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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2398168" data-attributes="member: 10201">As reported, the "study" is no such thing--it's just anecdotes. We don't know the situation, the backgrounds of the players involved, the systems chosen, or, really, anything useful to judge whether this is meaningful data. Which is not necessarily an attack on Ryan--in his original context, i'm not sure his statement needed support. But the study is, nonetheless, pretty much useless as evidence without knowing more about it.Hypothetical One: a group of die-hard D&D3E players, who've only ever played D&D3E, are given a single copy of Buffy RPG 4 hours before the game session. It's unfamiliar to them, not drastically lighter than D&D3E, in an unfamiliar setting/genre, and only one at a time can actually read any of the rules. Hypothetical Two: a group of RPers with widely-varying experiences are sat down to play a rules-lite RPG. The GM is moderately familiar with the rules and setting, but one of the players is an expert who's been following it since it's earliest drafts, and a rules-lawyer to boot. This player is constantly correcting the GM on her "mistaken" interpretation of the rules, and just generally arguing every little point.Hypothetical Three: Several of the players have had a bad experience with a "killer GM" or really badly-railroading GM, and refuse to let any decision go unchallenged, unless there's a B&W rule supporting it explicitly.Hypothetical Four: The group plays a crunchy game in the morning, when they're fresh, and then after lunch does a rules-lite game, when they're a bit tired out. Or, the do the rules-lite game in the morning while they're still half-asleep (or hung over), and the crunchy game in the afternoon after they've really woken up.Now, i'm not claiming the study was as badly conceived as some of those examples, but at least some of those elements certainly could have been present. And several of them could've been there even in a good-intentioned, moderately-well-done study. Some of them also might not be recognized by the study organizers, especially if they had a fairly small sample set.</blockquote>

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