Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[Umbran]

The TTRPG hobby is dominated by D&D, and D&D is dominated by fans in that first category, who demand it remain a bad game.

With respect, Tony.

It is a bad game.... FOR YOU.

There are no objective measures of the overall quality of games. "Good" and "bad" are subjective terms. Until you internalize that, your critique will be of limited value to anyone but yourself, and your lines of discussion will be OneTrueWayist, and rather easy to dismiss for that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The point is, bagging on an entire group of the RPG population for liking and enjoying D&D comes across as arrogant and elitist.

I like & enjoy D&D. I'd prefer not to think of myself as arrogant or elitist.

I can understand that point of view even if I don't entirely agree with it. There are a lot of components of D&D that I find unintuitive, stilted, artificial, clunky, and so on and so on. .. And when I want a fun D&D experience, I want all of those things even though I dislike them individually. And when I want a different RPG experience I find a game with none of those mechanics and have a great time too.

Exactly. Just because a game has faults doesn't mean you can't like it.

It does mean it could be improved, though....

I demand that D&D remain D&D, warts and all. Because even with its faults I have a ton of fun with it.

It's not like AD&D, for instance, will ever stop being D&D. We have the classic game to go back to whenever we like, whether in spite of or because of the various oddities & failings it possessed.

The insistence that the latest edition also have the same oddities and failings, though, is problematic for the hobby as a whole. It makes D&D both the proud, faithful flagship of TTRPGs - and their inescapable albatross.


Ironic, a little bittersweet/sad, and after the edition war, I don't see how it could change.

With respect, Tony.

It is a bad game.... FOR YOU.

No, it's a delightfully fun game, for me (in the case of 5e, to DM) - that's a subjective opinion on my part. But, it's a fun game that I acknowledge has mechanical shortcomings, which are right there, in the mechanics, in B&W.

Of my long-time favorite TTRPGs: 1e AD&D, 1st Ed Gamma World, RQII, 3e & 4e D&D, Champions!/Hero System, and Mage: the Ascension, I could maybe recommend 2 of them as genuinely-good in any sort of mechanical sense. The rest either have some good and bad aspects, or are just almost irredeemably mechanically flawed (even to the point that lampshading can contribute to the fun).

There are no objective measures of the quality of games. "Good" and "bad" are subjective terms

The idea that all aspects of a game, whether quantitative or qualitative are wholly subjective and impervious to analysis strikes me as futile.

If it were true, posts here would be limited to "I liked/didn't like it, YMMV."

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

A good game design is a game that has the mechanical and written fluff support to help you play the kind of game and tell the stories you want to tell with it.

A bad game design is a game that appears to be for a certain kind of game but doesn't support it with game mechanisms or gm help to create and manage what the game's theme and scope are all about.

What fun a person has with any game is irrelevant as far as a games actual rules and what the rules say is how the game is meant to be played.

D&D is a good game for monster slaying, dungeon delving, high fantasy stories where combat is the key means of gaining xp and levels... Its great for that because that is what the game is designed to do.

Others games, like Shadowrun or Dark Heresy 40k, are bad games because their core themes are one thing but their game rules focus and bad gm advice don't fully support what the core game idea is all about. Both can be extremely fun, but they are badly designed games.

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D also presents classes as equally-weighted player choices. Maybe not exactly equally-weighted in 1e, when there were race restrictions and ability requirements. In all three modern eds, though, that's pretty consistent. You can choose the class you like, they're presented as equal. Not like choosing spells that have different levels, weapons that have different ways of getting proficiency, different costs, and so forth, but just a co-equal choice. Yet, classes are not equal. How unequal they are even varies with pacing of the campaign.

It also presents itself as an FRPG, but aspects of it are at odds with the broader fantasy genre.

So there are both ways in which it is spot-on, and ways in which it misses.

 

[Balesir]

Of my long-time favorite TTRPGs: 1e AD&D, 1st Ed Gamma World, RQII, 3e & 4e D&D, Champions!/Hero System, and Mage: the Ascension, I could maybe recommend 2 of them as genuinely-good in any sort of mechanical sense. The rest either have some good and bad aspects, or are just almost irredeemably mechanically flawed (even to the point that lampshading can contribute to the fun).

I have to say that I took Tony's original post in this vein and I get exactly where he's coming from. I largely agree. Mage:the Ascension is one of my all-time rave game settings; I adore its sheer vision and concept, and I have longed to run it for an extended campaign for years. But that ain't going to happen with the current or previous WoD systems which are, frankly, deeply, deeply flawed (to be kind). They just really don't work well. I still desperately want to make the thing work, though. There's something there that makes me want it even with all its failings, but that doesn't mean that I have to be blind to those failings...

Rinse and repeat for RQ, AD&D, 3.X and Hero System (although I did once almost get RQ3 to work to my full satisfaction - RQ is probably fairly close to a "good game" in the overall sense). They all have something irresistibly appealing to me - but also some undeniable flaws as game engines. Add to the list Powers & Perils, Traveller, GURPS and Chivalry & Sorcery; same deal.

 

[Umbran]

But, it's a fun game that I acknowledge has mechanical shortcomings, which are right there, in the mechanics, in B&W.

Ah, you see, here's the thing - you keep shoving off the personal aspect into language changes.

