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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8120825" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I reject the dichotomy. It presumes that only one result (whether it be success or failure) is the "focus" or "point." Without <em>both</em> being valuable, it's a non-starter.</p><p></p><p>"Often" is a strong word, isn't it? How many first-year art students produce Mona Lisas? How many first-year philosophy students write a <em>Tractatus</em>? It is absolutely true that some people don't need formal education to learn the rules--they already learned them, whether by accident or on purpose, such that formal schooling <em>might</em> trip them up (in exactly the way that questions like "are you sure you know where your feet are" can screw up a dancer or the like). But your assertion is too bold; you are, essentially, saying that training and education are completely unimportant for producing any work of art or design, and I'm <em>pretty</em> sure history isn't on your side on this one.</p><p></p><p>To return your argument to you: There have been times even in mathematics--perhaps <em>the</em> most rules-based discipline around--where someone who "didn't know it wasn't possible" did something fantastic. Such events are exceedingly rare, not because The Man gets fertile minds down, but because it is <em>extremely hard</em> to have such brilliant insight when you don't know anything yet. And even in the only case I know of is George Dantzig, this wasn't some fresh-faced first-year mathematics student; Dantzig was a graduate student in a UC Berkeley statistics course under his own doctoral advisor. This is someone who absolutely <em>already knew</em> the rules of the particular art he was practicing, and his work would have been outright impossible for someone who didn't have the formal training he had.</p><p></p><p>So yeah. It's true that formal training is neither a guarantee of success, nor a requirement for it. But it's damn useful, and chasing the dream of the totally untrained rube that bests the Ph.D. is going to result in fewer good works, not more, in the long run. Recognizing that training isn't <em>the end-all, be-all</em> is emphatically not the same as deciding, "Welp, guess nobody ever needed to <em>practice</em> painting before they actually start doing portraiture!"</p><p></p><p></p><p>Then that is a great thing. But again, you present a singular case. There are two reasons you might do this. The first, to demonstrate the exceptionally weak claim that training (of whatever kind) isn't <em>required</em> for producing good work. This is true...but it doesn't actually oppose what I said, that creative rules exist to help produce better work and, thus, mastering them <em>means</em> learning when to break them, which is why it's worth bothering with practice and training. The second reason is to demonstrate the far stronger claim that these rules are <em>never</em> necessary...but that's a universal claim, and you can't make a universal claim from a particular instance.</p><p></p><p>This is the <em>logical</em> reason why an anecdote isn't data, by the way. You either get weak claims (that, in this case, don't actually affect my own claim), or you fail to reach strong ones.</p><p></p><p></p><p>And how many bands struggle with their sophomore album, not because of any kind of lack of training or anything else, but because they had <em>their entire lives</em> to prepare their first album and perhaps a few <em>years</em> to prepare their second? Your evidence isn't strong enough to back up your assertion here. There are <em>far</em> too many confounding variables. (To name a few others: success gets to their heads so they make foolish choices; living the high life causes them to disconnect from their sources of inspiration or engage in activities that reduces their working time; the stress, anxiety, and constant attention of stardom negatively affects their ability to work; they lose interest in producing further work of the same kind; etc.)</p><p></p><p>Nope. DM was explicitly and intentionally running 4e precisely by-the-book, because he wanted to know exactly how by-the-book 4e worked out. He was, I admit, a DM who primarily used old-school stuff prior to running 4e. But he was running things so thoroughly "by the book" that we didn't even use updated/errata'd materials, he really wanted to know <em>exactly</em> how things worked circa PHB2 (to include Druid and Bard and such).</p><p></p><p></p><p>But in every case, the Fighter is doing something with a defined benefit. The Rogue is only able to do things because the DM decided there would be benefit, and actively worked to make that benefit exist. It is entirely possible to make extensible framework rules (such as 4e's Page 42) and simple always-on options (like Aid Another) that make it so effectively all conceivable actions that have benefit can be represented by something definitively worthwhile. </p><p></p><p>It <strong>is</strong> the lack of a target (or target-like-thing--I want to be clear that "target" has a lot of baggage I'm not keen on, I'm just using your word) and the lack of an obvious success-fail condition (or, at least, one that can be found with reasonable ease) that is the difference that matters to me.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Unless you collected these systematically--which I sincerely doubt, since you're getting these from people you've gamed with, which <em>is not a representative sample</em>--it's exactly the same problem. This is one major part (though far from the only one) of why surveys are <em>incredibly difficult</em> to design, and why good social science is so difficult to do.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Then I spoke unclearly.