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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8458654" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, yeah.&nbsp; RPGs are not like Literature, or Engineering, in which we go to school and learn stuff in an organized fashion.&nbsp; We have people perpetually reinventing the wheel, because there's no systematic approach to passing along information.[USER=3029]@seankreynolds[/USER] used to have an article on &quot;The Breakdown of RPG Players&quot; which was a result of the 1999 WotC market research.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the site that was hosted on has gone away, and I cannot find another copy of it.However, my memory is that the cluster analysis of their survey data revealed 5 groupings - four of which mapped largely to the groupings you note here (I don't doubt that someone at WotC had read about the Fourfold Way), and a fifth, that was an admixture of the four.&nbsp;&nbsp; If I recall correctly, in fact the majority of players sat in the &quot;mixed&quot; group, rather than adhering strongly to any one aspect of gaming.Which is a different statement form the majority of campaigns being mixed - the statement from the cluster analysis is that most individual players DON'T have a single strong &quot;type&quot;. So... that &quot;may be&quot; is carrying a whole lot of weight there.&nbsp; This speculative construction is something we see in the dissemination of misinformation.&nbsp; &quot;Could it be that aliens helped build the pyramids?&quot;I can see why one would make such speculations - anecdotal observation suggests that people's tastes in, say, food, or music, is strongly influenced by what they are exposed to early in life.&nbsp; However, we can also observe a great many people can, and do, expand their palettes for various experiences over time.Thus, I lack confidence in the &quot;permanently prejudiced&quot; part of that.&nbsp;&nbsp; It would seem to me that this assumption is part of what makes the discussions so heated - since we assume people will be permanently impacted, there's a &quot;battle for the soul of gaming&quot; going on.Focus instead on how it is healthy to get people to try different things now and then, so that they broaden their palettes, and the territoriality can go away.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 8458654, member: 177"] Well, yeah. RPGs are not like Literature, or Engineering, in which we go to school and learn stuff in an organized fashion. We have people perpetually reinventing the wheel, because there's no systematic approach to passing along information. [USER=3029]@seankreynolds[/USER] used to have an article on "The Breakdown of RPG Players" which was a result of the 1999 WotC market research. Unfortunately, the site that was hosted on has gone away, and I cannot find another copy of it. However, my memory is that the cluster analysis of their survey data revealed 5 groupings - four of which mapped largely to the groupings you note here (I don't doubt that someone at WotC had read about the Fourfold Way), and a fifth, that was an admixture of the four. If I recall correctly, in fact the [I]majority[/I] of players sat in the "mixed" group, rather than adhering strongly to any one aspect of gaming. Which is a different statement form the majority of campaigns being mixed - the statement from the cluster analysis is that [I]most individual players DON'T have a single strong "type"[/I]. So... that "may be" is carrying a whole lot of weight there. This speculative construction is something we see in the dissemination of misinformation. "Could it be that aliens helped build the pyramids?" I can see why one would make such speculations - anecdotal observation suggests that people's tastes in, say, food, or music, is strongly influenced by what they are exposed to early in life. However, we can also observe a great many people can, and do, expand their palettes for various experiences over time. Thus, I lack confidence in the "permanently prejudiced" part of that. It would seem to me that this assumption is part of what makes the discussions so heated - since we assume people will be permanently impacted, there's a "battle for the soul of gaming" going on. Focus instead on how it is healthy to get people to try different things now and then, so that they broaden their palettes, and the territoriality can go away. [/QUOTE]

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