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

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes but you still have to account for taste preferences. A game with a robust social combat system, may be better suited for social interactions than a game without any mechanics for social interaction to some people.....except those of us who can't stand social combat systems and don't want mechanics intruding with that part of play for us. I think this is where a lot of these arguments start to break down.

I mean, I would argue that "I just want to do it my way and anything which prevents me from doing it my way is The Worst Thing Ever" is fundamentally a rejection of the concept of game design in the first place. IMO, such people do not want to play games. They want to do the thing they want to do, the game is just a convenient guise for doing what they want to do.

Which, yes, if you have a single procedure you want to use and you never ever want to see or hear or even think about anything else, then of course no game can be better or worse, by definition. But games are designed, and design can be a good fit or a poor fit for a specific gameplay goal.

A Volkswagen Beetle can be used to tow things, but it's not designed for doing so and will be much harder to use than something that was designed for that purpose. The Socratic Method is great for annoying people and working with a cooperative person to drill down to the deepest substratum of a particular topic (which, as Plato's writing shows, often results in "well we don't really know anything" or "we just sort of assumed this is what it is"), but it's pretty useless for developing your own answers. (I mention this, an abstract thing, to show that the physical analogy is not faulty as a consequence of being physical--abstractions can also be better-suited or worse-suited for particular activities or purposes.)

Yes, you are correct that the sum total of a game should be considered if one is recommending the whole game for any purpose a person might value. But that flatly is not a valid reason to conclude--as has been argued here--that it is objectively false to say that some games are better-suited for a singular specific task than others.

An electric mixer is, objectively, better suited to many cooking tasks than stirring things by hand. Some people will still prefer the arduous labor of hand-mixing for various reasons. That doesn't mean the mixer and the spoon cannot possibly be compared for ease-of-use at the specific task of mixing ingredients. It just means that ease-of-use for that purpose isn't the only consideration a person might have in deciding what methods to use.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Exactly; Ironswork doesn't do what I want in a sandbox, so it being easier to prepare is irrelevant.

This sounds to me like "Yes, but I don't care", not "No." Yet it is being presented as though it were "No, you're just wrong."

That the tool doesn't do other things you want done has nothing to do with whether it is easier for the purpose described.

I don't think there is much value to trying to find a universal statement with clear bounds here.

I take arguments--as in, points made in a discussion--seriously. This argument has a massive gaping logical hole. If you expect me to swallow an argument with a massive, gaping logical hole, well, all I can say is "get used to disappointment".

Otherwise, we get into some really wonky territory where we have to accept some positions I'm quite confident no poster in this thread (...well, perhaps almost no poster in this thread) is willing to accept. Like, for example, anyone who has ever argued that a particular rules-change would cause the game to have less flavor--that argument is immediately rejected in its entirety by this claim that no rules-system can ever be said to be better or worse for any purpose no matter what.

 

[AlViking]

You can't assert that. By your logic, if anyone tells you, "I find 52 Pickup easier to run sandboxes in", you can't tell them no. There can be no allowance; your rule was absolute.

So, again, I want to ask, as succinctly as possible:

It is not possible for any game, regardless of mechanics, to ever be better for any purpose, no matter what?

Because the moment you open that "X isn't trying to be a Y" thing, you have opened up the possibility that someone can assert that a particular game's rules aren't trying to be that thing. You have opened up the possibility that someone can, in fact, argue that a given game isn't good at a particular thing because it wasn't designed for that purpose. Which is, functionally, what Hussar is arguing. That D&D was not actually designed to support a sandbox experience, whereas that was very specifically the thing Ironsworn was designed to be.

I don't have to agree with anyone that a game is useful. I also don't have to consider hyperbole worth discussing.

 

[Umbran]

Yes but you still have to account for taste preferences.

There should be two separate questions:
1) Does game X do thing Y well?
2) Do I want to use game X? Why or why not?

One should not have to deny a game does something you want to do well in order to claim you don't want to use it.

 

[AlViking]

There should be two separate questions:
1) Does game X do thing Y well?
2) Do I want to use game X? Why or why not?

One should not have to deny a game does something you want to do well in order to claim you don't want to use it.

But achieving a goal when it's not a goal I want means I don't value it. I can say that a Ford F-150 pickup truck is good at hauling, it doesn't mean that it's a better vehicle than my Honda Accord. They have different goals, it doesn't mean one is better than the other.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There should be two separate questions:
1) Does game X do thing Y well?
2) Do I want to use game X? Why or why not?

One should not have to deny a game does something you want to do well in order to claim you don't want to use it.

I agree but I also think when we are talking comparatively (X is better than y at z) it gets murky

 

[Bedrockgames]

But achieving a goal when it's not a goal I want means I don't value it. I can say that a Ford F-150 pickup truck is good at hauling, it doesn't mean that it's a better vehicle than my Honda Accord. They have different goals, it doesn't mean one is better than the other.

It also depends on what you want to haul. But RPGs aren’t cars. nor are they board or card games. Something that does social interaction well for one gamer does it horribly for another.

 

[Umbran]

But achieving a goal when it's not a goal I want means I don't value it. I can say that a Ford F-150 pickup truck is good at hauling, it doesn't mean that it's a better vehicle than my Honda Accord. They have different goals, it doesn't mean one is better than the other.

Yeah, so they are wrong.
Your point?

 

[AlViking]

Yeah, so they are wrong.
Your point?

People regularly say their system is "better" because it works differently and I don't see what point they're trying to make.

 

[AlViking]

It also depends on what you want to haul. But RPGs aren’t cars. nor are they board or card games. Something that does social interaction well for one gamer does it horribly for another.

If another game has a system for social interaction, I can learn from it and possibly utilize parts of that system now and then. I don't want a systematic approach to social interaction outside of what D&D provides 99% of the time. But that 1%? Maybe. Problem is that in most cases the approach of the rules and the underlying assumptions are so different from D&D that they don't apply or people explain it in terms that only make sense if you know how to play the game.