Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[soviet]

Some of those feel almost intentionally set up to not align with the point - but the basic premise holds, one doesn't have to be intimately familiar with something to offer valid critiques.

My point is that all three are invalid perspectives, and the criticism they generate is worthless.

 

[FrogReaver]

My point is that all three are invalid perspectives, and the criticism they generate is worthless.

They aren't invalid. They may not be perspectives most of us agree with, but they aren't invalid. The criticisms generated may not be deep, but they do carry meaning. Knowing a film is a comedy with a boring premise that has bad reviews is meaningful information.

Just like knowing Blades in the Dark works fairly differently than D&D is also meaningful to anyone that wants to play something similar to D&D or that wants to avoid playing something similar to D&D. It's not earth shattering revelations - but it is still meaningful info.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Why?

Or perhaps you are eliminating the nuance of that particular argument - it's not one i recall from the era, but it's easy to get to a not-completely-dumb point from what you said - that healing surges can be viewed as providing far more healing during an adventuring day than an adventurer typically needed and that anything past that point might as well be infinite.


Presumably they have read what you said about them. Can they not criticize them based on what you say of them? Why would that be anything other than valid merit?

Healing surges put a hard limit on the amount of healing a character is capable of throughout the day, unlike every other edition of D&D where you can heal without limit via magic. The "critique" that was frequently put forth (on this forum, within the last year) was that healing surges were just extra healing on top of magic, which is just not true of the system in question.
It's not a valid critique because it's fundamentally incorrect, and it came up CONSTANTLY by people who had never read the book or played the system. You're right, it is very possible to offer valid critiques of 4E's healing surge system. But proper critiques comes from people who actually know what they're talking about and are not relying on usually incorrect third-hand knowledge.

There's a difference between a critique and an opinion. If you hear about a comedy with bad reviews and a premise that doesn't interest you, you can have an opinion ("I don't think that sounds like a movie I would enjoy"), but it's not a critique ("The movie suffers as a comedy due to poor pacing and inconsistent characterization as demonstrated by ABC and could have been made better by XYZ").

Opinions are valid and valuable, but they serve a fundamentally different purpose than critiques. And critiques and criticisms aren't the same things either.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So what about the 99% of criticism that isn't like that?

I asked @billd91 earlier for examples of prejudicial jargon, but neither he nor anyone else has offered examples.

I’ll ask you now… what criticisms do you have in mind?

Why?

I think the word invalid is a shade too far. But certainly less valid.

Generally speaking, first hand knowledge is going to be of more use than second or third hand knowledge. I’m sure we can find exceptions… edge cases and the like where somehow first hand knowledge was less accurate… but I don’t think we need to be as concerned about those.

When it comes to RPGs, I don’t think that it should be all that shocking to say that someone who has played a game for many years will have a more accurate idea of how it works than someone who’s played it for a few months, but that person will have a more accurate idea than someone who’s played it once, who likely has a better idea than someone who’s just read the book, who probably knows more than the person who’s read about the book.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Also speaking of conspiracy, who are they talking about on the The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread? It's making me a bit paranoid TBH.

Everyone

 

[Pedantic]

Healing surges put a hard limit on the amount of healing a character is capable of throughout the day, unlike every other edition of D&D where you can heal without limit via magic. The "critique" that was frequently put forth (on this forum, within the last year) was that healing surges were just extra healing on top of magic, which is just not true of the system in question.
It's not a valid critique because it's fundamentally incorrect, and it came up CONSTANTLY by people who had never read the book or played the system. You're right, it is very possible to offer valid critiques of 4E's healing surge system. But proper critiques comes from people who actually know what they're talking about and are not relying on usually incorrect third-hand knowledge.

That's just failing to answer the deeper, 3rd critique, which was "that looks like too much healing to deplete HP totals over the course of an adventuring day" contained in that first critique, which is correct, because 4e moved to a model of depleting healing surges and assumed most encounters would involve at or near full HP PCs.

Admittedly, I suspect that critique was mostly put forward by people who hadn't learned about wands of Cure Light Wounds, which further points to what was really going on, "this violates my expectations of the game's play pattern, and does so in a more obvious way than previous systems did," because 4e's design is significantly more decisive about its design goals and significantly less baroque than the edition that proceeded it.

That conversation doesn't happen very often though, as it would require too much introspection and empathy from all parties involved. You'd have to not only have the first party accept correction gracefully, but the second party offering the correction then to assume the critique was rooted in an actual problem, and both parties then strive to elucidate it.

 

[FrogReaver]

Healing surges put a hard limit on the amount of healing a character is capable of throughout the day, unlike every other edition of D&D where you can heal without limit via magic. The "critique" that was frequently put forth (on this forum, within the last year) was that healing surges were just extra healing on top of magic, which is just not true of the system in question.
It's not a valid critique because it's fundamentally incorrect, and it came up CONSTANTLY by people who had never read the book or played the system. You're right, it is very possible to offer valid critiques of 4E's healing surge system. But proper critiques comes from people who actually know what they're talking about and are not relying on usually incorrect third-hand knowledge.

There's a difference between a critique and an opinion. If you hear about a comedy with bad reviews and a premise that doesn't interest you, you can have an opinion ("I don't think that sounds like a movie I would enjoy"), but it's not a critique ("The movie suffers as a comedy due to poor pacing and inconsistent characterization as demonstrated by ABC and could have been made better by XYZ").

Opinions are valid and valuable, but they serve a fundamentally different purpose than critiques. And critiques and criticisms aren't the same things either.

Then to me all your critiques are mere opinions and all I ever do is critique. I hope you can see how 2 people operating on that same belief is going to go no where.

Telling me my critique isn’t actually a critique because it’s an opinion while having no basis preventing me from calling your critique an opinion seems very short sighted.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think what you mean is that if someone criticizes things you like in what you view as an intelligent way that you view as thoughtful and nuanced and that you haven't considered before (alot of caveats there) that you like such criticism.

So what about the 99% of criticism that isn't like that?

Depending on the subject and the nature of the criticism it can be like anywhere between about 5% and 90% that isn't like that. Most of those caveats are things you've made up that I didn't say, so I'm going to ignore those.

 

[FrogReaver]

Depending on the subject and the nature of the criticism it can be like anywhere between about 5% and 90% that isn't like that. Most of those caveats are things you've made up that I didn't say, so I'm going to ignore those.

I can't speak for @hawkeyefan but I kind of love it when people criticise stuff I like in an intelligent way (books, movies, TV, TTRPGs, etc.). Sometimes it's totally amazing, especially if it's really thoughtful and nuanced and brings up stuff I hadn't considered. Virtually everything has flaws and best to know them so you can deal with them, rather than to hide from them. I'm happy to admit the flaws in a system where they're inarguably flaws or limitations (again all systems have them).

For all to see that I didn’t make that crap up.

 

[Umbran]

I’d much rather discuss.

So, just to be clear, you did also just say:

I respond to criticism of things I enjoy with a counter argument of some sort, and back it up with examples of play that demonstrate the ideas I’m arguing.

Which sounds a lot like argument. So then we look at this...

I’d be very interested in hearing why someone would think that Apocalypse World is not a significant work in the RPG hobby that didn’t amount to just them not being aware of it.

And one comes to ask: are you interesting in hearing why, so that you can counter, or are you interested in LEARNING why, to get a different perspective on the topic?

That's kind of the difference between argument and discussion.