Why D&D is like pr0n

[clip]

Here's a fact - many, if not most people will deny viewing pornography regularly.

There's a rhetorical question that goes something like this:

"Pornography is a worldwide multi-billion dollar industry. How is that possible when nobody watches it?"

*

So, how is D&D like pr0n? Well, look at the official site and others like this. There are huge huge volumes and traffic on the CharOp boards. There are huge, detailed character guides. There are hundreds of questions about bent and broken features. CharOp in 4e even has its own language. There are unique phrases for character types and certain feats - no doubt imported from Diablo (and later WoW).

And yet - go to any FLGS, any con, any RPG club. Meet other DMs - and what do 90% of them say first? "I like a rules-lite, RPG-heavy game that concentrates on the story telling. I like to focus on roleplaying and not too much combat."

So, all these players that are juicing the plusses and minuses, and working out how best to nuke the gnolls, or Frostcheese everyone out of sight...are these guys all coincidentally playing with the 10% of DMs that aren't proponents of the almighty roleplaying?

Or is it not much more likely that many DMs say these things, but either don't actually mean them (ie they actually like a hack & slash game, but for some reason don't want to say so), or they don't actually realise what a "rules-lite, big narrative game" looks like - and they think their dungeon bash is actually a daring political intrigue?

I don't for a second suggest that anyone else shouldn't play the game type that they like, or that any mould of game is any better than another - but I am personally proud that my games are very much Tom & Jerry with swords and spells - and the players are (as far as I'm aware) having fun all the time. There's no prizes for having the least fighting, or the most story-telling, so my question is - why the denials?

 

[arthurhoneyhill]

What does role vs. roll have to do with porn?

 

[ExploderWizard]

There is nothing to what you say that means anyone is being dishonest.

Mechanics obsession, and hack n slash are wildly popular topics of discussion. A good number of DM's say that they prefer more roleplaying in their games.

These things are not mutually exclusive. Look at the number of threads involving DM's who are wanting to find more ways to bring RP and less bloodthirsty elements into their campaigns.

 

[Morrus]

The basic flaw in your line of reasoning is your 90% figure. Your entire post hinges on it, and it is unverified.

I dispute your 90% figure. It doesn't mesh with my experience. I'd suggest that you're either (a) living in a coincidentally localised phenomenon or (b) you notice those people more than you notice the people who don't claim that (confirmation bias).

Other than an expensive international survey of epic proportions using a good marketing firm able to use control questions and other devices to obtain genuine results, the only real measure we have is sales figures - but we don't have accurate sales figures, and sales are led by many factors other than pure product content - brand strength, marketing budgets, etc. so the best we get is a rough guess.

 

[IronWolf]

There is nothing to what you say that means anyone is being dishonest.

Mechanics obsession, and hack n slash are wildly popular topics of discussion. A good number of DM's say that they prefer more roleplaying in their games.

These things are not mutually exclusive. Look at the number of threads involving DM's who are wanting to find more ways to bring RP and less bloodthirsty elements into their campaigns.

Yeah, this is what I would consider more likely to be the case. I think the charop boards can still be full of people working to tweak their characters while DMs across the world are trying to figure out more ways to bring less bloodthirst and more roleplaying to their game.

 

[TarionzCousin]

The basic flaw in your line of reasoning is your 90% figure. Your entire post hinges on it, and it is unverified.

It's a well-known fact that 83.7% of all statistics are made up.

 

[clip]

There is nothing to what you say that means anyone is being dishonest.

Mechanics obsession, and hack n slash are wildly popular topics of discussion. A good number of DM's say that they prefer more roleplaying in their games.

These things are not mutually exclusive. Look at the number of threads involving DM's who are wanting to find more ways to bring RP and less bloodthirsty elements into their campaigns.

This is exactly the point. Without getting into a statistical evidence symposium (which Morrus here seems to be interested in), forums like this are jam-packed with threads about exactly that - "more RP, less violence, please". How many threads are there asking how to bring in "more fighting and less roleplaying"? Would you say the first instance outnumbers the second by say....9-1?

Let's suppose a lot of people play the default game - that intended by WotC, and let's suppose a lot of people are playing something like Scales of War. There's a fair amount of fighting, and for the sake of it, there's the odd skill challenge thrown in here or there. But in with all that, no-one can deny that it's not a game of D&D miniatures. If you wanted more fighting in SoW, you could fit it in - it's not like there isn't room. It's also not like there isn't a narrative or a plot or lots of roleplaying. So on balance, you could send that game either way.

Yet how many people come on these forums and ask that question, and state that they prefer a bloodthirsty game over one with more "roleplaying"? Very few.

 

[clip]

The basic flaw in your line of reasoning is your 90% figure. Your entire post hinges on it, and it is unverified.

I dispute your 90% figure. It doesn't mesh with my experience. I'd suggest that you're either (a) living in a coincidentally localised phenomenon or (b) you notice those people more than you notice the people who don't claim that (confirmation bias).

Other than an expensive international survey of epic proportions using a good marketing firm able to use control questions and other devices to obtain genuine results, the only real measure we have is sales figures - but we don't have accurate sales figures, and sales are led by many factors other than pure product content - brand strength, marketing budgets, etc. so the best we get is a rough guess.

Nah, sorry. You just don't get it. Of course a 90% figure is made up -it's rhetoric, after all. But it doesn't change anything, and the accuracy of that isn't central to my assertion. It is absolutely self-evident on boards like enworld, that there is a strong body of players (DMs) banging on about exactly this subject - how much they like the rules-lite, combat-lite, RP/narrative game. Without looking, I'm sure there are at least 8 threads on the first two pages of this forum at any given time using this as a theme.

At the same time, there is very very little representation of the opposite case. I'm not performing a mathematical proof here - just an analogy.

The rhetorical question on pornography doesn't have any evidentiary basis - yet I think it's reasonable to accept it. Have I performed a statistically sound survey of people to ask if they view pornography regularly? No, of course not. But is it a reasonable and sensible assertion that most people asked will say they do not?

Do you regularly view pornography?

 

[ExploderWizard]

This is exactly the point. Without getting into a statistical evidence symposium (which Morrus here seems to be interested in), forums like this are jam-packed with threads about exactly that - "more RP, less violence, please". How many threads are there asking how to bring in "more fighting and less roleplaying"? Would you say the first instance outnumbers the second by say....9-1?

I say that there is no dishonesty because there might be a fair number of DM's who might actually enjoy what they say that they do but do not have a group that delivers said preferred game.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxkdmL3iMCY]YouTube - The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want (Live 1969)(The Flying Dutchman)[/ame]

The particular thing you are talking about then would seem to be less about denials and more about wishful thinking.

 

[Umbran]

There are huge huge volumes and traffic on the CharOp boards.

Do not mistake anything on a message board as being representative of gamers as a whole. There's maybe a few thousand people who post on such venues, but the number of people who play RPGs regularly is probably closer to a million. So, the folks who post are a small fraction of the total body of gamers. They are not randomly chosen out of the mass, but are instead self-selected to be the types who will post in such venues, so aren't a good representative sample.