D&D 5E Heteroglossia and D&D: Why D&D Speaks in a Multiplicity of Playing Styles

[FrogReaver]

I am not a fan of the car analogy. It assumes that different games are substitutes. That one might get you there faster, but that the other is more reliable. That's not how this fundamentally works. Different games get you to different destinations.

Nothing in my analogy suggested different games are substitutes that can take us to the same destination. Analogies have a scope. When you push beyond they scope they all fall apart because they aren’t identities, they are analogies.

That said I think if we are going to talk about the resulting playstyle(s) of a game then driving experiences between different cars would be the most apt analogy and for that it doesn’t really matter what the destination is either.

 

[Oofta]

I am not a fan of the car analogy. It assumes that different games are substitutes. That one might get you there faster, but that the other is more reliable. That's not how this fundamentally works. Different games get you to different destinations.

If all people cared about was getting to destinations we'd all be driving generic but reliable econo boxes or taking public transportation. Depending on the size of your family you might be driving a minivan.

How you decide what qualities of a vehicle are important is very subjective. There are some objective things you can measure from cost of ownership to how quickly the car can get to 60 from a dead stop. Other things like styling and overall design are highly subjective. My brother-in-law loves his Tesla but the unintuitive design of the interface and other factors leaves me cold. Literally. They had it set to 68, it was chilly when we borrowed the car.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Nothing in my analogy suggested different games are substitutes that can take us to the same destination. Analogies have a scope. When you push beyond they scope they all fall apart because they aren’t identities, they are analogies.

Xeno: Money is the engine of litigation.
Achilles: What? Money isn't an engine! My god, man, money is completely different than engines! Engines convert power into motion, whereas money, assuming you're talking about fiat currency, is only a medium of exchange issued by the government without any commodity behind it. Here, allow me to further illustrate my knowledge of these concepts ....
Xeno: You must be fun at cocktail parties ...

Something I’ve noticed in recent years … is that readers desire precision in metaphors and analogies, even though metaphor is — by definition! — not supposed to be taken literally. People seem much more interested in taking analogies apart, identifying what doesn’t work, and discarding them rather than — more generously and constructively IMO — using them as the author intended to better understand the subject matter. The perfect metaphor doesn’t exist because then it wouldn’t be a metaphor.

 

[FrogReaver]

Xeno: Money is the engine of litigation.
Achilles: What? Money isn't an engine! My god, man, money is completely different than engines! Engines convert power into motion, whereas money, assuming you're talking about fiat currency, is only a medium of exchange issued by the government without any commodity behind it. Here, allow me to further illustrate my knowledge of these concepts ....
Xeno: You must be fun at cocktail parties ...

Something I’ve noticed in recent years … is that readers desire precision in metaphors and analogies, even though metaphor is — by definition! — not supposed to be taken literally. People seem much more interested in taking analogies apart, identifying what doesn’t work, and discarding them rather than — more generously and constructively IMO — using them as the author intended to better understand the subject matter. The perfect metaphor doesn’t exist because then it wouldn’t be a metaphor.

It’s always good to ask the purpose of the analogy. For this particular one, it was because there is high emotional investment in defining what is quality in relation to rpgs and low emotional investment to the same in relation to cars. The goal was to pull emotion out of it so we could talk more objectively. For the most part that worked.

 

[Campbell]

It’s always good to ask the purpose of the analogy. For this particular one, it was because there is high emotional investment in defining what is quality in relation to rpgs and low emotional investment to the same in relation to cars. The goal was to pull emotion out of it so we could talk more objectively. For the most part that worked.

The fundamental problem with the analogy is that you are trying to evaluate the quality of things that ultimately serve different purposes as if they were fundamentally the same class of thing. A game that is built around individual player character dramatic needs with intersecting relationships between the characters should not be evaluated in the same way as a game built around group based adventuring. It's like trying to evaluate differences in quality between a boat and a car.

Quality can really only be fundamentally evaluated in terms of things that are fundamentally the same sort of thing. It will still be a subjective judgement because we all weigh things differently. That's why explaining our reasoning is far more important than the actual evaluation. When I read a review for a book or movie the actual score is pretty much irrelevant to me. The reasoning behind that evaluation will tell me far more than the actual score.

 

[FrogReaver]

The fundamental problem with the analogy is that you are trying to evaluate the quality of things that ultimately serve different purposes as if they were fundamentally the same class of thing. A game that is built around individual player character dramatic needs with intersecting relationships between the characters should not be evaluated in the same way as a game built around group based adventuring.

That was precisely the point the analogy made. That we can’t judge the quality of a Corolla and BMW and thus the quality of D&D and other RPGs the same way.

Quality can really only be fundamentally evaluated in terms of things that are fundamentally the same sort of thing. It will still be a subjective judgement because we all weigh things differently. That's why explaining our reasoning is far more important than the actual evaluation. When I read a review for a book or movie the actual score is pretty much irrelevant to me. The reasoning behind that evaluation will tell me far more than the actual score.

