Academic Plague in gaming

[3catcircus]

You really have no idea, do you?

Take a look at some old 2e brown books. Let's set aside mistakes. The fact of the matter is that they weren't even written to the same standard at all. All products were independantly freelanced. Everyone made things up as they went along, which made using them together a pain. But we couldn't flag this things as mistakes because there were no standards.

The fact that you can even identify mistakes are a sign that explicit standards exist to be compared to, which puts us on inherently better footing than we once were. Considering that, I think it makes "good ole' days" arguments regarding supplements that existed in prior editions laughable.

There's problem #1 with your argument - the mere fact that they were written to a different standard makes them baseless in your argument - they *weren't* written to the same standard. That different products were "made up" is a problem of continuity in the fluff, not in the mechanics of the product. Errors in the mechanics and errors in editing are what I am talking about in the 3.x products. The fact is that WOTC can take something from a 3.0 product, place it in a 3.5 book as "updated," not even spend the time to research the fact that it was already updated in an errata (essentially, updating Rev - instead of updating Rev A), release it, and then release the "errata" a few months down the road.

Granted, it is only a game - what if the books were law or medical texts, or designed to teach police bomb squads. What would WOTC say when people were injured or killed as a result of their poor research and editing? Sorry, here's the errata in a web article?!?!

The fact that I (and better people than me) can find errors in the mechanics of the products speaks less about WOTC's adherence to quality standards and more to our ability to seem to be able to do what WOTC seems to be incapable of doing - paying attention to detail.

 

[Desdichado]

"You're and ELF and elves make TOYS!" - An early example of race/class restrictions as seen in Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer

I know this has nothing whatsoever to do with the thread, except that I just saw this new part of your sig in this thread. But regardless --

Good one, man!

 

[Treebore]

I only read the first three pages of this so....

I agree that we need to ensure teenagers are recruited. They are the best recruits any market can hope for.

As for 3E not being geared towards teenagers, they are, towards the ones who aren't afraid to read, do Math, and think on their own. The trick is to not only get these types of teens but to also get the ones who are afraid of reading, etc..... Show them they can despite what they have come to believe.

As for the evil intellectuals ruining the hobby, I don't agree. The bad ones are ignored like any piece of trash. The good ones give us Traveller, Paranoia, Shadowrun, and the others created by the few good that have ALWAYS been mixed in with the bad.

Trash will be thrown out, the jewels will persist over time.

 

[Arnwyn]

There is also a very very insular and selfish mainstream of gamers, who want games made for THEM.
i.e. most gamers are in their mid to late 20s, and want games that appeal to THEIR generation, THEIR sense of style, THEIR education and THEIR views of the world.

What a strange and irrelevant assertion. And also flat-out wrong.

They are neither insular nor selfish - they are simply being normal consumers. And rightfully so. Of course people want (to buy) products that appeal to them. (I'll add a big "duh", here.) Consumers wanting products that do not appeal to them as closely as possible is simply senseless and illogical.

And, in the end, it's irrelevant what these consumers want. The market will supply products where there is demand and where money to be made. Period.

Suggesting that consumers spending their dollars on products they want is "very very insular and selfish" is laughable to the extreme. These consumers have nothing to do with any "downfall" of RPGs or whatever you're trying to espouse.

 

[tec-9-7]

In my experience, I'm an undergraduate student in philosophy in my final year, if you bloat your writings with useless tripe to make yourself look "smart" the professors are going to catch you on it. Often times the first draft of a work is cut down a great deal to remove extraneous sentences/paragraphs/words which detract from the overall work. The more common place to find pretentious writing is in less formally trained writers work, not that it is always the case.

There is the problem. Philosophy, at least the typical flavors of analytical philosophy popular in the US, do tend to favor a more bare-bones type of writing. Take a trip over to the English Department, or better yet Comp Lit - You will find a much different ballgame (or at least I did back in my Graduate days).

Re: specialized "academic" language - in my experience, this is a smoke-screen for poor thought; at least in the humanities. I've heard people cry about how they can't express their ideas in "plain" English - Ha! It's because if they did it would be immediately apparent how laughable their "arguments" were.

 

[Psion]

There's problem #1 with your argument - the mere fact that they were written to a different standard makes them baseless in your argument - they *weren't* written to the same standard. That different products were "made up" is a problem of continuity in the fluff, not in the mechanics of the product.

It directly impacted their utility, and the utility of the constellation of products as a whole. There was no base to call them wrong, though, because there was no standard. How would you "fix" a Complete Fighter kit to work like a Complete Bard kit, or vice versa? I can't say, because there was no standard. Now their is some room to identify mistakes as such, and get the "right" answer, or a creidble stab at it.

Errors in the mechanics and errors in editing are what I am talking about in the 3.x products.

I'm not saying WotC does not have definite room to improve in this area (indeed, I think my loathing of aspects of CD in this vein might be well remembered by some). But what I was referring to was how your statement made comparisons to old editions as if it was some special and magical time superior to the state of being now, when in fact we are far better off now than we were then.

(And indeed, I feel they have improved, judging by comparint CD and CW to CA.)

