Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[Maxperson]

No one says that in the olden days those guys were not better than the average human, but Aragorn in Lord of the Rings does not really do anything the average human could not do

Aragorn literally uses healing hands, telepathy, safely(due to his superhuman willpower) uses the palantir, and commands the dead. In the movies he also uses animal empathy, another power of the numenoreans which he possesses.

 

[Micah Sweet]

i saw the hobby as a whole moving away from sim well before the 3e era. I won't speak of D&D specifically here because I wasn't involved in the period of the two AD&Ds much, but D&D lived in less of a vacuum disconnected from the rest of the hobby in the 80's and 90's than it does now, if anything.

Not addressing @Thomas Shey specifically here.

I think it's worth noting (since folks love to talk about how unpopular my preferences are around here) that popularity and validity are completely different metrics, and I have never told anyone they're playing "wrong" or that their playstyles are less valid than mine. Also, there are still.sim games out there, and people who play games in a sim way, as much as they can get away with. I use inspiration in my 5e-based games because my players like it, and as @Umbran says you pick your battles. I still have a strong sim preference, and would play more sim than I do if I could.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Also I don't think simulation per se is unpopular, people still definitely want some amount of it, even though they are satisfied with less than what @Micah Sweet wants. But D&D 4e was mostly rejected because it went too far into "gamism over sim" direction.

 

[Umbran]

i saw the hobby as a whole moving away from sim well before the 3e era.

Who among us really wants to put forth that our prsonal observations represents "the hobby as a whole" in any real way? Hm?

My experience back in the AD&D era wasn't sim. Nobody I knew played sim. We were 12 - 18, and wouldn't know "sim" if someone slapped it in our faces like a dead fish.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I don't actually think ot is particularly niche in a field of the niche. Everyone has a specific playstyle. Few are more niche than others. It is just that Micah is not shy about stating his preferences, which I think is refreshing in its way.
I feel as strongly as Micah in the opposite direction: neither immersion nor mechanical fidelity to the simulation are of any importance to me. I expect i am as niche as he, and that is tosay: not particularly.

I say this with some comfort in my assessment, but admitting I can't prove it: while perhaps not viewing the hobby as a whole, I think your position is significanly more common in the gaming populace than Micah's. It may well have been the inverse when I entered the hobby where a simulationist streak was significantly more visible.

Possibly. I don't have any particular skill at assessing the pulse of the hobby. But I do see enough people overly (IMO) embracing sulimulation and especially immersion to not feel like Micah is too much of an oulier.

While obviously I cannot say how representative they are, I do know (at least tangentially) vast numbers of people in the hobby who fit the category of non-forum-dwellers. My general takeaway on 'the pulse of the hobby' is that purity in all forms, especially fidelity to any particular grand theory that ends in a '-tion' or '-ism,' is the domain of us perpetually-online-and-overanalizing types.

I mean, sure, people do have 'but realism!' debates, and some of the other grand debates we have (martials vs. casters; should fighters be the 'I roll attack' class or have a bunch of tactical options; humans and 3-5 demihumans vs. the whole cantina), but overall both the debates and the preferences are much more... specific and situational. By that I mean that it isn't 'simulation' or 'immersion,' it's 'D20 vs. 3D6' or 'this game system makes ranged combat too good' or 'there are a million build options, but building to go first and drop one opponent is always the best choice' or the like.

So, in this instance, I think Micah's 'I care strongly about this theoretical underpinning of the game design' preference is going to be less-well represented than Reynard's 'I don't care strongly about them' position. However, I think in the next thread where we overanalyze that one epistemological underpinning of gaming that is the hill Reynard would die on, the situation would be reversed (because the grand majority of gamers also don't spend much time worrying about that one, either).

We all float like nerds down here.

In barrels? Down the forest river?
c'mon, with all the Tolkien discussion going on, you had to expect that one.

 

[Umbran]

But D&D 4e was mostly rejected because it went too far into "gamism over sim" direction.

With respect, I don't think we, the gaming public, have anything like a coherent picture of why 4e was rejected. Everyone has suppositions, which coincidentally tend to align with how 4e violated their personal play preferences.

If you have solid data supporting that, I'd like to see it.

 

[Umbran]

While obviously I cannot say how representative they are, I do know (at least tangentially) vast numbers of people in the hobby who fit the category of non-forum-dwellers. My general takeaway on 'the pulse of the hobby' is that purity in all forms, especially fidelity to any particular grand theory that ends in a '-tion' or '-ism,' is the domain of us perpetually-online-and-overanalizing types.

 

[Thomas Shey]

interesting way to phrase it when D&D is about 80% of the hobby…

Which is why it can afford to largely ignore the rest of the hobby. It used to be more intertwined with it back before 3e, probably because it wasn't assumed it was going to cover all ground (even though TSR had other games in other genres).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Also I don't think simulation per se is unpopular, people still definitely want some amount of it, even though they are satisfied with less than what @Micah Sweet wants. But D&D 4e was mostly rejected because it went too far into "gamism over sim" direction.

Its less about gamism than the fact modern gamers--and again, I think this trend started a long time ago now--have leaned into genre emulation rather than the kind of simulationism that Micah cares about.

(I know certain circles consider that the same thing but I'm not one of them).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Who among us really wants to put forth that our prsonal observations represents "the hobby as a whole" in any real way? Hm?

As I've noted before, I spent enough effort over enough time I'm fairly comfortable making a generality here, though not a universal. Other people can feel free to ignore me as they wish.

My experience back in the AD&D era wasn't sim. Nobody I knew played sim. We were 12 - 18, and wouldn't know "sim" if someone slapped it in our faces like a dead fish.

The fact I say it was more common in no way implies it was universal.