Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[Manbearcat]

This is simply not true. Marketing is a primary input for getting a consumer to desire a product... There are plenty of products whose marketing doesn't touch on their actual design in any way.

I'm not talking about "plenty of products." I'm talking about 5e specifically. I have no idea why you're bringing in "plenty of products?"

And you know this...because you go on to say the below...

Your're the one heavily implying (if not necessarily outright stating) that one of your 3 points is since 5e is the "nostalgia" edition then experience in previous editions somehow directly translates into automatic understanding/experience/authority to speak to 5e without having actually read the 5e corebooks. If I'm incorrect in what you are trying to convey with your posts please state plainly what it is you are saying.

Correct, that is exactly what I'm saying. I don't know how you go from this to what you've imputed to me above!

Read what I wrote to @Malmuria about gymnasts and climbing. If that isn't accessible, then apply something else where there is a substrate of general exposure, technical expertise, and mental/physical conditioning that is shared between two disciplines.

There is a reason why high school pitchers are often the QB of the football team.

There is a reason why skill position football players are often on the basketball team.

There is a reason why professional Mixed Martial Artists almost universally draw from a wrestling (at least high school, but overwhelmingly college) and/or kick-boxing background.

Rince and repeat.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not talking about "plenty of products." I'm talking about 5e specifically. I have no idea why you're bringing in "plenty of products?"

And you know this...because you go on to say the below...

I'm talking about you claiming their marketing (or any marketing) necessarily reflected on the actual design. You're supposedly a scholar of ttrpg's so I'll ask again, do you really think the design of 5e calls back to the actual rules and procedures of past editions? They were for the most part rules heavy and had plenty of prescribed procedures for gameplay (and this includes both 3.x and 4e)... 5e doesn't, it calls back to what people, for the most part, actually did with those previous editions during actual play. If anything I believe that is why so many people enjoy it and that is why it's so easy to pick up for many (they are creating their own bespoke game of D&D that runs the way they want it to)... but also why it gets so much slack from those who desire hardcoding or who advocate for procedures and system matters.

Correct, that is exactly what I'm saying. I don't know how you go from this to what you've imputed to me above!

Read what I wrote to @Malmuria about gymnasts and climbing. If that isn't accessible, then apply something else where there is a substrate of general exposure, technical expertise, and mental/physical conditioning that is shared between two disciplines.

There is a reason why high school pitchers are often the QB of the football team.

There is a reason why skill position football players are often on the basketball team.

There is a reason why professional Mixed Martial Artists almost universally draw from a wrestling (at least high school, but overwhelmingly college) and/or kick-boxing background.

Rince and repeat.

Ok so NOW we can discuss things outside of 5e to make points. I'd love to see some actual statistics on this. From my understanding there are a few QB's who played baseball and claimed it helped them... but if what you are claiming above we should see way greater numbers of cross-pollination in sports... and for the most part we don't. Also this could be chalked up to a greater general athletic ability in certain people as well.

 

[Manbearcat]

You're supposedly a scholar of ttrpg's

Seriously Imaro?

We're done. Donezo.

I don't have a single person on my ignore list. Not a one. I've never reported a single person. Not a one.

But I am so, so tired of this from you. You wrote upthread this:

Edit: Which is to say I don't automatically but instead at least try to judge what you are stating on its own merit... not sure I'm always successful and I probably come off more antagonistic with you and @Manbearcat than I want or mean to most of the time.

Just so we're clear. You do (and obviously you know you do). You have for 10.5 years now. You clearly don't like me. You routinely spit this kind of poison at me either directly or passive-aggressively like the above.

You and I are done. I am not engaging with you again.

 

[billd91]

Ok so NOW we can discuss things outside of 5e to make points. I'd love to see some actual statistics on this. From my understanding there are a few QB's who played baseball and claimed it helped them... but if what you are claiming above we should see way greater numbers of cross-pollination in sports... and for the most part we don't. Also this could be chalked up to a greater general athletic ability in certain people as well.

At the adolescent level, we very much do get cross pollination with sports. And a major reason that kids good with one sport are good with another is because of brain development. While each sport has its own specialty conditioning and skills, the maintenance of the regions of the brain responsible for coordination and movement performed through one sport benefit most of them.

 

[Hussar]

While true, that's a two-edged sword; watching a game in play can tell you some things that won't be obvious in reading, but it can also distort your sense of how the game plays at the table in either direction (i.e., people who have trouble with a particular game or it works for particularly well, or in more extreme cases, people that kind of have trouble with everything or will have a good time despite any fighting with mechanics).

Oh for sure. We’d need to observe multiple tables in order to make any real judgments.

 

[clearstream]

At the adolescent level, we very much do get cross pollination with sports. And a major reason that kids good with one sport are good with another is because of brain development. While each sport has its own specialty conditioning and skills, the maintenance of the regions of the brain responsible for coordination and movement performed through one sport benefit most of them.

