Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[niklinna]

The singular lens of trad/D&D play is valuable when applying analysis to D&D and trad play. It's less useful, however, when talking in generalities about TTRPGs on the whole or about particular TTRPGs outside of that sphere of play.

Always reminds me of how Noam Chomsky would almost exclusively use English to make broad generalizations about all human languages.

 

[Campbell]

Probably not. Which is why...

... such resistance makes sense, particularly if the posts suggesting such changes come across as (or are outright written along the lines of) "the whole game should change in this direction" rather than "here's an idea for your table that's worked at mine".

D&D (at least in its 1e-2e-5e versions) is IMO at its core flexible enough and robust enough to handle both a) a huge variety of different playstyles and preferences and b) any minor rules tweaking that might be needed to achieve these ends; and that most of its players/DMs aren't necessarily interested in exploring those different playstyles doesn't negate that flexibility's existence.

I already have D&D 4e, Stonetop, Dungeon World, Old School Essentials, Worlds Without Number and Pathfinder Second Edition. Why would I want 5e to change to suit my preference sets? I mostly just want the attendant styles of play enabled by those games to be treated with the same level of attendant respect as any other D&D like. Especially when it comes to sideswipes in unrelated threads or condemnation of particular techniques like collaborative world building.

The same applies to many other games. Not just indie games, but also trad games like Dune 2d20 and Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition which get cast off as "narrative games" as if they were not fundamentally built off the same precepts as other trad games.

I do not really care how anyone plays rather than hoping they find their personal bliss rather than be bullied (as I was when I was younger) into accepting norms that do not fit the play experience they are looking for.

 

[Aldarc]

I already have D&D 4e, Stonetop, Dungeon World, Old School Essentials, Worlds Without Number and Pathfinder Second Edition. Why would I want 5e to change to suit my preference sets? I mostly just want the attendant styles of play enabled by those games to be treated with the same level of attendant respect as any other D&D like. Especially when it comes to sideswipes in unrelated threads.

The same applies to many other games. Not just indie games, but also trad games like Dune 2d20 and Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition which get cast off as "narrative games" as if they were not fundamentally built off the same precepts as other trad games.

That's the thing. IMHO, the people who want to change the direction of 5e are typically the people who only play D&D - whether to turn it into an older edition or to make it into their D&D fantasy heartbreaker - and NOT the people who have other games that scratch those different playstyle itches.

Isn't that even why some of us get flak in 5e threads? The fact that we recommend people try playing other games rather than telling them how to drastically alter 5e into some other game?

 

[Campbell]

That's the thing. IMHO, the people who want to change the direction of 5e are typically the people who only play D&D - whether to turn it into an older edition or to make it into their D&D fantasy heartbreaker - and NOT the people who have other games that scratch those different playstyle itches.

Isn't that even why some of us get flak in 5e threads? The fact that we recommend people try playing other games rather than telling them how to drastically alter 5e into some other game?

Speaking for myself I generally do not recommend other games, even if that's the way some of my examples get taken. Generally, I am using structures or processes from other games as a way to point out how something may be made to work or to make a specific point about what is possible. Often when sideswipes are made or when in General RPG or General D&D how roleplaying games work or how the entire tradition of D&D is treated as if it were all contained within the 2e/3e/5e branch.

I actually believe that most people that are posting in the 5e section (at least the most prolific are incredibly well served by 5e). I certainly would not want @Lanefan to change the approach that has worked for him for decades. I would merely hope that he could find a way to respect that his approach is not the best approach for every play agenda.

Addendum: I would also say that I think players who orient themselves to more game oriented or Neotrad play within the overall 5e space tend to be not well treated by members of this board.

 

[clearstream]

I guess my contention there is that I do not view play in which the agenda, structure and principles vary from moment to moment as especially flexible overall. Basically, you are choosing from moment to moment which sets of tradeoffs you are willing to accept.

That's a reasonable view, and I think I have not put forward that those things should vary moment to moment. Rather they can vary cohort to cohort. For example, in our case, we played a string of six sessions applying my principles. I felt that to really understand it would need at least the same again, but we had agreed to rotate to MotW.

One particular one is if players are not given the right sort of cues as to what agenda is in play, they might not have a clear view of how to enable and support each other's play or how their moves will be interpreted to affect the game state. This makes approaching play from specific sorts of agendas damn near impossible. Specifically play centered on dramatic conflicts and skilled play priorities tend to not function well in such an environment.

