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

[Umbran]

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.

Yeah. Someone is gonna pelt me with tomatoes for this....

Writing down rules is a form of what is often called "technical writing", and it is a different skillset than writing fiction prose, or essays, or the like.

Gygax's writing leaned to the essay form, so like editorials in Dragon he was good at. I was never a fan of his fiction prose, and his technical writing skills do not seem to have been up to par at all...

 

[AlViking]

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.

The point is simple. If there are two options that achieve the same end goal but you consciously choose the option that is more difficult for many it's gatekeeping. You can repeat until you're blue in the face that you personally don't have an issue but it doesn't change anything. I didn't have any particular issue with THAC0 but I can still acknowledge that the additive approach is easier.

It doesn't really have anything with math, education or skill, I know people that were better at advanced math than I, but still struggled with THAC0. For that matter I know people that have issues with adding in their head that were otherwise intelligent and fun to play with.

I see no good reason to advocate for unnecessary difficulties.

 

[The Firebird]

The point is simple. If there are two options that achieve the same end goal but you consciously choose the option that is more difficult for many it's gatekeeping. You can repeat until you're blue in the face that you personally don't have an issue but it doesn't change anything. I didn't have any particular issue with THAC0 but I can still acknowledge that the additive approach is easier.

I also think the additive approach is easier.

But I dispute that THACO is gatekeeping. That seems such an uncharitable reading to me. Because the point of gatekeeping is exclusivity. It is to prevent others from joining the game.

And I don't think THACO fans prefer THACO so that they can exclude others. That may happen incidentally, but its not the intention. The intention is to play a game with rules the players like.

Maybe it is gatekeeping if you define gatekeeping separately from intention. But then the term loses a lot of its value. E.g., suppose there is fellow who grew up on THACO and finds additive AC harder. I think it's reasonable that such a person exists. Using additive AC makes the game harder for them, and therefore is also gatekeeping.

 

[Faolyn]

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?

It depends on the type of assumptions you make. If you go with the idea that people should have a specific level of education to play the game, that's not great. Not every player is going to be old enough, for instance. Not every player has gone to college even if they're old enough to have done so. Not every player is going to be good at math even if they have amazing skills in other areas. Some players are going to be great at math and have terrible reading comprehension, which means that it doesn't matter if you have ascending or descending AC because they might not understand how you wrote it.

So making an assumption of "this should be for college students" doesn't actually have any practical use other than to keep people that you (generic you) think aren't "smart enough" from playing your game.

But! Making a system shouldn't be about "minimum education level." It should be a balance of streamlining it, allowing for nuance, and getting it to do what you want it to do.

 

[The Firebird]

So making an assumption of "this should be for college students" doesn't actually have any practical use other than to keep people that you (generic you) think aren't "smart enough" from playing your game.

I don't think that's true. It gives you practical guidelines about what level of depth you can include in your mechanics. If you decide your audience is 10 and under then the mechanics you can choose from will look significantly different than if its for an adult audience.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't think that's true. It gives you practical guidelines about what level of depth you can include in your mechanics. If you decide your audience is 10 and under then the mechanics you can choose from will look significantly different than if its for an adult audience.

Ish.

There's also a difference between a game specifically designed for young children and a game designed to be "all ages." And you can achieve that difference with terminology and by having more a heavily streamlined version of the "adult" version of the game. Although I haven't actually read No Thank You Evil, which is for kids, it appears that the mechanics are merely a simplified version of the Cypher System: you don't have to multiply the difficulty by three to make your target number, the pools have been renamed to Tough, Fast, Smart, and Awesome instead of Might, Speed, Intellect, and Effort, and you, the GM, decide whether the kids have an Adjective and a Verb in addition to their Noun, based on how old they are and how good they are at handling the complexity. I personally wouldn't call that significantly different. Maybe you would, though.

