Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[JAMUMU]

Fair enough. But again that becomes difficult because your only seeing half the whole picture. Which is often why we get such radically different opinions about things.

I wonder if the difficulty comes from a type of shyness. It's fine to talk about the rules/setting text, the "implications", as Dennis Reynolds might say. It's fine to pontificate about where a game comes in some ranking or typology system of the ttrpg. It's great to talk about abstract concepts and perfect applications of RAW and how other people are doing it wrong.

But the child-like openness that constitutes the act of describing "our" play and where "we" made mistakes and alterations and how that interacted with the rules text we're purporting to criticise, is to render the writer-critic vulnerable, and maybe that's not what people want to do. It's easier to man the barricades of whatever confected position, and dig in.

 

[Emoshin]

But I will confess to two things:

1) The tone on ENWorld is often bracing and combative. It freaked me the hell out when I first started posting. Any post can turn into a brawl at any moment—including moderators somewhat confusingly taking off their mod hat and wading in—and especially when they're about this topic. Hell, this entire thread is basically a thread about past threads. It's very possible I've adapted to that rough style of discourse without realizing it.

2) I'm a little thrown by how many questions you're asking about the basic nature of this topic, and the forum overall. To be clear, I'm absolutely not calling you a sock puppet, or even a sea lion—that doesn't make sense to me. But ENWorld is what it is, for better or worse, and it's not like there's some great mystery to be unravelled or peace to be made. People do stuff on the internet for all sorts of reasons, some rational, some not.

Here's one hypothesis: Perhaps my question-asking is throwing you off because you're so used to some sort of status quo of telling people how you think it is about them, instead of asking via polite inquiry how it actually is with them?

Another hypothesis: my question-asking seems excessive to you because I am over-compensating for said status quo, trying to find out how I can fit in this "combative" dynamic that is incredibly off-putting.

These are rhetorical questions btw, as I won't be engaging with you further until I see evidence that I should do otherwise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Can we use Vampire: The Masquerade first edition? Will anyone get up in arms if people use that game for comparative purposes?

How long do you think you can use that one before the phase "brain damage" starts coming up?

 

[Campbell]

How long do you think you can use that one before the phase "brain damage" starts coming up?

The last thing most of us (indie fans) want to talk about is that. I fundamentally don't understand why it keeps getting thrown in the face of people who did not say it. What's the healing that needs to happen on this issue for us to move forward and just talk about games? This honestly feels like getting into an argument with your partner and them bringing up something one of your friends did when you were in your 20s.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you're not familiar with RPGs other than D&D and D&D-likes, how are you going to contribute to any general analysis of RPGing? What evidence base would you draw on? What examples would you have ready to hand?

How any individual poster deals with the fact that they don't know much about RPGs other than D&D is their prerogative. But I don't see how they can insist on being taken seriously if they lack the requisite knowledge and experience.

But then again, that still gets back to a question of what other RPGs one has to be familiar with.

I mean, I don't disagree with your general point, but let's look at a working case. Let's say you have someone like me, but who stopped investigating in new games in, say, 1990. I'm not limited to D&D (in fact, at that point I hadn't played D&D for 15 years), but all the games I had contact with at all were trad games; barring some oddity, I wouldn't even have had the chance to hit much that wasn't.

Is that "sufficient" to participate in discussion? Its still going to bias my expectations, since I'd have had no contact with FATE (even Fudge was about two years off from my cutoff), PbtA, Cortex or any of the evolutionary works of the last three decades. But I'm not limited to only D&D; I have had contact with RuneQuest, Hero, GURPS and Traveler to use four commonly known cases, none of which are particularly D&D like except in the broadest sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The last thing most of us (indie fans) want to talk about is that. I fundamentally don't understand why it keeps getting thrown in the face of people who did not say it. What's the healing that needs to happen on this issue for us to move forward and just talk about games? This honestly feels like getting into an argument with your partner and them bringing up something one of your friends did when you were in your 20s.

You're assuming its the people on the indie side who I think would bring it up (though I've seen it done there, mostly by indie fans who dislike the source of that quote and will wave it around as a reason to disregard that person). But the point was, that system's particular history with the Forge and it origin is going to be a constant ghost haunting discussion, so is it really the best system to use as a springing off point? And more to the point, is there any system that can be used that's going to work there without running into similar problems? As someone who spent many years in that ecosystem, I can tell you that BRP fans can come out with their fists clenched sometimes (and that's not even getting into the internal "How much do we give a damn about Glorantha?" discussions).

I'm probably beating around the bush too much here; the issue I'm suggesting is that people in the RPG hobby unless they're very omnivorous tend to develop identity links with system, and at least some of them will get kind of soggy using it as a critical springboard. You see that a lot here with D&D because of the combination of how many D&D fans there are, and that this board is very D&D-centric, but I've seen the same phenomenon with any game system with a significantly sized fandom, and as soon as you're in a venue where fans of that particular system congregate, its progressively more visible.

 

[Manbearcat]

No worries...for the record I have some of your blades post saved and will go back to them if I ever run the game again. But the point I was responding suggested that dissatisfaction with particular terminology ("drift" etc) or a way of thinking about games represented a desire to erase those games from the hobby. I don't think that's the case, it's just this way of talking about games can be alienating, and if you (general you) is going to be an advocate for these games you have to be somewhat aware of that dynamic.

Totally different context, but similar dynamic: a few years ago I was getting into a lot of indie rpgs and I started following a lot of people on twitter. And for the most part that was a huge mistake! My timeline became full of misanthropy and drama, certainly against dnd and its players but also against any moderately successful ttrpg. Followed by tweets like "I'm literally BEGGING to try a non dnd game." Granted, it's twitter, and twitter loves petty drama. But it was such a bad look overall and not a good way to get exposed to new games.

I read you. I don’t Twitter or Reddit or Facebook or Instagram or any of it ( never have nor would I ever).

I’m pretty sure I put the offer out awhile back, but it still stands. I’m pretty game-crunched, but I’d gladly run a game (of Blades or something else) for you and a few others (no more than 3).

 

[dragoner]

I least I find bryce0lynch's reviews entertaining, and he is a cool person, partied with him at the murder shack by his house. Though really criticism has to have utility, to general, or philosophical, and it doesn't satisfy every player. Our table has very active in front of the story types, there for the dice rolling action, and having a beer and slice passive entertainment people.

 

[Hussar]

Well I guess we'll just have to chuck the entire fields of Linguistics and Anthropology, then.


You know, there's more than one person in the world, and they can communicate with one another. Oh, wait, we've chucked the entire field of Linguistics, haven't we? So much for that idea.

There's a little book from the early morning of RPGs, called Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds, in which a professional anthropologist joined a couple role-playing communities specifically as a participant-observer, and, you know, documented them, and even made some tentative steps toward theory. I'm sure an anthropologist today (or, you know, more than one) could handle live plays like Critical Role as a particular instance or variant of this human activity.

Are there people actively doing this? I haven’t seen very much.

I always found it very interesting that when we got a peek into WotC’s market research (grabbing random people from the street and watching them play DnD) they got very different results than what we often talk about.

 

[hawkeyefan]

How long do you think you can use that one before the phase "brain damage" starts coming up?

Well, I would have given it better odds than one reply later… but so much for that!