That matches my experience. An initial hitch was making sure everyone understood the agenda. I'm not quite following you about "play centered on dramatic conflicts and skilled play priorities tend to not function well in such an environment." What environment are you envisioning? Do you mean one in flux, from moment to moment?

 

[Campbell]

That matches my experience. An initial hitch was making sure everyone understood the agenda. I'm not quite following you about "play centered on dramatic conflicts and skilled play priorities tend to not function well in such an environment." What environment are you envisioning? Do you mean one in flux, from moment to moment?

I mean in flux. In my experience they both require the ability to anticipate what sort of response you are going to receive for play to feel meaningful.

 

[Lanefan]

I already have D&D 4e, Stonetop, Dungeon World, Old School Essentials, Worlds Without Number and Pathfinder Second Edition. Why would I want 5e to change to suit my preference sets?

Because for the 5e-only player/GM (or 1e, or 2e, for all that), of which there are a great many, it obviates the need to learn a whole new system. (side effect: it also obviates the need to buy or otherwise acquire said new system)

And I'm not suggesting 5e itself (as in, the root game) has to change to suit any given set of preferences; rather, those with said preferences can change 5e through houserule, kitbash, social contract, and trial-and-error to suit those preferences, and due to its I-can-only-assume-intentional vagueness of design the system can handle it. Learning and adopting tweaks to a known system is light-years easier than learning a new one from scratch.

And I should probably note I'm saying this not as a defender of 5e specifically, but as a proponent of the general principle of one-size-fits-all big-tent systems.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Because for the 5e-only player/GM (or 1e, or 2e, for all that), of which there are a great many, it obviates the need to learn a whole new system. (side effect: it also obviates the need to buy or otherwise acquire said new system)

If someone is that uninterested in learning any non-D&D systems I'm not sure what they have to contribute to any discussion of game design/criticism/etc. Like hearing someone's take on writing when they've read one book, and refuse to read others.

Also, I just flat out don't believe that folks who refuse to look at other games are doing so for financial reasons. There are tons of cheap or free PDFs. People can download Mothership right now for free on DriveThru. That's not what's going on.

 

[pemerton]

Both the interpretation of the written rules into the game mechanisms, and the diverse exogenous rules that players bring with them into the circle that will inform their play.

This appears to be a restatement of the Lumpley principle.

As a non-formalist, when I see characterisations of play as "incorrect" I understand that to be normative rather than definitive.

Given that "correct" is a word used to express conformity to a requirement, and that "normative" means pertaining to requirements (norms), this appears to be a tautology.

No platonic ideal play exists to provide an objectively correct model.

I don't think anyone in this thread has committed to Platonism.

On the other hand, it seems fairly obvious that when (say) @Campbell refers to play of Apocalypse World as providing a play experience not available from (say) Gamma World, he has in mind a certain paradigmatic way of playing each game. The existence of, and reference to, those paradigms does not depend upon any notion of "objectively correct model".

I mean, maybe there are people out there playing Gamma World and getting the same experience as @Campbell gets when he plays Apocalypse World, but no one has provided a shred of evidence that they exist in this or any other thread.

I believe that it is reasonable to focus discussion on the normal so long as we know that's what we are doing, and - for the sake of glimpsing interesting alternatives - remain open to exploring play that from our perspective might be unusual.

As I just posted, where is the evidence of this unusual play?

evaluations (better or worse) are justified in the context of some given purposes, which means to remain open to different evaluations made in the context of different purposes.

This claim is contentious and I reject it. Not all evaluation has to be in an instrumental context. We can also judge the intrinsic value of things. This happens in other aesthetic domains. RPGs aren't, and RPGing isn't, special.

 

[pemerton]

the insistence that certain lenses (like distribution of authority) are the way to analyze RPGs at the exclusion of lenses chosen by D&D fans or others is a large part of what comes across as disrespectful.

Who is insisting on that?

Here are some "lenses" that occur to me, and that I have deployed over the years:

*Distribution of authority over the shared fiction;
*Method of constraining how fiction is introduced (eg dice rolls; reference to player-provided cues; map-and-key; etc);
*Techniques of action resolution;
*The "point" of an episode of roleplaying, that the participants are aiming for (eg simulationism, gamism, narrativism).​

The most common lenses I see used in relation to D&D play are:

*A combination of distribution of authority over the shared fiction with method of constraining how the fiction is introduced (typically presented as a linear/railroad to sandbox spectrum);

*The "point" of an episode of roleplaying (typically presented in terms of "beating the dungeon" or similar tournament-ish victory metrics, or else in terms of portraying the PC's personality in play).​

Do you have other lenses in mind?