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

[payn]

Sure. When we start talking 2 fairly generic games I think it's worth asking what one does different than the other that is driving it's success. Like, why has mcdonalds been more successful and continues to be more successful than most other fast food burger chains? Or getting back to RPG's. What's different about D&D and Savage Worlds and which of those things are propelling D&D's success over Savage Worlds?

I think its asking folks to give up their D&D for a new kind of D&D, as opposed, to a different kind of D&D.

 

[FrogReaver]

D&D, IMO anyway, is maybe more specialized than it seems. That's not a bad thing, but I think that people overestimate the ability of the system to comfortably handle just about any kind of game. D&D is indelibly combat focused by the nature of its mechanics and subsystems, so styles that don't emphasize combat to some degree aren't really using the system to it's best advantage. 5E starts to chug a little when it gets too focused on social interaction and/or exploration (if you'll pardon the three pillar metaphor), as it does neither of those things particularly well. It does them, and not even badly exactly, just maybe not well.

In fairness, for a lot of people it's probably easier to use a system they know for something it's only OK at rather than using a new system that handles it better. That idea, more than anything else, is what I think drives a lot of the D&D for every occasion talk.

I think that discounts the group nature of the activity to some degree. I mean getting together a group of 5-6 people all with various tastes - there's just not going to be a perfect system for most groups like that. I think that's where TTRPG theory starts to go astray. It focuses on a single individual and says I'll be the best game for this single kind of player without recognizing that it should be designed for the group and not the individual and that the group is likely not to like exactly the same things as one individual.

 

[Campbell]

I understand that my tastes are on the periphery and will remain so. The play experience I'm looking for requires too many stars to align to ever be mainstream.

I guess I just don't understand why I should care why something is popular or not. I care about my gaming experience and the people I play with. I like the stuff I like. I like discussing games. I get getting over that thing where you like stuff because it's not popular, but I have found my zen place where I can like popular stuff and not popular stuff equally based on what each brings to the table. I don't get why I should have to defer to what's popular. My enjoyment of Dune has nothing to do with how popular it is. Neither does my enjoyment of 5e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Exalted Third Edition, Dune 2d20, Blades in the Dark, or Apocalypse World.

I like 5e. I play 5e. I have been part of this community for more than 20 years. This insufficient fandom bit is getting real thin.

I don't need to come to grips with why 5e is popular. I have a pretty good idea. It's accessible. It's a damn fine game. I would not play it if it was not. It enables a very popular yet fairly limited set of playstyles that basically have a single failure point (the DM). If you have played CRPGs it's easy to transition into.

It's just not my responsibility to give a damn about why this game or that game is popular or advocate for other people's perspectives. They can do that themselves (and I want them to as vociferously as possible). I try to be fair, respectful and meet people where they are at. I don't expect anyone to use the same language as me, but I am going to use language that allows me to make my points and share my perspective without twisting myself in knots. I want conversations, often challenging ones. I don't expect people to describe the sorts of play I prefer in glowing terms. Most don't.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think that discounts the group nature of the activity to some degree. I mean getting together a group of 5-6 people all with various tastes - there's just not going to be a perfect system for most groups like that. I think that's where TTRPG theory starts to go astray. It focuses on a single individual and says I'll be the best game for this single kind of player without recognizing that it should be designed for the group and not the individual and that the group is likely not to like exactly the same things as one individual.

Well, to an extent you're mistaking my intent here, but that's perhaps on my brevity and not you. I was talking about the system in terms of let's play this kind of campaign session zero stuff, not what happens at the table with a mix of characters who have different skills. D&D does that bit just fine for the most part, and only start to slip a little when you have a concentration of characters and players who want a different game experience. Let me be clear, D&D is popular for a reason - it's a good game that does what it says on the tin. It's just not endlessly malleable, that's all.

 

[pemerton]

You assumed I didn't know what I was talking about

I didn't make any assumption.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

...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.

I think listing what 5e does well or successfully is definitely useful, but I feel like this might still wind up being a trap, because one of the quickest ways to start a war here is to try to define D&D's strengths and incentivized playstyles in anything but the broadest and most universal terms.

But I'll stop building this army of straw men and get on with it. And I'm going to avoid dropping caveats or throwing secret elbows, even though a lot of what I think 5e's design does well is also more specific and D&D-ish than some care to admit.