 

[The Firebird]

There's also a difference between a game specifically designed for young children and a game designed to be "all ages." And you can achieve that difference with terminology and by having more a heavily streamlined version of the "adult" version of the game. Although I haven't actually read No Thank You Evil, which is for kids, it appears that the mechanics are merely a simplified version of the Cypher System: you don't have to multiply the difficulty by three to make your target number, the pools have been renamed to Tough, Fast, Smart, and Awesome instead of Might, Speed, Intellect, and Effort, and you, the GM, decide whether the kids have an Adjective and a Verb in addition to their Noun, based on how old they are and how good they are at handling the complexity. I personally wouldn't call that significantly different. Maybe you would, though.

I'm not familiar with the Cypher system mechanics so its hard to say. But I can think of crunchy RPG systems, like Lancer or Shadowrun. And I can think of complex board games like Twilight Imperium.

For many people who enjoy these, the complexity is part of the appeal. A simplified version of it doesn't give them the same degree of tactical and strategic options. The complexity is not there to exclude; it's there because it is fun.

 

[mamba]

Why is it a problem for an RPG to assume a certain level of education among the audience?

at a minimum they need to be able to read so yes, a certain level is required.

If your game text requires a higher level of education than the rules actually would, you are basically overcomplicating your description and locking out part of your potential audience without gaining anything in return. I see no advantage to this

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

see above, generally speaking it probably should aim for around 12 year olds. I have a hard time thinking of a game where the rules are too complex for that age, this is not a book on quantum physics

 

[Faolyn]

I'm not familiar with the Cypher system mechanics so its hard to say. But I can think of crunchy RPG systems, like Lancer or Shadowrun. And I can think of complex board games like Twilight Imperium.

For many people who enjoy these, the complexity is part of the appeal. A simplified version of it doesn't give them the same degree of tactical and strategic options. The complexity is not there to exclude; it's there because it is fun.

And there's also a difference between "this game is complex" and "this game is meant for people with a college-level education."

Complex, in RPGs, typically means "lots of moving parts and things to remember." It doesn't necessarily mean "requires a lot of math." I finally finished reading Ryuutama last night, and boy does that have a surprising amount of complexity to it, and that's a low-key game designed for people new to the hobby. It's very serious about resource management--the Food and Water sheet is separate from the Items sheet because of how it needs to be tracked. And the GM not only has to do all the typical GM stuff but also has a GMPC to run. The only math was rolling a pair of dice, adding them together, and maybe adding a +1 or +2 modifier. And that's 2nd grade math (I think; grade school was a long time ago). But there were a lot of moving parts and things to remember to play the game, much more than you would expect for a game that's about regular people traveling and taking in the beauty of the natural world.

(It does seem to have decent journey rules, though.)

Likewise, I'd wager most people would consider World of Darkness games to be fairly complex, and the only math that's involved is "count the dots and roll that many d10s."

The context, in this particular case, is about roll-under and roll-over systems, and ascending or descending AC. It's been noted that role-under modifiers are often confusingly and inconsistently written, and that it's provably faster to add than to subtract. So saying that the game should be specifically made and marketed to people with a college-level education because they should be able to understand roll-under and descending AC--that's gatekeeping.

 

[The Firebird]

If your game text requires a higher level of education than the rules actually would, you are basically overcomplicating your description and locking out part of your potential audience without gaining anything in return. I see no advantage to this

see above, generally speaking it probably should aim for around 12 year olds. I have a hard time thinking of a game where the rules are too complex for that age, this is not a book on quantum physics

Reasonable.

The context, in this particular case, is about roll-under and roll-over systems, and ascending or descending AC. It's been noted that role-under modifiers are often confusingly and inconsistently written, and that it's provably faster to add than to subtract. So saying that the game should be specifically made and marketed to people with a college-level education because they should be able to understand roll-under and descending AC--that's gatekeeping.

I don't follow your logic. I don't think the operations work the way you suggest: i.e., "the game should be made for college-educated people because they should be able to understand this". That direction has nothing to do with the claims made.

As I read them, the claim was "it is reasonable for D&D to target educated adults as its market". Then, that implies that a bit of arithmetic is not too much to ask. I think that's a reasonable claim. The rules don't need to be simplified in case 10 year olds want to play. And simplifying in that way would result in a worse experience for some.