Exactly. That’s what we are saying too!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It’s always good to ask the purpose of the analogy. For this particular one, it was because there is high emotional investment in defining what is quality in relation to rpgs and low emotional investment to the same in relation to cars. The goal was to pull emotion out of it so we could talk more objectively. For the most part that worked.

The primary issue with analogies & metaphors on the internet (including this forum) is this-

The best use of an analogy is generally to explain. A good analogy can illuminate - if you've ever taught or tutored, you know that a skillful analogy help illuminate underlying concepts. Here, for example, the car analogy (and this is hardly the first time it has been used) is trying to get to the salient point- that design has a goal and an intended audience, and that "good design" does not exist in a vacuum. A person designing a broadly popular car will have different design goals than a person designing a performance sports car (for example). Even the idea of what is "broadly popular" changes over time- your use of a Corolla is slightly anachronistic, as the top selling vehicles in the US are all pickup trucks and SUVs/CUVs (in 2021, of the top 25 best-selling vehicles, 4 were sedans; #6 was a Toyota Camry, #10 was a Honda Civic, #12 was the Corolla, and #16 was an Accord).

Heck, if I was to use the car analogy, I would probably say that D&D 5e is a pickup truck (#1, #2, and #3). You can complain that it's poorly designed for most consumers because it's just being used to go to the grocery store and drive around and they don't need a pickup trick, but guess what? Maybe you should learn why people keep buying them, because if all you are doing is making hot hatches with stick shifts in the American market, you're not selling many vehicles.

Anyway, in my experience one of two things usually happens when you are using an analogy: (1) either the person doesn't get it (because there are people who just aren't great at analogies, very literal, etc.); or (2) the person will argue with the analogy.

The second is usually the issue- again, the purpose of the analogy is to try and explain a position. It is always a trivial exercise to argue with an analogy because (as you correctly noted) analogies are not identities. But if you're offering an analogy to explain, and the other person wished to argue, it will always prove unhelpful.

 

[Umbran]

That seems like a critique that could be laid against most anything. We rarely have an agreed upon measure for anything.

Yes! Exactly!

Are you bringing these points up to suggest that we shouldn't have this conversation? Because that's what it comes across as to me.

No. Just that these points should be realized as part of the discussion. It leads away from "I am right and you are wrong" and towards "Okay, so what are the essential similarities and differences in our positions, and what are the less important fiddly bits."

 

[Campbell]

Like this - I see this and think that Masks is thematically constrained, to use Campbell's own term.. Masks is designed to do teenage supers angst. And that's about it. It literally hands you a set of iconic figures for that in the character playbooks. Anything else requires a full rewrite of the playbooks, and when most of the genre/theme divers of a PbtA game are in the playbooks, that's basically saying that I have to write a new game. Heck, I looked at Masks and thought about doing Middle-age supers angst, and gave it up because I'd need all new playbooks.

To clarify my stance from earlier in the thread:

I'm not saying that Masks isn't strongly themed by default, but it absolutely can be extended in all sorts of ways. I just do not view it as less thematically constrained than D&D. I don't view angsty teenage superheroes as more specialized than ragtag group of adventurers of assorted fantasy races go off on adventures where they explore strange new environments and fight lots of things (mostly monsters). Like if I want to play a game that's mostly grounded in social intrigue with a much more elided timescale the class design of D&D is just as fundamentally inadequate from my perspective*. I also do not view Masks as fundamentally harder to extend or alter than D&D. Actually kind of easier. A new playbook involves a lot less design work than a new class in any version of D&D.

* Not saying the game cannot handle individual social intrigue scenes. Just that the mechanics of the game actively push away from a game where that is the focus.

Figured I would elaborate towards why : When a game gives you buttons there is a natural tendency to want to push the buttons it gives you. I found this to be a problem personally when attempting to use Mutants and Masterminds for an X-Men style angsty teen super game even though the players were all on board. The presence of detailed power writeups on players' sheets tended to focus player attention on the details of their powers and using them to solve problems rather than on the interpersonal relationship stuff we were trying to make the focus of play. The rules got in our way and pulled play away from our intended focus despite an xp reward systems that should be pretty good for this stuff.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Like if I want to play a game that's mostly grounded in social intrigue with a much more elided timescale the class design of D&D is just as fundamentally inadequate from my perspective*. I also do not view Masks as fundamentally harder to extend or alter than D&D. Actually kind of easier. A new playbook involves a lot less design work than a new class in any version of D&D.

* Not saying the game cannot handle individual social intrigue scenes. Just that the mechanics of the game actively push away from a game where that is the focus.

This was a point I made earlier. Its one of the reasons I'm not fundamentally a fan of class or playbooks as an approach to character design, but as you say, playbooks are easier to put together than at least most modern classes.