-Levels are fun: Video games fully appropriated leveling up, and then somehow the horrible influencers and self-help types followed suit, but leveling is a clear way to do progression.

-Everyone can fight: Though some fight better than others, and there are always those people obsessed with optimization, every class can fight. This is a crucial design element for D&D because of the game's emphasis on combat.

-Feats are cool: I wish you never had to decide between a stat increase and a feat, but feats are great.

-It's hard to die: I get why this is a huge downside for some people, but I'm not a fan of random and frequent PC death, so to me "easy mode" is fine, so long as the DM makes the game challenging in other ways and about more than combat. Fights can be easy (if only in the sense that they're survivable) while larger objectives are not.


And I think that's it, for me. But my criticism of D&D generally and 5e specifically has never really been about a huge number of design elements or mechanics that I think it does "wrong," but rather everything it doesn't try to do. I don't think it mechanically feels like any specific genre or narrative or activity other than "fighting fantasy enemies on a map" (which can obviously be a lot of fun), but I also don't think it provides the tools to do much more or different than that.

So as a tactical combat game that's simple enough to pick up quickly but with enough depth and progression mechanics to support combat-first play for a longer campaign, it cooks. And the system reflects the brand that it's maintained, and the tropes it's injected into pop culture, especially the ones that don't appear in any thing else (like forgetting spells). But as has been discussed to death in other threads, there are so many other systems that do other genres and types of narratives better. And the fact that a lot of people stick with D&D to do those other kinds of narratives is not, to me, a sign of 5e's design choices or excellence. I think that's about everything else mentioned by others in this thread (opportunity cost, name recognition, etc.). I think, to hopelessly scramble something you mentioned above, they're trying to hire Dane Cook to star in everything, including a period-accurate Mandarin-language wuxia epic...and not in a winking, ironic way.

 

[FrogReaver]

I didn't make any assumption.

Serious question, what's the purpose of this 5 word comment?

 

[Campbell]

I think that discounts the group nature of the activity to some degree. I mean getting together a group of 5-6 people all with various tastes - there's just not going to be a perfect system for most groups like that. I think that's where TTRPG theory starts to go astray. It focuses on a single individual and says I'll be the best game for this single kind of player without recognizing that it should be designed for the group and not the individual and that the group is likely not to like exactly the same things as one individual.

I have never gotten this perspective. I'm not looking for a perfect system. I'm looking for a game. I'm not making a long term commitment.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's just not my responsibility to give a damn about why this game or that game is popular or advocate for other people's perspectives. They can do that themselves (and I want them to as vociferously as possible). I try to be fair, respectful and meet people where they are at. I don't expect anyone to use the same language as me, but I am going to use language that allows me to make my points and share my perspective without twisting myself in knots. I want conversations, often challenging ones. I don't expect people to describe the sorts of play I prefer in glowing terms. Most don't.

IMO. You tend to do that fairly well most of the time. Maybe this thread isn't so much about how you in particular handle these discussions.

But about why care if D&D is popular, because presumably that means it's doing something right and understanding what those things are is important.

 

[pemerton]

I am saying that the label (be it "avant garde" or "bohemian" or whatever) doesn't indicate value

<snip>

Avant garde is a temporary status.

<snip>

From where I sit, you seem to be conflating, "there is value to be found looking in new territory," for, "being new is valuable." They are not equivalent.

I think you've misunderstood my point. I don't need you to tell me that avant garde is a temporary status. I made that point in the posts that you responded to.

My point is that what was once avant garde is now common place or even passe. But the people for whom it is common place are, in functional and social terms, the same people who once derided it as irrelevant or pretentious or elitist.

When I was a university student in Melbourne, eating sushi was unusual, even edgy. Today when I walk past a building site at lunchtime I'll see the construction workers eating sushi for their lunch. That doesn't mean the building workers are insincere in any way. But it does mean that I wouldn't take their judgements as to what is proper in food, and what is not, as a very good guide to what is possible or desirable.

Part of the genius (if you want to call it that) of commercialised mass culture is that commercial producers and publishers are able to take what was, at the moment of its invention (or, in the case of sushi, it's "discovery" by a culture in which it was hitherto unknown) controversial or derided as pretentious or elitist or irrelevant, and absorb that and use it as the basis for their mainstream commercial products.

It seems to me that RPGing is not fundamentally different in this respect.