RPG Theory- The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World

[Campbell]

Oh the irony.

Mind unpacking this? I am trying to come at this conversation in good faith. I do not think I deserve that snark.

 

[FrogReaver]

Mind unpacking this? I am trying to come at this conversation in good faith. I do not think I deserve that snark.

Seemed an easier and more effective way to communicate that there's a handful of posters who do that more than any other and you tend to like their posts and often your viewpoints and theirs align. Thus, it was ironic that such a comment came from you. I pretty much agree with your assessment 100%, but it's one that I think is being directed toward the wrong people.

Unpacking this too much more is going to end up getting too personal so I think that's about as far as I'm comfortable unpacking.

 

[MGibster]

He also observed that one of the best ways to learn a subject it to kind of know it, and then to teach it. Having to restate it so that someone else will understand forces you to process it more deeply and completely.

I directly experienced this effect in graduate school giving lectures and from my time at a museum playing docent. Sometimes I'd be asked questions I didn't know the answer to and I'd do a little research so I could answer the next person who asked it. But even if I knew the answer, often times being asked to talk about it would help me think about it in a different way.

In the hard sciences, nobody teaches you how to teach. If you are a Teaching Assistant, they just toss you into the deep end of the pool. The first lecture class they gave me, they just handed me the text and said, "You've taken this course, so you know what's in the curriculum. Teach it." Feynman was a great support during that experience.

In the soft, well, I've never pretended history was a science, but nobody taught me how to teach either. "You know the subject. Just jump in there and tell them about it."

I'd still be teaching now, if academia paid anywhere near what I make in my current job.

I know how you feel. I'd still be working at the museum if I could have made a decent living.

 

[FrogReaver]

Critical Role??

I don't deny critical role positively impacts 5e's popularity - but it seems to me that critical role first chose 5e because of 5e's popularity (maybe I'm wrong).

 

[FrogReaver]

What does "doing it right" mean? That's just a tautology for it's popular. And why is it important to understand why it's popular?

I mean, if I'm buying a bike maybe popularity is relevant - it can be a marker of quality for price. (Of course, it can also be a marker of branding success.)

If I'm buying clothes than I get why popularity is important, because (except during lockdowns) clothes are a social thing, and fitting in with what's normal or popular is part of that sociality.

But if I'm buying myself a CD, why is it relevant whether or not the performer or genre is popular? Isn't what's relevant whether or not I like it, or think it's worth learning to like it?

If you think 5e D&D has cleverly solved a particular technical problem in RPGing, then tell me about that. But the cleverness of the solution is not going to be shown or explained just by pointing out its popularity.

It feels to me like you have the argument backwards. I don't suggest you 'care' about D&D because it's popular. I suggest the fact that it's popular means there's some underlying quality about it that made it popular. Knowing and understanding that quality is what I suggest you should care about. It may even be something compatible with the games you prefer. But shrugging off whatever that quality is as 'branding success' just comes across as dismissive of the game and the qualities it does bring to the table. I mean do you really think if your preferred games had better branding that they would be as popular as 5e? That's the fundamental disconnect I have with that position.

I do think D&D has solved at least 1 important problem - encouraging and allowing people to play together that share fundamentally different focuses and playstyles (obviously not all of them though). I'm curious, in some of the games you play can a player focused on optimization and mini-wargame-like tactics, a player wanting a relaxing beer and pretzels style game, a player that's focused on exploration and a player focused on play acting out and developing their character through play all sit at the same table and enjoy playing the same game together?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Should we consider anyone posting here to be "uninitiated"?

 

[pemerton]

shrugging off whatever that quality is as 'branding success' just comes across as dismissive of the game and the qualities it does bring to the table.

So here is what I said in my post: if I'm buying a bike maybe popularity is relevant - it can be a marker of quality for price. (Of course, it can also be a marker of branding success.)

And you describe that as shrugging off some or other quality of 5e D&D as branding success.

