Aka 'popularity is the only measure of quality'. McDonalds is the best restaurant, etc. People eat it ergo it is the best.
D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
I don't know or care about the game being broken. What I can tell you is running 3e, even at fairly low levels, damn near broke me. Almost put out of the hobby altogether. The sheer amount of work it took to bring a successful session together still has me shell shocked. 10 hours of highly technical prep for like a 4 hour session.
clearstream
(He, Him)
They are not comments on the relationship between quality and popularity.
As @Campbell felt previously, I find knocking one game design or another unwelcoming and unproductive. It's a habit of some posters here and it contributes nothing at all to the strength of their arguments.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Returning to my "game-(design-)purposes" taxonomy and some of the input @clearstream and others have given, but starting (almost) from scratch in terms of examining and presenting it...
A designed thing, especially a designed thing with rules, must have a goal, an end. Laws and rules, as part of their very nature, are teleological. They must point toward a goal or purpose, and should they produce results genuinely counter to that goal or purpose, they not only can but should be changed until they meet their purpose. The process of designing anything is, in part, the process of figuring out what tools will accomplish the chosen end(s) effectively, learning what standards or functions those tools can serve, applying those tools and functions toward that end, and then checking to see whether the designed thing does the task or meets the standard of judgment for the purpose that it was created.
My interest, with this taxonomy, is to consider the families of "purposes" that roleplaying games may be designed to pursue. As a result, this is a descriptive effort, though in being descriptive I am not opposed to the possibility of finding a lacuna that can be filled with a theoretical not-widely-grokked option. As this is concerned with the overall reason for why someone would make a given game, rather than the specific methods that would work well for a given "overall reason why," individual techniques may certainly be an interesting side or follow-up discussion but are not strictly my area of focus. Furthermore, as my focus is on the thing the designer "sets out for," it is not strictly interested in things that would motivate players to choose to play the game, even though player motivation is absolutely an important and valid aspect of game design.
Having reflected on others' models, in particular Edwards', and on my own experience with roleplay, I have come to the conclusion that most "game-purposes" define some kind of central concept(s) that will drive the interest or focus of play, and then some general category of action that will constitute the process of play (from a design perspective—that is, what might be called the "gameplay loop," which is distinct from the literal lived-through process of play that actual players experience, in the same way that a blueprint differs from the physical object it generates.)
I have seen, both in games I have personally played and in the ways others talk about games whether or not I have played them, at least four distinct "game-purposes," that I choose to label with an "X-and-Y" (or, abbreviated, X&Y, just the first letters) format. These are as follows.
Score-and-Achievement. This is "game-purpose" in arguably its most literal sense, making a roleplaying game in order for it to be a game, with points or grades or numerical/evaluative testing of some kind, balance, difficulty curves, etc. A really ultra-pure S&A game is centered on that process of mastering the rules and then engaging in their skillful use in ways that matter to the player(s.) Few games are quite that purely S&A in design, though, as they usually provide context for why success would be relevant.
"Score" refers to the designer-created system or structure that allows at least partially objective measurement or evaluation of performance within the Situations the system considers. A game that includes Score, in general, needs a concept of "fairness" in order for that Score to be valid and worthy of player attention, and needs to not play fast and loose with the game rules so that the Score can retain relevance as a metric of evaluation and not just a random number or keyword. Score also, generally speaking, benefits from clarity, both in the sense of "transparency" (it is easy to see how the rules work and interact) and specificity (the use of keywords and other unambiguous terms/"jargon.")
"Achievement" is the action, by players, of pursuing success in goals, where that success can be measured or evaluated via the already-defined Score. I specifically call this "Achievement" rather than something like "striving" or "attempting" because S&A design specifically emphasizes a focus on success, with failure pretty clearly seen as an undesirable state, something to avoid or correct, which is generally not shared with the other "game-purposes." This "game-purpose" is pretty much inarguably the oldest and best-demonstrated of the bunch, having been the heart of the first TTRPG. As a result it can sometimes be glossed over as being intuitive or already explored because it is old hat, but this is not always the case (as Clearstream has demonstrated purely by making this thread!)
