# RPG Theory- The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 1, 2021)

Well, it happened again! Another thread, ostensibly about one thing (discussing the division of narrative authority within 5e) turned into another thing (jargon-filled general discussion about RPG theory). Which is thing. Thread drift happens! But given the recurrent nature of this issue, I thought I'd put forth a general resource and guide for people when it came to TTRPG theory. Sort of a beginner's guide to understanding some of the concepts and idea, with links to allow you to go and do your own research.

And also a big plug for my latest good read- _The Elusive Shift: How Role Playing Games Forged their Identity._

*A. What is RPG Theory, and Why is it so Contentious?*

Well, I think the (slightly jokey) response to that is probably familiar to most people- the debates about TTRPG theory tend to be so bitter and divisive because the stakes are so small! But I think that it goes deeper than that; in effect, RPG "theory" encompasses a great number of different areas. It is about the _design of the games_, it is about the _play of the games_, it is about _describing what the games are_, and it makes normative (that's a jargon term for "value-laden" or "is it good or bad") statements about _what games should be_. I'm sure that there are a lot of other factors, but that's a good start.

We can see the difficulties in inherent in RPG theory just from the beginning- what is an RPG? Is it just a "standard" TTRPG like D&D? What about TTRPGs that don't have a standard arbiter referee/GM like Fiasco? What about LARP? What about children's games like Cops and Robbers? What about CRPGs? And so on.  Defining the subject is incredibly important- and that's just part of it.

More importantly, any person familiar with this board's strong disfavoring of "one-true-way-ism" instinctively understands that when you move from the descriptive (this is how this game functions) to the prescriptive (this is how this game _ought_ to function), you start running into problems- the issue of _what games should be. _People tend to be very protective of how their own game functions, and what provides them with "fun." Telling someone that they are doing it wrong is rarely met with open arms and acquiescence.

Finally, there is one more additional issue; when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This is similar to the @Malmuria "basket" analysis- which is to say, if your theory predicts that TTRPGs fall into a finite number of baskets (say, 3 baskets), then you will forever be limited to articulating how something goes into a particular basket, or why it should or shouldn't be in that basket. A long time ago, I took an advanced critical theory course where every week, we had to write a paper analyzing the same text using a different method of critical theory analysis. One week it would me Marxist theory, another week psychoanalytic theory, another week third-work approach (measure it against the standards articulated from another work, like Burke's _On the Sublime and Beautiful_), another week semiotic and structuralist, another week post-structuralist, another week authorial intent, and so on. The purpose was to show how the same text would produce different meanings depending on the approach used; that instead of focusing on the "correct reading" it was best to think of different theoretical approaches as different tools with which to retrieve meaning. There wasn't a single correct theory- but the theory you used was determinative of the types of meaning you would end up with. A Marxist approach tended to reveal a lot of elements of class struggle and power relations, whereas a psychological analysis is more likely to reveal elements of the characters' conscious and subconscious motivations.

In a similar way, many arguments about RPG theory devolve into arguments about whether the theory even applies (are you using the right tool) or, worse, jargon.


*B. We have to backburner your annual until we've leveraged the pivot-to-video into actionable engagement with our disruptive client-centered approach. *

A brief aside about jargon. Jargon (or any kind of specialized language) is both helpful and unhelpful. If you think of any specialized field- medicine, law, banking, computer science, and so on, it will have jargon. Jargon can serve a very useful purpose- it can allow people with a shared interest in something technical to describe something quickly without having to use regular language each time and "re-invent" the wheel. It's a linguistic shortcut used by people with a shared interest.

Of course, there are other instances of jargon as well, outside of technical fields. Think about almost any area- when there is a shared group, there is often a shared vocabulary. This gets down to the smallest groups- I am sure that all of us have friend groups, and in those groups we have verbal shortcuts from shared events or people we have known! If everyone remembers that terrible night in Toledo, then it would be normal for someone in the group to say, "We don't want another Toledo" and for everyone to nod in agreement. (I am sure that someone is getting ready to start typing, _Shakra, when the walls fell._)

The trouble with jargon, however, is that while it can help in-groups communicate more effectively, it is also incredibly off-putting to other people; in fact, it is can be considered both a feature and a bug. If you've ever spoken to a professional (a doctor, a lawyer, a banker) who can't be bothered to explain things and "dumb it down" for a "mere layman" or dealt with a close group of friends that talks entirely in "in-jokes" and doesn't explain them, you understand what this means. When you have invented terms, people will use them as a weapon to exclude others- "Oh, you don't understand what I mean by XXXXXX? Well, obviously you just don't get it."

Given that there really isn't a standard for academic RPG theory (as discussed below), many disagreements about RPG theory are just arguments over what jargon is being used. "Oh, that's not a railroad. That's player agency!" Or, "That's not skilled play, because other types of play have skill." And so on.


*C. All of this has happened before, and all this will happen again.*

Finally, the most frustrating thing about many conversations regarding RPG theory is the extent to which they are forced to continually re-occur. RPGs sprung from a loose hobbyist market, and have both attracted a number of very smart people but also usually lacked the type of money or prestige that would generally attract the attention of traditional academia. Which means that the wheel keeps getting re-invented when it comes to RPG theory.

Here is where I'm going to plug an excellent resource- we are all familiar with _Playing at the World_, and with _Game Wizards_, but I think that it's a shame that we haven't had time to discuss Peterson's recent book, _The Elusive Shift: How Role Playing Games Forged their Identity. _

The book is essentially about how the early TTRPG community (the D&D community) grappled with this new thing that they had, and how the early scholars and theorists in the _1970s _were already discussing the exact same issues that we keep coming across today. Reading through it was like seeing the same debates I see here, just from more than 40 years ago. Seeing the creator of Chivalry & Sorcery go hardcore into creating a realistic game, and then realizing that the game he made didn't work to create the stories and drama he wanted to the extent that he advised ignoring the rules? Yeah, seems familiar.

This lack of institutional knowledge and a consistent approach is what tends to bind us. We don't remember what others have said and done. We use poorly defined terms or jargon to exclude people from the conversation. We don't bother having a consistent baseline, relying on anecdotes that can't explain the experience of others (for example, while "play experiences" might have limited value, it does little to disentangle the players/referee from the system itself). And there is a frustrating inability to be able to discuss any sort of "best practices," because usually, instead of discussing best practices to run a _type of game_, you end up with theory about _what a game ought to be._


*D. So is all RPG Theory useless?*

No, of course not! Obviously, it's fun for people to discuss. And helpful for some people to make their own experiences better. But when it comes to systemic looks at real RPG theory, I think that some of the following might be helpful:

1. _Role-playing Game Studies__._ This is an academic work, but is interesting and has the majority of chapters available to the public on-line.
2. _The Elusive Shift. _Jon Peterson's book. Available at amazon and others.
3. _Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012. _William J. White. Available at amazon and others (expensive).
4. Designers & Dragons. Shannon Applecline. (I think some of this has been superseded by newer material from Peterson, but sill good). Available with a free TSR section of 100 pages at evilhat.
5. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Pat Harrigan. Available at amazon and others.
6. Great roundup of web-based resources at Black & Green Games.
7. _Playground Worlds_. Some ideas, with a strong emphasis from the Nordic community, available on-line.

These are just starting points. Some of the resources are older, some are newer. They treat the subject of RPGs seriously. If this is something interesting to you, and if you enjoy it, I recommend looking into these resources. While many of the debates in RPG theory are just refinements of the ones we have seen since the 70s, an increasing approach to looking at the systems in an academic manner is fascinating.

....or, you can just grab your pizza, your beer, and your d20 and have some fun!


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## Umbran (Nov 1, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> The purpose was to show how the same text would produce different meanings depending on the approach used; that instead of focusing on the "correct reading" it was best to think of different theoretical approaches as different tools with which to retrieve meaning.




By the Powers That Be, how much better our discussions would be if folks would embrace this point.  

It is okay to have a favored framework, but for goodness sake realize that it is only a framework, not TEH TRVTH!


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## MGibster (Nov 1, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> A long time ago, I took an advanced critical theory course where every week, we had to write a paper analyzing the same text using a different method of critical theory analysis. One week it would me Marxist theory, another week psychoanalytic theory, another week third-work approach (measure it against the standards articulated from another work, like Burke's _On the Sublime and Beautiful_), another week semiotic and structuralist, another week post-structuralist, another week authorial intent, and so on.



I took a Gender & Science Fiction course as an undergraduate where I was required to write a critical analysis of several short stories from different theoretical points of view.  My final paper was a feminist critique of _Tarnsman of Gor_.  



Snarf Zagyg said:


> Given that there really isn't a standard for academic RPG theory (as discussed below), many disagreements about RPG theory are just arguments over what jargon is being used. "Oh, that's not a railroad. That's player agency!" Or, "That's not skilled play, because other types of play have skill." And so on.



I especially find it different when those who are exposed to academic jargon then apply it outside of that context and expect everyone else to follow suit and understand.  It's hard to engage in meaningful communication when we can't all agree on what a simple word means.  



Snarf Zagyg said:


> ....or, you can just grab your pizza, your beer, and your d20 and have some fun!



I mean, we can do both, right?


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## Umbran (Nov 1, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Given that there really isn't a standard for academic RPG theory (as discussed below), many disagreements about RPG theory are just arguments over what jargon is being used. "Oh, that's not a railroad. That's player agency!" Or, "That's not skilled play, because other types of play have skill." And so on.




As you point out, there's no one standard academic theory for literary discussion either.  The problem is less that there isn't one, and more that they generally aren't formalized, or even have accepted names - when you refer to Marxist theory, or psychoanalytic theory that, when mentioned, give folks at least a general idea of the theme of discussion.

And, maybe we don't need them.  But, lacking them, what we really do need is to recognize that we have different _goals of play_ - we are seeking different broad experiences, and in general our framework for considering a game or a practice really ought to be one that is geared toward that desired experience. 

And, we should then realize that if we heavily favor one experience, that's our preference, and there's nothing bloody wrong with folks wanting something else, and stop arguing as if we were Protectors of the Soul of RPGs.


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## Umbran (Nov 1, 2021)

MGibster said:


> I mean, we can do both, right?




Maybe... not at the same time?  Talking about theory with a mouthful of pizza presents a choking hazard...


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## payn (Nov 1, 2021)

I find much of the jargon used, unfortunately, starts as derogatory ways to put down things folks dont like. Instead of finding a respectful way to describe something they dont prefer. Fortunately, folks tend to reinvent the term in a more respectful way on their own during these discussions and arguments.  For example, railroading vs. linear campaign design. One term inherently bad, the other neutral to positive and better used for general discussion. 

Many RPG theory discussions and arguments can become incendiary. The E. War back in 2008 was particularly volatile as the imagined stakes for the future of RPG design seemed to hang in the balance. Moderation was necessary and required constantly as folks were awful to one another. Though, eventually it became necessary to find more diplomatic ways to engage on ideas and concepts. The ultimate goal of understanding always wins out in the end. While the process may be very unpleasant, I think its worth engaging for the benefits of mutual understanding and self growth. The 2008 E. War might have been a bad period, but I learned more about my preferences and understanding of RPG design in those few years then all the years prior combined. Ultimately, RPG theory is worth it.

My number one rule when engaging theory discussions is to listen to Rufus the 13th Apostle, "I think it's better to have ideas (than beliefs). You can_ change _an idea. Changing a belief is trickier..."


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 1, 2021)

MGibster said:


> My final paper was a feminist critique of _Tarnsman of Gor_.




Was it a very short paper? Three words?

_No. Just ... no._

(I once knew of a person that did a feminist critique of Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back. Had to present it to the class. He started by saying that he chose it because he thought it would be enlightening, would actually show that it was a feminist approach to the objectification of women and racial standards, and so on. But then he paused, and said, "But after all of that, I realized that it wasn't hiding anything. The song was just written by a guy just really really likes butts." 

There's a fine line between clever and stupid.)


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## MGibster (Nov 1, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Was it a very short paper? Three words?



The first Gor book was just your standard sword and planet adolescent power fantasy.  It wasn't until later in the series that sex or philosophy, for lack of a better word, starting getting more attention in the books.  I'm not going to say _Tarnsman of Gor _is a good book, but you probably won't feel the need to take a shower after reading it.  It's been so long since I read and wrote that paper that I don't remember a lot about it, I do specifically remember there was a need for men to physically compete with one another to establish who would be the dominate.  



Snarf Zagyg said:


> (I once knew of a person that did a feminist critique of Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back. Had to present it to the class. He started by saying that he chose it because he thought it would be enlightening, would actually show that it was a feminist approach to the objectification of women and racial standards, and so on. But then he paused, and said, "But after all of that, I realized that it wasn't hiding anything. The song was just written by a guy just really really likes butts."



The very first paper I wrote requiring me to actually interpret the past came in my Women in World History course.  I took the lives of three or four women who attained fame for their behavior at sea, sailor being a traditionally masculine, and how they each presented themselves in a manner more acceptable with what expected of feminine behavior when it suited them.  For example, at her trail Mary Read made sure to let the court know that she was married, as befitting a proper woman, and in the ultimate act of femininity "pleaded her belly" (told the court she was pregnant) to receive some of that sweet, sweet clemency.  Another was a 19th century American woman accompanying her husband on the merchant ship he captained.  He showed her how to navigate, and after he fell ill, being the only person on the ship who could navigate, she took over as captain, thwarted a mutiny, and made it to port through treacherous waters.  When reporters spoke to her she played up her role of wife.  

Anyway, I was really proud of that paper but before I turned it in I had a moment of panic.  Did I believe any of this?  Is this all naughty word?  I sometimes ask this question of myself and this applies to game theory as well.  I don't mean to imply that theory isn't worth the effort.  But I still sometimes wonder whether or not it's a big pile of horse hockey.


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## Campbell (Nov 1, 2021)

I think it's fair to say that our thinking is heavily influenced by the analytical frameworks we are most familiar with. What I think is not fair to say is the idea that the mainstream culture of play is not also deeply influenced by a very particular analytical framework when it comes to discussion of roleplaying games and game design. Language like The Story™, the Group™, power gamer, rules lawyer, plot hook, adventure, Game Master, lead storyteller, et al is not value neutral in orientation.  Nor should it be really. Having a methodology, firm expectations, and strong play loops are critical to creating a game worth playing.

I think we should all be mindful of our own cultural context. Where cultural differences rear their ugly head having an awareness of where people are coming from can be important, but expecting them to completely abandon their frame of reference in order to have a discussion with you is somewhat fraught in my opinion. I never expect anyone to adopt the same analytical frame as me. I just try to use the language that most precisely gets my point across. I expect other people to do the same.

I think such cultural clashes are good for discussion actually. We should all have our frame and assumptions challenged from time to time. Discussions where we all agree with one another are seldom interesting or useful.


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## Aldarc (Nov 1, 2021)

@Snarf Zagyg, IMHO, the more interesting contrast in terms of theory is not necesarily between TTRPGs and literary theory, but, rather, between tabletop roleplay gaming and other forms of gaming, namely board games or video/computer gaming. The latter of which has developed far more articulate theoretical frameworks, terminology/jargon, and the like from both scholars, game designers, and gamers.


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## aco175 (Nov 1, 2021)

So, in a nutshell... House rules are the root of the problem.  I change things to what I think ought to be and your ought to be are now at odds and we end up saying bad things on how each of us play the game.  I guess the same thing is for optional rules like flanking, and new rules/options like the orc/drow threads of last year that still continue.  

There is also the text and people reading it differently, the RAW/RAI problem.  Half of this site is about problems with something that some of us say, "no, of course not.  That is just silly.", and the other half are on the opposing point.  That is likely part of the reason many of us look at the site.

Who is right, not sure.  It would be easy to be quippy and just say if everyone agreed with me, things would be great.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 1, 2021)

To me, the use of RPG theory jargon isn't all that problematic--if someone is joining a discussion about RPG theory, they should be able to handle either asking for looking up the definitions and context of a handful of terms. If not, there will always be tons of other threads to jump into that aren't about RPG theory.

The pattern that I keep seeing, that I think can be unhelpful, is people essentially showing up to shut down theory-related discussion in the context of "Well in _my_ game we do it this way and that's always worked for _us_ so why are we talking about any _other_ approach or system or concept?" The battle lines in those cases seem to be drawn over the notion of even talking about theory, as though by even trying to define different elements and styles of play, and maybe figure out ways to improve as players and GMs or bring in more types of gamers, we risk ruining the effortless chemistry of the campaign someone's been running for the past 20 years.

If people don't want to discuss this stuff in detail, at the level of theory...they just shouldn't. No one's forcing any of us to post.


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## Umbran (Nov 1, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> If people don't want to discuss this stuff in detail, at the level of theory...they just shouldn't. No one's forcing any of us to post.




If someone comes in as you noted, my observation isn't that they "don't want to discuss it".  It is that they have seen those discussions before, and those discussions, to them, seem to discredit, dismiss, or exclude their personal playstyle - they are engaging in that way because what they see seems to put their own play into the "Out Group".  

Then, on the other side, those who have steeped themselves in theory have a tendency of facing such folks with a wall of academic discussion.  

And in the end, nobody _bridges the gap_.  This is connected to how people often listen/read to be able to respond, rather than to learn and understand.  There's a difference, and they lead to different kinds of discussion.


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## overgeeked (Nov 1, 2021)

Umbran said:


> If someone comes in as you noted, my observation isn't that they "don't want to discuss it".  It is that they have seen those discussions before, and those discussions, to them, seem to discredit, dismiss, or exclude their personal playstyle - they are engaging in that way because what they see seems to put their own play into the "Out Group".
> 
> Then, on the other side, those who have steeped themselves in theory have a tendency of facing such folks with a wall of academic discussion.
> 
> And in the end, nobody _bridges the gap_.  This is connected to how people often listen/read to be able to respond, rather than to learn and understand.  There's a difference, and they lead to different kinds of discussion.



It's further complicated by the fact that we can't even seem to define what all this even is (RPGs) without someone feeling excluded and/or attacked. There's no workable definition that won't exclude some people, games, and playstyles and any definition broad enough to intentionally include everyone, every game, and every playstyle will by necessity be too broad to be useful or meaningful.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 1, 2021)

Umbran said:


> If someone comes in as you noted, my observation isn't that they "don't want to discuss it".  It is that they have seen those discussions before, and those discussions, to them, seem to discredit, dismiss, or exclude their personal playstyle - they are engaging in that way because what they see seems to put their own play into the "Out Group".
> 
> Then, on the other side, those who have steeped themselves in theory have a tendency of facing such folks with a wall of academic discussion.
> 
> And in the end, nobody _bridges the gap_.  This is connected to how people often listen/read to be able to respond, rather than to learn and understand.  There's a difference, and they lead to different kinds of discussion.



I mostly agree with this, except that when people join a discussion already feeling defensive and cornered, it just never really works out well--and that's really on them for making it personal. To me that's the equivalent of barging into an academic discussion to proclaim that you didn't need fancy schooling to tell you about X, and turning what might have been a productive back-and-forth into a bitter and probably pointless slugfest.

In other words, if the only reason someone is dropping into a thread is to secure validation for their playstyle, that's just asking for trouble, and also a bit depressing.


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## Marc_C (Nov 1, 2021)

RPG theory is interesting to read on a blog or in a book. I stopped discussing rpg theory on forums because it is very time consuming and talking past each other is often the end result.

I prefer using my time to work on my campaigns.


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## MGibster (Nov 1, 2021)

Marc_C said:


> RPG theory is interesting to read on a blog or in a book. I stopped discussing rpg theory on forums because it is very time consuming and talking past each other is often the end result.



I went to graduate school and took courses that covered and made extensive use of various theories.  I have to admit that sometimes when I read an RPG theory thread my eyes glaze over and I have no idea what the hell is being talked about.  I get lost.


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## Aldarc (Nov 1, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> It's further complicated by the fact that we can't even seem to define what all this even is (RPGs) without someone feeling excluded and/or attacked. There's no workable definition that won't exclude some people, games, and playstyles and any definition broad enough to intentionally include everyone, every game, and every playstyle will by necessity be too broad to be useful or meaningful.



The issue, IMHO, is when people try to pass off their prescriptive understandings of TTRPGs as descriptive.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 1, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> @Snarf Zagyg, IMHO, the more interesting contrast in terms of theory is not necesarily between TTRPGs and literary theory, but, rather, between tabletop roleplay gaming and other forms of gaming, namely board games or video/computer gaming. The latter of which has developed far more articulate theoretical frameworks, terminology/jargon, and the like from both scholars, game designers, and gamers.




I briefly touched upon that (or, at a minimum, was thinking about that) when I wrote the following:
_Finally, the most frustrating thing about many conversations regarding RPG theory is the extent to which they are forced to continually re-occur. RPGs sprung from a loose hobbyist market, and have both attracted a number of very smart people but also usually lacked the type of money or prestige that would generally attract the attention of traditional academia. Which means that the wheel keeps getting re-invented when it comes to RPG theory._

Vides games in general are similar to movies, in that sense. You have an entertainment that is originally viewed as unserious. Quickly, the sheer amount of money requires that companies (and the people that work for those companies) begin to approach the field in a more systemic manner; what works, what doesn't work. You need standardized language to approach certain problems and to communicate the needs and solutions to other professionals in the field.

The money also means that you have subsidiary and collateral sources spring up- independent (and professional, and money-making) third parties begin reviewing and critiquing video games- and they will use a shared language as well. You have agreed-upon divisions of the market into different segments with different goals, and standards, and comparators, and language for reviewing. And you have academic study which can deepen (embiggen?) the level of analysis. 

This is largely lacking in the TTRPG sphere. IMO.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 1, 2021)

Yeah, I've done a ton of theory as well, and it just doesn't seem to come off the same way in conversation about RPGs as it does in a Lit Grad lecture. Well, except about Derrida, but that's Derrida for you. I think I'd agree that a limiting factor is probably that the base theory sets are not as well constructed/appreciated/deployed/_insert theory word here_ as is the case with Lit theory (or whatever theory). Not that people don't argue about Lit, obviously they do, but the nature of the arguments seem a little different to me. Tough to really put my finger on the exact differences though. Something to think about.


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## Malmuria (Nov 2, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> A long time ago, I took an advanced critical theory course where every week, we had to write a paper analyzing the same text using a different method of critical theory analysis. One week it would me Marxist theory, another week psychoanalytic theory, another week third-work approach (measure it against the standards articulated from another work, like Burke's _On the Sublime and Beautiful_), another week semiotic and structuralist, another week post-structuralist, another week authorial intent, and so on. The purpose was to show how the same text would produce different meanings depending on the approach used; that instead of focusing on the "correct reading" it was best to think of different theoretical approaches as different tools with which to retrieve meaning. There wasn't a single correct theory- but the theory you used was determinative of the types of meaning you would end up with. A Marxist approach tended to reveal a lot of elements of class struggle and power relations, whereas a psychological analysis is more likely to reveal elements of the characters' conscious and subconscious motivations.




In this way studying literature requires acceptance and even embrace of uncertainty, contradiction, and ambiguity, at least to a certain degree.  You can thus learn to say meaningful things about, say, a poem, without driving analysis towards a singular and inevitable end.  

The "game design" aspect of rpg theory seems to veer more often towards normative and prescriptive categorization and analysis of types of games, even in its "soft" manifestations ('7 types of gamer' etc).  I'm generally more interested in thinking, sometimes abstractly, about rpgs as a social activity (hence my general delight at incoherence, inconsistency, playing "wrong," etc).  




Snarf Zagyg said:


> 1. _Role-playing Game Studies__._ This is an academic work, but is interesting and has the majority of chapters available to the public on-line.
> 2. _The Elusive Shift. _Jon Peterson's book. Available at amazon and others.
> 3. _Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012. _William J. White. Available at amazon and others (expensive).
> 4. Designers & Dragons. Shannon Applecline. (I think some of this has been superseded by newer material from Peterson, but sill good). Available with a free TSR section of 100 pages at evilhat.
> ...




Great set of references!  To quote from one of the articles in item (1):



> Finally, RPG theorizing participates in the politics of culture: To theorize and critically discern RPGs, one must develop both knowledge of and a sense of taste for RPGs. By demonstrating such knowledge and taste in evaluating, appreciating, or rejecting some subject matter, we accrue social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984). Every theoretical contribution is thus fundamentally intertwined with one’s social position: to do RPG theory is always also to manage one’s public impression as a theorist within specific (intended) social networks (Goffman 1959). And since RPG theory holds only meager academic and societal status, most RPG theory and criticism is produced by critical amateurs for critical amateurs. “Taste,” as Hennion (2005, 135) puts it, “is a productive activity of critical amateurs”.


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## Malmuria (Nov 2, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> To me, the use of RPG theory jargon isn't all that problematic--if someone is joining a discussion about RPG theory, they should be able to handle either asking for looking up the definitions and context of a handful of terms. If not, there will always be tons of other threads to jump into that aren't about RPG theory.




The context of the discussion is certainly important.  The problem comes in if someone posts about the 'World's Greatest,' for example.  Imo, that's a clear signal that the discussion is meant to be accessible to a wide group of people who might not have access or interest in a specific vocabulary.

It took me a lot longer than it should have for me to get into either 'story games' or osr games just because every time I tried to learn more about them it felt like I jumped into a pit of toxic arguments over nothing (or, subtweeted drama that made no sense unless you were an insider).


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## loverdrive (Nov 2, 2021)

Kind of tangent, but…

I think that the main problem with any kind of TTRPG discussion, theory, and whatnot is the fuzziness of the term itself. If:

Solving tactical and strategic problems in hostile, “fantasy Vietnam” environment…
Char-op and hacking and slashing…
Immersing oneself in an imaginary world, speaking in funny voices and all that…
Experiencing a linear, GM-authored story with an agreement between the participants to not “break” it…
Collaborative storytelling in a director stance and all that genre emulation jazz…
Playing a solo game with journaling and random tables to generate prompts…
…is TTRPGing, then, what _isn't_? At which point we can say that activity X isn't a TTRPG? Even the “tabletop” part is a questionable criterion — we live in 2E 21 and a lot of games are played online, and even before that, many games don't really have a use for a _table_. 

Of course people butt heads all the ####ing time! Why wouldn't they?


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 2, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Kind of tangent, but…
> 
> I think that the main problem with any kind of TTRPG discussion, theory, and whatnot is the fuzziness of the term itself. If:
> 
> ...




So, two things.

First, I think reading Peterson's other book (_Elusive Shift_) shows you that these debates (What is a TTRPG? Is it rules or role-play? Dramatic beats or wargame-y combat? Story or simulation? etc.) are as old as TTRPGs themselves.

Second, I don't think that the issue is particular to TTRPGs. For example, films can be about superheroes or normal people, the past or the future, funny or sad, genre or realistic, fiction or non-fiction, linear or non-linear, narrative or non-narrative, etc. ... yet they are all films. There is still something that we can call "film theory" (or film criticism).

If anything, I'd say that the problems with TTRPG Theory (esp. w/r/t the TT part if you're neglecting the nordic and LARPing branches) is twofold- first, that the scope of material for analysis isn't too broad, but too narrow. Unlike most mature fields, even later ones video games, there aren't a lot of subjects- its a field traditionally dominated by iterations and variations of a single product, with other niche products and indie products making up the remainder. Second, that people focus too much on just the theory of abstract design, and don't allow for the experience of the consumer/market.

On the second (which I will expand on later in a different thread), it's more an issue that other fields tend to at least tacitly acknowledge that somethings that are "good" may or may not be "popular" and vice versa- it's sort of the difference between a great piece of art, and something that is widely appealing to a large number of people- that isn't always the same thing. Anyway, TTRPG theory to date often doesn't take into account that particular issue.


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## loverdrive (Nov 2, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Second, I don't think that the issue is particular to TTRPGs. For example, films can be about superheroes or normal people, the past or the future, funny or sad, genre or realistic, fiction or non-fiction, linear or non-linear, narrative or non-narrative, etc. ... yet they are all films. There is still something that we can call "film theory" (or film criticism).



I think, films, unlike TTRPGs aren't viewed as homogenous substance. There are genres, movements, and many narrow categories.

Now, when I thought about it for more than five seconds, I think the constant arguments over playstyles (and subsequent turn to “ah, do whatever as long as you have fun!” nonsense I'm not a fan of) is caused not only by the lack of clear shortcuts to describe whatever it is they like, or an assumption that their playstyle is the norm (something I'm definitely guilty of), but also by the fact that people who do theory, criticism and all that are the same people who play the damn games!

When someone says that a scene X in film Y is bad or stupid or distasteful, even if you like that movie, it's still criticism of someone else's work. When someone says something about running or playing TTRPGs, it's a much more personal thing. In a way, they criticize _you_, even if they genuinely mean well.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 2, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> I think, films, unlike TTRPGs aren't viewed as homogenous substance. There are genres, movements, and many narrow categories.




I agree! Which is what I was alluding to with this part-
"Unlike most mature fields, even later ones video games, there aren't a lot of subjects- its a field traditionally dominated by iterations and variations of a single product, with other niche products and indie products making up the remainder."

Most "internet" TTRPG theory (as opposed to the occasional academic work) tends to treat TTRPGs as a single things to be "solved." In the OP, that's generally what I think of when I think of as an issue- I think that different TTRPGs serve different audiences (tables)- and what works for some doesn't work for others. 



loverdrive said:


> When someone says that a scene X in film Y is bad or stupid or distasteful, even if you like that movie, it's still criticism of someone else's work. When someone says something about running or playing TTRPGs, it's a much more personal thing. In a way, they criticize _you_, even if they genuinely mean well.




Eh, while I want to agree with you, I think you might be underestimating the level of fandom and identification. 

Try wading into any film thread and having a rational discussion about Marvel vs. DC films ... or, for that matter, the relative merits of the most recent three Star Wars films.*

I honestly think it's probably just a byproduct of the internet and the manner of discussion of forums sometimes- it tends to lead to extremes. And a lack of nuance. And it's hard to discern tone. That sort of thing. 


*Seriously, the weirdest time I was insulted & ignored on this forum was when I made a joke about Return of the Jedi. ... People take some things very seriously. Very, very seriously! Either that or it was some kind of Ewok/Furry thing going on. Not that I'm judging.


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## Umbran (Nov 2, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> There's no workable definition that won't exclude some people, games, and playstyles and any definition broad enough to intentionally include everyone, every game, and every playstyle will by necessity be too broad to be useful or meaningful.




So, I ask: useful or meaningful... _for what_? All definitions are communications. All communication has an intended audience _and purpose_. And yes, if you use a term that is defined for one purpose, and use it for another, you will have failures in communication.

I suggest that very broad genre definitions (like "sports" or "sandwich" or "literature" or "RPG") are not useful for critical analysis, but they were never really intended for critical analysis.  They're general use, introductory words.

Since literary analysis was brought up at the start, let us keep going with that - we have already noted that literary analysis is not one thing.  It is several disparate frameworks.  And when applying them, we usually break down the overall literature space into conceptually manageable chunks.  We do Psychological Analysis of Postmodern American Literature, for example.




Grendel_Khan said:


> In other words, if the only reason someone is dropping into a thread is to secure validation for their playstyle, that's just asking for trouble, and also a bit depressing.




Well, there's a question to be asked, related to what overgeeked said above - Are we clear to ourselves about how our discussion really cannot be general to all RPGs?  Are we up-front to others about it?  Do we forgetfully elide into discussing as if our framework is universal, or is meaningfully applied to all RPGs?

Hint:  A lot of RPG theory-talk does forget its limitations, and either stakes out an explicit claim of being TEH TRVTH! or slides into taking a position of general validity that it does not deserve.  And then folks are understandably put out that that... arrogance, for lack of a better term.

This is why I advocated for _starting_ with what playstyle or goals of play you intend to discuss.


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## Umbran (Nov 2, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Second, I don't think that the issue is particular to TTRPGs. For example, films can be about superheroes or normal people, the past or the future, funny or sad, genre or realistic, fiction or non-fiction, linear or non-linear, narrative or non-narrative, etc. ... yet they are all films. There is still something that we can call "film theory" (or film criticism).




FIlm theory/criticism does not pretend to be one thing, though.  It recognizes that it is a "body of work", a collection.  And a good critic doesn't usually apply the standards of European Art Film to a Superhero Blockbuster.

This is because art theory and criticism is not, for the most part, an evaluation of the goals of the artist.  It is an evaluation of how well the artist met their goals using their chosen tools.


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## Campbell (Nov 2, 2021)

Honestly even discussing a lot of the games I like or the experience I am after often gets taken as theorizing when it's a whole lot less theoretical than most of the stuff Justin Alexander talks about on the Alexandrian. Sometimes calling discussion of play outside the norm as "RPG theory" feels like a way to basically dismiss it and people that like it as ivory tower elitists. That sucks.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 2, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Hint:  A lot of RPG theory-talk does forget its limitations, and either stakes out an explicit claim of being TEH TRVTH! or slides into taking a position of general validity that it does not deserve.  And then folks are understandably put out that that... arrogance, for lack of a better term.
> 
> This is why I advocated for _starting_ with what playstyle or goals of play you intend to discuss.



I think this is spot on. As @loverdrive 's talked about in other threads the hobby could benefit from widespread recognition of what (iirc) she calls different schools of RPGs. Until that happens a lot of these conversations will continue to lose focus, because someone will inevitably show up and start making sweeping statements about all RPGs, when really they're just talking about the specific style of game they play or run most often, or even exclusively.

But I also think we're doing ourselves a disservice if we use the same sort of both-sides, everybody's-wrong framing that makes a lot of political discourse so useless. IME the people who rappel into a thread that's explicitly about RPG theory, or that's veering into that territory, and start mucking things up with aggrieved assertions about how they've always run their games and why are we talking about these dumb approaches and mechanics anyway because no game should ever have mechanics for social encounters or hard framing or really anything other than combat...well, let's just say they aren't exactly crazy for PbtA. 

Maybe I've missed some crucial threads where Dogs in the Vineyard fanatics are constantly throwing bombs about how collaborative storytelling is the only option and everything else is inferior. As is the case with discussing film or literature or other creative mediums, RPG theory discussions often to get into comparative criticisms and discussions, comparing and contrasting how different systems and settings and even specific mechanics tackle a given challenge. Those are the threads where I feel like discussion devolves when folks essentially barge in to say, Who cares, cause this is how I play.

Like, fine, go play how you want. But if your style of play doesn't merit any discussion at the level of theory and doesn't benefit from comparisons with other systems, plus you're also just here to repeatedly assert what you do at your table...it's a big site. There's probably a thread just above or just below that's about death saves or how psionics might work in a new Dark Sun.


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## payn (Nov 2, 2021)

Folks might be too close to the RPG theory discussions to assume that cinema discussions are not incendiary or segmented. I mean, all summer we got treated to Marty Scorsese popping a squat on Marvel flicks and telling us how they are "ruining cinema." RPG theory discussions are not unique as a topic.


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## Aldarc (Nov 2, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I briefly touched upon that (or, at a minimum, was thinking about that) when I wrote the following:
> _Finally, the most frustrating thing about many conversations regarding RPG theory is the extent to which they are forced to continually re-occur. RPGs sprung from a loose hobbyist market, and have both attracted a number of very smart people but also usually lacked the type of money or prestige that would generally attract the attention of traditional academia. Which means that the wheel keeps getting re-invented when it comes to RPG theory._
> 
> Vides games in general are similar to movies, in that sense. You have an entertainment that is originally viewed as unserious. Quickly, the sheer amount of money requires that companies (and the people that work for those companies) begin to approach the field in a more systemic manner; what works, what doesn't work. You need standardized language to approach certain problems and to communicate the needs and solutions to other professionals in the field.
> ...



Most definitely. Money and popularity definitely factor into why discussion of theory has progressed far faster in video games than in TTRPGs. It's also why I don't think that it's a coincidence that the flow of theory is not from TTRPGs to Computer Games, but, rather, from Computer Games to TTRPGs. People are bringing video game terms, knowledge, and theoretical frameworks to the TTRPG space, occasionally to the consternation of those tabletop gamers unfamiliar with computer game discourse and frameworks. 



payn said:


> Folks might be too close to the RPG theory discussions to assume that cinema discussions are not incendiary or segmented. I mean, all summer we got treated to Marty Scorsese popping a squat on Marvel flicks and telling us how they are "ruining cinema." RPG theory discussions are not unique as a topic.



I know Marvel stans like to jump at the defense of these films, but I also think that it's important to understand where Scorsese is coming from with his criticisms.


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## payn (Nov 2, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I know Marvel stans like to jump at the defense of these films, but I also think that it's important to understand where Scorsese is coming from with his criticisms.



Sure, I agree with much of what Marty says, but not his part about defining what cinema is and isn't. He is making MCU the bad guy of a situation he doesnt like. A lot like folks like to do about RPGs. Swap Federico Fellini with Gary Gygax and its the same story.


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## gorice (Nov 2, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Great set of references!  To quote from one of the articles in item (1):






> Finally, RPG theorizing participates in the politics of culture: To theorize and critically discern RPGs, one must develop both knowledge of and a sense of taste for RPGs. By demonstrating such knowledge and taste in evaluating, appreciating, or rejecting some subject matter, we accrue social and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984). Every theoretical contribution is thus fundamentally intertwined with one’s social position: to do RPG theory is always also to manage one’s public impression as a theorist within specific (intended) social networks (Goffman 1959). And since RPG theory holds only meager academic and societal status, most RPG theory and criticism is produced by critical amateurs for critical amateurs. “Taste,” as Hennion (2005, 135) puts it, “is a productive activity of critical amateurs”.




I think it really needs to be stressed that denying the validity of critical or aesthetic judgments made by critical amateurs (or anyone else) is _also_ a productive activity of critical amateurs (the main one, if Twitter is anything to go by). Critical subcultures do _not_ like anything they perceive as a threat to or indictment of their tastes and habits. This is something that has shifted noticably within my lifetime: we've gone from hegemonic assumption that artistic taste can or should be normative, to a hegemonic assumption that it is wrong to make normative assumptions about art.

In plain English: in my experience, a lot of people in online 'nerd' subcultures, especially in TTRPGs, are very hostile to the idea that anything can be good or bad for reasons other than moral ones. This really impacts people's ability to think about the culture they consume, and leads to a sort of knee-jerk anti-intellectualism when it comes to understanding what we actually do when we play RPGs.


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## gorice (Nov 2, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Kind of tangent, but…
> 
> I think that the main problem with any kind of TTRPG discussion, theory, and whatnot is the fuzziness of the term itself. If:
> 
> ...



My working definition of TTRPGs is somthing like 'games that are played using both rules and the logic of a shared imaginary space'. I'm sure it's not watertight, but I think it gets at the common thread.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> Most "internet" TTRPG theory (as opposed to the occasional academic work) tends to treat TTRPGs as a single things to be "solved." In the OP, that's generally what I think of when I think of as an issue- I think that different TTRPGs serve different audiences (tables)- and what works for some doesn't work for others.



The thing is, a lot of internet TTRPG theory is made by people who actually do have problems to solve. It is not, in any sense of the word, academic. Players and designers have particular things that they want to achieve. I think industry  or technical knowledge would be a better comparison. (obviously, subcultural identity stuff always muddies the waters).



Umbran said:


> Hint:  A lot of RPG theory-talk does forget its limitations, and either stakes out an explicit claim of being TEH TRVTH! or slides into taking a position of general validity that it does not deserve.  And then folks are understandably put out that that... arrogance, for lack of a better term.
> 
> This is why I advocated for _starting_ with what playstyle or goals of play you intend to discuss.



This last bit seems like good advice to me. I'd like to reiterate what I said above in reply to Snarf Zagyg: TTRPG theory makes a lot more sense if you approach it as a heuristic developed to serve particular technical or aesthetic goals.


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## MGibster (Nov 2, 2021)

I am looking forward to the Criterion  Collection print of D&D and Cyborge Commando.


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## Campbell (Nov 2, 2021)

The main frameworks we use to discuss roleplaying games all came from designers trying to solve particular design problems

GM as Storyteller or Traditional : The folks at White Wolf Magazine, Mark Rein-Hagen, and John Wick were all trying to solve how do we use these war games to like tell stories man? Much of the theoretical foundations a lot of our community relies on came mostly from this crew. They also presented their case pretty damn provocatively. Playing Dirty, Whitewolf Magazine, and Vampire weren't always the most gentle to the gamist inclinations of many D&D gamers. We often forget exactly how much Whitewolf magazine was basically throwing bombs at what was mainstream play then.

The Forge : We like what Vampire is trying to be, but we feel it fails at it. How do we make games that tell stories and are about things? Also pretentious, but like doggedly focused on laying out the ground work for Story Now play.

The OSR : We like lost something man. Let's rediscover what was lost. Get back to playing games with referees. Also pretty damn pretentious. Sandboxes uber alles.

Nordic LARP : We like lost the plot man by focusing too much on plot. Let's focus on characters and experience. Also let's throw away progression and the idea that LARPs are games. We want to feel like our characters, immerse in them.

Basically all these frameworks are provocative, and have communities that sometimes fail prey to pretentiousness. Because we're dealing more with artistic movements. It's not a body of criticism. It's not scientific theory, even if sometimes taxonomies are made. It's people trying to make frameworks to guide creative decision making. Game designers, GMs, and players alike.


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## Malmuria (Nov 2, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Honestly even discussing a lot of the games I like or the experience I am after often gets taken as theorizing when it's a whole lot less theoretical than most of the stuff Justin Alexander talks about on the Alexandrian. Sometimes calling discussion of play outside the norm as "RPG theory" feels like a way to basically dismiss it and people that like it as ivory tower elitists. That sucks.



Again, it probably depends on the context.  As @Snarf Zagyg said, If you can be confident that your audience will follow the use of special terminology, then employing it is a great way to streamline discussion.  But if discussion participants lack access to that language, the conversation will becoming more insular.  This is probably to the detriment of the theory in question, as it tends to become self referential.


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## prabe (Nov 2, 2021)

Campbell said:


> The main frameworks we use to discuss roleplaying games all came from designers trying to solve particular design problems
> 
> GM as Storyteller or Traditional : The folks at White Wolf Magazine, Mark Rein-Hagen, and John Wick were all trying to solve how do we use these war games to like tell stories man? Much of the theoretical foundations a lot of our community relies on came mostly from this crew. They also presented their case pretty damn proactively. Playing Dirty, Whitewolf Magazine, and Vampire weren't always the most gentle to the gamist inclinations of many D&D gamers.
> 
> ...



This as a progression isn't radically unlike just about any progression of movements (so to speak) in any art form, or criticism thereof, that I know of. Just about every movement is in conversation with what has come before, and usually a direct reaction (often but not always in opposition) to an immediate predecessor.


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## Malmuria (Nov 2, 2021)

gorice said:


> I think it really needs to be stressed that denying the validity of critical or aesthetic judgments made by critical amateurs (or anyone else) is _also_ a productive activity of critical amateurs (the main one, if Twitter is anything to go by). Critical subcultures do _not_ like anything they perceive as a threat to or indictment of their tastes and habits. This is something that has shifted noticably within my lifetime: we've gone from hegemonic assumption that artistic taste can or should be normative, to a hegemonic assumption that it is wrong to make normative assumptions about art.
> 
> In plain English: in my experience, a lot of people in online 'nerd' subcultures, especially in TTRPGs, are very hostile to the idea that anything can be good or bad for reasons other than moral ones. This really impacts people's ability to think about the culture they consume, and leads to a sort of knee-jerk anti-intellectualism when it comes to understanding what we actually do when we play RPGs.




Without getting too "academic," the Bourdieu reference in the paragraph I quoted seems intended to claim that these discussions are themselves ways to establish authority over "taste."  This is not necessarily tendentious, as people can do this without really thinking about it.  For example, with regards to ttrpgs, 5e obviously takes up the most air.  This means that discussion of other games is always striving to contrast itself with 5e, to show what they do different and better.  When it comes to talking about the game itself, this might be valid, but there is also an element of judgement and tastemaking involved.  For example, OSR discussions will often assert that a PC is not "special" and should not have "8 pages of backstory."  Part of this is a best practice: let character emerge through play.  But, of course, there are layers of social judgement in those statements that extend beyond analysis of the game itself.


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## ReshiIRE (Nov 2, 2021)

MGibster said:


> I'm not going to say _Tarnsman of Gor _is a good book, but you probably won't feel the need to take a shower after reading it.




I mean, that's fair, but I just took a shower before reading the first part of the summary on Wikipedia of this 'Gor' series and I think I should probably go take a second shower.

Jesus _Christ_.

To be more on topic: it makes sense that the way we speak and how we interpret and use language does limit our worlds. What I am curious about and something I now have to worry about is whether conditions such as say _dyslexia_ would have any effect.

Now, my dyslexia mostly affects my spelling (so not a big issue for DMing generally, unless I want to create new names that others might find incomprehensible), but I do also notice that sometimes my sentances or paragraphs are put backwards and I have to manually affect them. I'm not sure if that will come out while speaking... which may make certain characters or speeches poor.

Does anyone have any insight in something like this?


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## Malmuria (Nov 2, 2021)

prabe said:


> This as a progression isn't radically unlike just about any progression of movements (so to speak) in any art form, or criticism thereof, that I know of. Just about every movement is in conversation with what has come before, and usually a direct reaction (often but not always in opposition) to an immediate predecessor.



And I think situating a given theory in that history is really important for communicating what's important about it.  It helps contextualize why a particular theory or game is trying to do the thing it is trying to do.  Absent that, these frameworks become universalizing and mutually exclusive.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 2, 2021)

MGibster said:


> I am looking forward to the Criterion  Collection print of D&D and Cyborge Commando.



I feel duty-bound to link to this genuinely cool game whenever someone mentions Cyborg Commando






						DriveThruRPG.com
					

Your one-stop online shop for new and vintage RPG products from the top publishers, delivered fresh to your desktop in electronic format.




					www.drivethrurpg.com
				




Seriously cool ideas, though it works well as a bit, too.


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## gorice (Nov 2, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Without getting too "academic," the Bourdieu reference in the paragraph I quoted seems intended to claim that these discussions are themselves ways to establish authority over "taste."  This is not necessarily tendentious, as people can do this without really thinking about it.  For example, with regards to ttrpgs, 5e obviously takes up the most air.  This means that discussion of other games is always striving to contrast itself with 5e, to show what they do different and better.  When it comes to talking about the game itself, this might be valid, but there is also an element of judgement and tastemaking involved.  For example, OSR discussions will often assert that a PC is not "special" and should not have "8 pages of backstory."  Part of this is a best practice: let character emerge through play.  But, of course, there are layers of social judgement in those statements that extend beyond analysis of the game itself.



Oh, completely. I didn't mean to suggest that there aren't critical discourses that establish taste now. What I think has changed is that few people in Bourdieu's day would have responded to a critique with normative implications with something like 'how dare you judge my taste'.

Actually, one of the, uh, frustrating things, to me, about the many pixels spilled over things like GNS and the threefold model is that these were in a sense groundbreaking gestures towards inclusivity. Premising your theory on the idea that different people want different things from RPGs and that's OK ought not to have caused so much consternation... Though normative statements were probably unavoidable, at least implicitly, as you point out.


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## prabe (Nov 2, 2021)

gorice said:


> Actually, one of the, uh, frustrating things, to me, about the many pixels spilled over things like GNS and the threefold model is that these were in a sense groundbreaking gestures towards inclusivity. Premising your theory on the idea that different people want different things from RPGs and that's OK ought not to have caused so much consternation... Though normative statements were probably unavoidable, at least implicitly, as you point out.



I think part of the reason the statements might have been taken as normative in spite of being intended as inclusive is that having your play described from outside by someone who doesn't understand it (or its appeal) seems ... likely to come across as patronizing if not insulting.


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## loverdrive (Nov 2, 2021)

Another tangent, but I'm going to talk about it anyway.

Here in the East we (kinda) have a taxonomy of both playstyles and systems. Of course, stupid arguments still happen when people who haven't learned of jargon or people who just want to argue meet in one place, but _generally_, people stay in their camps and _generally_ productive discussions can take place.

There are:

The Old school: solving of tactical and strategic problems in a Fair™ fictional world adjudicated by the Referee, with no regard to how dramatic or cinematic the narrative turns out in the end. The rulesets used are, well, old school — Traveler, B/X and all her various offspring like OSE, LoFP and st. Crawford's body of work. FKR movement didn't really take any roots here, because of a long lasting disdain for the slovesochkas, games without rules.
The Mid school: a limbo between two other schools, where the Storyteller simultaneously tries to create Drama™ and an _illusion_ of a fair, independent  world. The systems used are the most diverse, from D&D 3E to V:tM to new Fria Ligan stuff.
The New school: everything is up to grabs, but the narrative is the queen. It's about embracing whatever the designer intended and running with it.

Given that this taxonomy was coined by a prominent OSR enthusiast Ivan Devyatko and embraced by a prominent OSR and PbtA enthusiast Alice Loverdrive, of course there's some dislike towards mid-school in it, but, hey, it still works. People generally don't barge into OSR discussions with their comments about how the things are done in WoD, so it's kind of a win.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 2, 2021)

ReshiIRE said:


> To be more on topic: it makes sense that the way we speak and how we interpret and use language does limit our worlds. What I am curious about and something I now have to worry about is whether conditions such as say _dyslexia_ would have any effect.
> 
> Now, my dyslexia mostly affects my spelling (so not a big issue for DMing generally, unless I want to create new names that others might find incomprehensible), but I do also notice that sometimes my sentances or paragraphs are put backwards and I have to manually affect them. I'm not sure if that will come out while speaking... which may make certain characters or speeches poor.
> 
> Does anyone have any insight in something like this?




Moving somewhat far afield of the topic ... but here's my two cents.

The title is a paraphrase from Wittgenstein (it's originally in German, so you'll see various versions). Not our old friend, Ludwig van. Ludwig Josef Johann. 

It's kind of a distillation of the idea that you can only know what you have words for- that understanding and language cannot be viewed as severable concepts, but inseparable. If something is, then it must be thought of, and for it to be thought of, it must be within the range of things that we can speak - language determines what we can think about. Or, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence." Well, it's more complicated, which is why he probably wrote a lot of stuff in German (and he would tend to disagree with himself over time). But that's okay for a quick summary. I always enjoyed it for the nutshell (only half-joking) I learned a long time ago- 

The TLDR of Wittgenstein is- Are you even talking about the same thing? 

But no, I don't think you are limited in any way! AFAIK, dyslexia is just a difference in processing written language. I am grateful that we have much better resources today than we did when I was growing up, but I don't think it's my place to really comment other than that.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 2, 2021)

prabe said:


> I think part of the reason the statements might have been taken as normative in spite of being intended as inclusive is that having your play described from outside by someone who doesn't understand it (or its appeal) seems ... likely to come across as patronizing if not insulting.




This was a bit noticeable with RGFA threefold, where the theory was worked out by simulationists and dramatists, and only included gamists as an afterthought when a few people noted that no, they really were there to a large part focused on the game element, and the world and drama were primarily relevant in supporting that.  The net effect was that since there were so few gamists in the discussion (at one point I think it was down to me and Brian Gleichman) the way it was discussed could sometimes be a bit--special.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Without getting too "academic," ... This is not necessarily tendentious...




Um.... folks were making points about accessible language.  You are trying to not get too academic, but use a word like "tendentious"?


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> It's kind of a distillation of the idea that you can only know what you have words for- that understanding and language cannot be viewed as severable concepts, but inseparable. If something is, then it must be thought of, and for it to be thought of, it must be within the range of things that we can speak - language determines what we can think about.




Yeah, I've seen that argument before.  It has a chicken-and-egg element to it, as there was a time when no language existed on this planet.  By this theory, we could not think of anything before that time, and therefore could not have generated language to begin with.  The fact that we have language means we must, on occasion, be able to think outside the box.

I will totally buy that we _have difficulty_ conceiving things outside our language - that with language, we dig ourselves a rut of thought that is hard to get out of, but not impossible.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> The thing is, a lot of internet TTRPG theory is made by people who actually do have problems to solve.




I am not sure that's true most of the time.  I don't think folks who have immediate problems at their table, or as they design a game, usually build bodies of Theory, and then use that to design a solution. 

I think the practical elements come first - some folks have problems, or goals that aren't well served by current designs.  They find create immediate solutions as best they can.  Theory (at least good theory) comes up when people step back and go, "Hey, a lot of people had this kind of problem.  Look at their solutions.  Is there some generalizing we can do?"


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

prabe said:


> I think part of the reason the statements might have been taken as normative in spite of being intended as inclusive is that having your play described from outside by someone who doesn't understand it (or its appeal) seems ... likely to come across as patronizing if not insulting.




Indeed, because, let us be honest, it is patronizing.  

I stood up a thread about advice a little bit ago - and it was based on the idea that if you want to give useful input, you have to ask questions and understand first.  Much the same concept applies here - your chances of building successful theory about a thing you can't wrap your head around are low.

This is why, in the sciences, folks tend to push on the difference between hypothesis and theory, and lean into empirical testing of hypotheses before anything gets called a theory.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Like, fine, go play how you want. But if your style of play doesn't merit any discussion at the level of theory and doesn't benefit from comparisons with other systems, plus you're also just here to repeatedly assert what you do at your table...it's a big site. There's probably a thread just above or just below that's about death saves or how psionics might work in a new Dark Sun.




So, the problem here is that you tie this together with the exact kind of dismissiveness that causes folks to reject the comparisons.

There's a real issue when, in making comparisons, we use language that leans heavily to _value judgements_.  So, yes, a comparison is made, and one of the options is stated or implied to be _bad_.  How well do you _expect_ people to take that, when their favorite gets the short end of the stick?  

If you want to successfully have theory discussion in a broad and open forum, there's a lot of work in _establishing trust_ that has to go on.  Making the scope of discussion (like what playstyles are you discussing, etc) clear is part of that.  Minding how you speak about things is part of that.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

So I see far to many posters in this that do some of the very things this thread is criticizing actually liking the comments criticizing the things they do.  Should we suppose it's just intense self reflection or do they not realize they are doing these things?

Feel free to count me in the group I'm talking about here.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Finally, there is one more additional issue; when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This is similar to the @Malmuria "basket" analysis- which is to say, if your theory predicts that TTRPGs fall into a finite number of baskets (say, 3 baskets), then you will forever be limited to articulating how something goes into a particular basket, or why it should or shouldn't be in that basket. A long time ago, I took an advanced critical theory course where every week, we had to write a paper analyzing the same text using a different method of critical theory analysis. One week it would me Marxist theory, another week psychoanalytic theory, another week third-work approach (measure it against the standards articulated from another work, like Burke's _On the Sublime and Beautiful_), another week semiotic and structuralist, another week post-structuralist, another week authorial intent, and so on. The purpose was to show how the same text would produce different meanings depending on the approach used; that instead of focusing on the "correct reading" it was best to think of different theoretical approaches as different tools with which to retrieve meaning. There wasn't a single correct theory- but the theory you used was determinative of the types of meaning you would end up with. A Marxist approach tended to reveal a lot of elements of class struggle and power relations, whereas a psychological analysis is more likely to reveal elements of the characters' conscious and subconscious motivations.



So I've never had a class on critical literary theory so strike me down if this question is dumb but...

It seems like critical theory as articulated here has it's own basket problem as you describe it and if it does then doesn't that ultimately deconstruct to - any literature means whatever we want it to mean - because one can presumably just create a new framework/lens/critical theory with which to view it where it means exactly what the person say it means when viewed under that framework/lens/theory - and doesn't this same criticism (or a similar one) apply to what is being done in ttrpg theory?  That we can map virtually any meaning we want onto it by choosing the appropriate lens/framework/theory.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Yeah, I've seen that argument before.  It has a chicken-and-egg element to it, as there was a time when no language existed on this planet.  By this theory, we could not think of anything before that time, and therefore could not have generated language to begin with.  The fact that we have language means we must, on occasion, be able to think outside the box.
> 
> I will totally buy that we _have difficulty_ conceiving things outside our language - that with language, we dig ourselves a rut of thought that is hard to get out of, but not impossible.



Yea, it sounds a bit too much like, 'can I think without language?', which one would presume is a resounding yes!


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> So I see far to many posters in this that do some of the very things this thread is criticizing actually liking the comments criticizing the things they do.  Should we suppose it's just intense self reflection or do they not realize they are doing these things?
> 
> Feel free to count me in the group I'm talking about here.




Why not a bit of both?


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Yea, it sounds a bit too much like, 'can I think without language?', which one would presume is a resounding yes!




This is going to come out as ironic, but it probably depends on how broadly you define "think"; managing complex concepts without language may, indeed, but impossible, though its obvious some basic and reflexive concepts can be managed other ways.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

On the Wittgenstein quote: it's from the Tractatus. It's not a claim about the "evolution" of language. It's a claim in the logical theory of representation, and it rests on a premise - which Wittgenstein himself later rejected - that all language is representational.

I'll sblock the rest of this:



Spoiler



Part of Wittgenstein's theory is a contrast between _saying_ - ie what a well-formed sentence achieves vis-a-vis the actual or possible state of affairs that it represents - and _showing - _ie (roughly) relations that the logical theory of representation entails (i) must exist, but (ii) can't be said.

The metaphor for "showing" is the way a ruler is used to measure a distance - on pain of infinite regress there is no need for a third, mediating entity to establish the measurement. An example of something which (per Wittgenstein) shows itself and cannot be said is the representational relationship itself that obtains between a sentence and the state of affairs which constitutes its "said" content.

The limit of my (cognisable) world can't be _said_, because that would require representing the limit, which in turn would require thinking both sides of the limit. Rather, the limit _shows_ itself, as a consequence of the limits of my repertoire of representation (and the limits here are in-principle ones - eg even in principle I can't represent the representation relationship itself; and there are other things too that Wittgenstein thinks can't be _said_, not due to any contingent limit or ignorance but as a matter of logical principle, like ethics and theology).



