RPG Theory- The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World

[Snarf Zagyg]

Often designers (at least competent ones) are forced to take a broader view than people who play or even GM games. And in cases where they don't, its often extremely obvious.

I would also add that D&D (especially 5e) engages in extensive playtesting and market research in terms of surveys that most games are unable to. Which allows them to iterate and release "broadly popular" products.

Being broadly popular doesn't make you "good" or "well-suited for everything," but it does help ensure that you are giving people what they want and will get paid for it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, I would say that there's an assumption behind that statement as well!

Absolutely. But that's the point; you have to come from some kind of posture to decide doing things like revisiting D&D mechanics is or isn't useful, and its difficult to judge whether the fact its the 800 pound gorilla says anything about real preference in the first place. So all anyone can do is guess (because what data exists--frankly could possibly exist--to tell you one way or another in any authoritative fashion?

Look, two things could be going on. Not even mutually exclusive.

1. People are stupid, and they don't know any better, so they just play D&D because they are stupid. Which is, roughly paraphrased, what you are saying. If that's true, then that is worth examining. Just like it's worth examining why people eat McDonald's when there are better options. You can't just assert something- you have to look at the evidence and examine what it means. Or, to go back to my example, "People who like hip hop and rock and pop music don't have any real preferences. They would listen to opera if they just knew better." As a general rule, the "people are stupid and don't know better" argument generally isn't a great one. IMO.

I think your first statement is a much bigger judgment call than I'd place on it. It doesn't require stupidity; all it requires is that the amount of lifting to find out if there's something better exceeds their apparent need. I played and ran D&D for some years before I appreciably forayed outside of it, even though some things made me chafe at it at the time. That was largely a consequence of opportunity cost, and I don't see it as any less true now, given D&D's growth over time.

The situations about music are not, after all, really parallel. Anyone vaguely interested in new music can pretty easily try it out. This is absolutely not true of any number of people playing D&D.

2. People like what they like. It's possible that there are reasons that you aren't considering (or that you are, and are discounting) for people to have different preferences. For example, it could be as simple as, "People know about other games, and they might like other games, but because D&D is so common, it is the default game for any mixed group of people." Again, though, this is worth examining.

That's unquestionably true. But it doesn't mean they suddenly like D&D for reasons that weren't true 35 years ago when it was much more the measuring stick. Its entirely possible to understand that people have reasons for a preference, and still conclude that (at least for your purposes) they're inadequate and to give them no more attention.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

It is possible to both appreciate that the hoi polloi isn't going to be on the bleeding (artistic) edge, as well as acknowledge that the revealed preferences of those who are buying and playing the game may account for something useful.

This makes some sense to me in the abstract, though if you get into the particulars, an Apocalyse World game and related design and theory discussions, for example, might be so far removed from how D&D is played and designed that it's likely a waste of time to bother referencing D&D. If a bunch of indie filmmakers were sitting around analyzing the MCU's ratio of trailer-friendly comedic-one-liners to genuine story or action beats, I'd think they're just sorting out the best way to get pulled into the MCU stable, not trying to improve or inform their own work.

Where I agree, though is in the way that the bleeding edge is often informed by criticisms of popular work. The French New Wave defined itself, in some respects, as being nothing like what those filmmakers saw as the stunted, polished "cinema of quality" at the time.

But what happens when people criticize or even reference D&D in anything other than a positive light? Claims of elitism, pretentiousness, and blame for creating a divisive environment.

So, it's a Catch-22. Don't leave D&D out of the conversation, since that's dismissing its player base. But also, keep D&D out of your mouth unless it's to heap praise upon it.

Meanwhile, as @pemerton referenced re: the avant-garde, but I think holds true in a lot of discourse that happens in the shadow of a single, dominating IP, the people interested in pushing a given medium often hold what they create and consume to the same high standards as they do that looming thing. That stans of the monolith, whether that's the MCU or D&D or whatever else, see almost any whiff of criticism or preference for something else as a slight will always confuse me. You're waaaay up there. We're no threat down here. We can't win. The war never existed, or was over before it started. We're just trying to have some fun trying something else, in many cases while still playing D&D every so often.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would also add that D&D (especially 5e) engages in extensive playtesting and market research in terms of surveys that most games are unable to. Which allows them to iterate and release "broadly popular" products.

Being broadly popular doesn't make you "good" or "well-suited for everything," but it does help ensure that you are giving people what they want and will get paid for it.

Well, they also have the advantage that they can know their market right out the gate (whether they pay attention to it in all cases seems somewhat varied), whereas people designing new games are having to make estimates with intrinsically limited information.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you go into a fate community and constantly talk about non-fate it comes across as proselytizing and I think that’s what’s happening with the pushback you are seeing.

There's bound to be some of that, but you'll see it even with "I'm interested in Game X but have an issue with these parts of it." The pushback can be pretty sharp.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

and I was hoping for an inclusive thread for people who don't normally join in to be able to discuss those concepts in the context of 5e and see what they had to say, since I don't see that very often. New voices getting to express themselves.

That's an excellent goal, and assuming it's one of the aims of this current thread, a good reason for me to shut up for a bit.

