D&D General D&D's feel - ENWorld vs. rpg.net

[Scribe]

If you don’t bother to do anything to curate your experience, you’ll only see what the algorithm thinks will get engagement from you, and what you go find when you first sign up. If you’re actually engaged with one or more communities on the platform, it’s far from a bubble or a waste of time.

A big part of my issue with Twitter when I had it, was just this. You get into a feedback loop where the algorithm absolutely drives content to you that it thinks you want, which can cause that bubble effect.

I feel that in combination with the 'outrage' amplification, its just people pushing an echo chamber narrative that doesnt remotely reflect reality, and once I did start playing around with curating it (mute/block) the effect was so profound, I just decided it was impossible to trust what Twitter was doing with the algorithm at all.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A big part of my issue with Twitter when I had it, was just this. You get into a feedback loop where the algorithm absolutely drives content to you that it thinks you want, which can cause that bubble effect.

I feel that in combination with the 'outrage' amplification, its just people pushing an echo chamber narrative that doesnt remotely reflect reality, and once I did start playing around with curating it (mute/block) the effect was so profound, I just decided it was impossible to trust what Twitter was doing with the algorithm at all.

I don’t ever expect to trust literally anything that any publicly traded corporation does.

Twitter is extremely useful, if used with literally even a very small amount of care for what you’re consuming. Just keeping your feed on “latest tweets” rather than “top tweets” hugely neuters the company’s influence on your feed, as does just choosing who to follow based on having an enjoyable experience, rather than feeling like you need to follow the Twitter account for everything that you like. Also, very few brands/companies have healthy comment traffic, so if you’re prone to reading comments, be very careful about what brands/companies you follow.

Even muting and blocking is mostly important for engaging with communities that have a really vocal “piece of crap” contingent, and for dealing with the occasional troll.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A big part of my issue with Twitter when I had it, was just this. You get into a feedback loop where the algorithm absolutely drives content to you that it thinks you want, which can cause that bubble effect.

I feel that in combination with the 'outrage' amplification, its just people pushing an echo chamber narrative that doesnt remotely reflect reality, and once I did start playing around with curating it (mute/block) the effect was so profound, I just decided it was impossible to trust what Twitter was doing with the algorithm at all.

The scary part is that Twitter is way less manipulative than Facebook and YouTube.

 

[Mistwell]

Alignment is iconic, emblematic, but not high on most folks' "you need it for it to feel like D&D" list, nor their "must be retained" list.

I was with you until you got to this one.

Alignment is so recognizable as specifically representative of D&D that thousands of memes are based on the 9 alignments with comparisons to many things in society, and everyone understands exactly what it means at a glance. Even if they've never played D&D, they know what it means and that it's a thing from D&D which they relate to because the alignments do represent in their minds the things portrayed.

Once you remove alignment, it becomes THAC0 for future generations who pick up the game after that point. It will lose it's impact as an overwhelmingly recognizable trait of the game. Which is a harm to the game, as it doesn't have that many elements which non-players recognize as being from D&D at a glance like that.

It must be retained, on some level. It does not have to have big mechanical meaning, and it doesn't have to be as prominent, but it needs to be there purely from an intellectual property trade dress level. If you ditch it entirely, you're ditching marketing value for no particularly good reason when you can just adapt it to something else and retain the value.

I'd say leave it there but have it apply to just creatures from certain planes. So demons, devils, angels, modrons, and similar planar creatures have an alignment trait which some spells can identify or detect or influence or harm in some way. You can remove it from PCs and NPCs, or leave it as an optional rule, while still having it be in the game somehow, somewhere.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It must be retained, on some level. It does not have to have big mechanical meaning, and it doesn't have to be as prominent, but it needs to be there purely from an intellectual property trade dress level. If you ditch it entirely, you're ditching marketing value for no particularly good reason when you can just adapt it to something else and retain the value.

There's nothing about alignment that can be protected as IP. Anyone who wants to hurt their system by adding it can use it with no repercussions--and that's ignoring that it's in the SRD.

 

[Mistwell]

There's nothing about alignment that can be protected as IP. Anyone who wants to hurt their system by adding it can use it with no repercussions--and that's ignoring that it's in the SRD.

I do not mean it in the way you're reading it. That's why I said marketing value of the trade dress. I am not talking about from the legal standpoint of protecting the IP, I am talking about the marketing value of using it. "Intellectual property" and "trade dress" have meaning outside of "is this thing legally enforceable in a court of law." I am speaking to the marketing value of this type of property to the company as an element of the look and feel of the game on some level.

 

[Blue]

I consider all of these polls flawed. There were a good number of items that were identified during the first posting by commenters that could be critical parts of D&D. But they were never polled.

What this really polls is "From the list of what JEB thinks about D&D, what is important?", which has a huge bias selection in the possible responses compared to the how it represents itself. I applaud the effort, but the results are at best partially complete and skewed because of that, and at worst are unintentionally misleading.

With so many additional contender for what makes D&D important, the only way to get good data would be new polls with the expanded options. Best likely available would be asking freeform "what makes D&D important" in the different spaces and crafting from there a poll, to be as inclusive as possible in the potential choices.

 

[JEB]

I consider all of these polls flawed. There were a good number of items that were identified during the first posting by commenters that could be critical parts of D&D. But they were never polled.

What this really polls is "From the list of what JEB thinks about D&D, what is important?", which has a huge bias selection in the possible responses compared to the how it represents itself. I applaud the effort, but the results are at best partially complete and skewed because of that, and at worst are unintentionally misleading.

With so many additional contender for what makes D&D important, the only way to get good data would be new polls with the expanded options. Best likely available would be asking freeform "what makes D&D important" in the different spaces and crafting from there a poll, to be as inclusive as possible in the potential choices.

I wasn't asking what makes D&D "important". That's a very different question. I was asking which of those elements, drawn from the 5E core rules, people considered part of D&D's "feel", with room for "other" answers outside that scope. I'm sorry if that's not the kind of poll you wanted me to make.

I certainly encourage you to create your own new polls, or open-ended questionnaires! The results would certainly be fascinating.