To my reading, the initial resistance formed around something like - what's good for the gander is good for the goose. Ad arguendo, a person with strong experience in some RPGs will have specialty conditioning and skills that give them a leg up in most of them. I'm not sure that really dissolves the initial resistance.

That noted, my view is that contributions should be judged on the merit of those contributions, not on perceptions about the contributor. Perhaps they have little direct knowledge, but are unusually insightful? Or perhaps they come from a place that yields an unexpected insight... one not available to those with greater familiarity? I believe that this is especially relevant in debate on an internet forum, where after all folk can say whatever they like about their experience.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Perhaps they have little direct knowledge, but are unusually insightful? Or perhaps they come from a place that yields an unexpected insight... one not available to those with greater familiarity?

These definitely do happen. Not nearly as often as some people seem to think they happen, but they do happen. "Out of the mouths of babes..." and so on.

 

[ClusterFluster]

I have proposals for some terminology...

First issue involves the confusion over the term "story." Storys are patterned after beginning-rising-closing actions that often impart a moral. However, this does not fit the Sandbox style of game play, where it's said that you get a story out of the sequence of events after you've already finished your ordinary fishing trip--these are Tales, not stories, and the distinction needs to be made moving forward. A mere sequence of fictional events will never be a story, though they can still be entertaining as far as gold gathered, battles won, and bragging rights for solving peculiar critical thought challenges. This is record keeping, or lore keeping as you might prefer, but not story making. When talking about either/or in general, "Events" is fine.

Second issue involves the method of how the events in a given game even transpire. I've started with five categories:

Scripted:
There is an ultimate end point that needs to be reached, but everything leading to up that point is generally negotiable, though there are pre-loaded elements to interact with which are concerned with this end point. I'm borrowing from the idea of TV shows in particular for this idea, as a script tends to be revised a lot over the course of the show's existence. Any individually published adventure goes here.

Guided:
There is no ultimate end point, but there are lots and lots and lots of pre-loaded elements for adventurers to interact with as they go about their business. You essentially create alternate realities of this world through every group playing separately, with every group's next adventuring party. Published campaign setting books go here.

Note: The above two categories should only count when you use a super-majority of all the written elements (60% or more) as written and generally played in any sequence provided, but not when otherwise mining these books for a handful of ideas to use in other play styles.

Algorithmic:
Almost everything about each adventure is randomly generated, the pure sandbox style of play. I'm not aware of any sandbox materials yet that might offer something of what Campaign Settings do, but if those materials existed I might call these "Almanacs" which would present a loose grouping of thematic elements that won't have much of a hard-coded continuity, set of relationships, or schemes for world domination. Honestly, most people would prefer to use the random tables given in whatever counts for a game master's rulebook, anyway.

Rationale:
This category is most unlike the others for its permissiveness for the players to making adjustments to the game world or story. As far as I understand this, many games that claim to be "story games" fall into this category, as generally you're allowed to do almost anything if you can come up for a reason as to how you can accomplish your action.

Note: I get the impression that this latter category is celebrated for not needing GMs, but I think you could make the case that Algorithmic games can fit here too, if each player took turns rolling against a set of tables to generate a hex or dungeon room, for instance. Out of any category, this one is not my favourite at a glance, but I won't rule out creative sets of conditions where I might do so.

Fatalist:
This is railroading, where the GM has absolute law over the game, and events are not merely scripted so much as pre-ordained. If this were a historical period played out, all of the players get justifiably upset that they are just acting out the choreography of DB Cooper's escape and disappearance. Not much needs to be said here, as nobody likes this category, but it needs its own placeholder to help make sense of the others.

The third and final issue that I would bring attention to, is the idea of "winning" D&D versus "accomplishing" something in the game world. I'm not a big fan of the idea that D&D is only meant to cater to the mantra of "as long as everyone had fun!" because I'm skeptical that won't just lead to abuse by the players, creating the opposite problem of the fatalist GM. However, you do sort of "win" in games that have defined end goals like "stop Tiamat/Strahd in their own lair before X happens and they Y!" You also "win" sandbox games when you survive to amass enough gold to build a headquarters for that player, at least as written in the OD&D game. However, these are all accomplishments as a common ground, and more importantly it deescalates the hyper-min-maxing of characters that are simply made to demonstrate how "broken" the system is. Accomplishment still requires that your character faces uncertainty and risk, especially some mortal danger, and it takes the heat off of trying to turn every game into a rules lawyering tournament where nothing about the combination of your character's features makes any sense when put together because the chief consideration was the highest output of damage/healing/aoe/et cet.