Groundedness-and-Simulation. Though a popular interest, this "game-purpose" has occasionally struggled to see effective design, perhaps because it focuses least on any specific part of the phrase "roleplaying game," being neither about the role one plays, nor about being a game in the sense that S&A is. Rather, G&S is about the process of inserting or immersing the player, via their character, into the fictional world with its various rules and components, and letting things naturally advance, with minimal influence or modification by the person facilitating this experience once the ball starts rolling. In many ways, this is where TTRPGs intersect most with auteur cinema and authorship as in novels; there is a huge emphasis on worldbuilding and consistency and precision.
That's where "Groundedness" is established: someone (almost always the GM or the author of the premade setting or adventure) setting up a believable, cognizable, "realistic" (but still fantastical) context. This is vitally important ground work for the process of play, as an ungrounded fictional context is too unreliable or too incoherent to make sense of (unless that sort of thing is the point, e.g. the context is a dreamworld or the like where inconsistency is expected, but that's a rare exception where minimum Groundedness has a grounded reason for being very low.) Then, players themselves advance the state of the world (with the GM/module/system doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting) via naturalistic, context-appropriate decision-making: Simulation. They collectively Simulate (read: run the processes for an intended accurate model of) a world and its inhabitants and how they would process and respond to the established world and its rules.
Unexpected, emergent phenomena often result from these things. The intended gameplay loop usually involves having a goal within the established world (usually, but not necessarily, GM-provided) and a set of resources (possibly including information and time as "resources") which may be turned toward that goal, with the best play occurring when one finds a satisfactory path to that goal which employs those resources in clever or efficient ways or leverages unexpected confluences of the rules. Reasoning, extrapolation, and prediction are highly valued.
Conceit-and-Emulation. Almost as old as G&S (it's hard to tell which came first), but moving in very different directions, this is the "game-purpose" of faithful depiction of a theme, what is called a High Concept in cinema. Internal physical/naturalistic consistency is of minimal relevance, instead the High Concept is king, dictating what design elements will be included and wrapping the gameplay loop around itself. In general this High Concept, which I call the Conceit, will be chosen by the GM herself, though it may come from an outside source, or might even be collaborated on by the group, but rarely if ever will arise from an individual ordinary player picking it. From there, the gameplay loop focuses on developing satisfying and (ideally) enlightening portrayals of the Conceit(s), which is "Emulation."
Where an ultra-pure S&A game just cares about besting challenges and superlative success, and an ultra-pure S&G game follows naturalistic reasoning wherever it may lead, C&E welcomes elements that enforce the tropes or characteristics of the Conceit even if they might not be "effective" or "realistic," because the purpose of play is to elevate Conceit so that it can be appreciated more. Genres are one of the primary options for Conceit, but other choices are not unusual ("wacky hijinks" comedic games, for example). Because of this interest in Conceit, this "game-purpose" is much more amenable to active-in-play GM force than the previous two in their pure forms would be. (S&A generally opposes GM force outside of setting up the opposition/challenge, while G&S generally opposes GM force once the Simulation has started unless it is needed to expand the world content in a direction that hasn't previously been fleshed out.) Making "behind the scenes" tweaks to ensure a fulfilling portrayal is welcome here.
Values-and-Issues. The most recent, and most easily misunderstood, game-purpose. Here, the point of play is for the players themselves to declare what matters to them and then pursue or abandon those things specifically through the process of play. When this is actually facilitated by the system, it means the players have tools for establishing their Values in a concrete way, usually with incentives or rewards for doing things that exemplify, test, question, or invalidate these Values. Where a Conceit is more like an ambiance, a tone or vibe pervading the overall experience, Values are specific to each character and (typically) chosen by the player, since it can be challenging to choose to care about something that someone else has imposed on you.
But if you merely said, "I care about X" or "my goal is Y," that wouldn't really get anywhere, would it? To actually go somewhere, there must be some form of conflict or difficulty (all the "game-purposes have some kind of conflict, they differ on where it's located and how it's processed). For V&I, conflict arises in the form of Issues: points of uncertainty or even crisis, where the Values are on the line. An important characteristic of Issues compared to other conflicts, though, is that they generally follow after the set Values, rather than being decided separately in advance (as is generally the case for most other "game-purposes.") In the crucible of Issues, Values are tried and the resolve and beliefs of the character are put to proof. As a result, particularly in comparison to S&A design, "success" is generally not unequivocally preferable to failure even at the small scale--which is part of why "Fail Forward" is a technique strongly associated with games of this overall "game-purpose," such as Dungeon World. "Success" is nice, sure, but the "be a protagonist, face difficulty" gameplay loop functions little differently whether goals consistently succeed or consistently fail (though there's certainly a likelihood of darker characters if they fail all the time!)
