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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8624450" data-attributes="member: 71699">One thread of this discussion that I'd like to tease out could maybe be stated like this<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">through a GNS lense, gamism has as its agenda challenge or competition</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">5e is gamist, but dilutes that agenda so that it satisfies everyone but delights no one</li> </ul>These are consistent with a belief that system matters and mixing agendas must lead to incoherence. Satisfying everyone sustains its broad appeal, but no one sincerely loves 5e. An example of an edition that didn't satisfy everyone, but that was more loved by those it did satisfy, is 4e.I used the above to form some hypotheses<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Given gamism prizes challenge, I expect that people who like 5e will normally identify challenge as a key factor in their satisfaction</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Given 5e is gamist, but not delightfully so, I expect that criticisms of 5e will frequently identify insufficient challenge or competition as a key factor in their dissatisfaction, or they will call attention to their agenda and 5e's failings against it</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Given 4e delights while 5e only satisfies, I expect that will be reflected in more, but mediocre, scores for 5e, and fewer, but higher scores for 4e (or maybe I should predict they are polarised)</li> </ol>I looked at reddit, two videos, and an blog piece on why folk love 5e. I looked at reddit, quora and two blogs about why folk hate 5e. I collected ratings for three editions of D&D and six other titles from Amazon, and compared those with their ratings on rpggeek. This is clearly just a start on the survey they would ideally be done, but I wanted to report back here on my hypotheses.First of all, some folk attest to loving 5e. Key factors motivating their love of the game center on community, imaginative play, collaborative story telling. Many love the freedom to be another person. A few mentioned accessibility. A contrast to this was the blog piece, which opens with a statement that they have been criticised by their subscribers for being constantly negative about 5e, so they wanted to post what they like about it. Key for them were simplicity, balance, diversity of meaningful choices, and community factors including inclusivity.Some folk certainly do dislike 5e! Here I read criticisms around balance, monster variety, wokeness, DM discretion, narrowing of classes. More than one criticised trying to be everything to everyone, and doing nothing well (a complaint also in this thread.) Balance is certainly adjacent to challenge, but I did not find any critic citing lack of challenge as a key (or in my short survey, even one) driver of dislike. Nor did I find any articulating their own agenda and 5e's failings against it.Okay, so what of ratings. I first surveyed Amazon.com.5th ed PHB 40k ratings, 91% 5 star, 1% 1-star5th DMG 23k ratings, 91% 5-star, 0% 1-star5th MM 23k ratings, 91% 5-star, 0% 1-star5th core set, 12k ratings, 90% 5-starOn rpggeek 7.633 300 voters4th ed PHB 600 ratings, 76% 5-star, 2% 1-star4th DMG 300 ratings, 77% 5-star, 3% 1-star4th MM 300 ratings, 78% 5-star, 1% 1-starOn rpggeek 6.159 655 voters3.5e PHB 600 ratings, 85% 5-star, 1% 1-star3.5 DMG 400 ratings, 88% 5-star, 2% 1-star3.5 MM 300 ratings, 84% 5-star, 3% 1-starOn rpggeek 6.667 648 votersBlades in the Dark 800 ratings, 88% 5-star, 0% 1-star / rpggeek 7.839 135 votersMonster of the Week 900 ratings, 88% 5-star, 0% 1-starMork Borg 800 ratings, 89% 5-star, 1% 1-star / rpggeek 6.738 30 votersAgon 50 ratings, 64% 5-star, 4% 1-star / rpggeek 6.267 32 votersFiasco 200 ratings, 76% 5-star, 5% 1-star / on rpggeek 7.879 481 votersCall of Cthulhu 1300 ratings, 90% 5-star, 0% 1-starI feel this data doesn't sustain my hypotheses. So far as the ratings go, 5e is liked as much as the highest rated alternative, CoC. There is no evidence of delighted 4e players dragged down by a polarised group of haters. Many reviewers on Amazon wrote lengthy explanations of what motivated their rating. These are worth reading for any doubting that many players feel delighted by 5e - "My group and I were very excited about getting into DnD [5e], and it surpassed all of our expectations."There are going to be many ways to chew over, spit out and reason about this kind of data. One take is that 5e is successful in robust defiance of GNS's predictions. It's worth being aware however that there is a great deal of informed criticism elsewhere that is able to articulate 5e's failings... just not in a way that shows how 5e is gamist and being so makes it as appealing as it is.One reconciling thought I had was that perhaps gamist contains other important desires within it. A crucial goal of gamism may be to have expressive mechanics, that empower each player's imagination and creativity. Well architectured game mechanics often have a genius for expression. Additionally, mechanics can have a social consequence. Well architectured mechanics can promote collaboration and steer away from fractious behaviour (this is the focus of the emerging field of "player dynamics").Objective skill, challenge or competition are the circumstances in which traditionally the fair and expressive power of game mechanics has paid out. Perhaps it is the expressiveness of the mechanics and positive player dynamics, that are the true heart of what it is to be gamist all along*? Only in the past, we saw those things only through lenses coloured by mainstream masculine wargaming.*This is not a definition that would work well in a model where each agenda is to be in conflict with the others.</blockquote>

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