D&D 5E (2014) Full D&D Adventurers League is for Americas only...

[Morrus]

Oh, I'm not the only one unable to decipher "DotA"?

No, I don't know what it is, either.

 

[doctorhook]

I have to say, I feel that, even in the West, if TT RPGs hadn't appeared until the late '80s, they'd never have gained much a foothold against computer games.*

* = Equally, though, computer games would be completely different, without RPGs to draw inspiration from.

That's pretty plausible. D&D definitely benefited from a period as a fad phenomenon that might not have happened in a post-consumer-electronics setting, and without it, who knows where we'd be.

I think the most important influence D&D had on CRPGing is that it taught future game devs to think algorithmically about fantasy storytelling. Without that step, it's anyone's guess how the computer game market would have evolved.

 

[the Jester]

<3<3<3

Can you imagine if people here did do that? Every discussion would involve stuff like "Player's Handbook (PHB)", and it would slow things down so much!

(On a more serious and less "Oh Mistwell, why do you troll me so?!" note, even if I did spell out DotA and MOBA, you'd be no clearer on what they meant, because they're acronyms of meaningless terms without context - context that can only be gained by using the mighty GOOGLE - I mean, DotA = Defence of the Ancients - and I guarantee that unless you knew what DotA meant, that leaves you as confused as ever).

In fact my explanation cleared things up perfectly, I think Proving that the "The Correct Use of Acronyms" is in fact wrong! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!

To be fair, I realize you weren't intended to be obfuscatory initially. I'll be a bit more up front and polite than Misty about it, but I, too, would prefer to know what you're talking about when there's a discussion on ENWorld. MMORPG? That one I knew. The others? Nah.

Comparing these non-D&D acronyms to the PH (or PHB, whichever you favor) is a little disingenuous here, I think. It's a fair assumption that people here are familiar with decades-old D&Disms. Some online game's initials or genre is far less of a safe bet.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It might also be worth talking about D&D in a cultural context. Even though D&D is a blank slate at its core mechanic, elements like classes, races, monsters, spells, deities, adventures, and established settings all speak to a decidedly western style of fantasy storytelling that people in Asia may have difficulty relating to. To look at it from the other side, if games like Final Fantasy (except possibly its earliest episodes) are any indication, then the style of fantasy stories popular in Asian markets are pretty far removed from that of J. R. R. Tolkien or R. A. Salvatore. If nothing else, if I were in charge of marketing D&D in Asia, the first thing I'd do is hire an art director exclusively for this market.

I don't think so, doctorhook, with the bolded bits anyway.

Just look at Chinese, Korean, and Japanese MMORPGs - they all tend to have the concepts of races, classes, monsters and spells. Final Fantasy XIV (a Japanese MMORPG) is much CLOSER to D&D in spirit, I'd suggest, than, say World of Warcraft. You pick a race, pick a class, and fight monsters by casting spells on them.

Seriously, there are huge numbers of Asian MMORPGs out there, and they really do have concepts derived, largely, from D&D, at their core.

I would say that pretty much all of them have classes, the vast majority of them have races (but some make that part of class - just as D&D used to), all of them have spells (no exceptions I can think of), all of them have monsters (again, no exceptions), few of them have gods (but they don't have to be a big deal in D&D either), and I think adventures are kind of a nebulous concept in all CRPGs, Western and Asian, single-player or massive.

Korea, for example, is probably more into D&D tropes than present-day America. Japan actually publishes TT RPGs (most of which never get translated to English), and certainly has some D&D players, and huge amounts of stuff based on D&D. China is a little further from it, but I don't think anyone would be confused by much of what is in D&D if they've played a few Chinese MMORPGs.

I do agree that the big barrier would be art - but here's the thing - much of the art for 5E is being done by Chinese concept-artists - and some of what we've seen does have a slightly "Asian game"-look to it, so whilst they might want to change the look, they could probably re-use the concept artists that they already used, and just direct them differently.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To be fair, I realize you weren't intended to be obfuscatory initially. I'll be a bit more up front and polite than Misty about it, but I, too, would prefer to know what you're talking about when there's a discussion on ENWorld. MMORPG? That one I knew. The others? Nah.

I explained in the post before his what a "DotA" or "MOBA" is, I'll re-quote myself for you:

Just to be clear - DotA is in no way, shape or form an MMORPG (it's a MOBA), despite using some concepts common to both. It's a real-time strategy game in which you directly control one "hero" unit whilst attempting to control three (usually) "lanes" (avenues of access between your base and the enemy base), and the goal is to destroy their base. It's one of the twitchiest, most precision-demanding games out there.

So you can't actually complain that I didn't explain what it was! DotA and MOBA are terms used fairly interchangeably. To be clear, there was a game called DotA, but it now refers to a genre of games.

