Find the Anime Challenge

[gizmo33]

As such, it's mostly meaningless, like "dungeonpunk" and "video gamey".

Words like "hot" and "cold" are also meaningless AFAICT by this criteria because people use them inconsistently for all sorts of things. They represent a basic idea though. Whether or not any individuals opinion about hot/cold matches yours is a different issue. If opinions that are different than mine are "meaningless", that's mostly a matter of my ability to understand things I don't agree with and less about anything universal IMO.

If you're seeing some kind of statement over and over again from people (for example "DnD art is too anime" or whatever) then I would suspect that there's something going on there and that it's not a figment of a bunch of people's imagination. That's not to say that all the words they are using to describe it are being used with some sort of scientific rigour.

 

[Hussar]

Words like "hot" and "cold" are also meaningless AFAICT by this criteria because people use them inconsistently for all sorts of things. They represent a basic idea though. Whether or not any individuals opinion about hot/cold matches yours is a different issue. If opinions that are different than mine are "meaningless", that's mostly a matter of my ability to understand things I don't agree with and less about anything universal IMO.

If you're seeing some kind of statement over and over again from people (for example "DnD art is too anime" or whatever) then I would suspect that there's something going on there and that it's not a figment of a bunch of people's imagination. That's not to say that all the words they are using to describe it are being used with some sort of scientific rigour.

That's a very nice strawman.

Hot and cold do, in fact, have pretty definable meanings. And, any reasonable test of them would do. -20 is not hot by any reasonable standard. 15 isn't really either. (or, I guess about 60 for you guys on the other system.) Not too many people are going to start bitching about the heat when it's 75 outside. If a group of people do start complaining at 75, then perhaps, they misunderstand the definition of hot rather than assume that their definition is somehow valid simply because they happen to hold it.

The same goes for a large number of the buzzwords you see on internet forums. "Videogamey" is a beauty. It is completely meaningless. Or rather, you can twist it to mean just about anything, so long as its bad. Never mind that video games encompass a huge range of subjects and styles and that under even a minimum of scrutiny, the comparison falls apart. That's not the important part. The important part is to get in that shot of "It's so VIDEOGAMEY!"

Replace Videogamey in the above paragraph with pretty much any buzzword you like and it holds.

I've shown rather nicely that anime has very little influence in 3e art. Yes, it has some. That's fine. But, we're talking about the same level of influence that you see in pretty much any pop art. Yet, time after time, we see posts of "3e art is so anime!". No, it's not SO anime. It's a little tiny bit anime. It's a minuscule part of the collection. The vast majority of the art shows about as much anime influence as X-Men or Batman.

Yet, I NEVER, EVER, hear that "3e art is so MARVEL". Or, "3e art is so DC". Why is that?

Oh right. Go back up a couple of paragraphs. If someone can't make the cheap, uninformed shot, what's the point? And, yup, I call it uninformed. This thread has shown how uninformed it is. Heck, I'm not even a fan of anime, yet, I can tell that most of the stuff posted isn't anime in the slightest.

So, when people insist on using a term that isn't applicable, apparently we should change the definition of the term rather than actually insist that the terms be used correctly? I don't think that's terribly constructive.

 

[Cadfan]

If you're seeing some kind of statement over and over again from people (for example "DnD art is too anime" or whatever) then I would suspect that there's something going on there and that it's not a figment of a bunch of people's imagination. That's not to say that all the words they are using to describe it are being used with some sort of scientific rigour.

There's something going on, alright, but it has nothing to do with anime. It has to do with a hierarchy of geekiness, in which one geek community looks down on things another geek community likes, and insults them. This leads the first community to start using the things the other geeks like as a sort of epithet.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

That's a very nice strawman.

Hot and cold do, in fact, have pretty definable meanings. And, any reasonable test of them would do. -20 is not hot by any reasonable standard. 15 isn't really either. (or, I guess about 60 for you guys on the other system.) Not too many people are going to start bitching about the heat when it's 75 outside. If a group of people do start complaining at 75, then perhaps, they misunderstand the definition of hot rather than assume that their definition is somehow valid simply because they happen to hold it.

The same goes for a large number of the buzzwords you see on internet forums. "Videogamey" is a beauty. It is completely meaningless. Or rather, you can twist it to mean just about anything, so long as its bad. Never mind that video games encompass a huge range of subjects and styles and that under even a minimum of scrutiny, the comparison falls apart. That's not the important part. The important part is to get in that shot of "It's so VIDEOGAMEY!"

Replace Videogamey in the above paragraph with pretty much any buzzword you like and it holds.