</p><p></p><p>What I am saying is that "you CAN have fun doing X"--as in, it is <em>possible</em> for <em>at least one person</em> to have fun doing X--is the least useful of all defenses for a game element. That is, let's look at the negation of the statement: "it is impossible for at least one person to have fun doing X." I think we can agree that <em>any</em> design element which you could truly label with this statement would be an objectively bad game element--something that should never appear in <em>any</em> game, ever.</p><p></p><p>But what does that mean? That means that <em>absolutely all</em> design elements that are ever worth considering--<em>literally every single one</em> of the possible rules or components you could put into a game--must meet the common standard of, "At least one person <em>could</em> enjoy this." Thing is? It's going to be <em>really hard</em> to assert that a given element is objectively bad for all possible games (as you yourself have stated, more or less). So...that basically means we have a criterion--"element must have the potential for fun for at least one person"--which is <em>effectively always</em> applicable, regardless of the design element we look at. </p><p></p><p>Now, if the criterion were, "A majority of players who want to play a game of type Y report having fun while doing X," that would be completely different. That WOULD be a matter of evaluating whether component X generates fun. But that is a <em>dramatically</em> different claim from "it is possible for at least one person to have fun while doing X."</p><p></p><p></p><p>...and now we go back to my original argument. "True average" people should actually be <em>exceedingly rare</em>. The odds of rolling exactly two 13s and exactly four 12s are (approximately) .1327^2*.1289^4 = 0.00000486131, or about one in every 200,000. (Note that I am ignoring the order for this; the results will be the same if you account for ordering, as the factors will cancel out.) The perfectly average person is actually quite rare, as I said initially. Instead of this "true average" (which is quite rare), we should instead look at the <em>expected results</em>. And that's what the AnyDice calculation does. It looks at what the most likely highest stat is, the most likely second highest stat, etc. And, lo and behold, it is nearly identical to the Elite Array!</p><p></p><p></p><p>Some posters (I <em>think</em> you among them?) had said that it is unnatural or unrepresentative to have characters with such high stats. I have been pointing to the statistics of such things to show that no, it is this unnatural enforcement of the <em>exceedingly rare</em> "true average" behavior that leads you to think these results are divergent; they are in fact <em>more</em> natural, <em>more</em> representative of the distribution used. (Admittedly, btw, 3d6-strict would generate lower overall numbers, but the fact is that 14-16 <em>isn't</em> nearly as unusual as you claim even with such methods.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>Okay then. Two questions:</p><p>1. If being "born lucky" doesn't actually matter, why do you care? It seems you have argued that <em>your own position</em> is irrelevant, because it's actually the underlying system math (being highly lethal, having save-or-die rolls, great uncertainty about results) that decides whether characters live or die, not their individual statistics. So why not <em>let</em> players play those "born lucky"? it won't matter in the end, but they'll get their little bit of enjoyment from big numbers.</p><p>2. Why are these two forms of luck so different? I genuinely don't understand. The snipped parts didn't really illustrate why luck during character generation is of an entirely different kind from luck elsewhere in play.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sorry man, gut feels aren't the same as statistical analysis. I get that things don't <em>look</em> all that favorable to you. But crunching numbers (particularly on a much larger, unbiased data set) is what actually answers questions like this.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Um...yes? There are several 1-30 adventure paths written for 4e (including the excellent <em>Zeitgeist</em>, which I'm still dying to play through...ah, someday.) It is entirely possible to play a long-runner game with a perfectly reasonable pace of advancement. Say you level up every 3-5 weekly sessions; that gets you roughly 13 levels per year, so accounting for breaks and needing at least a few sessions to wrap everything up once you hit max level, a two-and-a-half year campaign would make perfect sense. I've only been a participant in one game that has ever lasted nearly that long...and that's the game I currently DM.</p><p></p><p></p><p>But they don't <em>have</em> to be. That's why I keep talking about 4e. It's a game where the rules as written AREN'T crap. They sure as hell aren't <em>perfect</em>, but they're quite effective at what they shot for. Dungeon World is another game where the rules as written emphatically are not crap. 13th Age is a third. It is <em>entirely possible</em> to design rules that, as written, are ACTUALLY GOOD. That are actually WORTH using, so that you break them only when you know you need to. We're just caught on this idea that because rules will always need exceptions, you may as well not care about design quality and constantly force the DM to re-design the game on the fly. It's <em>incredibly frustrating</em> to me the "well if they aren't perfect I don't want them" attitude that pervades the tabletop design community.