What this contentious theory tells us about RPGing and discussions of RPGing, I leave to others to explain!


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> My working definition of TTRPGs is somthing like 'games that are played using both rules and the logic of a shared imaginary space'. I'm sure it's not watertight, but I think it gets at the common thread.



What I would add to this is: most of the participants in a paradigmatic RPG adopt the "player" role, which means that their engagement with the shared imaginary space - the shared fiction - is mediated through their imagined projection into a particular person located within that shared fiction.

I know that there are fuzzy boundaries here, and cases that don't fit my paradigm; but I'm trying to distinguish the "first person's eye view" that characterises a Braunstein, Blacmoor and then RPGing more generally, from the "god's eye view" that characterises a typical wargame player's engagement with the shared fiction (even in a wargame where the fiction matters to adjudication).



gorice said:


> TTRPG theory makes a lot more sense if you approach it as a heuristic developed to serve particular technical or aesthetic goals.





Fenris-77 said:


> I've done a ton of theory as well, and it just doesn't seem to come off the same way in conversation about RPGs as it does in a Lit Grad lecture. Well, except about Derrida, but that's Derrida for you. I think I'd agree that a limiting factor is probably that the base theory sets are not as well constructed/appreciated/deployed/_insert theory word here_ as is the case with Lit theory (or whatever theory). Not that people don't argue about Lit, obviously they do, but the nature of the arguments seem a little different to me. Tough to really put my finger on the exact differences though. Something to think about.



I encounter literary theory mostly either in criticism, or when it bleeds over into social and political theory. It's normally a tool for analysing and evaluating _content. _It tends to take it as uncontentious that the audience has available the artefact to be criticised - though of course what exactly that artefact consists in, and how independent that is of the audience (if at all) is a matter of contention!

But most RPGing analysis I'm familiar with isn't about the criticism of already available artefacts. It's an attempt to understand the processes of creating a shared fiction using RPGing techniques - or inventing new techniques that build on the core idea of the first-person perspective within a shared fiction. So I am really agreeing here with @gorice: RPG theory mostly isn't about aesthetic criticism, but rather about resolving technical or aesthetic challenges that arise in the course of RPGing.



Malmuria said:


> the Bourdieu reference in the paragraph I quoted seems intended to claim that these discussions are themselves ways to establish authority over "taste."  This is not necessarily tendentious, as people can do this without really thinking about it.  For example, with regards to ttrpgs, 5e obviously takes up the most air.  This means that discussion of other games is always striving to contrast itself with 5e, to show what they do different and better.



Is there an element of observer bias here? I don't regard 5e as the RPG around which all other discussions orbit. For me, the canonical RPGs for comparison are Gygax's AD&D and Moldvay Basic; RQ; and CoC - the classics - and then AW as a modern classic. But I also like talking about systems as systems. My experience is that it tends to be those who predominantly play 5e D&D who are not happy to talk about less widely played RGS on their own terms.

The seemingly widespread view that it is pretentious or elitist to enjoy or prefer RPGs other than 5e D&D strikes me as coming from much the same place as the view that it is pretentious or elitist to think that (say) My Life Without Me is a better film (both in general, and as a Mark Ruffalo vehicle) than Age of Ultron.



prabe said:


> I think part of the reason the statements might have been taken as normative in spite of being intended as inclusive is that having your play described from outside by someone who doesn't understand it (or its appeal) seems ... likely to come across as patronizing if not insulting.



I've never really got this. Ron Edwards analysis of purist-for-system RPGing is brilliant - as a 19-year RM devotee far more insightful than anything to be found on the ICE messageboards! Likewise his analysis of 4e D&D, all the more remarkable for being written about 5 years before the game was published! He also explains other games I've loved really well - CoC, RQ, Prince Valiant, even - I would say - AD&D. I have never felt patronised or insulted: he takes my games and (by implication) my play seriously. And helps me better understand my own engagement with them.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> *I've never really got this*. Ron Edwards analysis of purist-for-system RPGing is brilliant - as a 19-year RM devotee far more insightful than anything to be found on the ICE messageboards! Likewise his analysis of 4e D&D, all the more remarkable for being written about 5 years before the game was published! He also explains other games I've loved really well - CoC, RQ, Prince Valiant, even - I would say - AD&D. I have never felt patronised or insulted: he takes my games and (by implication) my play seriously. And helps me better understand my own engagement with them.




Sure. And to employ the apocryphal Pauline Kael quote, "I don't know how Richard Nixon won. No one I know voted for him." I, too, don't understand how people could think differently than I do- yet they keep making new variants of elves, don't they?

It's a feature, not a bug, Some people believe that Derrida helps them understand things in way so profound, they can't help but push a copy of his work with one hand while a lit Gauloises dangles from the other, while others think he is a pile rancid brie atop a stale baguette. To each their own.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> If you want to successfully have theory discussion in a broad and open forum, there's a lot of work in _establishing trust_ that has to go on.  Making the scope of discussion (like what playstyles are you discussing, etc) clear is part of that.  Minding how you speak about things is part of that.



You’re misrepresenting what I’m saying, and jumping to the same sorts of defensive conclusions that I was warning about and predicting. My comment wasn’t a broad takedown of D&D and/or D&D players, but an attempt to honestly surface a recurring issue, which is people rejecting the idea that any of this is worth talking about at the level of theory, especially in a comparative way. My point is that there is so much to talk about re: D&D that there’s no reason to try to shout down or reject the premise of a theory discussion.

Also, is it really an implicit barb to reference threads about death saves and psionics? Those are actual things that people post about, and they’re often interesting discussions. And they can happen without dealing with this apparent risk of being greatly offended by someone breaking down modes of play and different approaches to GM authority in a wide variety of games.

But you’re also reinforcing my comparison about these sorts of discussions and the oddly asymmetric nature of current political and even cultural discourse. Must remember to walk on eggshells around people who are threatened by any criticism—implied or direct, real or imagined—of whatever point of view they grew up with, or whatever popular IP is the source of their fandom. Discussions of the stifling effects of kneejerk anti-intellectualism shouldn’t, IMO, be forbidden for fear of someone deciding it’s a personal assault on their intelligence. It’s about whether and how you want to dig in, and none of us wants to dig into everything the same way.

Anyway my point in posting what you’re responding to was to note how those who don’t actually want to engage in these kinds of discussions, but are just chiming in because they feel slighted, often derail the whole enterprise. I know you’re interested in these kinds of discussions, but you’re also doing the exact thing I was talking about, though in this case on behalf of the presumably aggrieved parties. The result is the same.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> So I've never had a class on critical literary theory so strike me down if this question is dumb but...
> 
> It seems like critical theory as articulated here has it's own basket problem as you describe it and if it does then doesn't that ultimately deconstruct to - any literature means whatever we want it to mean - because one can presumably just create a new framework/lens/critical theory with which to view it where it means exactly what the person say it means when viewed under that framework/lens/theory - and doesn't this same criticism (or a similar one) apply to what is being done in ttrpg theory?  That we can map virtually any meaning we want onto it by choosing the appropriate lens/framework/theory.




The distinction that I was making is that (some) TTRPG theory attempts, like a scientific theory, to explain all of TTRPG. A grand unified theory of TTRPGs, if you will 

The difficulty is that the mode of analysis will often determine the outcome- the whole, "If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Or, "If you decide that everything is A, B, or C, then you will categorize everything as A, B, or C." (the "baskets"). 

From experience, we should know that this will lead us to results that will derive meanings specific to an analysis. Looking at a work from a Marxist or post-colonialist lens, for example, will _likely_ give us a very different result than looking at it from a traditional, "what was the author trying to accomplish" lens, which in turn would likely be different than a structuralist approach.

(As to the last thing you allude to- no. Yes, there are additional issues re: reader-response theory and other theories that assert the primacy of the audience either in the abstract or in the particular, but it should be error to simply state that meaning is derived independently of the work- you can apply these different approaches correctly or incorrectly, and the idea that people are just making stuff up is a caricature of what is going on. Although there are some truly bad takes ... just like anywhere else.)


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

Most popular contemporary art depends, at least to some extent, on the prior efforts of the avant garde. But most people who enjoy that popular art hate the _current_ avant garde. They may also hate the past avant garde (impressionism is no longer widely seen as outrageous; cubism still seems to be).

This is a deep asymmetry, which I think applies to RPGing as much as other creative endeavours.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Most popular contemporary art depends, at least to some extent, on the prior efforts of the avant garde. But most people who enjoy that popular art hate the _current_ avant garde. They may also hate the past avant garde (impressionism is no longer widely seen as outrageous; cubism still seems to be).




For every Velvet Underground ("The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." - Brian Eno), there are untold tens of thousands of avant garde music ensembles that disappear, never to be heard from again.

It is not enough to simply assert you are avant garde; otherwise, we would all be like Brad because he wore all black in 8th grade. Don't be like Brad.



pemerton said:


> This is a deep asymmetry, which I think applies to RPGing as much as other creative endeavours.




The issues of TTRPGs as a creative endeavor are different than most of the other examples we have. It neither sufficient nor necessary to just assert it is creative, therefore amenable to certain theory. Primarily because it is not like other "art."

It is not paintings. Or literature. Or movies. Because it is not a completed work meant to be consumed.
It is not just a set of rules meant to be designed, either.
Nor is it simply acting from a script, or improv.
Finally, it isn't just creative storytelling or world building.

The very nature of it (from the rules and design creation to the player-player interaction to the division of authority w/r/t rules to the varying degrees to which table might desire to "act out" or "role play") is so varied that easy categorization does not apply, and the type of analysis that might be very appealing to one set of consumer/players will be alienating to another.

IMO, YMMV, etc.

EDIT- to return the subject I mentioned in the OP, what was shocking is how un-avant garde most TTRPG theory is. This was all done and discussed in the 70s and early 80s. It's just a constant re-inventing of the wheel.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> For every Velvet Underground ("The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." - Brian Eno), there are untold tens of thousands of avant garde music ensembles that disappear, never to be heard from again.
> 
> It is not enough to simply assert you are avant garde; otherwise, we would all be like Brad because he wore all black in 8th grade. Don't be like Brad.



Is that Brad who goes around randomly quoting lines from Wittgenstein, or a different Brad?

In any event, I think it's pretty safe to say that Edwards, Baker, Czege et al were part of an RPGing avant garde. 



Snarf Zagyg said:


> The issues of TTRPGs as a creative endeavor are different than most of the other examples we have. It neither sufficient nor necessary to just assert it is creative, therefore amenable to certain theory. Primarily because it is not like other "art."
> 
> It is not paintings. Or literature. Or movies. Because it is not a completed work meant to be consumed.



Did anyone already make this point upthread? Yes they did - @gorice, and me.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> That we can map virtually any meaning we want onto it by choosing the appropriate lens/framework/theory.




Sure.  Any human cognitive construct is open to the same issue.  You can always construct a theory to have any result you want.  The resulting theory, however, is apt to be... a tortured mess.  This leads us to meta-critical analyis, or meta critical theory, if you will - the theory of what critical theory should look like.  

In the end, there is always a reliance on the people to be _reasonable_.  If you are not up for that, the best you can do is become a forest ranger, and have as little contact with your fellow humans as possible.

I can't say that I haven't seriously considered that final option.  Humans can be so disappointing.


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## prabe (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Ron Edwards analysis of purist-for-system RPGing is brilliant - as a 19-year RM devotee far more insightful than anything to be found on the ICE messageboards! Likewise his analysis of 4e D&D, all the more remarkable for being written about 5 years before the game was published! He also explains other games I've loved really well - CoC, RQ, Prince Valiant, even - I would say - AD&D. I have never felt patronised or insulted: he takes my games and (by implication) my play seriously. And helps me better understand my own engagement with them.



Of course talking about a way to game you don't enjoy or even understand the pleasures of is perilous. Edwards himself said D&D causes brain damage, and there are people who've never forgiven him for it, and now write off anything and everything he says and has said--which is plausibly a mistake, but I think an understandable one.

Even here, so many of the recurring arguments seem to be because people do not just fail to understand the differences in how others play, but the differences in why. Or that, for instance, someone else could try the way I play and reject it--then the way I play is (of course) perfect for me. One can comprehend the mechanics of a game and still fail to understand its players.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> So I see far to many posters in this that do some of the very things this thread is criticizing actually liking the comments criticizing the things they do.  Should we suppose it's just intense self reflection or do they not realize they are doing these things?
> 
> Feel free to count me in the group I'm talking about here.




Yep.  What, did you want _logical consistency_ from humans?  

Human neurology at work - we use different areas of our brains to judge actions taken by others, and judging our own actions.  We are rather literally of two minds in such matters.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

prabe said:


> Edwards himself said D&D causes brain damage



Do you have the quote for this? The "brain damage" posts I'm familiar with are talking about White Wolf "storyteller" games and similar systems like 7th Sea.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

prabe said:


> Of course talking about a way to game you don't enjoy or even understand the pleasures of is perilous. Edwards himself said D&D causes brain damage, and there are people who've never forgiven him for it, and how write off anything and everything he says and has said--which is plausibly a mistake, but I think an understandable one.
> 
> Even here, so many of the recurring arguments seem to be because people do not just fail to understand the differences in how others play, but the differences in why. Or that, for instance, someone else could try the way I play and reject it--then the way I play is (of course) perfect for me. One can comprehend the mechanics of a game and still fail to understand its players.



That's part of why I also question the value in talking about 'play experiences'.  The players involved are the ones that have the 'play experiences' which makes those 'play experiences' a rather personal thing.  Another player is likely to have quite a different 'play experience' even in the same game as you just by virtue of being another person than you are. 

Perhaps the value in lenses and frameworks in TTRPG analysis is to reveal players that experience things similarly moreso than it is about revealing that a specific game offers a universal play experience to everyone.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Yep.  What, did you want _logical consistency_ from humans?



Yes I do.


Umbran said:


> Human neurology at work - we use different areas of our brains to judge actions taken by others, and judging our own actions.  We are rather literally of two minds in such matters.



That's interesting.  I wasn't aware.  Explains alot.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Sure.  Any human cognitive construct is open to the same issue.  You can always construct a theory to have any result you want.  The resulting theory, however, is apt to be... a tortured mess.  This leads us to meta-critical analyis, or meta critical theory, if you will - the theory of what critical theory should look like.
> 
> In the end, there is always a reliance on the people to be _reasonable_.  If you are not up for that, the best you can do is become a forest ranger, and have as little contact with your fellow humans as possible.
> 
> I can't say that I haven't seriously considered that final option.  Humans can be so disappointing.



Yes.  One can certainly create incoherent and unreasonable theories.  I am suggesting one can create a coherent and reasonable theory that produces the answer you want when it comes to any kind of literary or ttrpg criticism


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> I am suggesting one can create a coherent and reasonable theory that produces the answer you want when it comes to any kind of literary or ttrpg criticism



As soon as a new instance is presented, it generates new demands on the theory, whether the theory is explanatory or interpretive/critical. At which point there is no guarantee of "producing the answer you want".


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> In any event, I think it's pretty safe to say that Edwards, Baker, Czege et al were part of an RPGing avant garde.




Ever see the musical _RENT_?  It centers around a group of pauperized artistic bohemians in New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and in part concerns their rejection of a development project.  

There's a structural problem with the piece, when you look beyond the surface.  You are set up to view the bohemians in a positive light, but if you think about it, the supposed antagonist of the piece is _trying to help them_.  What he offers is a good, well-thought-out plan that would be of benefit to the central characters themselves, and to their community.  It is rejected not for its results, but because it does not fit in with bohemian ideals.

Never mind that "bohemian ideals" lead to malnutrition, drug use, living without power and heat, and dying of AIDS.

Basically, the work rests on the idea that "bohemian" is good, no matter what the results (like, death and misery) might be.

Avant garde has a similar issue - being at the forefront doesn't itself mean the results are valuable.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Yes.  One can certainly create incoherent and unreasonable theories.  I am suggesting one can create a coherent and reasonable theory that produces the answer you want when it comes to any kind of literary or ttrpg criticism




No.  I don't accept that posit.  You can create theories that _sound_ coherent and reasonable, but to get arbirary results, you end up in "all horses are white and have an infinite number of limbs" territory.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Yes I do.




To get that, you must remove the human limbic system.  Since your memory depends on it... that's causes issues.  Good luck!



FrogReaver said:


> That's interesting.  I wasn't aware.  Explains alot.




It really, really does.  We _think_ we are terribly logical and even handed, when, we a really aren't.  This is why peer review is important - no one person is actually without cognitive biases, but if you filter thorugh several folks, they tend to filter each other out, until you get at something approaching a realistic view of the world.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> As soon as a new instance is presented, it generates new demands on the theory, whether the theory is explanatory or interpretive/critical. At which point there is no guarantee of "producing the answer you want".



I can see that. I think that depends to some degree to how narrow a field of answers you would find acceptable.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Ever see the musical _RENT_?  It centers around a group of pauperized artistic bohemians in New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and in part concerns their rejection of a development project.
> 
> There's a structural problem with the piece, when you look beyond the surface.  You are set up to view the bohemians in a positive light, but if you think about it, the supposed antagonist of the piece is _trying to help them_.  What he offers is a good, well-thought-out plan that would be of benefit to the central characters themselves, and to their community.  It is rejected not for its results, but because it does not fit in with bohemian ideals.
> 
> ...



Are you suggesting that all avant garde creativity is worthless or self-defeating? Impressionism? Dada? Cubism? Surrealism? Wagner?

Are you suggesting that all rationalist proposals for social reform ought to be embraced, by everyone? Even those whose lives are oriented around fundamentally different, non-rationalist frameworks? (There's a separate argument that resistance to rationalisation is _futile_, but that's not an evaluative claim, it's a descriptive one associated most prominently with Weber.)

I assume you're not - because a musical would be a pretty thin evidence base for such claims.

Are the results of the avant garde I mentioned valuable? Those results include Sorcerer, My Life With Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Apocalypse World and its many many offshoots. These games aren't widely played, at least if the measure of "widely played" is D&D in its various versions. I get the impression that many D&D players regard it as pretentious or elitist to prefer these games to D&D. Nevertheless, contemporary RPGing would hardly be what it is but for the influence of these games.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Is that Brad who goes around randomly quoting lines from Wittgenstein, or a different Brad?




You know, snarky isn't your best look, is it?

I'd probably go back and read what I wrote again. I know that you often misapprehend what I say because I tend to sprinkle in jokes, but I'll let you in on a quick annotated version. Here is what I wrote in response to a question about the quote-

_The title is a paraphrase from Wittgenstein (it's originally in German, so you'll see various versions). Not our old friend, Ludwig van. Ludwig Josef Johann.

It's kind of a distillation of the idea that you can only know what you have words for- that understanding and language cannot be viewed as severable concepts, but inseparable. If something is, then it must be thought of, and for it to be thought of, it must be within the range of things that we can speak - language determines what we can think about. Or, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence." Well, it's more complicated, which is why he probably wrote a lot of stuff in German (and he would tend to disagree with himself over time). But that's okay for a quick summary. _

Now, let's examine this.

1. _The title is a paraphrase from Wittgenstein (it's originally in German, so you'll see various versions). _Okay, I know who the dude is.
2. _Not our old friend, Ludwig van. Ludwig Josef Johann. _That's called a joke (or at least an _allusion _to Kubrick's Clockwork Orange).
3._ It's kind of a distillation of the idea that you can only know what you have words for- that understanding and language cannot be viewed as severable concepts, but inseparable. _That is a paraphrase of one of the important concepts behind the representational theory of language.
4. _If something is, then it must be thought of, and for it to be thought of, it must be within the range of things that we can speak - language determines what we can think about. _Pretty boilerplate representational theory of language.
5. _Or, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence." _That's the pull quote (some) people know from _Tractatus._
6. _Well, it's more complicated, which is why he probably wrote a lot of stuff in German ..._ This is the whole, yeah, Wittgenstein isn't really likely to lead to a productive conversation on this thread, and I don't normally bother explaining myself due to responses like yours, but someone asked a genuine and earnest question.
7. _(and he would tend to disagree with himself over time). _That's the reference to Wittgenstein's shift from _Tractatus _to _Philosophical Investigations. _
8. _But that's okay for a quick summary. _And that's what it was. A quick summary explaining the quote.

I didn't follow up on the various responses by Umbran, et al., because I don't normally do so- I'm not really interested, for purposes of this discussion, in the evolution of language, or Chomsky, or current scientific theories regarding same. But you tell me, since you are the expert on this and what I was thinking when I used the quote in the title- why would I possibly be referencing a philosopher who famously adapted positions from what many would think of as a postivist approach to a something more akin to pragmatism when I wrote the OP? I mean, yeah, it's probably just me being all stupid and stuff, like usual. Right?


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Ever see the musical _RENT_?  It centers around a group of pauperized artistic bohemians in New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic, and in part concerns their rejection of a development project.




If you watch _Rent _with most people today, the reaction you get is pretty uniform- _Why don't they just pay the damn rent?_

Different times and all that.


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## Campbell (Nov 3, 2021)

What's so damn wrong with being Brad if that's your bliss? If you bring joy to 5 people or 500,000 you are still engaging in meaningful creativity. I find the idea that the Brad's of this world are devoid of value to be utterly pretentious. A lot of time those no name bands who don't make an impact influence the next Velvet Underground.

Not to mention this analogy makes our hobby look pretty much completely hopeless. We are pretty much engaging in a creative act meant for an audience of 4-7 people. I think that's a worthwhile endeavor.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Campbell said:


> What's so damn wrong with being Brad if that's your bliss? If you bring joy to 5 people or 500,000 you are still engaging in meaningful creativity. I find the idea that the Brad's of this world are devoid of value to be utterly pretentious.




Brads listen to Coldplay and play Bards. You can't trust Brads, Campbell.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Brads listen to Coldplay and play Bards. You can't trust Brads, Campbell.



Well, sure, but Coldplay and Bards is still a step up from Nickleback and Gnome Paladins. So there's that.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> Well, sure, but Coldplay and Bards is still a step up from Nickleback and Gnome Paladins. So there's that.




Brad never made it as a wise man
Brad couldn't cut it as a cleric healing
Brad's tired of playing as a good man
Now he wants to play as a class that's unappealing

And this is how Brad reminds me
This is how Brad remind me
Of what Bards really are
This is how Brad reminds me
Of what Bards really are

Brad never will say that he's "Sorry"
Plays a different Bard but the same old story
He plays a class that's godforsaken
Another bad joke and my mind is achin'

And I've been wrong, I've been down
Bards drive me to the bottom of every bottle
These five words in my head
Scream "Are we having fun yet?"


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

@Snarf Zagyg 

I read your posts. I "apprehended" them. I just don't agree with them. I don't think you've shown that Wittgenstein helps us understand either patterns of influence in RPG design, or techniques and practices for engaging in RPGing. Nor do I think you've show that Wittgenstein helps explain why RPG theory is contentious. All analysis and explanation of cultural artefacts and practices is contentious - both in its details, and that anyone should do it at all. Why would RPG theory be any different?


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

I have a good friend who insists that he enjoys airplane food - that he can't tell that it's terrible, although everyone assures him that it is.

He doesn't hold himself up as a gourmand.

The same friend has an excellent ear for music - both classical and popular - and is a reasonably skilled amateur pianist. He does hold himself up as a credible commentator on things musical.

I don't know what Vincent Baker is like as a restaurant or music critic, but he's thought pretty hard about the "metaphysics" and social construction of shared fictions. What he has to say about that sort of thing, and how it can be operationalised via various sorts of processes - including game mechanical processes - for allocating authority, is pretty interesting. And the particular set of processes he puts forward in AW is brilliant.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I read your posts. I "apprehended" them. I just don't agree with them. I don't think you've shown that Wittgenstein helps us understand either patterns of influence in RPG design, or techniques and practices for engaging in RPGing. Nor do I think you've show that Wittgenstein helps explain why RPG theory is contentious. All analysis and explanation of cultural artefacts and practices is contentious - both in its details, and that anyone should do it at all. Why would RPG theory be any different?




1. No, you don't apprehend the majority of my posts. Your dismissive tone shows that. You assumed I didn't know what I was talking about- and when I finally responded (not after your first post, but after a dismissive and snarky aside) you incorrectly claim to understand.

You don't. I don't even think you tried. But let me simplify this- someone asked about the quote in a certain context that I felt compelled to explain it, and I explained it. Period. I normally don't explain the quotes and jokes I use, because they tend to be Easter Eggs- either you get it, or you don't. If you still don't get it, that's okay. I don't need you to "get" me.*

2. I understand that you disagree with me. I'm cool with that. But, for whatever reason, you seem unable to understand that it is possible that there are smart and good-faith people that disagree with you. As noted in the very first response in this thread,_ It is okay to have a favored framework, but for goodness sake realize that it is only a framework, not TEH TRVTH! _I would note that among the resources I listed in the first post was a thorough recounting of _The Forge_- not because I agree with it, or think it is gospel, but because I think it is important to have a diversity of thought and opinion represented. Not just the same opinion, over and over and over again.

If you have something interesting to say about _The Elusive Shift_, for example, that would be cool. And unexpected. Literally anything except the same debate that takes place in every single thread, regardless of what the thread was about. 


*Not to mention they tend to be like frogs- dissect them and they die.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Are you suggesting that all avant garde creativity is worthless or self-defeating? Impressionism? Dada? Cubism? Surrealism? Wagner?




No, I am not.  More importantly, I wonder how one could possibly get that from what I wrote. 

I am saying that the label (be it "avant garde" or "bohemian" or whatever) doesn't indicate _value_, any more than "blue" indicates value.  Sturgeon's Law applies - 90% of everything is crap.  That means that 90% of all avant garde work is crap, such that the label itself can't be a direct line to quality or value.

Indeed, none of the things you mention - impressionism, Dada, cubism, etc - are even avant garde any more!   Wagner died in 1883!  We are well over a century past his work - there is no viable claim that it is on the forefront of art at this point.  Avant garde is a _temporary_ status.  Eventually that which was _avant garde_ becomes either _de rigueur_ or is consigned to the _oubliette_ of history (because, really, why leave the French descriptors - they are so fancy!). 

But Wagner is still Wagner.  Monet is still Monet. 

Value does not come directly from being a member of a genre.  It comes from the detailed merits of an _individual_ work.



pemerton said:


> Are the results of the avant garde I mentioned valuable?




Not all of them, no.  There were a lot of really crappy Monet wannabees, so to speak.



pemerton said:


> Those results include Sorcerer, My Life With Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Apocalypse World and its many many offshoots. These games aren't widely played, at least if the measure of "widely played" is D&D in its various versions. I get the impression that many D&D players regard it as pretentious or elitist to prefer these games to D&D. Nevertheless, contemporary RPGing would hardly be what it is but for the influence of these games.




From where I sit, you seem to be conflating, "there is value to be found looking in new territory," for, "being new is valuable."  They are not equivalent.  This becomes clear in the survivor bias in your statement - you mention a cherry-picked list of games that had influence, but you don't survey the games of that school as a whole for all the _failed_ attempts that didn't take hold, and didn't have influence.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> You don't. I don't even think you tried.




We should really avoid making this personal.  Try to keep the high ground, because you make good points.  Use the blocking features if you need to.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> If you watch _Rent _with most people today, the reaction you get is pretty uniform- _Why don't they just pay the damn rent?_
> 
> Different times and all that.




Heck, Benny offers to let them stay without paying rent!  He offers to _improve their living and working conditions_ and let them stay without paying rent!


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Heck, Benny offers to let them stay without paying rent!  He offers to _improve their living and working conditions_ and let them stay without paying rent!




Sometimes, I think the difference between the 90s and today is this-

90s- "Eff you, I won't do what you tell me! I'll never sell out to The Man!"

Today- "You would be so lucky for The Man to notice you! Tell me where and when to sell out, and I'll be there with bells on!"

edit- just to be clear, I am not making fun of people today. Different times.


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## Umbran (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Sometimes, I think the difference between the 90s and today is this-
> 
> 90s- "Eff you, I won't do what you tell me! I'll never sell out to The Man!"
> 
> Today- "You would be so lucky for The Man to notice you! Tell me where and when to sell out, and I'll be there with bells on!"




But that was also the 60s, the 70s, maybe not so much the 80s, but yeah, the 90s...  I mean, "The Man" is a term from back in the 50's.


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## gorice (Nov 3, 2021)

I'm sorry I alluded to the Forge, however indirectly. It always ruins threads.

Getting back to the OP, I'd like to read _The Elusive Shift_ when I get the chance. I looked at an article or two in the academic journal, and immediately closed them, since they committed what I think is a cardinal sin when it comes to RPG theory: carelessly importing concepts from videogames. Literally every academic work that talks about TTRPGs seems to do this! And it's always those accursed MMOs! Why!?


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> We should really avoid making this personal.  Try to keep the high ground, because you make good points.  Use the blocking features if you need to.



Just thought I’d add for others. I am fairly ignore/blocking adverse which has harmed my time on this forum.

Now I’ve configured my block:ignore functionality to be 1 way ignore where it’s only me that can’t see others posts when I ignore.  I also have the option in thread to click to see posts I’ve ignored which I find I often have no need or desire to do.

The cool thing is that even if I click and read them the extra step and seeing them on my ignore list helps remind me that engaging with that poster is likely to just end in my frustration and so I’m much less prone to get into frustrating situations to begin with - while still having the ability if desired to read what they say and craft a response with this background in mind.

For me it’s been a great middle ground that aligns with my no block philosophy while serving as a tool to focus my attention and aid in my memory. 

For any other ignore or block averse users I highly recommend trying it this way. It does help.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> But that was also the 60s, the 70s, maybe not so much the 80s, but yeah, the 90s...  I mean, "The Man" is a term from back in the 50's.




I was being specific to the reaction to _Rent_. 

I saw it when it first came out (okay, technically it was its first road production) and I read it, in context, as it was intended. On the other hand, I saw it again just before the pandemic and while the younger people I was with enjoyed the music, they could not even _understand the plot _(w/r/t the rent, and Benny being the villain)_. _At all.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> I'm sorry I alluded to the Forge, however indirectly. It always ruins threads.




It's not your fault. 

I think it was Malthus who first remarked about the inevitability of things. Then again, I'm pretty sure that Engels replied, "You are wrong, your momma smells bad, and your reasoning is as poor as you claim the population to be. #FIRST11!!!! #PWNED #TOOLOFOPPRESION

I'll add this to the running total of new maxims!

1. Ancalagon's Apothegm: If you ever write something about how awesome people are, they will immediately prove you wrong.
@Ancalagon 

2. Gorice's Gospel: All conversations about TTRPG theory on enworld inevitably become arguments about the Forge. 



gorice said:


> Getting back to the OP, I'd like to read _The Elusive Shift_ when I get the chance. I looked at an article or two in the academic journal, and immediately closed them, since they committed what I think is a cardinal sin when it comes to RPG theory: carelessly importing concepts from videogames. Literally every academic work that talks about TTRPGs seems to do this! And it's always those accursed MMOs! Why!?




Because that's where the money is. (Speaking of Engels ...) 

Seriously, though. When that much money is spent on triple-A games, and on creating and maintaining MMOs, then you get a lot of work done on the practical aspects of what makes it "good" and "worth playing." In other words, the design and theory aspects of them. Because of the relative paucity of such work in the TTRPG field, a lot of the concepts get borrowed. 

IMO. I think @Aldarc has mentioned this as well.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Is there an element of observer bias here? I don't regard 5e as the RPG around which all other discussions orbit. For me, the canonical RPGs for comparison are Gygax's AD&D and Moldvay Basic; RQ; and CoC - the classics - and then AW as a modern classic. But I also like talking about systems as systems. My experience is that it tends to be those who predominantly play 5e D&D who are not happy to talk about less widely played RGS on their own terms.




I tend to agree.  Once you get away from a D&D-centric space like ENWorld, most discussion of RPGs in contrast doesn't mention any incarnation of D&D, other than to the degree its lumped in with other traditional games.  This wasn't always true--early in the hobby a lot of discussion of new games were framed in contrast to what they did that D&D doesn't--but for most people outside the D&D-sphere (in the sense they don't do it or its not their primary game choice) that fight is long won as far as they're concerned, and they've moved on to working on other issues beyond whether there's better ways to represent characters than classes or better ways to represent armor than AC.  It doesn't even come up (and even when it does, its in a kind of "of course" sort of way).


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

prabe said:


> Of course talking about a way to game you don't enjoy or even understand the pleasures of is perilous. Edwards himself said D&D causes brain damage, and there are people who've never forgiven him for it, and now write off anything and everything he says and has said--which is plausibly a mistake, but I think an understandable one.
> 
> Even here, so many of the recurring arguments seem to be because people do not just fail to understand the differences in how others play, but the differences in why. Or that, for instance, someone else could try the way I play and reject it--then the way I play is (of course) perfect for me. One can comprehend the mechanics of a game and still fail to understand its players.




Yeah.  One of the useful functions of the discussion back in RGFA back in the day was it conveying to the participants that other people not only genuinely could want different things than they did, but that it was not a critique of what they wanted that they did.  David Berkman indirectly did everyone a favor by being blind to this truth.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 3, 2021)

Before the usual battle lines get drawn too deeply, help me understand something.

@Snarf Zagyg in your OP, referring to another thread you had started, you said:

_Another thread, ostensibly about one thing (discussing the division of narrative authority within 5e) turned into another thing (jargon-filled general discussion about RPG theory)._

How is that second thing really all that different or unexpected or undesirable, compared to thing one? "Division of narrative authority within 5e" is about as complex and involved as it gets, so why wouldn't that wind up getting into theory, and especially theory that uses other games and their approaches for context? To me that would be like wanting to discuss narrative point of view in James Bond movies, and being aghast when someone talks about how that's handled in le Carre or Bourne movies, or how spy shows and miniseries do it differently. Or even pulling examples and techniques from totally different genres. Isn't that just how discussions and analyses go, if they don't peter out? Analysis of horror movies has been enriched by analysis of comedy movies (since they sometimes share a surprising number of approaches). Indie film movements have changed the way Hollywood movies are edited and paced, and digging into those relationships can deepen appreciation of those mainstream movies, even if someone finds those lesser-watched films aren't their thing. I can't think of a discussion I've had about anything creative that, given enough time and depth, hasn't started to draw connections and context from other works. That's what professors do, what written criticism does--I'd argue it's how humans understand creative output and activities, and the world more generally, through informed comparisons. How is doing that with RPGs a problem?

Or is this really just about the challenges posed by jargon?

If that's what this is about, I think we can have a more focused discussion, though maybe sort of a boring one: Jargon, y/n? But right now it feels like you've started another thread that's almost tailor-made--based on the length of the OP and choice of topic but also lack of specific stance--to trigger the exact dynamic you're criticizing.

To me, that other thread (which is still going) is contentious but interesting. But you bailed out of that one--as is your right, obviously--early on. So here's what I want to know, in all sincerity: What sort of discussion do you want to have, or that you think is worthwhile? Or was this more an airing of frustration that's wound up doing what frustrates you in the first place?

If I didn't know better, I'd think you might be a master of instigating food fights and then appearing after the fact to decry the terrible mess that others have made. I don't necessarily think that's what's happening, but I'm not Not seeing a certain twinkle in your eye...


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I tend to agree.  Once you get away from a D&D-centric space like ENWorld, most discussion of RPGs in contrast doesn't mention any incarnation of D&D, other than to the degree its lumped in with other traditional games.  This wasn't always true--early in the hobby a lot of discussion of new games were framed in contrast to what they did that D&D doesn't--but for most people outside the D&D-sphere (in the sense they don't do it or its not their primary game choice) that fight is long won as far as they're concerned, and they've moved on to working on other issues beyond whether there's better ways to represent characters than classes or better ways to represent armor than AC.  It doesn't even come up (and even when it does, its in a kind of "of course" sort of way).




I mean, I think that would be a giant red flag that something should be re-examined.

Imagine if you were trying to think about any other field, and you chose to discard _the majority of relevant data about actual observed preferences_ because it doesn't fit what you want it to be.

It's akin to someone saying, "Yeah, I like discussing music and music theory. I'm not going to talk about hip-hop, or rock, or pop, because that's what people listen to. Opera, on the other hand ... that's where the action is."

It is possible to both appreciate that the hoi polloi isn't going to be on the bleeding (artistic) edge, as well as acknowledge that the revealed preferences of those who are buying and playing the game may account for something useful.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> 2. Gorice's Gospel: All conversations about TTRPG theory on enworld inevitably become arguments about the Forge.




Its not just here.  I've seen that process occur anywhere I see a discussion about TTRPG theory.  Its probably because the two are so associated in so many people's minds.


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## Aldarc (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Because that's where the money is. (Speaking of Engels ...)
> 
> Seriously, though. When that much money is spent on triple-A games, and on creating and maintaining MMOs, then you get a lot of work done on the practical aspects of what makes it "good" and "worth playing." In other words, the design and theory aspects of them. Because of the relative paucity of such work in the TTRPG field, a lot of the concepts get borrowed.
> 
> IMO. I think @Aldarc has mentioned this as well.



It's where the money is, but it's also a field that has established lingo/jargon for its games and isn't afraid to use it. We're not talking academic level here, but also at a basic amateur fan community level of criticism. I often get the impression that people in the various TTRPG communities are incredibly reluctant to talk about their games in a comparable way that board game or video/computer game enthusiasts talk about their games.* However, in the absence of available terminology to utilize in the TTRPG space, people will draw their terms from elsewhere. In this case, it's predominately video games.

One can't say that this hasn't influenced TTRPG talk either. For starters, one can look at how the term "sandbox" was used in older TTRPG discussions to be synonymous with a "campaign" or a "setting," but the term "sandbox" acquired a more particular meaning as a result of its particular usage in computer games. I saw somewhere online where one of the designers for Wilderlands in the d20 era flat out admitted that they took the term "sandbox" from video games to describe its style of tabletop gaming. I have also seen people talk of settings in terms of being a "theme park" setting. 

* I will admit that one of my own frustrations across various TTRPG communities is the hypersensitivity to any potential criticisms particularly about the strengths and weaknesses of a game. Without pointing fingers to D&D, I can recount how I got a heaping amount of backlash among some Cypher System influencers when I tried asking what the Cypher System wasn't good at and its systemic weaknesses. But if every game was "one size fits all" as some game communities make their game out to be then we wouln't nearly have as many game systems, generic or otherwise, out there that we do.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I mean, I think that would be a giant red flag that something should be re-examined.
> 
> Imagine if you were trying to think about any other field, and you chose to discard _the majority of relevant data about actual observed preferences_ because it doesn't fit what you want it to be.
> 
> ...




The problem is that there's an assumption buried in this: that the vast majority of people playing D&D actually have a thought-through preference for the sort of mechanical things it does.  Given the number of D&D players I've hit over the years that only even have the vaguest sense other RPGs exist, and in many cases have no opportunity to experience them (other than in a third party sort of way, until recently almost certainly by reading, which for many people is a seriously inadequate way to do so), and given the other factors that produce a lack of interest in straying outside the D&D sphere, its not clear there's so much a general preference as a lot of people who don't even have a sense there's a meaningful choice.

Its about like contrasting McDonalds consumption with consumption of burgers from various much smaller chains; examining the latter could, indeed potentially tell you something, but what its just as likely to tell you is that McDonalds is all over the place and is much better known and most people gravitate to what they're familiar with unless they have a strong reason not to.  And that isn't even getting into the extremely strong networking benefits being in the D&D sphere has.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> * I will admit that one of my own frustrations across various TTRPG communities is the hypersensitivity to any potential criticisms particularly about the strengths and weaknesses of a game. Without pointing fingers to D&D, I can recount how I got a heaping amount of backlash among some Cypher System influencers when I tried asking what the Cypher System wasn't good at and its systemic weaknesses. But if every game was "one size fits all" as some game communities make their game out to be then we wouln't nearly have as many game systems, generic or otherwise, out there that we do.




This is particularly pronounced if you go into a dedicated community to a game system; I've seen it in two or three I was involved with over the years.  But yes, its what I saw someone refer to (talking about the Fate community some years ago) as "Its apparently both a floor wax and a desert topping."  I suspect its because people who come from a particular angle, where a specific system literally serves all their needs pretty well, have trouble imagining it not doing so for others, and therefor assume any question in this regard is a veiled attack.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> _Another thread, ostensibly about one thing (discussing the division of narrative authority within 5e) turned into another thing (jargon-filled general discussion about RPG theory)._
> 
> How is that second thing really all that different or unexpected or undesirable, compared to thing one?




Well, yeah! Look at the big disclaimer I wrote at the beginning of the thread-

_*Please note that I am going to try and use words in their, um, natural language (it's 5e!) so as to allow a multiplicity of opinions. To the extent that I accidentally employ jargon, it is not intentional, and I will explain any terms I use if they are meant to be "terms."*_

And then I ended with this-

_One thing I have seen repeatedly is a conflict in that interstitial area- the Player declaration prior to the DM narration. And this is where I think that it is worth exploring, at your own table, what level of narrative control and authorial responsibility should Players have? What is acceptable?

I don't think that there is a single, correct, answer. For example, if you using 5e to do a "old school" dungeon crawl with a keyed map, and descriptions of the things in each room, you should probably avoid having Players describe new things in the rooms. On the other hand, if the party goes into a bustling metropolis that hasn't been full described, is there any harm in having the Players narrate the name and location of the place they are staying, such that it becomes part of the fiction of the world? Or is this something that your table prefers remains exclusively within the province of the DM?

I put this out not because I have an answer, but simply to outline the issues and to see what other people say. So, have at it!_

To answer your question, I think that we see a lot of the same conversations/discussions/debates/arguments with a lot of the same people. Some of them don't play 5e or believe it's a system worth playing, really. Which is totally acceptable- different people like different things!

But I do think that these conversations can be alienating to many players and GMs, since they often rely on specialized jargon, or refer to things "everyone knows" (posts from years ago) or theories from two decades ago, or demand people post long and involved excerpts from their own games or refer to prior ones to participate in the conversation.

...and I was hoping for an inclusive thread for people who don't normally join in to be able to discuss those concepts in the context of 5e and see what they had to say, since I don't see that very often. New voices getting to express themselves. 



Grendel_Khan said:


> If I didn't know better, I'd think you might be a master of instigating food fights and then appearing after the fact to decry the terrible mess that others have made. I don't necessarily think that's what's happening, but I'm not Not seeing a certain twinkle in your eye...




Not really! Well, probably not? I prefer to think that I am trying to see what people have to say about certain topics, and then, after I am again shocked by the thread drift, move on to something else.*

I'm more Charlie Brown, always shocked that Lucy yanked the football away. Next time, though. Next time!


*Honestly, once I post the thread starter, I don't usually contribute too much. I've said what I've had to say! And I already know the rest of what I'm going to say- it's much more interesting to see what other people write.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> This is particularly pronounced if you go into a dedicated community to a game system; I've seen it in two or three I was involved with over the years.  But yes, its what I saw someone refer to (talking about the Fate community some years ago) as "Its apparently both a floor wax and a desert topping."  I suspect its because people who come from a particular angle, where a specific system literally serves all their needs pretty well, have trouble imagining it not doing so for others, and therefor assume any question in this regard is a veiled attack.



If you go into a fate community and constantly talk about non-fate it comes across as proselytizing and I think that’s what’s happening with the pushback you are seeing.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> The problem is that there's an assumption buried in this: that the vast majority of people playing D&D actually have a thought-through preference for the sort of mechanical things it does.




Well, I would say that there's an assumption behind that statement as well!

Look, two things could be going on. Not even mutually exclusive.

1. People are stupid, and they don't know any better, so they just play D&D because they are stupid. Which is, roughly paraphrased, what you are saying. If that's true, then that is _worth examining_. Just like it's worth examining why people eat McDonald's when there are better options. You can't just assert something- you have to look at the evidence and examine what it means. Or, to go back to my example, "People who like hip hop and rock and pop music don't have any real preferences. They would listen to opera _if they just knew better." _As a general rule, the "people are stupid and don't know better" argument generally isn't a great one. IMO. 

2. People like what they like. It's possible that there are reasons that you aren't considering (or that you are, and are discounting) for people to have different preferences. For example, it could be as simple as, "People know about other games, and they might like other games, but because D&D is so common, it is the default game for any mixed group of people." Again, though, this is worth examining.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> This is particularly pronounced if you go into a dedicated community to a game system; I've seen it in two or three I was involved with over the years.  But yes, its what I saw someone refer to (talking about the Fate community some years ago) as "Its apparently both a floor wax and a desert topping."  I suspect its because people who come from a particular angle, where a specific system literally serves all their needs pretty well, have trouble imagining it not doing so for others, and therefor assume any question in this regard is a veiled attack.



Interestingly enough, I distinctly remember seeing Rob Donoghue (and/or Clark Valentine) flat out say that Fate can't do everything. There are limitations and weaknesses to the various game systems out there, and (most) designers rarely carry the same delusions that some fans have about game systems having no known limitations or weaknesses.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Interestingly enough, I distinctly remember seeing Rob Donoghue (and/or Clark Valentine) flat out say that Fate can't do everything. There are limitations and weaknesses to the various game systems out there, and (most) designers rarely carry the same delusions that some fans have about game systems having no known limitations or weaknesses.




Often designers (at least competent ones) are forced to take a broader view than people who play or even GM games.  And in cases where they don't, its often extremely obvious.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Often designers (at least competent ones) are forced to take a broader view than people who play or even GM games.  And in cases where they don't, its often extremely obvious.




I would also add that D&D (especially 5e) engages in extensive playtesting and market research in terms of surveys that most games are unable to. Which allows them to iterate and release "broadly popular" products.

Being broadly popular doesn't make you "good" or "well-suited for everything," but it does help ensure that you are giving people what they want and will get paid for it.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Well, I would say that there's an assumption behind that statement as well!




Absolutely.  But that's the point; you have to come from some kind of posture to decide doing things like revisiting D&D mechanics is or isn't useful, and its difficult to judge whether the fact its the 800 pound gorilla says anything about real preference in the first place.  So all anyone can do is guess (because what data exists--frankly could possibly exist--to tell you one way or another in any authoritative fashion?



Snarf Zagyg said:


> Look, two things could be going on. Not even mutually exclusive.
> 
> 1. People are stupid, and they don't know any better, so they just play D&D because they are stupid. Which is, roughly paraphrased, what you are saying. If that's true, then that is _worth examining_. Just like it's worth examining why people eat McDonald's when there are better options. You can't just assert something- you have to look at the evidence and examine what it means. Or, to go back to my example, "People who like hip hop and rock and pop music don't have any real preferences. They would listen to opera _if they just knew better." _As a general rule, the "people are stupid and don't know better" argument generally isn't a great one. IMO.




I think your first statement is a much bigger judgment call than I'd place on it.  It doesn't require stupidity; all it requires is that the amount of lifting to find out if there's something better exceeds their apparent need.  I played and ran D&D for some years before I appreciably forayed outside of it, even though some things made me chafe at it at the time.  That was largely a consequence of opportunity cost, and I don't see it as any less true now, given D&D's growth over time.

The situations about music are not, after all, really parallel.  Anyone vaguely interested in new music can pretty easily try it out.  This is absolutely not true of any number of people playing D&D.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> 2. People like what they like. It's possible that there are reasons that you aren't considering (or that you are, and are discounting) for people to have different preferences. For example, it could be as simple as, "People know about other games, and they might like other games, but because D&D is so common, it is the default game for any mixed group of people." Again, though, this is worth examining.




That's unquestionably true.  But it doesn't mean they suddenly like D&D for reasons that weren't true 35 years ago when it was much more the measuring stick.  Its entirely possible to understand that people have reasons for a preference, and still conclude that (at least for your purposes) they're inadequate and to give them no more attention.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> It is possible to both appreciate that the hoi polloi isn't going to be on the bleeding (artistic) edge, as well as acknowledge that the revealed preferences of those who are buying and playing the game may account for something useful.



This makes some sense to me in the abstract, though if you get into the particulars, an Apocalyse World game and related design and theory discussions, for example, might be so far removed from how D&D is played and designed that it's likely a waste of time to bother referencing D&D. If a bunch of indie filmmakers were sitting around analyzing the MCU's ratio of trailer-friendly comedic-one-liners to genuine story or action beats, I'd think they're just sorting out the best way to get pulled into the MCU stable, not trying to improve or inform their own work.

Where I agree, though is in the way that the bleeding edge is often informed by criticisms of popular work. The French New Wave defined itself, in some respects, as being nothing like what those filmmakers saw as the stunted, polished "cinema of quality" at the time.

But what happens when people criticize or even reference D&D in anything other than a positive light? Claims of elitism, pretentiousness, and blame for creating a divisive environment.

So, it's a Catch-22. Don't leave D&D out of the conversation, since that's dismissing its player base. But also, keep D&D out of your mouth unless it's to heap praise upon it.

Meanwhile, as @pemerton referenced re: the avant-garde, but I think holds true in a lot of discourse that happens in the shadow of a single, dominating IP, the people interested in pushing a given medium often hold what they create and consume to the same high standards as they do that looming thing. That stans of the monolith, whether that's the MCU or D&D or whatever else, see almost any whiff of criticism or preference for something else as a slight will always confuse me. You're waaaay up there. We're no threat down here. We can't win. The war never existed, or was over before it started. We're just trying to have some fun trying something else, in many cases while still playing D&D every so often.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I would also add that D&D (especially 5e) engages in extensive playtesting and market research in terms of surveys that most games are unable to. Which allows them to iterate and release "broadly popular" products.
> 
> Being broadly popular doesn't make you "good" or "well-suited for everything," but it does help ensure that you are giving people what they want and will get paid for it.




Well, they also have the advantage that they can know their market right out the gate (whether they pay attention to it in all cases seems somewhat varied), whereas people designing new games are having to make estimates with intrinsically limited information.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> If you go into a fate community and constantly talk about non-fate it comes across as proselytizing and I think that’s what’s happening with the pushback you are seeing.



There's bound to be some of that, but you'll see it even with "I'm interested in Game X but have an issue with these parts of it."  The pushback can be pretty sharp.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> and I was hoping for an inclusive thread for people who don't normally join in to be able to discuss those concepts in the context of 5e and see what they had to say, since I don't see that very often. New voices getting to express themselves.




That's an excellent goal, and assuming it's one of the aims of this current thread, a good reason for me to shut up for a bit.


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## gorice (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> It's not your fault.
> 
> I think it was Malthus who first remarked about the inevitability of things. Then again, I'm pretty sure that Engels replied, "You are wrong, your momma smells bad, and your reasoning is as poor as you claim the population to be. #FIRST11!!!! #PWNED #TOOLOFOPPRESION
> 
> ...



'Gorice's gospel' has a nice ring to it!

Anyway, I should have known that Vulgar Marxism would explain 90% of everything once again.



Thomas Shey said:


> I tend to agree.  Once you get away from a D&D-centric space like ENWorld, most discussion of RPGs in contrast doesn't mention any incarnation of D&D, other than to the degree its lumped in with other traditional games.  This wasn't always true--early in the hobby a lot of discussion of new games were framed in contrast to what they did that D&D doesn't--but for most people outside the D&D-sphere (in the sense they don't do it or its not their primary game choice) that fight is long won as far as they're concerned, and they've moved on to working on other issues beyond whether there's better ways to represent characters than classes or better ways to represent armor than AC.  It doesn't even come up (and even when it does, its in a kind of "of course" sort of way).



I don't think you're being dismissive of pedantic D&D discussion here, but I want to mention anyway: someone (I think it was actually Ron Edwards) once said words to the effect that truly understanding a system like D&D and then carefully curating the experience via small changes is an equally valid method of game design as making a bold new design from whole cloth. If tweaking D&D gets you the game you want, that's OK.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> I mean, I think that would be a giant red flag that something should be re-examined.
> 
> Imagine if you were trying to think about any other field, and you chose to discard _the majority of relevant data about actual observed preferences_ because it doesn't fit what you want it to be.
> 
> ...



_Having said _the above, 'revealed preference' is one of those miraculous tautologies that makes me want to punch an economist. D&D casts such a long shadow over the medium that I don't think music is a good comparison. A better one might be miniatures wargaming, where Games Workshop completely dominates the scene, and continues to do indescribable things to people's understanding of the medium by attaching slipshod rules to a constant parade of overpriced fetish objects. _Ahem_.

I think what I'm getting at is that I think people's preferences and understanding are shaped by experience. Which means that WotC's virtual monopoly of the medium is not only self-reinforcing, like all monopolies, but that it also shapes people's habits and preferences in a way that makes empirical observation of preference worthless.


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## gorice (Nov 3, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> It's where the money is, but it's also a field that has established lingo/jargon for its games and isn't afraid to use it. We're not talking academic level here, but also at a basic amateur fan community level of criticism. I often get the impression that people in the various TTRPG communities are incredibly reluctant to talk about their games in a comparable way that board game or video/computer game enthusiasts talk about their games.*



This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so _much more comfortable_ talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so _much more comfortable_ talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.



You must have missed the vast amounts of hate Diablo 3 received for changing things from previous Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 hames many players preferred.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so _much more comfortable_ talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.



Opportunity costs and identity forming, really.  The former is a partial function of the latter.  RPGs tend to be highly social endeavors in ways that video games are not, so there's an element of social identity wrapped up into RPGs -- you are part of this crowd.  And RPGs have been strongly attacked from outside, so there's a learned wariness and defensiveness about that identity grouping.  It's not gone unnoticed by me that the people that react the strongest to my comments about play goals and differing approaches and how play is structured tend to be long time participants in the hobby centered almost entirely on D&D or D&D offshoots.  This is just a thing.  The opportunity costs come in where RPGs are much, much harder to sample (I believe this was recently mentioned in thread, I apologize that I don't recall who said it) and part of this difficulty in sampling is running into the social identities issue and how challenging it can be to get entrenched players to try something new.  This doesn't seem to be the same kind of problem in video games outside of WoW, which, in comparison, is the only game that remotely resembles D&D in marketshare, duration, and foundational impacts.  And even there it's noticeably weaker in effect.


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## Aldarc (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so _much more comfortable_ talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.



The snobbery is there, but it's also frequently gendered or coded in things like "casual gamer" or "hardcore gamer" or "PC vs. console gamer." In the CRPG space, one of the big divides is the matter of Real Time with Pause vs. Turn-Based action. I recall seeing debates about this in both Torment: Tides of Numenera and Baldur's Gate 3.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

gorice said:


> _Having said _the above, 'revealed preference' is one of those miraculous tautologies that makes me want to punch an economist.




That's what you're saying with your words. But since you aren't going around punching economists, we all know what your revealed preferences are telling us.

Economist-lover.


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## Malmuria (Nov 3, 2021)

Skimming the discussion, but in terms of avant garde vs popular games...why not both?  I have loved exploring and introducing people to different kinds of games over the past couple of years.  In my group, I'm actually the one pushing us to stop playing 5e and CoC and try new things, whether OSR games or Blades or Ten Candles or whatever.  I play with a lot of new-to-rpg players, so I get to see how they experience these different systems and styles of gaming (and the things they emphasize are very interesting and very different than the way those various games would be classified in this forum).

As I see it, the issue of accessibility is less about playing a variety of games, and more about the context of _discussion_ about them.  There should absolutely be a place where people who share the same vocabulary can talk about games, but when we are in mixed company, it's good to be mindful that not everyone has access to that vocabulary nor the same range of play experiences.  I'm as guilty of this as anyone else: I remember years ago reading rpg forums and getting annoyed by people listing off what to me were obscure games, mistaking their enthusiasm for hipsterism.  Now I do that sometimes.

With regards to the forge specifically, I find some of the ideas provocative and useful, but, as I expressed at length in the other thread, I ultimately find it to be a closed and self-referential system.  More open and approachable for me is the play advice in games like dungeon world and blades in the dark (perhaps because game books are written by people who actually want people to play their games).  I am skeptical of the way the theory operates, rather than of the fact that it is theory.

The discussions on OSR and FKR discords feel more like a vanguard to me at this point: there is a spirit of free form experimentation and engagement with speculation that I find very appealing.  It's less concerned with transcendental categories and more with taking things apart in a playful way.  The discussion of FKR here struck me as in fact somewhat reactionary in its skepticism of the new hotness, but that's just my perception.

Finally, the more general cultural context should be noted.  While there might be avant gardes and populisms within the ttrpg scene, our little hobby of _playing games_ is probably generally considered to be camp pop culture by most people.  "Nerd culture" in various forms has gained more legitimacy in recent years, but I think that's be cause there has been a reevaluation of the importance of popular culture more generally.  In fact, if academic criticism takes up the subject of ttrpgs more seriously, it won't be from a formalist analysis of gameplay, but rather what games offer as a social practice.


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## loverdrive (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> People are stupid, and they don't know any better, so they just play D&D because they are stupid. Which is, roughly paraphrased, what you are saying. If that's true, then that is _worth examining_. Just like it's worth examining why people eat McDonald's when there are better options. You can't just assert something- you have to look at the evidence and examine what it means. Or, to go back to my example, "People who like hip hop and rock and pop music don't have any real preferences. They would listen to opera _if they just knew better." _As a general rule, the "people are stupid and don't know better" argument generally isn't a great one. IMO.



Well, D&D is quite different from music. Or food. Or videogames.

I don't think there's a single one hip-hop enthusiast out there who never ever heard anything but hip-hop. You just can't simultaneously be enthusiastic about a genre of music _and_ never be exposed to other genres. People who like hip-hop like like hip-hop because they truly like hip-hop. In order to like hip-hop, you need to have a taste in music — you _really_ need to know what you actually like and what you don't.

You can be a D&D enthusiast, run and play it for gazillion years and never really be exposed to other games outside of forum talk. It's certainly within the realm of possibility.