Hence Remathalis's sig.

 

[gizmo33]

That's a very nice strawman.

Strawman, as I've been saying for a while, means something specific. If you don't agree with the analogy then I suppose the details of why would be relevant. The hot/cold analogy was not a proxy argument.

Hot and cold do, in fact, have pretty definable meanings. And, any reasonable test of them would do. -20 is not hot by any reasonable standard.

Yes, it probably is hot by planetary standards.

15 isn't really either. (or, I guess about 60 for you guys on the other system.) Not too many people are going to start bitching about the heat when it's 75 outside.

Food served at an air temperature that people would call "hot" would actually be called cold. You're way oversimplyfing this, and coincidentally I think that's what's going on in the anime debate. The fact is that things are legitimately much more a matter of perspective than you are recognizing.

"Videogamey" is a beauty. It is completely meaningless. Or rather, you can twist it to mean just about anything, so long as its bad. Never mind that video games encompass a huge range of subjects and styles and that under even a minimum of scrutiny, the comparison falls apart.

I don't agree. The core technologies that video games are built on share the same characteristics and have a similar set of limitations. I was just reading a Sun white-paper on their Darkstar game platform, which actually contradicts what you're saying here from a technical perspective.

Again, I really feel like it's a matter of you objecting to the negativity, but I think "meaningless" is just overstated and overly dismissive.

"Yet, I NEVER, EVER, hear that "3e art is so MARVEL". Or, "3e art is so DC". Why is that?

That's probably a good question. Seems regretful that it's not an open question to you.

So, when people insist on using a term that isn't applicable, apparently we should change the definition of the term rather than actually insist that the terms be used correctly? I don't think that's terribly constructive.

Well, I'd say no. But then again you don't really seem interested in what they're actually talking about, so the intent is not to aid them in being constructive but instead call the points "meaningless" so they can be dismissed.

For example, I think your use of the overly used internet buzzword "strawman" was inappropriate here, but I don't think it's worth it to stonewall the conversation. Instead I think it's better to assume that you have some point and the rest is just about clarifying our vocabulary.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If you're seeing some kind of statement over and over again from people (for example "DnD art is too anime" or whatever) then I would suspect that there's something going on there and that it's not a figment of a bunch of people's imagination. That's not to say that all the words they are using to describe it are being used with some sort of scientific rigour.

As it's used on ENWorld the word does have a fairly specific meaning imo, referring to oversized weapons, non-historical armour, spikey hair, lack of backgrounds, black line, figures in motion, superhuman powers and general lack of 'realism'.

The problem is the word is poorly chosen. What it describes doesn't bear much resemblance to the distinctive features of anime. Oversized weapons and weird armour can be found all over the place in fantasy art and really stem from 2000AD and Games Workshop and, ultimately Frank Frazetta, I believe.

Dungeonpunk is a good word though. It refers to the style of art in the 3e PHB. Simple. Though there are a lot fewer piercings than people think there. And no spikey hair at all.

Videogamey is almost completely meaningless though as there are so many different video games. The one thing it might mean is that death is relatively unimportant/easy to come back from, cause that's true of all of them. Unless you're playing in Iron Man, no save mode. Damn!

 

[Cadfan]

Videogamey is almost completely meaningless though as there are so many different video games. The one thing it might mean is that death is relatively unimportant/easy to come back from, cause that's true of all of them. Unless you're playing in Iron Man, no save mode. Damn!

But people almost always use "videogamey" to refer to new playstyles. Die/resurrect is old school.

I think that the die/resurrect cycle is the one most "videogamey" thing in D&D, but its also the one I've never, ever heard someone call videogamey. Uh, except me right now.

 

[Lackhand]

I don't agree. The core technologies that video games are built on share the same characteristics and have a similar set of limitations. I was just reading a Sun white-paper on their Darkstar game platform, which actually contradicts what you're saying here from a technical perspective.

Again, I really feel like it's a matter of you objecting to the negativity, but I think "meaningless" is just overstated and overly dismissive.

While I disagree with your position and broader point, I am totally digging the white paper. Thanks for pointing out its existence!

 

[WizarDru]

Videogamey is almost completely meaningless though as there are so many different video games. The one thing it might mean is that death is relatively unimportant/easy to come back from, cause that's true of all of them.

Which, when you consider that most video games got a lot of their ideas FROM D&D (see the .sig) kind of turns that argument back upon itself, even in that context. Raise Dead wasn't an invention of 3e and the only pen-and-paper RPG I've ever played where characters got 'multiple lives' like many 'old school' video games was Paranoia, which was itself an element of satire.

