Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[FrogReaver]

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.

From another perspective this is just another example in a long slew of examples of outright dismissal/disrespect toward 5e fans perspectives.

 

[pemerton]

adding heavy use of metacurrency to the system just makes my feeling in this matter stronger.

Anything beyond "what my PC thinks and does" is a nudge away from my personal comfort zone.

In BW and in MHRP, the function of "metacurrency" is basically dice pool manipulation (eg reroll 6s and add the successes; add and/or keep another die; etc). Or in other words it operates at the "roll the dice" stage rather than the "declare you action" stage.

Where does this sit, for you?

 

[FrogReaver]

Fair point, but only to a point. I still don't believe that just about anyone sticks with a single system for financial reasons, and the amount of time and effort it takes to wrestle 5e into other forms isn't any less than checking out something else.

I’m a tightwad. It would be a consideration. That said it’s more psychological than it is affordable.

 

[innerdude]

For my part, I generally consider any game that makes consistent, moderate or stronger use of "tags", "qualities", "aspects" or similar rules for descriptive phrases to be a non-trad game in my estimation. It's why I consider Star Trek Adventures to be such, despite many traditional leanings in its ruleset.

Edit: adding heavy use of metacurrency to the system just makes my feeling in this matter stronger.

* Puts feet up on desk and leans back in chair *

So this is where we get into the argument about just what exactly a hit point is and how much of it is a "meta currency" compared to other kinds of meta currencies, right? Because that's one of my favorites!

 

[Old Fezziwig]

From another perspective this is just another example in a long slew of examples of outright dismissal/disrespect toward 5e fans perspectives.

Aside from the fact that I don't think "[gamers] uninterested in learning any non-D&D systems" and "5e fans" are necessarily the same people, in discussions of game design wouldn't gamers who only play a single game and its variants be necessarily limited in their ability to provide useful insight beyond that ecoysystem? Certainly there're going to be some insights coming out of deep expertise that will be translatable to a broader discussion, but there are also going to be some limits to what contributions can be made.

 

[Campbell]

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.

I was responding to the notion that I am in any way trying to suggest that 5e itself needs to change to suit my preferences. Not one bit. I am also saying that the tent is not nearly as big as many people would claim it is. Proven by how much I have struggled against it as a GM for many years before finding the sorts of play experiences I was looking for. That it has an overall structure of play and set of play styles that it supports. That it is not a meaningful replacement for games with different structures. It is a phenomenally poor fit for the play structures I used when I ran 4e for instance.

The idea that it is somehow a suitable replacement for say Dungeon World or Stonetop which use a fundamentally different set of play loops is beyond the pale. Frankly I cannot believe that when I put forward the idea that games should be valued for the distinct unique value they provide, giving 5e and other trad games their flowers that it instead spawned a discussion of how these games do not meaningfully function differently despite 10+ pages specifically about how their play procedures were not capable of producing satisfying results for people who enjoy the sort of play experience 2e/3e/5e engender. Both of these things cannot be true at once.

 

[Thomas Shey]

* Puts feet up on desk and leans back in chair *

So this is where we get into the argument about just what exactly a hit point is and how much of it is a "meta currency" compared to other kinds of meta currencies, right? Because that's one of my favorites!

Just because I tend to find that argument a little disingenuous (even though I don't have a problem with metacurrencies myself) I should note its hard to call something a metacurrency in any real way when you have no choice as to whether to expend it or not. Someone playing Savage Worlds decides whether or not to use a Bennie; someone playing a D&D version doesn't normally have any player decision making that directly involves whether those will be extended, it seems a poor parallel to make.

If you want to argue level-elevating hit points in particular don't have a very good direct map to any in-character function, I won't argue; but they're not a metacurrancy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The idea that it is somehow a suitable replacement for say Dungeon World or Stonetop which use a fundamentally different set of play loops is beyond the pale. Frankly I cannot believe that when I put forward the idea that games should be valued for the distinct unique value they provide, giving 5e and other trad games their flowers that it instead spawned a discussion of how these games do not meaningfully function differently despite 10+ pages specifically about how their play procedures were not capable of producing satisfying results for people who enjoy the sort of play experience 2e/3e/5e engender. Both of these things cannot be true at once.