 

[gorice]

It's not your fault.

I think it was Malthus who first remarked about the inevitability of things. Then again, I'm pretty sure that Engels replied, "You are wrong, your momma smells bad, and your reasoning is as poor as you claim the population to be. #FIRST11!!!! #PWNED #TOOLOFOPPRESION

I'll add this to the running total of new maxims!

1. Ancalagon's Apothegm: If you ever write something about how awesome people are, they will immediately prove you wrong.
@Ancalagon

2. Gorice's Gospel: All conversations about TTRPG theory on enworld inevitably become arguments about the Forge.



Because that's where the money is. (Speaking of Engels ...)

Seriously, though. When that much money is spent on triple-A games, and on creating and maintaining MMOs, then you get a lot of work done on the practical aspects of what makes it "good" and "worth playing." In other words, the design and theory aspects of them. Because of the relative paucity of such work in the TTRPG field, a lot of the concepts get borrowed.

IMO. I think @Aldarc has mentioned this as well.

'Gorice's gospel' has a nice ring to it!

Anyway, I should have known that Vulgar Marxism would explain 90% of everything once again.

I tend to agree. Once you get away from a D&D-centric space like ENWorld, most discussion of RPGs in contrast doesn't mention any incarnation of D&D, other than to the degree its lumped in with other traditional games. This wasn't always true--early in the hobby a lot of discussion of new games were framed in contrast to what they did that D&D doesn't--but for most people outside the D&D-sphere (in the sense they don't do it or its not their primary game choice) that fight is long won as far as they're concerned, and they've moved on to working on other issues beyond whether there's better ways to represent characters than classes or better ways to represent armor than AC. It doesn't even come up (and even when it does, its in a kind of "of course" sort of way).

I don't think you're being dismissive of pedantic D&D discussion here, but I want to mention anyway: someone (I think it was actually Ron Edwards) once said words to the effect that truly understanding a system like D&D and then carefully curating the experience via small changes is an equally valid method of game design as making a bold new design from whole cloth. If tweaking D&D gets you the game you want, that's OK.

I mean, I think that would be a giant red flag that something should be re-examined.

Imagine if you were trying to think about any other field, and you chose to discard the majority of relevant data about actual observed preferences because it doesn't fit what you want it to be.

It's akin to someone saying, "Yeah, I like discussing music and music theory. I'm not going to talk about hip-hop, or rock, or pop, because that's what people listen to. Opera, on the other hand ... that's where the action is."

It is possible to both appreciate that the hoi polloi isn't going to be on the bleeding (artistic) edge, as well as acknowledge that the revealed preferences of those who are buying and playing the game may account for something useful.

Having said the above, 'revealed preference' is one of those miraculous tautologies that makes me want to punch an economist. D&D casts such a long shadow over the medium that I don't think music is a good comparison. A better one might be miniatures wargaming, where Games Workshop completely dominates the scene, and continues to do indescribable things to people's understanding of the medium by attaching slipshod rules to a constant parade of overpriced fetish objects. Ahem.

I think what I'm getting at is that I think people's preferences and understanding are shaped by experience. Which means that WotC's virtual monopoly of the medium is not only self-reinforcing, like all monopolies, but that it also shapes people's habits and preferences in a way that makes empirical observation of preference worthless.

 

[gorice]

It's where the money is, but it's also a field that has established lingo/jargon for its games and isn't afraid to use it. We're not talking academic level here, but also at a basic amateur fan community level of criticism. I often get the impression that people in the various TTRPG communities are incredibly reluctant to talk about their games in a comparable way that board game or video/computer game enthusiasts talk about their games.*

This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so much more comfortable talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.

 

[FrogReaver]

This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so much more comfortable talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.

You must have missed the vast amounts of hate Diablo 3 received for changing things from previous Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 hames many players preferred.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This, times one billion. Both designers and players of videogames are so much more comfortable talking about design and preference than TTRPG players, and no-one is ever accused of being a slob or an elitist for saying they like sandbox RPGs or soulslikes or whatever (well, maybe the latter). Is our problem intrinsic to the medium? I suspect it's more of an historical accident, but I don't really know.

Opportunity costs and identity forming, really. The former is a partial function of the latter. RPGs tend to be highly social endeavors in ways that video games are not, so there's an element of social identity wrapped up into RPGs -- you are part of this crowd. And RPGs have been strongly attacked from outside, so there's a learned wariness and defensiveness about that identity grouping. It's not gone unnoticed by me that the people that react the strongest to my comments about play goals and differing approaches and how play is structured tend to be long time participants in the hobby centered almost entirely on D&D or D&D offshoots. This is just a thing. The opportunity costs come in where RPGs are much, much harder to sample (I believe this was recently mentioned in thread, I apologize that I don't recall who said it) and part of this difficulty in sampling is running into the social identities issue and how challenging it can be to get entrenched players to try something new. This doesn't seem to be the same kind of problem in video games outside of WoW, which, in comparison, is the only game that remotely resembles D&D in marketshare, duration, and foundational impacts. And even there it's noticeably weaker in effect.