TTRPGs, unlike pretty much anything I can think of is a very freeform activity with barely any obvious limitations. Everything is possible! Fantasy Vietnam? Sure. Carefully crafted story? Possible! D&D in SPAAAAACE? Yeah, you can do that. I won't say it's a good idea, but it's possible, if you're brave enough.

In other words, it's quite hard to get stuck in a genre of music, but it's very easy to get stuck in whatever is your first RPG.

Many people I've talked to (or just observed talking to other people), both IRL and on the Internet don't _really_ want D&D specifically, they just want a roleplaying game. When someone tells you a story how they played a 5E campaign without a single combat and how much fun they had investigating a murder mystery or being spooked in a haunted house or just talking in-character or whatever as opposed to boringly slaying goblins, question "then what was the point of using D&D 5E ruleset?" immediately pops to my mind.


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## payn (Nov 3, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Well, D&D is quite different from music. Or food. Or videogames.
> 
> I don't think there's a single one hip-hop enthusiast out there who never ever heard anything but hip-hop. You just can't simultaneously be enthusiastic about a genre of music _and_ never be exposed to other genres. People who like hip-hop like like hip-hop because they truly like hip-hop. In order to like hip-hop, you need to have a taste in music — you _really_ need to know what you actually like and what you don't.
> 
> ...



There is definitely a crowd of "D&D can do anything, so why play anything else?".  One part is you can always find players, another is a lot folks dont want to learn new systems. I dont fully understand it, but you are right its not like this in most other hobbies.


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## loverdrive (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> This is particularly pronounced if you go into a dedicated community to a game system; I've seen it in two or three I was involved with over the years.  But yes, its what I saw someone refer to (talking about the Fate community some years ago) as "Its apparently both a floor wax and a desert topping."  I suspect its because people who come from a particular angle, where a specific system literally serves all their needs pretty well, have trouble imagining it not doing so for others, and therefor assume any question in this regard is a veiled attack.



Fate in particular is kind of weird. Like, it actually can do anything. Any genre or even a specific piece of fiction you want to _emulate_, Fate will work and would be faithful to the original inspiration. Even something silly like emulating the process of playing a video game: "Hey, you are at a point-blank range and there is no freaking chance in hell that you would miss... Unfortunately, we're playing *X-Com, so, of course you miss! Damn your luck".

So I can certainly understand people who talk about Fate as some kind of magical, one size fits all solution.

The fact that some people just want the game to feel like being in the world, as opposed to just produce an appropriate fiction often slips mind of people who are chiefly concerned with fiction.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Well, D&D is quite different from music. Or food. Or videogames.




Sure. It is different. But then again, food is different from music. Art is different from videogames. 



loverdrive said:


> I don't think there's a single one hip-hop enthusiast out there who never ever heard anything but hip-hop. You just can't simultaneously be enthusiastic about a genre of music _and_ never be exposed to other genres. People who like hip-hop like like hip-hop because they truly like hip-hop. In order to like hip-hop, you need to have a taste in music — you _really_ need to know what you actually like and what you don't.




See, I don't agree here. You just assume others are worldly. But as the old joke goes, "I like both types of music, country AND western."

There are tons of people out there that just like small slices of things. They don't need to experience all the music in the world to know what they like. They don't need no fancy cuisine or NEW YORK CITY salsa to like the food they eat.

The giveaway is what you wrote- "you need to have a _*taste*_ in music" Sure, if you want to erect barriers and assume that some people are better than others, and everyone would like the same things if they just had the same impeccable taste ... why not?

...that never ends well.




loverdrive said:


> Many people I've talked to (or just observed talking to other people), both IRL and on the Internet don't _really_ want D&D specifically, they just want a roleplaying game. When someone tells you a story how they played a 5E campaign without a single combat and how much fun they had investigating a murder mystery or being spooked in a haunted house or just talking in-character or whatever as opposed to boringly slaying goblins, question "then what was the point of using D&D 5E ruleset?" immediately pops to my mind.




So many people conjure these "many people." I mean, okay? Like ... sure. Why not. In today's day and age when you can't even scroll around on Roll20 without seeing other TTRPGs listed, no one even knows about other games? Or sees them in Amazon or the local store when they buy their D&D books?

Again, it's weird. It's the feeling that people just don't know better, and if they did, they would choose differently. It's possible, for some people. There are people that play D&D and migrate to other games. But there's also a lot of people (the proverbial "many people") that do try other games, and end up back playing D&D, right?

I truly don't understand this reasoning. Let me correct that- I do understand it. I do understand why people might say, "If it wasn't for those meddling kids and the stupidity of the average gamer, {insert favorite game here} would be more popular, not D&D! It's BETTER!"

I understand that, but I fail to understand why people aren't more curious as to the success of D&D. At a certain point, who are the fools - the people who keep claiming it's a stupid game for stupid people who don't know better, or the people making the money?

In other words, if a company is making a game with the goal of being broadly popular, and constantly iterates on that, and constantly surveys the user base on that, then maybe there is something to it? Perhaps asking people what they want, and giving it to them, might account for some measure of the popularity?


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## loverdrive (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> There are tons of people out there that just like small slices of things. They don't need to experience all the music in the world to know what they like. They don't need no fancy cuisine or NEW YORK CITY salsa to like the food they eat.



And these people probably don't fancy themselves as salsa affectionados or treat their love for spaghetti as a part of their identity.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> The giveaway is what you wrote- "you need to have a _*taste*_ in music" Sure, if you want to erect barriers and assume that some people are better than others, and everyone would like the same things if they just had the same impeccable taste ... why not?



This wasn't what I was getting at. I don't care if their taste is good or bad or ugly.

In order to be a hip-hop _fan_ and not just a dude who sometimes listens to hip-hop because that's what his weird friend who carries a BT speaker with them all the time plays at house parties, one needs to know what they like.

One can be a D&D fan, wear a D20 necklace and a wear this label as an identity without knowing about other games.




Snarf Zagyg said:


> So many people conjure these "many people." I mean, okay? Like ... sure. Why not. In today's day and age when you can't even scroll around on Roll20 without seeing other TTRPGs listed, no one even knows about other games? Or sees them in Amazon or the local store when they buy their D&D books?



It's at least more than what I can count with fingers of one hand. I have only nine grades of education, I can't count. One, two, three, four, five, many!

Jokes aside, just being aware that game X exists and experiencing it are two vastly different things.




Snarf Zagyg said:


> Again, it's weird. It's the feeling that people just don't know better, and if they did, they would choose differently. It's possible, for some people. There are people that play D&D and migrate to other games. But there's also a lot of people (the proverbial "many people") that do try other games, and end up back playing D&D, right?



I have no questions for people who like D&D specifically. I like my 5E, I like my B/X and I'm the gal who just can't shut her mouth about other games.

It's those who like something that D&D doesn't really deliver and don't care for things it excels at, yet they still chew this cactus, I have questions for.

If someone doesn't like initiative-based combat with minis, doesn't care for charop and your damage output, constantly fudges dice to keep PCs and BBEGs from dying in an anticlimactic way, tries to "fix" totally unrealistic HP progression with houserules and yet still play 5E, I can't explain it by any other reason that they don't know any better.

I was like that many years ago. I just couldn't understand why in the nine hells would I need to learn a new system, if I spent so much time learning 3.5E and could do absolutely anything with it.


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## gorice (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> That's what you're saying with your words. But since you aren't going around punching economists, we all know what your revealed preferences are telling us.
> 
> Economist-lover.



I am defeated.

I also realise that, as a few people have pointed out, 'nobody calls people slobs or elitists' was far too strong a statement re: videogames. I know full well how much snobbery and gatekeeping there can be in gaming subcultures! The important difference, perhaps, is that people who play videogames have both a much richer vocabulary to describe them and a greater willingness to deploy it.  Part of this is driven by marketing, but you can also go and watch a stream from something like GDX where devs lay out the theory behind how they designed something, jargon included, and the comments will be full of laypeople talking about how cool that is. Videogamers aren't allergic to jargon; they seem to embrace it when they find it useful.

If it were in my power to create a standard vocabulary for TTRPGs and enforce it as the RPG Police, I'd seriously consider it! Unfortunately, I don't think that will work.

[edit to add] re: people being stupid, I don't think that's the question. To me, it's an issue of whether preference is intrinsic or learned. People aren't stupid, but we're all more or less ignorant.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Fate in particular is kind of weird. Like, it actually can do anything. Any genre or even a specific piece of fiction you want to _emulate_, Fate will work and would be faithful to the original inspiration. Even something silly like emulating the process of playing a video game: "Hey, you are at a point-blank range and there is no freaking chance in hell that you would miss... Unfortunately, we're playing *X-Com, so, of course you miss! Damn your luck".




The problem is that doesn't say "It can do anything".  The latter also involves what the players and GM get out of it, and some things Fate (at least without massive reconstruction) can't do.  But people answering about it either don't consider that or consider those things invalid.



loverdrive said:


> So I can certainly understand people who talk about Fate as some kind of magical, one size fits all solution.
> 
> The fact that some people just want the game to feel like being in the world, as opposed to just produce an appropriate fiction often slips mind of people who are chiefly concerned with fiction.




Okay, so you do get the difference.


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## Campbell (Nov 3, 2021)

Fate can't do anything. It can handle just about any fiction, but it still handles like Fate.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> And these people probably don't fancy themselves as salsa affectionados or treat their love for spaghetti as a part of their identity.
> 
> 
> This wasn't what I was getting at. I don't care if their taste is good or bad or ugly.
> ...




So I don't know that the divide is worth going over again- but if a person self-identifies as a fan of something, then why not? I mean, who am I to judge? I thought this was the whole "high culture, low culture" thing we try to avoid.

I remember someone who told me that they loved comedy, and they loved Dane Cook (this was, oh, 12 years ago maybe?). Now, I have my own ... reservations ... and judgey judgey about that kind of statement, but hey- why not?

Hidden behind the verbiage I often see is the implicit assertion- _once you_ _know better, your taste will improve, and you will like the things that I do_. I just don't agree with that. We've seen this time and again- "genre" films were disreputable, until Cahiers du Cinema. Pop culture wasn't high art- but what about Warhol or Lichtenstein? You have to understand art in order to make art. Unless it's outsider art. Or primitive art. Or ... whatever.

You get the idea. I live by a few, simple ideas-

1. People like what they like.
2. Elves are dead-eyed, soulless abominations.
3. It is better and easier to convince someone to try something by telling them that this is new thing is _good and fun_, than by trying to convince them that they are bad or ignorant for liking what they like.
4. There are only two things in the world that I cannot abide; people who are intolerant of the roleplaying choices of others, and bards.
5. It's better to try and understand the things that D&D is doing right, than to assume it is doing things wrong and people don't know better.
6. I don't know about you, but I take comfort knowing that he's out there. The Dude. Takin' er easy for all us sinners arguing on eworld.

See? Simple ideas, happy life.


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## Aldarc (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> So I don't know that the divide is worth going over again- but if a person self-identifies as a fan of something, then why not? I mean, who am I to judge? I thought this was the whole "high culture, low culture" thing we try to avoid.
> 
> I remember someone who told me that they loved comedy, and they loved Dane Cook (this was, oh, 12 years ago maybe?). Now, I have my own ... reservations ... and judgey judgey about that kind of statement, but hey- why not?
> 
> ...



I don’t think it’s so much a matter of knowing better “improves” one’s taste as it is understanding what the boundaries of your tastes are and being able to articulate those preferences better. I’m fine if people don’t like the board games that I do but, in my experience, when people play more games they have a better understanding of the sort of games they like. I also don’t expect that they will stop liking their initial set of games they liked.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I don’t think it’s so much a matter of knowing better “improves” one’s taste as it is understanding what the boundaries of your tastes are and being able to articulate those preferences better. I’m fine if people don’t like the board games that I do but, in my experience, when people play more games they have a better understanding of the sort of games they like. I also don’t expect that they will stop liking their initial set of games they liked.




Sometimes! I've played a lot of different games, and I don't regret anything. NOTHING!

But I truly think that there are people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) who can't seem to understand that there might be aspects of D&D and 5e that are incredibly appealing and that the games are massively popular not in spite of their design, but because of the design. The whole, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."

...and it seems bizarre to me that there is little effort spent on the elephant in the room; trying to come to grips with what lessons might be learned about why a particular game is so popular- is it truly just path dependency? Or are there additional reasons. That seems like a salient discussion. And it might also shed light on why D&D could never embrace some of the innovations we see in indie games. 

Maybe.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Sometimes! I've played a lot of different games, and I don't regret anything. NOTHING!
> 
> But I truly think that there are people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) who can't seem to understand that there might be aspects of D&D and 5e that are incredibly appealing and that the games are massively popular not in spite of their design, but because of the design. The whole, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
> 
> ...



My take on that question.

Certain restaurants specialize on a particular kind of food and are spectacular with it, let's say Japanese in this case.  Other restaurants have a more generic menu that everyone can order from and make a number of types of food decently well.

Even if the specialized restaurant has much better food, the other restaurant can may get more customers and ultimately be more profitable.  Why?  Because when you are getting a group of people to all go together, oftentimes having variety is more important than exceling at a single thing - because a) peoples tastes can vary day to day b) you aren't leaving anyone in the group out.  Now if you are with a group that loves Japanese anytime, that Japanese restaurant is better suited for them, but for many groups that's not necessarily going to be the case.

I think D&D is popular because it's fairly flexible and can cater just enough to multiple people that the group decides its the right game for them even if it isn't necessarily the best.  I think that's what helps make it popular, and especially so in a niche hobby where finding lots of people to game with isn't always easy.  Now I do think familiarity and cost of entry keeps players from ever trying other games (cost is more learning curve/time, but may also be money).  I mean, why spend 50 dollars on another game and dedicate numerous hours to learning it when you have something your group is enjoying that you've already spent 200 dollars on.

So it might be better to focus on what kind of players like D&D.  Let's call them player archetypes.  I'll leave creating those categories open.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> My take on that question.
> 
> Certain restaurants specialize on a particular kind of food and are spectacular with it, let's say Japanese in this case.  Other restaurants have a more generic menu that everyone can order from and make a number of types of food decently well.
> 
> ...




Like this?









						D&D 5E - 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough
					

An idea I've been noodling around with for a few weeks is trying to understand not just "Why 5e," but "Why 5e?" To put it more bluntly; it would seem obvious (to me, at least) that D&D has been having a cultural moment, and capturing the zeitgeist, in a way that hasn't been seen since the prior...




					www.enworld.org


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 3, 2021)

I will just note that not all non-D&D games are specialized (and a lot of them aren't more specialized than D&D).  I think there's a tendency to think there's D&D and some tightly focused games and ignore a lot of middle ground there (Savage Worlds, for example, is far from specialized).


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I will just note that not all non-D&D games are specialized (and a lot of them aren't more specialized than D&D).  I think there's a tendency to think there's D&D and some tightly focused games and ignore a lot of middle ground there (Savage Worlds, for example, is far from specialized).



Sure.  When we start talking 2 fairly generic games I think it's worth asking what one does different than the other that is driving it's success.  Like, why has mcdonalds been more successful and continues to be more successful than most other fast food burger chains?  Or getting back to RPG's.  What's different about D&D and Savage Worlds and which of those things are propelling D&D's success over Savage Worlds?


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 3, 2021)

D&D, IMO anyway, is maybe more specialized than it seems. That's not a bad thing, but I think that people overestimate the ability of the system to comfortably handle just about any kind of game. D&D is indelibly combat focused by the nature of its mechanics and subsystems, so styles that don't emphasize combat to some degree aren't really using the system to it's best advantage. 5E starts to chug a little when it gets too focused on social interaction and/or exploration (if you'll pardon the three pillar metaphor), as it does neither of those things particularly well. It does them, and not even badly exactly, just maybe not well. 

In fairness, for a lot of people it's probably easier to use a system they know for something it's only OK at rather than using a new system that handles it better. That idea, more than anything else, is what I think drives a lot of the_ D&D for every occasion_ talk.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Like this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Well I remember that thread.  Now I don't know if you implanted the idea in my head months ago or if I came up with it independently.  Dang You Snarfy.


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## payn (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Sure.  When we start talking 2 fairly generic games I think it's worth asking what one does different than the other that is driving it's success.  Like, why has mcdonalds been more successful and continues to be more successful than most other fast food burger chains?  Or getting back to RPG's.  What's different about D&D and Savage Worlds and which of those things are propelling D&D's success over Savage Worlds?



I think its asking folks to give up their D&D for a new kind of D&D, as opposed, to a different kind of D&D.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> D&D, IMO anyway, is maybe more specialized than it seems. That's not a bad thing, but I think that people overestimate the ability of the system to comfortably handle just about any kind of game. D&D is indelibly combat focused by the nature of its mechanics and subsystems, so styles that don't emphasize combat to some degree aren't really using the system to it's best advantage. 5E starts to chug a little when it gets too focused on social interaction and/or exploration (if you'll pardon the three pillar metaphor), as it does neither of those things particularly well. It does them, and not even badly exactly, just maybe not well.
> 
> In fairness, for a lot of people it's probably easier to use a system they know for something it's only OK at rather than using a new system that handles it better. That idea, more than anything else, is what I think drives a lot of the_ D&D for every occasion_ talk.



I think that discounts the group nature of the activity to some degree.  I mean getting together a group of 5-6 people all with various tastes - there's just not going to be a perfect system for most groups like that.  I think that's where TTRPG theory starts to go astray.  It focuses on a single individual and says I'll be the best game for this single kind of player without recognizing that it should be designed for the group and not the individual and that the group is likely not to like exactly the same things as one individual.


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## Campbell (Nov 3, 2021)

I understand that my tastes are on the periphery and will remain so. The play experience I'm looking for requires too many stars to align to ever be mainstream.

I guess I just don't understand why I should care why something is popular or not. I care about my gaming experience and the people I play with. I like the stuff I like. I like discussing games. I get getting over that thing where you like stuff because it's not popular, but I have found my zen place where I can like popular stuff and not popular stuff equally based on what each brings to the table. I don't get why I should have to defer to what's popular. My enjoyment of Dune has nothing to do with how popular it is. Neither does my enjoyment of 5e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Exalted Third Edition, Dune 2d20, Blades in the Dark, or Apocalypse World.

I like 5e. I play 5e. I have been part of this community for more than 20 years. This insufficient fandom bit is getting real thin.

I don't need to come to grips with why 5e is popular. I have a pretty good idea. It's accessible. It's a damn fine game. I would not play it if it was not. It enables a very popular yet fairly limited set of playstyles that basically have a single failure point (the DM). If you have played CRPGs it's easy to transition into.

It's just not my responsibility to give a damn about why this game or that game is popular or advocate for other people's perspectives. They can do that themselves (and I want them to as vociferously as possible). I try to be fair, respectful and meet people where they are at. I don't expect anyone to use the same language as me, but I am going to use language that allows me to make my points and share my perspective without twisting myself in knots. I want conversations, often challenging ones. I don't expect people to describe the sorts of play I prefer in glowing terms. Most don't.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> I think that discounts the group nature of the activity to some degree.  I mean getting together a group of 5-6 people all with various tastes - there's just not going to be a perfect system for most groups like that.  I think that's where TTRPG theory starts to go astray.  It focuses on a single individual and says I'll be the best game for this single kind of player without recognizing that it should be designed for the group and not the individual and that the group is likely not to like exactly the same things as one individual.



Well, to an extent you're mistaking my intent here, but that's perhaps on my brevity and not you. I was talking about the system in terms of _let's play this kind of campaign_ session zero stuff, not what happens at the table with a mix of characters who have different skills. D&D does that bit just fine for the most part, and only start to slip a little when you have a concentration of characters and players who want a different game experience. Let me be clear, D&D is popular for a reason - it's a good game that does what it says on the tin. It's just not endlessly malleable, that's all.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> You assumed I didn't know what I was talking about



I didn't make any assumption.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 3, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> ...and it seems bizarre to me that there is little effort spent on the elephant in the room; trying to come to grips with what lessons might be learned about why a particular game is so popular- is it truly just path dependency? Or are there additional reasons. That seems like a salient discussion. And it might also shed light on why D&D could never embrace some of the innovations we see in indie games.




I think listing what 5e does well or successfully is definitely useful, but I feel like this might still wind up being a trap, because one of the quickest ways to start a war here is to try to define D&D's strengths and incentivized playstyles in anything but the broadest and most universal terms.

But I'll stop building this army of straw men and get on with it. And I'm going to avoid dropping caveats or throwing secret elbows, even though a lot of what I think 5e's design does well is also more specific and D&D-ish than some care to admit.


-Levels are fun: Video games fully appropriated leveling up, and then somehow the horrible influencers and self-help types followed suit, but leveling is a clear way to do progression.

-Everyone can fight: Though some fight better than others, and there are always those people obsessed with optimization, every class can fight. This is a crucial design element for D&D because of the game's emphasis on combat.

-Feats are cool: I wish you never had to decide between a stat increase and a feat, but feats are great.

-It's hard to die: I get why this is a huge downside for some people, but I'm not a fan of random and frequent PC death, so to me "easy mode" is fine, so long as the DM makes the game challenging in other ways and about more than combat. Fights can be easy (if only in the sense that they're survivable) while larger objectives are not.


And I think that's it, for me. But my criticism of D&D generally and 5e specifically has never really been about a huge number of design elements or mechanics that I think it does "wrong," but rather everything it doesn't try to do. I don't think it mechanically feels like any specific genre or narrative or activity other than "fighting fantasy enemies on a map" (which can obviously be a lot of fun), but I also don't think it provides the tools to do much more or different than that.

So as a tactical combat game that's simple enough to pick up quickly but with enough depth and progression mechanics to support combat-first play for a longer campaign, it cooks. And the system reflects the brand that it's maintained, and the tropes it's injected into pop culture, especially the ones that don't appear in any thing else (like forgetting spells). But as has been discussed to death in other threads, there are so many other systems that do other genres and _types_ of narratives better. And the fact that a lot of people stick with D&D to do those other kinds of narratives is not, to me, a sign of 5e's design choices or excellence. I think that's about everything else mentioned by others in this thread (opportunity cost, name recognition, etc.). I think, to hopelessly scramble something you mentioned above, they're trying to hire Dane Cook to star in everything, including a period-accurate Mandarin-language wuxia epic...and not in a winking, ironic way.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I didn't make any assumption.



Serious question, what's the purpose of this 5 word comment?


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## Campbell (Nov 3, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> I think that discounts the group nature of the activity to some degree.  I mean getting together a group of 5-6 people all with various tastes - there's just not going to be a perfect system for most groups like that.  I think that's where TTRPG theory starts to go astray.  It focuses on a single individual and says I'll be the best game for this single kind of player without recognizing that it should be designed for the group and not the individual and that the group is likely not to like exactly the same things as one individual.




I have never gotten this perspective. I'm not looking for a perfect system. I'm looking for a game. I'm not making a long term commitment.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Campbell said:


> It's just not my responsibility to give a damn about why this game or that game is popular or advocate for other people's perspectives. They can do that themselves (and I want them to as vociferously as possible). I try to be fair, respectful and meet people where they are at. I don't expect anyone to use the same language as me, but I am going to use language that allows me to make my points and share my perspective without twisting myself in knots. I want conversations, often challenging ones. I don't expect people to describe the sorts of play I prefer in glowing terms. Most don't.



IMO.  You tend to do that fairly well most of the time.  Maybe this thread isn't so much about how you in particular handle these discussions.

But about why care if D&D is popular, because presumably that means it's doing something right and understanding what those things are is important.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

Umbran said:


> I am saying that the label (be it "avant garde" or "bohemian" or whatever) doesn't indicate _value_
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I think you've misunderstood my point. I don't need you to tell me that avant garde is a temporary status. I made that point in the posts that you responded to.

My point is that what was once avant garde is now common place or even passe. But the people for whom it is common place are, in functional and social terms, the same people who once derided it as irrelevant or pretentious or elitist.

When I was a university student in Melbourne, eating sushi was unusual, even edgy. Today when I walk past a building site at lunchtime I'll see the construction workers eating sushi for their lunch. That doesn't mean the building workers are insincere in any way. But it does mean that I wouldn't take their judgements as to what is proper in food, and what is not, as a very good guide to what is possible or desirable.

Part of the genius (if you want to call it that) of commercialised mass culture is that commercial producers and publishers are able to take what was, at the moment of its invention (or, in the case of sushi, it's "discovery" by a culture in which it was hitherto unknown) controversial or derided as pretentious or elitist or irrelevant, and absorb that and use it as the basis for their mainstream commercial products.

It seems to me that RPGing is not fundamentally different in this respect.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 3, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I have never gotten this perspective. I'm not looking for a perfect system. I'm looking for a game. I'm not making a long term commitment.



Perhaps that's one thing that separates you from others.  Your mix of time/interest/motivation leaves open the possibility to put the time and effort into learning/trying new systems.  Not everyone has the time/interest/motivation to learn and try a new system.

For example my group meets for 3ish hours a week.  We've tried a few different games and have been playing a few years.  5e of course, Stars without number (great game), A battletech RPG and a 3 page simple game one of the players wrote.  In general Stars without number took 1-2 sessions to even get started up.  It took a few more sessions to really run smoothly (personally I prefer it to 5e and even the simple 3 page game I prefer to 5e).  The Battletech RPG was similar in terms of set up time and smoothly running time (and was mostly a mini war game at least how we played it).  But we are ultimately back to playing 5e.  Why?  IMO, because it caters to the group as a whole more.  Why don't we try out alot of different games to see if one works even better for us?  The time investment into trying and learning a new system isn't typically worth it, though the players are very accommodating if someone wants to try something for a session or 2.


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## pemerton (Nov 3, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> the bleeding edge is often informed by criticisms of popular work. The French New Wave defined itself, in some respects, as being nothing like what those filmmakers saw as the stunted, polished "cinema of quality" at the time.



I agree with this.

In the context of RPGing, for instance, we have games like RQ, C&S and RM that are critical responses to (what were seen as) the inanities of D&D's non-simulationist elements: silo-ed character classes; AC and hp; inane dungeons; etc.

And then we have the indie/"story now" games from the second half of the 90s through to AW that are critical responses to (what were seen as) the incoherence and railroadiness of the White Wolf (and similar) "storytelling" RPGs.

And the OSR is a critical response to (what was seen as) the lack of fiction and fictional positioning in 3E D&D. (Calling the OSR "avant garde" is tricky, because at least some of its elements seem self-consciously reactionary, but I think that's a fair characterisation - in the RPG context - of things like LotFP or ZakS's work.)

In due course there will be some sort of response to AW - maybe it's already here, in the form of FitD! I probably won't play it - I suspect my tastes are largely fixed, given my age and inclinations - but it seems silly to rail against it.



Grendel_Khan said:


> But what happens when people criticize or even reference D&D in anything other than a positive light? Claims of elitism, pretentiousness, and blame for creating a divisive environment.
> 
> So, it's a Catch-22. Don't leave D&D out of the conversation, since that's dismissing its player base. But also, keep D&D out of your mouth unless it's to heap praise upon it.



I would add: theorising D&D as it is played is primarily a theory of consumption. It belongs, I think, to economics and social psychology.

That's not the sort of theory I'm interested in, at least in the ENworld context. And so I don't post about it.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 3, 2021)

Hmm, just to tack an idea on to my post upstream I'll expand a little on the idea that _the system I know_ might have more weight than any real assessment of what that system is actually good at. The idea that D&D isn't an equal opportunity system in terms of the three pillars is, I think, a trivially obvious statement. However, set next to that we have the absolute plethora of posts, hacks, and questions about _doing X with 5E_. I think many people would rather hack what they know, or bolt on a widget, than buy, learn, and then sell to a group a whole new system. That's not a bad thing either, as 5E is an eminently hackable system IMO.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Sure.  When we start talking 2 fairly generic games I think it's worth asking what one does different than the other that is driving it's success.  Like, why has mcdonalds been more successful and continues to be more successful than most other fast food burger chains?  Or getting back to RPG's.  What's different about D&D and Savage Worlds and which of those things are propelling D&D's success over Savage Worlds?




Well, and to make it abundantly clear I'm not claiming this is the only factor, when one of the two has been the public face of the hobby for almost fifty years now I don't think you can at least write-off a big part of it being because one of the two is immensely more well known and has had a vastly longer time to generate an extent community.  That doesn't mean there aren't people who genuinely and legitimately prefer the D&D structure for any number of reasons, but I at least think you have to make some effort to factor the prior issues in when assessing that.  As I've noted before, if you're playing with groups for whom trying anything new is not a thing they normally do, and you get interested in Savage Worlds--then what?  Do you abandon your extent game just to try it out?  If you're not big into online play (and even with COVID, some people really aren't) can you even find somewhere to try it?

I think its just really easy for people who feel like D&D and its kin are being dismissed to ignore the really massive gravitational advantage it has these days, even if other games are, to some extent, more accessible than they once were.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> D&D, IMO anyway, is maybe more specialized than it seems. That's not a bad thing, but I think that people overestimate the ability of the system to comfortably handle just about any kind of game. D&D is indelibly combat focused by the nature of its mechanics and subsystems, so styles that don't emphasize combat to some degree aren't really using the system to it's best advantage. 5E starts to chug a little when it gets too focused on social interaction and/or exploration (if you'll pardon the three pillar metaphor), as it does neither of those things particularly well. It does them, and not even badly exactly, just maybe not well.




While this is true, I'd argue that at least the vast majority of trad games aren't immensely less combat focused, even if their non-combat skills are a little better supported.  Games that really lean into non-combat elements are still more the exception than the rule, even outside D&D and its kin.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 4, 2021)

I want to add musical numbers into D&D. Which terms should I use to make it so?


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> I want to add musical numbers into D&D. Which terms should I use to make it so?


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## pemerton (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I guess I just don't understand why I should care why something is popular or not.



And adding to that: analysing why 5e is popular is not very relevant to helping me enjoy and improve my RPGing. Eg inspired by a recent post of yours I started a thread on Conflict in RPGing. In the OP is try to sketch what I see as some of the possibilities, including contrasts with other, narrative, media.

If someone has experience from 5e play that is relevant to thinking about conflict in RPGing, then by all means post away. But the relevance of that experience doesn't depend in any way on 5e being popular. I'm not asking for advice on how to make a commercially sellable RPG. I'm looking for ideas about how to play and GM my RPGs in ways that will give me an enjoyable experience.



Campbell said:


> This insufficient fandom bit is getting real thin.



When I was regularly buying and playing what WotC was selling - from around 2009 to around 2012 - I was regularly criticised for being a WotC "fan boy". Now that I don't buy and play what WotC is selling, I'm regularly criticised from being out of touch with what's popular and mainstream.

So I don't worry too much about it!


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## pemerton (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> But about why care if D&D is popular, because presumably that means it's doing something right and understanding what those things are is important.



What does "doing it right" mean? That's just a tautology for _it's popular_. And _why_ is it important to understand why it's popular?

I mean, if I'm buying a bike maybe popularity is relevant - it can be a marker of quality for price. (Of course, it can also be a marker of branding success.)

If I'm buying clothes than I get why popularity is important, because (except during lockdowns) clothes are a social thing, and fitting in with what's normal or popular is part of that sociality.

But if I'm buying myself a CD, why is it relevant whether or not the performer or genre is popular? Isn't what's relevant whether or not I like it, or think it's worth learning to like it?

If you think 5e D&D has cleverly solved a particular technical problem in RPGing, then tell me about that. But the cleverness of the solution is not going to be shown or explained just by pointing out its popularity.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Well, and to make it abundantly clear I'm not claiming this is the only factor, when one of the two has been the public face of the hobby for almost fifty years now I don't think you can at least write-off a big part of it being because one of the two is immensely more well known and has had a vastly longer time to generate an extent community.  That doesn't mean there aren't people who genuinely and legitimately prefer the D&D structure for any number of reasons, but I at least think you have to make some effort to factor the prior issues in when assessing that.  As I've noted before, if you're playing with groups for whom trying anything new is not a thing they normally do, and you get interested in Savage Worlds--then what?  Do you abandon your extent game just to try it out?  If you're not big into online play (and even with COVID, some people really aren't) can you even find somewhere to try it?
> 
> I think its just really easy for people who feel like D&D and its kin are being dismissed to ignore the really massive gravitational advantage it has these days, even if other games are, to some extent, more accessible than they once were.



All I’m suggesting is that saying it’s popular now because it’s always been popular doesn’t explain what made it popular to begin with. Note that 5e has become immensely more popular despite he previous edition being much less popular in comparison.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> All I’m suggesting is that saying it’s popular now because it’s always been popular doesn’t explain what made it popular to begin with. Note that 5e has become immensely more popular despite he previous edition being much less popular in comparison.



Critical Role??


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## MGibster (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Um.... folks were making points about accessible language. You are trying to not get too academic, but use a word like "tendentious"?



You're right.  We should eschew obfuscation in order to encourage perspicuity.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 4, 2021)

I want my Helm of Language Complication back. Gimme.


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## Umbran (Nov 4, 2021)

MGibster said:


> You're right.  We should eschew obfuscation in order to encourage perspicuity.




So, I'm a physicist by training.  This is a field that is immersed in deep, elaborate, arcane mathematics, inscrutable to most mortal eyes.

One of the greatest minds of the field, the man who invented Quantum Chromodynamics, Richard Feynman, famously noted that if you cannot explain a topic in simple, easy to understand language, you probably don't understand it that well yourself.  

Using layers of jargon with the uninitiated is the antithesis of successful communication.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 4, 2021)

I have a lot of love for Richard Feynman. 

Edit: His _The Pleasure of Finding Things Out_ does at least suggest that plain language wasn't anathema to him.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, I'm a physicist by training.  This is a field that is immersed in deep, elaborate, arcane mathematics, inscrutable to most mortal eyes.
> 
> One of the greatest minds of the field, the man who invented Quantum Chromodynamics, Richard Feynman, famously noted that if you cannot explain a topic in simple, easy to understand language, you probably don't understand it that well yourself.
> 
> Using layers of jargon with the uninitiated is the antithesis of successful communication.



I feel this is a red herring, though, because things have been discussed without jargon, using simple direct language, and the responses from those more interested in disruption that engagement is the same.  For people that are willing to listen, I haven't seen that jargon is actually a barrier to discussion, especially since jargon is usually clearly explained at least 3-4 times in threads.  Like, every time I mention Force* in a thread for the first few times, I include the definition of it.  So that argument that avoiding jargon results in better outcomes on these topics doesn't really seem to hold much water.

*Force is the GM enforcing an outcome on play regardless of player inputs, action declaration, or system output.


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## MGibster (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> One of the greatest minds of the field, the man who invented Quantum Chromodynamics, Richard Feynman, famously noted that if you cannot explain a topic in simple, easy to understand language, you probably don't understand it that well yourself.
> 
> Using layers of jargon with the uninitiated is the antithesis of successful communication.



I've never really thought about it that way, but I think this Feynman guy is onto something.  If you were to speak to me as one of your brother physicist magicians, well, admittedly, a lot of it would go right over my head.  But if you know it backwards and forwards, you can probably find some other way to explain it to me.  It won't make me an expert at your level but at least I wouldn't be totally clueless.  And that's how I feel about a lot of RPG theory discussions I see.  And theory was one of my favorite parts about anthropology!


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, I'm a physicist by training.  This is a field that is immersed in deep, elaborate, arcane mathematics, inscrutable to most mortal eyes.
> 
> One of the greatest minds of the field, the man who invented Quantum Chromodynamics, Richard Feynman, famously noted that if you cannot explain a topic in simple, easy to understand language, you probably don't understand it that well yourself.
> 
> Using layers of jargon with the uninitiated is the antithesis of successful communication.




This isn't about communicating with the uninitiated though. It's about communicating with people that are deeply steeped in their own particular jargon and are insisting that you must adopt their jargon to communicate with them.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> This isn't about communicating with the uninitiated though. It's about communicating with people that are deeply steeped in their own particular jargon and are insisting that you must adopt their jargon to communicate with them.



Oh the irony.


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## Umbran (Nov 4, 2021)

MGibster said:


> I've never really thought about it that way, but I think this Feynman guy is onto something.




He also observed that one of the best ways to _learn_ a subject it to kind of know it, and then to teach it.  Having to restate it so that someone else will understand forces you to process it more deeply and completely.

In the hard sciences, nobody teaches you how to teach.  If you are a Teaching Assistant, they just toss you into the deep end of the pool.  The first lecture class they gave me, they just handed me the text and said, "You've taken this course, so you know what's in the curriculum.  Teach it."  Feynman was a great support during that experience.

I'd still be teaching now, if academia paid anywhere near what I make in my current job.


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Oh the irony.




Mind unpacking this? I am trying to come at this conversation in good faith. I do not think I deserve that snark.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Mind unpacking this? I am trying to come at this conversation in good faith. I do not think I deserve that snark.



Seemed an easier and more effective way to communicate that there's a handful of posters who do that more than any other and you tend to like their posts and often your viewpoints and theirs align.  Thus, it was ironic that such a comment came from you.  I pretty much agree with your assessment 100%, but it's one that I think is being directed toward the wrong people.

Unpacking this too much more is going to end up getting too personal so I think that's about as far as I'm comfortable unpacking.


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## MGibster (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> He also observed that one of the best ways to _learn_ a subject it to kind of know it, and then to teach it. Having to restate it so that someone else will understand forces you to process it more deeply and completely.



I directly experienced this effect in graduate school giving lectures and from my time at a museum playing docent.  Sometimes I'd be asked questions I didn't know the answer to and I'd do a little research so I could answer the next person who asked it.  But even if I knew the answer, often times being asked to talk about it would help me think about it in a different way.  


Umbran said:


> In the hard sciences, nobody teaches you how to teach. If you are a Teaching Assistant, they just toss you into the deep end of the pool. The first lecture class they gave me, they just handed me the text and said, "You've taken this course, so you know what's in the curriculum. Teach it." Feynman was a great support during that experience.



In the soft, well, I've never pretended history was a science, but nobody taught me how to teach either.  "You know the subject.  Just jump in there and tell them about it."  



Umbran said:


> I'd still be teaching now, if academia paid anywhere near what I make in my current job.



I know how you feel.  I'd still be working at the museum if I could have made a decent living.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> Critical Role??



I don't deny critical role positively impacts 5e's popularity - but it seems to me that critical role first chose 5e because of 5e's popularity (maybe I'm wrong).


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

pemerton said:


> What does "doing it right" mean? That's just a tautology for _it's popular_. And _why_ is it important to understand why it's popular?
> 
> I mean, if I'm buying a bike maybe popularity is relevant - it can be a marker of quality for price. (Of course, it can also be a marker of branding success.)
> 
> ...



It feels to me like you have the argument backwards.  I don't suggest you 'care' about D&D because it's popular.  I suggest the fact that it's popular means there's some underlying quality about it that made it popular.  Knowing and understanding that quality is what I suggest you should care about.  It may even be something compatible with the games you prefer.  But shrugging off whatever that quality is as 'branding success' just comes across as dismissive of the game and the qualities it does bring to the table.  I mean do you really think if your preferred games had better branding that they would be as popular as 5e?  That's the fundamental disconnect I have with that position.

I do think D&D has solved at least 1 important problem - encouraging and allowing people to play together that share fundamentally different focuses and playstyles (obviously not all of them though).  I'm curious, in some of the games you play can a player focused on optimization and mini-wargame-like tactics, a player wanting a relaxing beer and pretzels style game, a player that's focused on exploration and a player focused on play acting out and developing their character through play all sit at the same table and enjoy playing the same game together?


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 4, 2021)

Should we consider anyone posting here to be "uninitiated"?


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## pemerton (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> shrugging off whatever that quality is as 'branding success' just comes across as dismissive of the game and the qualities it does bring to the table.



So here is what I said in my post: _if I'm buying a bike maybe popularity is relevant - it can be a marker of quality for price. (Of course, it can also be a marker of branding success.)_

And you describe that as _shrugging off some or other quality of 5e D&D as branding success_. 

Can you see that, to me, that comes across as a significant degree of misreading, even projection? What I actually first had in mind when I wrote the sentence is that some people buy cars because of the brand. But in my post I was writing about buying a bike rather than a car. And the actual example from my own experience I was thinking of was buying a piano, where a better quality was available for a given price because a particular brand carried a premium.

But you take a parenthetical remark about what something _can _be as a dismissive remark about 5e D&D.



FrogReaver said:


> I mean do you really think if your preferred games had better branding that they would be as popular as 5e?  That's the fundamental disconnect I have with that position.



Some people asserted that the only reason 4e D&D sold in anything like the volume it did was because it was branded D&D. I'm sure that's true. If Burning Wheel was branded D&D it would sell better than it does. If 5e D&D was branded (say) T&T I don't think it would sell in the volume it does.

It seems obvious that branding is not everything in 5e D&D's popularity. Branding is something, but not everything, in the popularity of Ed Sheeran's newest songs. But if - for whatever reason - I'm not really into Ed Sheeran, why would the fact that his music is popular change my mind?

I mean, whenever I see references to music on ENworld it tends to be to either classic rock or hard rock. I don't think I've ever seen anyone reference Rihanna, or Alicia Keys, or Andre 2000, or Doja Cat, or Olivia Rodrigo, or The Roots, to drop a sprinkling of names of performers I like and/or who I've seen recently in the Top 20.

Is there some secret essence to these popular acts that people who are really into guitar-based rock would appreciate it if only they took them more seriously? Or is it just a case of different tastes.

Do you think that there is some secret essence of 5e D&D that I've missed, and if I noticed it I'd suddenly want to play it? I mean, I never thought that about 4e D&D when I spent years being attacked by those who didn't like it for the fact that I liked it. Why would I now take that sort of suggestion seriously in relation to 5e D&D?



FrogReaver said:


> I do think D&D has solved at least 1 important problem - encouraging and allowing people to play together that share fundamentally different focuses and playstyles (obviously not all of them though).



Do you mean 5e D&D in particular? Is 5e different in this respect from AD&D? Most of the debates and discussions I see about playstyle clashes and compatibility in the 5e context (eg optimisers/powergamers/min-maxers vs character-explorers vs instigators  vs follow-the-storyliners) all seem pretty similar to the same sorts of debates and discussions that were going on in the early-to-mid 90s.



FrogReaver said:


> I'm curious, in some of the games you play can a player focused on optimization and mini-wargame-like tactics, a player wanting a relaxing beer and pretzels style game, a player that's focused on exploration and a player focused on play acting out and developing their character through play all sit at the same table and enjoy playing the same game together?



Well obviously the answer for 4e D&D is yes, given that a significant subset of groups who do this with 5e also did it with 4e.

I'd be surprised if this has never been done with Classic Traveller in its 44 year history.

Marvel Heroic RP doesn't use minis (but then neither does plenty of 5e play, I'm told) but it certainly supports mathematical optimisation. And can be played relaxedly, and with an eye to character development, and with an eye on exploration.

Burning Wheel is going to be pretty demanding on a beer and pretzels player; and Prince Valiant has no scope for optimisation though a wargamer might enjoy its mass battle system. So that's 3 or 3-and-a-half out of 4.


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## loverdrive (Nov 4, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> So I don't know that the divide is worth going over again- but if a person self-identifies as a fan of something, then why not? I mean, who am I to judge? I thought this was the whole "high culture, low culture" thing we try to avoid.



Again, it's not about “high culture, low culture”. What I'm saying is, outside of the world of TTRPGs, it's unlikely that someone self-identifies as a fan of something doesn't have even cursory knowledge of other things.

I highly doubt that there is a self-identified hip-hop fan that never experienced anything other than hip-hop. It's just a highly improbable scenario.

I highly doubt that there is a self-identified First-Person Shooter fan who bought DooM in 1993 then Unreal in 1998 and never ever tried any other kind of game ever since. And, of course, been modding Unreal to make it into a completely different kind of game through all these years.

Self-identified D&D fans, on the other hand…



Snarf Zagyg said:


> But I truly think that there are people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) who can't seem to understand that there might be aspects of D&D and 5e that are incredibly appealing and that the games are massively popular not in spite of their design, but because of the design. The whole, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."



Of course there are people who like D&D for what D&D is. I don't deny their existence. Hell, I'm one of them.

But I also can't deny the existence of people whose goals don't align with what D&D (or 5E in particular) offers. Haven't you seen such people? People who don't care for dungeon delving or slaying goblins or solving puzzles or committing war crimes in Neverwinter, actively avoid all the things that the system handles well and pursue areas where playing 5E is indistinguishable from playing a slovesochka, a game without rules? People who don't care for fantasy and get a hard on for CP, oh, wait, I mean Cyberpunk or modern days or wild west stuff? I don't know nor care if they are a majority of all D&D players or a tiny fraction, but I see them often enough.

Here on the enworld there is a bias towards old school and dungeoncrawling in D&D discussions, probably because it's only us old timers use forums these days, but take a trip to /r/DnD. Look what advice people there give or ask for. For me, it's clear as day that there are at least some people who would be better served with something other than D&D.



Spoiler: Like, seriously


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## Aldarc (Nov 4, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Sometimes! I've played a lot of different games, and I don't regret anything. NOTHING!
> 
> But I truly think that there are people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) who can't seem to understand that there might be aspects of D&D and 5e that are incredibly appealing and that the games are massively popular not in spite of their design, but because of the design. The whole, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."
> 
> ...



This feels a bit like an earlier comment (maybe either @gorice or @Grendel_Khan) that talked about the veiled issue of how one is only permitted to talk about D&D or 5e in terms that showers praise on it while exclaiming it better than the rest. IMHO, it seems that anyone who needs their 800 pound market gorilla praised in that fashion - no matter what market or product we are talking about - has no genuine intention of engaging in TTRPG criticism or theory, but, rather, are fishing for reassurance for a fragile ego that their gamer identity is the best, usually on an ad populum basis.

I understand that Coca-Cola is a market leader in drinks and I understand why it is popular, but that doesn't mean that I will or should recommend it for everyone or in all occasions. For example, I probably won't recommend it to someone before they run a marathon.

Or likewise: *'MERICA! (Truck yeah!)* The USA is the greatest country ever. Praise be the Flag of Flags. America can do no wrong. America is mother. America is father. American exceptionalism is the most exceptional! And so on. But it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans I have encountered either here or elsewhere who have little to no grasp (almost to the point of being offended) of the idea that other fully functioning non-American democracies aren't designed just like America is. The idea, for example, that the citizens of other countries have greater liberties or freedoms in some aspects than Americans is so anethema to American thinking and self-identity. It is so offensive to some Americans that America is not the best at everything. How could this be possible? They are the land of the free. They personally invented democracy in 1776. They have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights. How could other citizens possibly have more freedoms in not-America? (It's okay, I can say all of this as an American citizen, with special cred as a Southerner from Appalachia with both sides of my family living in America for 250+ years.)

That said, I sometimes encounter these sort nationalistic undertones with people (_not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure_) so invested in D&D as their game of choice. (It's a bit trite, but I'll point out that these undertones can certainly exist in non-D&D game communities too - I did mention the Cypher System and Fate has also been brought up before - but D&D is the 'Merica! of game systems.) I wish I could talk about other countries or games plainly without having to constantly jump through hoops to appease these fragile nationalist/factionalist egos.

I also don't think that most people who bring indie games up in discussion are trying to turn D&D into these indie games. These are people who often still play D&D 5e as D&D 5e or D&D-adjacent games in their own fashion (e.g., Pathfinder 2, Worlds Without Number, Black Hack, OSR Retroclones, etc.). In my observation, it has primarily been about showing that alternatives exist to how D&D or 5e does things, that differences exist in other games, playstyles, and/or approaches. It's not that D&D has to be like Burning Wheel, but, rather, it's to show that games like Burning Wheel exist with different game philosophies and approaches, particularly when it comes to GM/player authority dynamics.

Similarly, I don't think that the question of "why D&D could never embrace some of the innovations we see in indie games" is particularly interesting, because (1) the enduring popularity of the elephant in the room has _already_ been widely discussed for *decades*, (2) I think that the reasons are fairly obvious at this point, which was only reinforced by 5e's success, so I'm not sure what that discussion hopes to achieve apart from inundating D&D (_but really the exceptional people who chose D&D as their game of choice_) with affirmative praise, and (3) I'm not necessarily wanting D&D to be more like "bespoke indie games." That I think that 5e D&D's design could be improved upon or tightened up should not be regarded as being synonymous with "D&D should be like indie games." Sometimes it means "hey, maybe 5e should have a more robust exploration pillar and play loop like D&D B/X did or Adventures in Middle Earth 5e does." Sometimes it means "hey, I think that D&D threw out some of its own greatest in-house design innovations and lore with the bath water as a result of the D&D 4e backlash."

Usually, if I point out alternative ways to what D&D does that D&D actually could incorporate, it's with other games that are more adjacent to D&D's own design philosophies and system architecture, often with heavily D&D-experienced writers (e.g., _Shadow of the Demon Lord_ by Rob Schwalb, _13th Age_ by Heinsoo and Tweet, _Pathfinder 2_ by Paizo, _Cypher System_ by Monte Cook, etc.) or even in 5e 3pp (e.g., _Adventures in Middle Earth_).


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 4, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> IMHO, it seems that anyone who needs their 800 pound market gorilla praised in that fashion - no matter what we market or product we are talking about - has no genuine intention of engaging in TTRPG criticism or theory, but, rather, are fishing for reassurance for a fragile ego that their gamer identity is the best because ad populum.
> 
> I understand that Coca-Cola is a market leader in drinks and I understand why it is popular, but that doesn't mean that I will or should recommend it for everyone or in all occasions. For example, I probably won't recommend it to someone before they run a marathon.
> 
> Or likewise: *'MERICA! (Truck yeah!)* The USA is the greatest country ever. Praise be the Flag of Flags. America can do no wrong. America is mother. America is father. American exceptionalism is the most exceptional! And so on. But it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans I have encountered either here or elsewhere who have little to no grasp (almost to the point of being offended) of the idea that other fully functioning non-American democracies aren't designed just like America is. The idea, for example, that the citizens of other countries have greater liberties or freedoms in some aspects than Americans is so anethema to American thinking and self-identity. It is so offensive to some Americans that America is not the best at everything. How could this be possible? They are the land of the free. They personally invented democracy in 1776. They have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights. How could other citizens possibly have more freedoms in not-America? (It's okay, I can say all of this as an American citizen, with special cred as a Southerner from Appalachia with both sides of my family living in America for 250+ years.)




This is such a good framework for the “Well D&D must be doing something right” discussion that I’m shocked I haven’t seen it before. The same exceptionalism and sense of almost occult mystery. At the risk of going even further afield it reminds me of people who proclaim that anyone who’s massively wealthy must be a genius and also worthy of respect, if not adulation. What’s that, his father owned an emerald mine? Tut tut! Even the born-ultra-rich must bootstrap themselves to greater heights!

Dismissing foundational and inherited advantages doesn’t just muddy the conversation. It posits a world where those advantages provide just a tiny head-start, and everything else in the competition is fairness and merit. That’s not our world.  

And as others have mentioned, there’s the somewhat inscrutable but ultimately boring (to me) question of the power of D&D’s branding. Personally I think the influence of branding, and resistance to the notion that brand success might have nothing to do with inherent quality, ties into ‘Merica and Musk as well, but that’s obviously a bigger and even more off-topic conversation.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Again, it's not about “high culture, low culture”. What I'm saying is, outside of the world of TTRPGs, it's unlikely that someone self-identifies as a fan of something doesn't have even cursory knowledge of other things.




That is not at all a true comment, in my opinion.  

It (1) elevates TTRPGs to a position of specialness that isn't true, (2) posits that TTRPG fans are more stupid than fans in any other area, and (3) overlooks the nature of fandom.

Many fans (fanatics) are known not for their exacting knowledge of the world outside of their fandom, but, instead, the lack of interest. Not all! Some acquire more knowledge (usually to mock or belittle or argue with fans of other things), but for the most part ... yeah.


loverdrive said:


> Here on the enworld there is a bias towards old school and dungeoncrawling in D&D discussions, probably because it's only us old timers use forums these days, but take a trip to /r/DnD. Look what advice people there give or ask for. For me, it's clear as day that there are at least some people who would be better served with something other than D&D.




I think that there is also a bias _against it. _The whole "how do you play your D&D" is a constant tension in the threads. I do agree that enworld skews older and more DM-centric, so there are more conversations about history, etc. (although certainly not to the extent of more specialized forums, like OD&D on Proboards or Dragonfoot or Canonfire or any innumerable more specialized ones), but there are a ton of prominent people that vocally push back against that. Makes it fun!

Finally, I don't disagree that some people might be better served with something other than D&D. That's never been in dispute. But that's not an interesting point to me (I'm not saying that it's a bad point, just not interesting _to me_). Because TTRPGs are social  games that involve multiple people with different distributions of authority, it is rare to find that a table consistently is playing a game that is the optimum choice for everyone at the table. I think it's almost inevitable that _someone_ at the table is compromising by playing the game.* And that's true, whether it's D&D, or Blades in the Dark, or some FKR, rules-lite game.

I have a little more that is responsive to you, in a way, but I will respond to a different poster with a second post. 

*There are no universals. Some people have managed to acquire long-term groups where it might be possible that every single individual is in alignment and the game is a perfect encapsulation of what they want to do! But generally, I believe that people elevate having fun together over a specific desire that their individual need is paramount every session.


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## Umbran (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Thus, it was ironic that such a comment came from you.




*Mod note:*
I said, just yesterday, that we should avoid making this personal.  You seemed to agree with that.

This is the opposite of avoiding.  Please, just _keep the personal commentary to yourself_.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> *Mod note:*
> I said, just yesterday, that we should avoid making this personal.  You seemed to agree with that.
> 
> This is the opposite of avoiding.  Please, just _keep the personal commentary to yourself_.



Apologies for taking it too far.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

@Campbell apologies to you as well.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> This is such a good framework for the “Well D&D must be doing something right” discussion that I’m shocked I haven’t seen it before. The same exceptionalism and sense of almost occult mystery. At the risk of going even further afield it reminds me of people who proclaim that anyone who’s massively wealthy must be a genius and also worthy of respect, if not adulation. What’s that, his father owned an emerald mine? Tut tut! Even the born-ultra-rich must bootstrap themselves to greater heights!




Well, I'm glad that you thought it was a good framework. I hope you understand that I am choosing not to respond to the post because it is, for some people (like me) deeply insulting. If anyone can appreciate hyperbole, I can. But I don't really enjoy having the same group denigrate my playing preferences again. I'll explain after the jump!



Grendel_Khan said:


> Dismissing foundational and inherited advantages doesn’t just muddy the conversation. It posits a world where those advantages provide just a tiny head-start, and everything else in the competition is fairness and merit. That’s not our world.
> 
> And as others have mentioned, there’s the somewhat inscrutable but ultimately boring (to me) question of the power of D&D’s branding. Personally I think the influence of branding, and resistance to the notion that brand success might have nothing to do with inherent quality, ties into ‘Merica and Musk as well, but that’s obviously a bigger and even more off-topic conversation.




Imagine a slightly different perspective. Let me take this away from 5e for just a second before going back in, because it's not really about 5e. Whenever there is a conversation about TTRPG theory, or something interesting, it always ends up being the same people talking about the same things. It's not like 'Murika (I mean, really?). It's more like a high school cafeteria, where the same bullies patrol the area. They make fun of all the kids for either being part of the "crowd" (who wants to be like all those people, they don't even know what they want) or they make fun of any other smaller group that isn't like them. No other conversations are allowed, or they get shouted down (or reported to the principal).

I can understand this because I've seen it occur. Do you want to have a conversation about FKR and the recent re-discovery of interest in rules-lite neo-Arnesonian games? Yeah, no. Sorry. Can't talk about that. It doesn't fit in the box for the cool kids. Do you want to have a jargon-free discussion about 5e, so you tag it with "5e" and say it's about 5e and try your darnedest ? Yeah, no, can't talk about that either. Even though it's a 5e discussion, you aren't allowed to have it because it's ... 'Murika?

This thread wasn't about 5e at all; it's about the rejection of this singular dogmatic approach. That's what _*this thread*_ was about. Umbran got it in one.

_It is okay to have a favored framework, but for goodness sake realize that it is only a framework, not TEH TRVTH!_

That's why I put in a number of different resources- and because I don't consider myself the arbiter of the truth either, I included in the list of sources what I think is the best, and most representative, example of something that I think is kinda divisive. And if that book is too expensive, you could just look at _Playground Worlds_ (available on-line with a link) starting on page 232. It's all good.

People like what they like.

So yeah, I see a lot of really smart people on enworld. I'm sure you do too- and I keep noticing that most of them don't participate in any of these conversations (I'm not going to name them or 'at' them because I respect their choice- obviously, they are smarter than I am because they avoid these threads). Which is sad to me- because they often have a wealth of real-world experience that I'd like to hear from, and would be more interesting and valuable than just seeing the same quote from (designer who shall not be named) trotted out again. Not to mention that we sometimes see newer people that post here, and don't see again because they get shouted down in conversations because they didn't play some indie game or were aware of someone's playing transcript from 3 years ago.

Finally, I think the issue with 5e (and why it was introduced) keeps getting misunderstood. There is a cadre of people that routinely dismiss it _because it is popular _(well, for other reasons too, but that's neither here nor there*). It's just branding. Or it's just because people don't know any better. Which are common refrains we often hear to explain away popularity in all sorts of areas- but those explanations usually don't hold up.**

It's far more productive, and interesting, to examine what else is behind that. There are a number of plausible reasons- network effects (it's easier to find a game because "everyone" knows how to play D&D). Division of authority (games that only require a single truly engaged person, the DM, require less 'buy in' from every member of the group and are therefore more likely to be successful with a mixed group of people). Second-best (the concept that D&D does a number of different things "well enough" to make it an overall first choice, even though it might not be any particular person's first choice- kinda like a TTRPG social choice or Arrow's theorem). The reward loop of D&D and the persistent campaign leads to long-term engagement (XP+level+more abilities and rinse/repeat). Or maybe because D&D has a long culture of homebrew and expansions and "hackability," it is considered an incomplete ruleset and people are comfortable modifying it to their needs- which is not the case with other complete rulesets.

