide to rest and heal. You, having actually read the books naturally assume that you heal at a rate of 1 hit point per day for the first 30 days. So day one guys by, you up your hit points by 1, but then BE says, hey, woah, you skip the first day in OD&D. You tell him that that's not how it works in AD&D, and he just keeps countering with "OD&D says you skip the first day".

I never said he was a bro (probably hoping to steer the conversation somewhere else), but this is the first time he lies about me not liking timekeeping in general. I don't know why he bothers, as anyone that scrolls up through the thread can see that at no point did I express a dislike of timekeeping. But this reinforces my theory that he is retarded.

The lady doth project too much, methinks: I pointed to words, and then he pointed to the same words, and still somehow chose to misinterpret them. And again, not sure why he keeps pathetically attempting to misrepresent my point: you can just scroll up and see that it's not about me "not liking words in a book", but him and other Brosr tourists not understanding what words mean.

Here I call him out on the lies, and rather than take a screenshot of a tweet that proves that he is telling the truth (which would be trivially easy to do), tries to brush it off with a "nuh uh" and saying that he finds "the old way interesting". You know, the old way that didn't even exist as the Brosr tourists tell it.

Will he admit to it?

Provide evidence?

Of course not:

Instead, we get even more projection. BE is upset, pissy, you might say, that he's wrong and doesn't understand the difference between a rule and recommendation, and on top of it all got caught lying. He won't admit to any of this, so is resorting to attempting to flip it around on me, as if I'm being unreasonable merely by wanting evidence.

Evidence that would be easy to provide since it's just a single Twitter thread.

Best thing to do in this scenario is to just repeat the question. If for no other reason than to demonstrate to everyone else who finds the thread that he's wrong and lying, because if he was telling the truth he could have just taken a screenshot and proved it.