Okay so let's talk about this.

How important or necessary is it to be versed in the larger #ttrpg game design canon for your own design process?

If a creator tells you "Pbta? Fitd? I don't know what that is...", what would your reaction be?

(smol thread) https://twitter.com/yes_jon/status/1260269317658046464

And I'm not asking whether knowing the touchstones of the industry is beneficial. I think we can all agree that it's always good to diversify your familiarity with different systems.

I'm asking if it's *necessary* to know those touchstones.

To give a bit more context: Currently my only contact to the design community is on Twitter. I can't do discord and I haven't been in this long enough to know the Forge or Google+ or the like.

That also means that I have some glaring holes in my knowledge about the larger space.

Great question!

1) Necessary for writing good games (I know, more of a rhetorical question)

2) Necessary to be able to participate / being recognized as a legitimate creator. https://twitter.com/mthsblgr/status/1260601103017750533?s=19

So, I know that there will probably be no one actually arguing that you NEED to know certain games to be able to call yourself a game designer.

However, what I'd just like to bring to the surface by this is more the idea of: What kind of role does our design canon fulfill?

And going off of that: Would you deem it necessary to follow specific blogs / YouTube channels / sub community discussions / relevant creators' Twitter accounts to be able to be recognized as a Serious Designer (tm)?

I'm being a little facetious here (note to self: look up what facetious means before sending tweet)

I know that y'all are good people, and many of us are very critical about elitism and gatekeeping.

But I think we don't talk often enough about those aspects in the context of the sometimes quite academic sides of the indie sphere.

A philosophy student who hasn't heard of Kant would probably earn some strange looks.

What are we doing to avoid that in our space?