If you still need more information than that, I think it is completely fair, in 2014, when you are posting on the internet (as opposed to asking me in person), to expect you to look it up.

Comparing these non-D&D acronyms to the PH (or PHB, whichever you favor) is a little disingenuous here, I think. It's a fair assumption that people here are familiar with decades-old D&Disms. Some online game's initials or genre is far less of a safe bet.

Yeah, but that's my point, dearest Misty is being a bit attention-seek-y, because he knows that no-one here uses acronyms "correctly"! Not like I don't have to puzzle out or Google a fair few D&D acronyms and others!

 

[Mistwell]

<3<3<3

Can you imagine if people here did do that? Every discussion would involve stuff like "Player's Handbook (PHB)", and it would slow things down so much!

It would slow things down?

How so? What, if people did that the first time it was mentioned in a thread it would slow reading down...a quarter of a second maybe? You think this is some great difficulty? Not to mention, as explained above, there is a big difference between commonly used acronyms on a message board you know is very familiar with them, and acronyms from things not frequently used on that message board.

On a more serious and less "Oh Mistwell, why do you troll me so?!" note, even if I did spell out DotA and MOBA, you'd be no clearer on what they meant, because they're acronyms of meaningless terms without context - context that can only be gained by using the mighty GOOGLE - I mean, DotA = Defence of the Ancients - and I guarantee that unless you knew what DotA meant, that leaves you as confused as ever).

So provide context. You know, so as to further communication within a larger community.

You think I was trolling you, but my view turned out to represent the view of several others, including the guy running the message board. Maybe your goal was not to communicate information - but then, why post?

 

[doctorhook]

I don't think so, doctorhook, with the bolded bits anyway.

<snip>

I supposed I should have been more clear: I didn't mean that classes, races, and spells didn't exist in those games, rather that the specific concepts that make up each class, race, or spell might not have much traction with players in Asian markets.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So provide context. You know, so as to further communication within a larger community.

I did. I explained what DotA/MOBA meant in the very post you were responding to! Do I have to quote it again? I guess so!

Just to be clear - DotA is in no way, shape or form an MMORPG (it's a MOBA), despite using some concepts common to both. It's a real-time strategy game in which you directly control one "hero" unit whilst attempting to control three (usually) "lanes" (avenues of access between your base and the enemy base), and the goal is to destroy their base. It's one of the twitchiest, most precision-demanding games out there.

You think I was trolling you, but my view turned out to represent the view of several others, including the guy running the message board. Maybe your goal was not to communicate information - but then, why post?

As I've shown, I did explain it. in that post. I cannot help it if people don't read my posts. That's beyond my control.

Further, I was responding to a poster who used the terms DotA and MMORPG. So who definitely knows approximately what they mean. So why did you not respond to him? You need to explain that.

Finally, you posted something from some un-sourced style guide, that you took time to Google or click to, but you couldn't spend that time Google'ing DotA or MOBA or MMORPG? That's why I am assuming you are taking the piss in a jolly way. Because that is by far the most charitable thing I can assume.

I really hope you are going to retract your comments when you realize it was your own failure to read my post, as I've pointed out, that lead to you not knowing what I was talking about.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I supposed I should have been more clear: I didn't mean that classes, races, and spells didn't exist in those games, rather that the specific concepts that make up each class, race, or spell might not have much traction with players in Asian markets.

Well, they definitely do recognise the specific concepts in South Korea and Japan, I can say that with absolute certainty based on their MMORPGs. China is a bit more complicated, but certainly they recognise a lot of the basic D&D concepts very well.

 

[Mistwell]

I did. I explained what DotA/MOBA meant in the very post you were responding to! Do I have to quote it again? I guess so!





As I've shown, I did explain it. in that post. I cannot help it if people don't read my posts. That's beyond my control.

Further, I was responding to a poster who used the terms DotA and MMORPG. So who definitely knows approximately what they mean. So why did you not respond to him? You need to explain that.

Finally, you posted something from some un-sourced style guide, that you took time to Google or click to, but you couldn't spend that time Google'ing DotA or MOBA or MMORPG? That's why I am assuming you are taking the piss in a jolly way. Because that is by far the most charitable thing I can assume.

I was trying to point out the larger issue of, "Not defining obscure acronyms before using them in a conversation". And yeah you did give some vague context, without giving the definition of the acronym, so it still remained a mystery. But you knew that - which is why you later, in response to my questioning it, finally wrote the actual words that made up the acronym.

I don't think I was asking something unreasonable. If you do - fair enough. If you're only trying to communicate with the people who already understand the acronym, fine. If you're trying to communicate with others though, you might consider what I said.