I'll go farther than that; its not a very good substitute with a number of other trad games, not at least without modifying it on pretty fundamental levels. The experience of playing any incarnation of D&D and pretty much any edition of RuneQuest is quite different, and that's even before you get into the play-cycle of the latter.

 

[innerdude]

One perspective might be that in this post you are now privileging whoever uses the most lenses- as if more lenses gets us closer to 'the truth', whereas in criticism a lens is not about 'the truth' but simply about a perspective. In either event, whether it's the lens itself or the person using the lens, the argument you present is one for privileging your position.

I suppose there's an argument to be made that the "trad 5e lens" is a highly effective instrument at explaining how Apocalypse World doesn't work. So it's always useful in that sense.

But there's a reason why Formalist literature criticism gave way to Historicist criticism in the early 1960s, which gave way to Deconstructionism in the late 1960s, which gave way to post-Marxist and Psychoanalytic theory in the 1970s, which gave way to New Wave Feminism in the late 1970s and early '80s, which gave way to New Historicist and Post-Modernist Cultural Critique in the late '80s and early '90s.

The "Trad 5e lens" is like a 1950s Formalist critic showing up today and telling everyone else that their new fangled literature critical theories can really all just be encapsulated in Formalism if you "just change a few words here and there to mean what we say they should mean."

The rest of the literature critics are going to think you're pleasantly misguided at best, and a laughably uneducated rube at worst.

So at risk of offense, yes, I "privilege" the opinions of those with an understanding of more than one methodology and approach to RPG play.

Somewhere in this thread there was a trad 5e player who started cataloguing "playstyles" as "sandbox", "adventure driven", "story driven", etc., but at no point did the poster question his or her assumption around the distribution of authority afforded to the GM--because he or she was unaware that there was any other conception of it.

As a post-Marxist, modern Deconstructionist with feminist and Psychoanalytic leanings, Formalism still has its place, and so does "trad" D&D, but can we at least stop pretending that understanding more than one mode of play gives license to accusations of "privilege"?

I'd also note that there are infinite lenses and asserting that 5e fans use just one is a mistake. They use multiple - albeit not the same ones you typically highlight. It's just their lenses/perspectives get dismissed (your post here is a great example of that in action). Going back to the perspective of respect, such dismissal and privileging of your perspectives is not a sign of respect toward them.

Sure. They use all the old Formalist trad stand-bys----the "D&D as sandbox" lens, and the "D&D as hexcrawl", and the "D&D as living world", and "D&D as adventure path", and the "D&D as Dungeon Delve", and "D&D as GM story railroad", and the "D&D as combat-is-sport competition", and the "D&D combat-is-war".

If y'all want to go pow wow on the merits of any of those "Formalist" D&D theories/lenses, by all means, knock yourselves out. Just don't come back to the Post-Modernists and neo-Marxists and tell us that anything outside your theoretical conceptions are null and void.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One perspective might be that in this post you are now privileging whoever uses the most lenses- as if more lenses gets us closer to 'the truth', whereas in criticism a lens is not about 'the truth' but simply about a perspective. In either event, whether it's the lens itself or the person using the lens, the argument you present is one for privileging your position.

I'd also note that there are infinite lenses and asserting that 5e fans use just one is a mistake. They use multiple - albeit not the same ones you typically highlight. It's just their lenses/perspectives get dismissed (your post here is a great example of that in action). Going back to the perspective of respect, such dismissal and privileging of your perspectives is not a sign of respect toward them.

I would think that this is a misreading of the thought behind the post it responds to. In ANY normal aspect of the world one would say that a person with more varied types of experience is almost sure to show a greater mastery of their subject matter. Certainly I would consider this to be highly likely in the realm of "how does this type of experience fit into the total landscape of similar experiences?" I mean, if you play nothing ever but 5e, sure I'll grant you may be more knowledgeable about that one game than someone who played 7 different RPGs in the same 3 year period, lets say. To say that that narrower experience can possibly compare in overall understanding of RPGs though? No, I don't think that's really supportable. Its not disrespectful to another to provide an assessment of their expertise based on a realistic understanding of what they have experienced. Heck, its the fundamental basis of team building in many disciplines, such as software development.