A designed thing, especially a designed thing with rules, must have a goal, an end. Laws and rules, as part of their very nature, are teleological. They must point toward a goal or purpose, and should they produce results genuinely counter to that goal or purpose, they not only can but should be changed until they meet their purpose. The process of designing anything is, in part, the process of figuring out what tools will accomplish the chosen end(s) effectively, learning what standards or functions those tools can serve, applying those tools and functions toward that end, and then checking to see whether the designed thing does the task or meets the standard of judgment for the purpose that it was created.
My interest, with this taxonomy, is to consider the families of "purposes" that roleplaying games may be designed to pursue. As a result, this is a descriptive effort, though in being descriptive I am not opposed to the possibility of finding a lacuna that can be filled with a theoretical not-widely-grokked option. As this is concerned with the overall reason for why someone would make a given game, rather than the specific methods that would work well for a given "overall reason why," individual techniques may certainly be an interesting side or follow-up discussion but are not strictly my area of focus. Furthermore, as my focus is on the thing the designer "sets out for," it is not strictly interested in things that would motivate players to choose to play the game, even though player motivation is absolutely an important and valid aspect of game design.
Having reflected on others' models, in particular Edwards', and on my own experience with roleplay, I have come to the conclusion that most "game-purposes" define some kind of central concept(s) that will drive the interest or focus of play, and then some general category of action that will constitute the process of play (from a design perspective—that is, what might be called the "gameplay loop," which is distinct from the literal lived-through process of play that actual players experience, in the same way that a blueprint differs from the physical object it generates.)
I have seen, both in games I have personally played and in the ways others talk about games whether or not I have played them, at least four distinct "game-purposes," that I choose to label with an "X-and-Y" (or, abbreviated, X&Y, just the first letters) format. These are as follows.
Score-and-Achievement. This is "game-purpose" in arguably its most literal sense, making a roleplaying game in order for it to be a game, with points or grades or numerical/evaluative testing of some kind, balance, difficulty curves, etc. A really ultra-pure S&A game is centered on that process of mastering the rules and then engaging in their skillful use in ways that matter to the player(s.) Few games are quite that purely S&A in design, though, as they usually provide context for why success would be relevant.
"Score" refers to the designer-created system or structure that allows at least partially objective measurement or evaluation of performance within the Situations the system considers. A game that includes Score, in general, needs a concept of "fairness" in order for that Score to be valid and worthy of player attention, and needs to not play fast and loose with the game rules so that the Score can retain relevance as a metric of evaluation and not just a random number or keyword. Score also, generally speaking, benefits from clarity, both in the sense of "transparency" (it is easy to see how the rules work and interact) and specificity (the use of keywords and other unambiguous terms/"jargon.")
"Achievement" is the action, by players, of pursuing success in goals, where that success can be measured or evaluated via the already-defined Score. I specifically call this "Achievement" rather than something like "striving" or "attempting" because S&A design specifically emphasizes a focus on success, with failure pretty clearly seen as an undesirable state, something to avoid or correct, which is generally not shared with the other "game-purposes." This "game-purpose" is pretty much inarguably the oldest and best-demonstrated of the bunch, having been the heart of the first TTRPG. As a result it can sometimes be glossed over as being intuitive or already explored because it is old hat, but this is not always the case (as Clearstream has demonstrated purely by making this thread!)
Groundedness-and-Simulation. Though a popular interest, this "game-purpose" has occasionally struggled to see effective design, perhaps because it focuses least on any specific part of the phrase "roleplaying game," being neither about the role one plays, nor about being a game in the sense that S&A is. Rather, G&S is about the process of inserting or immersing the player, via their character, into the fictional world with its various rules and components, and letting things naturally advance, with minimal influence or modification by the person facilitating this experience once the ball starts rolling. In many ways, this is where TTRPGs intersect most with auteur cinema and authorship as in novels; there is a huge emphasis on worldbuilding and consistency and precision.
