D&D General Explain Bounded Accuracy to Me (As if I Was Five)

[ECMO3]

If I join (say) a book club, I think it's reasonable to expect that I will read the books. It's not acceptable just to turn up to book club and not be unpleasant.

I don't think this is expected in most book clubs and if it is it should be stated.

If I join a choir, I have to be prepared to sing, to do whatever warm-ups we do in choir, probably to do some exercises and practice in my own time.

I don't think yopu are expected to practice on your own time (or at least I wasn't in 4th grade), you are ex-ected to sing but not to be on key.

Obviously every RPG group has its own standards, but I don't think there's any general assumption that no one is expected to take it seriously, or that it atypically demanding to expect more from a player than not being unpleasant to others.

I think there is no general assumption that players are supposed to take the game seriously. What I am saying if that is an expectation, that you are a group of "serious" players that needs to be stated up front.

This sort of attitude that there is a minimal acceptable standard is a form of gatekeeping and one that keeps newbies interested in the game away. It was prevalent in the 90s and 00s but is less so now I believe and I think that is one reason in the explosion of popularity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think this is expected in most book clubs and if it is it should be stated.




I don't think yopu are expected to practice on your own time (or at least I wasn't in 4th grade), you are ex-ected to sing but not to be on key.



I think there is no general assumption that players are supposed to take the game seriously. What I am saying if that is an expectation, that you are a group of "serious" players that needs to be stated up front.

This sort of attitude that there is a minimal acceptable standard is a form of gatekeeping and one that keeps newbies interested in the game away. It was prevalent in the 90s and 00s but is less so now I believe and I think that is one reason in the explosion of popularity.

Do you really think expecting any amount of effort from all participants in a scheduled group social activity that has actual rules is a form of gatekeeping?

 

[ezo]

I don't think this is expected in most book clubs and if it is it should be stated.

Then what is the point of joining a book club if you aren't going to read the book???

I don't think yopu are expected to practice on your own time (or at least I wasn't in 4th grade), you are ex-ected to sing but not to be on key.

You might not think that, but IME you are most certainly expected to practice on your own (or with other members) outside of the scheduled meeting times. If you don't you will most likely not be on key. The other members might be a bit annoy with your apparent lack of progress.

I think there is no general assumption that players are supposed to take the game seriously. What I am saying if that is an expectation, that you are a group of "serious" players that needs to be stated up front.

Ok, I agree with this one at least, but I'll point out there's a difference between taking the game "seriously" and putting forth a minimal amount of effort to learn how the game plays so you can participate without being an annoyance to the others and hindering their fun.

This sort of attitude that there is a minimal acceptable standard is a form of gatekeeping and one that keeps newbies interested in the game away.

Back to disagreeing (sort of).

It isn't a matter of a minimal acceptable standard since each group can establish their own level, just as each group establishes its own level of how serious their game is to them. I TOTALLY agree that any "standard" should be established up front, just like how "serious" players take the game. However, if a new player fails to meet either of those requirements, they probably aren't a good match for that group. It doesn't mean they aren't good for the hobby by any stretch of the imagination! Even in such cases, it hopefully at least will give newbies a taste for what D&D can be like (even if the group isn't ideal), and encourage them to find another group--or even discuss how things could change so they might be able to stay. Compromise is never completely out of the question.

It was prevalent in the 90s and 00s but is less so now I believe and I think that is one reason in the explosion of popularity.

IME I never say any such thing back then, but your experience can certainly be different and I'm not questioning them. Regardless, I don't think it has anything really to do with the explosion of its popularity. There are many more reasonable catalysts for D&D's growth under the 5E banner IMO. But, that's just my opinion.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think this is expected in most book clubs and if it is it should be stated.

What's the point of a book club if not to read the books and then discuss them?

I don't think yopu are expected to practice on your own time (or at least I wasn't in 4th grade), you are ex-ected to sing but not to be on key.

Elementary school is different, as they kinda have to take anyone who is interested regardless of singing ability. Actual real choirs, however, would usually expect one to be able to both sing well enough to keep up, and to practice.

This sort of attitude that there is a minimal acceptable standard is a form of gatekeeping and one that keeps newbies interested in the game away.

Just because I might be interested in choir singing doesn't mean I should just be able to sign up for a choir and expect to become part of it; there's this little requirement called singing ability, without which they're quite justified in telling me to hit the road until and unless I can develop my singing to the point where I'm not undermining the abilities of everyone else.

With gaming, it's not that there's necessarily a minimum expected ability required to start but more that there's a reasonable expectation that over the short-medium term players are going to "learn the ropes", as it were, to a standard that suits the table they're at. That doesn't seem too much to ask.

It was prevalent in the 90s and 00s but is less so now I believe and I think that is one reason in the explosion of popularity.

The explosion of popularity has little if anything to do with this issue. That said, one element that's helped 5e is that it seems a lot of groups have together all learned the game from scratch at once, somehting that really hasn't happend much otherwise since the early 80s heyday of 1e.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but I hope we all know different groups will have different levels of what they are willing to tolerate. I do play with more "serious" players, so our level would probably appear lower to some others.

Sure, this was just a call back to the issue of whether a cell phone is an automatic sign of a bad actor.

Oh, certainly, just about anything can be a distraction! Cell phones simply are the primary offenders IME, but I am probably biased.

One suspects from your comments, so.

But that said, my point is that you can just have someone prone to distraction. I strongly suspect I'm an undiagnosed case of ADHD (since I was in my teens before it even started to be diagnosed, and adult before it became regularly attended to), and it can make it very hard for me to stay focused as a player, to the degree that if I had nothing else I'd probably just drift off in thought (which I've often found is actually worse than, say, playing a computer game I know well since it'll make me lose the thread completely, as I tend to tune out background sounds when I do that whereas playing the game I'll still have part of my attention to it). Notably I do not have the same problem as a GM.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If there really is demand for an intense, hard-core experience, then why not take the opportunity to form an all Enworlder group here in this thread?

What better place then Enworld is there to find the most hard-core elite high skilled players?

 

[tetrasodium]

Rude and extreme is telling someone in game they are not contributing enough or that they need to know the rules better.

Its no different than telling someone that theyare being unreasonable if they do a hockey check travel with the ball or stand there playing games/watching videos on their phone in basketball.

I don't think this is expected in most book clubs and if it is it should be stated.




I don't think yopu are expected to practice on your own time (or at least I wasn't in 4th grade), you are ex-ected to sing but not to be on key.



I think there is no general assumption that players are supposed to take the game seriously. What I am saying if that is an expectation, that you are a group of "serious" players that needs to be stated up front.

This sort of attitude that there is a minimal acceptable standard is a form of gatekeeping and one that keeps newbies interested in the game away. It was prevalent in the 90s and 00s but is less so now I believe and I think that is one reason in the explosion of popularity.

Are you intentionally channeling the mirror universe evil version of comicbook guy with sincere belief or trying to play devil's advocate? Either way I think that you are very much demonstrating that wotc probably needs to make some efforts in shifting the Overton window of teen spirit back a few degrees in 2024

 

[MichaelSomething]

Do you really think expecting any amount of effort from all participants in a scheduled group social activity that has actual rules is a form of gatekerping?

It's "exercising Gygaxian naturalism;" not "gatekeeping."

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Do you really think expecting any amount of effort from all participants in a scheduled group social activity that has actual rules is a form of gatekerping?

i mean, technically it is...but i wouldn't say that's bad.

 

[Maxperson]

What's the point of a book club if not to read the books and then discuss them?

To hit people over the head?