I don't have an answer- but those are some ideas, and I think exploring them are better and less insulting than 'Murika, truck yeah. More importantly, if someone doesn't want to engage in discussing the application of theory to 5e (whether it's simple design theory, or division of authority, or whatever), there's a simple solution- don't. You don't have to mock the people that do want to discuss it. 

_The point is not that 5e is good because it is popular, the point is only that it is bizarre to ignore the most popular TTRPG and the largest dataset when it comes to discussing TTRPG theory. _

So I'm going to wrap this up here. And why I usually exit threads after a short period of time. Everything that really needed to be said is in the original post. 


*I do think that some portion of the pushback and non-engagement with this specific issue is because it would necessarily require asking about 5e's relative popularity vis-a-vis other versions, and what that says about whether certain aspects of the prior versions, whether it's Gygaxian skilled play and high mortality, 3e's high crunch, or some of 4e's innovations, are effective in broadly popular games at this time. To acknowledge that 5e is broadly popular is to acknowledge that the design decisions of 5e, that are not in accord with prior versions, might be part of that success.

**"Apple fans only like their products because of branding." "The only reason people buy SUVs is because of branding and marketing." "MCU fans only like their movies because they are marketed better." etc. Yeah, marketing and branding can be important- but there's always something more to learn. Marketing and branding works by exploiting things that consumers already like and want.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 4, 2021)

@Snarf Zagyg I suppose there's not much point in responding, since it sounds like you're dropping this post on your way out the door, and also saying that "Everything that really needed to be said is in the original post," raises the question: Why bother starting a thread, if what you're really doing is writing a blog post, and then getting increasingly frustrated when people disagree?

But I will note that this business of presenting those who criticize the absolutely dominant status quo (in any industry or other context) as bullies patrolling the cafeteria is 100 percent the asymmetric problem I'm trying to surface, as far as talking about D&D goes. Why can't film critics hail the absolute artistic genius of all things MCU, as evidenced by their box office success? Darn snobbish bullies. How dare people poke fun at 'Merica, or make jokes about white privilege or whatever sports team is currently dominant or anything else that, by nearly all quantifiable measures of success, is winning. What bullies, squeaking away...somewhere down there. Don't they know there's no honor in punching up, since, you see, Goliath's size is really a disadvantage, since it makes him such an easy target!

If we're going to talk about anything on a meaningful level related to mechanics, theory, etc. and not just "what's your favorite setting/race/class," why should anything be sacred? PbtA and all of its offshoots are open for criticism and comparison. OSR games too. Toss a barb about WoD players into a thread and you'll get a laugh emoji. Why do D&D and its players have to be treated so gingerly?

I mean, I guess you've already answered that, including busting out the old "People like what they like" maxim, the purpose of which I'm never sure of, except to try to short-circuit further analysis by somehow shaming the participants. But, at least in this sense, I suppose I'm shameless.

I also don't flip out when someone says Shadowrun 5th edition, the game I've been running for a while now, is not for them, has an unwieldy system, is worse than 2e, worse than Cyberpunk 2020 or Red, etc. I don't imagine them as bullies or wannabe cool kids. Because I'm not married to this game for the rest of my life, and it does some very specific things well (IMO) that I want to do right now, and pretty soon I'll say goodbye to the system, maybe forever.

I'm not saying everyone should be system-promiscuous. But I reserve the right to be confused when anyone gets this offended by criticism of the game or system they're currently using.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> @Snarf Zagyg I suppose there's not much point in responding, since it sounds like you're dropping this post on your way out the door, and also saying that "Everything that really needed to be said is in the original post," raises the question: Why bother starting a thread, if what you're really doing is writing a blog post, and then getting increasingly frustrated when people disagree?
> 
> But I will note that this business of presenting those who criticize the absolutely dominant status quo (in any industry or other context) as bullies patrolling the cafeteria is 100 percent the asymmetric problem I'm trying to surface, as far as talking about D&D goes. Why can't film critics hail the absolute artistic genius of all things MCU, as evidenced by their box office success? Darn snobbish bullies. How dare people poke fun at 'Merica, or make jokes about white privilege or whatever sports team is currently dominant or anything else that, by nearly all quantifiable measures of success, is winning. What bullies, squeaking away...somewhere down there. Don't they know there's no honor in punching up, since, you see, Goliath's size is really a disadvantage, since it makes him such an easy target!
> 
> ...



Maybe they aren’t getting offended because there’s simply criticism but because of some other aspect of how the criticism is presented (like the ‘Merica comparison above) or how even 5e tagged discussions about rpg theory get turned into discussions about non-5e games.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Maybe they aren’t getting offended because there’s simply criticism but because of some other aspect of how the criticism is presented (like the ‘Merica comparison above) or how even 5e tagged discussions about rpg theory get turned into discussions about non-5e games.




Or how any conversations about theory ends up derailed by the same topics (and/or same individuals). Even this thread that is discussing a specific book (_Elusive Shift_) and providing resources from a variety of viewpoints.


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## Malmuria (Nov 4, 2021)

The success of 5e is obviously a lot about branding and market dynamics.  But playing it, and seeing others play it and get into rpgs for the first time, I think what it suggests to me is, to put it pithily, ‘system doesn’t matter.’  Or doesn’t matter to the degree and in the ways that some people think it does.  There’s an element to a game system that affords a playstyle by simply not getting in the way.  So, we don’t actually need mechanics for fantasy shopping.  The character and world building prompts in the game do a better job, _without rules_, to give people the fantasy shopping simulator they desire.  Making sure the ‘system has a say’ would make the experience _less_ fun.  When people are trying to perform, having to refer to mechanics can be disruptive. (Similarity we can say that critical role was influential for 5e’s success.  But what makes dnd a good vehicle for that kind of game?  What about dnd produces the Matt mercers of the world?)

With regards to character, I think the way that dnd evokes fantasy archetypes is a big part of why people like it.  I prefer osr games with streamlined classes and races.  But I’ve realized that is not what my players like.  And from reading things online, I infer that most players are wrapped up in the backstory and/or build of their characters.  They are not concerned with authoring the fiction of the world because they are in charge of authoring the fiction of the one thing they care about, their characters (and their character’s pets).


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Maybe they aren’t getting offended because there’s simply criticism but because of some other aspect of how the criticism is presented (like the ‘Merica comparison above) or how even 5e tagged discussions about rpg theory get turned into discussions about non-5e games.




A lot of the time when this happens it's because people make bold assertions about what's possible in roleplaying games or use D&D discussions to pontificate about all roleplaying games. See all the discussion around how railroading is necessary if you want to have a game about anything other than dungeon crawling. See also the sandbox / railroad spectrum stuff.

I also think some 5e super fans have a pretty limited (and overly conservative with a lowercase c) perspective of what 5e is actually capable of when pushed. This includes stuff like the authority models used by a lot of people inspired by Critical Role.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> All I’m suggesting is that saying it’s popular now because it’s always been popular doesn’t explain what made it popular to begin with. Note that 5e has become immensely more popular despite he previous edition being much less popular in comparison.




Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but being first out the door is not a benefit to be understated.  Unless you count Tunnels and Trolls (where the jokey approach put a lot of people off), most any survivors from that period came along a good two years after D&D arrived.  That's plenty of time to dominate the mindspace.  All it needed at that point was to at least be _adequate_, and not completely drop the ball thereafter.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The success of 5e is obviously a lot about branding and market dynamics.  But playing it, and seeing others play it and get into rpgs for the first time, I think what it suggests to me is, to put it pithily, ‘system doesn’t matter.’  Or doesn’t matter to the degree and in the ways that some people think it does.  There’s an element to a game system that affords a playstyle by simply not getting in the way.  So, we don’t actually need mechanics for fantasy shopping.  The character and world building prompts in the game do a better job, _without rules_, to give people the fantasy shopping simulator they desire.  Making sure the ‘system has a say’ would make the experience _less_ fun.  When people are trying to perform, having to refer to mechanics can be disruptive. (Similarity we can say that critical role was influential for 5e’s success.  But what makes dnd a good vehicle for that kind of game?  What about dnd produces the Matt mercers of the world?)
> 
> With regards to character, I think the way that dnd evokes fantasy archetypes is a big part of why people like it.  I prefer osr games with streamlined classes and races.  But I’ve realized that is not what my players like.  And from reading things online, I infer that most players are wrapped up in the backstory and/or build of their characters.  They are not concerned with authoring the fiction of the world because they are in charge of authoring the fiction of the one thing they care about, their characters (and their character’s pets).




And in a similar vein, I've ran a fair number of FKR/rules-lite games in the past few years, and genuinely enjoy them. But while that worked great for one-shots or short arcs, my main group wanted a more lasting campaign with character advancement (that feedback loop)- and they wanted 5e (and 5e's structure) for that. We adopted some of the playstyle from the rules-lite games, but within the overall 5e framework. 

Anyway, what I found so interesting about the _Elusive Shift _is the extent to which the conversations we are having today on the forum, and were having 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, are just rehashes of the same ones that were being had in the 70s and early 80s. 

But maybe no one else read it?


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but being first out the door is not a benefit to be understated.  Unless you count Tunnels and Trolls (where the jokey approach put a lot of people off), most any survivors from that period came along a good two years after D&D arrived.  That's plenty of time to dominate the mindspace.  All it needed at that point was to at least be _adequate_, and not completely drop the ball thereafter.



Sure but IMO that made a bit better argument before 4e and 5e as the cause for D&D’s popularity. But it doesn’t explain 5e’s popularity relative to 4e’s.  What does is the difference in the game itself. There’s something more to it than starting first and branding, especially after all these years.


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Sure but IMO that made a bit better argument before 4e and 5e as the cause for D&D’s popularity. But it doesn’t explain 5e’s popularity relative to 4e’s.  What does is the difference in the game itself. There’s something more to it than starting first and branding, especially after all these years.




Why keep beating this dead horse though? What good do all these 4e sideswipes do for our community? Other than to make 4e fans feel unwelcome?


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Why keep beating this dead horse though? What good do all these 4e sideswipes do for our community?



It’s not a sideswipe. I liked 4e.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 4, 2021)

I do enjoy arguments that 5e's system must be good because, well, I can find reasons (but no evidence) that it can't be popularity, branding, marketing, or publicity (like Critical Role).  So, therefore it must be the system.  No evidence is given why this system is superior to even past editions of D&D in a way that could drive it's popularity.  No specific points of analysis are provided as to how the system creates fun and engaging play across a wide range of play agendas.  None of this.  It's just claims and claims and claims.

5e is popular.  Why?  Dunno.  Certainly branding is important.  Certainly publicity is important (Critical Role was perfectly timed).  Certainly shifts in popular culture are important.  And certainly the fact it's system is solid, maybe even good, is important. You cannot tease this out, or claim that one is the larger factor, because there's no way to get the data necessary.  Maybe it is the system, but then it would have to be because the design goal was to leave the system just incomplete enough and just vague enough that it could appear to be many things to many people and could function well enough in all those ways.  I mean, that's brilliant design, but then it's really hard to say that 5e is popular because it has the best system.  Because "best" is really individually defined and includes all of the work and approach the players take for each table.  Again, that's brilliant, but in a weird way.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Sure but IMO that made a bit better argument before 4e and 5e as the cause for D&D’s popularity. But it doesn’t explain 5e’s popularity relative to 4e’s.  What does is the difference in the game itself. There’s something more to it than starting first and branding, especially after all these years.





That's true, but how to put this: _Even D&D 4e was dramatically more popular in terms of raw numbers than virtually anything else on the market.  _So even though a presumably significant part of the base recoiled from it, the amount left was _still_ enough to largely dwarf everything else.

That says there are issue going on here well beyond anything to do with system design.  And if people expect me to ignore that, I'm afraid I'm just going to make them unhappy.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> I do enjoy arguments that 5e's system must be good because, well, I can find reasons (but no evidence) that it can't be popularity, branding, marketing, or publicity (like Critical Role).  So, therefore it must be the system.  No evidence is given why this system is superior to even past editions of D&D in a way that could drive it's popularity.  No specific points of analysis are provided as to how the system creates fun and engaging play across a wide range of play agendas.  None of this.  It's just claims and claims and claims.




Heck, I'd be willing to make arguments why 5e (which, to keep clear, I'm not a fan of) is superior to editions prior to 3e.  On the other hand, some of the arguments I'd make would add up to "ways its not like the traditional view of D&D" primarily in character customization, so some people would likely consider it damning with faint praise.



Ovinomancer said:


> 5e is popular.  Why?  Dunno.  Certainly branding is important.  Certainly publicity is important (Critical Role was perfectly timed).  Certainly shifts in popular culture are important.  And certainly the fact it's system is solid, maybe even good, is important. You cannot tease this out, or claim that one is the larger factor, because there's no way to get the data necessary.




This is essentially the argument I've made.  D&D is an abnormal game in a lot of non-system related ways compared to the rest of the market.  Whether that's the key to its overall popularity or not isn't, and likely can't, be clear, but its also a little much to act like it can't be a significant factor.


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## dragoner (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Here on the enworld there is a bias towards old school and dungeoncrawling in D&D discussions, probably because it's only us old timers use forums these days, but take a trip to /r/DnD. Look what advice people there give or ask for. For me, it's clear as day that there are at least some people who would be better served with something other than D&D.



Roll a d20 vs a TN, now you are playing DnD.

I am over there, I was just posting in the Traveller reddit, answering questions about my setting that I have on dtrpg. It is the same with Traveller, roll 2d6 vs a TN, now it's Traveller.

DnD gets its grip in a lot of ways due to ancillary products, gencon has a massive manufacturers midway, devoted to just that, and you can watch them engrave custom dice for a $1000. So whatever they are playing, they are going to take out the custom wooden dice case, with their $1000 dice, just for an example.

I was sitting in a beer garden having a beer with the players on an upcomming CoC campaign about the Mad Baron, I was lucky they really didn't know anything about Ungern. Gave me lots of freedom, nevertheless, they were talking about finishing their Pathfinder "Magic Girl" anime campaign, which I almost mentioned there might be other games that better cover the subject, and realized, I don't know anything about the subject really.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> That's true, but how to put this: _Even D&D 4e was dramatically more popular in terms of raw numbers than virtually anything else on the market.  _So even though a presumably significant part of the base recoiled from it, the amount left was _still_ enough to largely dwarf everything else.
> 
> That says there are issue going on here well beyond anything to do with system design.  And if people expect me to ignore that, I'm afraid I'm just going to make them unhappy.



Right. Popularity can be because d) all of the above.  Your example is an excellent way of pointing that out. And possibly also a good springboard for the notion that 4e and 5e still are very similar in alot of ways (very different in others). Thise similarities and differences could make a good case study for which kinds of mechanics are more popular. 

Note: It was the notion that the game itself wasn’t part of the reason for its popularity I was pushing back on. Seems we agree there.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Heck, I'd be willing to make arguments why 5e (which, to keep clear, I'm not a fan of) is superior to editions prior to 3e.  On the other hand, some of the arguments I'd make would add up to "ways its not like the traditional view of D&D" primarily in character customization, so some people would likely consider it damning with faint praise.
> 
> 
> 
> This is essentially the argument I've made.  D&D is an abnormal game in a lot of non-system related ways compared to the rest of the market.  Whether that's the key to its overall popularity or not isn't, and likely can't, be clear, but its also a little much to act like it can't be a significant factor.



It’s this notion of ‘superior’ that’s strange to me.  I don’t tend to think of trrpgs as superior and inferior.  

popularity isn’t superiority even though there’s some important things we can take away for examining why something is popular.


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

So I think very few people are going to have an issue with the notion that 5e's design has a meaningful impact on its popularity. I think almost all the pushback comes from the idea that a more popular game is necessarily a better game. 5e is a good game. It's a popular game. It's also not a better game then other games that are less popular.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Right. Popularity can be because d) all of the above.  Your example is an excellent way of pointing that out. And possibly also a good springboard for the notion that 4e and 5e still are very similar in alot of ways (very different in others). Thise similarities and differences could make a good case study for which kinds of mechanics are more popular.
> 
> Note: It was the notion that the game itself wasn’t part of the reason for its popularity I was pushing back on. Seems we agree there.




That'd require a particular tunnel-vision approach to claim it.  The issue is that what we can't do is establish in any verifiable way how much of that popularity is system based; given that, its entirely possible that if you pulled out all the other factors, D&D wouldn't be any more popular than a number of other game systems.

But we don't know.  We probably _can't_ know.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> So I think very few people are going to have an issue with the notion that 5e's design has a meaningful impact on its popularity. I think almost all the pushback comes from the idea that a more popular game is necessarily a better game. 5e is a good game. It's a popular game. It's also not a better game then other games that are less popular.



I agree. I don’t think anyone is really saying that though…?


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> It’s this notion of ‘superior’ that’s strange to me.  I don’t tend to think of trrpgs as superior and inferior.




I can't follow you there.  I absolutely think some RPGs as superior to others.

But the important element is that I think that from my perspective.  I don't think that concept means anything without establishing there's a perspective one is viewing that from; in a broad generalization, I think the best one could (theoretically) say is that a given game seems to do nothing others don't do better from, well, pretty much any perspective.  But those are few and far between.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> So I think very few people are going to have an issue with the notion that 5e's design has a meaningful impact on its popularity. I think almost all the pushback comes from the idea that a more popular game is necessarily a better game. 5e is a good game. It's a popular game. It's also not a better game then other games that are less popular.




In theory, in a broad sense, you could argue that a game that is more popular _entirely from its design_ would be a better game in any general sense you could use.

But, of course, almost no game runs entirely from its design--other factors are virtually _always_ in play--so popularity by itself tells you nothing beyond that something is more popular.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> That'd require a particular tunnel-vision approach to claim it.  The issue is that what we can't do is establish in any verifiable way how much of that popularity is system based; given that, its entirely possible that if you pulled out all the other factors, D&D wouldn't be any more popular than a number of other game systems.
> 
> But we don't know.  We probably _can't_ know.



Comparing just between 4e and 5e controls for most of the non-system related advantages of d&d.  The remaining popularity difference would presumably be driven by system differences - unless there’s some other highly plausible explanation?


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Comparing just between 4e and 5e controls for most of the non-system related advantages of d&d.  The remaining popularity difference would presumably be driven by system differences - unless there’s some other highly plausible explanation?




I mean it does not account for the colossal boneheaded decision making of Wizards' business unit back in 2008.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I mean it does not account for the colossal boneheaded decision making of Wizards' business unit back in 2008.



I have no idea what this refers to, but I have no doubt that it is true.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I can't follow you there.  I absolutely think some RPGs as superior to others.
> 
> But the important element is that I think that from my perspective.  I don't think that concept means anything without establishing there's a perspective one is viewing that from; in a broad generalization, I think the best one could (theoretically) say is that a given game seems to do nothing others don't do better from, well, pretty much any perspective.  But those are few and far between.



On what do you base their superiority?


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## Aldarc (Nov 4, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Well, I'm glad that you thought it was a good framework. I hope you understand that I am choosing not to respond to the post because it is, for some people (like me) deeply insulting. If anyone can appreciate hyperbole, I can. But I don't really enjoy having the same group denigrate my playing preferences again. I'll explain after the jump!
> 
> Imagine a slightly different perspective. Let me take this away from 5e for just a second before going back in, because it's not really about 5e. Whenever there is a conversation about TTRPG theory, or something interesting, it always ends up being the same people talking about the same things. It's not like 'Murika (I mean, really?). It's more like a high school cafeteria, where the same bullies patrol the area. They make fun of all the kids for either being part of the "crowd" (who wants to be like all those people, they don't even know what they want) or they make fun of any other smaller group that isn't like them. No other conversations are allowed, or they get shouted down (or reported to the principal).
> 
> ...



For someone who claims not to be responding to my post, you sure are clearly making a deliberate and concerted effort to make as many mean-spirited personal swipes at my post as possible. And it's a pretty bad faith take too. For starters, I am not making fun of anyone for being part of the in-crowd nor am I bullying anyone. My post reflects a genuine frustration that I felt when discussing tabletop games, and I tried my best to convey that in a way that I thought it would be easily understood, though with some tongue-in-cheek satrical prodding at American exceptionalism and a relatively common unfamiliarity with how non-American democracies operate. 

I certainly have not said that there is only one true way for theory or games, especially since my criticism regarding quasi-nationalistic behaviors surrounding gaming identities was meant to dispel that idea, and I did not single out D&D either there. I do, however, take issue with people who think that D&D's approach to roleplaying is the only way possible or that alternative structures of RP "governance" are somehow inherently badwrong because it lies outside of how D&D does it.

I most definitely can talk about what 5e did well, as I don't think that it's popularity amounts to brand alone, and I have done so plenty of times. I just don't think it's particularly interesting to discuss, because it seems (a) obvious and consequently (b) somewhat self-serving since those reasons are obvious. Should I praise 5e again to appease you? Do I need to pass yet another arbitrary purity test that proves my patriotic appreciation of D&D? But this again goes back to this weird song and dance where I feel like I constantly have to reaffirm fans of the 800 lb. gorilla of its greatness.

Despite what you may think, I did not set about to write that post to insult you. I just wish that you could have shown the courtesy to take my post in the good faith it was delivered and return the favor without the veiled insults. There is no need to make things personal, veiled or othewise.



Campbell said:


> So I think very few people are going to have an issue with the notion that 5e's design has a meaningful impact on its popularity. I think almost all the pushback comes from the idea that a more popular game is necessarily a better game. 5e is a good game. It's a popular game. It's also not a better game then other games that are less popular.



This.



FrogReaver said:


> On what do you base their superiority?



They're not F.A.T.A.L.


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## loverdrive (Nov 4, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> That is not at all a true comment, in my opinion.
> 
> It (1) elevates TTRPGs to a position of specialness that isn't true, (2) posits that TTRPG fans are more stupid than fans in any other area, and (3) overlooks the nature of fandom.



I think, TTRPGs _are_ unique. Assuming the default entry point of D&D, there are some qualities that other hobbies I can think of don't posses:

*Open-ended nature of the game*. There are no obvious limitations, quite the opposite, in fact — rule 0 is a thing, after all, and unlimited freedom is a common part of how people describe the hobby to their friends.


A related thing, *perceived ease of modification*. In, say, videogames, when one thinks "oh my God I love Call of Duty so much, what if it was like Star Wars, with blasters and stuff?", modifying the game to be Star Wars is not really an option. You can do that, sure, but for an average gamer, it's an insurmountable task — it's obviously easier to look for a Star Wars first-person shooter that it is to mod stormtroopers into Call of Duty.

IN TTRPGs, you don't need to know how to code, or make 3d models or levels or sound design. You just need to know how to write. The perceived amount of effort required to homebrew Star Wars D&D is, at least, comparable to the perceived amount of effort required to learn a new system.

Post AD&D 1E complexity of the game also is a factor — after studying 300+ page behemoth of a rulebook for your first game, it's reasonable to assume that other games are just as damn heavy.

The *cultural significance*. There's no "normie" word for videogames. Like, an average person who is even just vaguely interested in vidya ain't gonna call them all "Call of Duty". Call of Duty, however big, way damn bigger than D&D will ever be, is still _a_ videogame.

There's a "normie" word for TTRPGs — it's "D&D". Dungeons and Dragons is _the_ tabletop roleplaying game.


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## Umbran (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Heck, I'd be willing to make arguments why 5e (which, to keep clear, I'm not a fan of) is superior to editions prior to 3e.




Because... that's constructive?

I'm going to reject that there is a flat "superior" or "inferior" to RPGs, without regard to goals or intended experiences.  Just as there's no objective superior in cuisine, books, or movies.  To steal the line from Shakespeare, in its original meaning, there is no accounting for taste.

If you want to make arguments why 5e is superior than OtherGame at doing X, Y, and Z, for your group that wants to have a game with lots of A and B, but no C, that might make sense.  But a general, "5e is better than OtherGame" is devoid of context.


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## Malmuria (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Many people I've talked to (or just observed talking to other people), both IRL and on the Internet don't _really_ want D&D specifically, they just want a roleplaying game. When someone tells you a story how they played a 5E campaign without a single combat and how much fun they had investigating a murder mystery or being spooked in a haunted house or just talking in-character or whatever as opposed to boringly slaying goblins, question "then what was the point of using D&D 5E ruleset?" immediately pops to my mind.




There was a thread about social mechanics a while back, and I said I was ambivalent about them (I think I made an offhand reference to FKR and then @Snarf Zagyg kept making new threads and now here we are).  And the more I think about it, I think the way that 5e handles it (i.e., by not handling, whether by design or not (probably not)) is actually fine, and is actually a feature, not a bug.  It provides a context (fantasy archetypes and strong characterization) and then steps out of the way, and I think people like this.  That is, we can look at people describing play experiences that don't utilize the 5e rules and ask if there is a better system for them, and maybe there is!  Maybe they just don't know enough about other games.  On the other hand, there's maybe something about the 'provide context, then get out of the way' approach of 5e that is actually a preference for groups.  

There's something analogous going on with using natural language for combat things.  One could ask, how is that good design, if you have a combat mini-game with imprecise language.  But I think maybe natural language is evocative and accessible in ways that constitute a preference and are not just an indication that people don't yet know about other systems.

Together with other social and cultural changes, I think this makes 5e a more accessible game to people who had been previously marginalized in the hobby.  

Separately, this thread from Avery Alder is interesting for this discussion


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

One thing that might be interesting is if there was a quasi psychological and preference profile that would be capable of predicatively matching players to games they are likely to prefer.


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## Malmuria (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> One thing that might be interesting is if there was a quasi psychological and preference profile that would be capable of predicatively matching players to games they are likely to prefer.



that sounds like a potential black mirror episode


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## Aldarc (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> One thing that might be interesting is if there was a quasi psychological and preference profile that would be capable of predicatively matching players to games they are likely to prefer.



This is actually one way that I use D&D. After a level 1-5+ journey of a party, it's generally a fairly easy to assess the sort of things that the players may prefer. I find D&D generally useful for matching players to preferred systems or even alternative preferred play styles within D&D. But that also requires knowing the strengths and weaknesses of D&D as well as the sort of play experiences that other games tend to cultivate or are designed to cultivate.


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## gorice (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The success of 5e is obviously a lot about branding and market dynamics.  But playing it, and seeing others play it and get into rpgs for the first time, I think what it suggests to me is, to put it pithily, ‘system doesn’t matter.’  Or doesn’t matter to the degree and in the ways that some people think it does.  There’s an element to a game system that affords a playstyle by simply not getting in the way.  So, we don’t actually need mechanics for fantasy shopping.  The character and world building prompts in the game do a better job, _without rules_, to give people the fantasy shopping simulator they desire.  Making sure the ‘system has a say’ would make the experience _less_ fun.  When people are trying to perform, having to refer to mechanics can be disruptive. (Similarity we can say that critical role was influential for 5e’s success.  But what makes dnd a good vehicle for that kind of game?  What about dnd produces the Matt mercers of the world?)



So, this is a tangent on a tangent on a tangent, and a whole can of worms as well, but I think you're working with a much narrower definition of 'system' than the original epithet assumed. For example, personally, 'social combat' mechanics are not something I want in my games, but having things like stakes, an understanding of what different characters want, and a connection to the game's broader trajectory or reward cycle is absolutely necessary to stop social scenes falling flat. A fantasy shopping scene won't work if the characters don't want to buy anything, and if the things they buy can have no effect on the game later. So, even a completely 'freeform' shopping scene in D&D is actually strongly mechanically anchored.

This is pretty much the implication of the 'fruitful void' idea from your later comment. Mechanical procedures are used to generate the space for people to play. This is actually my main line of critique regarding 5e: it has good procedures for creating this void for some use cases, and horrifically inadequate ones for others.


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## Campbell (Nov 4, 2021)

I agree with much of what Avery had to say. This is pretty much the only space I ever bring up Forge stuff. I mostly prefer post-Forge stuff. It's just that in this particular space I often feel like I'm stuck in the 1990s talking to the White Wolf magazine crowd. Just like getting across that there are like other options than sandboxes and railroads feels daunting. Even expressing that we can like frame scenes, have players just play their character, see what happens, and then frame new scenes just feels like pulling teeth. Every time I see stuff like the inherent cynicism towards people wanting their characters to like matter or get called selfish when I clearly express a preference (with no expectation people will share my preference) it only feeds into the sense that it's still important to keep saying these things. Not because people should play like I play, but because I feel like even after 20 damn years I have to fight for right to even exist and be seen in this space. To even be part of the damn conversation.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> For someone who claims not to be responding to my post, you sure are clearly making a deliberate and concerted effort to make as many mean-spirited personal swipes at my post as possible. And it's a pretty bad faith take too.




So ... to be clear, you want to make absolutely certain that I understand that (1) The post that you made, as a _reply to my post_, and that I viewed as insulting, was not, in fact insulting, and (2) any response I make to that post to explain what I wrote is not only insulting to you, but bad faith, too!

But to make sure there is nothing unclear, this is exactly what you wrote as a reply to my post, and was the _exact part_ that someone else quoted as a great framework and that I responded to-

_This feels a bit like an earlier comment ... that talked about the veiled issue of how one is only permitted to talk about D&D or 5e in terms that showers praise on it while exclaiming it better than the rest. IMHO, it seems that anyone who needs their 800 pound market gorilla praised in that fashion - no matter what we market or product we are talking about - has no genuine intention of engaging in TTRPG criticism or theory, but, rather, are fishing for reassurance for a fragile ego that their gamer identity is the best because ad populum.

I understand that Coca-Cola is a market leader in drinks and I understand why it is popular, but that doesn't mean that I will or should recommend it for everyone or in all occasions. For example, I probably won't recommend it to someone before they run a marathon.

Or likewise: *'MERICA! (Truck yeah!)* The USA is the greatest country ever. Praise be the Flag of Flags. America can do no wrong. America is mother. America is father. American exceptionalism is the most exceptional! And so on. But it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans I have encountered either here or elsewhere who have little to no grasp (almost to the point of being offended) of the idea that other fully functioning non-American democracies aren't designed just like America is. The idea, for example, that the citizens of other countries have greater liberties or freedoms in some aspects than Americans is so anethema to American thinking and self-identity. It is so offensive to some Americans that America is not the best at everything. How could this be possible? They are the land of the free. They personally invented democracy in 1776. They have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights. How could other citizens possibly have more freedoms in not-America? (It's okay, I can say all of this as an American citizen, with special cred as a Southerner from Appalachia with both sides of my family living in America for 250+ years.)_

So, I apologize if I somehow misinterpreted this.

I don't think I did. At all. But sure, I guess I demand praise for 5e, and demand reassurance for a fragile ego. And have no intention of engaging in TTRPG theory or criticism. 

You know, just like all them ignorant 'Murikans who have no idea that a world can possibly exist.




Aldarc said:


> Should I praise 5e again to appease you? Do I need to pass yet another arbitrary purity test that proves my patriotic appreciation of D&D? But this again goes back to this weird song and dance where I feel like I constantly have to reaffirm fans of the 800 lb. gorilla of its greatness.




Okay. If you don't see how someone might take offense at these characterizations, I don't think further explanation is going to help.


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## loverdrive (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Sure but IMO that made a bit better argument before 4e and 5e as the cause for D&D’s popularity. But it doesn’t explain 5e’s popularity relative to 4e’s.  What does is the difference in the game itself. There’s something more to it than starting first and branding, *especially after all these years.*



I'd say, "all these years" only increase the advantage of cultural significance, branding and starting first if we're talking about a product totally dominating the space.

With each passing decade, chances that something will ever replace Coca-Cola are getting more and more slim. Or Google. Or YouTube.

For me, Coca-Cola is just a part of life that existed since forever, not really different from water or even the sun in the sky. I've been drinking it for my whole life, I've constantly seen it in movies and heard it mentioned in songs. В руке банка колы, в кармане пакетик с киви-и. For me, Pepsi isn't a soft drink, it's a Coca-Cola-like.

For modern internet users, especially young ones, Google is such a thing. Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo aren't search engines, they are Google-likes, to the point where "bing it" product placement in some movie I don't remember felt almost like a joke.

D&D existed since forever, and is a most prominent roleplaying game, that is often referenced in TV, film and videogames. Other games are D&D-likes, and, probably, will forever be.

All in all, I can't see D&D being really eclipsed by anything now, in 2E 21, even if WotC will wake up tomorrow and decide that the dice must only be played on certified birch dicefields. I can see that happening in the eighties, though.


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## ReshiIRE (Nov 4, 2021)

I think it might be time for people to take a step back and away from anything personal; it doesn't advance the discussion.

Having played D&D 5e, and having read and wanting to run other systems... I can certainly see advantages and disadvantages to 5e as a system, and to using 5e for fantasy, and for using 5e as a base for a system outside of fantasy. Level Up 5e seems like it will solve a number of these problems and be quite a good refinement; I hope that the 2024 revision will incorporate positive changes; but I certainly know that if I can find players for it, I'd prefer to run pathfinder 2e. Likewise, if I ever get to run it, I'd certainly prefer to use Cyberpunk RED over 5e for a cyberpunk world I have in my head.

So for me, 5e is inferior to the other options I have for the games and stories I want to run (and maybe play).

_That doesn't make it inferior for everyone, or a 'wrong' choice, or anything but a preference_. I think people need to step back and realise that most of us, when talking about our opinions, and what we prefer, and what we dislike, are speaking with _subjectivity being implied_. Like... that is certainly how I go about it the vast majority of the time. It's the only sane position to hold. This video by Joseph Anderson is perhaps harsh and not immune from criticism, but I feel it's the only way to handle conversations on the internet now.

It doesn't mean that examining it's popularity from the point of view of "what does the system does well that make it so popular?" is wrong either (though like others it needs to be acknowledged the system _does_ have many inherit brand advantages). I do think the system gets a lot right, more than it gets wrong - it's ability of being fairly pick up and play from a player side is a big system advantage, and I think it should be acknowledged that _Lost Mines _being a (as far as I know) great adventure - showing a commitment from WoTC to work hard on adventures - definitely helped the system and showed DMs what was possible to do.


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## loverdrive (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> There was a thread about social mechanics a while back, and I said I was ambivalent about them (I think I made an offhand reference to FKR and then @Snarf Zagyg kept making new threads and now here we are). And the more I think about it, I think the way that 5e handles it (i.e., by not handling, whether by design or not (probably not)) is actually fine, and is actually a feature, not a bug. It provides a context (fantasy archetypes and strong characterization) and then steps out of the way, and I think people like this. That is, we can look at people describing play experiences that don't utilize the 5e rules and ask if there is a better system for them, and maybe there is! Maybe they just don't know enough about other games. On the other hand, there's maybe something about the 'provide context, then get out of the way' approach of 5e that is actually a preference for groups



Sometimes, better system is no system at all.

I think, the benefits of using a ruleset must outweigh the inherent overhead of using it and there's a lot of overhead coming with 5e.

The context that D&D provides is also kinda weird. Like, what's the difference between a barbarian and a fighter? Or a cleric and a paladin? Or a sorcerer and wizard? The D&D archetypes are mostly endemic to D&D, and I don't think they mean much for people who aren't already neck deep in the game, so I don't think I can agree with that.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> There was a thread about social mechanics a while back, and I said I was ambivalent about them (I think I made an offhand reference to FKR and then @Snarf Zagyg kept making new threads and now here we are).  And the more I think about it, I think the way that 5e handles it (i.e., by not handling, whether by design or not (probably not)) is actually fine, and is actually a feature, not a bug.  It provides a context (fantasy archetypes and strong characterization) and then steps out of the way, and I think people like this.  That is, we can look at people describing play experiences that don't utilize the 5e rules and ask if there is a better system for them, and maybe there is!  Maybe they just don't know enough about other games.  On the other hand, there's maybe something about the 'provide context, then get out of the way' approach of 5e that is actually a preference for groups.
> 
> There's something analogous going on with using natural language for combat things.  One could ask, how is that good design, if you have a combat mini-game with imprecise language.  But I think maybe natural language is evocative and accessible in ways that constitute a preference and are not just an indication that people don't yet know about other systems.
> 
> ...



What are you talking about?  5e has a clear set of social mechanics and a process for play.  It's in the DMG, and not as an optional set of rules.  It's about setting initial attitude for NPCs, having players interact to discover NPC BIFTs, and then being able to leverage those for advantage on the called for check to resolve an ask or demand.  Social conflict resolution mechanics totally and absolutely exist in 5e.  They're just ignored by just about everyone that already knows how to play D&D and so doesn't bother with the 5e rules that don't align with how they already know how to run D&D. 

It's page 244 of the 5e DMG, by the way, under the heading "Social Interactions."  This is in the "Running the Game" chapter.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> The context that D&D provides is also kinda weird. Like, what's the difference between a barbarian and a fighter? Or a cleric and a paladin? Or a sorcerer and wizard? The D&D archetypes are mostly endemic to D&D, and I don't think they mean much for people who aren't already neck deep in the game, so I don't think I can agree with that.





 A thing can be "high quality," and have "broad appeal," and still be forced to make compromises- in fact, I'd argue that making those compromises is part of what drives the broad appeal.

Because 5e is not, and cannot be, a niche product, it has to make compromises. To use one example that I think most people can agree with is the inclusion of legacy components and lore.

5e includes legacy components. It has to use "parts" (rules, lore) from older editions. If the game designers were designing 5e from scratch, if they were making some "white room" best game ever using only the "best practice" design that has been learned over nearly 50 years, I'm guessing some of that legacy would be ditched. Which ones- the six ability scores? The weird mishmash of classes? The half-orc? Who knows? One person's sacred cow is another person's hamburger. We've already seen alignment marginalized over time- but also the difficulty in removing it completely; I don't think it would have been possible with 5e's release.

The point of this is that part of the broad appeal of the game, part of the "popularity" is that it retains some continuity- that it continues to have those compromises. There is something for everyone, or for most people. There is both some modern design, and some continuity with the past.

You can use this with many aspects of the game. It's an incredibly tough thing to design for broad appeal. It's easy to design something when you're only designing for a small group, and don't have to worry about large sales, or broad popularity.

I'm reminded of the McDonald's example I heard of some time ago- the executive chef had some serious training and chops in terms of haute cuisine- top of class from CIA, and so on. But the reason why developing new products is so difficult isn't because they can't make all sorts of tasty things in their test kitchen; it's because the sheer scale that is required means that basic logistics and sourcing is the primary challenge for new menu items- not to mention that any dish has to be either be made with pre-exiting equipment or requires a serious investment, plus anything has to be easily made by that workforce. In short, it's a look at what types of design choices have to be made in different contexts.


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## payn (Nov 4, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> A thing can be "high quality," and have "broad appeal," and still be forced to make compromises- in fact, I'd argue that making those compromises is part of what drives the broad appeal.
> 
> Because 5e is not, and cannot be, a niche product, it has to make compromises. To use one example that I think most people can agree with is the inclusion of legacy components and lore.
> 
> ...



This leads back to that massive brand feature D&D has. Instead of pursuing games that don't have D&D legacy items in them, some gamers campaign to have them striped out instead. Its really important that the Kleenex/Coke of the hobby fit their preferences.


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## Aldarc (Nov 4, 2021)

I agree that compromise plays a large part of 5e’s initial and continued appeal. A number of rules are in/substantial enough for fans of different play styles to utilize as written, beef up, or ignore entirely, particularly in regards to social and exploration pillars of the game. 

I do wish that WotC would take more risks with the system now that they have garnered trust amongst its new core fanbase or go back and address some commonly acknowledge sore spots in the game. I do think that they are taking some risks given how they are removing racial bonuses. And maybe they will make further improvements and polishes as part of the 2024 revision.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 4, 2021)

Apologies if this has been discussed in detail in past threads, but something I've wondered about for years is the prominence of fantasy as a genre in the TTRPG hobby.

I think this directly ties into what we're talking about re: D&D's popularity, but I could be wrong. And maybe there are easy answers I'm just missing. But I can't work it out, because, with very rare exceptions (Game of Thrones, the LotR movies) fantasy barely registers in pop culture, and yet it's the overwhelming default in RPGs. 

It feels to me like there's a chicken-and-egg dilemma here.

Is it the case that:

-People who are super into fantasy are drawn to D&D, which has become synonymous with fantasy, feeding its popularity?

-D&D's popularity draws people to fantasy, because D&D is synonymous with the genre?

It could be both at once, obviously, but I wonder if, in addition to what @loverdrive was saying about D&D being the normie term for all TTRPGs, it's also in some ways a universal reference point for fantasy, a genre that otherwise lives mostly in books and video games, and rarely achieves the kind of pop culture ubiquity that sci-fi, for example, often has. Is part of D&D's gravitational pull and brand momentum the fact that it started in the 70's as sort of a safe haven for fantasy fans--the dweebiest of dweebs, long before nerd culture was absorbed into the mainstream, and back when even Trekkies could look down on them in their cultural ghetto--and was just never really challenged as a way of establishing a specific kind of fandom-based identity. It's a less fragile fandom, in a lot of ways, than being a Star Wars fan or even a LotR fan. It's basically saying "I'm a fantasy fan." And time and culture has just cemented that unique relationship, making fantasy fandom and identity inextricable from D&D fandom and identity, to the point that you literally can't separate the two now.

Not a terribly great example, but the Pixar movie Onward is set in a fantasy version of modern day, but it doesn't actually play on fantasy tropes. It plays almost exclusively (IMO) on D&D tropes. There's a damn gelatinous cube scene and everything!

Anyway, that's something that's been bugging me--whether D&D essentially created and sustained the modern version of fantasy fandom, or whether fantasy fandom sustains and grows D&D, for all the reasons above (relative paucity of mainstream fantasy content, historical associations with D&D, etc.).


Or is it much simpler and more mechanical: Fantasy is the most natural fit for TTRPGs, because guns, spaceships, and technology of all kinds make it generally harder for GMs and adventure writers to anticipate what players might do, and most gaming is based on anticipating, railroading, etc (no judgments there, just seems like an obvious baseline to me). Same for full-on superheroes, which, if all things were equal and TTRPGs reflected the larger culture, would completely dwarf all other gaming genres.


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## Malmuria (Nov 4, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> What are you talking about?  5e has a clear set of social mechanics and a process for play.  It's in the DMG, and not as an optional set of rules.  It's about setting initial attitude for NPCs, having players interact to discover NPC BIFTs, and then being able to leverage those for advantage on the called for check to resolve an ask or demand.  Social conflict resolution mechanics totally and absolutely exist in 5e.  They're just ignored by just about everyone that already knows how to play D&D and so doesn't bother with the 5e rules that don't align with how they already know how to run D&D.
> 
> It's page 244 of the 5e DMG, by the way, under the heading "Social Interactions."  This is in the "Running the Game" chapter.



Yes, there are about 6-7 pages dedicated to the social pillar in the phb/basic rules, and 3-4 pages in the dmg (the latter has sections like "Multiple Checks: Certain situations might call for more than one check, particularly if the adventurers come into the interaction with multiple goals."  Helpful!).  My point is that maybe the relative lack of detail and integration for some of the "pillars of play" actually helps facilitate engagement.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 4, 2021)

payn said:


> This leads back to that massive brand feature D&D has. Instead of pursuing games that don't have D&D legacy items in them, some gamers campaign to have them striped out instead. Its really important that the Kleenex/Coke of the hobby fit their preferences.




Yeah, and it definitely results in awkward arguments. 

That, to me, is partly why I find design decisions in 5e so fascinating- I think that they can tell us a lot about what is broadly popular outside of our preferences. Because we know that 5e (and Hasbro) have the resources to survey, playtest, and iterate- but with the goal of making a game that is _broadly popular, _and not necessarily _well-designed._

So looking at the crystal ball, all of the discussions about things like increasing the lethality of 5e, or making it less magical (preferences expressed by people like me) are just complete non-starters. That's not what most people like or want. I would also say that tucking away variant rules like plot points in the DMG without further elaboration or publicity shows that 5e is unlikely to move from the current play loop / narrative authorship model any time soon. And so on. 

Personally, I'm guessing that the next edition might have additional rules that allow the table to de-emphasize combat for a more narrative approach, but maybe I'm misreading recent releases.


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## Malmuria (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Sometimes, better system is no system at all.
> 
> I think, the benefits of using a ruleset must outweigh the inherent overhead of using it and there's a lot of overhead coming with 5e.
> 
> The context that D&D provides is also kinda weird. Like, what's the difference between a barbarian and a fighter? Or a cleric and a paladin? Or a sorcerer and wizard? The D&D archetypes are mostly endemic to D&D, and I don't think they mean much for people who aren't already neck deep in the game, so I don't think I can agree with that.



I'd be happy with playing a five torches deep game that collapses some of those similar archetypes, but I think the detail provided in the phb is enough (obviously) to sustain prolonged interest

dnd-derived video games also help introduce these archetypes even before new players try ttrpgs


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## Aldarc (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Yes, there are about 6-7 pages dedicated to the social pillar in the phb/basic rules, and 3-4 pages in the dmg (the latter has sections like "Multiple Checks: Certain situations might call for more than one check, particularly if the adventurers come into the interaction with multiple goals."  Helpful!).  My point is that maybe the relative lack of detail and integration for some of the "pillars of play" actually helps facilitate engagement.



I think that some better guidelines would be appreciated so that the sorts of engagements that are facilitated between participants at the table aren't the sort of heated engagements reminiscent of when people talk politics on Thanksgiving.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Apologies if this has been discussed in detail in past threads, but something I've wondered about for years is the prominence of fantasy as a genre in the TTRPG hobby.
> 
> I think this directly ties into what we're talking about re: D&D's popularity, but I could be wrong. And maybe there are easy answers I'm just missing. But I can't work it out, because, with very rare exceptions (Game of Thrones, the LotR movies) fantasy barely registers in pop culture, and yet it's the overwhelming default in RPGs.
> 
> ...



it may be that simple fantasy concepts resonate with people on many different levels.  The knight in shining armor, rescuing the princess, handling good kings, handling bad kings, the warrior, hard work, risk and sacrifice to improve ones place in life, supernatural evil, heroic good making it right. Fantasy has a ton of concepts that fundamentally have meaning to people.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Yes, there are about 6-7 pages dedicated to the social pillar in the phb/basic rules, and 3-4 pages in the dmg (the latter has sections like "Multiple Checks: Certain situations might call for more than one check, particularly if the adventurers come into the interaction with multiple goals."  Helpful!).  My point is that maybe the relative lack of detail and integration for some of the "pillars of play" actually helps facilitate engagement.



This feels like special pleading.  We're looking at, what, 9-11 pages defining how social interactions work in 5e, some with pretty exacting specificity some being pretty vague.  However, when it comes to convincing the shopkeeper to give you a better price while shopping, 5e defines this interaction and mechanizes it pretty effectively.  You have a shopkeeper NPC, you assign them BIFTs and an initial attitude towards the player which will be friendly, indifferent, or hostile (and the scope of actions from the NPC is pretty well laid out here).  Then the players can engage in conversation with the NPC, and make checks with clear processes to improve attitude or discover BIFTs, which can be spent for advantage on improving attitude or the final CHA check.  Then there's the final CHA check to see if the results were obtained, with a DC set by way of current attitude and what's being asked.  This is a pretty robust and well mechanized process.  It doesn't look at all like the freeform play you were characterizing.

Now take a game like Blades in the Dark, which is often held up as an example of a game that strongly mechanizes social encounters and is quite often decried for it.  There are fewer pages of rules for social interactions.  Matter of fact, the rules to use are the same ones for any action in the game, with a quick list and blurb for the various social actions (which are pretty wide open and often interchangeable) -- less than what 5e has to define the proficiencies, even.  Yet, this gets held up as too much system for social challenges quite often, with distaste for this often stated.  5e has more than this, but gets a pass because you can just ignore it.

There's a double standard at play here.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Because... that's constructive?




When talking about it from my specific POV, absolutely.  Whether absolutely anyone wants to do that is, of course, in serious question. 



Umbran said:


> I'm going to reject that there is a flat "superior" or "inferior" to RPGs, without regard to goals or intended experiences.  Just as there's no objective superior in cuisine, books, or movies.  To steal the line from Shakespeare, in its original meaning, there is no accounting for taste.




If you look, that's exactly what I said--that such things almost always require a specific POV.   I just know there are a few of what are sometimes called "fantasy heartbreakers" that don't seem to do, well, anything better than other similar games, and I've never seen anyone who really seemed to think they do.  And I'm including games that have aims I don't share here (some OSR products for example) where I'm not just reflecting my own views.  Unsurprisingly, they aren't exactly games with a big fan base.



Umbran said:


> If you want to make arguments why 5e is superior than OtherGame at doing X, Y, and Z, for your group that wants to have a game with lots of A and B, but no C, that might make sense.  But a general, "5e is better than OtherGame" is devoid of context.




Again, go back and look at what I said, which was making such arguments only makes sense when argued from a specific POV.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> On what do you base their superiority?



 Are we talking about my comment about 5e or the games I reference as having games that seem to do everything others do better?  In the latter case it'd require a lot of unpacking with examples that would almost certainly be immensely off-topic for this thread, but in general its games that claim to have the same design ethic as other games, where when compared its difficult to see any benefit to the changes _even when viewed from that ethic_.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Comparing just between 4e and 5e controls for most of the non-system related advantages of d&d.  The remaining popularity difference would presumably be driven by system differences - unless there’s some other highly plausible explanation?




Not really.  Note there's also some different emphasis on settings between the two--there were also people who responded badly to the Nentir Vale and PoL approach in 4e.  I don't consider those part of system, per se, though they influence playstyle at least somewhat.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> They're not F.A.T.A.L.




Or, honestly, in somewhat less extreme cases, at least possible to play with the material available.  There are games where it appears literally impossible to complete character generation with the material provided, and lacking in any indication that the holes are intended to be filled by those playing.  There was at least one game I was aware of that apparently failed to actually explain how damage was done in the system (and no, it was not a game with a non-combat focus).

Aiming at games with these sort of writing flaws is, of course, low-hanging fruit, and as I indicated there are more subtle cases where you have two games that are trying to emulate some particular old-school game, and where the difference in changes they've chosen seems, even by their apparent market, to be nonsensical.  In some cases this may simply misaimed design (in other words, the apparent target market is not actually the intended one), but I'm pretty comfortable describing misaimed design as being worse than games that know what they're trying for and know how to tell you that, too.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> A related thing, *perceived ease of modification*. In, say, videogames, when one thinks "oh my God I love Call of Duty so much, what if it was like Star Wars, with blasters and stuff?", modifying the game to be Star Wars is not really an option. You can do that, sure, but for an average gamer, it's an insurmountable task — it's obviously easier to look for a Star Wars first-person shooter that it is to mod stormtroopers into Call of Duty.
> 
> IN TTRPGs, you don't need to know how to code, or make 3d models or levels or sound design. You just need to know how to write. The perceived amount of effort required to homebrew Star Wars D&D is, at least, comparable to the perceived amount of effort required to learn a new system.




Eh.  I know you used "perceived" in this, but I think there are many, many systems where if you try to do that without having a clear idea of how the mechanics fit together you're going to get pretty bad outcomes.  While not perhaps as severe as doing computer mods, its not a trivial skill.



loverdrive said:


> Post AD&D 1E complexity of the game also is a factor — after studying 300+ page behemoth of a rulebook for your first game, it's reasonable to assume that other games are just as damn heavy.
> 
> The *cultural significance*. There's no "normie" word for videogames. Like, an average person who is even just vaguely interested in vidya ain't gonna call them all "Call of Duty". Call of Duty, however big, way damn bigger than D&D will ever be, is still _a_ videogame.
> 
> There's a "normie" word for TTRPGs — it's "D&D". Dungeons and Dragons is _the_ tabletop roleplaying game.




Well, that's got more to do with the fact that for many of them, other RPGs effectively _don't exist_.  They don't often even know there _are_ such things.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> All in all, I can't see D&D being really eclipsed by anything now, in 2E 21, even if WotC will wake up tomorrow and decide that the dice must only be played on certified birch dicefields. I can see that happening in the eighties, though.




Even then, the explosive growth of D&D would have made it almost insurmountable to displace in fantasy at least, and there's always the question if any other genre could have competed with it at all (certainly neither SF nor supers ever did).


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Apologies if this has been discussed in detail in past threads, but something I've wondered about for years is the prominence of fantasy as a genre in the TTRPG hobby.




I've seen  arguments that its not just fantasy, but a _particular sort of fantasy_ that D&D supports, and I think its a combination of that fact and the particular time and places when D&D got rolling that largely contribute to it.  Its a form of fantasy that easily supports ongoing group play, sets up, generically, a set of easily understood aims that multiple players/character can engage with, and sets all of the players as a default on a relatively easy footing.

Its actually not easy to find an SF set up that's similar; almost all of them fail out on some of these grounds.  Different problems arise with superheroes.  Some other genres are not as popular in general (Westerns) or bring their own problems to the table (urban fantasy).  That doesn't mean there aren't people that like SF or urban fantasy, but it requires more work to get them in the same space on it.


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## pemerton (Nov 4, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The success of 5e is obviously a lot about branding and market dynamics.  But playing it, and seeing others play it and get into rpgs for the first time, I think what it suggests to me is, to put it pithily, ‘system doesn’t matter.’  Or doesn’t matter to the degree and in the ways that some people think it does.  There’s an element to a game system that affords a playstyle by simply not getting in the way.  So, we don’t actually need mechanics for fantasy shopping. The character and world building prompts in the game do a better job, _without rules_, to give people the fantasy shopping simulator they desire.  Making sure the ‘system has a say’ would make the experience _less_ fun.



I don't know who the _some people_ are to whom you're referring.

But most people who invoke Edwards's notion that "system matters" are using _system_ in the way he does - ie _a means by which in-game events are determined to occur_. And so would say that you are describing a system for resolving fantasy shopping that you prefer - ie consensual agreement on a shared fiction - and are contrasting it with a different system - eg one which uses mechanical resolution to constrain who is allowed to suggest or agree to what. (As an example, Classic Traveller (1977 version) uses a system like this, mediated via the Streetwise mechanics and the Law Level framework, if the PCs are trying to shop for things that are sketchy or illegal.)

I'm also puzzled by your use of _need_. Are you meaning to imply that people who play Classic Traveller using the Streetwise system are acting _needlessly_ or _irrationally_? It just seems to me that, unlike you, for at least some of their fantasy shopping they want an approach other than consensual agreement on the shared fiction. The concept of _need_ doesn't seem to me to have any purchase here.


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## pemerton (Nov 4, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> _Even D&D 4e was dramatically more popular in terms of raw numbers than virtually anything else on the market.  _So even though a presumably significant part of the base recoiled from it, the amount left was _still_ enough to largely dwarf everything else.
> 
> That says there are issue going on here well beyond anything to do with system design.





Campbell said:


> So I think very few people are going to have an issue with the notion that 5e's design has a meaningful impact on its popularity. I think almost all the pushback comes from the idea that a more popular game is necessarily a better game.



I think the comparison to 4e is interesting.

Back when 4e launched, some people would quote sales figures which at least purported to show that the early 4e books sold more copies than 3E books in the same sort of time frame. Is this evidence that 4e was _better designed_ than 3E? (My view: no.) Is it relevant to how PF 1E fans engage with their preferred RPG? (My view: no.)

What happens if, one day, WotC launches 6E and it is _even more popular_ than 5e? Would that prove that 5E was flawed in its design? (My view: no.)

Here's a conjecture that _could_ be true, based on my knowledge of the relevant evidence:

* 4e made it possible to build a certain sort of market presence - eg drop-in organised play; streaming of play - that 3E didn't support so well;

* 4e had design elements that put a relatively hard cap on how much that market presence could grow;

* 5e builds on that established market presence but overcomes some of those hard limits.​
A more general version of the above conjecture: _4e is a necessary component of the development path that made 5e and its popularity possible_.

Now I can't prove these conjectures. Maybe there was a possible pathway to 5e - with its fixed damage expressions for spells, its short rest/long rest structure (which I gather of late is being abandoned), its death/dying rules, its monsters and NPC built on a different framework from PCs but still having the same build elements (stats, skills, powers, etc), etc - straight from 3E without going via the 4e versions of those things.

But suppose my conjectures, or something in their neighbourhood, is true. What does that tell us about 4e? And what does that tell us about 5e's eclipsing of 4e? I think it becomes something more complex than simply that 4e failed and 5e succeeded.

All that said, such conjectures and conclusions seem to me to be completely irrelevant from the point of view of someone who wants to play and enjoy 4e D&D. The fact that the game has hard caps on how much its market presence can grow is super-important for a commercial publisher like WotC, but utterly irrelevant to those actually playing the game.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 4, 2021)

pemerton said:


> All that said, such conjectures and conclusions seem to me to be completely irrelevant from the point of view of someone who wants to play and enjoy 4e D&D. The fact that the game has hard caps on how much its market presence can grow is super-important for a commercial publisher like WotC, but utterly irrelevant to those actually playing the game.




I'm going to take (mild) disagreement with this.