Can you see that, to me, that comes across as a significant degree of misreading, even projection? What I actually first had in mind when I wrote the sentence is that some people buy cars because of the brand. But in my post I was writing about buying a bike rather than a car. And the actual example from my own experience I was thinking of was buying a piano, where a better quality was available for a given price because a particular brand carried a premium.

But you take a parenthetical remark about what something can be as a dismissive remark about 5e D&D.

I mean do you really think if your preferred games had better branding that they would be as popular as 5e? That's the fundamental disconnect I have with that position.

Some people asserted that the only reason 4e D&D sold in anything like the volume it did was because it was branded D&D. I'm sure that's true. If Burning Wheel was branded D&D it would sell better than it does. If 5e D&D was branded (say) T&T I don't think it would sell in the volume it does.

It seems obvious that branding is not everything in 5e D&D's popularity. Branding is something, but not everything, in the popularity of Ed Sheeran's newest songs. But if - for whatever reason - I'm not really into Ed Sheeran, why would the fact that his music is popular change my mind?

I mean, whenever I see references to music on ENworld it tends to be to either classic rock or hard rock. I don't think I've ever seen anyone reference Rihanna, or Alicia Keys, or Andre 2000, or Doja Cat, or Olivia Rodrigo, or The Roots, to drop a sprinkling of names of performers I like and/or who I've seen recently in the Top 20.

Is there some secret essence to these popular acts that people who are really into guitar-based rock would appreciate it if only they took them more seriously? Or is it just a case of different tastes.

Do you think that there is some secret essence of 5e D&D that I've missed, and if I noticed it I'd suddenly want to play it? I mean, I never thought that about 4e D&D when I spent years being attacked by those who didn't like it for the fact that I liked it. Why would I now take that sort of suggestion seriously in relation to 5e D&D?

I do think D&D has solved at least 1 important problem - encouraging and allowing people to play together that share fundamentally different focuses and playstyles (obviously not all of them though).

Do you mean 5e D&D in particular? Is 5e different in this respect from AD&D? Most of the debates and discussions I see about playstyle clashes and compatibility in the 5e context (eg optimisers/powergamers/min-maxers vs character-explorers vs instigators vs follow-the-storyliners) all seem pretty similar to the same sorts of debates and discussions that were going on in the early-to-mid 90s.

I'm curious, in some of the games you play can a player focused on optimization and mini-wargame-like tactics, a player wanting a relaxing beer and pretzels style game, a player that's focused on exploration and a player focused on play acting out and developing their character through play all sit at the same table and enjoy playing the same game together?

Well obviously the answer for 4e D&D is yes, given that a significant subset of groups who do this with 5e also did it with 4e.

I'd be surprised if this has never been done with Classic Traveller in its 44 year history.

Marvel Heroic RP doesn't use minis (but then neither does plenty of 5e play, I'm told) but it certainly supports mathematical optimisation. And can be played relaxedly, and with an eye to character development, and with an eye on exploration.

Burning Wheel is going to be pretty demanding on a beer and pretzels player; and Prince Valiant has no scope for optimisation though a wargamer might enjoy its mass battle system. So that's 3 or 3-and-a-half out of 4.

 

[loverdrive]

So I don't know that the divide is worth going over again- but if a person self-identifies as a fan of something, then why not? I mean, who am I to judge? I thought this was the whole "high culture, low culture" thing we try to avoid.

Again, it's not about “high culture, low culture”. What I'm saying is, outside of the world of TTRPGs, it's unlikely that someone self-identifies as a fan of something doesn't have even cursory knowledge of other things.

I highly doubt that there is a self-identified hip-hop fan that never experienced anything other than hip-hop. It's just a highly improbable scenario.

I highly doubt that there is a self-identified First-Person Shooter fan who bought DooM in 1993 then Unreal in 1998 and never ever tried any other kind of game ever since. And, of course, been modding Unreal to make it into a completely different kind of game through all these years.

Self-identified D&D fans, on the other hand…

But I truly think that there are people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) who can't seem to understand that there might be aspects of D&D and 5e that are incredibly appealing and that the games are massively popular not in spite of their design, but because of the design. The whole, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."

