D&D 5E What is Quality?

[Willie the Duck]

However I can say I have had better experience with foreign breed cars then US made ones... but as I have been told time and time again, no matter where the company HQ is all the cars are made in factories here.

Breeds of car? Is... is that how you think cars are made?

IMHO, the fact that the argument keeps dancing back to fallacious, superficial appeals to popularity is a bit frustrating. In so doing, the argument ironically cannot progress to the point where it can even consider or engage in discussions that could validate, legitimize, and support 5e as a quality product on its actual merits! Moreover, the fact that it can't progress also means that people who likewise believe that 5e is a quality product are forced to repetitively rebuke the argumentum ad populum fallacy rather than argue how 5e is a quality product.

Indeed. I certainly think 5e is a good product, but I don't even know where to begin jumping on to that conversation for want it accidentally getting muddled in the fallacious argument (yes, the onetime I want the thread-derail to succeed).

Oh, goodness, yes. And this is a great point for us on these forums, because most of us are probably the equivalent of "car guys" for RPGs, right?

But, the car guys of the world often forget something - there is such a thing as "good enough". Failing to be the best of the best of the best does not mean a thing is bad. Especially when any car guy should know that being high in one mode of performance usually means you are poor at something else. Lamborghinis and Mack trucks can both be good, but they don't have the same performance characteristics - and you liking one kind of performance doesn't mean others are bad...

There's also the issue that there can be things that "car guys" prefer that detract from the car experience for anyone who isn't a car guy. My dad was a car guy of the 50/60s, and he sometimes waxes ecstatically about little touches that his favorite cars had -- little sliders that let you adjust both the heat that your heater put out, and which vents it came out of, but the admixture of inside and outside air, and so on; variable clutch this and that, transmission whatsits (I'm showing how much I paid attention, aren't I?), and so forth. All of those went to the wayside, apparently, because the average driver didn't want to futz with them (the experience was actually worse for them).

Ah but that's the thing.

5e is not more organized than 4e was. 4e was extremely well organized and read more like an instruction manual (deliberately more technical language vs. the flowing natural language of past editions).

5e is a clearly deliberate step back and away from that. Back to more natural (but also more confusing) language and a more flowy reading oriented presentation style.

A clear and deliberate choice on the part of WoTC because they thought it would sell better (and it seems they were correct).

This might be a corollary. The same reason that people might prefer* the mongrel beast like D&D to the different TTRPGs which are purer examples of a given design aesthetic (be that GURPS or Fate or Dramasystem or whatnot).
*beyond overall popularity/ease of finding a group/etc.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Unless being able to ignore it is, in fact, a desired feature.

Right but I think I kind of addressed that in the rest of my post.

 

[Morrus]

Yes. Because popularity does not equal quality. That's one of the core points of the thread.

Digital watches are superior to pure analog watches in most respects: cheaper, easier to use, easier to read, easier to make, almost always more accurate, etc. I still love mechanical watches, particularly pocketwatches which let you see parts of the movement artfully displayed. I find them beautiful, even mesmerizing. But if the point of the watch is to perform the function of accurately and unambiguously telling the time, reliably, with minimal maintenance or replacement cost, then digital watches are clearly superior to mechanical watches, full stop.

Watches are jewellery, not simple functional devices. Simply telling the time is not the only function of a watch.

 

[LadyElect]

You may note that my earlier posts in the thread said essentially this. I am aware.

Bah, scrolling back for information? Sounds like a job for the objectivists. It’s so much simpler over here with the subjectivists, where all I have to do is feel!

 

[Mort]

Watches are jewellery, not simple functional devices. Simply telling the time is not the only function of a watch.

Exactly. I have an acquaintance who owns a watch valued north of $200k. It only tells day and night (designed that way). He doesn't own it, let alone wear it just to tell time!

Quality here is measured as jewelry not as a timepiece.

 

[James Gasik]

Breeds of car? Is... is that how you think cars are made?

As I recall, Ford Prefect made that very same mistake.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I dont buy the easier your way argument. Folks always use that one when they want their preference at the front. I've been trying very hard to make PF2 work and the system fights me the whole way. I can dial in 3E/PF1/5E pretty easy. I think bounded accuracy actually makes this very easy to do. Its kind of the best of both worlds (for me obviously).

So, this ones up to the feedback and designers choice in the future. If they decide to tighten it up, I'll just have it live with it or stick with an older game.

How is it not easier to add ambiguity than to remove it?