One of the intrinsic virtues with D&D is that when you're first getting into it, or moving to a new area, finding players is relatively easy.  So to some extent, growth of market _can_ be relevant to someone wanting to play the game.  Its unlikely to be severe impact, just because the base market is so big, but its not completely irrelevant.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I don't know who the _some people_ are to whom you're referring.
> 
> But most people who invoke Edwards's notion that "system matters" are using _system_ in the way he does - ie _a means by which in-game events are determined to occur_. And so would say that you are describing a system for resolving fantasy shopping that you prefer - ie consensual agreement on a shared fiction - and are contrasting it with a different system - eg one which uses mechanical resolution to constrain who is allowed to suggest or agree to what. (As an example, Classic Traveller (1977 version) uses a system like this, mediated via the Streetwise mechanics and the Law Level framework, if the PCs are trying to shop for things that are sketchy or illegal.)
> 
> I'm also puzzled by your use of _need_. Are you meaning to imply that people who play Classic Traveller using the Streetwise system are acting _needlessly_ or _irrationally_? It just seems to me that, unlike you, for at least some of their fantasy shopping they want an approach other than consensual agreement on the shared fiction. The concept of _need_ doesn't seem to me to have any purchase here.




I’m thinking of people on Twitter or Reddit who respond to positive play experiences —-characterized as not needing to roll dice all session because they were just role playing — by saying that the 5e can’t be credited with their successful session, on account of the relatively sparse social and exploration pillars.  That 5e is more extensive and robust in combat compared to social and  exploration tracks with my perception of the system, and from what I can gather is a common observation, but maybe that could be classed as a specific approach and contrasted with the ‘other approaches’ you reference.  However you want to classify it, I’m proposing that 5e’s system/approach is sufficient in this regard for 5e players, and not just because they are unaware, or vaguely aware but uninterested, in other games. That is, I wouldn’t assume they people prefer 5e only because they haven’t tried other games.  FWIW, I hope they do try those other games, and my statements above  were not meant to indicate that those other games are not worthwhile, much less say anything specific about classic traveller in particular.

You contrast “consensual agreement of shared fiction” with “mechanical resolution,” which is pretty close to what I was trying to say but with slightly more technical terms. Given that, it seems that the main point of your post is to suggest that I am not qualified to reference a phrase like “system matters,” or, more specifically, the way I’ve seen that sentiment expressed in online discussions. Similarity, you can probably infer from our discussions that I don’t know anything about classic traveller, and was certainly not attempting to make any claims about classic traveller, so suggesting that my comment in 5e does not apply to classic traveller it seems to imply that my frame of reference is parochial while yours is expansive.



That is, your response demonstrates the exact dynamic OP described: claiming authority by referencing a putatively deeper understanding of theory, insertion and insistence on particular phrases (with definitions known by you), and driving conversation towards your particular play experiences. As I’ve said many times, I certainly respect the depth of rpg knowledge you and others on this board have, so it’s unfortunate and unnecessary that you still feel the need to claim this authority.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 5, 2021)

D&D is popular because you can use the branding to find players and then ignore the rules you don't like citing "DM empowerment."


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I’m thinking of people on Twitter or Reddit who respond to positive play experiences —-characterized as not needing to roll dice all session because they were just role playing — by saying that the 5e can’t be credited with their successful session, on account of the relatively sparse social and exploration pillars.  That 5e is more extensive and robust in combat compared to social and  exploration tracks with my perception of the system, and from what I can gather is a common observation, but maybe that could be classed as a specific approach and contrasted with the ‘other approaches’ you reference.  However you want to classify it, I’m proposing that 5e’s system/approach is sufficient in this regard for 5e players, and not just because they are unaware, or vaguely aware but uninterested, in other games. That is, I wouldn’t assume they people prefer 5e only because they haven’t tried other games.  FWIW, I hope they do try those other games, and my statements above  were not meant to indicate that those other games are not worthwhile, much less say anything specific about classic traveller in particular.
> 
> You contrast “consensual agreement of shared fiction” with “mechanical resolution,” which is pretty close to what I was trying to say but with slightly more technical terms. Given that, it seems that the main point of your post is to suggest that I am not qualified to reference a phrase like “system matters,” or, more specifically, the way I’ve seen that sentiment expressed in online discussions. Similarity, you can probably infer from our discussions that I don’t know anything about classic traveller, and was certainly not attempting to make any claims about classic traveller, so suggesting that my comment in 5e does not apply to classic traveller it seems to imply that my frame of reference is parochial while yours is expansive.



I don't get why what you said was being turned into a slight against classic traveler either.  Your point was pretty clear IMO, mechanics aren't always required and in many cases their absence may actually be preferred.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> All that said, such conjectures and conclusions seem to me to be completely irrelevant from the point of view of someone who wants to play and enjoy 4e D&D. The fact that the game has hard caps on how much its market presence can grow is super-important for a commercial publisher like WotC, but utterly irrelevant to those actually playing the game.



I'm not sure there's any game theory or analysis is actually relevant to those wanting to play and enjoy 4e D&D.  They've already chosen their game.


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## pemerton (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I'm going to take (mild) disagreement with this.
> 
> One of the intrinsic virtues with D&D is that when you're first getting into it, or moving to a new area, finding players is relatively easy.  So to some extent, growth of market _can_ be relevant to someone wanting to play the game.  Its unlikely to be severe impact, just because the base market is so big, but its not completely irrelevant.



OK. Though there's a chicken-and-egg (or something like that) issue - change the game to much to grow market penetration, and may be the prospective player doesn't want to play it anymore!


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## pemerton (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> I'm not sure there's any game theory or analysis is actually relevant to those wanting to play and enjoy 4e D&D.  They've already chosen their game.



To me, this is a strange view to take. My main reason for engaging in theory and analysis has been to improve my play: my Rolemaster play at first, then my 4e D&D play, then other systems that I've played over the past several years.

This relates back to a point made upthread that I agreed with:


gorice said:


> a lot of internet TTRPG theory is made by people who actually do have problems to solve. It is not, in any sense of the word, academic. Players and designers have particular things that they want to achieve. I think industry  or technical knowledge would be a better comparison. (obviously, subcultural identity stuff always muddies the waters).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> TRPG theory makes a lot more sense if you approach it as a heuristic developed to serve particular technical or aesthetic goals.


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## pemerton (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I’m thinking of people on Twitter or Reddit who respond to positive play experiences —-characterized as not needing to roll dice all session because they were just role playing — by saying that the 5e can’t be credited with their successful session, on account of the relatively sparse social and exploration pillars.  That 5e is more extensive and robust in combat compared to social and  exploration tracks with my perception of the system, and from what I can gather is a common observation, but maybe that could be classed as a specific approach and contrasted with the ‘other approaches’ you reference.  However you want to classify it, I’m proposing that 5e’s system/approach is sufficient in this regard for 5e players, and not just because they are unaware, or vaguely aware but uninterested, in other games. That is, I wouldn’t assume they people prefer 5e only because they haven’t tried other games.  FWIW, I hope they do try those other games, and my statements above  were not meant to indicate that those other games are not worthwhile, much less say anything specific about classic traveller in particular.
> 
> You contrast “consensual agreement of shared fiction” with “mechanical resolution,” which is pretty close to what I was trying to say but with slightly more technical terms. Given that, it seems that the main point of your post is to suggest that I am not qualified to reference a phrase like “system matters,” or, more specifically, the way I’ve seen that sentiment expressed in online discussions. Similarity, you can probably infer from our discussions that I don’t know anything about classic traveller, and was certainly not attempting to make any claims about classic traveller, so suggesting that my comment in 5e does not apply to classic traveller it seems to imply that my frame of reference is parochial while yours is expansive.
> 
> ...



When you say "some people" in a post in a thread where a number of the posters are being criticised - as per you post here that I've quoted - I have a natural curiosity as to who the people are you have in mind. The phrase "system has a say" is one that on these boards I've only ever seen used by @Manbearcat, in posts that I believe you have probably also read, so I did take you to be alluding to him.

When you say that "system doesn't matter", a negation of a very well-known slogan associated with a particular individual and web-forum, are you surprised that that comes to mind in me (or other readers)? If what you actually mean is that you prefer free roleplaying to mechanics, I'm not sure why you don't just say that.

For me, this has nothing to do with authority: for me it is about what @Campbell posted upthread:


Campbell said:


> people make bold assertions about what's possible in roleplaying games



Eg back in the dying days of 4e D&D, when I wanted to explain why I liked skill challenges, I posted Why I like skill challenges as a noncombat resolution mechanic

I didn't say anything about what "we", or anyone else, "needs". I just explained why I like that particular method of resolution. As you can see from that thread if you want to, I didn't purport to speak for all 4e players. And indeed many 4e players posted in that thread explaining why they don't like skill challenges.

I don't know how many of the Twitter or reddit posters you refer to are also 5e players. But I don't understand why you frame your response to them using plural phrases like "we" and "5e players" (as if the latter were all of one mind on how to approach social resolution in 5e D&D play) rather than by attesting your own preferences.


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I've seen  arguments that its not just fantasy, but a _particular sort of fantasy_ that D&D supports, and I think its a combination of that fact and the particular time and places when D&D got rolling that largely contribute to it.  Its a form of fantasy that easily supports ongoing group play, sets up, generically, a set of easily understood aims that multiple players/character can engage with, and sets all of the players as a default on a relatively easy footing.
> 
> Its actually not easy to find an SF set up that's similar; almost all of them fail out on some of these grounds.  Different problems arise with superheroes.  Some other genres are not as popular in general (Westerns) or bring their own problems to the table (urban fantasy).  That doesn't mean there aren't people that like SF or urban fantasy, but it requires more work to get them in the same space on it.




Absolutely. The type of narrative D&D games (which is almost entirely unique to D&D descendants) produce is uniquely accessible because it allows for an incredibly cooperative play model. It also is pretty much like most of the video games newer gamers grew up playing so playing D&D feels more natural than something more focused on individual characters like Exalted or Legend of the Five Rings despite not being less specific than them. If you have played World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, Darkest Dungeon, Diablo, Divinity or Dragon Age you have basically already played D&D. Most video games RPGs are basically already linear storytelling based forms of D&D.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> To me, this is a strange view to take. My main reason for engaging in theory and analysis has been to improve my play: my Rolemaster play at first, then my 4e D&D play, then other systems that I've played over the past several years.



Okay.  Let me reclarify.  I don't see how theory and analysis of rpgs in general or of non-D&D-4e games helps improve your D&D 4e play?

Analyzing your D&D 4e play... I get how that might help improve your D&D 4e play.  But what does bringing other games into that discussion help?


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Okay.  Let me reclarify.  I don't see how theory and analysis of rpgs in general or of non-D&D-4e games helps improve your D&D 4e play?
> 
> Analyzing your D&D 4e play... I get how that might help improve your D&D 4e play.  But what does bringing other games into that discussion help?




A lot of the techniques I use in traditional games have their roots in other roleplaying games. I think the GM role is in part a game design role. Understanding how roleplaying games can be designed and played holistically provides a more comprehensive knowledge base that helps when it comes to tailoring the game to this specific set of players. The DMG2 is absolutely full of techniques that have their origin in other games as an example. Understanding how they work in other games really helps you apply them in 4e.

My own 4e games were immeasurably improved by both my World of Darkness/Exalted background and having an awareness of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel taught me the scene framing techniques that grounded our 4e experience.

I also think we should spend time reflecting from time to time if the game we are playing matches with what we are trying to do. When I ran Lancer I realized that it was not a good match for our game and we moved the game over to Beam Saber.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Just a quick thought on this conversation and a peculiarity of D&D and now 5e culture.

A long, long time ago, I brought up and broke down 5e’s Social Conflict mechanics. I described them as giving social play a structure and feel similar to Pictionary/Charades + Wheel of Fortune. From a read, I thought this was a very solid bit of game design not because they’re the best Social Conflict mechanics I had seen (at that point or since). I said that because they worked holistically with the rest of 5e’s design and play feel (solving various puzzles and integrating various pieces of fiction to trigger mechanical advantage).

When I ran the game, I was pleased (enough) with the results. I praised the game and design for this. This was a good long while ago.

I came on this board to express that sentiment and, to no big surprise, to a respondent pretty much everyone either didn’t have a clue what I was talking about (they didn’t read this section of the DMG or perhaps they didn’t read the DMG much at all) or (the very few) felt it was rubbish and weren’t using it.

It’s mistaken to chalk this up as a case of  “system doesn’t matter.” System very much did matter to all those folks way back when. They were subbing out 5e’s “system’s say” for:

* Procedures they had accreted over the years from other games (including past D&D).

* “GM decides” based on extrapolation of the fiction + unrevealed backstory.

* “GM decides” based on the GM’s storyteller mandate and/or AP requirements.

* Negotiated imagination via some type of table consensus achieved.

++++++++++

I frowned then that a coherent piece of 5e design was being ignored and subbed out for something else with the play culture being ignorant of the Social Conflict rules or brazenly asserting they’re either crap or not worth the effort to assimilate in play without even trying.

My takeaway wasn’t that D&D fans don’t care about “the system’s say” (as every 4e edition war proved that premise to not be true). My takeaway was that D&D fans deeply care about it (and care about it in a way I find frustrating…particularly because this would be bizarrely misattributed to design being irrelevant!)!


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Absolutely. The type of narrative D&D games (which is almost entirely unique to D&D descendants) produce is uniquely accessible because it allows for an incredibly cooperative play model. It also is pretty much like most of the video games newer gamers grew up playing so playing D&D feels more natural than something more focused on individual characters like Exalted or Legend of the Five Rings despite not being less specific than them. If you have played World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, Darkest Dungeon, Diablo, Divinity or Dragon Age you have basically already played D&D. Most video games RPGs are basically already linear storytelling based forms of D&D.




Of course that's no surprise, since most of them are descended from games that were pretty obviously D&D derived.  The interesting thing is that, to a large extent, the party based fantasy CRPG largely fell out of fashion (you'll often have more than one character but its a main character and 2-3 companions who rotate in and out), but that's probably an artifact of the move to realtime games.


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

@Manbearcat 

Another example of the same phenomenon at play are 5e Backgrounds. We have an amazing piece of game design that grounds characters to the setting, provides firm fictional positioning, and allows unlimited player fiat within a narrow area of the fiction players can depend on (that does not come from a damn spell book). 

I see so many GMs on this board treat Background features and abilities like Natural Explorer like polite suggestions and I wonder why they cannot see the brilliant pieces of 5e design for how brilliant they are.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> OK. Though there's a chicken-and-egg (or something like that) issue - change the game to much to grow market penetration, and may be the prospective player doesn't want to play it anymore!




Eh, could be, but a game you can't find fellow players for is kind of useless except as an intellectual exercise.  Its an area I can't help but think the advent of remote play has probably helped with since you don't have to locate everyone locally (though its still a challenge once you move into more obscure systems from what I've heard).


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> My takeaway wasn’t that D&D fans don’t care about “the system’s say” (as every 4e edition war proved that premise to not be true). My takeaway was that D&D fans deeply care about it (and care about it in a way I find frustrating…particularly because this would be bizarrely misattributed to design being irrelevant!)!




You can also run into a thing where the usage people are making of "system" ends up at loggerheads. 

 While I understand your usage, I don't find describing naked GM arbitration as part of "system" very useful, on a couple grounds: 1. It makes talking about whether a game has a system for X fraught since, pretty much by definition, that can be applied to every game including ones not intended for it, often without anyone even thinking about it, and 2. My observation has been that its frequently not very, well, systematic.  In the case of other people they presumably don't think of it as part of system because they consider "system" to imply constraints (which kind of just reinforces my second take on it, but this is an area where I admit to some cynicism) which they actively don't want in some particular part of the game.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> You can also run into a thing where the usage people are making of "system" ends up at loggerheads.
> 
> While I understand your usage, I don't find describing naked GM arbitration as part of "system" very useful, on a couple grounds: 1. It makes talking about whether a game has a system for X fraught since, pretty much by definition, that can be applied to every game including ones not intended for it, often without anyone even thinking about it, and 2. My observation has been that its frequently not very, well, systematic.  In the case of other people they presumably don't think of it as part of system because they consider "system" to imply constraints (which kind of just reinforces my second take on it, but this is an area where I admit to some cynicism) which they actively don't want in some particular part of the game.



Feels a lot like arguing whether 0 should be classified as a number or the empty set should be classified as a set.


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh, could be, but a game you can't find fellow players for is kind of useless except as an intellectual exercise.  Its an area I can't help but think the advent of remote play has probably helped with since you don't have to locate everyone locally (though its still a challenge once you move into more obscure systems from what I've heard).




I somewhat agree. Having enough of a player base (or least being able to convince people to play) is important, but a massive player base brings its own issues. You go from finding players being difficult to filtering out who to play with being difficult. It's hard to find players who are specifically looking to play Apocalypse World, but when you do compatibility is likely to be high. It's easy to find 5e players, but finding compatible players can be extremely taxing. That's pretty much why I am willing to play 5e with the right group, but generally do not run it. I find it much easier to find compatible players for games like World Without Number and Pathfinder Second Edition.

In a match making market oversaturation is just as much of an issue as sparseness.


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## prabe (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I find it much easier to find compatible players for games like World Without Number and Pathfinder Second Edition.



Completely without snark: It seems as though a shared preference for those games would correlate highly with player compatibility.


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## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I somewhat agree. Having enough of a player base (or least being able to convince people to play) is important, but a massive player base brings its own issues. You go from finding players being difficult to filtering out who to play with being difficult. It's hard to find players who are specifically looking to play Apocalypse World, but when you do compatibility is likely to be high. It's easy to find 5e players, but finding compatible players can be extremely taxing. That's pretty much why I am willing to play 5e with the right group, but generally do not run it. I find it much easier to find compatible players for games like World Without Number and Pathfinder Second Edition.
> 
> In a match making market oversaturation is just as much of an issue as sparseness.



This is why I never sign up for campaigns with strangers. I always one shot my way up to a compatible and enjoyable group.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> A lot of the techniques I use in traditional games have their roots in other roleplaying games. I think the GM role is in part a game design role. Understanding how roleplaying games can be designed and played holistically provides a more comprehensive knowledge base that helps when it comes to tailoring the game to this specific set of players. The DMG2 is absolutely full of techniques that have their origin in other games as an example. Understanding how they work in other games really helps you apply them in 4e.
> 
> My own 4e games were immeasurably improved by both my World of Darkness/Exalted background and having an awareness of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel taught me the scene framing techniques that grounded our 4e experience.
> 
> I also think we should spend time reflecting from time to time if the game we are playing matches with what we are trying to do. When I ran Lancer I realized that it was not a good match for our game and we moved the game over to Beam Saber.



D&D is very friendly toward modifying the game to fit ones preferred playstyle.  If the argument is that one can analyze other games and incorporate compatible techniques that you prefer into 4e (using 4e as a stand in for any game) - I think that’s doable.  

But most of the analysis and theory I see discussed Is more grandiose and general than that. As an example, what does classifying a playstyle as situation first or backstory first help in regards to running any game better?


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> But most of the analysis and theory I see discussed Is more grandiose and general than that. As an example, what does classifying a playstyle as situation first or backstory first help in regards to running any game better?




I would think that understanding the experience a game was designed to deliver would be a reasonable first step for understanding the best way to proceed when running/playing that game. This would apply to other design elements, too.

This is a big part of what makes discussion of games so frustrating when it comes to D&D 5e; it’s not entirely specific about the experience it means to deliver, and even where it may be, many folks routinely overwrite their own desired experience, and then proceed to discuss the game as if that is THE intended output.

See the comments above about Background Traits and Social Interactions for some solid examples.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

payn said:


> This is why I never sign up for campaigns with strangers. I always one shot my way up to a compatible and enjoyable group.




I've got to admit leaping blind into a long term commitment with people I don't know would seem--fraught.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I would think that understanding the experience a game was designed to deliver would be a reasonable first step for understanding the best way to proceed when running/playing that game. This would apply to other design elements, too.
> 
> This is a big part of what makes discussion of games so frustrating when it comes to D&D 5e; it’s not entirely specific about the experience it means to deliver, and even where it may be, many folks routinely overwrite their own desired experience, and then proceed to discuss the game as if that is THE intended output.
> 
> See the comments above about Background Traits and Social Interactions for some solid examples.




Though honestly, that's true about a fair number of traditional games; they're intended as general purpose tools, perhaps within a broad genre, but not necessarily aimed at a particular sort of style or experience.

If anything, I've argued that D&D traditionally paints itself as more broad in usage than it really is at base (though as with a lot of games you can do the using-a-wrench-as-a-hammer thing of making it work beyond its strengths, which is often done by people when they have a game system they're used to and they don't really want to learn a new one).


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## Umbran (Nov 5, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I would think that understanding the experience a game was designed to deliver would be a reasonable first step for understanding the best way to proceed when running/playing that game. This would apply to other design elements, too.




That works... if a game is designed to deliver one specific sort of experience.  And some games are.  



hawkeyefan said:


> This is a big part of what makes discussion of games so frustrating when it comes to D&D 5e; it’s not entirely specific about the experience it means to deliver




Indeed, I would venture so far as to say that it is not actually intentionally designed for one specific experience - the presence of so many sidebars and optional rules, and a long history of houserules rather indicate a design to enable (or at least minimize interference with) a significant breadth of experiences.


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## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I've got to admit leaping blind into a long term commitment with people I don't know would seem--fraught.



Yet, folks do it all the time and then complain when things go pear shaped.


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

Can someone provide an example of a tabletop roleplaying game that lacks sidebars and optional rules? That does not provide meaningful discussion of how to customize the game to the people playing it? 5e is fairly flexible, just not especially so.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> You can also run into a thing where the usage people are making of "system" ends up at loggerheads.
> 
> While I understand your usage, I don't find describing naked GM arbitration as part of "system" very useful, on a couple grounds: 1. It makes talking about whether a game has a system for X fraught since, pretty much by definition, that can be applied to every game including ones not intended for it, often without anyone even thinking about it, and 2. My observation has been that its frequently not very, well, systematic.  In the case of other people they presumably don't think of it as part of system because they consider "system" to imply constraints (which kind of just reinforces my second take on it, but this is an area where I admit to some cynicism) which they actively don't want in some particular part of the game.




I understand this sentiment.

However (needless to say), I don’t find it compelling in any area of life, TTRPGs included.

When D&D GMs eschew structure for freeform, resolution mechanics for extrapolation/fiat (principled or seemingly arbitrary), what is actually happening doesn’t become magical pixie dust or something possessed of an ethereal quality that renders it inscrutable (or even exempt from being “a thing” at all).

We can analyze it and classify it and
find its place in a taxonomical structure. The only reason to not put forth this effort (that I can think of) is similar to the inclination to zoom out to the stratospheric view of TTRPG play priorities and say THERE ARE NO PRIORITIES THERE IS ONLY “THE FUN TM”; to render play impervious to a deeper understanding of (a) why we actually play _this_ game instead of _that_ one and (b) what is actually happening at the table to ensure we don’t accidentally stumble into _that_ gameplay instead of _this_ gameplay.

I mean the reality that “GM Decides” (extrapolation based on process simulation, adjudication based around genre logic, Force applied to ensure metaplot stays online) can be binned multiple different ways is a pretty  potent line of evidence for this (GM Decides is system whether people want to classify it as that or not).


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Can someone provide an example of a tabletop roleplaying game that lacks sidebars and optional rules? That does not provide meaningful discussion of how to customize the game to the people playing it? 5e is fairly flexible, just not especially so.



Having sidebars and optional rules is just one line of evidence supporting that conclusion.  There’s also the stated big tent approach from devs. There’s also the history of extreme customization.  It all coalesces into a picture of a game (and maybe some of it is more tradition than game - but I think by now that tradition and the game are somewhat inseparable) not attempting to force too specific of an experience.

As you note - a lot can be said about the intended play experiences of other games. Other than trying to be D&D to all I’m not sure much can be said about the intended experience of 5e.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Maybe some of what we are seeing is the difference in games built from a theory first mindset and games built from a play test/practical first mindset.


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## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Can someone provide an example of a tabletop roleplaying game that lacks sidebars and optional rules? That does not provide meaningful discussion of how to customize the game to the people playing it? 5e is fairly flexible, just not especially so.



I learned this the hard way during the 3e era. That was a time when we witnessed people trying to get D&D or the d20 system to do everything under the sun. I myself was one of those people who was trying to engineer first D&D and then the d20 system in a way that I could play the sort of games or even the sort of fantasy adventure that I wanted, but to little or no avail. It wasn't generally worth the effort. The closest that I got to a d20 toolkit system that I could customize for the sort of campaign settings I wanted was Blue Rose and True 20. Eventually I gave up and had to admit that D&D does D&D style fantasy adventure well, but it will fight you tooth and claw when you try to get it to do something else. 



FrogReaver said:


> Having sidebars and optional rules is just one line of evidence supporting that conclusion.  There’s also the stated big tent approach from devs. There’s also the history of extreme customization.  It all coalesces into a picture of a game (and maybe some of it is more tradition than game - but I think by now that tradition and the game are somewhat inseparable) not attempting to force too specific of an experience.
> 
> As you note - a lot can be said about the intended play experiences of other games. Other than trying to be D&D to all I’m not sure much can be said about the intended experience of 5e.



What do you think are the breaking points of the system? What can't the game do well? What shouldn't D&D be used for? At what point do you recommend to someone that they may be better off playing another game? 



FrogReaver said:


> Maybe some of what we are seeing is the difference in games built from a theory first mindset and games built from a play test/practical first mindset.



I'm incredibly skeptical.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

...{I}t picks up one of a few perennial debates: realism versus playability; task resolution; game design and play advice; gender, ethnicity, and sex; and finally, the subject matter of the post, player and system typologies – what people enjoy about playing RPGs, how different people may have different preferences or styles, and how game design may accommodate that. The post responds dismissively to one of the most influential typologies, the Threefold Model, trying to focus the discussion on what “really” matters – player emotion – while also trying to claim a middle ground: “The thing is, different people’s emotional responses to different gaming techniques differ.” 

This move – third – can be found again and again: “Making different kinds of games to support different kinds of play and different kinds of people shouldn’t de-legitimize the kinds of play that already exist” “People can often enjoy many different types  of games. And if someone starts playing these ‘wrong’ games, they probably are getting something they missed elsewhere” Each time, a new piece of theory wishes to end fruitless debate and provide a big ecumenical tent of tolerance, yet by contributing a new piece that disagrees with previous ones, it does the opposite: continue the debate. While Henley’s blog post overtly makes light of the self-seriousness of RPG theory, it also tries to make its own theory stick. *We see here at work some motives for RPG theorizing we identified: the joy of intellectual argument (and connecting over it); the desire to help design and play ‘better’ (implying particular normative ideas about what ‘good’ means); and the jockeying for social status and recognition within one’s community*.

Finally, fourth, we see the almost-eternal return of debates and points made previously (Henley’s appeals to affect theory are far from new), due to the ephemeral nature and fragmented structure of RPG theorizing. As Bourdieu put it: “To account for  the infinite diversity of practices{, one has} to reconstruct the networks of interrelated relationship which are present in each”. In this respect, valiant attempts to capture its history can only scratch  the surface. Cultural sociology may prove just as helpful. Future research on RPG theorizing will likely reveal just how rhizomatic our processes and means of thought and communication actually are. 

-Evan Torner, _Theorizing by Designers and Players. _(2018) (internal citations omitted; emphasis supplied).

Same story, different day. It truly baffles me that:
(1) There is little to no acknowledgment, especially in light of recent research, that the majority of these debates over theory have repeatedly re-occurred over the past 50 years (and have their antecedents prior to that). It's like Sisyphus.  
(2) There is little to no acknowledgment that people have done and said things since 2006, or at least 2010.
(3) There is little to no acknowledgment that a good portion of these conversations are about "jockeying for social status and recognition within one's community" and the so-called desire to design and play 'better.' (and what that naturally entails). 
(4) Finally, given the wealth of material being generated in other countries, the utter absence of credit to, or reference to, the intellectual ferment and discussions held in other countries, both in other languages or in English (the more academic work) is also strange.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> What do you think are the breaking points of the system?



Due to its very fleshed out combat subsystem I wouldn’t recommend someone play D&d that doesn’t like most of the fundamentals of that’s systems design. (If it’s a specific mechanic or two they dislike but are good with the broader context they should probably by modifying their home game 5e rules)



Aldarc said:


> What can't the game do well?



Campaigns that feature both dungeon delving and overland exploration. The recovery mechanics tend to either trivialize the overland or make dungeon delving extremely difficult (depending on specific home rules around resting+recovery)


Aldarc said:


> What shouldn't D&D be used for? At what point do you recommend to someone that they may be better off playing another game?



I wouldn’t recommend they would be better off with another game because chances are when the whole body of their preferences is taken into account they probably will still prefer 5e. I see to many recommendations of other games based on a single issue with 5e - where the game being suggested is so different that there’s a good chance the player will dislike those differences more than the one aspect it’s fixed for him.


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

There's just such a fundamental disconnect at what looks like diversity of play from the perspective of people who mostly exist in the D&D space and people who have experience with a wide variety of games with different expectations. In my experience almost all D&D family games are flexible when it comes to games where players play a team of specialists who go to unfamiliar environments, explore them, and get into multiple fights a day. They are flexible on motivations. They are flexible on content. The fundamental structure of managing resources over an adventure day to overcome obstacles and defeat enemies is core to pretty much every play account of a D&D family game I have ever seen. I have not really noticed too much difference on this score between D&D family games.

Outside of @Sepulchrave II 's Tales of the Wyre game I have seldom seen play accounts that even reminded me of very typical World of Darkness or Legend of the Five Rings play with player characters pursuing individual agendas and working together when their agendas align, but not when they do not.

I have significant experience trying to meld D&D family games to such agendas, generally with very poor results. The systems very much get in the way. I applaud @Sepulchrave II for pulling it off.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Though honestly, that's true about a fair number of traditional games; they're intended as general purpose tools, perhaps within a broad genre, but not necessarily aimed at a particular sort of style or experience.




Yeah, that's very true for many games. And I don't think that most games are designed to delivery one specific experience every time.....even something like Lady Blackbird that has a specific set up will result in different things. 

But look at modern D&D compared to the earliest editions. Those were pretty tight in scope. Things got much more broad with 2e. 

So what I mean is if you took a sample of examples of play from Moldvay Basic and then from 5e, you'd see more similarity among the Moldvay basic. They'd all likely involve some kind of dungeon or other physical adventure site, a keyed map, and the PCs exploring that site and managing their resources as best as possible to navigate the obstacles there. There'd be variation of details, and even some variation of the overall structure, but that foundational experience would be recognizable as a common theme, I expect.

With 5e, you'd find more diversity among the play experiences, even if everyone was playing by the book, so to speak, without house rules and the like. You might see an example of play that would fit in with the Moldvay examples, then you'd see one that was a sandbox, then one that was linear, then one that's almost entirely handled through character portrayal and mechanics are barely ever brought to bear....and so on.



Thomas Shey said:


> If anything, I've argued that D&D traditionally paints itself as more broad in usage than it really is at base (though as with a lot of games you can do the using-a-wrench-as-a-hammer thing of making it work beyond its strengths, which is often done by people when they have a game system they're used to and they don't really want to learn a new one).




I think 5e allows for the broadest experience of play....among editions of D&D. 

How broad does it really get? That's one of those fuzzy areas that I'm talking about. I mean, a 5e session could consist of literally no dice rolls, with the players simply declaring what their characters do, and the GM responding according to what he thinks the NPCs would do.....so something like a negotiation between the PCs and an NPC lord, or something. The duchy is in danger, and we have to convince the duke. That could be an entire session for the right play group. 

Now, add to that the concept of house rules or people using older editions to shape how they play 5E....sometimes without even realizing they're doing it (I've done this)....and it can make the game hard to discuss in specific ways.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> There's just such a fundamental disconnect at what looks like diversity of play from the perspective of people who mostly exist in the D&D space and people who have experience with a wide variety of games with different expectations. In my experience almost all D&D family games are flexible when it comes to games where players play a team of specialists who go to unfamiliar environments, explore them, and get into multiple fights a day. They are flexible on motivations. They are flexible on content. The fundamental structure of managing resources over an adventure day to overcome obstacles and defeat enemies is core to pretty much every play account of a D&D family game I have ever seen. I have not really noticed too much difference on this score between D&D family games.
> 
> Outside of @Sepulchrave II 's Tales of the Wyre game I have seldom seen play accounts that even reminded me of very typical World of Darkness or Legend of the Five Rings play with player characters pursuing individual agendas and working together when their agendas align, but not when they do not.
> 
> I have significant experience trying to meld D&D family games to such agendas, generally with very poor results. The systems very much get in the way. I applaud @Sepulchrave II for pulling off such a feat with Third Edition of all games.



To me D&D gets out of the way of agenda driven play. 

It does have the requirement that you play an adventurer, but your adventuring agenda can be picked by you, the dm, a random die roll or whatever and the system doesn’t care because it got out of the way.

it also has a quasi-requirement you work in a group as pvp is handled poorly in d&d.  So the group does tend to need to be able to agree on what to do next (though framing from the dm can help align player objectives so that they want to do the same things).

Im with you that it doesn’t allow for multiple competing player agendas simulataneously.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 5, 2021)

Umbran said:


> That works... if a game is designed to deliver one specific sort of experience. And some games are.




I'd say it's perhaps more about the experience being clear. There's almost always some wiggle room to change things up a bit. Having more than one possible play experience shouldn't be a barrier if we can meaningfully distinguish experience A from B. 5e kind of does this....for example see discussion on play styles on page 34 of the DMG; the comparison between Hack & Slash and Immersive Roleplaying. It's not the most significant comparison, and seems to ultimately suggest that somewhere between those two options is what most games will fall into. 




Umbran said:


> Indeed, I would venture so far as to say that it is not actually intentionally designed for one specific experience - the presence of so many sidebars and optional rules, and a long history of houserules rather indicate a design to enable (or at least minimize interference with) a significant breadth of experiences.




The intention of the design wasn't really what I was commenting on, but yes, I would agree that 5e certainly seems designed to please different parts of the fanbase, and we can take that to mean it was designed to deliver a breadth of experiences. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say the breadth was significant, but I imagine that's just a matter of opinion. 

The important thing is that this lack of specificity combined with house rules and the many people who've been playing D&D for decades who just install their own take on how things should function.....whether based on house rules or being ported from prior editions and so on....very often act as if they are playing vanilla, by the book 5e. And they often approach discussion with that mindset, which can lead to confusion. 

Again, if you look at the Hack and Slash and Immersive Roleplaying descriptions on page 34.....I think one of these is supported far more than the other by the rules as written. I think that's pretty clear and I imagine many folks would agree with me. 

Shouldn't we be able to compare these two approaches? Why do I think the rules support one more than the other? Why I think there may be other games that would suit the other style better?


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

@FrogReaver

The two biggest ways that D&D family games have historically gotten in the way mechanically for the types of games I like to run are the daily attrition model and how specialized characters tend to be.

To get players to that place where they really feel the pinch you generally have to put a significant amount of effort into pacing the adventuring day in some way. That can be in the form of wandering monster checks or just how you stock locations in more sandbox games or in active GM pacing. That's much harder to do in more set environments where exploration is not a focus of play. This can be more complicated when characters have vastly different resource schedules.

The more fundamental breakpoint is that D&D characters are just way too dependent on each other for a game where they might have individual agendas to pursue. It's hard to have scenes where characters go off and do things on their own if there is a high likelihood they need to have Bard or Rogue around every time they have a tense conversation. There's also the fact there is nothing more unexciting then a 1 on 1 fight in D&D.

I think there's a sense that some gamers have that adventuring is like fundamental to the roleplaying game experience. For a good deal of us that's just not the case. I think a lot of people just have never really fought against the edges of the game in the same way I have so they don't see those edges nearly as sharply.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I think there's a sense that some gamers have that adventuring is like fundamental to the roleplaying game experience. For a good deal of us that's just not the case. I think a lot of people just have never really fought against the edges of the game in the same way I have so they don't see those edges nearly as sharply.




That could be. Or ... and this is just a possibility, other people just have different preferences than you do.

I keep seeing this disconnect- it's great that you've "fought against the edges of the game{.}" It's awesome that you enjoy games were people are pursuing their own individual agendas.

But it's quite likely that your preferences are not the same as other people's. That those things that you don't enjoy, are exactly what other people enjoy. That a game that is designed for your preferences would not be in alignment with the preferences of others.

Moreover, and this keeps getting re-stated and ignored, D&D is not just a single thing. Which is why it is eternally frustrating when someone says, "Well, this rule is in 5e. JUSTIFY IT!"  (I guess it's better than being lectured to be people who don't play it at all ....)

D&D (and 5e) is the sum total of not just the rules, but the playing community and the norms. The expectations. The tensions between RAW and freeform groups. The expectations of those who want giant set-piece battles ever session with minis, and those who prefer a flowing game with very occasional ToTM combat.

And that's why this never gets anywhere (putting aside, for the second, that this thread was never about 5e). When there are those who discuss the flexibility or "big tent" nature of 5e, they aren't discussing a diversity of outcome, necessarily- D&D is very good at D&D- which is to say, a kind of fantasy that never existed with its own norms that can incorporate anything into it from spaceships to anime-inspirations, because it never bothered to be something more specific. On the other hand, it does allow for a multiplicity of _process in order to be D&D_; you can have a group get together at lunch and play some diceless 'D&D' or have someone play it as nearly a wargame or have another group incorporate 4e elements and skill challenges into 5e (there are plenty of places to find how to do that if you don't want to do it on your own).

That _diversity of process_ is something that is definitely _unusual_ in most games, which lack the history, community, and norms of D&D- most games expect that you will be playing the game as it is designed. 

But it's not like this hasn't been said before! Again, D&D (and 5e) isn't perfect, and it's certainly not great for everyone. But that's hardly a novel observation. If it's not a game that works for your preferred playing style, or with your group, don't play it.


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## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

@Snarf Zagyg 

Please talk to me. Not at me. Please address what I am actually saying and not what you imagine to be saying.

I like Fifth Edition. I play it every 2 weeks and have done so for the last 2 years. I have fun playing it. I think it's a very well designed game that's great at what it does. I don't have any clue what you are expecting from me here. 

I am just saying that like every other game D&D has a conceptual space it works best in. That conceptual space is not fundamentally more broad in my estimation. If you think it is please present your case to me in a way that shows respect for me and my play as I am trying to do for everyone else.


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## Umbran (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Outside of @Sepulchrave II 's Tales of the Wyre game I have seldom seen play accounts that even reminded me of very typical World of Darkness or Legend of the Five Rings play with player characters pursuing individual agendas and working together when their agendas align, but not when they do not.




I think there are so many things _other than mechanics_ that need to come together to support the pursuit of individual agendas that this isn't a cut-and-dried mechanical design issue.

I am not even convinced that play for individual agendas is actually "typical" of tabletop WoD play.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> @Snarf Zagyg
> 
> Please talk to me. Not at me. Please address what I am actually saying and not what you imagine to be saying.
> 
> ...



You didn't put this in the other post, so your fidelity to 5e fandom was not clear.  It's an easy mistake to make.  Just make sure to always praise 5e in some way in every post, or tell people that you are indeed a constant player and fan, and these kinds of things can be avoided.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> You didn't put this in the other post, so your fidelity to 5e fandom was not clear.  It's an easy mistake to make.  Just make sure to always praise 5e in some way in every post, or tell people that you are indeed a constant player and fan, and these kinds of things can be avoided.



 Followed by






And don’t forget to kiss the ring.


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## Malmuria (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> When you say "some people" in a post in a thread where a number of the posters are being criticised - as per you post here that I've quoted - I have a natural curiosity as to who the people are you have in mind. The phrase "system has a say" is one that on these boards I've only ever seen used by @Manbearcat, in posts that I believe you have probably also read, so I did take you to be alluding to him.
> 
> When you say that "system doesn't matter", a negation of a very well-known slogan associated with a particular individual and web-forum, are you surprised that that comes to mind in me (or other readers)? If what you actually mean is that you prefer free roleplaying to mechanics, I'm not sure why you don't just say that.
> 
> ...




Well, the context of my comment is a discussion of why 5e is popular, so my personal preferences are not actually very relevant.  So I'm giving my impression of discourse I've seen online in trying to give an account of what makes 5e work for so many tables.  If you want to make the (fairly obvious) point that that discussion is speculative and cannot speak to the preferences of each and every 5e player, go ahead, but I don't think speculating in that way is wildly out of bounds of normal discussion.

re: bold assertions.  Certainly claims that I or anyone else make are based to a large degree in individual experiences.  If you've played a wider array of games and/or played for a longer time, then you may very well have a perspective that helpfully contextualizes other people's claims.  There is a way to introduce that perspective and participate in a conversation that does not imply that others are disqualified from participating.  For examples of how do to this, see @Campbell 's posts.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> I am just saying that like every other game D&D has a conceptual space it works best in. That conceptual space is not fundamentally more broad in my estimation. If you think it is please present your case to me in a way that shows respect for me and my play as I am trying to do for everyone else.




I don't think any further explanation will suffice, so I will reiterate what I just said. 

_D&D (and 5e) is the sum total of not just the rules, but the playing community and the norms. The expectations. The tensions between RAW and freeform groups. The expectations of those who want giant set-piece battles ever session with minis, and those who prefer a flowing game with very occasional ToTM combat.

And that's why this never gets anywhere (putting aside, for the second, that this thread was never about 5e). When there are those who discuss the flexibility or "big tent" nature of 5e, they aren't discussing a diversity of outcome, necessarily- D&D is very good at D&D- which is to say, a kind of fantasy that never existed with its own norms that can incorporate anything into it from spaceships to anime-inspirations, because it never bothered to be something more specific. On the other hand, it does allow for a multiplicity of process in order to be D&D; you can have a group get together at lunch and play some diceless 'D&D' or have someone play it as nearly a wargame or have another group incorporate 4e elements and skill challenges into 5e (there are plenty of places to find how to do that if you don't want to do it on your own).

That diversity of process is something that is definitely unusual in most games, which lack the history, community, and norms of D&D- most games expect that you will be playing the game as it is designed._

And that's it. That's the fundamental disconnect between what you are saying, and what others are saying. You keep asking for people to explain things to you in a matter of X (D&D is only good at D&D- what you call a conceptual space and I call diversity of outcome), and people respond by saying, "No, it's actually Y that we're talking about." (That D&D, because of the history, norms, 3PP, community, etc., has a great diversity of process and playing styles that are not encapsulated within the rules _qua _rules). 

This disconnect in what people are discussing underlies a great deal of the disagreement, and not just about D&D. If people don't agree with _a priori _terminology and theoretical models you are using, they are unlikely to be able to explain things to you in a manner that you will find convincing; however, by the same token, you will be unlikely to convince them. 

So if you were to abstract things out a little, and (to avoid jargon) simply state that D&D is better at some things, other games are better at other things- I think there would be broad agreement. But the actual disagreement is something I don't think will ever be resolved- because some people prefer systems that are flexible, hackable, and have large communities and norms regarding them, and others prefer systems that provide for any flexibility within the ruleset _qua _ruleset, and I doubt that this difference in approach is likely to be bridged.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Well, the context of my comment is a discussion of why 5e is popular, so my personal preferences are not actually very relevant.  So I'm giving my impression of discourse I've seen online in trying to give an account of what makes 5e work for so many tables.  If you want to make the (fairly obvious) point that that discussion is speculative and cannot speak to the preferences of each and every 5e player, go ahead, but I don't think speculating in that way is wildly out of bounds of normal discussion.
> 
> re: bold assertions.  Certainly claims that I or anyone else make are based to a large degree in individual experiences.  If you've played a wider array of games and/or played for a longer time, then you may very well have a perspective that helpfully contextualizes other people's claims.  There is a way to introduce that perspective and participate in a conversation that does not imply that others are disqualified from participating.  For examples of how do to this, see @Campbell 's posts.



Wow.  The level of irony in that last sentence is staggering, outside of the insult to @Campbell by calling him properly deferential.  This is more of the "if you want to tell me something, you have to be nice and validate me before introducing an idea I might disagree with..  On the other hand, if you aren't, then it's your fault when you get treated poorly.  After all, you deserve it for your failings."


----------



## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

@Snarf Zagyg

I think you show a fundamentally flawed understanding of the communities and games you are making comparative judgements about. The only meaningful difference on this score is the size of the communities. Are you honestly going to claim that Apocalypse World is a not a flexible, hackable game, mostly guarded by norms? Those norms are different. Sure. The idea that the community surrounding D&D is somehow more experimental and less rigid than the indie RPG community seems fairly rich to me. What are you basing that claim on? Have you seen itch.io?


----------



## loverdrive (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh. I know you used "perceived" in this, but I think there are many, many systems where if you try to do that without having a clear idea of how the mechanics fit together you're going to get pretty bad outcomes. While not perhaps as severe as doing computer mods, its not a trivial skill.



Yeah, I can attest to that.

But unlike videogame modding, the difficulty isn't like lion. It's like a shark. It's lurking underwater, out of sight, but still just as scary.

You ain't gonna run into a roadblock while homebrewing a Star Wars D&D or whatnot. Doesn't mean it's easy, though.



Thomas Shey said:


> Well, that's got more to do with the fact that for many of them, other RPGs effectively _don't exist_.  They don't often even know there _are_ such things.



The snake bites its ass and the uroboros is complete. Other games "don't exist" for a normie because the field is absolutely dominated by a 362.87kg gorilla, or was the 362.87kg gorilla so well-fed because other games don't exist? I have only nine grades of education, so I can't answer that.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> @Snarf Zagyg
> 
> I think you show a fundamentally flawed understanding of the communities and games you are making comparative judgements about. The only meaningful difference on this score is the size of the communities. Are you honestly going to claim that Apocalypse World is a not a flexible, hackable game, mostly guarded by norms? Those norms are different. Sure. The idea that the community surrounding D&D is somehow more experimental and less rigid than the indie RPG community seems fairly rich to me. What are you basing that claim on?




First, I would ask that you not "at" me- unfortunately, there is one person that I have on my permaignore list because (from my point of view) this individual is unable to stop harassing people, including me. I can tell from the way that my numbers are off on the posts that this individual is in the thread- and I know that they enjoy talking about me by replying to posts that "at" me. So ... that's a request, please. 

Second, I think in your desire to argue with me, you aren't understanding what I am writing. Given that we already have people making posts that are nothing more than typical edition war BS (really? it's 2021?) I will respectfully decline the invitation ... mostly because, and I will stress this again- this thread was never about this. Just because a certain group of people wants to re-litigate 5e again doesn't mean I have to. If you agree with what I wrote, great. If not, that's cool too. Given how you chose to misunderstand and incorrectly paraphrase what I wrote, I don't think we will have an agreement. It's okay. Happens all the time!


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Wow.  The level of irony in that last sentence is staggering, outside of the insult to @Campbell by calling him properly deferential.  This is more of the "if you want to tell me something, you have to be nice and validate me before introducing an idea I might disagree with..  On the other hand, if you aren't, then it's your fault when you get treated poorly.  After all, you deserve it for your failings."



The ask is not that anyone be "deferential," but just that they try to be polite and helpful...or else not reply at all, which is always an option.  Further, I've said in this thread and other threads that I respect everyone's depth of rpg knowledge (including to you, directly), and that I'm here to learn; that's not, I don't think, treating anyone "poorly."  (In one instance I made a facetious post that came off poorly; I deleted it and apologized).


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Yeah, I can attest to that.
> 
> But unlike videogame modding, the difficulty isn't like lion. It's like a shark. It's lurking underwater, out of sight, but still just as scary.
> 
> You ain't gonna run into a roadblock while homebrewing a Star Wars D&D or whatnot. Doesn't mean it's easy, though.




Yeah, you're more likely to find out things just don't work as planned in play.  And in some cases that there's no easy patch.



loverdrive said:


> The snake bites its ass and the uroboros is complete. Other games "don't exist" for a normie because the field is absolutely dominated by a 362.87kg gorilla, or was the 362.87kg gorilla so well-fed because other games don't exist? I have only nine grades of education, so I can't answer that.




Having been around at the start of the hobby, I think its a bit from each column.  D&D got big very, very fast, so even in the early days it heavily dominated, but it at least looked like there were a few early on that at least _looked_ could have been competition.  Didn't work out that way, however, and as time went by, that became less and less possible, simply because of D&D's spread (and the fact there were relatively few of the games involved that even had the anything like the longevity; I can probably count on one hand the games that sprung up in the 70's that I can think of that are still around).

But in any case, its long since reached the point where (barring some bizarre event they factor into) if someone hears about an RPG in mainstream media, its overwhelming likely to be D&D.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I think 5e allows for the broadest experience of play....among editions of D&D.




Out of curiosity, what makes you think it allows a broader experience than, say, AD&D2 or D&D3e?  Your example about the negotiation is one I could have seen showing up in either of those.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I don't think any further explanation will suffice, so I will reiterate what I just said.
> 
> _D&D (and 5e) is the sum total of not just the rules, but the playing community and the norms. The expectations. The tensions between RAW and freeform groups. The expectations of those who want giant set-piece battles ever session with minis, and those who prefer a flowing game with very occasional ToTM combat.
> 
> ...




I want to be clear on what my as are in these discussions.

A wise man once told me (he’ll know who he is), “don’t try to change the minds of the people you’re engaging with. Just engage with them. Through that engagement, dozens more minds will engage with your thoughts and there may be deeper interest and/or uptake on what you’re saying by the many, many silent onlookers out there.”

I mean, I used quotes, but that is the Manbearcatian-unabridged version of what he said.

And you know what?

He was bloody well right!

There are only a few handful of active participants whose minds I have either actually changed or made some kind of dent in their mental model on any of this stuff. But there are dozens and dozens of folks who aren’t terribly active in which my considerable efforts on here have made a positive difference to their play.

So that is my general goal here anymore:

Give something for the silent majority out there to reflect upon in their own play and maybe pique their curiosity about play and games they’ve yet to engage with.

And my secondary aim is to do that with as little grief as possible from folks who consider me some kind of indie-game bogeyman (up to and included being called an ivory tower douche typically in the super secret wink wink nudge nudge say no more say no more passive aggressive way…).

It’s a sincere aim that is about reaching individual players. I’m not interested in a culture war. I’m not on any form of social media. I couldn’t give a crap less about who the majority is, what the market share is. Reminding me of this over and over and over and over reminds me (as if I needed another reminder after the role vs roll storytelling takeover of late 80s-90s, the OSR vs Forge, and the 4e Edition War) that it is, in fact, a culture war to a great number of folks out there.

It’s not to me. I’m one dude. Interested in having vigorous, thoughtful exchanges about gaming so maybe one or two or ten disconnected onlookers might say “huh…that’s interesting…let me hear more” or “let me check that out.”

So anyone on here who thinks that you’re having this charged exchange with me where my aim is to change your mind? You’re not having the exchange you think you are.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> I understand this sentiment.
> 
> However (needless to say), I don’t find it compelling in any area of life, TTRPGs included.
> 
> ...




Well, I still kind of object to using the term "system" for that (I think I'd prefer "process") but I get your point and don't really disagree with it.


----------



## Umbran (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> @Snarf Zagyg
> 
> Please talk to me. Not at me. Please address what I am actually saying and not what you imagine to be saying.




So, here's a thing that has come up a lot lately.

What do you want to get out of this discussion?  Are you interested in debate, or arguing with Snarf until one of you "wins"?  Are you interested in Making Your Point?  Are you interested in Learning about Snarf's point of view?  Or something else?

You and Snarf each have reasons you are engaging in this discussion.  They may not match up.  The things you think are important he may not give a whit about, and he won't respond to things he doesn't care about.  You don't get to structure his interests, any more than he gets to structure yours.

Discussion is, in many, many ways, like RPGs.  Stated or not, there's some things you are looking for in engaging in the activity.  It pays ot make sure that everyone's goals, while not necessarily similar, are at least somewhat aligned and compatible, or things won't work out well.




Campbell said:


> I am just saying that like every other game D&D has a conceptual space it works best in. That conceptual space is not fundamentally more broad in my estimation.




Not fundamentally more broad... than what, specifically? Did I miss a post specifying it?  If so, my apologies, and ignore the rest of this post.

If not - I am darned sure we can name games that are fundamentally narrower than D&D in intent and design.

I'll start with one - Ashen Stars.  it is a GUMSHOE based sci-fi game.  The authors tell you up front that it is designed to do mysteries, and sci-fi procedurals.  The PCs are specifically assumed to be the crew of a ship of troubleshooters-for-hire, and the character generation procedure is intended to make sure there's a set of In-flight and Groundside roles filled, and adventure design assumes a certain specific set of relevant skills are definitely covered by the person in each role.  IIRC, they even specifically advise a minimum of 5 players, as at less than that some people will double-up on roles, and then may not be free to act in one of their roles when needed.

As noted, the adventures are expected to be sci fi mysteries and procedural missions presented to the characters (very Star Trek), with strong advisement to have an A Plot and B Plot running, focusing on different characters.  Choosing to not take a mission means... there's no mission, and the PCs do not get paid - sandbox play is not supported.  Resolution of the procedure or mystery is expected to include confronting an ethical dilemma or choice the PCs have to face.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> So anyone on here who thinks that you’re having this charged exchange with me where my aim is to change your mind? You’re not having the exchange you think you are.




Is there some reason in particular you replied to me for this? I honestly don't know. 

I assume you read my OP? Does your comment have to do with that? Is this related to the _Elusive Shift_? Or the several resources I posted for people interested in RPG theory?

Was this a long explanation of your "kiss the ring" comment? I have no idea ... did you not mean to reply to me?


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> [mers have that adventuring is like fundamental to the roleplaying game experience. For a good deal of us that's just not the case. I think a lot of people just have never really fought against the edges of the game in the same way I have so they don't see those edges nearly as sharply.




Even in games that do, the degree of niche protection games in the D&D sphere typically embrace is pretty foreign to much of the gaming market.  There's usually the idea that a character has some sort of purpose within the group that is not completely covered by others, but its to much less a degree.


----------



## loverdrive (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> A thing can be "high quality," and have "broad appeal," and still be forced to make compromises- in fact, I'd argue that making those compromises is part of what drives the broad appeal.
> 
> Because 5e is not, and cannot be, a niche product, it has to make compromises. To use one example that I think most people can agree with is the inclusion of legacy components and lore.
> 
> ...



While interesting, I don't think this relates to anything I have said. I'll go on a tangent about sacred cows a bit later, though.

Returning to what @Malmuria said:


> There was a thread about social mechanics a while back, and I said I was ambivalent about them (I think I made an offhand reference to FKR and then @Snarf Zagyg kept making new threads and now here we are). And the more I think about it, I think the way that 5e handles it (i.e., by not handling, whether by design or not (probably not)) is actually fine, and is actually a feature, not a bug. It provides a context (fantasy archetypes and strong characterization) and then steps out of the way, and I think people like this. That is, we can look at people describing play experiences that don't utilize the 5e rules and ask if there is a better system for them, and maybe there is! Maybe they just don't know enough about other games. On the other hand, there's maybe something about the 'provide context, then get out of the way' approach of 5e that is actually a preference for groups.



"The context that D&D 5E gives" isn't about sacred cows.

Let's imagine. There's a group of friends, who don't care for tactical combat or resource management or whatnot. They care about social interactions and solving riddles. They also don't like fleshed out social mechanics for whatever reason, maybe it breaks their immersion and forces them to treat the process as a game, or maybe they think that no ruleset can capture the complex nature of social interactions (though, while I wasn't ever in a combat, I was actually trained for combat unlike pretty much all other conscripts, and I don't think there's a ruleset that can capture the combat either, but I digress), or whatever.

Let's imagine. That group of friends really ####ing cares for D&D. They know, and they give more than two tugs of a dead dog's cock, about the difference between a fighter and a barbarian, or a cleric and a paladin, or a wizard and a sorcerer. They already know D&D stuff. Using 5E doesn't really give them any advantage over playing a slovesochka.

Let's imagine. That group of friends doesn't care for D&D. They don't know, and don't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock, about the difference between a fighter and a barbarian, or a kenku or aarakocra. They don't care for D&D stuff. Using 5E doesn't really give them any advantage over playing a slovesochka.

The benefits of using a ruleset doesn't justif the costs of maintaining it. I can behind that. I'm playing in a World of Darkness campaign, where we chose to just throw the rulebook out of the window and play freeform, because it doesn't make any sense to use a thick book that doesn't enhance the experience in any way.



On sacred cows. I *hate *sacred cows.

Not just _"I don't like'em very much"_, but _"oh my ugliest fattest cannibal gods, I hate sacred cows with white-hot hatred, whiter than Hank Hill and hotter than George Clooney, unless they are in a form of a burger with a pineapple slice and jalapeños_".

Sacred cows are just stupid. The thing either works, or it doesn't. I don't give a single flying ####, whether it worked in the different time and different context.

For an absolutely egregious example, there's Bethesda's Fallout. They have caps, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, the supermutants, the deathclaws and the radscorpions for no goddamn reason other than "oh, it's a FO game, so of course we have to have these things that will make a Fallout-theme park complete!". None of these make any sense in FO3 or FO4 or FO76 that I haven't played. It's just stupid. Caps, at least, doesn't even make sense in New Vegas, and I'm in love with New Vegas.

OK, Fallout rant out of the way, somewhat serious talk. How serious an alcoholic can really be? Doesn't matter.

Conservativism always drives me nuts. I'm all for keeping things worth having, but as soon as they outlive their usefulness, we must get rid of em. It doesn't make any sense to keep both the modifies and the scores, or alignment if it doesn't do anything, or races if there's no use for them.

I'm so happy I'm aint a D&D head designer. Half of the community would want to burn me on a stake and then do unspeakable things to my charred corpse.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The ask is not that anyone be "deferential," but just that they try to be polite and helpful...or else not reply at all, which is always an option.  Further, I've said in this thread and other threads that I respect everyone's depth of rpg knowledge (including to you, directly), and that I'm here to learn; that's not, I don't think, treating anyone "poorly."  (In one instance I made a facetious post that came off poorly; I deleted it and apologized).



