D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[The Firebird]

Put another way, should the game be designed for and marketed to educated adults* in full knowledge that kids are almost certainly going to (try to) play it anyway? To this my own answer is a full-on "yes"; IMO it should target the college crowd, and younger kids who play will benefit from gaining some added vocabulary and arithmetical competence.

This seems like a reasonable standard to me.

This isn't a minimum education thing. It's an accessibility of writing thing. And, good writers can make things understood by anyone, not just the "educated elite."

Agree to some extent, disagree in specific cases. More accessible writing is better. But not everyone is going to understand everything. As an edge case, there are some hard mathematics out there that frankly, only a very small number of humans are ever going to be able to understand. But the same holds for things that can occur in RPGs. There is the volume of a fireball thing. Then there's concepts like "increasing a high AC will have a greater effect on relative damage taken than increasing a low AC", which can be challenging.

But that is actually not relevant. If one system for some reason is more complicated and more difficult than another system and achieves the same result then that more complicated system is poorly designed. That's just how design works. A simpler, easier to use system that gets the same results is always a better system.

This seems right to me. I'm too young to have used Thaco, except in (for me) old video games. I never found it confusing. But I don't see any benefits to it.

Why would you deliberately use more difficult systems, more complex language structures, when it is completely unneeded? You are gatekeeping, straight up. "Sorry, you have to be this smart/educated to ride this ride" is probably one of the most toxic forms of gatekeeping in the hobby.

That said I don't think it is gatekeeping to prefer Thaco. I agree with the points made earlier that speed of play is the most important thing. Frankly, if Thaco slows someone down that significantly, I would expect them to play slowly with ascending AC. That doesn't mean they should leave the hobby. But in that case another game may be the right choice for the group.

To be clear it isn't just a matter of intelligence. I've known a gifted mathematician who had some variant of Dyscalculia and struggled with repeated, simple addition. D&D 3.5 was very difficult for them at the table. And I played with a group of PhD scientists who didn't grok the 5e rules (or were too busy to put in the time), and a lot of things experienced gamers consider routine slowed them down.

We had more fun with other systems.

It seems to me D&D is not marketed to children in any meaningful way, despite the frequent accusations of "Disneyfication" etc. that get thrown around. But it is marketed with the expectation that some children are going to play.

I agree with this. I was confused by another statement that kids are the primary target audience.

You're forgetting that not all internet rants are written in a "this is just MY personal opinion, man, live and let live". Some are written as expressions of fact, laced with insults to those who disagree.

Rants, I suppose. I think it's possible to have productive discussions though, especially in a forum environment with chronological display.

In the sense of the OP, "conservative" positions (and many others - but this thread is about "conservative" positions) are primarily matters of taste and feelings. And you're confronting them with facts and logic as if that's a good approach for addressing emotional positions.

I am not sure that the resulting frustration is their fault. Folks like things. They should be allowed to like things. There's not a lot of value in logically assailing them with reasons why the things they like are badwrongfun.

This is a great post and a great attitude to have. I think there would be a lot less conflict in the discussion if it was adopted widely.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Which raises a tangential yet relevant question: for what level of education-comprehension-ability should the game be designed?

Should the books be written to Grade 6 vocabulary and comprehension levels? Grade 8? Grade 12? To what expected level of arithmetic competence should the game design adhere? And so on.

Put another way, should the game be designed for and marketed to educated adults* in full knowledge that kids are almost certainly going to (try to) play it anyway? To this my own answer is a full-on "yes"; IMO it should target the college crowd, and younger kids who play will benefit from gaining some added vocabulary and arithmetical competence.

I'm not convinced that this happens much.

I mean, yes those of us who grew up with TSR-era D&D do love to point out that we learned the words charisma and proficiency long before our peers (and that cloth is measured in bolts, and wine comes in tuns, etc.). That was generally beneficial.

The math, though, I am skeptical. As the pro-ThAC0 side has been arguing for several pages now, most of the math the gamebooks actually cover aren't that complex (mostly adding and subtracting negative numbers*). What I think happened -- moreso than young D&D players picked up significant arithmetic competence -- was that mathematically gifted kids were the ones most likely to put up with not-hard-but-repeated-frustration math. *Even the much-commented-on GURPS and Hero System are mostly massively-multiple addition/subtraction and/or multiplying fractions.

That leads back to the point I made a couple pages back about us being the survivor-bias biased. As in, no, most of us didn't have a problem doing ThAC0 calculations, but we did have friends who tried A/D&D and didn't stick with it, in part because the keeping track of where the magic armor plus and Dex bonus and flanking bonus and weapon-vs-armor mod all went on the to-hit roll wasn't their idea of fun.

But more to the point, I don't think the 'complex' math was really doing us any specific good. And it did (in some small way) keep the game more niche than it had to be, keeping some of our otherwise-might-have-played friends from playing with us. I don't see a particular advantage to continuing or repeating that. TTRPGs teach kids to read the books and follow rulesets and use numbers to adjudicate situations and communicate and cooperate with others. It doesn't need to do more, and at the same time that means we should encourage it among a less select set of them.

 

[Umbran]

This is a great post and a great attitude to have. I think there would be a lot less conflict in the discussion if it was adopted widely.

Right. The discussion doesn't have to be, "prove this is good/bad". It can be, "What about this is appealing to you? How does it accomplish what you like seeing at the table?" and so on.