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Again: this assumes the ability to <em>see</em> that there was an error in the first place. It is entirely possible to never realize what is wrong, and simply feel dissatisfied or continually work to "fix" your frustrations by going down blind alleys or adjusting unrelated elements. Hence why I bring up Dr. Howard Moskowitz and chunky spaghetti sauce all the time: <em>a full third of Americans</em> had literally NO idea that they had been hankering for extra chunky spaghetti sauce their entire lives, because <em>having</em> a preference or desire and <em>knowing what fulfills it</em> are two completely different things.</p><p></p><p>I am NOT just saying, "Oh, well, these things can be hard to do on the fly." I'm saying these things may literally be <em>impossible</em> for some people to figure out on their own, because the solution requires re-conceiving the problem with tools they don't know exist and asking questions they've never even considered.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Then I applaud your substantial design skill. I can emphatically say that ripping out all of 1e's save mechanics so that I felt confident I could have the experience I wanted, without running into nasty surprises, would be an absolutely <em>daunting</em> task.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Or, instead of saying "oh well that choice was bad," maybe we should recognize that there are (at least) <em>two different ideas of what low-level play is? </em>Like, you are literally saying your idea of low level play is the objective way low-level play SHOULD be, for everyone. I, as an alternative, am asserting that we should recognize that there's a sizable audience (particularly brand-new players) for whom "low-level play" SHOULD be somewhat "heroic" (while still being relatively simple, to introduce them to the game)....and yet ALSO recognize that there's another sizable audience (which includes you) for whom "low-level play" SHOULD NOT be even slightly "heroic" (while still potentially being a very rich, detailed experience <em>if</em> desired). There is no way to uphold these two attitudes with a singular progression for absolutely everyone...and thus the "zero levels" idea comes into play. That way, it is <em>equally correct</em> to say that "low-level play" "is heroic" and "is not heroic," because "low-level play" refers to two different things: 1st level characters (who are presumed to have demonstrated their heroism) and "apprentice" characters or whatever we want to call them, who explicitly have <em>not</em> (fully) demonstrated their heroism yet.</p><p></p><p>By introducing this feature, you respect that there are two radically different styles of play, and design game rules that actually try to make each group happy, rather than forcing one to dance by the other's tune. That's why I argue so stridently for it. It actually says, "You know, BOTH of you want something that is D&D, so BOTH of you deserve to get what you want."</p><p></p><p></p><p>Oooooooooooor maybe "bad things will inevitably happen to [your] characters" isn't something objectively good, but is a really specific and fairly narrow interest among tabletop roleplayers, and thus generally isn't catered to directly? Further, maybe it's an interest that can be catered to purely through electing to (as you described earlier) run a game in "hard mode," with opt-in features that increase risk and reduce survivability?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8120825, member: 6790260"] I reject the dichotomy. It presumes that only one result (whether it be success or failure) is the "focus" or "point." Without [I]both[/I] being valuable, it's a non-starter. "Often" is a strong word, isn't it? How many first-year art students produce Mona Lisas? How many first-year philosophy students write a [I]Tractatus[/I]? It is absolutely true that some people don't need formal education to learn the rules--they already learned them, whether by accident or on purpose, such that formal schooling [I]might[/I] trip them up (in exactly the way that questions like "are you sure you know where your feet are" can screw up a dancer or the like). But your assertion is too bold; you are, essentially, saying that training and education are completely unimportant for producing any work of art or design, and I'm [I]pretty[/I] sure history isn't on your side on this one. To return your argument to you: There have been times even in mathematics--perhaps [I]the[/I] most rules-based discipline around--where someone who "didn't know it wasn't possible" did something fantastic. Such events are exceedingly rare, not because The Man gets fertile minds down, but because it is [I]extremely hard[/I] to have such brilliant insight when you don't know anything yet. And even in the only case I know of is George Dantzig, this wasn't some fresh-faced first-year mathematics student; Dantzig was a graduate student in a UC Berkeley statistics course under his own doctoral advisor. This is someone who absolutely [I]already knew[/I] the rules of the particular art he was practicing, and his work would have been outright impossible for someone who didn't have the formal training he had. So yeah. It's true that formal training is neither a guarantee of success, nor a requirement for it. But it's damn useful, and chasing the dream of the totally untrained rube that bests the Ph.D. is going to result in fewer good works, not more, in the long run. Recognizing that training isn't [I]the end-all, be-all[/I] is emphatically not the same as deciding, "Welp, guess nobody ever needed to [I]practice[/I] painting before they actually start doing portraiture!" Then that is a great thing. But again, you present a singular case. There are two reasons you might do this. The first, to demonstrate the exceptionally weak claim that training (of whatever kind) isn't [I]required[/I] for producing good work. This