Yes, the thing is this is entirely one sided.  You are complaining about people that are bringing ideas from outside D&D to people that know only D&D, and requiring they be polite when doing so.  No one is saying that D&D players have to be polite to people that bring in outside ideas.  Your request is unidirectional.  Further, the overwhelming mode of engaging is politeness.  It's only in the face of repeated attacks and demands to respect 5e that things get testy, which is pretty natural given the abuse that gets tossed at people not in the in-group of 5e or who are, but are treated as if they are not because they acknowledge that the out-group is also valid.

No, your claims are mostly smoke that disguise a requirement that some deference be shown while none is returned.  It's positional and is effectively claiming that the 5e in-group is in a superior position and needs to be approached as such.  It's the setup that allows dismissal unless a petitioner is polite enough.  And, for @Campbell, even his politeness isn't enough to keep him from being attacked by Snarf.  You're proposing that people that want to challenge the in-group thought process commit to an approach that doesn't at all improve anything other than a few of the in-group's feelings about how valid their group is.

I mean, I have to almost post every single time that I play and love 5e, and I still get repeated statements despite this that I just hate 5e and that's why I'm saying what I say, or, even better, that I just don't get 5e.

Effectively, you are tone policing.


----------



## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Well, I still kind of object to using the term "system" for that (I think I'd prefer "process") but I get your point and don't really disagree with it.




I’m not wedded to the word “system” there. “Process” (to my mind) does the same lifting so I’m fine either way.

Do you like “process” there because you feel like it can be used informally whereas you think “system” connotes formal?

That makes sense based on other things you’ve said (but I’m certainly willing to be corrected).

I use “system” because it connects with all aspects of my life (from education to work to martial arts/sports). So when I say “system”, I’m talking about the component parts and the holistic machine (those principally-integrated component parts) that provides the volitional force to get the thing done (whatever it is).

An easy for instance of this is “there was a system in place governing the generation of the 12 to 6 downward movement of a curveball even before it was consciously unlocked and formalized in the form of grip + arm slot + torque generation.”

You could probably just replace process for system there but my brain reflexively goes to system.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Conservativism always drives me nuts. I'm all for keeping things worth having, but as soon as they outlive their usefulness, we must get rid of em. It doesn't make any sense to keep both the modifies and the scores, or alignment if doesn't do anything, or races if there's no uses for them.
> 
> I'm so happy I'm aint a D&D head designer. Half of the community would want to burn me on a stake and the do unspeakable things to my charred corpse.




Which is probably why you'd be a poor choice to be the lead designer for a category-leader like D&D. 

Yeah, it's tough having to work with constraints! It's difficult dealing with legacies of any kind. And a lot of times, it would be so much better to jettison things and start fresh.

But that's not usually what works in the real world. Consumers have expectations. They have reliance interests. If you become the brand manager for Coca Cola, you can't suddenly say, "I hate sacred cows. Carbonated sugar water is terrible for you. I am replacing all Coke with a healthy, non-carbonated beverage. We will still call it Coke, but let's get rid of the sacred cows that keep us from making the drink we should be making!"

I mean, you could ... but your posterior will quickly be meeting the street. 

(The only thing you are incorrect about is saying it's half the community ... you'd be so lucky!)


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Is there an actual point to this thread any more than people playing a hot potato blame game with each other while talking over each other?


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> I’m not wedded to the word “system” there. “Process” (to my mind) does the same lifting so I’m fine either way.
> 
> Do you like “process” there because you feel like it can be used informally whereas you think “system” connotes formal?




No, as I said, its because "system" implies, well, systematic (that is to say structured) where process just says something happens in a general way.  Some ad-hoc GMing decisions are systematic, but some of them are anything but.



Manbearcat said:


> That makes sense based on other things you’ve said (but I’m certainly willing to be corrected).
> 
> I use “system” because it connects with all aspects of my life (from education to work to martial arts/sports). So when I say “system”, I’m talking about the component parts and the holistic machine (those principally-integrated component parts) that provides the volitional force to get the thing done (whatever it is).
> 
> ...




Everyone has their things about that.  Its why semantics is difficult.


----------



## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Is there some reason in particular you replied to me for this? I honestly don't know.
> 
> I assume you read my OP? Does your comment have to do with that? Is this related to the _Elusive Shift_? Or the several resources I posted for people interested in RPG theory?
> 
> Was this a long explanation of your "kiss the ring" comment? I have no idea ... did you not mean to reply to me?




Your post was about disconnects and disagreements about language and concepts and culture and about how we keep playing out this “Time is a Flat Circle” loop (or at least I thought it was). That seems to be a common lament you have.

I just figured I’d use your post to clarify that my engagements on here aren’t about culture or disconnects with the people I’m speaking with or about imposing language or any of that.

For me it’s about ferreting out my own thoughts, clarifying them + resolving them or reorienting them with those who disagree with me, and (overwhelmingly, though I have had purchase with active commentators here and there) reaching disconnected, curious individuals out there who are intrigued by the conversation.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 5, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, the thing is this is entirely one sided.  You are complaining about people that are bringing ideas from outside D&D to people that know only D&D, and requiring they be polite when doing so.  No one is saying that D&D players have to be polite to people that bring in outside ideas.  Your request is unidirectional.  Further, the overwhelming mode of engaging is politeness.  It's only in the face of repeated attacks and demands to respect 5e that things get testy, which is pretty natural given the abuse that gets tossed at people not in the in-group of 5e or who are, but are treated as if they are not because they acknowledge that the out-group is also valid.
> 
> No, your claims are mostly smoke that disguise a requirement that some deference be shown while none is returned.  It's positional and is effectively claiming that the 5e in-group is in a superior position and needs to be approached as such.  It's the setup that allows dismissal unless a petitioner is polite enough.  And, for @Campbell, even his politeness isn't enough to keep him from being attacked by Snarf.  You're proposing that people that want to challenge the in-group thought process commit to an approach that doesn't at all improve anything other than a few of the in-group's feelings about how valid their group is.
> 
> ...




The context of the discussion is important in understanding others' frame of reference and situating one's own comment appropriately



Snarf Zagyg said:


> The trouble with jargon, however, is that while it can help in-groups communicate more effectively, it is also incredibly off-putting to other people; in fact, it is can be considered both a feature and a bug. If you've ever spoken to a professional (a doctor, a lawyer, a banker) who can't be bothered to explain things and "dumb it down" for a "mere layman" or dealt with a close group of friends that talks entirely in "in-jokes" and doesn't explain them, you understand what this means. When you have invented terms, people will use them as a weapon to exclude others- "Oh, you don't understand what I mean by XXXXXX? Well, obviously you just don't get it."






Malmuria said:


> The context of the discussion is certainly important.  The problem comes in if someone posts about the 'World's Greatest,' for example.  Imo, that's a clear signal that the discussion is meant to be accessible to a wide group of people who might not have access or interest in a specific vocabulary.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, here's a thing that has come up a lot lately.
> 
> What do you want to get out of this discussion?  Are you interested in debate, or arguing with Snarf until one of you "wins"?  Are you interested in Making Your Point?  Are you interested in Learning about Snarf's point of view?  Or something else?
> 
> ...



Ah, here's a good example.  @Campbell makes a reasonable request for another poster to engage with what they are saying rather than what the other poster is creating as a strawman.  Then another member of the in-group, @Umbran, views this exchange where one poster is politely requesting another to stop engaging in bad faith, but sorts it by in and out groups. Snarf is a member of the in-group, so @Umbran starts by asking out-group member @Campbell to be clear about what they want from the conversation, because the blame must lie in @Campbell not having the same objective as @Snarf Zagyg.  Please note how @Snarf Zagyg was not similarly engaged -- his objectives are not questioned, despite being the aggressor in this exchange, but instead prioritized.  The power of the in-group!


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The context of the discussion is important in understanding others' frame of reference and situating one's own comment appropriately



Yes, and I assume the context of discussion is always that 5e needs deference if it's flaws or issues are to be discussed or if another game is to be discussed.  Because I've clearly seen this pushback in threads that are in general and clearly not specific about 5e.  Like, say, this thread where the topic is about how games are discussed in relation to each other.  It's very clear that the deference to the 5e in-group is still a strong expectation in this context.

As for frame of reference, what privileges yours over mine?


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> Your post was about disconnects and disagreements about language and concepts and culture and about how we keep playing out this “Time is a Flat Circle” loop (or at least I thought it was). That seems to be a common lament you have.
> 
> I just figured I’d use your post to clarify that my engagements on here aren’t about culture or disconnects with the people I’m speaking with or about imposing language or any of that.
> 
> For me it’s about ferreting out my own thoughts, clarifying them + resolving them or reorienting them with those who disagree with me, and (overwhelmingly, though I have had purchase with active commentators here and there) reaching disconnected, curious individuals out there who are intrigued by the conversation.




To the extent that you are reaching disconnected, curious individuals out there, that's great.

Well ... eh, that's not really it from my P.O.V. From my P.O.V., no matter what topic I post, no matter how it's framed, and no matter what tags I used (like "5e") in an attempt to get the "disconnected, curious individuals" out there to contribute to the discussion because I'd like to hear what they have to say, it feels like the exact same people come in and dominate the conversations with the same points, leaving no air for the curious and disconnected.

I already know what I think- I'd really like to hear what other people think. The curious, disconnected people who don't post in the theory threads because ... well, because.


----------



## Yora (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Is there an actual point to this thread any more than people playing a hot potato blame game with each other while talking over each other?



I was just trying to get into the thread by starting at the end after not quite understanding the beginning of the discussion. And I still don't really know what it is actually being discussed.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

There’s no theory without jargon. There is no field or area of expertise without jargon. Just because things can be explained simply without jargon does not magically disappear the existence of said jargon. Physicists will talk to other physicists not in terms of simplicity but with jargon. I can explain simply Wellhausen’s influential four source hypothesis for the Pentateuch but this one (quite boring) area of focus in biblical studies still has plenty of jargon that experts use amongst each other. Jargon does not in itself render ideas null and void. Jargon is a natural property of language and communication.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> There’s no theory without jargon. There is no field or area of expertise without jargon. Just because things can be explained simply without jargon does not magically disappear the existence of said jargon. Physicists will talk to other physicists not in terms of simplicity but with jargon. I can explain simply Wellhausen’s influential four source hypothesis for the Pentateuch but this one (quite boring) area of focus in biblical studies still has plenty of jargon that experts use amongst each other. Jargon does not in itself render ideas null and void. Jargon is a natural property of language and communication.



I agree, which is why context and audience matters.  This theoretical physicist will talk somewhat differently at a conference with other experts vs in an intro undergraduate survey.  As Alder said in the tweet I posted: "theory is often jargon-laded and difficult to penetrate, and people can feel shut-out by conversations they aren't welcomed into."


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

*Malmuria 20 +2 = 22*


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Yora said:


> I was just trying to get into the thread by starting at the end after not quite understanding the beginning of the discussion. And I still don't really know what it is actually being discussed.




I'm not entirely sure, but I'm reasonably certain that we will be hearing about the great Coke/New Coke fiasco soon!


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I'm not entirely sure, but I'm reasonably certain that we will be hearing about the great Coke/New Coke fiasco soon!



As a North Carolinian, I was always more a Pepsi guy.


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

I like beans in my chilli.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I agree, which is why context and audience matters.  This theoretical physicist will talk somewhat differently at a conference with other experts vs in an intro undergraduate survey.  As Alder said in the tweet I posted: "theory is often jargon-laded and difficult to penetrate, and people can feel shut-out by conversations they aren't welcomed into."



I find this tedious, because the jargon being deployed in these threads is either the use of big words that people don't like but aren't jargon, or the jargon deployed is clearly explained.  When a physicist does engage with people new to the topic, one thing that happens quite often is a bit of jargon is introduced and then defined, so that everyone understands it and the discussion moves forwards.

What happens in these threads is the jargon is introduce and defined by the user early on, but then a whole discussion erupts about how to define the jargon as everyone jumps in with different definitions or argues the definition instead of engaging the points.  Then we get threads like this that complain that it's jargon that's the problem.  It's not, really, and context is also not the problem -- we aren't talking about quantum physics and 8th graders, but about people that have already come online to talk about games on a discussion forum.  This is where you go to talk about games!  What better context to introduce, define, and discuss things with jargon?!

No, jargon is attacked not because it's jargon, but because going after the definition of jargon is the low-hanging fruit for stalling out discussion.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> As a North Carolinian, I was always more a Pepsi guy.




I was POSITIVE you were going to go with Royal Crown, my friend!


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I'm not entirely sure, but I'm reasonably certain that we will be hearing about the great Coke/New Coke fiasco soon!



Only Bards and Gnome Paladins drink New Coke. Says so in the bible.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> As a North Carolinian, I was always more a Pepsi guy.



I knew there was something wrong with you, but I didn't expect it to be being a Pepsi-lover.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

payn said:


> I like beans in my chilli.










Oh, you've gone too far.

TOO.

FAR.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I was POSITIVE you were going to go with Royal Crown, my friend!



Only with Moonpies, my friend.

Edit: Now that we’ve all had a good laugh, let’s go back to misunderstanding and dehumanizing each other.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Only with Moonpies, my friend.
> 
> Edit: Now that we’ve all had a good laugh, let’s go back to misunderstanding and dehumanizing each other.



You're a terrible person and you should feel bad.

Like that? Or did you want something a little less on the nose? We can do the scene again...


----------



## loverdrive (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Yeah, it's tough having to work with constraints! It's difficult dealing with legacies of any kind. And a lot of times, it would be so much better to jettison things and start fresh.
> 
> But that's not usually what works in the real world. Consumers have expectations. They have reliance interests. If you become the brand manager for Coca Cola, you can't suddenly say, "I hate sacred cows. Carbonated sugar water is terrible for you. I am replacing all Coke with a healthy, non-carbonated beverage. We will still call it Coke, but let's get rid of the sacred cows that keep us from making the drink we should be making!"



Honestly? I'm fine with constraints. I'd be more happy if the tensions between the Law and the Chaos and alignment languages and all that were brough back in hypothetical 6E, instead of getting rid of alignments completely.

It's half-measures and lip-service I hate the most. "Oh, we'll keep alignment, but reduce it into a non-thing" is as stupid and insulting as "oh, we'll keep calling the thing Coke, but make it taste like artesian water!".



Snarf Zagyg said:


> I'm not entirely sure, but I'm reasonably certain that we will be hearing about the great Coke/New Coke fiasco soon!



What the hell is "new coke"? 
We have only coke and coke zero here! Well, that, and coffee coke that existed for, like, five seconds and then disappeared.

Out of all experiments, I really miss Pepsi Twist. That stuff was beautiful.


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Oh, you've gone too far.
> 
> TOO.
> 
> FAR.



There is a wide variety of preferences amongst the chili community. Its difficult to discuss because folks rarely agree on Chili jargon. Dont get me started on pungency and afterburn. Also, the sacred cow of using cow in the damn chili drives me crazy.


----------



## Manbearcat (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> To the extent that you think you are reaching disconnected, curious individuals out there, that's great.
> 
> Well ... eh, that's not really it from my P.O.V. From my P.O.V., no matter what topic I post, no matter how it's framed, and no matter what tags I used (like "5e") in an attempt to get the "disconnected, curious individuals" out there to contribute to the discussion because I'd like to hear what they have to say, it feels like the exact same people come in and dominate the conversations with the same points, leaving no air for the curious and disconnected.
> 
> I already know what I think- I'd really like to hear what other people think. The curious, disconnected people who don't post in the theory threads because ... well, because.




I know what you think. You’ve made it abundantly clear.

The folks who have talked to me about it in the last 10 years via PM, text message, Discord, email are pretty much the same answer:

* Don’t have the time.

* Don’t have the interest in engaging with a bunch of strangers but will gladly read and take-in exchanges.

I think you see the problem as some kind of “barrier-to-entry” based on x, y, z detached from what I’ve mentioned above.

My anecdotal evidence says no. I regularly talk to people who are smarter and more articulate than I am but who don’t post exclusively because of what I’ve posted above. Someone like @darkbard is a perfect example of an extremely thoughtful person who doesn’t post much because of time/lack of interest. In the course of the last 11 years on ENWorld, we’ve lost about 40 excellent, thoughtful posters due to various forms of attrition (none of those folks have left this board due to anything I’ve said or jargon or theory or language barrier-of-entry).

EDIT - I note you removed the “you think” from your first sentence. I appreciate that you agree that I’m not delusional!


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

loverdrive said:


> Honestly? I'm fine with constraints. I'd be more happy if the tensions between the Law and the Chaos and alignment languages and all that were brough back in hypothetical 6E, instead of getting rid of alignments completely.
> 
> It's half-measures and lip-service I hate the most. "Oh, we'll keep alignment, but reduce it into a non-thing" is as stupid and insulting as "oh, we'll keep calling the think Coke, but make it taste like artesian water!".




.... you know, I can mix it up with the best of them, but there is no way (NO WAY) I am going to touch alignment with a 10' pole.

Or someone else's 10' pole. 



loverdrive said:


> What the hell is "new coke"?
> We have only coke and coke zero here! Well, that, and coffee coke that existed for, like, five seconds and then disappeared.
> 
> Out of all experiments, I really miss Pepsi Twist. That stuff was beautiful.




New Coke.

Now, what you really want ... it's Crystal Pepsi. The great test of crystal meth, in Pepsi!

Wait, no. It was "clear" Pepsi. I think. I always have trouble differentiating Pepsi and meth.


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> .... you know, I can mix it up with the best of them, but there is no way (NO WAY) I am going to touch alignment with a 10' pole.
> 
> Or someone else's 10' pole.
> 
> ...



Both cause mountain dew mouth I hear.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> Only Bards and Gnome Paladins drink New Coke. Says so in the bible.




_The path of the righteous player is beset on all sides by the inequities of the Elves and the tyranny of Bards. Blessed is he who, in the name of St. Cuthbert and Pholtus, shepherds the weak through the Valley of the Mage. For he is truly his party's keeper and the finder of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. 

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger the Bards and Elves who attempt to poison and destroy my party. And you will know I am a Paladin subclass when I lay my vengeance upon you!_


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> _The path of the righteous player is beset on all sides by the inequities of the Elves and the tyranny of Bards. Blessed is he who, in the name of St. Cuthbert and Pholtus, shepherds the weak through the Valley of the Mage. For he is truly his party's keeper and the finder of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
> 
> And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger the Bards and Elves who attempt to poison and destroy my party. And you will know I am a Paladin subclass when I lay my vengeance upon you!_



SMITE ...SMITE ... SMITESMITESMITE 

You need the violence at the end there...


----------



## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> Only Bards and Gnome Paladins drink New Coke. Says so in the bible.




Except Coke Zero which uses pretty much the same formula and is mad successful (and super tasty).


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Except Coke Zero which uses pretty much the same formula and is mad successful (and super tasty).



Coke zero? Im trying Campbell....Im trying real hard to be the Shepard...


----------



## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Why has no one mentioned the 5e of colas, Diet Coke


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Why has no one mentioned the 5e of colas, Diet Coke



Because people have standards.

Edit: Cue @Umbran saying “in comparison with what?!”


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Why has no one mentioned the 5e of colas, Diet Coke



If Mountain Dew can sell like hot cakes with its heavy association with tooth decay and drug abuse, then 5E with its popularity must be mountain Dew with its six ability scores and alignment.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

payn said:


> If Mountain Dew can sell like hot cakes with its heavy association with tooth decay and drug abuse, then 5E with its popularity must be mountain Dew with its six ability scores and alignment.




Would that make Cheerwine … _Call of Cthulhu_?

The horror …. THE HORROR.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Would that make Cheerwine … _Call of Cthulhu_?
> 
> The horror …. THE HORROR.



Shut your mouth. You have crossed the line. Cheerwine (from Salisbury, NC) is divine!


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Never heard of Cheerwine, but when I googled it the next item up was Mustard flavored soda. I didnt need to know that was a thing...



> _If you've ever seen a child eat a corn dog, chances are you've seen someone suck on the end and slurp up mustard like it was a drink and not a condiment._



No, cant say I have...


> _Mustard Flavored Soda is your chance to do the same with a refreshing bubbly finish. Each bottle, sweetened with pure cane sugar, is filled with effervescent and complex tangy, sour, and sweet flavors. So pour a glass to share with friends; the taste is so oddly accurate, you might find yourselves dipping your Bavarian pretzel in it._



erm...


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Shut your mouth. You have crossed the line. Cheerwine (from Salisbury, NC) is divine!




I mean …. when they put it in the baby’s bottle, it’s bound to have some lasting effects ….

True fact - the name Cheerwine is a shortened form of the original name- _This beverage is not wine and will cause no cheer_.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

If it sounds like something a Halfling would drink I want no part of it.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I mean …. when they put it in the baby’s bottle, it’s bound to have some lasting effects ….
> 
> True fact - the name Cheerwine is a shortened form of the original name- _This beverage is not wine and will cause no cheer_.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

I believe that's @Aldarc 's unhappy face.


----------



## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


>




We all know that there is only ONE TRUE SOFT DRINK TO RULE THEM ALL!


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> We all know that there is only ONE TRUE SOFT DRINK TO RULE THEM ALL!
> 
> View attachment 146189



When you complain about people who constantly bring up “bespoke indie games” but then you bring up Moxie.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> We all know that there is only ONE TRUE SOFT DRINK TO RULE THEM ALL!
> 
> View attachment 146189



Ahem, you're correct, just not about which drink should rule them all...


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> Ahem, you're correct, just not about which drink should rule them all...


----------



## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

The One True Drank





The One True Drank of Gym Bros


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> The One True Drank
> 
> View attachment 146190
> 
> The One True Drank of Gym Bros



On a completely unrelated note: It’s incredible how quickly respect can be lost.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 5, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> On a completely unrelated note: It’s incredible how quickly respect can be lost.



I bet he wears Affliction clothing and swears at innocent cashiers too.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 5, 2021)

My misspent youth


----------



## pemerton (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Okay.  Let me reclarify.  I don't see how theory and analysis of rpgs in general or of non-D&D-4e games helps improve your D&D 4e play?
> 
> Analyzing your D&D 4e play... I get how that might help improve your D&D 4e play.  But what does bringing other games into that discussion help?



This is incredibly strange to me. Throughout the 4e era I improved my 4e play by engaging with the analysis and discussion of RPGing in general, and other games that had relevant things to say - Burning Wheel (the best advice on scene-framing play I know), HeroWars/Quest and Maelstrom Storytelling (both excellent for skill challenges, because pioneering RPGs for closed scene resolution play) being some of the main ones.

Analysis of RPGs in general also helps. For instance, this from Ron Edwards basically sets out the essence of 4e's mechanics and anticipates every flashpoint in the Edition wars:

But if Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes . . .​​* Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.​​* Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.​​* More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.​

In virtue of having thought about RPGing that adopts this sort of approach, I was able to write the following bit of advice to the prospective players in my 4e game, some time towards the end of 2008 or in early 2009 (sblocked for length; the references to 3E D&D and RM reflects the main systems the members of the group had been playing up to that point):



Spoiler



Relationship Between Game Mechanics and Gameworld​Unlike 3E or Rolemaster, a lot of the 4e mechanics work best if they are not treated as a literal model of what is going on in the gameworld. So keep in mind that the main thing the mechanics tell you is what, mechanically, you can have your PC do. What your PC’s actions actually mean in the gameworld is up to you to decide (in collaboration with the GM and the other players at the table).

Some corollaries of this:

Character Levels​Levels for PCs, for NPCs and for monsters set the mechanical parameters for encounters. They don’t necessarily have any determinate meaning in the gameworld (eg in some encounters a given NPC might be implemented as an elite monster, and in other encounters – when the PCs are higher level – as a minion). As your PC gains levels, you certainly open up more character build space (more options for powers, more feats, etc). The only definite effect in the gameworld, however, is taking your paragon path and realising your epic destiny. How to handle the rest of it – is your PC becoming tougher, or more lucky, or not changing much at all in power level relative to the rest of the gameworld – is something that will have to come out in the course of play as the story of your PC unfolds.

PC Rebuilding​The rules for retraining, swapping in new powers, background feats etc, don’t have to be interpreted as literally meaning that your PC has forgotten how to do things or suddenly learned something new. Feel free to treat this as just emphasising a different aspect of your PC that was always there, but hadn’t yet come up in the course of play.

Skill Checks and Power Usage​When you make a skill check (especially in a skill challenge), use a feature or power, take the second wind action, etc, the onus is on you to explain how what you are attempting works in the gameworld. (Where a feature or power has flavour text you may use that flavour text or come up with your own.) Feel free to be dramatic.

Inadequate explanation which leaves everyone at the table scratching their heads as to what is going on in the gameworld may lead to a -2 penalty, or even automatic failure of the attempted action, depending on the circumstances.



I have no doubt at all that general familiarity with at least some of the variety of possible approaches to RPGing, gained from reading different RPGs and moreso from reading around The Forge, helped me with the above. Reading The Forge also significantly improved my RM play, in part by helping me appreciate ways in which RM differs from RQ even though - at a certain level of generality - both are very similar purist-for-system/"process simulation" RPGs. For instance, both use attack vs parry as part of their combat resolution. But in RM parry is a player decision-point about round-by-round allocation of overall available effort; whereas in RQ it is a roll against a fixed target number with no comparable decision point. This difference matters hugely in play. Now the only person I've ever seen make this particular point about those two systems is me: but I couldn't have identified and articulated it but for my reading of Edwards, and his discussion of the way different systems open up different sorts of decision-points that enable players to inject their own priorities from "outside" the unfolding in-fiction logic.

Another example, not about 4e D&D or RM but about Classic Traveller, which I've certainly posted in threads you've participated in: my approach to GMing in my current Classic Traveller campaign is heavily influenced by reading and discussing Apocalypse World - treating all the little subsystems as "moves" in the AW sense, and treating "if you do it, you do it" as the basic principle of play. And without wanting to embarrass him my saying it yet again, it is @Campbell who has helped me most with this, by pushing me to see what differentiates AW and BW as systems (roughly, AW is follow-the-fiction + "if you do it, you do it" while BW is scene-framed + "say 'yes' or roll the dice" + intent-and-task + "let it ride"). Appreciating those differences also sharpens my sense of the BW techniques, which helps my BW GMing and play and also makes it easier to bring those techniques into other systems where they are highly appropriate but not fully spelled out (eg Prince Valiant; Cthuhu Dark).

A final example: I recently watched  video where Ron Edwards says some critical things about BitD. I'm not familiar enough with BitD to form a view as to the merits of his criticisms: but it did prompt me to reflect further on Agon - another John Harper game with very intricate and overlapping resource and advancement tracks, which I have just started playing. That helped me identify possible stress points in Agon play, which I can handle and overcome by being aware of them and approaching them a certain way in my GMing.

And a concluding more general point: as an academic researcher I publish in a few fields. But I attend seminars and try to keep track of general developments in many more: being aware of what is happening in the general discipline is something I regard as essential to avoiding narrowness, parochialism and ultimately methodological error in my own fields. RPGing isn't something I approach as seriously as my work!, but I still find the same basic principle applies.


----------



## pemerton (Nov 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> @Manbearcat
> 
> Another example of the same phenomenon at play are 5e Backgrounds. We have an amazing piece of game design that grounds characters to the setting, provides firm fictional positioning, and allows unlimited player fiat within a narrow area of the fiction players can depend on (that does not come from a damn spell book).
> 
> I see so many GMs on this board treat Background features and abilities like Natural Explorer like polite suggestions and I wonder why they cannot see the brilliant pieces of 5e design for how brilliant they are.



First: I was ninja'd by you re my post just upthread, and shoud acknowledge that.

Second: I've read @Manbearcat's account of 5e's social mechanics in earlier thread. Because I'm not really into Pictionary + Wheel of Fortune (at home, when we play Pictionary, the phrases _get to play with dad as a partner_ and _drew the short straw _are largely synonymous), my appreciation for them can only be abstract and vicarious.

Third: I fully agree with you about 5e backgrounds. I feel similarly about backgrounds - with their free-descriptorness - in 13th Age. I feel these are really the one place where these post-4e games have pushed the logic of 4e's design further than 4e itself managed to. (Whereas I found 4e's backgrounds incredibly lacklustre and largely ignored them.)

But I don't think that what I appreciate about 5e backgrounds is widely shared among the 5e advocates whose posts I read.


----------



## Campbell (Nov 5, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> I bet he wears Affliction clothing and swears at innocent cashiers too.




Real gym bros wear plain tapered tees because nothing else fits them. If they level up they wear hoodies with shorts. Power lifters occasionally wear Relentless Athletic Wear because they lift raw . They would. Damn hipsters of gym bros.


----------



## Grendel_Khan (Nov 5, 2021)

So, since this keeps coming up, phrased in one form or another, from more than one preson...

Has anyone here ever heard or read, "People like what they like" and thought, Yes, yes, this is very valuable insight.

How about pointing out that something is inherently immune to critique and pointless to analyze because it's wildly popular?

I can't for the life of me understand what value either of those have. The _only_ goal or result for either would seem to be to try to end the discussion. They certainly never advance it.


----------



## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> So, since this keeps coming up, phrased in one form or another, from more than one preson...
> 
> Has anyone here ever heard or read, "People like what they like" and thought, Yes, yes, this is very valuable insight.
> 
> ...



IDK, I usually only see it when folks are at loggerheads and beyond reasonable critique or discussion. It's essentially a agree to disagree declaration. I'd say just ignore that poster going forward. If the comments are directed at you, maybe examine your postings. They could be drifting away from constructive criticism and killing desire for discussion.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Third: I fully agree with you about 5e backgrounds. I feel similarly about backgrounds - with their free-descriptorness - in 13th Age. I feel these are really the one place where these post-4e games have pushed the logic of 4e's design further than 4e itself managed to. (Whereas I found 4e's backgrounds incredibly lacklustre and largely ignored them.)




Oddly enough, the excessive shapelessness of 13th Age Backgrounds was the one thing I actively disliked, but that's more because I can see to many degenerate conditions arising from it with people I play with than any other part.


----------



## pemerton (Nov 5, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> what does classifying a playstyle as situation first or backstory first help in regards to running any game better?



Seeing as those phrases are my coinage, I thought I might reply.

To begin with: many, many RPG texts are very unclear about how the game is actually to be played. The first RPG that I, personally, read that I could see was just coming out and telling me how it was to be played was Burning Wheel. Since then I've discovered older texts that do this too (eg Maelstrom Storytelling, Over the Edge). I've also come to realise that Gygax's AD&D and Moldvay Basic do this to a large extent, though they have some misleading trappings (about heroic fantasy etc) in their introductory material.

But when playing a system like AD&D OA (which clearly is not meant to be played in the Gygax/Moldvay style) or Rolemaster, In my experience you're basically on your own.

I read a lot of stuff - both official stuff for both systems, and other commentary - which told me that I should create a rich gameworld, lots of interacting factions, etc (ie a "living sandbox"), or strongly implied that I should to that by presenting it as a model. Relatedly, both OA and various RM books have lots of tables for determining (perhaps by rolling, perhaps by choice) arcs of events in the campaign world, clearly intended to provide both a backdrop to play and material for play.

I also read a lot of stuff that talked about how to design and adjudicate action in locations, which clearly took for granted eg that movement would be adjudicated by tracking distance moved on a map vs movement rates.

And then one gets to the actual moment of play and of adjudication, and the question arises, _what to do with all this prepped material? _Eg, if one of my background events is _the assassination of the emperor_, and my maps and movement rates tell me that _if, at this moment, I reveal a rumour to the players, then even if they travel to the capital at their fastest they can't arrive in time to stop the assassination as per my prepared timelines_, what am I to do? Stick to all my prep, and have this dramatic event happen offstage? Or adjust my timeline?

At the same time, it's becoming clear in play that the players are into some stuff - eg the scheming of the Scarlet Brotherhood - but not other stuff - eg the border wars in Furyondy. Do I still focus on both in my prep and management of the sandbox? What if my random rolls for event generation reveal that all the exciting stuff is going to involve Furyondy and not the Scarlet Brotherhood. What if the players decide to try and infiltrate a Scarlet Brotherhood stronghold and I don't have it prepped - or haven't even thought about whether and where it might be?

My ability to deal with these questions in my own play was helped a great deal by having someone else - mostly Ron Edwards - explain what was giving rise to them, namely, a certain set of assumptions about how prepped backstory, framing of situations, and resolution of declared actions, would all fit together. Encountering systems like BW - with its Circles and Wises checks - made it clear, by _showing how_ rather than just _asserting that_, that other approaches are possible. I was able to realise that the relationship between successful moments of play, and various techniques I'd used without necessarily noticing that I was using them, was not accidental but causal. And so I was able to become more systematic.

And now, when I GM, I have a set of conceptual and practical tools for thinking about how I use prepped backstory, and how I prep for situation, and how I adjudicate actions. For instance: I can now see clearly that if (i) I treat prepped backstory as fluid, non-binding suggestions and (ii) I adjudicate declared actions as automatic failures _on the basis of unrevealed backstory_ then (iii) I'm basically just fiatting failure or the possibility of success. No AD&D or RM book ever explained this to me. I also now have a clear way of thinking about _how to bring backstory into framing_, so it becomes part of the established fictional positioning. I also understand much better than I use to how to incorporate player suggestions about backstory into framing and adjudication.

All these things have made my RPGing better.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> How about pointing out that something is inherently immune to critique and pointless to analyze because it's wildly popular?




There's not a single person here that has done this...


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> So, since this keeps coming up, phrased in one form or another, from more than one preson...
> 
> Has anyone here ever heard or read, "People like what they like" and thought, Yes, yes, this is very valuable insight.
> 
> ...




That's sometimes how I read it, but to give people the benefit of the doubt, what I suspect most of them are intending is to suggest there's a fundamental taste based element at the root of people's enjoyment of RPGs that trumps everything else, and as such makes any attempt to engage with it on a critical level, basically pointless.  So arguably they _are_ trying to end the discussion, because they see it as serving no purpose but as an exercise in harshing someone's buzz (and possibly don't trust at least the motivations of some of the people doing it for that reason).

While I don't agree with them there is a problem in such discussion that's hard to engage with: there are usually one or more premises that people doing a critique take as a given, and often they're unwilling or unable to unpack those, and without doing so its hard to move forward.  At least occasionally (there's a poster on here about PF2e that does this) they also take it as a given that their premise is so self-evident that anyone not accepting it is a blind fanboy.

I don't necessarily think any of this means such discussion is fruitless, but it can all be a contributor toward it being tedious and annoying for pretty much everyone involved.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> And now, when I GM, I have a set of conceptual and practical tools for thinking about how I use prepped backstory, and how I prep for situation, and how I adjudicate actions. For instance: I can now see clearly that if (i) I treat prepped backstory as fluid, non-binding suggestions and (ii) I adjudicate declared actions as automatic failures _on the basis of unrevealed backstory_ then (iii) I'm basically just fiatting failure or the possibility of success. No AD&D or RM book ever explained this to me. I also now have a clear way of thinking about _how to bring backstory into framing_, so it becomes part of the established fictional positioning. I also understand much better than I use to how to incorporate player suggestions about backstory into framing and adjudication.
> 
> All these things have made my RPGing better.




I want to use Pemerton a little bit here to illustrate a bit from my prior post.

The above paragraph and most of the rest of the post leading to it has an unstated but (I think) pretty clear assumption: that the purpose of backstory is overwhelmingly to engage the PCs' interests.  Given the time and mode of the books he's talking about, this is not an assumption I'd guess those books were making; that the purpose of the backstory was to set up a dynamic setting, and that it was not necessary for the PCs to interact with all of it for that to be a virtue.

The significance of this is that for a person who thinks the latter is true, a critique based on the former is going to evoke, to one degree or another, a response of "And?"  That's likely even to be true if they understand the difference between the two positions, as they presumably consider the latter as a virtue that someone with priorities toward the first won't, so it may be hard for them to sympathize with the aims of the first.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> View attachment 146198
> 
> My misspent youth




My misspent, um, not youth.


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## payn (Nov 5, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> My misspent, um, not youth.
> 
> View attachment 146201



Are you sure this wasn't your jam?...


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 5, 2021)

payn said:


> Are you sure this wasn't your jam?...




How did I not know about this before? My life was incomplete.

It’s like no one ever told me about sunshine. Or rainbows. Or The film oeuvre of the world’s greatest thespian, Nicolas Cage.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 5, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Seeing as those phrases are my coinage, I thought I might reply.
> 
> To begin with: many, many RPG texts are very unclear about how the game is actually to be played. The first RPG that I, personally, read that I could see was just coming out and telling me how it was to be played was Burning Wheel. Since then I've discovered older texts that do this too (eg Maelstrom Storytelling, Over the Edge). I've also come to realise that Gygax's AD&D and Moldvay Basic do this to a large extent, though they have some misleading trappings (about heroic fantasy etc) in their introductory material.
> 
> ...



My take from this is that your framework and methodology is deeply personal to you.  That you find it extremely useful and think others can too - even to the point that the same relationships between specific successful moments of play and various techniques that you discovered will be broadly applicable to others.

I've had alot of success modifying death rules in 5e to make falling to 0 hp more consequential.  But every time I bring up the relationship of the success I have had with such techniques I find to my dismay that hardly anyone is interested in modifying their game that way.  What I find is that relationships I initially think are universal and that others would benefit from usually aren't really that universal but particular to my tastes and possibly a small segment of other players tastes.  There's never the broad appeal there that I expect.



pemerton said:


> And now, when I GM, I have a set of conceptual and practical tools for thinking about how I use prepped backstory, and how I prep for situation, and how I adjudicate actions. For instance: I can now see clearly that if (i) I treat prepped backstory as fluid, non-binding suggestions and (ii) I adjudicate declared actions as automatic failures _on the basis of unrevealed backstory_ then (iii) I'm basically just fiatting failure or the possibility of success. No AD&D or RM book ever explained this to me. I also now have a clear way of thinking about _how to bring backstory into framing_, so it becomes part of the established fictional positioning. I also understand much better than I use to how to incorporate player suggestions about backstory into framing and adjudication.



I think there's alot of unstated assumptions in this example.  For example, one can treat some areas of backstory as fluid, non-binding while adjucating actions on the non-fluid backstory elements without causing fiat.  And then there's the question, even if you do make an adjucation on a fluid, non-binding piece of backstory - was fiat in that situation actually 'bad' or 'negative' in anyway - especially if such fiat based adjucations come up rarely?

Which to me reveals that what your analysis is teaching you is more about personal insight than universal principles that we call can use.


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Well ... eh, that's not really it from my P.O.V. From my P.O.V., no matter what topic I post, no matter how it's framed, and no matter what tags I used (like "5e") in an attempt to get the "disconnected, curious individuals" out there to contribute to the discussion because I'd like to hear what they have to say, it feels like the exact same people come in and dominate the conversations with the same points, leaving no air for the curious and disconnected.



Because I didn't want to disrupt your FKR thread, I started a thread in General about FK (not FKR) and RPGing.

You posted in that thread and (implicitly, but not very implicitly) directed me to yours, suggesting that mine was wrong-headed and based on an inadequate evidence base.

As a result, I made some posts in your thread. I thought that's what you were inviting me to do.


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I want to use Pemerton a little bit here to illustrate a bit from my prior post.



Three thoughts in response:

(1) Do you think I kept the premise you identify hidden, or am incapable of discussing it? I thought I stated it or strongly implied it pretty clearly. (Except that I would refer to _players' interests_ or _player-authored PC priorities_; not _PCs' interests_.)

(2) I don't fully agree with your characterisation of RM texts. I posted some quotes from Campaign Law (1984) recently in another thread and won't repeat them here, but they make it clear that the GM is supposed to be engaging the players via the backstory. The same book also encourages prepping a detailed backstory. It doesn't explain how to reconcile the tension between that can arise, in play, between these two instructions.

(3) I posted in reply to a question from @FrogReaver about how drawing a certain contrast - backstory-first and situation-first - might help someone improve their RPGing. I think I answered the question. Now if your response is that someone who is following backstory-first advice and isn't worried by the outcomes of that may not gain anything from noting that distinction, fair enough. But I didn't assert that _everyone_ will improve their play by drawing such a distinction.

On another recent thread, I made a post that I think 5e can be played situation-first, because I have played situation-first AD&D and 5e doesn't seem wildly different from AD&D in the relevant respects. FrogReaver asked me to elaborate, and I did. As part of the elaboration I explained what I take to be the contrast between prioritising backstory in framing and adjudication, and subordinating backstory to situation in play. Now if someone doesn't want to play situation-first AD&D or 5e, that's obviously their prerogative. But having been asked to provide the elaboration, I'm not sure why it's objectionable to do so.

EDIT:


FrogReaver said:


> Which to me reveals that what your analysis is teaching you is more about personal insight than universal principles that we call can use.



When you ask questions, and people answer, it seems odd to attack them for their answers.

I've never asserted that any set of preferences is universal. Or that any set of principles should be universally adopted.

I think the analysis of backstory vs situation is highly applicable, though. Clearly beyond just my own case, given that there are a very large numbers of RPGs built more-or-less deliberately to exploit the various ways these can be related.

It also lets me understand others' play. Eg I can infer from your posts that you prefer backstory-first play. That comes through in many of your posts, particularly one in the last week or so where you talked about the sorts of spontaneous backstory-introduction that you could or could not accept. Also in your discussion of how to establish and adjudicate a living sandbox.


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The ask is not that anyone be "deferential," but just that they try to be polite and helpful...or else not reply at all, which is always an option.  Further, I've said in this thread and other threads that I respect everyone's depth of rpg knowledge (including to you, directly), and that I'm here to learn; that's not, I don't think, treating anyone "poorly."  (In one instance I made a facetious post that came off poorly; I deleted it and apologized).



You make many posts about what sorts of mechanics "we need". I've explained why I think the use of "we" in these sorts of discussions is not all that helpful, nor "need": because different people want different things from RPGing, and sometimes the same person can want different things from RPGing on different occasions. So it seems to me that there is no _we_ and there is no _need_.

If people want to free roleplay fantasy shopping, that's their prerogative. That doesn't to my mind show or suggest or even kind-of hint that others who resolve shopping differently are doing it wrong, or have made a mistake about what RPGing is about. Nor vice versa, obviously.

I think the context of 5e play can make the differences more fraught, because expressions of preference often get bundled into discussions of what sort of material WotC should publish. In my experience this association of _what techniques do I and/or my table prefer _and _what ought the commercial publishers of D&D to publish_ really seems to date from the 3E era. Perhaps I was out of touch in the AD&D era, but I don't remember that particular line of discussion coming up so often.

I think this is a function of the market position, and subsequent customer relation to the product, of D&D compared to (say) Rolemaster or Apocalypse World.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Three thoughts in response:




Before I do, I just want to make it clear I was just using your post as a springboard; I don't think you've been exceptionally muddy in this area, but I thought the post _in absence of any prior reading of your posts_ could be an example of the issue.



pemerton said:


> (1) Do you think I kept the premise you identify hidden, or am incapable of discussing it? I thought I stated it or strongly implied it pretty clearly. (Except that I would refer to _players' interests_ or _player-authored PC priorities_; not _PCs' interests_.)




The latter I'm utterly incapable of assessing; I endeavor not to engage in what I refer to as "Internet Telepathy" and I haven't read enough of your posts to develop an opinion outside of that.

I don't think you stated it, but did indeed imply it; but that doesn't actually help with the situation as much as you'd think.



pemerton said:


> (2) I don't fully agree with your characterisation of RM texts. I posted some quotes from Campaign Law (1984) recently in another thread and won't repeat them here, but they make it clear that the GM is supposed to be engaging the players via the backstory. The same book also encourages prepping a detailed backstory. It doesn't explain how to reconcile the tension between that can arise, in play, between these two instructions.




I don't think this is contrary, per se; after all, if you have four elements, and one of those engages the players, you're still doing it.  The other three simply are establishing background context (and of course may engage the players at some other point).  The question still ends up coming down to whether the extra material is worth the additional effort, and that still turns on whether it provides value in and of itself.



pemerton said:


> (3) I posted in reply to a question from @FrogReaver about how drawing a certain contrast - backstory-first and situation-first - might help someone improve their RPGing. I think I answered the question. Now if your response is that someone who is following backstory-first advice and isn't worried by the outcomes of that may not gain anything from noting that distinction, fair enough. But I didn't assert that _everyone_ will improve their play by drawing such a distinction.




This is where it gets complicated: to what degree does presenting such a thing default to assuming it is of value to the reader?  There's obviously a difference between people who take someone to task for not using a technique or assert that everyone should do it and someone who simply presents it without an obvious value judgment, but the difference can be _extremely_ muddy in some cases, and to some degree depends on the observer. So while I'm not sure there's an obligation to be affirmative in stating that a critique or a technique suggestion comes from a given posture and does not apply to those not sharing it, not doing so almost inevitably will end up producing some results from people who read the opposite into it (possibly from past experiences with those who did assume it as a given) along with, of course, some percentage of people who approach the discussion assuming bad intent or bring it themselves.

The net effect is that there's always going to be some problems with this kind of formulation, some the poster has some influence over (but that can require more heavy lifting than they're willing to do), some less so.



pemerton said:


> On another recent thread, I made a post that I think 5e can be played situation-first, because I have played situation-first AD&D and 5e doesn't seem wildly different from AD&D in the relevant respects. FrogReaver asked me to elaborate, and I did. As part of the elaboration I explained what I take to be the contrast between prioritising backstory in framing and adjudication, and subordinating backstory to situation in play. Now if someone doesn't want to play situation-first AD&D or 5e, that's obviously their prerogative. But having been asked to provide the elaboration, I'm not sure why it's objectionable to do so.
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> When you ask questions, and people answer, it seems odd to attack them for their answers.




It isn't so odd when you understand that the answers can be read as critical of the extent way they're playing and think they should play.  Its arguably very unproductive, but its common enough its not useful to act like it isn't the case.

Its also a good idea to remember that often responses to you are, whether the poster is conscious of it or not, often directed to not only you but every past individual they've seen discussion on the same subject with.  Again, you can argue it shouldn't be that way, but it clearly _is_ that way in many, many cases.


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 6, 2021)

I also want to put a bit of clarification on something I said in an earlier post: when I say people are unwilling or unable to unpack their assumptions, I'm not just talking about what they are, but _why they're desirable_. Its easy to say that you find, say, all mechanics player facing desirable, but unless you can explain why you do, its unlikely to be useful at all to someone who doesn't share that desire in regard to applying it to a system that doesn't currently do so.


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I don't think this is contrary, per se; after all, if you have four elements, and one of those engages the players, you're still doing it.  The other three simply are establishing background context (and of course may engage the players at some other point).  The question still ends up coming down to whether the extra material is worth the additional effort, and that still turns on whether it provides value in and of itself.



I don't really understand this point. I've started a new thread. (Well not quite yet, but am about to.) I'll @ you, but it's a no-obligation @!


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I also want to put a bit of clarification on something I said in an earlier post: when I say people are unwilling or unable to unpack their assumptions, I'm not just talking about what they are, but _why they're desirable_. Its easy to say that you find, say, all mechanics player facing desirable, but unless you can explain why you do, its unlikely to be useful at all to someone who doesn't share that desire in regard to applying it to a system that doesn't currently do so.



I don't know if this is always true, though.

I mean, if someone asserts _In my RPGing I do such-and-such a thing_, and someone else asks for elaboration or more explanation, I don't think it's incumbent on the first person to explain why the do such-and-such a thing - especially if the topic of the thread is about ways of doing such-and-such a thing, or contrasting it with other things that sit in the same functional space.

Concrete example: if I ask @FrogReaver to elaborate on the changes he (? I believe that's the right pronoun, and apologise if I'm wrong) has made to the zero hp rules in 5e, I don't think there's any burden on him to explain _why_ he made them. Especially as it will often be pretty self-evident - eg "realism"/verisimilitude, perhaps combined with a distaste for what I've seen called the whack-a-mole aspect of dropping to zero hp in 5e.


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## Malmuria (Nov 6, 2021)

edit


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 6, 2021)

Getting OSR people to define OSR is like pulling teeth half the time...


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 6, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> Getting OSR people to define OSR is like pulling teeth half the time...



Half the time?


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> if you have four elements, and one of those engages the players, you're still doing it.  The other three simply are establishing background context (and of course may engage the players at some other point).  The question still ends up coming down to whether the extra material is worth the additional effort, and that still turns on whether it provides value in and of itself.



Btw, I think I worked this out: you mean _four elements in the fiction_ eg four adventure sites, or four factional plots, or something like that (and obviously there might be mixing and matching different sorts of elements) - and then the three elements the players don't choose to engage with are part of background setting.

RM Campaign Law sort of touches on this, but I don't think that, on its own, it reconciles the tensions. Happy to take up further in the other thread if you like.


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## pemerton (Nov 6, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> Getting OSR people to define OSR is like pulling teeth half the time...





Fenris-77 said:


> Half the time?



To me, at least, OSR seems to be a mix of (i) resolution/system framework, (ii) play goal, and (iii) aesthetic.

If they are all there - eg OSRIC and other retroclones - then no worries!

If you've got only a bit, it's trickier. Eg DW has (iii) - at least arguably - but not (i) or (ii); Torchbearer has (ii) and (iii) but not (i); AD&D 2nd ed or derivatives have (i) and maybe a splash of (iii) but not (ii). I personally don't think of any of those as OSR, but maybe others do?

There might be ways of moving in the (i) space that are still more faithful to the classics than Torchbearer; they're better candidates, I would think, to count as OSR.


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## Yora (Nov 6, 2021)

OSR is OD&D, Basic/Expert D&D, and AD&D 1st Edition. What's so hard about that?


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## Aldarc (Nov 6, 2021)

Yora said:


> OSR is OD&D, Basic/Expert D&D, and AD&D 1st Edition. What's so hard about that?



Because it also can include non-retroclones and games like Maze Rats and Into the Odd.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> So, since this keeps coming up, phrased in one form or another, from more than one preson...
> 
> Has anyone here ever heard or read, "People like what they like" and thought, Yes, yes, this is very valuable insight.




Since I am the person who uses that phrase most often, perhaps I should explain it.

When I use it, I am referring to the settled law of Judge John Hodgman.  The full phrasing as the following:

_People like what they like. You can’t force someone to like something. You can expose them to a piece of work, but if they don’t like it, that’s the way it is. You can’t talk them out of it._

And yeah, I think that is not only a valuable insight, I also believe that if people not only understood it, but tried to apply it, they would find their relationships and lives a lot happier.

At the core is a very simple notion- everyone is not the same. People can have different subjective tastes. If not, we would all have the same hobbies, tastes, and art preferences- for example. More importantly, someone can be really smart, be really knowledgeable about a topic, engage in totally good faith ... and still disagree with you.

If most people think about this for even a second, really really think about this, they know it to be true. Two people who both love movies and film criticism, one who loves Wes Anderson and one who doesn't. Or you can see this in your personal life- maybe you love watching bad horror movies, and your significant other doesn't. Or they love Ornette Coleman, and you don't.

In the end, all you can ask is for someone to try something that you love- to share that experience. And if they don't like it, all the talk in the world isn't going to change their mind. You can't force someone to love what you love.

That's really one of the main takeaways, for me. If someone else loves something, and I see that love, the enthusiasm might convince me to try it. The one thing that almost always fails for me (and, I think, for most people) is when people don't share their enthusiasm, but instead mock you for the things you enjoy. That's a little too "comic book guy" and "gatekeeper-y" for me.*

*EDIT- this, by the way, is why I think that the occasional sneering I see w/r/t having "fun" as a goal is the most counterproductive thing a person can possibly say. Yeah, sure, you want to go deeper than that. But my goodness- it's like a parody of any gatekeeper (comic book guy, record store guy, FLGS guy ... always GUY). "Oh, you like {Insert here} because it's FUN? Harumph." Personally, I love to have fun! If someone tells me a game will be fun, I will be a lot more likely to play it. Sometime later, I might unpack why it was fun, maybe. But yeah, fun is a pretty big goal and a good selling point in a hobby.

Anyway, that's what it means. Share your love, and hope that people love it like you do. But be okay if they don't, because not everyone likes the same things. And that's okay.



Grendel_Khan said:


> How about pointing out that something is inherently immune to critique and pointless to analyze because it's wildly popular?




Not a single person has said. As has been said repeatedly, it would be odd to _not_ analyze something that is popular. Most people would agree that "superhero movies" as a genre are popular, right? Do you think it would be weird if, every time on enworld (on in society as a whole), people wanted to discuss and critique superhero films, the conversation got derailed because someone brought up Lars von Trier and everyone started arguing about Dogme 95?

I do!


Grendel_Khan said:


> I can't for the life of me understand what value either of those have. The _only_ goal or result for either would seem to be to try to end the discussion. They certainly never advance it.




That's an interesting point to make! I mean, it would seem counter-productive for someone to repeatedly spend a lot of their own time _creating and starting_ threads with the purpose of ending discussion.

I've been doing it wrong the entire time! Good catch. 


EDIT 2- Seriously, though, the purpose of the first phrase ("People like what they like") is just an acknowledgment that people can have different preferences and that's okay. It doesn't mean you can't have your own opinion, or that you can't critique something- but that at certain point an impasse has to occur for the simple reason that preferences are subjective, and arguing over preferences is counter-productive. As for the second- I have to assume you are recalling things that haven't been happening in this thread, or that I am aware of.


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## Yora (Nov 6, 2021)

People know what they like.
But people don't know what they want.

People like what they like, but they generally don't understand what exactly they like about it. They don't fully understand what aspects of a thing makes it something that they like, and how the various aspects are interacting with each other to produce something that they like. This is particularly true with movies and games, which have many more moving parts than what the audience is consciously experiencing in the moment.
You always get fans saying that they really like something, but that they would like it more if you would make a few specific changes. But if the fans don't understand the internal workings of the thing they like, then they also don't know how the final result will change. As a creator, especially when being the creator of the specific work in question, one has a much deeper understanding on how the individual aspects interact together to form a final whole.

I guess the moral of this story is to not design by committee. Design as holistic concepts.
When the next prototype rolls out, you can ask the audience what things they like and what things they don't like, and perhaps what they think why they don't like them. But that's only a pointer at which aspects you could look into again to look for ways that you could refine them. Then check again if they like the changes more or less. It's should not be the audience making their own uninformed edits to the work that you blindly execute.


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## Campbell (Nov 6, 2021)

Speaking personally (as someone who considers themselves a fan of the OSR) my connection is more to playstyle and aesthetics than mechanics. I think playstyle is pretty well understand by referencing stuff like Finch's Old School Primer and the Principia Apocrypha. Games like Into The Odd, The Nightmares Underneath, and Worlds Without Number feel more OSR to me than AD&D playing the more story oriented modules. I am much more of a B/X person though.

@Manbearcat might rake me over the coals for this, but I think games like Torchbearer and Freebooters on the Frontier share old school aesthetics, but have a pretty different playstyle.

Dungeon World is a game that I think has as much of an aesthetic link to the modern game as it does to old school aesthetics. Freebooters feels much more old school to me.









						Principia Apocrypha: Principles of Old School RPGs, or, A New OSR Primer
					

Principia Apocrypha is a new, free Primer for OSR  and other Old School Style RPG Gaming in the form of a collection of Apocalypse World-s...




					lithyscaphe.blogspot.com


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 6, 2021)

Yora said:


> People know what they like.
> But people don't know what they want.
> 
> People like what they like, but they generally don't understand what exactly they like about it.




Two things-

1. That's not exactly what the phrasing is about.

2. If you're designing something, then you are necessarily making choices about the audience.* If it's a commercial product, you want it to sell. The choices you make will be influenced not just by what you consider to be the "best product" or even "what the consumer really wants, but doesn't know yet," but what is likely to sell, with various constraints in place (cost of production, expected market, need for backwards compatibility, etc. etc. etc.).

If you're making a commercial product, then in a very certain way, what you say in the last sentence shouldn't happen ... is what happens. You release the product, the audience (the market) makes its "edits" by either accepting or rejecting your creation (purchase, ignores), and you continue, iterate, or discontinue based upon the audience's feedback.

There is less of this in DIY hobbyist spheres- for example, if you are self-releasing a "pay whatever you want" rules-lite game on itch, then you probably don't care about, or need, commercial success or viability.



*Okay, maybe there is someone, somewhere, that is making something solely for themselves. But for the most part ...


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## Aldarc (Nov 6, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Since I am the person who uses that phrase most often, perhaps I should explain it.
> 
> When I use it, I am referring to the settled law of Judge John Hodgman.  The full phrasing as the following:
> 
> ...



I will say that in my discussions about other games or systems, I don't necessarily expect that other people will or must like the games that I discuss. I rarely, if ever, go in to these discussions with the intent of convincing other people into liking these games. I understand fulll well that other people have different tastes, and they are entitled to them. I like playing other games, and not every game is designed with a D&D-esque framework. (And I do think that you, Snarf Zagyg, likely would also enjoy playing them, and I would be more than delighted to play these games with you.)

When I discuss these other games, however, I would appreciate it if other people took a little time understanding these games, how they work and play as games, and why others may like them instead of repeating blatant misunderstandings or falsehoods about the games or telling me that I'm engaging in badwrong-not true-roleplaying because I may play games with metagame currencies, robust social mechanics (e.g., Fate, Cortex, etc.), or greater player authority over the fiction. (These have all happened to me here on ENWorld within the past year too.). I don't enjoy having other games I like playing being condescendingly referred to as "bespoke" or the subject of special pleading about them being more specialized or less customizable/kit-bashable than D&D.

I don't necessarily like having my own personal tastes repeatedly be on trial, raked through the coals, or having to justify its own existence over against the hegemony of traditional gaming, which I myself also partake in and enjoy. That doesn't make me feel welcome, and it's almost a miracle that I'm still here on ENWorld given the crap people have said about my gaming preferences. And also being someone who liked 4e during the time of the Edition Wars here? _shudders_ I did not go looking to be a part of the "theory camp." It happened _to me_, largely as a byproduct of my own preferences (for liking 4e, for liking Fate, for liking Dungeon World, for liking Blades in the Dark, etc.) constantly being interrogated by others here.