That's where "Groundedness" is established: someone (almost always the GM or the author of the premade setting or adventure) setting up a believable, cognizable, "realistic" (but still fantastical) context. This is vitally important ground work for the process of play, as an ungrounded fictional context is too unreliable or too incoherent to make sense of (unless that sort of thing is the point, e.g. the context is a dreamworld or the like where inconsistency is expected, but that's a rare exception where minimum Groundedness has a grounded reason for being very low.) Then, players themselves advance the state of the world (with the GM/module/system doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting) via naturalistic, context-appropriate decision-making: Simulation. They collectively Simulate (read: run the processes for an intended accurate model of) a world and its inhabitants and how they would process and respond to the established world and its rules.
Unexpected, emergent phenomena often result from these things. The intended gameplay loop usually involves having a goal within the established world (usually, but not necessarily, GM-provided) and a set of resources (possibly including information and time as "resources") which may be turned toward that goal, with the best play occurring when one finds a satisfactory path to that goal which employs those resources in clever or efficient ways or leverages unexpected confluences of the rules. Reasoning, extrapolation, and prediction are highly valued.
Conceit-and-Emulation. Almost as old as G&S (it's hard to tell which came first), but moving in very different directions, this is the "game-purpose" of faithful depiction of a theme, what is called a High Concept in cinema. Internal physical/naturalistic consistency is of minimal relevance, instead the High Concept is king, dictating what design elements will be included and wrapping the gameplay loop around itself. In general this High Concept, which I call the Conceit, will be chosen by the GM herself, though it may come from an outside source, or might even be collaborated on by the group, but rarely if ever will arise from an individual ordinary player picking it. From there, the gameplay loop focuses on developing satisfying and (ideally) enlightening portrayals of the Conceit(s), which is "Emulation."
Where an ultra-pure S&A game just cares about besting challenges and superlative success, and an ultra-pure S&G game follows naturalistic reasoning wherever it may lead, C&E welcomes elements that enforce the tropes or characteristics of the Conceit even if they might not be "effective" or "realistic," because the purpose of play is to elevate Conceit so that it can be appreciated more. Genres are one of the primary options for Conceit, but other choices are not unusual ("wacky hijinks" comedic games, for example). Because of this interest in Conceit, this "game-purpose" is much more amenable to active-in-play GM force than the previous two in their pure forms would be. (S&A generally opposes GM force outside of setting up the opposition/challenge, while G&S generally opposes GM force once the Simulation has started unless it is needed to expand the world content in a direction that hasn't previously been fleshed out.) Making "behind the scenes" tweaks to ensure a fulfilling portrayal is welcome here.
Values-and-Issues. The most recent, and most easily misunderstood, game-purpose. Here, the point of play is for the players themselves to declare what matters to them and then pursue or abandon those things specifically through the process of play. When this is actually facilitated by the system, it means the players have tools for establishing their Values in a concrete way, usually with incentives or rewards for doing things that exemplify, test, question, or invalidate these Values. Where a Conceit is more like an ambiance, a tone or vibe pervading the overall experience, Values are specific to each character and (typically) chosen by the player, since it can be challenging to choose to care about something that someone else has imposed on you.
But if you merely said, "I care about X" or "my goal is Y," that wouldn't really get anywhere, would it? To actually go somewhere, there must be some form of conflict or difficulty (all the "game-purposes have some kind of conflict, they differ on where it's located and how it's processed). For V&I, conflict arises in the form of Issues: points of uncertainty or even crisis, where the Values are on the line. An important characteristic of Issues compared to other conflicts, though, is that they generally follow after the set Values, rather than being decided separately in advance (as is generally the case for most other "game-purposes.") In the crucible of Issues, Values are tried and the resolve and beliefs of the character are put to proof. As a result, particularly in comparison to S&A design, "success" is generally not unequivocally preferable to failure even at the small scale--which is part of why "Fail Forward" is a technique strongly associated with games of this overall "game-purpose," such as Dungeon World. "Success" is nice, sure, but the "be a protagonist, face difficulty" gameplay loop functions little differently whether goals consistently succeed or consistently fail (though there's certainly a likelihood of darker characters if they fail all the time!)
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Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
I did not mean to distract from the overall point of the thread. I was actually trying to praise the design quality of 5e which I feel is actually an incredibly coherent game. About on 4e's level on that score, but certainly more so than any other version besides B/X and 4e by a fairly wide margin.
