# RPGaDay 2026 - 02 - Stature tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2026 ![[RPG a Day 2026 (illo).jpg]] Time to get a jump on the second because I don't plan to be back home until the third. It's either get up early and write this or write it now. Guess what? I'm going to write it now. Today's topic is stature. I don't need the weekly or daily edge here because this is something that has been kicking around in the back of my head for a while. I've spent a lot of time on social media, even before social media was called social media. Usenet existed before the actual web, and I was there. If you think the current environment in the hobby is something new, one day go looking through the archives of *[rec.games.frp.misc](https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.frp.misc)*, and you'll see exactly the same patterns staring back at you. One of the most irritating ones is the idea that a luminary who made something that people liked a lot at some point in the past still has something relevant to say. Yes, I know. Challenging the idea that the greats of the hobby no longer are particularly applicable is simultaneously edgelord material and bland as fuck. I get it. To tout "death of the author" on the internet is akin to noting that it's raining as you stand in the middle of a hurricane. But here we are. Now, I'm not saying that people who have done great things in our field shouldn't be respected for what they've done, but they shouldn't get an automatic pass to riding on their own coattails until the end of time. Their work, now and historically, has to be judged on its own merits. If they don't have any recent work, their merits are few. If the only thing they talk about is what they used to do and not what they are doing, their merits are few. Sometimes in this hobby it feels like sitting around and listening to the guy that was the quarterback in high school and dated the head cheerleader, and then had a knee injury and washed out while she got fat. Now all he can talk about is the big game and the rest of us have moved on to play other big games. This is one of those things in the hobby I don't have a solution to, and I can't recommend one. This is a thing that happens in every human society. It seems to be endemic to the human condition. The one thing I can do is warn you away from it. Anyone reading this has the potential to do something great tomorrow, to literally write something that changes the world. I encourage you to do so—but don't let it be the last thing that you do. Don't let your stature cast a shadow over everything that you can see in front of you because the only light is behind you. Hold those of great stature accountable. Don't let their laurels fall down over your eyes. Things are not good just because they're old (nor are they good just because they're new). Things are good or not based on their own merits. Learn to discern those merits and to talk about them. Learn the words that can be used to talk about those merits and about their absence. You could probably insert something here about feet of clay, but since I'm walking around on two lumps of sand, I'm going to let that go for right now. But so are you, and so is every man. That doesn't mean we don't stop trying to walk uphill in the rain every single day. Stature provides a high place to fall from, but it's also a high place to crawl to.