Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[Grendel_Khan]

Alternatively if they are having fun playing blades that way, who is to say they are wrong. I will say it made my GMing them in blades harder than it might otherwise have been - but it wasn’t unfun for me either.

There's a lot to be said for just making something like Blades whatever you want it to be. Just might mean realizing why things could get unexpectedly wonky (some Playbook and Crew moves becoming much less useful, or hitting an XP/progression ceiling before you've actually gotten a lot of campaign-shaping jobs done) and being ready to zip up the campaign and move on. What I mean is that, imo, well-designed FitD games feel satisfying when you hit that progression ceiling—like you've done more in those 15 to 20 sessions than you might have in three times as many sessions of some trad games. The more in-game prepping and general noodling around you do, the less stuff is happening, so the mechanical "end" of the game (everyone pumped up to the extent they never really roll anything but a full success, making the system basically grind to a halt) could be a little unsatisfying.

Or maybe it'll just be a power fantasy from that point on, and that's fun in its own way. If folks are into it, no need to get dogmatic.

 

[FrogReaver]

You know what happens when conversations turn to Savage Worlds? Or GURPS? Or Fate? I stop talking and I listen. Or I preface anything I may say about those games with "I don't have any experience with game X, but..." and then I often differ to those who do have actual experience with them. And if I want to understand the games more, I ask questions.

Is that so crazy? Am I a victim of gatekeeping?

I’d suggest that when in a broader discussion and you (general) cite a game example as a point and it becomes apparent that who you are discussing with is not familiar with that game then at that point explaining the point you are making in more general terms would allow both people to equally participate in the discussion.

It’s more work for you to do this though. Although it’s much less work than asking someone to spend 30 dollars, read a 200 page rule book, and play 10 sessions of the game with players experienced at that game before commenting on it and then still rejecting their thoughts and demanding more because they did it wrong.

 

[chaochou]

You know what really bothers me about this thread is why you didn't delete the contents of the second post and say, see above.

It's ironic that the OP sought to have the 'debate' in an echo chamber by sleazing the way opening posts and the block feature interact.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Unfortunately, the perception of Blades as a heist game still runs fairly rampant and that has caused a fair number of mismatched expectations.

Yeah and I feel like Blades itself and a lot of the early Blades boosters were responsible for this situation. Personally I feel like the actual mechanics are only "okay" for a heist-oriented game, and the whole "no planning" approach that the game itself promotes doesn't really work well for that (though as I believe someone pointed out earlier, real "old hands" at Blade are long past pushing that approach).

IME most of the contentious discussions happen when criticism is applied more normatively and directly at the game in question instead of leaving open other possible avenues for the problem (players, specific situation, etc).

I think with Blades in particular it can be genuinely difficult to separate those elements, especially when dogmatic approaches to play style are involved. Dogmatic approaches which may well mirror text in the rule books.

A lot of PtbA games have issues here too - Dungeon World for example - if you take a dogmatic approach to how to play/run it, as was seemingly very common, say, 8-9 years ago, I think you end up making it a lot harder for people to get into/comprehend rather than if you take a looser approach. Like, does anyone really need/benefit from Fronts? I don't think so, personally, but at the time, god forbid you suggest that (it's a more common opinion now). Point is, games where there's dogmatic discussion about "how to play" can be a lot harder to discuss because that can obfuscate issues.

I’d suggest that when in a broader discussion and you cite a game example as a point and it becomes apparent that who you are discussing with is not familiar with that game then at that point explaining the point you are making in more general terms would allow both people to equally participate in the discussion.

That does rely on it becoming apparent, though. It's very helpful if the person involved signposts that they're not familiar with a game. And like 7 times in 10, that happens. Most people are pretty reasonable - they say "I'm not familiar [system X]" or whatever. What's really unhelpful is when someone acts like they're familiar with it, and avoids saying they're not, but keeps arguing strenuously, from a position of ignorance. I don't think it's "gatekeeping" or whatever to frown at that.

Like, I have just admit I dunno anything about Modiphus' 2d20 system. It sounds ghastly but I'm totally unfamiliar with it, so maybe it's fine?

 

[Emoshin]

It's ironic that the OP sought to have the 'debate' in an echo chamber by sleazing the way opening posts and the block feature interact.

How do you know it's ironic if you can't read what the OP is about specifically?

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Like, I have just admit I dunno anything about Modiphus' 2d20 system. It sounds ghastly but I'm totally unfamiliar with it, so maybe it's fine?

Tossed-out example, I know, but 2d20 is pretty good! Like in a lot of trad systems combat can get bogged down and it can be easy to exploit (moreso with older versions, like Conan) but imo it does some stuff extremely well. I think Star Trek Adventures is an incredible marriage of mechanics to premise, for instance. Quick example: When you're playing Starfleet and you set your phaser to kill, the GM gets a point of Threat, the metacurrency they use to adjust rolls, power NPC abilities, and make extra narrative complications and bad stuff happen. I think that's ingenious!

But the fact that 2d20 can be pretty different in each game that uses it makes it hard to really digest it, so I get why it's relatively unfamiliar material.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’d suggest that when in a broader discussion and you (general) cite a game example as a point and it becomes apparent that who you are discussing with is not familiar with that game then at that point explaining the point you are making in more general terms would allow both people to equally participate in the discussion.

It’s more work for you to do this though. Although it’s much less work than asking someone to spend 30 dollars, read a 200 page rule book, and play 10 sessions of the game with players experienced at that game before commenting on it and then still rejecting their thoughts and demanding more because they did it wrong.

I think it depends on the context.

Very often, other games are mentioned as evidence that the way someone has said RPGs "must work" is not true. I think this often happens because the way D&D works is often assumed to be the way RPGs work. I say this because at one point, it's pretty much what I thought. I had played other games, but none of the ones I played had really pushed the form much from how D&D does things.

But I was simply ignorant of many games that did things differently and how.

And people absolutely did explain things to me. That was step one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Quick example: When you're playing Starfleet and you set your phaser to kill, the GM gets a point of Threat, the metacurrency they use to adjust rolls, power NPC abilities, and make extra narrative complications and bad stuff happen. I think that's ingenious!

That's pretty hot, I admit (working on multiple levels). I do have Star Trek Adventures somewhere so I should probably actually read it one day!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it depends on the context.

Very often, other games are mentioned as evidence that the way someone has said RPGs "must work" is not true. I think this often happens because the way D&D works is often assumed to be the way RPGs work. I say this because at one point, it's pretty much what I thought. I had played other games, but none of the ones I played had really pushed the form much from how D&D does things.

But I was simply ignorant of many games that did things differently and how.

And people absolutely did explain things to me. That was step one.

This is a great point, and I experienced the same to some significant degree. Read a lot of stuff that opened my eyes/brain over the years. I mean sheesh I really only finally got how important fiction was relative to rules when I ran Dungeon World (though I will say, when I first started running RPGs I had the fiction as paramount, it was just something gradually worn away by decades of rules-heavy RPGs and degraded by some terrible DMs in the '90s putting the fiction first only when it suited them).

The most problematic response is the one where, when you finally get someone to understand that the way D&D does X is not the way all RPGs necessarily need to do X, they then just insist that [Example RPG] is a bad RPG or even, as I've seen a few times, "not an RPG" for doing it that way. Videogamers who are relatively new to TTRPGs and only familiar with the D&D are weirdly some of the most ultra-dogmatic on this in our present era.

 

[chaochou]

How do you know it's ironic if you can't read what the OP is about specifically?

Because I can read the OP.