Throw in more randomized actions: recharges, effects that vary wildly based on random die rolls, effects that have a chance to split the party so their synergy no longer applies (e.g. raising walls so they can no longer see one another). Randomize HP values, or other statistics if you feel like it. Roll a d6: 1-2 means reduce HP, 3-4 means keep it the same, 5-6 means raise it. Then roll some amount of dice (perhaps picking an arbitrary number of d6 out of a bag) and apply them as needed.

I could almost certainly write a full page (or more) on tools of this kind to make it harder to predict how things will go. You will, of course, be inviting more PC deaths and TPKs as a direct consequence, but I presume that that is a desired element here (otherwise you'd be wanting ambiguity and yet also wanting certainty which...doesn't work). Or I could just refer you to the "Nastier Specials" examples in 13th Age (sadly, I don't think there's a database of these, but it would be super cool if there was such a thing.)

In order to remove baked-in ambiguity, you'd have to rewrite most monsters from the ground up. That's a huge ask. Adding a couple quirks to any given monster is perhaps five minutes' effort. Rewriting the MM would take ages. I don't see how there's any way to argue that the above is even remotely the same level of effort. Yes, it will still be AN effort. Obviously. If you're playing a system that doesn't do everything literally exactly the way you want it, you're going to have to put in some effort, that's how this works. But all efforts are not created equal.

Exactly. I have an acquaintance who owns a watch valued north of $200k. It only tells day and night (designed that way). He doesn't own it, let alone wear it just to tell time!

Quality here is measured as jewelry not as a timepiece.

Do you think RPGs are valued purely as decorative accessories, to be fashionable or eye-catching, and not as (abstract) devices designed to perform a function?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay. Why use a digital display? The two are identical in accuracy (since the analog one is just a display, being digital either way in terms of its timekeeping). What does digital give you that analog doesn't?

It can display a 24 hour clock, which simply is the sensible way to measure a 24 hour day.

Clarity. That's my whole point. It is objectively faster and easier to read a digital display than an analog one.

It's not. It might be faster and easier for me and you, perhaps for most people, but it is not objectively so. I know this for a fact, my SO has several times explained to me that they find conceptualising time via analog clocks easier and more intuitive than with digital ones. And it makes sense, people process information differently, and analog clock shows the time as visual pie that will be easier to read to some.

If the purpose of the clock or watch is to be functional and not simply  pretty, then clarity becomes a rather important virtue.

If.

And yet with game design, where the whole point of the rules IS very specifically to be functional,

Who decided that's the whole point? Because a lot of people would disagree. That's not the whole point.

since that's literally all they are, clarity has been consistently sacrificed for aesthetics, specifically wanting LESS clarity. Why? That seems a very strange pattern. It would be like choosing the analog display because it is harder to read.

A lot of people treat a RPG book as holistic experience, and want the text to actually evoke the fiction. So to them a text that doesn't do this is lacking in quality. I don't think many people desire lesser clarity per se, merely they are not filling to sacrifice other things for maximal clarity.

And to add to that and connect it to the point of people processing information differently, some people actually found the concise and mechanics focused 4e powers evocative. But that obviously wasn't the majority experience.

 

[soviet]

Do you think RPGs are valued purely as decorative accessories, to be fashionable or eye-catching, and not as (abstract) devices designed to perform a function?

Well... I'd be interested to see the correlation between likes 5e/doesn't and fudges the dice/doesn't.

 

[Hussar]

This whole line of argument just grinds my gears.

The idea that a 17 year old kid microwaving a hamburger tossing together from company demanded proportions and then wrapping it up (hopefully carefully) in a waxed paper sheet is of comparable quality to the hamburger that I could get from a master chef with hundreds of hours of training, thousands of hours of practical work experience using only the highest quality of ingredients is laughable. But it's this attitude that expertise and training counts for nothing and that that all judgements of quality are solely subjective, thus, all judgements of quality are equal is so prevalent.

Are there subjective qualities to any judgment of quality? Of course there are. Which criteria you choose to judge will be partly subjective if nothing else. But, that doesn't make judgements of quality subjective, nor does it mean that all judgments are even remotely equal.

The truly funny thing is about @Oofta's comparison of a Rolex and his Casio. If you read back, he mentions that the reason he thinks his Casio is better quality is because it lasted for 20 years and it has a stop watch function. Which basically tells us that he has absolutely no idea what functions come on a Rolex. Surprisingly enough, Rolex does make watches with every single function a Casio might have. Plus, it's got a time piece that will be keeping accurate time long after that Casio has died. But, because @Oofta has never actually looked at a Rolex, his judgment is based entirely on his experience with a Casio. Any comparison runs into the brick wall of that experience.

It's pretty much exactly how the discussion about RPG's goes as well.