How is saying '5e is the most popular and therefore also the best, suck it nerds!' not doing the same thing?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
This, I believe, is specifically the problem. That is, have you not just described "Mother-May-I" so-called "design"? Anyone can attempt "hear input, narrate result." That's not a game design, it is literally conversing with other people.
Very truly: I am glad that you have found it such. My experience has been exactly the opposite, much to my consternation. 3rd edition at least had the excuse of being really badly made. 5e is not "really badly made," it's just made from parts that don't talk to each other or design choices that actively compete against one another. For instance, making early levels have few options and minimal choices so new players can have an easy onramp....and then also making early levels be RIDICULOUSLY DEADLY such that new players, who don't really know what they're doing, are extremely likely to have characters die, and thus extremely likely to experience a "quit moment" rather than keep playing. Or the (admitted) issues with resting, where the game was designed expecting people would choose to extend the time between long rests as much as possible, when there are huge incentives to do exactly the opposite if you want to succeed more; they predicated their design on willingly ignoring a dominant strategy and then gave a shocked pikachu face when people followed the dominant strategy, particularly when not following it feels like a slog.
Or, for an example that is simply weak design without actually producing conflict per se, the rampant over-use of Advantage, something I predicted back in the D&D Next playtest and which remains a pernicious weakness for 5e. One that will likely be difficult to solve, because the only "solutions" I know of require breaking one or more of the characteristics that made Advantage valuable in the first place (its one-stop-shopping nature, its extreme simplicity, or the fact that it doesn't stack).
Manbearcat
Legend
@EzekielRaiden
Some label changes to consider for your model:
Score + Achievement = Distill Skill
Groundedness + Simulation = I’m there
Conceit + Emulation = Experience genre
Purpose + Conflict = Distill Protagonism
Some label changes to consider for your model:
Score + Achievement = Distill Skill
Groundedness + Simulation = I’m there
Conceit + Emulation = Experience genre
Purpose + Conflict = Distill Protagonism
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Sure, those would be decent labels for the overall combination (though the last one is technically "Values + Issues," but I get what you mean). These seem like decent, pithy albeit decontextualized, ways of summarizing the "game-purposes" in a holistic way.
I might also change "Experience Genre" to something more like..."Portray Concept." Portrayal, the whole "giving my subjective performance of some archetype or ideal or concept that interests me," is the thing C&E gameplay loops focus on. C&E/"Portray Concept" is usually going to carry some Necessary Weasels (as TVTropes puts it), and accepts or even embraces that fact, which is a key thing differentiating it from "I'm There"/G&S and from "Distill Protagonism"/V&I.
clearstream
(He, Him)
As an aside, I would encourage folk to read and contrast purchaser reviews on Amazon for Rifts and 5e.
There's the headline 79% (170) 5-star against 90% (40,000) but for me the testimonials attached to those scores are what really speak to the quality of each game (read multiple so as to avoid any sense of cherrypicking!)
There's some ambiguity in your wording here. Do you mean an RPG is not conversing with other people, and the problem is that 5e is a conversation? By way of reference
Or do you fear that the DM being involved in the conversation ends the conversation? Why? How is that obviated if say we elect someone at random to narrate? How is that obviated if a player narrates their own successes?
Some reasearch was done on early game difficulty, in Australia. The outcomes were that folk on average dislike an overly easy early game. It seems like they want to respect the challenge in order to feel that any skill they express is really, er, skillful. (Connects well with your Score-Achievement.) What is crucial is that they can see that they can do better next time. Ideally, they have some idea what they want to try... how they might overcome the obstacle.
Games that were much easier up front were also found to be less engaging by players (strictly speaking, resulted in less perseverance) than games that were harder, with a couple of caveats. The obstacle couldn't be one that they couldn't possibly imagine overcoming. It couldn't be an impenetrable wall. As I said, they had to be able to come up with a good idea of what to try next: believing that success was possible for them.
Advantage is a good mechanic, but I agree leaned on too heavily now in 5e. It's worth counting among its merits that with advantage, you have a better chance of making a success within your range, but your range isn't shifted. Die modifers - especially when stacked - shift your range. Sometimes undesirably.
I believe the right approach is both together (advantage and die modifers.) It's been interesting to see more recent PbtA designs include advantage (roll 3d6, keep highest two) and disadvantage.
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