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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6052408" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think it's an interesting essay, although a bit overblown or exaggerated in places. I'm a great admirer of Weber, and I think there is something to be said for applying a Weberian analysis to the aesthetics of D&D.</p><p></p><p>But I think the author falls into an edition-warring trap. For example, the author clearly doesn't understand how skill challenges are meant to be adjudicated. On page 20, s/he says:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Through a mechanic called “skill challenges,” the game converts a role-playing event such as negotiating with a local duke into a quantitatively governed dice-rolling session, described as “Level: Equal to the level of the party; Complexity 3 (requires 8 successes before 4 failures)” (Wyatt 76). Gone is the uneasy treaty between rationalization and enchantment; here, the system is all-encompassing.</p><p></p><p>And on the same page, s/he says of 4e monsters that</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">the qualitative aspects are like a skin overlaid on this framework.</p><p></p><p>In both cases, s/he shows a lack of understanding of how these mechanical systems relate to the "qualitative aspect" of play ie the fiction. In neither case is the system all-encompassing; rather, the system is intended to regulate the process of narration between player and GM, and it is their narration, within the constraints of that regulation, that produces the fiction.</p><p></p><p>The essay would have been strengthened, I think, by recognising the huge influence of indie- and Forge-style design on 4e: as in my description just above, for example, the conception of the function of the rules that Vincent Baker has pioneered, namely, as primarily intended not to describe the fiction, but to regulate the shared production of the fiction. (And no one in the RPG world has more strongly attacked the idea that <em>if only your rules are mathematically tighter in their simulation, you'll get the enchantment you're after</em> than Ron Edwards. So 4e is influenced by a school of design that agrees with many of the points made in the essay.)</p><p></p><p>This would then have provided a basis for identifying 4e (and Forge game design more generally) as a modernist attempt to reconcile rationalised production and creativity, rather than a mere McDonald's-isation. Which may or may not be vulnerable to some sort of deconstructive or other critique (depending on the author's inclinations in that regard).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6052408, member: 42582"] I think it's an interesting essay, although a bit overblown or exaggerated in places. I'm a great admirer of Weber, and I think there is something to be said for applying a Weberian analysis to the aesthetics of D&D. But I think the author falls into an edition-warring trap. For example, the author clearly doesn't understand how skill challenges are meant to be adjudicated. On page 20, s/he says: [indent]Through a mechanic called “skill challenges,” the game converts a role-playing event such as negotiating with a local duke into a quantitatively governed dice-rolling session, described as “Level: Equal to the level of the party; Complexity 3 (requires 8 successes before 4 failures)” (Wyatt 76). Gone is the uneasy treaty between rationalization and enchantment; here, the system is all-encompassing.[/indent] And on the same page, s/he says of 4e monsters that [indent]the qualitative aspects are like a skin overlaid on this framework.[/indent] In both cases, s/he shows a lack of understanding of how these mechanical systems relate to the "qualitative aspect" of play ie the fiction. In neither case is the system all-encompassing; rather, the system is intended to regulate the process of narration between player and GM, and it is their narration, within the constraints of that regulation, that produces the fiction. The essay would have been strengthened, I think, by recognising the huge influence of indie- and Forge-style design on 4e: as in my description just above, for example, the conception of the function of the rules that Vincent Baker has pioneered, namely, as primarily intended not to describe the fiction, but to regulate the shared production of the fiction. (And no one in the RPG world has more strongly attacked the idea that [I]if only your rules are mathematically tighter in their simulation, you'll get the enchantment you're after[/I] than Ron Edwards. So 4e is influenced by a school of design that agrees with many of the points made in the essay.) This would then have provided a basis for identifying 4e (and Forge game design more generally) as a modernist attempt to reconcile rationalised production and creativity, rather than a mere McDonald's-isation. Which may or may not be vulnerable to some sort of deconstructive or other critique (depending on the author's inclinations in that regard). [/QUOTE]
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