It would be nice if what you wrote here was equally or fairly applied to all the people who spent their time on ENWorld punching down at marginalized gaming preferences rather than those of us who were occasionally having to punch up.


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## payn (Nov 6, 2021)

Yora said:


> People know what they like.
> But people don't know what they want.
> 
> People like what they like, but they generally don't understand what exactly they like about it. They don't fully understand what aspects of a thing makes it something that they like, and how the various aspects are interacting with each other to produce something that they like. This is particularly true with movies and games, which have many more moving parts than what the audience is consciously experiencing in the moment.
> ...



This is often overstated. In fact, I've seen it used as a weapon against folks enough that I pretty much default to giving people the benefit of the doubt they understand what they want.


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## payn (Nov 6, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> It would be nice if what you wrote here was equally or fairly applied to all the people who spent their time on ENWorld punching down at marginalized gaming preferences rather than those of us who were occasionally having to punch up.



It would be nice if folks didnt feel the need to punch _at all_. I will say that when it comes to discussing different types of games, particularly comparing games, EN World is one of the most diplomatic places. Maybe that's damning praise, im sorry you had those experiences.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 6, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> It would be nice if what you wrote here was equally or fairly applied to all the people who spent their time on ENWorld punching down at marginalized gaming preferences rather than those of us who were occasionally having to punch up.




First, I have no dispute with indie games. If anything, as I am sure you remember, I was incredibly disappointed that we were not able to more fully discuss some of the rules-lite games that I think are fascinating. Moreover, to the extent that I can be, I try to support games and gamers in the independent sphere. What you see from your perspective is not what I see. 

Second, I do not think that the appropriation of that language ("punching down at marginalized gaming preferences") in the context of this conversation is appropriate or helpful. There is a great deal of amazing work (some of which is available at the links in the OP) regarding issues of representation and marginalization in the TTRPG community- issue related to gender, sexuality, and minority representation among others. We see these issues both in the indie game community and in the larger, more commercial game community. I do not think that using this language to describe conversations about game preferences ("I like BiTD and 4e and PbTA games" as opposed to "I like Cthulhu Dark and 5e and rule-lite games") is helpful, and I think it uses language that evokes very real and systemic issues in our society and our hobby in a manner that is unhelpful when describing differences in gaming preferences.


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## Aldarc (Nov 6, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> First, I have no dispute with indie games. If anything, as I am sure you remember, I was incredibly disappointed that we were not able to more fully discuss some of the rules-lite games that I think are fascinating. Moreover, to the extent that I can be, I try to support games and gamers in the independent sphere. *What you see from your perspective is not what I see.*



How could you see things from my perspective? I've also seen this unfold on the forum since 2002. That tends to color my perspective a bit. 



Snarf Zagyg said:


> Second, I do not think that the appropriation of that language ("punching down at marginalized gaming preferences") in the context of this conversation is appropriate or helpful. There is a great deal of amazing work (some of which is available at the links in the OP) regarding issues of representation and marginalization in the TTRPG community- issue related to gender, sexuality, and minority representation among others. We see these issues both in the indie game community and in the larger, more commercial game community. I do not think that using this language to describe conversations about game preferences ("I like BiTD and 4e and PbTA games" as opposed to "I like Cthulhu Dark and 5e and rule-lite games") is helpful, and I think it uses language that evokes very real and systemic issues in our society and our hobby in a manner that is unhelpful when describing differences in gaming preferences.



Perhaps it was not the most suitable language, but as an LBGTQ person myself, it was the familiar language of my grief, aggravation, and frustration. And maybe instead of trying to shame me for using this language, it would be nice if you could sympathize where it was coming from and respond a little more gracious consideration.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 6, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> How could you see things from my perspective? I've also seen this unfold on the forum since 2002. That tends to color my perspective a bit.




I am not sure how to respond to this- if I say that what you see is not what I see, then your response doesn't make much sense. I didn't say I saw things from your perspective; I said you didn't see things from my perspective- because we are seeing things differently.

Your coloration and my coloration are not the same. 



Aldarc said:


> Perhaps it was not the most suitable language, but as an LBGTQ person myself, it was the familiar language of my grief, aggravation, and frustration. And maybe instead of trying to shame me for using this language, it would be nice if you could sympathize where it was coming from and respond a little more gracious consideration.




I don't feel the need to detail my personal history, nor do I think it's the same issue you do. I simply will re-state what I said previously- I don't find that language appropriate for a conversation about gaming preferences. This isn't about shaming you, or anyone else. I just think that using the language in contexts that are not appropriate devalues it when it is most certainly appropriate. You can choose how and when to use the language you want- I just registered why I believe it is unhelpful in the current context. I am sorry that you feel frustrated that you are not heard- but I don't think the comparison is helpful.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 6, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> _People like what they like. You can’t force someone to like something. You can expose them to a piece of work, but if they don’t like it, that’s the way it is. You can’t talk them out of it._
> 
> And yeah, I think that is not only a valuable insight, I also believe that if people not only understood it, but tried to apply it, they would find their relationships and lives a lot happier.




Two things on this. First, I would say that most of the disagreements that we get into aren’t really about what people like, but rather why they like them, or why they don’t like something else. Or sometimes why they think they won’t like something else.

Second, I think the quote is useful as a general guideline, but at the same time, I know I’ve changed my mind plenty of times about movies or books or games, and very often this is due to some input from other people. Some offered insight or new angle, or even just through discussion with someone who enjoys something can be enlightening.

Now, that’s not to say the goal of a conversation should specifically be to try and change someone’s mind, but no, I don't agree that people like what they like and never change.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> Personally, I love to have fun! If someone tells me a game will be fun, I will be a lot more likely to play it. Sometime later, I might unpack why it was fun, maybe. But yeah, fun is a pretty big goal and a good selling point in a hobby.




What do you say when someone asks you to play a game that’s not fun?



Snarf Zagyg said:


> That's an interesting point to make! I mean, it would seem counter-productive for someone to repeatedly spend a lot of their own time _creating and starting_ threads with the purpose of ending discussion.




You started the thread, sure, and I think you often introduce interesting ideas for discussion. But that doesn’t mean you get to own the discussion. I mean, you said in response to someone who disagreed with you that “everything that needs to be said was in the OP”.

In the authoritah thread that you started, you showed back up later on to lament what had happened to it. But there was actually plenty that was being discussed that was both relevant to the topic and perfectly cordial. You never responded to any of that nor even acknowledged it. You just lamented the entire thread.

People disagree. It’s okay. This seems to be one of your big things. But when people disagree with you, from what I’ve seen, you seem to struggle with that. You get standoffish and passive aggressive like the post I’ve quoted above, and eventually you kind of do the whole “well I guess you care a lot more than me, so bye ”.

I mean, look at how you started this thread. About the topic? Nope….by calling others out.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 6, 2021)

Campbell said:


> @Manbearcat might rake me over the coals for this, but I think games like Torchbearer and Freebooters on the Frontier share old school aesthetics, but have a pretty different playstyle.




Not sure that I disagree, but I’d need to hear more!

My old school play is Pawn Stance delving or “just north of Pawn Stance” Hexcrawling.

TB is nothing like that:

* It’s significantly more brutal.

* It’s significantly more personal (to the PCs and to the Town).


Which is why I always go back to Darkest Dungeon (which TB clearly inspired)! TB is about (mechanically and thematically) discovering the Nature (capital) of desperate adventurers in a brutally punishing crucible that grinds them to dust. 

D&D ain’t that!


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## Aldarc (Nov 6, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I don't feel the need to detail my personal history, nor do I think it's the same issue you do. I simply will re-state what I said previously- I don't find that language appropriate for a conversation about gaming preferences. This isn't about shaming you, or anyone else. I just think that using the language in contexts that are not appropriate devalues it when it is most certainly appropriate. You can choose how and when to use the language you want- I just registered why I believe it is unhelpful in the current context. I am sorry that you feel frustrated that you are not heard- but I don't think the comparison is helpful.



Then what appropriate language or context am I permitted to use so that I can effectively communicate the real frustration of my lived experiences to you so that you can understand where I am coming from? If you genuinely feel sorry, then there should be no need to so utterly and quickly dismiss it with 'I am sorry you feel that way, but..." You feel sorry that I feel that way, BUT you wanna remind me again of how I was wrong to use the language that I did? Thanks, I guess. Maybe it was well-intended; however, I do hope you understand why "I'm sorry you feel that way, but..." tends to be counterproductive in discussions and can across as unsympathetic.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 6, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Since I am the person who uses that phrase most often, perhaps I should explain it.
> 
> When I use it, I am referring to the settled law of Judge John Hodgman.  The full phrasing as the following:
> 
> ...




Hodgman also routinely and hilariously lambasts _many_ things, including extremely popular. stuff The context from him that you included is useful, but also (imo) gets to the heart of why that sort of point is pointless in practice, if not worse. If used as a response to criticism or analysis (that isn't purely effusive praise) it simultaneously casts those critics/analyzers as meanbad jerks trying to change your mind. It assumes that the point of any discussion is to sway someone to your side, not to explore, to challenge, to see what happens.

We see this all the time with responses to movie critics. In fact, it happened over on the Ghostbusters: Afterlife thread--the usual dismissal of critics, in the context that the only job of a critic is news-you-can-use, a recommendation to see or not to see. Critics, in other words, are just trying to convince you to share their opinion of a work. So when they don't like the popular thing someone likes, they're pushy snobs with an agenda. When they rave (or at least largely praise) the subject of some large-scale fandom, well they've finally hung up their berets and black turtlenecks and realized the true value of popular entertainment.

Do you see how stifling and anti-intellectual that sort of reaction is, to take criticism and analysis that isn't pure celebration as a rhetorical assault, and an attempt to take away other people's toys? 

Even if you disagree with that assessment, when have you ever seen "People like what they like" have an impact that isn't awkward or worse? Hodgman will often use it as part of preambles to scathing takedowns of a thing, to establish that it's all in the context of "this isn't for me." But, with that established, he doesn't pull punches. And he doesn't use it as an actual standalone retort or response.

The more I think about People like what they like, the more it haunts me. It's a black hole. It's the end.

You're in a group of people comparing the Justice League movie to the Snyder Cut--what some of them thinks works, what some hate, that some don't like either. You decide to chime in:

"Hey, guys...People like what they like."

People are discussed Moby Dick, whether its innovations and genuine weirdness outweigh how long the damn book is, whether it should still be considered in the canon or not, whether it should ever have been assigned in schools, why one person in the group thinks it's the greatest novel ever written and another despises it." You've waited long enough:

"Have you considered that...People like what they like?"

You're discussing 5e. The discussion is passionate. Some people are praising its big tent appeal. Others are criticizing its mechanics. You brace yourself, and dust it off, _one more time._

"People like what they like."


No response ever makes sense. Do you ignore it? But it's an accusation that can't be dealt with without sounding suspiciously defensive. You can get mad, but that just feeds it. You can move on, awkwardly, but it'll come up again (as it has here, as it always does). It's such a powerful, inexorable platitude that it can't be engaged with. It's the shimmer from Annihilation. It's Solaris rewiring your mental reality. It can't be resisted or escaped.

I have to go now. I think I hear People like what they like somewhere in the house. It's watching a Hallmark Christmas movie downstairs and really liking that it likes what it likes and liking that if you're so foolish as to say you don't like what it likes you should _really _keep in mind that

People like what they like.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Hodgman also routinely and hilariously lambasts _many_ things, including extremely popular. stuff The context from him that you included is useful, but also (imo) gets to the heart of why that sort of point is pointless in practice, if not worse. If used as a response to criticism or analysis (that isn't purely effusive praise) it simultaneously casts those critics/analyzers as meanbad jerks trying to change your mind. It assumes that the point of any discussion is to sway someone to your side, not to explore, to challenge, to see what happens.
> 
> We see this all the time with responses to movie critics. In fact, it happened over on the Ghostbusters: Afterlife thread--the usual dismissal of critics, in the context that the only job of a critic is news-you-can-use, a recommendation to see or not to see. Critics, in other words, are just trying to convince you to share their opinion of a work. So when they don't like the popular thing someone likes, they're pushy snobs with an agenda. When they rave (or at least largely praise) the subject of some large-scale fandom, well they've finally hung up their berets and black turtlenecks and realized the true value of popular entertainment.
> 
> ...




Look man.

People like what they like.

And remember to play to have fun.

This public service announcement is brought to you by “People Who Think They Like What They Don’t Like and Keep Accidentally Playing Games to Be Bored.”

EDIT - Oh and I hated King of Limbs until I listened to it 4 times and then I thought it was a masterpiece. I’ve had that experience, and the inverse, dozens of times in my life.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 6, 2021)

My brain can't really handle multi-snip nested exchanges--which imo can get weirder and more unwieldy as a thread progresses--so just wanted to talk about this separately.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> As has been said repeatedly, it would be odd to _not_ analyze something that is popular. Most people would agree that "superhero movies" as a genre are popular, right? Do you think it would be weird if, every time on enworld (on in society as a whole), people wanted to discuss and critique superhero films, the conversation got derailed because someone brought up Lars von Trier and everyone started arguing about Dogme 95?
> 
> I do!




If people were in the process of critiquing superhero movies--digging into the specific approaches and techniques and even film theory behind them--I would be thrilled if someone made a meaningful and relevant connection to Dogme 95. Given enough time and detail I think lots of discussions of creative works wind up exploring influences (which, perish the thought, aren't "category leaders" or financial juggernauts) and examples that are at the margins of a given field or medium.

And in discussing the MCU it's not at all weird to imagine talking about lesser-seen or indie movies. Is anything in Eternals reminiscent of Nomadland or The Rider, when you consider how different it is (or isn't) from other MCU works. Does Guardians of the Galaxy seem like an artistic compromise compared to The Suicide Squad, given how bonkers and iconoclastic Super is? And are Fruitvale Station's fingerprints anywhere in Black Panther, other than the director wanting to continue working with Michael B. Jordan? And never mind connecting the dots that directly between directors' MCU and pre-MCU work--do current superhero movies draw their visual language and tones from much older, non-supers movies, or is there really a house style, similar to how most TV shows lock in a look during the pilot and different directors--even distinctive ones like Tarantino, when he did ER--are brought in largely to just keep things moving, because they at least aren't going to screw up the production's well-oiled machine?

Those are all, I propose, legitimate topics of discussion related to superhero movies, that might get to some interesting places assuming people don't assume it's pretentious to try to make associations and connections beyond whether Thor: The Dark World is worse than Iron Man 3.


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## Grendel_Khan (Nov 6, 2021)

Welp, looks like I caught an Ignore or somesuch. 

Not sure how that works, exactly, so I'll just be over here liking what I like like my like depended on it.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 6, 2021)

Grendel_Khan said:


> Welp, looks like I caught an Ignore or somesuch.
> 
> Not sure how that works, exactly, so I'll just be over here liking what I like like my like depended on it.




It appears some people like to ignore others who may disagree with them! Have to respect that!


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## heretic888 (Nov 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> It appears some people like to ignore others who may disagree with them! Have to respect that!



No lie. I'm not even posting in this thread and I was put on ignore too, apparently for just "liking" posts somebody disagreed with. Draw your own conclusions from that.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 6, 2021)

There is something amusingly ironic about blocking everyone (so you can’t interact with them, thereby reducing your interaction space) in a thread titled The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World!


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## Yora (Nov 6, 2021)

Sometimes the polite way is to simply not reply to things.


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> It doesn't mean you can't have your own opinion, or that you can't critique something....




So, in here, there's a really interesting question:

What is the purpose of critique?

This can be answered in a broad, general sense, or in a specific sense - if you are here, on this site, giving a critique - what is the purpose of that communication?


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## Thomas Shey (Nov 7, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Btw, I think I worked this out: you mean _four elements in the fiction_ eg four adventure sites, or four factional plots, or something like that (and obviously there might be mixing and matching different sorts of elements) - and then the three elements the players don't choose to engage with are part of background setting.
> 
> RM Campaign Law sort of touches on this, but I don't think that, on its own, it reconciles the tensions. Happy to take up further in the other thread if you like.




That was more or less what I meant.

(And to put this on the table, the only familiarity I have with the RM tables in this regard is what you've said here though I've seen general RPG products that seemed to be approaching the same idea--having background events that were ongoing and how to time and monitor them).


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## Manbearcat (Nov 7, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, in here, there's a really interesting question:
> 
> What is the purpose of critique?
> 
> This can be answered in a broad, general sense, or in a specific sense - if you are here, on this site, giving a critique - what is the purpose of that communication?




Every thread like this almost always turns into (if it didn't lead with it...or at least the thin veneer of it) motive hunting or the implications of bad faith on the part of people trying to have conversations that critique design, critique systems in actual play, critique their own play, critique other's play, general TTRPG practices, specific instantiations of TTRPG practice, or encourages people to post excerpts so we can analyze them/unfurl the techniques used and system-stuff happening within a small loop of play.

I answered this question on the prior page.  Others have answered it as well (here in this thread and elsewhere).

But if my answer on the prior page won't do work, I guess we just have to give them what they want...nuke the entire site of the question from orbit.  What is best in critique?


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## Campbell (Nov 7, 2021)

For my part, even after 20 years, I guess am still trying to figure all this stuff out. Writing out what my mostly unfiltered perspective is and putting it to public scrutiny helps me to figure out how I feel about things which helps me develop and iterate over my GMing and roleplaying processes. I'm mostly trying to refine my thought processes while having engaging and challenging conversations that at least attempt to get beyond surface level stuff (which is like fun for me).

I'm also a process nerd. Talking about and refining process design is a personal passion of mine in all sorts of contexts. It's a big part of why body building, power lifting, board games, jiujitsu, muay thai, LARPs, theater and computer programming are so damn fun for me. There's so much to the process of each. So much that can be refined and tweaked. So many variables to be manipulated. If we're not here to put our play under the microscope and refine it I'm not sure what we're here for.

This afternoon I had a lengthy and challenging conversation about Exalted Third Edition with my Infinity GM who is going to try his hand at running it. It's a game that I'm very emotionally close to so the critical nature of parts of the conversation took some effort to navigate at times, but I think our play experience will be better for it. We talked failure points, ways we should modify the game to fit the group, how to structure the initial stages of the game, etc. We discussed what we should do if we liked the characters, but the game wasn't working for us. We also discussed which circumstance would call for putting the game back on the shelf. Getting used to having these difficult conversations has made our play experience infinitely better because we have been able to really tailor it to our specific needs and know where our breakpoints are.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Nov 7, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, in here, there's a really interesting question:
> 
> What is the purpose of critique?
> 
> This can be answered in a broad, general sense, or in a specific sense - if you are here, on this site, giving a critique - what is the purpose of that communication?




So I think it's pretty obvious that I'm done with the thread and the topic of RPG theory - it's like the old saw about why people keep hitting their heads against walls; because it feels so good when you stop!

But since you replied to me, this is what my thoughts are...

As a general rule, _critique_ (and criticism) is incredibly context-dependent in a broad, general sense. Intuitively, most of us understand this. To make this more clear, I would use some examples-
A. A teacher who is grading a paper and providing useful feedback should provide a searching critique- after all, the purpose of the critique is to help the student get better (constructive criticism).

B. A reviewer (a food critic, a book critic, a movie critic) is usually providing a mix of a both subjective observations (this is how the reviewer feels about the book, this is what the reviewer thinks the food tastes like) along with attempts to place the critique within a more objective framework (how is this restaurant compared to similar priced eateries; is this movie an 'art house' movie or a 'genre' movie, and what is it being compared to; despite the reviewer's personal preferences, how is the average reader likely to react to the book?). The mix of personal impressions with more objective impressions is tricky, and some people prefer the more personal (The New Yorker style of movie review being the standard example, or the literary takedown book review) and some prefer attempts at more removed, "this is what the average person" will think reviews.

C. An academic discussion of a work will differ from the discussion you have with you friends. If you're writing an academic paper on, for example, the nature of free will and Clockwork Orange (the book), it will be a much more narrowed and focused conversation than if you have just watched the movie and are talking about it afterwards with friends, when you are likely to just be hitting big broad themes that you might have noticed.

D. Finally, and most importantly, critique is incredibly socially-dependent. It's great for some people to say that they have honest and tough conversations with everybody- but most people call those types of people jerks. If you have friends that are looking for feedback (let alone your significant other, partner, etc.), you know that there are times you lean heavily on the constructive and affirming, and not so much on the criticism. Importantly, it's also socially relevant as to when critique is solicited and accepted.

That's from a broad perspective.

So, what about here? What about on enworld? I would say that there are a few primary issues:
1. On the internet, no one knows you are a dog. Not only do you not know the person you are talking to, you don't know their full experience, their full issues, or what type of table(s) they have. Your critique will likely be incorrect since you can't possibly understand all of the issues from a short post.

2. The format of Internet forums lends itself to unresolved argument, not friendly critique. Ideally, there would be some attempt at THESIS::ANTITHESIS::SYNTHESIS, but .... naw. This is the internet, someone is wrong, and you can't tell me what to do!

3. Building on 1 and 2, the social issues related to critique that are present in real life are gone when it comes to the internet in general and to forums like enworld. It's so weird to me- if you were at a gathering at someone's house, and someone said, "Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I disagree. Let's talk about something else," you'd be able to take the cue. You wouldn't follow them around the party arguing for the next three hours. 

4. Finally, these are games. About unicorns and spaceships and giant space hamsters. It's supposed to be fun. Discussions about it are supposed to be fun! Most people come here to have fun discussions about fun things. If it's not fun, if it's only about critique, or correction, or whatever, then maybe you've forgotten that many people here enjoy having fun. This doesn't mean you can't have serious conversation (or even critiques), but maybe don't take them too seriously.

IMO, YMMV, etc.

EDIT- I would add that the best statement regarding it was from the academic work I quoted earlier-
_We see here at work some motives for RPG theorizing we identified: the joy of intellectual argument (and connecting over it); the desire to help design and play ‘better’ (implying particular normative ideas about what ‘good’ means); and the jockeying for social status and recognition within one’s community. Finally, fourth, we see the almost-eternal return of debates and points made previously, due to the ephemeral nature and fragmented structure of RPG theorizing._

In other words, we see critique on EnWorld because-
a. People enjoy intellectual argument.
b. People want to help other people design and play "better" (which has its own problems ....).
c. People are jockeying for social status within their own community on enworld (ahem).
d. People are debating the same points made over and over and over again, not just here, but have been made for decades.


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## dragoner (Nov 7, 2021)

Mostly c & d, because it is the same people over and over


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## payn (Nov 7, 2021)

My experience tells me that a & b last about 5-10 pages. Anything after that turns in a c & d pedantic pageantry.


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## Aldarc (Nov 7, 2021)

ENWorld has to be one of the worst places for anyone to go jockeying for social power or clout in the entire internet. I suppose, though, that I should not underestimate either the _Narcissism of Small Differences_ or_ Sayre's Law_: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2021)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> a. People enjoy intellectual argument.
> b. People want to help other people design and play "better" (which has its own problems ....).
> c. People are jockeying for social status within their own community on enworld (ahem).
> d. People are debating the same points made over and over and over again, not just here, but have been made for decades.




Fair.  I mean, I don't think any of these are wrong - the list may not be complete, or there may be points that bear special calling out, but none of these seem wrong.

The point of the post, though, was to elicit a "don't think about an elephant" moment - or indeed a few of them, in the readers.  For posters to honestly think for themselves about why they are writing.  Because after asking that question comes the next obvious questions: 

1) Is this, for me, a worthwhile reason?
2) If it is a worthwhile reason, does this post really move toward my goal?


----------



## Umbran (Nov 7, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> ENWorld has to be one of the worst places for anyone to go jockeying for social power or clout in the entire internet.




Perhaps.  But, there then follow two questions, which are partially linked:

1) Is the fact that is is a bad place to do it going to stop anyone?
2) Are they, in fact, _aware_ that they are doing it for that reason?

Insert my several-times-noted bits about the human limbic system here.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 7, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Perhaps.  But, there then follow two questions, which are partially linked:
> 
> 1) Is the fact that is is a bad place to do it going to stop anyone?
> 2) Are they, in fact, _aware_ that they are doing it for that reason?
> ...



Whatever the case, the clear answer is to accuse others of jockeying for status while ignoring or pretending that one's own behavior doesn't apply.


----------



## Umbran (Nov 7, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Whatever the case, the clear answer is to accuse others of jockeying for status while ignoring or pretending that one's own behavior doesn't apply.




That wouldn't be what I'd take away from that, but as you will.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 7, 2021)

Umbran said:


> That wouldn't be what I'd take away from that, but as you will.




Whether its your takeaway or not, its an easy out to write off an argument or approach someone doesn't like; just assign ulterior motives on it and smugly move on.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 7, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Whether its your takeaway or not, its an easy out to write off an argument or approach someone doesn't like; just assign ulterior motives on it and smugly move on.



Not sure if being subtly sarcastic or obviously sarcastic.  Really depends on the targets, here.


----------



## prabe (Nov 7, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Not sure if being subtly sarcastic or obviously sarcastic.



Why not both?


----------



## Grendel_Khan (Nov 7, 2021)

Careful everyone. If you're very quiet, you can hear it scratching somewhere behind the walls, questioning the purpose and motives behind criticism, ultimately turning all discourse into a recursive dismantling of discourse itself.

There, do you hear it? Listen:

*People like what they like.*

Wow. Really makes you think, don't it?


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 8, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Not sure if being subtly sarcastic or obviously sarcastic.  Really depends on the targets, here.




I'll leave it as an exercise for the student, and just say I find the way the tone of these things works out pretty consistently disappointing.  I don't know why I expect different since I've been participating in such discussions for onto 40 years now, but hope always springs eternal and then falls on the rocks.


----------



## Yora (Nov 8, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> ENWorld has to be one of the worst places for anyone to go jockeying for social power or clout in the entire internet. I suppose, though, that I should not underestimate either the _Narcissism of Small Differences_ or_ Sayre's Law_: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."



I'll add you to that Yora's Law:

"When people start breaking quoted posts into individual paragraphs and sentences to reply to each of them separately, it's no longer about adding to the discussion, but winning a fight."

Which so far I've not seen in this thread, which is something.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 8, 2021)

Yora said:


> I'll add you to that Yora's Law:



My 


Yora said:


> "When people start breaking quoted posts



quoting 


Yora said:


> into individual paragraphs and



you


Yora said:


> sentences to reply to each of them separately,



this


Yora said:


> it's no longer about adding to the discussion,



way


Yora said:


> but winning a fight."



disproves 


Yora said:


> Which so far I've not seen in this thread,



your 


Yora said:


> which is something.



law.


----------



## Umbran (Nov 8, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Whether its your takeaway or not, its an easy out to write off an argument or approach someone doesn't like; just assign ulterior motives on it and smugly move on.




Yes, but doing so without evidence is weak sauce rhetoric that makes the discussion personal rather than about the topic at hand.

There is a reason why I am saying folks should look at _their own_ reasons, rather than presume they know anyone else's.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 8, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Yes, but doing so without evidence is weak sauce rhetoric that makes the discussion personal rather than about the topic at hand.
> 
> There is a reason why I am saying folks should look at _their own_ reasons, rather than presume they know anyone else's.




I don't disagree, but--good luck with that.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 8, 2021)

Yora said:


> I'll add you to that Yora's Law:
> 
> "When people start breaking quoted posts into individual paragraphs and sentences to reply to each of them separately, it's no longer about adding to the discussion, but winning a fight."
> 
> Which so far I've not seen in this thread, which is something.




Eh.  Don't think I can jump on that one; when I do that its because I think my points will lose clarity if lumped together, and that some of them are more relevant than others and I want to provide an easy way to tease them out.


----------



## payn (Nov 8, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh.  Don't think I can jump on that one; when I do that its because I think my points will lose clarity if lumped together, and that some of them are more relevant than others and I want to provide an easy way to tease them out.



Sometimes folks will ask you a handful of questions and its less messy to handle it in multi-quote. Though, I do see folks using it to needle the hell out of each others points. It just depends if its in that first dozen pages of a thread or the final 50.


----------



## Yora (Nov 8, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Eh.  Don't think I can jump on that one; when I do that its because I think my points will lose clarity if lumped together, and that some of them are more relevant than others and I want to provide an easy way to tease them out.



Not if you have two or three people have half a page of posts that each contain six to eight posts each.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 8, 2021)

Yora said:


> Not if you have two or three people have half a page of posts that each contain six to eight posts each.




I'm not going to deny that trying to keep the arguments straight can, instead, confuse them if you let broken-out bits propagate too far--when I see a discussion I'm in is doing that I try and simplify--but I'm still going to argue that trying to respond to one big block eight paragraph post with another of the same is not better, but worse.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 8, 2021)

payn said:


> Sometimes folks will ask you a handful of questions and its less messy to handle it in multi-quote. Though, I do see folks using it to needle the hell out of each others points. It just depends if its in that first dozen pages of a thread or the final 50.




Like most such things, it can be a tool or a weapon depending on how its applied.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Nov 8, 2021)

So I think that there are always some pitfalls of getting caught up in the discussion and everyone may go further with it than intended from time to time. The itemized quotes and liking posts only of those who appear to be on our side and so on. Anyone can get caught up in some of that from time to time. I know I have in the past; I get stuck in the back and forth of it to the point where the context is totally absent from responses, and you'd have to trace the conversation back across pages to even know what's actually being discussed. 

I've made an effort to do that less. I don't always manage, but I think I've gotten a lot better at it. I'm going to continue trying to get better at it. There's certainly room for improvement.

And I think maybe that's part of why I take part in these discussions about RPG theory and how games work and why, and all that. I've been playing for decades and until a few years ago, I hadn't really given more than surface level consideration about why I play RPGs and what I enjoy about them and how best to bring that about in my games. I've found conversation here to have been very helpful in examining that about myself and my games.

I think that's the point of any analysis. To see what's working correctly, and what's not, and how things may be improved. I've spent a lot more time considering my games and their processes and how those interact with what I and my fellow players enjoy. The result is that we're getting more out of our games.

So I tend to see analysis or critique as a tool that can help because that's what it's done for me. When I see people dismiss the importance of analysis or critique, my instinct is to push back on that. Largely because to actually dismiss analysis takes an effort. If someone isn't interested in analysis of whatever subject, they're likely not going to be involved in the conversation. They're either engaging with their game or book or movie at whatever level they enjoy and couldn't care less about analyzing that. That's perfectly fine. There are plenty of topics where that's my level of engagement and I don't seek anything further.

But I think it's something else to actively want to dismiss analysis because it's either all been said before or that it's empty posturing. To me, that's a take that is going to receive some push back, and deservedly so.


----------



## payn (Nov 8, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> So I think that there are always some pitfalls of getting caught up in the discussion and everyone may go further with it than intended from time to time. The itemized quotes and liking posts only of those who appear to be on our side and so on. Anyone can get caught up in some of that from time to time. I know I have in the past; I get stuck in the back and forth of it to the point where the context is totally absent from responses, and you'd have to trace the conversation back across pages to even know what's actually being discussed.
> 
> I've made an effort to do that less. I don't always manage, but I think I've gotten a lot better at it. I'm going to continue trying to get better at it. There's certainly room for improvement.



I've been guilty of this too. Once I see a couple of loggerheads with no indication they will stop, I've taken to tuning them out, but keep following along in case a new discussion blooms. 


hawkeyefan said:


> And I think maybe that's part of why I take part in these discussions about RPG theory and how games work and why, and all that. I've been playing for decades and until a few years ago, I hadn't really given more than surface level consideration about why I play RPGs and what I enjoy about them and how best to bring that about in my games. I've found conversation here to have been very helpful in examining that about myself and my games.
> 
> I think that's the point of any analysis. To see what's working correctly, and what's not, and how things may be improved. I've spent a lot more time considering my games and their processes and how those interact with what I and my fellow players enjoy. The result is that we're getting more out of our games.



Word.


hawkeyefan said:


> So I tend to see analysis or critique as a tool that can help because that's what it's done for me. When I see people dismiss the importance of analysis or critique, my instinct is to push back on that. Largely because to actually dismiss analysis takes an effort. If someone isn't interested in analysis of whatever subject, they're likely not going to be involved in the conversation. They're either engaging with their game or book or movie at whatever level they enjoy and couldn't care less about analyzing that. That's perfectly fine. There are plenty of topics where that's my level of engagement and I don't seek anything further.
> 
> But I think it's something else to actively want to dismiss analysis because it's either all been said before or that it's empty posturing. To me, that's a take that is going to receive some push back, and deservedly so.



There is also the cynical take of an old timer that has been on boards discussing these things forever. Folks can forget that it could be somebody's first rodeo. I try not to be too flippant when a dead horse gets dropped at our feet, yet again. I try but don't always succeed but I think I'm getting better.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 8, 2021)

payn said:


> There is also the cynical take of an old timer that has been on boards discussing these things forever. Folks can forget that it could be somebody's first rodeo. I try not to be too flippant when a dead horse gets dropped at our feet, yet again. I try but don't always succeed but I think I'm getting better.




As I noted, I can sometimes come from this posture, but I think its more of a flaw on my part (and the fact I've gotten old and mildly depressed) and don't actually view it as a virtue on my part.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 9, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, in here, there's a really interesting question:
> 
> What is the purpose of critique?
> 
> This can be answered in a broad, general sense, or in a specific sense - if you are here, on this site, giving a critique - what is the purpose of that communication?



I’m not sure I’m trying to provide formal critique, personally.  That is, I’m not so interested in finding a set of normative principles and categories that I can use to evaluate ttrpgs.  On the other hand, I am very interested in understanding the history of ttrpgs and how they’ve been played over time.  And I’m particularly keen to see the gaming community take seriously issues of equity and justice, both in games and among game-makers.

Aside from that, I don’t usually approach posts as providing critique or even an argument, given that this is a relatively causal form of communication.  Usually it’s more: here’s a thought that I had, here’s are some reflections on an anecdote, here’s a link to a blog post or a tweet that is interesting or provocative or potentially helpful.


----------



## FrogReaver (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I’m not sure I’m trying to provide formal critique, personally.  That is, I’m not so interested in finding a set of normative principles and categories that I can use to evaluate ttrpgs.



When other people are advocating for particular normative principles and categories and using words that have strong negative connotations to categorize playstyles _other _than theirs, then regardless of their intent it causes a rather defensive reaction from those whose playstyles they advocate for categorizing with terms that carry strong negative connotations.  It's no wonder discussions involving such advocation constantly blow up.  I personally believe people generally have 'pure' motives.  In this case advocating for a framework that has been very useful for them.  If there was one point of wisdom I could impart it would be to find a way to categorize without using language that carries with it strong negative connotations.


----------



## payn (Nov 9, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> When other people are advocating for particular normative principles and categories and using words that have strong negative connotations to categorize playstyles _other _than theirs, then regardless of their intent it causes a rather defensive reaction from those whose playstyles they advocate for categorizing with terms that carry strong negative connotations.  It's no wonder discussions involving such advocation constantly blow up.  I personally believe people generally have 'pure' motives.  In this case advocating for a framework that has been very useful for them.  If there was one point of wisdom I could impart it would be to find a way to categorize without using language that carries with it strong negative connotations.



Yeap, unfortunately it has a poisoning of the well effect too. Even if you try and get away from a term with negative connotations, the new neutral terms are often rejected as just another form of the same shade. (I.E. railroad vs linear) So its very important to be mindful at the outset when discussing theory topics if you want to cut the negativity and get to constructive discussion.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 9, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> When other people are advocating for particular normative principles and categories and using words that have strong negative connotations to categorize playstyles _other _than theirs, then regardless of their intent it causes a rather defensive reaction from those whose playstyles they advocate for categorizing with terms that carry strong negative connotations.  It's no wonder discussions involving such advocation constantly blow up.  I personally believe people generally have 'pure' motives.  In this case advocating for a framework that has been very useful for them.  If there was one point of wisdom I could impart it would be to find a way to categorize without using language that carries with it strong negative connotations.



Instead of “Force” we have decided to use the term “Rainbows” instead. Likewise “railroading” will be renamed to “vacationing.”


----------



## hawkeyefan (Nov 9, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> When other people are advocating for particular normative principles and categories and using words that have strong negative connotations to categorize playstyles _other _than theirs, then regardless of their intent it causes a rather defensive reaction from those whose playstyles they advocate for categorizing with terms that carry strong negative connotations.  It's no wonder discussions involving such advocation constantly blow up.  I personally believe people generally have 'pure' motives.  In this case advocating for a framework that has been very useful for them.  If there was one point of wisdom I could impart it would be to find a way to categorize without using language that carries with it strong negative connotations.




I don't disagree with what you're saying; I generally try not to put down anyone's preferred game or playstyle. But at the same time, being critical about something may require some negativity from time to time. If I see what I think is a flaw about a game or a process, and I explain my thinking, I don't think it should be seen as anything other than a stated preference along the lines of "I don't like lima beans because they don't taste good." There may be others.....bewilderingly.....who actually like the way lima beans taste. My preference is not an attack on theirs.

If I level a criticism at a game that you enjoy that you don't think is accurate, then you should state your case on why you disagree. That's what analysis and critique involve.

So if I were to say something like "I find sandbox play to still be largely GM driven; it's just a railroad where the stops can happen in any order" that's a critique of sandbox play. Is it true? That's up to each person as I think the answer is largely subjective. But I can make statements in support of that critique, or against it.

We tend to be overly touchy regarding our preferences about games (myself included), but we don't really need to be. Honestly, I think everyone not taking such great offense at the use of a word or phrase that may have negative connotations would be a huge help. Ultimately, if we just change the words we're using, we're not really changing what we're trying to say. So I think being clear is important, and people just not getting worked up is the bigger deal. Though I realize that can be difficult on things we're al passionate about, I think it's something we should all be striving for.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 9, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Instead of “Force” we have decided to use the term “Rainbows” instead. Likewise “railroading” will be renamed to “vacationing.”



Hilarious.  But I don't think we can pretend that some terms, like "railroading" or "agency" are value neutral.  There's the established context of their use within the hobby, in online and in person discussions and in game books.  So some terms should be used advisedly _if_ the goal is to have a helpful and mutually productive conversation.


----------



## Aldarc (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Hilarious.  But I don't think we can pretend that some terms, like "railroading" or "agency" are value neutral.  There's the established context of their use within the hobby, in online and in person discussions and in game books.  So some terms should be used advisedly _if_ the goal is to have a helpful and mutually productive conversation.



Sadly “Agency” was deemed too positive (and controversial) a term so it will be replaced with “Fun.” That will undoubtedly help clarify matters and keep conversations free of controversy.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 9, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> We tend to be overly touchy regarding our preferences about games (myself included), but we don't really need to be. Honestly, I think everyone not taking such great offense at the use of a word or phrase that may have negative connotations would be a huge help. Ultimately, if we just change the words we're using, we're not really changing what we're trying to say. So I think being clear is important, and people just not getting worked up is the bigger deal. Though I realize that can be difficult on things we're al passionate about, I think it's something we should all be striving for.



Normative critique strives to be disinterested, that is, be able to make judgments according to objective standards and avoid self-interested statements (like, saying a work of art is beautiful simply because I happen to enjoy its color palette).  However, it's very possible to _claim_ a position of neutrality while (consciously or unconsciously) elevating what one personally enjoys to status of objective good.  Or, it can easily be perceived that way.  Just something to be mindful of, in general.


----------



## prabe (Nov 9, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Sadly “Agency” was deemed too positive (and controversial) a term so it will be replaced with “Fun.” That will undoubtedly help clarify matters and keep conversations free of controversy.



FUN IS MANDATORY EVERYONE WILL HAVE FUN

WANG CHUNG-ING WILL HOWEVER BE OPTIONAL


----------



## FrogReaver (Nov 9, 2021)

payn said:


> Yeap, unfortunately it has a poisoning of the well effect too. Even if you try and get away from a term with negative connotations, the new neutral terms are often rejected as just another form of the same shade. (I.E. railroad vs linear) So its very important to be mindful at the outset when discussing theory topics if you want to cut the negativity and get to constructive discussion.



Yea.  Moving back a little closer to the thread premise, it's kind of like the Hatfields and Mccoys, this fued has been going on so long that no one knows who or what event actually started it.  I mean one of this threads premises is that there's history of how none of these arguments and perceptions are actually 'new'.  So to some extent, the well has been poisoned for both perspectives.  That's a difficult place to move forward from.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Hilarious.  But I don't think we can pretend that some terms, like "railroading" or "agency" are value neutral.  There's the established context of their use within the hobby, in online and in person discussions and in game books.  So some terms should be used advisedly _if_ the goal is to have a helpful and mutually productive conversation.




But why? If I'm going to critique something....let's say a TV Show like The Sopranos.....I should use the language that suits what I'm trying to say. If I want to say that at times, the pace of the show is glacial, that likely (intentionally!) has negative connotations. It's something I am saying I don't like about the show.

Why shouldn't I be able to use the terms I think are relevant?

If someone disagrees with me, then they can explain why. "The sometimes slow pace of the show is to give us insights into characters that may not seem relevant at the time, but which will pay off later on" or something similar. It may not change my mind about my criticism, but hey, maybe it will. Doesn't change the fact that there's more than one opinion on the matter.



Malmuria said:


> Normative critique strives to be disinterested, that is, be able to make judgments according to objective standards and avoid self-interested statements (like, saying a work of art is beautiful simply because I happen to enjoy its color palette).  However, it's very possible to _claim_ a position of neutrality while (consciously or unconsciously) elevating what one personally enjoys to status of objective good.  Or, it can easily be perceived that way.  Just something to be mindful of, in general.




Sure, but is anyone really striving for normative critique in these discussions? I'd say the majority of what's discussed is undoubtedly subjective.

I think the use of jargon is where this idea may come up; people are always trying to come up with one clear definition for a word or phrase. But that's not always possible. Either people are too married to their idea about the word/phrase, and not willing to all get on the same page, or there are simply too many ways to interpret the word/phrase. This is going to happen. When it does, I think it's best to provide an explanation on the use of the word, and make that clear. "When I say mosaic, what I mean is X" or something like that. Then, the other party has to accept that's the definition. They don't have to accept it forever and in all ways, but they have to accept it within the context of that specific use and that specific discussion.

What we often see is an unwillingness to accept, even temporarily, someone else's definition for a phrase, and so instead of discussion about the ideas behind the words, the idea becomes about the words themselves.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Normative critique strives to be disinterested, that is, be able to make judgments according to objective standards and avoid self-interested statements (like, saying a work of art is beautiful simply because I happen to enjoy its color palette).  However, it's very possible to _claim_ a position of neutrality while (consciously or unconsciously) elevating what one personally enjoys to status of objective good.  Or, it can easily be perceived that way.  Just something to be mindful of, in general.



This is returning to the argument that critique first has to be deferential, and must make statements that validate prior to engaging in critique, and that critique cannot ever violate the deference or statements of validity.

In order to apply a critique on 5e, I have to be mindful that a term used could be viewed negatively by some participants, and adjust my approach so as to not do this. The actual merit of the critique is never reached.  This is a version of the heckler's veto, and I don't buy it as intellectually useful.


----------



## FrogReaver (Nov 9, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> But why? If I'm going to critique something....let's say a TV Show like The Sopranos.....I should use the language that suits what I'm trying to say. If I want to say that at times, the pace of the show is glacial, that likely (intentionally!) has negative connotations. It's something I am saying I don't like about the show.
> 
> Why shouldn't I be able to use the terms I think are relevant?
> 
> If someone disagrees with me, then they can explain why. "The sometimes slow pace of the show is to give us insights into characters that may not seem relevant at the time, but which will pay off later on" or something similar. It may not change my mind about my criticism, but hey, maybe it will. Doesn't change the fact that there's more than one



I don't know about you, but I've seen where that leads 1 too many times.  It's never productive.  It's what leads to the kinds of repeated arguments we have here and that Snarf has helpfully shown are not actually new.

Because if you get to use the terms you think are relevant than I get to use the terms I think are relevant and in the end it turns into both sides just bad mouthing games/styles they don't like (or arguing about semantics).  For my styles I've seen, 'mother may I', 'railroading', 'less agency'.  For others styles I think the worst is probably, 'that's not an rpg'.  But I'm sure there's many others you can tell me about.

What good does telling my my playstyle is mother may I or me telling you that your not even playing an rpg do?  I'd love to know how you forsee that ending productively.

So by all means critique but think about whether a) the critique is going to be producitve and b) whether all the parties involved are even at the place of being able accept critiques to their playstyles.  Most people are good to critique other playstyles but don't do so well when their own gets critiqued.



hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, but is anyone really striving for normative critique in these discussions? I'd say the majority of what's discussed is undoubtedly subjective.



Many claim their subjectiveness is actually objectivity.



hawkeyefan said:


> I think the use of jargon is where this idea may come up; people are always trying to come up with one clear definition for a word or phrase. But that's not always possible. Either people are too married to their idea about the word/phrase, and not willing to all get on the same page, or there are simply too many ways to interpret the word/phrase. This is going to happen. When it does, I think it's best to provide an explanation on the use of the word, and make that clear. "When I say mosaic, what I mean is X" or something like that. Then, the other party has to accept that's the definition. They don't have to accept it forever and in all ways, but they have to accept it within the context of that specific use and that specific discussion.



Why do you get to define the terms instead of them?  If the terms don't matter then why not let them define them all and you just use whatever terms they want to sue?  Is this actually a case of language limitations impacting the limits of the thought/discussion.  If all the terms support the other sides 'theory' then how can you ever get your idea across to them in a way they can understand and that does justice to your theory.  Seems to me like there's potential here for understanding why people care about what often gets called 'semantics' in these discussions.



hawkeyefan said:


> What we often see is an unwillingness to accept, even temporarily, someone else's definition for a phrase, and so instead of discussion about the ideas behind the words, the idea becomes about the words themselves.



But that goes both ways and it becomes increasingly harder to do the more encompassing your theory is because your ideas about 'X' tie into other parts of your theory, framework and thought processes.  At some point it really is like you are speaking a language that has no words for opposing theories concepts, framework and thought processes.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Nov 9, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> I don't know about you, but I've seen where that leads 1 too many times.  It's never productive.  It's what leads to the kinds of repeated arguments we have here and that Snarf has helpfully shown are not actually new.
> 
> Because if you get to use the terms you think are relevant than I get to use the terms I think are relevant and in the end it turns into both sides just bad mouthing games/styles they don't like.  For my styles I've seen, 'mother may I', 'railroading', 'less agency'.  For others styles I think the worst is probably, 'that's not an rpg'.  But I'm sure there's many others you can tell me about.
> 
> What good does telling my my playstyle is mother may I or me telling you that your not even playing an rpg do?  I'd love to know how you forsee that ending productively.




Maybe try to stop looking at comments on a specific game or approach to play as being specifically about your playstyle? 

If I make a statement about sandbox play, it's about sandbox play. It's not about everyone who plays and enjoys sandbox play. Such folks can and should be free to share their thoughts, which may disagree with mine. That's fine. That's discussion. 

I don't think anyone's goal in these discussions is to get everyone to all like the same exact stuff for the same exact reasons.



FrogReaver said:


> Many claim their subjectiveness is actually objectivity.
> 
> 
> Why do you get to define the terms instead of them?  If the terms don't matter then why not let them define them all and you just use whatever terms they want to sue?  Is this actually a case of language limitations impacting the limits of the discussion.  If all the terms support the other sides 'theory' then how can you ever get your idea across to them in a way they can understand and that does justice to your theory.  Seems to me like there's potential here for understanding why people care about what often gets called 'semantics' in these discussions.




Anyone can define the terms theiy're using. It's not about one instead of the other. If I make a comment about sandbox games, I should likely include something like "I mean sandbox in the sense of old school hexcrawls like Isle of Dread" or similar clarifying statement. That means that person is specifically talking about a sandbox in that way. So any response that doesn't engage with that premise but instead starts with "Actually, sandbox play means X because...." is not actually addressing the statement. For the purpose of the conversation, participants should read "sandbox" as "old school heaxcrawls like Isle of Dread". So if you're going to respond to the actual idea that's being put forth, then you should be engaging with old school hexcrawls like Isle of Dread.

If you tell me that you think of railroading as X, shouldn't I accept that for the sake of discussion? Even if I have a different idea of what railroading may be? Is it possible that me sharing my definition of railroading may help the conversation? Yes, it's possible. Is it necessary? No, it's not necessary, not for me to understand what you mean, and for me to respond in kind with any thoughts that inspires, whether agreement or disagreement.



FrogReaver said:


> But that goes both ways and it becomes increasingly harder to do the more encompassing your theory is because your ideas about 'X' tie into other parts of your theory, framework and thought processes.  At some point it really is like you are speaking a language that has no words for opposing theories concepts, framework and thought processes.




Perhaps not. I'm not quite sure what you mean here. If someone is taking the time to explain their theory and how it connects to other ideas and concepts, I'm not really going to worry about how it accounts for my idea. It's their idea, they don't need to consider my thoughts in any way. 

That doesn't mean I can't have and share opinions about the idea. But this apparent need for all possible opinions to be considered when a person describes their thoughts on something they like or don't like is a bit bizarre.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 9, 2021)

I think it comes back to this:


Umbran said:


> What is the purpose of critique?
> 
> This can be answered in a broad, general sense, or in a specific sense - if you are here, on this site, giving a critique - what is the purpose of that communication?




What's appropriate for a conversation will depend on prior context, your audience, and what you are hoping to get out of it.  



hawkeyefan said:


> But why? If I'm going to critique something....let's say a TV Show like The Sopranos.....I should use the language that suits what I'm trying to say. If I want to say that at times, the pace of the show is glacial, that likely (intentionally!) has negative connotations. It's something I am saying I don't like about the show.
> 
> Why shouldn't I be able to use the terms I think are relevant?



I'm not saying there should be a ban on any words or anything like that.  But I think if you were to say the pacing of the Sopranos is _objectively_ glacial, there might be people who disagree, and say, but 'personally I don't find the show to be glacial.'  I suppose you could...determine the average length of scenes in the Sopranos vs comparable tv shows, or point to more specific definitions and critical discourse around terms like 'pacing' in TV criticism.  There's a time and place for that mode of criticism, but the conversation will become more insular and less generally accessible.



hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, but is anyone really striving for normative critique in these discussions? I'd say the majority of what's discussed is undoubtedly subjective.



Not sure, but as I said above, I am not.  At most, I'm trying to find out what might be enjoyable for my group based on other's recommendations.



Ovinomancer said:


> This is returning to the argument that critique first has to be deferential, and must make statements that validate prior to engaging in critique, and that critique cannot ever violate the deference or statements of validity.
> 
> In order to apply a critique on 5e, I have to be mindful that a term used could be viewed negatively by some participants, and adjust my approach so as to not do this. The actual merit of the critique is never reached.  This is a version of the heckler's veto, and I don't buy it as intellectually useful.




Well, the existence of an interlocutor and some bounds on what qualifies as an appropriate communication is what makes this dialogic.  There are all sorts of ways we defer in conversations: not interrupting others, being polite, saying things like "I agree with the first part, but...", asking (non-rhetorical) questions to understand someone's point of view.  Online discourse is what it is because it is easy to forget that there are actual interlocutors on the other end.  I think if we were all together in real life, the conversations  would go much differently and be more chill (partly because people would know when to stop. @Snarf Zagyg put it really well: you wouldn't just follow someone around a party continually asking them to justify their position on the best Joker).

(FWIW, to the extent that people try to understand the jargon people are putting forth, follow and read links to blog posts, and engage with play reports whatever their level of knowledge of those games, they are also being deferential.)


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> Well, the existence of an interlocutor and some bounds on what qualifies as an appropriate communication is what makes this dialogic.  There are all sorts of ways we defer in conversations: not interrupting others, being polite, saying things like "I agree with the first part, but...", asking (non-rhetorical) questions to understand someone's point of view.  Online discourse is what it is because it is easy to forget that there are actual interlocutors on the other end.  I think if we were all together in real life, the conversations  would go much differently and be more chill (partly because people would know when to stop. @Snarf Zagyg put it really well: you wouldn't just follow someone around a party continually asking them to justify their position on the best Joker).
> 
> (FWIW, to the extent that people try to understand the jargon people are putting forth, follow and read links to blog posts, and engage with play reports whatever their level of knowledge of those games, they are also being deferential.)



Sorry, but this is sophistic.  You've clearly built a strawman of how I was using deferential to make it seem like it's being polite or engaging with arguments rather than the clear point that 5e cannot be criticized without an appropriately statement that it is a great game and so forth.  One must be deferential to the subject of the criticism is not at all the same as saying that it could be considered deferential to actually engage with an argument made by another.  A use I struggle to actually parse, by the way, as it's stretched to the breaking point.

The opening statement is mush.  It's a bunch of big words strung together to say that there being other people put limits on how you can engage in order to have a conversation.  This is attempts to create a space were agreement that there are "some" limits to discussion like not screaming in faces or using vile insults or punching people is the same as the limit you're trying to enforce - that terminology be acceptable to everyone prior to the commencement of criticism.  It's a bunk concept, regardless of the morass of large words used to disguise it.

And your use of @Snarf's quote goes equally well towards not following someone around at a party continually asking them to justify their use of a term in their criticism.  In other words, it's not doing the work here you expect it to.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 9, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I
> 
> We tend to be overly touchy regarding our preferences about games (myself included), but we don't really need to be. Honestly, I think everyone not taking such great offense at the use of a word or phrase that may have negative connotations would be a huge help. Ultimately, if we just change the words we're using, we're not really changing what we're trying to say. So I think being clear is important, and people just not getting worked up is the bigger deal. Though I realize that can be difficult on things we're al passionate about, I think it's something we should all be striving for.




While you're not wrong, I think expecting semantic loading not to effect people is a lost cause; as long as communication is a multi-level process (and it absolutely is) expecting most people to be able to get around it on any regular basis is not a useful expectation.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 9, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> Yea.  Moving back a little closer to the thread premise, it's kind of like the Hatfields and Mccoys, this fued has been going on so long that no one knows who or what event actually started it.  I mean one of this threads premises is that there's history of how none of these arguments and perceptions are actually 'new'.  So to some extent, the well has been poisoned for both perspectives.  That's a difficult place to move forward from.




I mention this a lot, but it has relevance here: people carry scar tissue.  Anyone participating in discussion about RPG subjects for any length of time, whether in fora, in person, on Discord or whatever, will likely have had at least some bad experiences with some people on some topics.  It doesn't take too many repeats of that before the topic, effectively, already starts with warning bells going off in their head, some of which they may not ever realize consciously.  This means that its very easy for the heat level of the discussion to rise even if everyone is using a good faith attempt to keep it useful and non-confrontational.

(I don't have much of a solution for this problem, but I've sometimes found it a useful concept to keep in mind when someone seems to be taking something I say as much more negative than I intend; sometimes their reaction isn't entirely about the actual current discussion).


----------



## hawkeyefan (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> What's appropriate for a conversation will depend on prior context, your audience, and what you are hoping to get out of it.




Sure, absolutely!



Malmuria said:


> I'm not saying there should be a ban on any words or anything like that. But I think if you were to say the pacing of the Sopranos is _objectively_ glacial, there might be people who disagree, and say, but 'personally I don't find the show to be glacial.' I suppose you could...determine the average length of scenes in the Sopranos vs comparable tv shows, or point to more specific definitions and critical discourse around terms like 'pacing' in TV criticism. There's a time and place for that mode of criticism, but the conversation will become more insular and less generally accessible.




But are most people entering into these discussions with objective claims? I realize that they do come up from time to time, but most often what we're talking about is preference, and clearly so. 



Malmuria said:


> Not sure, but as I said above, I am not. At most, I'm trying to find out what might be enjoyable for my group based on other's recommendations.




Sure, that's largely what my goal has been at most times. I think I also view from the lens of someone who may be reading but not engaging in the discussion. But generally speaking, I'm not trying to change the minds of those I'm speaking with. Perhaps to explain my view or to better understand theirs, but in most cases I realize changing someone's mind is not likely, and is something for that person to decide or not.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Nov 9, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> While you're not wrong, I think expecting semantic loading not to effect people is a lost cause; as long as communication is a multi-level process (and it absolutely is) expecting most people to be able to get around it on any regular basis is not a useful expectation.




I'm not necessarily expecting people to abandon those urges, or to get around it, but instead to address the actual point. If I level a criticism of some sort at a game or movie or whatever, and someone disagrees, I'd prefer they explain why they think I'm wrong, or why their contra opinion is valid. 

Look at the Martin Scorsese/Marvel comments. I love Marvel. Doesn't mean Scorsese didn't have some valid points. It's an interesting topic to me with valid criticism on each side.

If you look around, you can see a lot of meaningful discussion about the topic. Many of the actors from the Marvel films shared their thoughts about the matter. They addressed the criticism with counter points and new thoughts. That's useful discussion. 

What's not useful, in my opinion, is the Marvel fans who instead said things like "Oh yea what does he know" or "Avengers made more then The Irishman" or "Marvel is the bestest!!!!" 

I'd rather see people engage with a criticism rather than dismiss it. Dismissing it is easy if you really want....you can simply ignore the post. But if you're going to take time to disagree, I think it makes sense to give some thought as to why. That defensive impulse to simply disagree but not to elaborate on why is what I'd like to see people move past.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 9, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I'm not necessarily expecting people to abandon those urges, or to get around it, but instead to address the actual point. If I level a criticism of some sort at a game or movie or whatever, and someone disagrees, I'd prefer they explain why they think I'm wrong, or why their contra opinion is valid.
> 
> Look at the Martin Scorsese/Marvel comments. I love Marvel. Doesn't mean Scorsese didn't have some valid points. It's an interesting topic to me with valid criticism on each side.
> 
> ...