The core technologies that video games are built on share the same characteristics and have a similar set of limitations. I was just reading a Sun white-paper on their Darkstar game platform, which actually contradicts what you're saying here from a technical perspective.

I'm not sure I quite follow what you're saying, here. Are you talking from a technical standpoint or from a games-theory standpoint or something else? I'm not sure what Sun's as-yet-unfinished engine for an MMO has to do with the discussion at hand. Darkstar may or may not be a nice solid platform upon which to build an MMO or scaling network game application...but that hardly has anything to do with Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, Indigo Prophecy or Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Two of which feature online or wifi multiplayer options, all of which don't give multiple 'lives' and all of which share features in common with D&D (skill point system, quests, hit points, item collection, exploration, etc.)

Like 'anime' in this context 'videogamey' is another nebulous concept that generally never gets backed up with specific details. Trying to say that Halo 1 somehow influenced D&D seems disingenuous...and as with 'anime', whenever the discussion turns to it, specific examples are found which largely predate 3e (which diffuses the video-game on 3e influence, as far as it goes). So many video games took their core ideas from D&D and internalized them...and many 'gamist' ideas within D&D were hardly new when they were applied there. Let's not forget that D&D itself is heir to a long line of board game ideas originating with H.G. Wells' "Little Wars", viewed through the lens of popular fantasy literature. As a game, it shares common characteristics with ALL games. Commonality is hardly causality.

Yes, terms like 'hot' and 'cold' are, to some degree (HA!) relative...but only in fine-tunings and personal acclimation. That a commonality of people decided that 20 degrees Fahrenheit isn't that cold to go swimming doesn't mean that they're right...unless their bodies have completely different physiologies, we can still gauge that, as far as their biology is concerned, it IS cold. Someone from Florida coming to Pennsylvania and telling me that 60 degrees is cold is as factual as not, due to his sensitivity from living in a higher temperature zone, and vice versa. But someone from three doors down coming by and telling me that 20 degrees isn't cold because he and his friends decided it wasn't doesn't change the fact that he'll be suffering from hypothermia if he stays out in the cold without protection or hyperthermia in the other direction.

I agree that if twenty people all identify something as 'anime' that even if correct, it's possible they've analyzed some sort of identifiable trend. But that's not what's happened here. Claims have been made by some that anime is essentially pornography...they can't describe it, but they know it when they see it. Further, much of the discussion has rotated around the fact that people can't even agree on individual examples. Twenty people aren't pointing and saying 'The Brothers Hildebrandt were clearly anime.' Five people are, and five others are saying 'Dude, Brom is clearly anime' and ten more are pointing at a host of other sources and saying that is anime. And some of it clearly is, and a lot of doesn't appear to be (depending on your perspective) and some of it clearly isn't.


A large part of the changes that D&D has experienced in the last three decades has come from player feedback and the changing tastes of gamers. What I enjoyed or considered acceptable in 1982 doesn't cut it, now. Hell, what I considered acceptable in 1997 doesn't cut it now. Game design has moved on. Popular art has moved on. Many of the artists who are working on D&D now weren't even BORN when I started playing. Undoubtedly many are seeing the influence of anime/manga and other sources. But an equal amount are not and D&D is not, by any means, dominated by anime content. And quite frankly, I'm GLAD. I've been watching anime for 30 years now, and while I love some of it, I'd hate for D&D to be more than slightly kissed by it. And so far, I don't see any signs that D&D has more than had a hint of anime influnece within WotC's pages.

 

[gizmo33]

Videogamey is almost completely meaningless though as there are so many different video games. The one thing it might mean is that death is relatively unimportant/easy to come back from, cause that's true of all of them. Unless you're playing in Iron Man, no save mode. Damn!

Ok, so we have a poorly chosen word (anime), a word (Dungeonpunk) that you think is appropriate, and a word (Videogamy) that you think is meaningless. What I'm saying is that I think "meaningless" has connotations of universality whereas when I dig through the logic I find more often than not that it's really just that the person using the word doesn't understand how the word is being used. Now perhaps that's because it's been chosen improperly. But ironically, I find concentrating on the language to be an actual strawman, and not very constructive. There *are* concepts at the root of people's complaints, whether or not one agrees with them, and I think it's more constructive to understand those concepts (and continue to disagree) or perhaps suggest some alternate/correct terminology.

And basically, it seems to make no sense to me logically for one to complain, on one hand, that such-and-such a term is overused and on the other hand that it's meaningless. Clearly if it's being overused (however improperly) there is some concept at the root of the word that has meaning. (I'm not saying that I always understand those meanings though.)