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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8941869" data-attributes="member: 85870">I suppose there's an argument to be made that the &quot;trad 5e lens&quot; 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 &quot;Trad 5e lens&quot; 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 &quot;just change a few words here and there to mean what we say they should mean.&quot;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 &quot;privilege&quot; 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 &quot;playstyles&quot; as &quot;sandbox&quot;, &quot;adventure driven&quot;, &quot;story driven&quot;, etc., but at no point did the poster question his or her&nbsp; 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 &quot;trad&quot; D&amp;D, but can we at least&nbsp; stop pretending that understanding more than one mode of play gives license to accusations of &quot;privilege&quot;?Sure. They use all the old&nbsp; Formalist trad stand-bys----the &quot;D&amp;D as sandbox&quot; lens, and the &quot;D&amp;D as hexcrawl&quot;, and the &quot;D&amp;D as living world&quot;, and &quot;D&amp;D as adventure path&quot;, and the &quot;D&amp;D as Dungeon Delve&quot;, and &quot;D&amp;D as GM story railroad&quot;, and the &quot;D&amp;D as combat-is-sport competition&quot;, and the &quot;D&amp;D combat-is-war&quot;.If y'all want to go pow wow on the merits of any of those &quot;Formalist&quot; D&amp;D&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 8941869, member: 85870"] I suppose there's an argument to be made that the "trad 5e lens" is a highly effective instrument at explaining how Apocalypse World [I]doesn't[/I] 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"? 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. [/QUOTE]

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