is true...but it doesn't actually oppose what I said, that creative rules exist to help produce better work and, thus, mastering them [I]means[/I] learning when to break them, which is why it's worth bothering with practice and training. The second reason is to demonstrate the far stronger claim that these rules are [I]never[/I] necessary...but that's a universal claim, and you can't make a universal claim from a particular instance. This is the [I]logical[/I] reason why an anecdote isn't data, by the way. You either get weak claims (that, in this case, don't actually affect my own claim), or you fail to reach strong ones. And how many bands struggle with their sophomore album, not because of any kind of lack of training or anything else, but because they had [I]their entire lives[/I] to prepare their first album and perhaps a few [I]years[/I] to prepare their second? Your evidence isn't strong enough to back up your assertion here. There are [I]far[/I] too many confounding variables. (To name a few others: success gets to their heads so they make foolish choices; living the high life causes them to disconnect from their sources of inspiration or engage in activities that reduces their working time; the stress, anxiety, and constant attention of stardom negatively affects their ability to work; they lose interest in producing further work of the same kind; etc.) Nope. DM was explicitly and intentionally running 4e precisely by-the-book, because he wanted to know exactly how by-the-book 4e worked out. He was, I admit, a DM who primarily used old-school stuff prior to running 4e. But he was running things so thoroughly "by the book" that we didn't even use updated/errata'd materials, he really wanted to know [I]exactly[/I] how things worked circa PHB2 (to include Druid and Bard and such). But in every case, the Fighter is doing something with a defined benefit. The Rogue is only able to do things because the DM decided there would be benefit, and actively worked to make that benefit exist. It is entirely possible to make extensible framework rules (such as 4e's Page 42) and simple always-on options (like Aid Another) that make it so effectively all conceivable actions that have benefit can be represented by something definitively worthwhile. It [B]is[/B] the lack of a target (or target-like-thing--I want to be clear that "target" has a lot of baggage I'm not keen on, I'm just using your word) and the lack of an obvious success-fail condition (or, at least, one that can be found with reasonable ease) that is the difference that matters to me. Unless you collected these systematically--which I sincerely doubt, since you're getting these from people you've gamed with, which [I]is not a representative sample[/I]--it's exactly the same problem. This is one major part (though far from the only one) of why surveys are [I]incredibly difficult[/I] to design, and why good social science is so difficult to do. Then I spoke unclearly. What I am saying is that "you CAN have fun doing X"--as in, it is [I]possible[/I] for [I]at least one person[/I] to have fun doing X--is the least useful of all defenses for a game element. That is, let's look at the negation of the statement: "it is impossible for at least one person to have fun doing X." I think we can agree that [I]any[/I] design element which you could truly label with this statement would be an objectively bad game element--something that should never appear in [I]any[/I] game, ever. But what does that mean? That means that [I]absolutely all[/I] design elements that are ever worth considering--[I]literally every single one[/I] of the possible rules or components you could put into a game--must meet the common standard of, "At least one person [I]could[/I] enjoy this." Thing is? It's going to be [I]really hard[/I] to assert that a given element is objectively bad for all possible games (as you yourself have stated, more or less). So...that basically means we have a criterion--"element must have the potential for fun for at least one person"--which is [I]effectively always[/I] applicable, regardless of the design element we look at. Now, if the criterion were, "A majority of players who want to play a game of type Y report having fun while doing X," that would be completely different. That WOULD be a matter of evaluating whether component X generates fun. But that is a [I]dramatically[/I] different claim from "it is possible for at least one person to have fun while doing X." ...and now we go back to my original argument. "True average" people should actually be [I]exceedingly rare[/I]. The odds of rolling exactly two 13s and exactly four 12s are (approximately) .1327^2*.1289^4 = 0.00000486131, or about one in every 200,000. (Note that I am ignoring the order for this; the results will be the same if you account for ordering, as the factors will cancel out.) The perfectly average person is actually quite rare, as I said initially. Instead of this "true average" (which is quite rare), we should instead look at the [I]expected results[/I]. And that's what the AnyDice calculation does. It looks at what the most likely highest stat is, the most likely second highest stat, etc. And, lo and behold, it is nearly identical to the Elite Array! Some posters (I [I]think[/I] you among them?) had said that it is unnatural or unrepresentative to have characters with such high stats. I have been pointing to the statistics of such things to show that no, it is this unnatural enforcement of the [I]exceedingly rare[/I] "true average" behavior that leads you to think these results are divergent; they are in fact [I]more[/I] natural, [I]more[/I] representative of the distribution used. (Admittedly, btw, 3d6-strict would generate lower overall numbers, but the fact is that 14-16 [I]isn't[/I] nearly as unusual as you claim even with such methods.) Okay then. Two questions: 1. If being "born lucky" doesn't actually matter, why do you care? It seems you have argued that [I]your own position[/I] is irrelevant, because it's actually the underlying system math (being highly lethal, having save-or-die rolls, great uncertainty about results) that decides whether characters live or die, not their individual statistics. So why not [I]let[/I] players play those "born lucky"? it won't matter in the end, but they'll get their little bit of enjoyment from big numbers. 