Define "shortcoming". It is a failure to meet a certain standard. But, in your statement the standard is going unstated! You are, in effect, asserting the existence of a universal standard. I am challenging that implicit assertion.

If you want to say that you have some things you like to experience at the table, and that the mechanics have problems producing those things, we'd be fine.

The idea that all aspects of a game, whether quantitative or qualitative are wholly subjective and impervious to analysis strikes me as futile.

That is not what I'm saying at all.

The statement, "It is bad," is not analysis! It is summation and generalization, pretty much the opposite of analysis. Analysis requires a logical breakdown of specific parts. If you want to do analysis, you say, "This game is good/bad at X, for reasons A, B, and C".

But then, we have a list of explicitly stated elements and criteria - and we can look at them and say, "Well, I don't like this, but others might," and the general statement of bad/good goes away.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Define "shortcoming". It is a failure to meet a certain standard. But, in your statement the standard is going unstated! You are, in effect, asserting the existence of a universal standard. I am challenging that implicit assertion.

'Clarity,' somehow, feels like a good example right now. Say you crack open a gaming book, and it is dense with jargon that it never bothers to define, totally lacking in organization, and flatly contradicts itself every time it does manage to convey a rule. You couldn't play that game. No one but the inarticulate designer could. It's fallen far short. Not of some arbitrary standard, but, indeed, of a universal one.

Now, sure, someone could set an unreasonably high or low bar for clarity, or for any other quality. If you set the bar for clarity low enough for early versions of D&D to comfortably clear, there's hardly a game published, except, perhaps, Spawn of Fshawn and it's ilk, that wouldn't also clear it.

The statement, "It is bad," is not analysis! It is summation

Nod. The analysis has long since been done. Valid criticisms of D&D have been hashed out decades since (not that there aren't plenty of invalid ones, as well). Any reader could easily supply some well-known ones as D&D's 'shortcomings' - unless they were somehow convinced D&D were perfect (are you convinced D&D is perfect? Would you care to prove that it is?).


There was some analysis - speculation really - in the post you quoted, but it wasn't about the quality of D&D, but why D&D is so resistant to improvement, and why the hobby is, similarly, so prone to niche fragmentation and very low growth.

Now, if you want to assume that D&D is a fantastic, accessible game and that everyone who tries it loves it, you could, and then you could come up with some alternative explanation for the consistently miniscule size of the TTRPG hobby. Something that accounts for D&D having mainstream name recognition, and it yet remaining unpopular even as closely-related hobbies, like CRPGs, MMOs, CCGs and board gaming are successful.

I'd be delighted to hear something more optimistic than what I could come up with.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

If you want optimism... Those other hobbies within the gaming spectrum are all directly influenced by the creation of D&D. Its cultural influences in game design can be seen in virtually all those other gaming mediums be them MMOs, Board games, video games and other RPGs.

Its recognition D&D deserves and its a shame that so many don't give it the credit it deserves.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If you want optimism... Those other hobbies within the gaming spectrum are all directly influenced by the creation of D&D.

There is that, yes. Even if D&D isn't being lifted with them, it started the tide in some sense. It seems like the people who make more successful games are sometimes D&D fans. The original WotC team who came up with M:tG were, for instance.

 

[Zak S]

The idea that all aspects of a game, whether quantitative or qualitative are wholly subjective and impervious to analysis strikes me as futile.

If it were true, posts here would be limited to "I liked/didn't like it, YMMV."

Yeah there are lots of ways to talk about ideas in meaningful ways without substituting opinion for fact:

The "assume everything not obviously fact is opinion" rule is a really bad rule in internet RPG discussion.
There are many times in RPGs when it's unclear whether the speaker thinks what they said is fact or opinion.
Like when someone goes "The magic rules as written are unplayable" they might mean:
(objective) "following the rules doesn't lead to any clear result--there is a paragraph missing in the book or something and even the designer would admit that further information would be needed to play using those rules."
(subjective) "I don't like the magic rules."
…another classic example is anything in a ruleset referred to as a "mistake". Mistake can mean:
-(objective) An actual -up made by the author that does not actually meet the author's genuine intention, which they might even cop to.
-(subjective) The person reading doesn't like the thing in the game.
…all useful conversations start with objective facts (even if they're assumed) and can only move to opinion after that.
Another area is when the possibility of hard data exists. When someone goes "people more intuitively grasp percentile systems" this is actually sociologically provable. When someone says "people more intuitively grasp (their favorite game)" we don't know if this person means they did research and it's a fact or they are just guessing that.

Thus it's extremely important to identify whether you're talking to someone who actually mistakes their subjective experience for an objective fact.

90% of the unnecessary argument on the RPG internet is because people don't mark the difference between what they suspect and what they believe to be fact. Then other people react by doing it back and…suddenly it's all noise.

The problem is:

There is often no way to make a game "better" for one audience without simultaneously making it worse for another.

Unless you can either:

-describe a third way that satisfies both parties
or
-successfully define one of the two parties as irrelevant and not deserving entertainment
…then you don't have grounds for "better".

It's better to use arabic rather than roman numerals to express numbers in D&D. You can survey the audience and find that out, I'll wager.

Other things: not so much. You risk confusing the argument desperately when you exchange "bad" for "didn't work for us" or "I am guessing it wouldn't work for ____ audience but I have no proof"