If the other person's experience doesn't match yours, you can be figuring out how/why, rather than trying to negate people's reported lived experience. The goal of discussion can be learning about gamers, why different things work for different people, and how to accomplish various experiences with games, instead of trying to be Right and them Wrong.

Edit to add: The tendency to try to negate is part of the problem. That makes folks defensive, which leads to presentations more intended to score win/loss points than generate mutual understanding.

 

[CellarHeroes]

Right. The discussion doesn't have to be, "prove this is good/bad". It can be, "What about this is appealing to you? How does it accomplish what you like seeing at the table?" and so on.

If the other person's experience doesn't match yours, you can be figuring out how/why, rather than trying to negate people's reported lived experience. The goal of discussion can be learning about gamers, why different things work for different people, and how to accomplish various experiences with games, instead of trying to be Right and them Wrong.

Edit to add: The tendency to try to negate is part of the problem. That makes folks defensive, which leads to presentations more intended to score win/loss points than generate mutual understanding.

Arrrrgh! It gets frustrating when people I usually disagree with make excellent points.

I would like to believe that most of the people in the ENWorld world are here to educate themselves and share experiences.

@Reynard You seemed to lament or express wonder about originally starting this thread. This has been truly educational for myself, and has allowed me to really consider why I like the things I like and am quick to judge things outside of that scope. Thank you!

 

[Faolyn]

Man oh man, is it now to be the case that every time someone wants to put some standards to something "gatekeeper!" is the first response?

Because a lot of the standards that get thrown around are gatekeeping. That's why.

When you say "designed for and marketed to educated adults" in context (AC where you have to add vs subtract) you are literally saying "people who don't want to do the sort of math I prefer shouldn't, or don't deserve, to play this game."

It would be like me saying that there should be a minimum of a life path system in every game, because there should be some standards as to how much effort people are willing to put in before they play. Clearly people who just roll their dice to determine stats and then pick their race and class aren't good enough to play.

Consider, though, the difference in writing and vocabulary etc. between even 1e D&D and 2e D&D. Sure Gygax's prose was convoluted, but it read at a much higher level than did 2e; and I posit the game should shoot for that higher level rather than dumb itself down.

And Gygax's writing is actually not useful.

When I went through the 1e books looking for actual combat rules, they were next to impossible to find. There's no handy section. The parts actually labeled Combat have length examples of play but don't actually state the rules clearly. The combat matrices ended up being in the DMG; I'm guessing Gygax felt that the players didn't actually need to know the rules and it should be the GM who has all the knowledge.

Now, I don't mind that Gygax used Big Words. I like Big Words (and I cannot lie). But his actual prose made for a terrible book of rules.

 

[The Firebird]

Because a lot of the standards that get thrown around are gatekeeping. That's why.

When you say "designed for and marketed to educated adults" in context (AC where you have to add vs subtract) you are literally saying "people who don't want to do the sort of math I prefer shouldn't, or don't deserve, to play this game."

It would be like me saying that there should be a minimum of a life path system in every game, because there should be some standards as to how much effort people are willing to put in before they play. Clearly people who just roll their dice to determine stats and then pick their race and class aren't good enough to play.

This strikes me as uncharitable, especially the statement "don't deserve". A game not being right for someone is not a value judgement.

People have different tolerances for how much math they like and how rapidly they can do it. There are different desires for how much crunch they want in a game. Some great games require players to have read a lot of lore beforehand, or to have digested a large rulebook, or to deal with a lot of math. Those games aren't for every group, and that's ok.

 

[Faolyn]

This strikes me as uncharitable, especially the statement "don't deserve". A game not being right for someone is not a value judgement.

People have different tolerances for how much math they like and how rapidly they can do it. There are different desires for how much crunch they want in a game. Some great games require players to have read a lot of lore beforehand, or to have digested a large rulebook, or to deal with a lot of math. Those games aren't for every group, and that's ok.

I agree with you. But that's not what the gatekeeping was about. It was about possibly aiming the books for people with a specific level of education.

 

[Umbran]

Arrrrgh! It gets frustrating when people I usually disagree with make excellent points.

I would like to believe that most of the people in the ENWorld world are here to educate themselves and share experiences.

Yes, but we are culturally rather steeped in adversarial approaches. In effect, when we seek to educate ourselves, we often set about trying to knock down a position we don't understand. Instead of asking questions, we make assertions and wait for others to knock them down.

Unfortunately, this combines poorly with standard human behavior and ego. Once we set things, we take on a desire to not see them knocked down, because then everyone sees we were wrong, and that's a loss of status to our primate brains.

We do not really stress active listening in our culture, and that shows in internet discussion.

 

[The Firebird]

I agree with you. But that's not what the gatekeeping was about. It was about possibly aiming the books for people with a specific level of education.

Why is it a problem for an RPG to assume a certain level of education among the audience? I assume we all agree that some assumptions are ok. E.g., it is fine to assume 5th grade education.

At what level of education is it a problem, and why?

 

[Gradine]

I agree with you. But that's not what the gatekeeping was about. It was about possibly aiming the books for people with a specific level of education.

Me: <building a wall> Anyone who can climb over this wall is welcome inside!
You: That's gatekeeping!
Me: It is emphatically not gatekeeping.
Me: Gates have doors