2. Why are these two forms of luck so different? I genuinely don't understand. The snipped parts didn't really illustrate why luck during character generation is of an entirely different kind from luck elsewhere in play. Sorry man, gut feels aren't the same as statistical analysis. I get that things don't [I]look[/I] all that favorable to you. But crunching numbers (particularly on a much larger, unbiased data set) is what actually answers questions like this. Um...yes? There are several 1-30 adventure paths written for 4e (including the excellent [I]Zeitgeist[/I], which I'm still dying to play through...ah, someday.) It is entirely possible to play a long-runner game with a perfectly reasonable pace of advancement. Say you level up every 3-5 weekly sessions; that gets you roughly 13 levels per year, so accounting for breaks and needing at least a few sessions to wrap everything up once you hit max level, a two-and-a-half year campaign would make perfect sense. I've only been a participant in one game that has ever lasted nearly that long...and that's the game I currently DM. But they don't [I]have[/I] to be. That's why I keep talking about 4e. It's a game where the rules as written AREN'T crap. They sure as hell aren't [I]perfect[/I], but they're quite effective at what they shot for. Dungeon World is another game where the rules as written emphatically are not crap. 13th Age is a third. It is [I]entirely possible[/I] to design rules that, as written, are ACTUALLY GOOD. That are actually WORTH using, so that you break them only when you know you need to. We're just caught on this idea that because rules will always need exceptions, you may as well not care about design quality and constantly force the DM to re-design the game on the fly. It's [I]incredibly frustrating[/I] to me the "well if they aren't perfect I don't want them" attitude that pervades the tabletop design community. Again: this assumes the ability to [I]see[/I] that there was an error in the first place. It is entirely possible to never realize what is wrong, and simply feel dissatisfied or continually work to "fix" your frustrations by going down blind alleys or adjusting unrelated elements. Hence why I bring up Dr. Howard Moskowitz and chunky spaghetti sauce all the time: [I]a full third of Americans[/I] had literally NO idea that they had been hankering for extra chunky spaghetti sauce their entire lives, because [I]having[/I] a preference or desire and [I]knowing what fulfills it[/I] are two completely different things. I am NOT just saying, "Oh, well, these things can be hard to do on the fly." I'm saying these things may literally be [I]impossible[/I] for some people to figure out on their own, because the solution requires re-conceiving the problem with tools they don't know exist and asking questions they've never even considered. Then I applaud your substantial design skill. I can emphatically say that ripping out all of 1e's save mechanics so that I felt confident I could have the experience I wanted, without running into nasty surprises, would be an absolutely [I]daunting[/I] task. Or, instead of saying "oh well that choice was bad," maybe we should recognize that there are (at least) [I]two different ideas of what low-level play is? [/I]Like, you are literally saying your idea of low level play is the objective way low-level play SHOULD be, for everyone. I, as an alternative, am asserting that we should recognize that there's a sizable audience (particularly brand-new players) for whom "low-level play" SHOULD be somewhat "heroic" (while still being relatively simple, to introduce them to the game)....and yet ALSO recognize that there's another sizable audience (which includes you) for whom "low-level play" SHOULD NOT be even slightly "heroic" (while still potentially being a very rich, detailed experience [I]if[/I] desired). There is no way to uphold these two attitudes with a singular progression for absolutely everyone...and thus the "zero levels" idea comes into play. That way, it is [I]equally correct[/I] to say that "low-level play" "is heroic" and "is not heroic," because "low-level play" refers to two different things: 1st level characters (who are presumed to have demonstrated their heroism) and "apprentice" characters or whatever we want to call them, who explicitly have [I]not[/I] (fully) demonstrated their heroism yet. By introducing this feature, you respect that there are two radically different styles of play, and design game rules that actually try to make each group happy, rather than forcing one to dance by the other's tune. That's why I argue so stridently for it. It actually says, "You know, BOTH of you want something that is D&D, so BOTH of you deserve to get what you want." Oooooooooooor maybe "bad things will inevitably happen to [your] characters" isn't something objectively good, but is a really specific and fairly narrow interest among tabletop roleplayers, and thus generally isn't catered to directly? Further, maybe it's an interest that can be catered to purely through electing to (as you described earlier) run a game in "hard mode," with opt-in features that increase risk and reduce survivability? [/QUOTE]
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