I think we can look at how differently criticism is engaged depending on what's being criticized.  If it's 5e, there's a huge amount of the kind of pushback you're describing here -- defensive and dismissive and that doesn't engage the criticism.  On the other hand, if it's other games, like say Blades, then criticism is deployed and any response to that criticism that shows disagreement is what's treated in a defensive and dismissive manner.  Like how social mechanics in a game like Blades are consistently misrepresented in criticism but any attempt to show why it is incorrect is met with dismissal and claims of "that just how I look at it."  This exposes that the criticism isn't because it's not at all interested in getting into how play works but rather labelling it for easy dismissal.

I'm fairly guilty of the things being argued here.  I deploy terms like "Force" to describe play that often occurs in 5e.  I use words like Participationism or passive play to describe certain approaches to play, often associated with 5e.  I also define these, and explain what I mean and why I use those terms.  I almost never get any response to the explanations or the critique behind those, but I definitely get raked for suggesting "passive" as a term.  Even by people that then go one to describe their play exactly as I presented it in my explanation. But they deny it because of the term.  I offer to use a different term, but the term is still the point of discussion.  The actual critique never seems to get to the forefront.  And, I've done it the other way -- avoided the term or used a value neutral term for the same thing, but the arguments are still almost always about the form of the argument, not the substance.  There isn't a magic bullet of using acceptable to all terms because whatever term is settled on as a euphemism will just be attacked the same way.  It's actually bunk to claim that arguments would go better if you used different words.


----------



## Malmuria (Nov 9, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> rather than the clear point that 5e cannot be criticized without an appropriately statement that it is a great game and so forth.



This has not been the context of any recent posts in response to @Umbran.  The most proximate context is the example of "sandbox" vs "railroad," which could describes styles of play within a 5e game.  Using that example, if someone comes and says they run a "sandbox" game, I would try to respect their own description and experience (it is, after all, their game), even if parts of their description struck me as not a sandbox by my definition.



Ovinomancer said:


> *Sorry, but this is sophistic.  You've clearly built a strawman *of how I was using deferential to make it seem like it's being polite or engaging with arguments rather than the clear point that 5e cannot be criticized without an appropriately statement that it is a great game and so forth.
> 
> *The opening statement is mush.  It's a bunch of big words strung together* to say that there being other people put limits on how you can engage in order to have a conversation.  This is attempts to create a space were agreement that there are "some" limits to discussion like not screaming in faces or using vile insults or punching people is the same as the limit you're trying to enforce - that terminology be acceptable to everyone prior to the commencement of criticism.  *It's a bunk concept*, regardless of the *morass of large words* used to disguise it.



Did you interpret my response to you above as very negative?  That was not the intent.   But even so, this seems to me to be an escalation of hostility.  What do you hope to get out of a conversation when you describe the other person's statements as "mush," "bunk" or as merely a "morass of large words used to disguise [something]"?   This small exchange demonstrates the thing this thread is trying to talk about, the way here that casual conversation turns into scathing commentary on my intellectual capability and writing style.  smh.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Nov 9, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> This has not been the context of any recent posts in response to @Umbran.  The most proximate context is the example of "sandbox" vs "railroad," which could describes styles of play within a 5e game.  Using that example, if someone comes and says they run a "sandbox" game, I would try to respect their own description and experience (it is, after all, their game), even if parts of their description struck me as not a sandbox by my definition.



This feels a complete non-sequitur.  I wasn't engaging with things @Umbran said.  I was making my own point.  If your statements are solely limited to things Umbran said, then okay, I withdraw them because Umbran didn't really say anything on the nature of allowable criticism, just some platitudes about self-reflection that amount to preaching rather than assisting the conversation.  However, if your statements are only limited to this, I don't really care about the craft of deploying platitudes to seem wise.

I was speaking to how criticism works on these boards.  If I want to criticize 5e, I have to constantly make deferential statements to the 5e fanbase about how much I like 5e and that it is a good game.  This I have to do just to get the criticism in the door without the "5e hater" tag being applied to anything I say and the criticism dismissed.  Doing thing, though, only gets me past that first hurdle, and then only slightly better than half the time as it's still deployed with depressing regularity.  That's just dealing with the easiest form of dismissal.  And this is obvious because the easiest way to criticize 5e is ask how 5e can be modified to fix whatever it is I'm talking about.  This is the acceptable way to criticism 5e, because it's properly deferential to 5e as just being the bestest.


Malmuria said:


> Did you interpret my response to you above as very negative?  That was not the intent.   But even so, this seems to me to be an escalation of hostility.  What do you hope to get out of a conversation when you describe the other person's statements as "mush," "bunk" or as merely a "morass of large words used to disguise [something]"?   This small exchange demonstrates the thing this thread is trying to talk about, the way here that casual conversation turns into scathing commentary on my intellectual capability and writing style.  smh.



Negative to me?  No.  I viewed it as mostly empty, though.  You didn't say anything to the points I was making and instead tried to establish a false equivalency with other things, such as comparing my claim that deference to the in-group is required prior to criticism to both general limits on behavior for conversation or that deference is also the same thing as just engaging with others' statements.  This is badly flawed. 

As for your style and word choice, I have zero problems with big words or an intellectual style.  I very much enjoy @pemerton's writing and @Manbearcat, both of whom are regularly attacked for being too intellectual in posting habits.  No, rather my point was that you turned up the style and went to larger words to hide that that what you were saying was establishing some false equivalences to what I said in order to try and knock their stuffing out.  You amped up the intellectual style at the same time you engaged in rhetorical tricks.


----------



## pemerton (Nov 9, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> this fued has been going on so long that no one knows who or what event actually started it.



What feud?

I've certainly read plenty of posts about dissociated mechanics, Schroedinger's <whatever>, shouting arms back on, etc. I ignore some I think are wrong, I reply to some I think are wrong. Occasionally the result is a productive exchange. Sometimes it's not. I don't see that there is any _feud_!

On the bigger issue of _critique_, _negative connotations_, etc - no one has told me what the negative connotations of "backstory first" or "situation first" are. They describe approaches to play. I certainly read plenty of posts where RPGs say that what they enjoy, as players is discovering the GM's world - which is to say, enjoy learning fiction that the GM has created. I don't see that there are any negative connotations in noting that this is a different play preference from my own general inclinations. Likewise, if someone tells me that RPGing can be located on a railroad-sandbox "spectrum" than I can infer that they are probably not familiar with the approaches to RPGing that are not on that "spectrum" because situation-first rather than backstory-first.

Some posters give me the impression - I'm sure it's not deliberate, and is perhaps a misperception on my part - that they both have very strong playstyle preferences and want to insist that no who has different preferences is having a different experience from them. Why I assume such an impression is not being deliberately conveyed is that it seems almost incoherent, that two things could at the same time both be importantly different yet not different at all.


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## FrogReaver (Nov 10, 2021)

pemerton said:


> What feud?



really?


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## Aldarc (Nov 10, 2021)

prabe said:


> FUN IS MANDATORY EVERYONE WILL HAVE FUN
> 
> WANG CHUNG-ING WILL HOWEVER BE OPTIONAL



Everybody _will like what they like_ tonight!


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## pemerton (Nov 10, 2021)

FrogReaver said:


> really?



Really.


----------



## Campbell (Nov 10, 2021)

Personally I don't really think people on this board are hostile to criticism of 5e on these boards. Loads of people criticize the game without getting raked over the coals. Many fans of the game still get caught in the crossfire for liking it for the wrong reasons.

What I have personally experienced is that these boards are firmly entrenched in the playstyle advocated by the folks at White Wolf magazine and people like John Wick. Even if you are fan of 5e if you are not a fan of GM as Storyteller no matter how respectful you are you are in the outgroup. You can enjoy pretty much every other way under the sun to enjoy playing roleplaying games (as I pretty much do). You can like 5e or not like 5e. If you acknowledge other ways of playing the game, view the game as a game, or suggest that there are other ways to enjoy the unfolding narrative of the game (even if you ground it as personal to you) you are in the out group.

Look at what happened in the recent Apocalypse World thread on these boards. The game was basically raked over the coals for not being congruent with _traditional GM as Storyteller presenting a mystery players are expected to work together to solve_ play. Attempts to clarify that the game handles mysteries just fine, but not GM defined ones players are duty bound to solve only resulted in more consternation.

In this and other threads there has even been hostility towards what I call Critical Role kids - people my age and younger who are fans of Critical Role and expect a deeply collaborative play experience. The GM Authority thread in particular seemed to want to not acknowledge that play culture.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 10, 2021)

Well, I think people should be able to play whatever way they want, just so long as it's the same as my way.


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## Aldarc (Nov 10, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Personally I don't really think people on this board are hostile to criticism of 5e on these boards. Loads of people criticize the game without getting raked over the coals. Many fans of the game still get caught in the crossfire for liking it for the wrong reasons.
> 
> What I have personally experienced is that these boards are firmly entrenched in the playstyle advocated by the folks at White Wolf magazine and people like John Wick. Even if you are fan of 5e if you are not a fan of GM as Storyteller no matter how respectful you are you are in the outgroup. You can enjoy pretty much every other way under the sun to enjoy playing roleplaying games (as I pretty much do). You can like 5e or not like 5e. If you acknowledge other ways of playing the game, view the game as a game, or suggest that there are other ways to enjoy the unfolding narrative of the game (even if you ground it as personal to you) you are in the out group.
> 
> ...



I love getting accused of trying to push bespoke indie games or non-traditional games. Have you seen my posting history? Here is my list of fairly traditional games that I have lavished over (e.g., True 20) and here are the ones that I still play and recommend (e.g., Fantasy/Modern AGE, Cypher, 5e D&D, ICRPG, SotDL, Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, Black Hack, etc.) as well as others that I want to play (e.g., Ryuutama, Pathfinder 2, The One Ring 2e, etc.). How are people getting the impression that I only play more narrative-focused indie games? And I'm still not loving 5e in the correct way?


----------



## Fenris-77 (Nov 10, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I love getting accused of trying to push bespoke indie games or non-traditional games. Have you seen my posting history? Here is my list of fairly traditional games that I have lavished over (e.g., True 20) and here are the ones that I still play and recommend (e.g., Fantasy/Modern AGE, Cypher, 5e D&D, ICRPG, SotDL, Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, Black Hack, etc.) as well as others that I want to play (e.g., Ryuutama, Pathfinder 2, The One Ring 2e, etc.). How are people getting the impression that I only play more narrative-focused indie games? And I'm still not loving 5e in the correct way?



Hmm. Yeah, it's weird. I've been playing and loving D&D for, let me count, 35 years. Pretty much continuously. Every edition (although only a little 4th, I'll admit). But somehow that fact that I also play FitD and PbtA games (among others) or, worse, think that those playstyles can profitably inform D&D play, really seems to be the only thing some people see. Wacky. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming...


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## Malmuria (Nov 10, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Personally I don't really think people on this board are hostile to criticism of 5e on these boards. Loads of people criticize the game without getting raked over the coals. Many fans of the game still get caught in the crossfire for liking it for the wrong reasons.
> 
> What I have personally experienced is that these boards are firmly entrenched in the playstyle advocated by the folks at White Wolf magazine and people like John Wick. Even if you are fan of 5e if you are not a fan of GM as Storyteller no matter how respectful you are you are in the outgroup. You can enjoy pretty much every other way under the sun to enjoy playing roleplaying games (as I pretty much do). You can like 5e or not like 5e. If you acknowledge other ways of playing the game, view the game as a game, or suggest that there are other ways to enjoy the unfolding narrative of the game (even if you ground it as personal to you) you are in the out group.
> 
> Look at what happened in the recent Apocalypse World thread on these boards. The game was basically raked over the coals for not being congruent with _traditional GM as Storyteller presenting a mystery players are expected to work together to solve_ play. Attempts to clarify that the game handles mysteries just fine, but not GM defined ones players are duty bound to solve only resulted in more consternation.



I agree that people are generally open to good faith criticism of 5e on these boards (and that  criticism is generally actually much less severe than in dedicated 5e spaces.).  I also agree that there are a variety of ways to play 5e.  In fact, that is what people are trying to reference when they say there is a "spectrum" of 5e play (between sandbox and railroad, for example)...they are trying to say, in effect, that there are lots of ways to play this game.  It's interesting because I interpreted the ensuing discussion in the other thread differently from you.  Namely, that discussion become a (somewhat tedious) debate about the word "spectrum."  The seeming effect was that a bright contrast was made between 5e and games like AW, Burning Wheel, and others, but at the cost of collapsing or minimizing the range or spectrum of play available within 5e.  More practically, I perceived that the conversation had fewer participants as people dropped out, not interested in following lengthy discussions about a single word.  So if the goal of communication is to expose people familiar with 5e to a wider array of gaming styles, the focus on categories and the refinement of terms can actually be counterproductive, even if that same terminology can be helpful to people already familiar with a variety of games and approaches.



Campbell said:


> In this and other threads there has even been hostility towards what I call Critical Role kids - people my age and younger who are fans of Critical Role and expect a deeply collaborative play experience. The GM Authority thread in particular seemed to want to not acknowledge that play culture.



Totally agree; this was what I was trying to reference in that thread.  Aside from your responses, I'm not sure the discussion on that point was very open to thinking of that as a distinct play culture, much less one that has emergent, hybrid properties.









						D&D 5E - Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
					

In Blades? As a GM, not a bit. Don't care. As a player, I'm keenly aware, but I don't expect the game to care or the GM.   That’s kind of what I figured. As a GM I have found that I’m aware of these things…stress use and gear use…and I think it can be a factor, even if an unconscious one...




					www.enworld.org


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## pemerton (Nov 10, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> The seeming effect was that a bright contrast was made between 5e and games like AW, Burning Wheel, and others





pemerton said:


> I don't agree. I've run AD&D quite successfully using shared backstory authority (especially in PC build, but also the GM taking suggestions from players on the way through) and GM authority over situation/scene-framing.
> 
> I don't see why 5e D&D couldn't be run the same way if a group wanted to do so.



I don't see the thread the same way you do. The self-quote is only one of many posts by me in that thread, and others, making the same point.



Malmuria said:


> collapsing or minimizing the range or spectrum of play available within 5e.



My own feeling is different. It seems similar to @Campbell's although coming from a different place.

To me it feels that attempts to suggest that certain approaches are possible elements within the variety of play available within 5e - eg approaches that are "situation first" rather than "backstory first"; or approaches which treat the GM as constrained by rules and principles in their exercise of their authority over the game's fiction - are met with quite a degree of opposition. And that opposition seems to come primarily from posters who present as strong 5e advocates.


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## Malmuria (Nov 11, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I don't see the thread the same way you do. The self-quote is only one of many posts by me in that thread, and others, making the same point.
> 
> 
> My own feeling is different. It seems similar to @Campbell's although coming from a different place.
> ...



I think some people, myself included, were expressing the sentiment that the difference between a sandbox and a railroad was significant, especially in regards to player agency, and thus were opposed to that distinction and play experience being overwritten by a new set of categories that took priority.  Actually it's surprising, because that whole discussion didn't strike me as 5e advocacy at all.

Regardless, my main takeaway from @Campbell 's post above is that I ought to be mindful, as much as possible, of the way that others are experiencing the same conversation differently, and possibly in ways that are exclusionary.


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## Haiku Elvis (Nov 11, 2021)

To see if @Aldarc has a point.


> Instead of “Force” we have decided to use the term “Rainbows” instead. Likewise “railroading” will be renamed to “vacationing.”




I think that a thread about language used to discribe how we play, use, critique rpgs has often been reduced to discussing individual style issues such as the use of _rainbows_ and _vacationing_ and their effects on players _fun_ says a lot about the underlying vagueness of how to discribe what these TTRPGs that we enjoy actually are, mean, and how should be used that fuels and feeds the ever more _fluffy_ series of big _hugs_ and _jovial banter_ that this or related threads descend into. Whether it's the definition of _vacationing_ or whether the use of _childrens entertainment_ to hide the _rainbows_ from players can impact a player's _fun_ if the players are unaware of the _rainbows_ in the first place.  Nevermind, if someone suggests something like using _pretty_ _unicorns_ in a game which is going to get some members of the community so _fluffy_ they are likely to suggest the commenter is lined up against the wall and _told they are pretty_.

 In fact j_ovial banter _leading to genuine _fluffyness_ is to be the expected outcome where so much lies undefined. Which I believe was one of the points of the OP. And tolerance, understanding and listening to create a truely shared method of descibing our experiences are the only solutions.

Except for those people with the _pretty_ _unicorns_. Screw those guys!


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

I'm all about outcomes, play it and see what it does. Look at design patterns and understand how they affect that. That's theory, useful theory. That's how I see it. No, it isn't very useful to spend tons of time arguing about 'jargon', but at the same time, a lot of it distills truths that have emerged from previous analytical efforts. It is true that a too-rigid sticking to an existing analytical paradigm without understanding its basic assumptions can be limiting. OTOH its pretty limiting to start at 0 too, certainly ambitious....


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## Campbell (Nov 12, 2021)

At the end of day I just want to talk about the things I actually want to talk about without being required to basically write a novel (even though I sometimes do anyway). Show me the language to use that doesn't require me to talk about worlds (loving, breathing, or otherwise), plot hooks, sandboxes, adventures or preplanned stories. Provide me with some language that actually gets to what's happening at the table between players of a game and I'll gladly use it.

Whatever the verbiage is it will still be contentious because it's not the verbiage that's really contentious. It's playing games as games, focusing deeply on character, or not treating the game's setting as a thing that has an independent existence that is contentious. It's expecting game mechanics to have teeth (a demonstrable impact) that is contentious. It's designing the setting around the players' characters that is contentious.

I think the vast majority of the time people know exactly what most of the folks here on this board are talking about. They just do not like the actual content. Language becomes a proxy war because actually talking about this contentious stuff upsets most gamers sense of social harmony.


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## pemerton (Nov 12, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Whatever the verbiage is it will still be contentious because it's not the verbiage that's really contentious. It's playing games as games, focusing deeply on character, or not treating the game's setting as a thing that has an independent existence that is contentious. It's expecting game mechanics to have teeth (a demonstrable impact) that is contentious. It's designing the setting around the players' characters that is contentious.



I think that I agree. For me, this was really brought out in the discussions of 4e D&D. But as was mentioned upthread, I think by you, we see it in other places too: eg the AW thread. I'm also reminded of a thread a while ago now where I asked What is Worldbuilding For?

Articulating the sorts of approaches to play that you describe often seems to be treated as "improper" or even "insulting" per se. As when, in the other thread, I posted that I think 5e D&D could be approached in such a fashion. No one seemed very interested in discussing further how that might be done. But it did seem to be considered overly forward to even make the suggestion!


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 12, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think that I agree. For me, this was really brought out in the discussions of 4e D&D. But as was mentioned upthread, I think by you, we see it in other places too: eg the AW thread. I'm also reminded of a thread a while ago now where I asked What is Worldbuilding For?
> 
> Articulating the sorts of approaches to play that you describe often seems to be treated as "improper" or even "insulting" per se. As when, in the other thread, I posted that I think 5e D&D could be approached in such a fashion. No one seemed very interested in discussing further how that might be done. But it did seem to be considered overly forward to even make the suggestion!



I don't recall others speaking to it, but I did say that I don't think that 5e supports that kind of play.  I don't think it forward to suggest it, I merely think that the 5e ruleset requires too much GM intervention to make it work that any attempt to actually play it more in a story now approach isn't possible.  With some fairly extensive hacks, sure, but you're going to need to climb into the system for that and either rebuild some things or just take entire categories of play off the table.  For example, 5e has quite a lot of rules for combat, but they are not encounter balanced at all.  This effectively requires daily pacing if you want the combat game to have teeth, or overloading of the encounters which comes with other issues (very tippy).  This kinda takes serious engagement with the combat engine off the table for situation framing without concern for pacing.  It's the need to be concerned about pacing that kills the idea in my mind.  And, if I'm taking the combat engine offline or downgrading it, I'm seriously wondering why we aren't just playing a different game!

But, no, not forward. No purity being protected here.  I just think the system doesn't have the tools to do it close to well (too many GM calls) and does have tools that actively fight against it.


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## Manbearcat (Nov 12, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> I don't recall others speaking to it, but I did say that I don't think that 5e supports that kind of play.  I don't think it forward to suggest it, I merely think that the 5e ruleset requires too much GM intervention to make it work that any attempt to actually play it more in a story now approach isn't possible.  With some fairly extensive hacks, sure, but you're going to need to climb into the system for that and either rebuild some things or just take entire categories of play off the table.  For example, 5e has quite a lot of rules for combat, but they are not encounter balanced at all.  This effectively requires daily pacing if you want the combat game to have teeth, or overloading of the encounters which comes with other issues (very tippy).  This kinda takes serious engagement with the combat engine off the table for situation framing without concern for pacing.  It's the need to be concerned about pacing that kills the idea in my mind.  And, if I'm taking the combat engine offline or downgrading it, I'm seriously wondering why we aren't just playing a different game!
> 
> But, no, not forward. No purity being protected here.  I just think the system doesn't have the tools to do it close to well (too many GM calls) and does have tools that actively fight against it.




This post feels eerily similar to one of my early posts in the 5e concept test back in late ‘12 or perhaps ‘13!

The thrust of that post was that balancing a game around the zoomed out Adventuring Day rather than the site of the Encounter was begging for a fraught combat engine where (a) GM intervention and exceptional cognitive load was going to be a profound feature of play (given the intricate features of modern D&D combat), (b) therefore play would progressively (as levels piled and Long Rest classes through-put and spike capability on recharge became increasingly significant) feature an arms race over the Long Rest recharge (that GMs who wish to control pacing can trivially do at their discretion by deploying offscreen assets or unrevealed backstory), (c) and therefore it’s going to pose problems to surmount (via more GM intervention) for both Story Now play (where everyone, including the GM, can play aggressively, just let things unfold, and can play to find out what happens) and also challenge-based Gamist play (where the engine does its work seemlessly and predictably, for the GM, at the encounter-level…without intervention…eg x difficulty is reliably x difficulty fight-in and fight-out…so both sides can play accelerator to the floor and feel good with the competitive integrity of play).

And my second critique was that class resource scheduling not being unified is going to obviously exacerbate this (requiring more GM intervention in tailoring, pacing, and the temptation of fudging…and increased related cognitive burden on the GM). But that ship had set sail so that critique was just an aside.

EDIT - As you might imagine, that offering was not received well back then!


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## Campbell (Nov 12, 2021)

I think the attrition model in 5e is pretty much uniquely unsuited to scene based play, even the more linear sort used by most Vampire GMs. It absolutely can be done, but if you care about reaching the point where the game's systems feel tense you absolutely have to orchestrate it or at the very least design scenarios to it. My personal experience is that even Pathfinder First Edition (if you ban fighters or just let natural selection take its course) handles scene based play somewhat better because you can still make single fight days feel pretty damn intense. 

Of course a lot of people will not see the issue because reaching the system's tension points is not something they particularly care about or even really desire. A lot of 5e play does not even come close to the tension point built into the game pretty much ever. That's part of the appeal for some people. I have seen a fair number of 5e players try games like Pathfinder Second Edition, Exalted Third Edition, or L5R Fifth Edition with me and not enjoy the scene based play specifically because of the level of tension in the encounters.

That's fine by the way guys. Not everyone is into the sort of uncertainty I am.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 12, 2021)

I feel like 5e could be GMed with a more story now approach. I don't think it's strongly suited for it. I think the adventuring day "budget" and the short rest/long rest recharges are where the strongest opposition would be. 

But I don't think it's something that can't be done. I feel like I've GMed with this general goal in mind in a campaign my group was playing that went on hold at the start of the pandemic. I'm sure if I could look back over a transcript of play, there would be points that clearly failed the sniff test, but I don't think it might be as many as would be typical in 5e. 

I think if the GM and the players are approaching play with this mindset, then it's possible.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 12, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like 5e could be GMed with a more story now approach. I don't think it's strongly suited for it. I think the adventuring day "budget" and the short rest/long rest recharges are where the strongest opposition would be.
> 
> But I don't think it's something that can't be done. I feel like I've GMed with this general goal in mind in a campaign my group was playing that went on hold at the start of the pandemic. I'm sure if I could look back over a transcript of play, there would be points that clearly failed the sniff test, but I don't think it might be as many as would be typical in 5e.
> 
> I think if the GM and the players are approaching play with this mindset, then it's possible.



I think another important part of this is the actual make-up of the party. The amount of magic and the potentially competing rest mechanics change the picture a lot. I also think this is much more doable at lower adventuring tiers when the party as a whole has less on-tap resources.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 12, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like 5e could be GMed with a more story now approach. I don't think it's strongly suited for it. I think the adventuring day "budget" and the short rest/long rest recharges are where the strongest opposition would be.
> 
> But I don't think it's something that can't be done. I feel like I've GMed with this general goal in mind in a campaign my group was playing that went on hold at the start of the pandemic. I'm sure if I could look back over a transcript of play, there would be points that clearly failed the sniff test, but I don't think it might be as many as would be typical in 5e.
> 
> I think if the GM and the players are approaching play with this mindset, then it's possible.



"More" is doing work here, and in saying you could do it "more" story now, I don't think I could disagree. There are places you can do it "more," but you can't just run it story now.  Not without serious revisions.   I mean, I've absolutely used skill challenge frameworks that were situation-framed and they work.  But, overall, it's still very GM directed, and has to be, if you aren't ignoring large parts of the system in play.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 12, 2021)

Campbell said:


> A lot of 5e play does not even come close to the tension point built into the game pretty much ever.




I'm currently playing in a game and this is what I'm finding to be true, due to a combination of reasons. There are five players, and so five characters, which just spreads out all the resource management that much further. Short rests have been easy to come by, and two of the PCs are monks, so they get to use their Ki freely without ever having to strongly consider conservation for later use. These kinds of things, combined with the generally forgiving nature of 5e (death saves, full HP restore on long rest, etc.), just mean that any actual moments of tension aren't all that strong. Sure, there may be concern that a character will drop to 0 hp....but if that happens, there's very little actual worry that he'll die.

I've been playing my character in a pretty reckless manner just to see if I can get him killed. Not actively seeking death, but doing nothing much to actively prevent it.

I don't really see it happening, at least not unless things change a bit. He's also an archer, so he tends to be out of a lot of immediate danger compared to other characters. There have been moments where he's gotten in danger and it feels a bit tense....but as I said, it's minimally so.

This isn't a complaint about the game overall, to be honest....I'm enjoying it just fine. There are moments of actual tension, but they're more story based, or about NPCs or other elements that may be at risk rather than the PCs.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 12, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> "More" is doing work here, and in saying you could do it "more" story now, I don't think I could disagree. There are places you can do it "more," but you can't just run it story now.  Not without serious revisions.   I mean, I've absolutely used skill challenge frameworks that were situation-framed and they work.  But, overall, it's still very GM directed, and has to be, if you aren't ignoring large parts of the system in play.




Oh, sure....I don't know if I'd say running it in a pure story now mode is even possible. But I think if you're approaching with that mindset, you can play that way. 

Skill challenge type scenarios are a good part of it. I've used clocks a lot just because they're simple to deploy. That's not anything that's really described in the rules, but I don't think that's a major revision. 

Fronts rather than detailed map/key type locations. Tweaks to the way certain skills work, especially more "knowledge" based ones. Asking questions, building on answers. These all can help do a lot of the work. 

I think the basic design and the way characters are constructed is the challenge. But a lot of that can also be a problem if you run 5e as written if you're not creating the proper number/difficulty of challenges to put pressure on the PCs' resources. But that can be handled through the use of multiple scenes/obstacles. Again, it's not a perfect match in this regard, but I don't see it as impossible so much as a bit of a challenge.


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## gorice (Nov 12, 2021)

While we're putting the boot into 5e, I want to mention that I've found it very unsuitable for traditional dungeon-delving, map-and-key play, as well. Even at 1st level, PCs have access to insane amounts of utility through cantrips, which makes it very difficult (but not impossible) to provide challenges that aren't just monsters and certian kinds of traps. And combat encounters are a different problem: no chase rules, attrition-based balance combined with tactical-based play and no system for rapid combat resolution... It's either a drawn-out mess, an underwhelming speed bump, or a 'tippy' set of tough battles. All of this is fixable with houserules and/or fiat, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

I actually think 5e is much better suited to scene-based play, so long as you substitute something like giffyglyph's 4e-inspired monster maker for the normal monster & encounter rules.


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## Aldarc (Nov 12, 2021)

The question of whether Game A could be run with Playstyle X seems a bit off. I think the more fundamental question is whether running Game A with Playstyle X actually plays to the strengths of Game A in a way that does justice to the game experience for everyone involved. 



gorice said:


> While we're putting the boot into 5e, I want to mention that I've found it very unsuitable for traditional dungeon-delving, map-and-key play, as well. Even at 1st level, PCs have access to insane amounts of utility through cantrips, which makes it very difficult (but not impossible) to provide challenges that aren't just monsters and certian kinds of traps. And combat encounters are a different problem: no chase rules, attrition-based balance combined with tactical-based play and no system for rapid combat resolution... It's either a drawn-out mess, an underwhelming speed bump, or a 'tippy' set of tough battles. All of this is fixable with houserules and/or fiat, but that sort of defeats the purpose.
> 
> I actually think 5e is much better suited to scene-based play, so long as you substitute something like giffyglyph's 4e-inspired monster maker for the normal monster & encounter rules.



I think that's why some see 5e as being more in the spirit of 2e-style D&D (and Dragonlance) than anything else.


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## gorice (Nov 12, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> The question of whether Game A could be run with Playstyle X seems a bit off. I think the more fundamental question is whether running Game A with Playstyle X actually plays to the strengths of Game A in a way that does justice to the game experience for everyone involved.
> 
> 
> I think that's why some see 5e as being more in the spirit of 2e-style D&D (and Dragonlance) than anything else.



My memories of 2e are pretty hazy. Do you mean 'trad', follow-the-adventure-path kind of play?


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## Aldarc (Nov 12, 2021)

gorice said:


> My memories of 2e are pretty hazy. Do you mean 'trad', follow-the-adventure-path kind of play?



Pretty much. IMO, 5e leans into trad (and neo-trad) gaming a great deal. It's heavy into empowering GM-authority. Authority to do what? Curate story adventures.


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## Malmuria (Nov 12, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like 5e could be GMed with a more story now approach. I don't think it's strongly suited for it. I think the adventuring day "budget" and the short rest/long rest recharges are where the strongest opposition would be.
> 
> But I don't think it's something that can't be done. I feel like I've GMed with this general goal in mind in a campaign my group was playing that went on hold at the start of the pandemic. I'm sure if I could look back over a transcript of play, there would be points that clearly failed the sniff test, but I don't think it might be as many as would be typical in 5e.
> 
> I think if the GM and the players are approaching play with this mindset, then it's possible.




I wonder if there are types of campaigns or even types of individual sessions that might lend themselves more to this approach.  For example, urban campaigns where combat is deemphasized (because of the context of the city).  The problem of how to "crawl" a city is complex enough that it can lead to a more scene-based approach. For example, this product is interesting in providing encounters for PCs as they wander through the city.  Ostensibly, they have a destination in mind (as related in the Waterdeep AP), but I can imagine a session that just introduces an encounter, keeping in mind the fronts/factions at play in the city, and letting things snowball from there.  (This take is somewhat inspired by this podcast episode).

But, dnd being games not one game, it might be the case that style of play various from session to session, or even within a session, and so things become blurred.


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## hawkeyefan (Nov 12, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I wonder if there are types of campaigns or even types of individual sessions that might lend themselves more to this approach.  For example, urban campaigns where combat is deemphasized (because of the context of the city).  The problem of how to "crawl" a city is complex enough that it can lead to a more scene-based approach. For example, this product is interesting in providing encounters for PCs as they wander through the city.  Ostensibly, they have a destination in mind (as related in the Waterdeep AP), but I can imagine a session that just introduces an encounter, keeping in mind the fronts/factions at play in the city, and letting things snowball from there.  (This take is somewhat inspired by this podcast episode).
> 
> But, dnd being games not one game, it might be the case that style of play various from session to session, or even within a session, and so things become blurred.




In discussing this today, I've been thinking back to my 5e campaign. It's largely based in Sigil. I give the players a lot of leeway with establishing what they know of the city and the kinds of resources they can find there. There are factions that are in play, some of the classic factions of Sigil and others as well. A large part of the game is how the PC group deals with these factions. That element does feel to me very similar to how I GM Blades in the Dark. 

But, there absolutely is a kind of GM plot in place that lends context to a lot of these elements...and that's much less suited to Story Now, though I don't think it's used in a way to establish a linear progression of any kind. And the plot in this case is one drawn from character hooks and player requests, so again, it's not a classic Dragonlance-esque type of linear sequence. Usually, play could roughly be described as the players deciding some goal for the characters (based on previously established play, etc.) and then we figure out a way for them to achieve that goal.

It's hard to say for sure. It's been nearly two years at this point since we played, and I wasn't GMing with a mind to later analysis, so it's a bit blurry at times. I was largely trying new things based on games other than 5e, but exactly how effective that was or exactly how any given session would hold up to scrutiny is hard to say. 

If/when we resume that campaign, I'll have to make sure to keep all this in mind so I can look at it after the fact.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think that I agree. For me, this was really brought out in the discussions of 4e D&D. But as was mentioned upthread, I think by you, we see it in other places too: eg the AW thread. I'm also reminded of a thread a while ago now where I asked What is Worldbuilding For?
> 
> Articulating the sorts of approaches to play that you describe often seems to be treated as "improper" or even "insulting" per se. As when, in the other thread, I posted that I think 5e D&D could be approached in such a fashion. No one seemed very interested in discussing further how that might be done. But it did seem to be considered overly forward to even make the suggestion!



Right, there's a definite overtone of "why are you attacking my sacred cows!" that happens. I mean, it varies a lot and I don't mean to bin everyone that posts here too much. Still, you get certain types of reactions, and then endless attempts to logic chop that amount to claiming that story games are just the same as trad D&D, etc. If you do some analysis and it doesn't support that contention, then either the specific analysis, or analysis in general, is at fault. lol. 

In the end I know that there's a considerable and real difference between the game 5e, taken at face value and played as generally depicted by its developers and most of the people who run it, vs "Heroes of Myth and Legend" which is my even more story-game hack of, basically, 4e. There IS a real substantive difference. Analyze it any way you want, I don't care, you cannot possibly paper over that difference. Same if you substitute Dungeon World. Yes, they are all RPGs, and you can converge styles of play to a significant degree across games, but system matters. As you say, you can certainly play a much more player-focused game where the players decide many of the things more traditionally reserved for GMs using 5e. That doesn't make it HoML. You literally cannot play HoML like 5e, not really, not without effectively rewriting large parts of it and actually breaking some of its mechanics in substantive ways!

Obviously nobody can claim the authority to judge anyone else's game play, but we can certainly critique games, techniques, theories, and assertions.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

Manbearcat said:


> This post feels eerily similar to one of my early posts in the 5e concept test back in late ‘12 or perhaps ‘13!
> 
> The thrust of that post was that balancing a game around the zoomed out Adventuring Day rather than the site of the Encounter was begging for a fraught combat engine where (a) GM intervention and exceptional cognitive load was going to be a profound feature of play (given the intricate features of modern D&D combat), (b) therefore play would progressively (as levels piled and Long Rest classes through-put and spike capability on recharge became increasingly significant) feature an arms race over the Long Rest recharge (that GMs who wish to control pacing can trivially do at their discretion by deploying offscreen assets or unrevealed backstory), (c) and therefore it’s going to pose problems to surmount (via more GM intervention) for both Story Now play (where everyone, including the GM, can play aggressively, just let things unfold, and can play to find out what happens) and also challenge-based Gamist play (where the engine does its work seemlessly and predictably, for the GM, at the encounter-level…without intervention…eg x difficulty is reliably x difficulty fight-in and fight-out…so both sides can play accelerator to the floor and feel good with the competitive integrity of play).
> 
> ...



Yeah, sigh, I remember making EXACTLY the same comments. I even wrote it all up in detail and handed it to the developers (I assume they basically didn't read any of their email/comments, they just pretended to want them). There were quite a few of us doing that on the WotC boards, with varying details, but generally in the same vein. There is a real REASON why something A/E/D/U-like is desirable! Honestly I've broken with that paradigm in my own design at this point, but the key details remain, there are substantial enconter-based resources that are held pretty much equally by all classes and builds of character. You all go into every fight, or other situation, with resources at the ready and roughly in the same quantity as everyone else (there are also daily resources, again everyone has the same). 

There are certainly some things to tweak in a system like 4e, like how swingy combats are, and the exact ratios of daily vs encounter resources. I think the daily ones are actually a useful tool, if you reduce them too much then you lose some ways to easily model stress on the party. Many sorts of games don't need that, but IMHO it actually works pretty well for FRPGs of the D&D ilk. Too much and the GM gets burdened with certain pressures (trying to subvert a tendency to stop and rest all the time for example). Too little and basically every fight has only plot significance, or else pure hazard value on its own. 

This is a major part of the reasoning for my own design decisions. HoML has, basically, ONE resource, power points, that underlies all the others (you can invoke riders using them, emulating daily/encounter powers, and they also work as both HS and AP effectively). Tweaking pacing becomes silly easy. How many of these points do you start with after a complete reset (Recovery) and how many do you get back after every (short) rest. The more you go with the later, the further you move towards pure encounter resources, so its pretty darn easy to tweak! Honestly, I currently have the limits set at you start with 8 points and get one back after every rest. Presumably you're going to use 2-4 points in an average fight and the day can then go from 2 to 5 or 6 combats depending on difficulty, etc. and you can then throw in your challenges and such to arrive at whatever the total encounters per day expectation should be. Tweaking the starting number changes the expected day length, and tweaking the recovery number shifts you more into pure encounter mode (and presumably you then cut the starting number a bit, perhaps).

You can also do fun stuff with that design. Like Consumables are 'frozen power', you can spend a point, carry out a ritual, and 'embody' its effect in a consumable. That lowers your available power points by one until its used or discarded. Planning is now fun and interesting! It is pretty thematic too, the Alchemist is pretty serious when he says "and I'll need a vial of your blood..." lol.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like 5e could be GMed with a more story now approach. I don't think it's strongly suited for it. I think the adventuring day "budget" and the short rest/long rest recharges are where the strongest opposition would be.
> 
> But I don't think it's something that can't be done. I feel like I've GMed with this general goal in mind in a campaign my group was playing that went on hold at the start of the pandemic. I'm sure if I could look back over a transcript of play, there would be points that clearly failed the sniff test, but I don't think it might be as many as would be typical in 5e.
> 
> I think if the GM and the players are approaching play with this mindset, then it's possible.



I would just lard tons of consumables into my game. So basically after every encounter you guzzle some heals and the wizard has plenty of scrolls to whip out if he runs out of slots. It pretty much works, though obviously you will need to have sturdier encounters since the PCs will now be tanked up going into every fight.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

Fenris-77 said:


> I think another important part of this is the actual make-up of the party. The amount of magic and the potentially competing rest mechanics change the picture a lot. I also think this is much more doable at lower adventuring tiers when the party as a whole has less on-tap resources.



Yeah, that or you simply elide the daily resource classes like wizard. I mean, there's still a good bit of variety. Heck, you can have just basically fighters, thieves, and warlocks or sorcerers or whatever (I'm a bit rusty on some of these classes details, never played either of them). I'm sure there are a couple other builds that would work fine too. Half-casters might or might not work, probably well enough but maybe not as much at high levels.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Pretty much. IMO, 5e leans into trad (and neo-trad) gaming a great deal. It's heavy into empowering GM-authority. Authority to do what? Curate story adventures.



Yup!


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## gorice (Nov 12, 2021)

Honestly, the disparity between short and long rest classes is one of those design decisions in 5e that has me scratching my head. There are plenty of things in the game that I might not like, but do understand; but that one seems to serve no purpose other than to create problems.

I really wonder what kind of game 5e was 'supposed' to be. I know opinion here leans towards trad, and I can see that, but you'd think that sort of game would be poorly served by the balance problems that occur with the attrition-based, short rest/long rest system they went with. On the other hand, the playtests had some honest-to-God 'old school' exploration procedures, and even a version of Keep on the Borderlands, but that all got ripped out in favour of DM fiat and linear adventures.

Maybe if I'd actually played any 3rd Edition (or any official adventures for second), I'd see more of a family resemblance.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 12, 2021)

gorice said:


> Honestly, the disparity between short and long rest classes is one of those design decisions in 5e that has me scratching my head. There are plenty of things in the game that I might not like, but do understand; but that one seems to serve no purpose other than to create problems.
> 
> I really wonder what kind of game 5e was 'supposed' to be. I know opinion here leans towards trad, and I can see that, but you'd think that sort of game would be poorly served by the balance problems that occur with the attrition-based, short rest/long rest system they went with. On the other hand, the playtests had some honest-to-God 'old school' exploration procedures, and even a version of Keep on the Borderlands, but that all got ripped out in favour of DM fiat and linear adventures.
> 
> Maybe if I'd actually played any 3rd Edition (or any official adventures for second), I'd see more of a family resemblance.



That because putting all classes on the same resource recovery system would make them too samey; something people did not approve of in 4E.


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 12, 2021)

If you actually stick to 2 shorts and a long per day it balances out ok and the differences feel neat instead of a pain in the arse. Sticking to that exact rest formula isn't always easy though.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 12, 2021)

gorice said:


> Honestly, the disparity between short and long rest classes is one of those design decisions in 5e that has me scratching my head. There are plenty of things in the game that I might not like, but do understand; but that one seems to serve no purpose other than to create problems.
> 
> I really wonder what kind of game 5e was 'supposed' to be. I know opinion here leans towards trad, and I can see that, but you'd think that sort of game would be poorly served by the balance problems that occur with the attrition-based, short rest/long rest system they went with. On the other hand, the playtests had some honest-to-God 'old school' exploration procedures, and even a version of Keep on the Borderlands, but that all got ripped out in favour of DM fiat and linear adventures.
> 
> Maybe if I'd actually played any 3rd Edition (or any official adventures for second), I'd see more of a family resemblance.



Yeah, I don't know what the reasoning was with not including the exploration stuff, they talked about it as a 'pillar' during the much-vaunted design process, but then just basically ignored it. AFAICT 5e is aimed squarely at reproducing 2e's game play. 2e did the same thing, it took 1e and ripped out all the exploration stuff, made it much harder to do things like create magic items, and then subverted the old GP for XP mode of advancement. 

I guess you could say that the play of 2e is well-known to a lot of older players, and is the last TSR version of D&D, the last one that is really seriously mechanically a child of Gary's own handiwork. So, evoking it may have been a sort of mandate, a way of insuring fan loyalty. I mean, 5e REALLY is sort of 2e reborn in a more robust set of rules. That also explains the whole resource thing, its not intended to be a clean sheet design of a resource system, it is exactly delivering all the quirks and foibles of good old vancian wizards and TSR fighters, though with a reasonably decent job of filing off some of the rough edges. Certainly a 5e fighter is a bit less vanilla than core 2e ones, though once you add available kits and such they seem fairly comparable (sort of depends on which 2e books you would consider reasonably usable, like NOT 'weapons and tactics', lol).


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## gorice (Nov 13, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> That because putting all classes on the same resource recovery system would make them too samey; something people did not approve of in 4E.



So you think it was purely a reaction against 4e? That's interesting.


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## pemerton (Nov 13, 2021)

Thanks @hawkeyefan, @Ovinomancer, @Malmuria and @Manbearcat for your reflections in response to my post.

My own experiences with "situation first" AD&D (back in the days of yore) are what make me think that it must in some sense be feasible in 5e - are the differences _that_ great? (Ovinomancer makes the strongest case that they are) - but I agree that compared to a gold standard like Burning Wheel it's all a bit shaky. @hawkeyefan's account of what he's done make sense to me. And I think the idea of urban environments - or at least socially rich environments - as better suited to this are correct. Also that it makes more sense at lower levels. (I think @Fenris-77 said that - I agree.)



Aldarc said:


> The question of whether Game A could be run with Playstyle X seems a bit off. I think the more fundamental question is whether running Game A with Playstyle X actually plays to the strengths of Game A in a way that does justice to the game experience for everyone involved.



Yes and no.

There's something to be said for working with what you know. For a vanilla narrativist system with vibrantly-painted characters and a basic stat-and-skill system, 5e D&D seems as workable as AD&D. So if someone were inclined to drift it in a more "situation first" direction, or was interested in "story now" but didn't want to learn a new suite of mechanic, I think it makes sense to talk about how 5e D&D might be used in such a fashion.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 13, 2021)

Malmuria said:


> I wonder if there are types of campaigns or even types of individual sessions that might lend themselves more to this approach.  For example, urban campaigns where combat is deemphasized (because of the context of the city).  The problem of how to "crawl" a city is complex enough that it can lead to a more scene-based approach. For example, this product is interesting in providing encounters for PCs as they wander through the city.  Ostensibly, they have a destination in mind (as related in the Waterdeep AP), but I can imagine a session that just introduces an encounter, keeping in mind the fronts/factions at play in the city, and letting things snowball from there.  (This take is somewhat inspired by this podcast episode).
> 
> But, dnd being games not one game, it might be the case that style of play various from session to session, or even within a session, and so things become blurred.



Using prepped encounters that aren't built around the PC's stated drives and motivations is kinda opposite of what a story now approach would be doing.

I don't think there's a kind of campaign or session, but you can use story now techniques in certain cases -- like the skill challenge example I posted.  Even there, the structure is something you have to add to 5e, because 5e doesn't support skill challenges of any kind out of the box.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 13, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Thanks @hawkeyefan, @Ovinomancer, @Malmuria and @Manbearcat for your reflections in response to my post.
> 
> My own experiences with "situation first" AD&D (back in the days of yore) are what make me think that it must in some sense be feasible in 5e - are the differences _that_ great? (Ovinomancer makes the strongest case that they are) - but I agree that compared to a gold standard like Burning Wheel it's all a bit shaky. @hawkeyefan's account of what he's done make sense to me. And I think the idea of urban environments - or at least socially rich environments - as better suited to this are correct. Also that it makes more sense at lower levels. (I think @Fenris-77 said that - I agree.)
> 
> ...



But can you ever really get good results? I don't think so, personally. I mean, I've PLAYED in 5e campaigns twice that were run by a GM who is fully versed in and capable of running story games. It STILL wasn't much of a story game. Nobody knows what their character can DO, that's the main problem. I have stats, but they are essentially just hints. Even if the GM is operating in totally good faith, I still don't know how situations could play out, and there's no driving principles or deep nested 'onion structure' of process and principles such as exists in a PbtA-based game.

WORSE there's no real process, outside of the most basic elements of combat, so I don't know what the VALUE of any action is. I can say I want to do X but I have only my notion of what the unrevealed story might be and what the GM's judgment of how to deploy checks is to gauge the impact of my character's actions. I mean, there's genre logic, right? But in the D&D milieu that seems pretty weak, unless its a pretty cut-and-dried situation. Ironically 5e doesn't even cater to those (IE dungeon crawling exploration stuff) very well!

I mean, a lot of the time it kind of worked, but things kind of 'derailed' quite often. Then we would have to go back out of character and negotiate what everyone meant and how their intentions mapped onto what was happening in a very explicit way. And then something like the pressures on the GM to manage situations to make the resource game work out come along and meh, it isn't that pretty.


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## Ovinomancer (Nov 13, 2021)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But can you ever really get good results? I don't think so, personally. I mean, I've PLAYED in 5e campaigns twice that were run by a GM who is fully versed in and capable of running story games. It STILL wasn't much of a story game. Nobody knows what their character can DO, that's the main problem. I have stats, but they are essentially just hints. Even if the GM is operating in totally good faith, I still don't know how situations could play out, and there's no driving principles or deep nested 'onion structure' of process and principles such as exists in a PbtA-based game.
> 
> WORSE there's no real process, outside of the most basic elements of combat, so I don't know what the VALUE of any action is. I can say I want to do X but I have only my notion of what the unrevealed story might be and what the GM's judgment of how to deploy checks is to gauge the impact of my character's actions. I mean, there's genre logic, right? But in the D&D milieu that seems pretty weak, unless its a pretty cut-and-dried situation. Ironically 5e doesn't even cater to those (IE dungeon crawling exploration stuff) very well!
> 
> I mean, a lot of the time it kind of worked, but things kind of 'derailed' quite often. Then we would have to go back out of character and negotiate what everyone meant and how their intentions mapped onto what was happening in a very explicit way. And then something like the pressures on the GM to manage situations to make the resource game work out come along and meh, it isn't that pretty.



Yup.  This describes the general problem.  You have to import structure, either like introducing formal frameworks like skill challenges or by establishing how DCs will be set transparently (like @loverdrive's suggestion that a 17+ is a success, 12+ success with complication (or whatever the numbers were)).  These are modifications to the 5e rules, though.  Just using the system as is it fights against story now.


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## Campbell (Nov 13, 2021)

Even traditional games that are well suited to scene based play like Exalted Third Edition, Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition, or Pathfinder Second Edition benefit more from an approach like Ron Edwards' accounts of his own Champions games. Basically you prep for the session based on player character motivations, but inside the session you pretty much run it like a sandbox game. These games have abilities that assume a much richer view of the situation than most scene framed games expect. I think it behooves GMs to work towards that somewhat.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 13, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Yup.  This describes the general problem.  You have to import structure, either like introducing formal frameworks like skill challenges or by establishing how DCs will be set transparently (like @loverdrive's suggestion that a 17+ is a success, 12+ success with complication (or whatever the numbers were)).  These are modifications to the 5e rules, though.  Just using the system as is it fights against story now.



Right, but I would say that even @loverdrive's suggestion isn't going to get you all the way there. I mean, its going to tend to result in a more consistent application, perhaps. I guess really there are a couple ways to go here. One is in the DW/PbtA direction where you simply stop modeling 'the world' AT ALL (PbtA doesn't, not even a little bit). Tossing dice in a PbtA game is a way of bringing randomness into the PLOT! The bonuses you can get for various things "hold" and such, are simply exercises in players directing the game. 4e OTOH is the other direction, which is one where the mechanics still relate to the game world and arbitrating it, but you have that structured system that tells you what each check is 'worth'. 

So, the problem with 5e in the PbtA-like approach is then what about combat? I mean, I used a 4e-like approach in HoML, because I was having fun getting engaged with tactically interesting story play, and just wanted to do that. So, combat is coherent with the rest of the design, checks actually DO have some relation to fiction, its just 'meta' enough to let you tell the story around it/with it that you want, or at least for the players to say "this is interesting, I try this interpretation of things!" That always gets me in @pemerton's examples of play in 4e, someone is always doing some crazy thing combining 4 different game elements and drawing on keywords and whatnot to concoct how the world might work to bring about their crazy plan, or not lets roll dice and find out... lol.

The DW and 4e end results are pretty similar, but they definitely take different paths. Not sure how 5e goes down the DW-like path.


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## pemerton (Nov 13, 2021)

@Ovinomancer, @AbdulAlhazred

I can absolutely follow your posts and understand your reasoning. All I can say in response is that I think you're getting close to treating the gold standard of a system like BW or AW as the floor!

In AD&D played vanilla narrativist, it's closer to AW than BW in the following sense: there's less of a sense of "scene stakes" and more of a sense of the "local" (for lack of a better word) stakes of a particular check. (This also fits with there being nothing like a skill challenge.)

But the GM can set a difficulty for checks, and honour success. And there can be a practice of allowing retries on a miss of (say) 4 or less (on d20), with the cost of a retry being some sort of fictional escalation like the passage of time or having to increase the offer to a NPC or similar. 

That's a bit different from the approach that @Campbell has described. It can be done in AD&D. I can see that 5e has more moving parts. It might work better in 5e for a rogue, a fighter and a warlock than (say) a paladin and two full casters.


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## loverdrive (Nov 13, 2021)

Ovinomancer said:


> Yup.  This describes the general problem.  You have to import structure, either like introducing formal frameworks like skill challenges or by establishing how DCs will be set transparently (like @loverdrive's suggestion that a 17+ is a success, 12+ success with complication (or whatever the numbers were)).  These are modifications to the 5e rules, though.  Just using the system as is it fights against story now.



I don't think it makes D&D 5E a story now game, and the result table wasn't an attempt to do so. I used PbtA-like static DCs because I can't be bothered to assign DC for each and every task.

I don't think there is a way to turn 5E into a story now game without tearing it down and rebuilding it anew.


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## MichaelSomething (Nov 13, 2021)

gorice said:


> So you think it was purely a reaction against 4e? That's interesting.



Not the factor but certainly a factor


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## Fenris-77 (Nov 13, 2021)

Well, just to put my own experience out there I've tried a couple of things to bring a little PbtA to my 5E table. The low hanging fruit, so to speak, is to frame narrative consequences for failed rolls and introduce complications like that. This requires two things. First, you need the players on board (obviously) and, second, you need to be pretty moderate in calling for rolls. By that I mean I only call for rolls when it _really_ matters, maybe a little less often that some DMs, but I tend to be pretty hard on DCs and my players know that the DC represents the situation and task, not just the task. So depending on the fiction, a failed roll might be success with consequences if the better part of the DC were situational rather than strictly task related, or just failure if its the task itself that is most of the DC. I didn't find this to be a huge cognitive load, but it was with players with PbtA and related experience so they knew what the goal looked like. I think it would be a steeper learning curve for D&D-only type players.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 13, 2021)

pemerton said:


> @Ovinomancer, @AbdulAlhazred
> 
> I can absolutely follow your posts and understand your reasoning. All I can say in response is that I think you're getting close to treating the gold standard of a system like BW or AW as the floor!
> 
> ...



I think it works mechanically, there is simply, in AD&D at least, nothing to 'latch on to' in the character, aside from class and race, to drive the engagement thing. DW has bonds for example, or BW has beliefs. So, the question is still kind of what exactly are the checks accomplishing? In a DW game the player makes some choice/answers a question then the GM presents a 'move' and there's a check, and either the player's intent is realized or not (usually with some caveat). So, lets assume you played AD&D in a scene-framed DW-esque fashion, then these checks you speak of (which are basically a de-novo mechanism, though later 1e and then 2e do have some limited generalized check mechanics) can 'work the plot' like they do in DW (IE they reflect plot randomization, not "what is the probability Joe the Dwarf can do X in situation Y"). However, you do run into some flies in the ointment, like thief abilities and such, and the general plethora of types of dice rolls. You COULD simply reform such mechanics, or live with it. So, its a bit of a mixed bag.

Now when you go to 5e, then you do have some 'personality' stuff that can be officially added to a PC, and a background, which is reasonably meaty (easy enough to flesh out, they are fairly suggestive). So, I guess it isn't HARDER, you can employ fixed DCs that just scale a bit with level, so 90% of all checks fall within a couple points of nominal chances, and then employ "and if you miss by only 4..." or something. Its not quite DW!

I would say you are subverting AD&D (1e certainly) MORE because you will surely only use a lot of the mechanics more to bring something like 'fronts' to life. So, for example, wandering monsters are not likely to be random! Maps full of rooms and whatnot are going to need 'holes in them', etc. and obviously the central 'test the player' paradigm is largely subverted (though I am reminded of @Manbearcat telling us that the various ways you get bonuses in DW are in fact a mechanism for injecting skilled play). 5e/2e are subverted a bit less, since they already kind of gave up on those skilled play concepts anyway, largely. 5e gets a bit weird in terms of different pressures on the PCs due to resources. OTOH DW doesn't especially allocate things symmetrically in that sense either, each resource is either a potential trade-off (do I forget my spell or attract unwanted attention) or a 'screw' to turn via a 'soft move'. 5e at least does offer full casters the old "how many slots do I really want to burn to get this done?" which could be levered by the GM in a few ways. Its a bit trickier to put pressure on, say, a Battlemaster in that sense, though hit points are always the classic standby. 

You just definitely, in all cases, need to forget everything you ever learned about traditional GMing of these games! If I were to try to run 1e this way it would be hard not to fall back into old habits, and the fact that the game has all the levers to cater to those won't help, lol.


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## pemerton (Nov 13, 2021)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You just definitely, in all cases, need to forget everything you ever learned about traditional GMing of these games!



Yes!

I can report from the front line that it's easier if you never mastered that in the first place.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it works mechanically, there is simply, in AD&D at least, nothing to 'latch on to' in the character, aside from class and race, to drive the engagement thing.



You rely on informal cues/requests.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, lets assume you played AD&D in a scene-framed DW-esque fashion, then these checks you speak of (which are basically a de-novo mechanism, though later 1e and then 2e do have some limited generalized check mechanics) can 'work the plot' like they do in DW (IE they reflect plot randomization, not "what is the probability Joe the Dwarf can do X in situation Y"). However, you do run into some flies in the ointment, like thief abilities and such, and the general plethora of types of dice rolls. You COULD simply reform such mechanics, or live with it.



Live with it.

There are no DCs in AD&D much of the time. I think that makes it easier.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Nov 14, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Yes!
> 
> I can report from the front line that it's easier if you never mastered that in the first place.
> 
> ...



Yeah, and of course its all subject to heavy interpretation as to when it is even appropriate to ask for things like Climb Walls checks. If you take Gary literally, at least the PHB, then the only time the checks even matter is if it is a SHEER wall, one that wouldn't even normally be climbable (I guess the assumption is any adventurer whatsoever will automatically scale anything easier, though that goes mostly unsaid). Of course the DMG seems to muddy those waters somewhat... In any case, it is certainly POSSIBLE, though the result seems like it won't resemble your Mom's D&D very much.... (yes, my Mom has played a pretty respectable amount of D&D! LOL, though she seems to have 'retired' of late from what I hear).


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