D&D General D&D's feel - ENWorld vs. rpg.net

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Mabye for kicks, if you find yourself in a mashochistic mood, put the same survey on sites dedicated to each of the various editions. I don't know which ones you'd want to hit for 3e and 4e but Dragonsfoot would be the place to get the old-school response. (though I'd recommend taking out things like advantage-disadvantage which only apply to one edition)

If you bring up advantage/disadvantage at Dragonsfoot, they'll burn you for being a witch.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's a technical pov though yes?

You would more or less have to build your own bubble?

Basically I read stuff I don't agree with and I think I've used block once in about 20 years.

It’s not enough just to not block stuff you don’t agree with. Algorithms analyze you’re browsing habits and target you with content they predict you will be more likely to engage with. You can reduce the extent to which bubbles form around you, but you can’t prevent it completely.

 

[Zardnaar]

It’s not enough just to not block stuff you don’t agree with. Algorithms analyze you’re browsing habits and target you with content they predict you will be more likely to engage with. You can reduce the extent to which bubbles form around you, but you can’t prevent it completely.

Ah I don't really browse just see what others post.

And I don't have a huge amount of FB friends mostly limited to people irl or went to school with.

Mostly sane with a few exceptions.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah I don't really browse just see what others post.

“Browse” here means “use the internet.”

 

[Zardnaar]

“Browse” here means “use the internet.”

Ah thought you meant using FB.

Mostly limited interwebs to a few news sites (BBC, some NZ ones) and history type stuff.

And buzzwords so I know what people are talking about.

Generally avoid the usual hot button type topics except on a single site I've been on since 2003.

 

[JEB]

Right, so I went ahead and cross-posted the original poll into r/Dungeons_and_Dragons, r/rpg, and r/dndnext. Considered r/DMAcademy and r/DnDBehindTheScreen, but figured a poll like this was off-topic for them.

Then I realized I'm now obliged to include folks who play other editions than 5E, so I threw in r/4eDnD, r/DungeonsAndDragons35e, r/adnd, r/BECMI (which is tiny, but whatevs), and r/odnd (which I was surprised to find). I considered r/OSR as well, but I don't want to over-represent older editions.

I hope I don't regret this...

 

[JEB]

It is absolutely iconic to D&D, but is it essential to the feel of D&D? I’d agree with @JEB that it is an element that is deeply associated with D&D, but that is pretty much obsolete. I don’t think the feel of D&D would be all that different without alignment (but I liked 4e, so what do I know? )

Just for the record, I don't personally think alignment is obsolete, I think it's still a useful shorthand. However, after these poll results, I'm pretty convinced my opinion isn't exactly the majority...

Mabye for kicks, if you find yourself in a mashochistic mood, put the same survey on sites dedicated to each of the various editions. I don't know which ones you'd want to hit for 3e and 4e but Dragonsfoot would be the place to get the old-school response. (though I'd recommend taking out things like advantage-disadvantage which only apply to one edition)

Eh, I think posting the poll in nine different Reddits, with one for each incarnation of the game, is as masochistic as I'm willing to get.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd say alignment is pretty iconic to D&D myself. They make memes about it. I'd venture out to the general public because these forums represent the vocal minority. That minority has a lot more power now than it did even 5 years ago. Let's see what the public really has to say?

First: I mean no offense, but there's legitimately no way that we could get a "general public" poll that would mean a dang thing. You'd need an actual, professional polling agency, you'd need to completely redesign the poll to avoid various sources of unintentional bias, and you'd need an active sampling method that got a genuinely representative sample of D&D players, which is going to be extremely hard to do. These polls, and the proposed Reddit stuff, are literally the best we will ever get our hands on, because it's unlikely that even WotC itself can do all that much better, apart from total number of people spoken to. I doubt WotC has conducted a single truly serious poll of their D&D fans in the past decade. (The Magic team handles these things quite differently, from what I've seen, with the whole psychographic profiles and all.)

Second: "Iconic" =/= "needed for the feel," and (even moreso) "iconic" =/= "should be retained." THAC0 was iconic for 2nd edition, but emphatically wasn't needed to feel like you were playing D&D. I completely agree that it's very easy to identify a game as being D&D-related if you know you've got a "Lawful Good Wizard," but even knowing that you are playing a "Lawful Good Wizard" does not in and of itself make players feel like they're getting the D&D experience.

For comparison, bald eagles are iconic of the United States, but aren't necessary for feeling patriotic for the USA. Evoking or specifically depicting a bald eagle is a great shorthand for signalling "you should associate this thing with the United States," but it's no guarantee that it will rouse patriotic feelings in the hearts of onlookers. The Stars and Stripes, on the other hand, is both iconic and inherently patriotic-feeling, for a variety of reasons (flags having long been explicitly identified with the nation they represent--hence why dirtying or burning a flag tends to inflame tempers). Conversely, the Lincoln Memorial is quite patriotic, but unless you are directly looking at the statue of Lincoln, the building is terribly unassuming from the exterior. Don't get me wrong, it's a very beautiful building that I'd love to see in person some day, and for us here in the States it is likely to evoke strong emotion because we recognize it, but for someone from outside the US, it just looks like any other marble-facade government building (unlike, say, the Washington Monument or US Capitol Building, which have more distinctive shape).

Alignment is iconic, emblematic, but not high on most folks' "you need it for it to feel like D&D" list, nor their "must be retained" list.

 

[GreyLord]

If you bring up advantage/disadvantage at Dragonsfoot, they'll burn you for being a witch.

Naw, I wouldn't, but I might change you into a Garden Gnome...

Wait a second...I see you've visited DF before...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Twitter is absolutely a bubble, and waste of time combined.

Whether it’s either of those is up to the user.

If you don’t bother to do anything to curate your experience, you’ll only see what the algorithm thinks will get engagement from you, and what you go find when you first sign up. If you’re actually engaged with one or more communities on the platform, it’s far from a bubble or a waste of time.

And honestly I doubt anyone is actually experiencing Twitter as a bubble. The site is set up to get a response from you constantly, and if you curate enough to make the algorithm largely irrelevant to your usage, you’d have to never read any replies to any user with more than a few hundred followers to experience a bubble.