 

[pemerton]

It's fairly interesting to me how some of what I have read about Ron Edwards writing about certain strands within the plurality of D&D's gaming cultures, isn't all that different from what OSR and FKR communities have talked about those same strands of D&D, such as how they speak of "Dragonlance" almost as a naughty word. Edwards, for example, emphasizes "folk traditions" in D&D while also resisting what can feel like GM-authored story railroading and D&D metaplots, whether their own or as supplied by an adventure path. If Ron Edwards wants to crap on metaplots in D&D, then he better get in line behind all the D&D fans on this forum who persistently crap on the various metaplots forced onto their favorite settings by TSR or WotC: e.g., Dragonlance, Planescape, Forgotten Realms, etc.

<snip>

for all the talk about how "Ron Edwards hates traditional gaming," it's amusing how many videos he has on YouTube where he's gushing about how much he likes Glorantha and RuneQuest.

And Champions.

 

[pemerton]

I'll make such a prediction now: most RPGers who are familiar only with D&D and D&D-like games will struggle at the idea of framing situations, and resolving actions, without resort to a map-and-key.

Why do you think that is?

If you're asking, what is the evidence for my prediction? the answer is the many, many posts and threads I've read on these boards, over decades, which illustrate the proposition. The details can take different forms - "Schroedinger's <whatever>", "quantum ogre", "living, breathing world", treating "sandbox" and "railroad" (ie two different approaches to the use of a map-and-key) as establishing a spectrum for all of RPGing, etc, etc, etc - but they all point in the same direction.

If you're asking what explains the struggle these RPGers will have with the idea of framing situations, and resolving actions, without resort to a map-and-key, that is harder. The most immediate reason that I would conjecture is that D&D leans very very heavily into map-and-key resolution except for some elements of combat resolution; but the way the combat resolution is presented and typically thought of (which is basically in accordance with wargame norms) makes it very very hard to see how those non-map-and-key elements might be generalised. This is compounded by the relative lack of importance of the fiction to D&D combat resolution except to the extent that the fiction is mediated via map-and-key (eg the positions of the combatants on a grid or other diagram).

Look at Apocalpse World as @Campbell has neatly summarised it:

The vast majority of the principles are going to be observed simply by observing the basic play loop.

1. When players look to you to find out what happens next make a GM move that follows. If they have not presented, you with a golden opportunity or rolled 6- on a previous move make a soft move (provide them with an opportunity to pursue something they want or threaten something they value). Otherwise make a hard move (irrevocable change to the fiction).
2. Ask the specific player the move was directed at What do you?
3. If the player's declared action fits a defined move execute those mechanics. Otherwise make a GM Move that follows.

The soft move / hard move dynamics plus be a fan of the player characters covers like 90% of it. That other 10% is going to be an important part of what distinguishes Apocalypse World from say Dungeon World, but most of the time if you internalize the play loop play will function just fine.

Two things that stand out, for someone who is familiar primarily with map-and-key resolution:

There is no provision for relying on the map-and-key to sidestep the player's declared action fits a defined move; and there is no provision for making a hard move because that's what the map-and-key tell you to do.

This is the fundamental difference between AW threats and fronts, and D&D map-and-key. As I posted upthread, I predict - based on the sort of experience I've mentioned in this post - that many RPGers whose familiarity is mostly with D&D struggle to accept these features of the AW "play loop".

Blades is specific in its play loop and guidance to a degree that, imo, makes it very hard for a lot of GMs to wrap their heads around, especially if it's your first storygame. When I first tried it about 5 years ago I was genuinely repulsed, and even years later it took me running Brindlewood Bay, and getting a handle on success-with-consequences being the default result, before I could work out how Blades both encourages and channels chaos in specific ways and phases.

I don't know how close BitD/FittD is to AW as sketched by @Campbell and elaborated on by me.

I'm curious if your challenge in coming to it connected at all to the absence of reliance on map-and-key ("notes") at key moments, which is a hallmark of both framing and resolution in much D&D but is foreign to AW and (I suspect) to BitD.

I can’t speak for @Campbell, but I view them as a fundamental part of the basic play loop rather than being “just” a constraint. They’re making a trade-off. It’s true you are giving up the ability to decide how a situation will play out, but in response you get to say whatever follows when you do get to say something. There’s no need to play nice and hold back.

I agree they're fundamental. I don't have a strong view on how helpful the notion of "play loop" ultimately is, but if we're going to use it, it then seems pointless to posit additional constraints as (i) external to it and yet (ii) fundamental to play. If they're fundamental then they're not external to the play loop, they're (at least partly) constitutive of it.

The bit about holding back is interesting. I think it can be teased apart in this way: I can (and do) play RPGs in which there is no "hidden gameboard", no map-and-key determining framing and resolution, and yet still have trouble bringing home hard consequences. The fact that the players bought into it doesn't, for me, necessarily make it easier.