Of course there are people who like D&D for what D&D is. I don't deny their existence. Hell, I'm one of them.

But I also can't deny the existence of people whose goals don't align with what D&D (or 5E in particular) offers. Haven't you seen such people? People who don't care for dungeon delving or slaying goblins or solving puzzles or committing war crimes in Neverwinter, actively avoid all the things that the system handles well and pursue areas where playing 5E is indistinguishable from playing a slovesochka, a game without rules? People who don't care for fantasy and get a hard on for CP, oh, wait, I mean Cyberpunk or modern days or wild west stuff? I don't know nor care if they are a majority of all D&D players or a tiny fraction, but I see them often enough.

Here on the enworld there is a bias towards old school and dungeoncrawling in D&D discussions, probably because it's only us old timers use forums these days, but take a trip to /r/DnD. Look what advice people there give or ask for. For me, it's clear as day that there are at least some people who would be better served with something other than D&D.

Spoiler: Like, seriously

 

[Aldarc]

Sometimes! I've played a lot of different games, and I don't regret anything. NOTHING!

But I truly think that there are people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) who can't seem to understand that there might be aspects of D&D and 5e that are incredibly appealing and that the games are massively popular not in spite of their design, but because of the design. The whole, "It's not a bug, it's a feature."

...and it seems bizarre to me that there is little effort spent on the elephant in the room; trying to come to grips with what lessons might be learned about why a particular game is so popular- is it truly just path dependency? Or are there additional reasons. That seems like a salient discussion. And it might also shed light on why D&D could never embrace some of the innovations we see in indie games.

Maybe.

This feels a bit like an earlier comment (maybe either @gorice or @Grendel_Khan) that talked about the veiled issue of how one is only permitted to talk about D&D or 5e in terms that showers praise on it while exclaiming it better than the rest. IMHO, it seems that anyone who needs their 800 pound market gorilla praised in that fashion - no matter what market or product we are talking about - has no genuine intention of engaging in TTRPG criticism or theory, but, rather, are fishing for reassurance for a fragile ego that their gamer identity is the best, usually on an ad populum basis.

I understand that Coca-Cola is a market leader in drinks and I understand why it is popular, but that doesn't mean that I will or should recommend it for everyone or in all occasions. For example, I probably won't recommend it to someone before they run a marathon.

Or likewise: 'MERICA! (Truck yeah!) The USA is the greatest country ever. Praise be the Flag of Flags. America can do no wrong. America is mother. America is father. American exceptionalism is the most exceptional! And so on. But it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans I have encountered either here or elsewhere who have little to no grasp (almost to the point of being offended) of the idea that other fully functioning non-American democracies aren't designed just like America is. The idea, for example, that the citizens of other countries have greater liberties or freedoms in some aspects than Americans is so anethema to American thinking and self-identity. It is so offensive to some Americans that America is not the best at everything. How could this be possible? They are the land of the free. They personally invented democracy in 1776. They have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights. How could other citizens possibly have more freedoms in not-America? (It's okay, I can say all of this as an American citizen, with special cred as a Southerner from Appalachia with both sides of my family living in America for 250+ years.)

That said, I sometimes encounter these sort nationalistic undertones with people (not the people currently talking, who are all smart, wise, and drink excellent Scotch I am sure) so invested in D&D as their game of choice. (It's a bit trite, but I'll point out that these undertones can certainly exist in non-D&D game communities too - I did mention the Cypher System and Fate has also been brought up before - but D&D is the 'Merica! of game systems.) I wish I could talk about other countries or games plainly without having to constantly jump through hoops to appease these fragile nationalist/factionalist egos.