Don't like the level of errors in WotC products? Fine, go shopping around. I recommend Green Ronin or Malhavoc. That's an option you have now that you didn't have back then. There was no alternative. You took their crappy inconsistent books or nothing.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

There is the problem. Philosophy, at least the typical flavors of analytical philosophy popular in the US, do tend to favor a more bare-bones type of writing. Take a trip over to the English Department, or better yet Comp Lit - You will find a much different ballgame (or at least I did back in my Graduate days).

Re: specialized "academic" language - in my experience, this is a smoke-screen for poor thought; at least in the humanities. I've heard people cry about how they can't express their ideas in "plain" English - Ha! It's because if they did it would be immediately apparent how laughable their "arguments" were.

And sometimes that 'smokescreen' has a purpose, which is shared definition of what those terms mean. (To deliberately use double-talk, connotation as well as notation.) A shared vocabulary is important in any endeavor, even gaming has the shared terms that outsiders do not understand, but everone in gaming comprehends, sometimes as acronyms. If I say NPC or nonplayer character pretty much every English speaking gamer understands what I am saying. having no common vocabulary means mistakes creeping in because of poor definition. If I say 'hand me a D6' you know what to reach for, you don't grab a D12. I have even heard ths called 'gamer speak'.

I had an argument with a pagan once who claimed he was a 'werewolf', having created his own definition for the term. What he was describing was animistic shamanism, but because he had no grounding in religion he did not have the vocabulary to understand the phrase. But if you were to walk up to Joe J. Fuddy on the street and say 'I am a werewolf' he has a very different vision of what you mean than what you might think that you are saying. Whereas if you say 'I am an animistic shaman' he will just look at you funny and wonder what you are talking about.

Sorry about being longwinded, but poor definition of terms is a real problem sometimes.

The Auld Grump

 

[Nisarg]

They are not complex terms - they are the correct ones to use. Your error/mistake/stupidity/trick (take your pick) is a common one, it has a term for describing it.

While that phenomenon (made famous in an episode of the simpsons) is fairly common, its not nearly as common as the trick you're pulling, which is to make it seem like an undistributed middle means what I'm saying is not true, or a mistake, or an outright lie.

It isn't any of those things. Its a theory.
And in my case a pretty solid theory with some pretty clear circumstantial evidence.
You're engaging in the same dirty tricks that creation scientists use to try to "disprove evolution" ("They have a monkey and they have a human, but there's no missing link!! oh wait... homo erectus.. right, well where's the link between homo erectus and the monkeys, huh? Huh???").
Or Global Warming.. "Yea sure we're pumping 200% more toxic emissions into the air each year, and the earth's temperature goes up .02% each year, but that doesn't mean there's any connection! It could be a natural temperature change! It could be space aliens, it could be Jeebus!"

Theoretically, any "connections" I created for you short of a photo of White Wolf staff hunting down gamers with machetes would not serve as sufficient "proof" that White Wolf was responsible for a net decline in gamers, and you could continue to label my argument as an "undistributed middle".

Hence, until you come up with a conclusively better theory, with better evidence to explain why the gaming community was so ill equipped to handle the attack from other media (CCGs, computers, etc) and why so many people left the hobby in disgust during that era, my theory stands.

Incidentally, I also have more than enough personal anecdotal evidence. Of a group of about 20 friends of mine that I was gaming with since I was 12 years old, I am one of only 2 who continues to game, and all the rest left during that era. For many of them, there were certain mitigating circumstances that caused them to leave (marriage, school, work), but all have told me repeatedly that if they had been making games in that time that were worth playing, and not angsty-wankfests they would have persevered.
I myself quit playing for about 6 months, finally burnt out of trying to buy or run decent games in an era where everything was about metaplot and "splatbooks" and railroaded adventures made to show off failed novelists' writing talents, rather than actually involved the players proactively, I just got tired of it all.
What saved me was D20. It brought me back to gaming, but I was one of the last holdouts from all my old group, and the others who had quit earlier just couldn't bring themselves back into the game, lamentably, because they were great gamers.

Nisarg

 

[Nisarg]

I never heard of the Forge until now either (except maybe in passing), and today's the first time I've visited there. Although I'm not sure I'd play any of the games there (as I look through their Free RPGs), I'm not exactly overwhelmed by the pretentiousness of a game like Babewatch the RPG.

Nick

Yea, but look at the design notes for it on their forums.

They'll make a game like "schoolgirls chasing kittens the RPG", but only after spending 200 pages talking about how it should fit "GNS theory", whether it fits with Ron Edwards' divine laws of acceptable games, and what kind of sociopolitical implications exist in a metaphorical game world or schoolgirls chasing kittens.
Then after the game is done, they'll bicker with each other about whether the game is a perfect narrativist model or if it has "simulationist undertones".
They'll also throw in a few hundred gratuitous posts about how Ron Edwards is the only person who really "Understands" rpgs, and how inferior a system D20 is because it "lacks premise".

In other words, mental onanism of the worst kind.

Nisarg

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Incidentally, I also have more than enough personal anecdotal evidence. Of a group of about 20 friends of mine that I was gaming with since I was 12 years old...

Although your anecdotal evidence has some validity, it's really not more than a drop in the bucket as far as the industry on the whole goes. Of all the people I gamed with back in the early 90s, I'm the only one left gaming that I know of (after 10 years off from 92-02), so my experience is similar to yours, but I'm not sure that our experiences are truly meaningful on an industry wide scale.

Nick