I also don't think that most people who bring indie games up in discussion are trying to turn D&D into these indie games. These are people who often still play D&D 5e as D&D 5e or D&D-adjacent games in their own fashion (e.g., Pathfinder 2, Worlds Without Number, Black Hack, OSR Retroclones, etc.). In my observation, it has primarily been about showing that alternatives exist to how D&D or 5e does things, that differences exist in other games, playstyles, and/or approaches. It's not that D&D has to be like Burning Wheel, but, rather, it's to show that games like Burning Wheel exist with different game philosophies and approaches, particularly when it comes to GM/player authority dynamics.

Similarly, I don't think that the question of "why D&D could never embrace some of the innovations we see in indie games" is particularly interesting, because (1) the enduring popularity of the elephant in the room has already been widely discussed for decades, (2) I think that the reasons are fairly obvious at this point, which was only reinforced by 5e's success, so I'm not sure what that discussion hopes to achieve apart from inundating D&D (but really the exceptional people who chose D&D as their game of choice) with affirmative praise, and (3) I'm not necessarily wanting D&D to be more like "bespoke indie games." That I think that 5e D&D's design could be improved upon or tightened up should not be regarded as being synonymous with "D&D should be like indie games." Sometimes it means "hey, maybe 5e should have a more robust exploration pillar and play loop like D&D B/X did or Adventures in Middle Earth 5e does." Sometimes it means "hey, I think that D&D threw out some of its own greatest in-house design innovations and lore with the bath water as a result of the D&D 4e backlash."

Usually, if I point out alternative ways to what D&D does that D&D actually could incorporate, it's with other games that are more adjacent to D&D's own design philosophies and system architecture, often with heavily D&D-experienced writers (e.g., Shadow of the Demon Lord by Rob Schwalb, 13th Age by Heinsoo and Tweet, Pathfinder 2 by Paizo, Cypher System by Monte Cook, etc.) or even in 5e 3pp (e.g., Adventures in Middle Earth).

 

[Grendel_Khan]

IMHO, it seems that anyone who needs their 800 pound market gorilla praised in that fashion - no matter what we market or product we are talking about - has no genuine intention of engaging in TTRPG criticism or theory, but, rather, are fishing for reassurance for a fragile ego that their gamer identity is the best because ad populum.

I understand that Coca-Cola is a market leader in drinks and I understand why it is popular, but that doesn't mean that I will or should recommend it for everyone or in all occasions. For example, I probably won't recommend it to someone before they run a marathon.

Or likewise: 'MERICA! (Truck yeah!) The USA is the greatest country ever. Praise be the Flag of Flags. America can do no wrong. America is mother. America is father. American exceptionalism is the most exceptional! And so on. But it never ceases to amaze me how many Americans I have encountered either here or elsewhere who have little to no grasp (almost to the point of being offended) of the idea that other fully functioning non-American democracies aren't designed just like America is. The idea, for example, that the citizens of other countries have greater liberties or freedoms in some aspects than Americans is so anethema to American thinking and self-identity. It is so offensive to some Americans that America is not the best at everything. How could this be possible? They are the land of the free. They personally invented democracy in 1776. They have a Constitution with a Bill of Rights. How could other citizens possibly have more freedoms in not-America? (It's okay, I can say all of this as an American citizen, with special cred as a Southerner from Appalachia with both sides of my family living in America for 250+ years.)

This is such a good framework for the “Well D&D must be doing something right” discussion that I’m shocked I haven’t seen it before. The same exceptionalism and sense of almost occult mystery. At the risk of going even further afield it reminds me of people who proclaim that anyone who’s massively wealthy must be a genius and also worthy of respect, if not adulation. What’s that, his father owned an emerald mine? Tut tut! Even the born-ultra-rich must bootstrap themselves to greater heights!

Dismissing foundational and inherited advantages doesn’t just muddy the conversation. It posits a world where those advantages provide just a tiny head-start, and everything else in the competition is fairness and merit. That’s not our world.

And as others have mentioned, there’s the somewhat inscrutable but ultimately boring (to me) question of the power of D&D’s branding. Personally I think the influence of branding, and resistance to the notion that brand success might have nothing to do with inherent quality, ties into ‘Merica and Musk as well, but that’s obviously a bigger and even more off-topic conversation.