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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 9112119" data-attributes="member: 7030042">This comes across as willfully obtuse; D&D 5e might be the introduction to tabletop roleplaying games for the majority of today's 5e players, but I guarantee that they have been "exposed" to plenty of other forms of gaming, whether board games, card games, or video games. Remember, hobby TTRPGs - even D&D! - are a small slice of the game market pie.What is more, I guarantee the majority of today's 5e players have also been "exposed" to a wide variety of fantastic fiction, whether the most popular stuff (superhero comics and films, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones) to well-known genre fiction (Discworld, Harry Dresden) to older or relatively niche stuff (Michael Moorcock's fiction for instance).And I guarantee that the vast majority of those stories are about heroic adventure (albeit possibly "heroic" in the classical Greek sense) and don't centre themselves around logistics; they instead treat such things as "set dressing" or as an occasional plot-driving occasion (for instance, the plight of the dwarves and Bilbo as they traverse Mirkwood in The Hobbit). I also guarantee that was just about as true in the 1970s and 1980s as it was today. In how many Conan stories, I wonder, are Conan's heroic deeds and adventures (albeit possibly "heroic" in the classical Greek sense) the focus of the story, and in how many stories is the story focus instead "Conan carefully plans out his rations and equipment outlay for his upcoming expedition or risks starvation"? I can't say 100% for sure, but suffice to say I thiiiiink I have a pretty good idea!Little wonder, then, if today's 5e players have sensibilities about what heroic fantasy gameplay ought to look like that don't tend to include "did I remember to tell the DM I brought a crowbar?" as a meaningful part of gameplay.Finally, given the tenor of your post, I would be remiss if I did not plainly and publicly state that a game being popular does not make it bad (even if, in all fairness, it does not make it good).So, the below is somewhat of an exaggeration for comic effect, but... not much.[MEDIA=youtube]2sRS1dwCotw[/MEDIA]You come across as conflating your own personal preferences for RPG play with "objective standards" for play. That is not merely a matter of disagreement or agreement. It's simply incorrect, period.Bad AnalogiesSince you bring up a poor chess analogy in an attempt to lampoon my position, let's start there:There is no "genuinely better" or worse set of chess piece properties and legal moves: the "best" set of chess piece properties and legal moves is the set that people who want to play chess want to use - and right now, people who want to play chess want to play with pawns as pawns, rather than as queens.Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, the two largest D&D player bases want to either play a casual "kick in the door, kill stuff, get their loot, rinse repeat" game of heroic adventure, or play a player-character-decisions-driven-game heroic adventure (whether those decisions are narrative or mechanical - or both - in their basis) while having enough D&D-isms to "feel like D&D". At the same time, because of its market position, rich history, and reputation as a "big tent" game that ostensibly facilitates other styles of gameplay, there are also a non-trivial number of players who want to play D&D in a different way - but who still want to play D&D. Therefore, the "best" version of D&D is the version that best satisfies the gamut of preferences of people who actually want to play D&D while minimising rules confusion or conflict when different sets of preferences don't coincide. That does mean, of course, that the "best" version of D&D probably won't "perfectly" satisfy the gameplay preferences of any of its player groups, but on the upside it does meant that it can support a broad player base (as indeed it does).Likewise, the "best" version of Apocalypse World is the version that best satisfies the preferences of people who want to play Apocalypse World. I am quite confident that AW has probably done a good job on that score since its second edition, to the best of my knowledge, is far closer to what one would normally expect from an "edition" as the term is traditionally used in publishing than as the term has been used in the D&D-sphere. On the one hand, AW has the advantage over D&D of being more narrowly-focused, meaning it can more "perfectly" line up with its players' preferences. On the other hand, that does restrict the potential maximum size of its player base. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.)Your post wraps up with another poor analogy about hockey. Guess what? The D&D equivalent to a hockey player sharpening their skates and tying their laces so that they can play hockey is a D&D player remembering to bring their character sheet or the DM remembering to bring their notes for tonight's game. That is, you are trying to draw a parallel between "things that are a prerequisite to physically playing the game of hockey" and "something that you decide is worthwhile explicitly making part of the "foreground" in-game fiction as part of D&D gameplay". That is a false parallel on its face.In-Game LogisticsI had planned to go on at length about what are or aren't important goings-on in the in-game fiction of a D&D game, but have since decided to just get to the point:You insisting that "in-game logistics" are functionally or figuratively equivalent to real world logistics is factually wrong. Period. So is your seeming insistence that players must be obliged to attend to them on the basis of nothing more than your personal sensibilities.It is factually the case that logistics gameplay is only important in a game to the extent that players value it. This means that players who don't value logistics will eschew games that intentionally include or focus on it, and players who do value it will eschew games that exclude it - or that players will play games that tickle their fancy one way or the other as it changes.The kicker for D&D is that it happens to be in a situation where it is trying to appeal to multiple player constituencies who have diverging attitudes towards logistics gameplay. Assuming the game wants to make a good faith effort to make good on that appeal, it's faced with trying to make it so that these constituencies can all play D&D. I am sure it could do a better job on this score by cutting out the half-baked logistics gameplay rules it does have and putting together a robust-but-optional set of such rules for them as want it.Hobby versus ChoreAnother bottom line here is that there is a difference between a hobby and a chore.I can, for instance, find a sense of accomplishment when I finish a load of dishes or when I catch up on laundry. But I do not, and will never, do dishes or laundry for fun. I do not draw enjoyment from the act of doing dishes or laundry: I do them because I must, and if I could get a robot to do them, I would leap at the opportunity.By contrast, my late wife enjoyed gardening as a hobby. Gardening is not a game, so I wouldn't go so far as to say that she found it fun, but she definitely enjoyed the act of gardening in and of itself as well as the results of her gardening work. For my part, I do not enjoy gardening as a hobby. To me, it is a chore. Because it is not obligatory the way dishes and laundry are, I do not voluntarily garden. I do just enough to keep my late wife's favourite plants alive, and no more.In fact, I am quite certain that, almost by definition, one only engages in an activity in the capacity of "hobby" if one enjoys the undertaking of that activity in and of itself. Feelings of post-facto accomplishment by themselves are clearly inadequate to keep people in a hobby, or I daresay far more people would be quilting than actually are - or, for that matter, my old Blood Bowl miniatures would all be painted! - the activity itself must be enjoyable to the person undertaking it more often than it isn't.D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games are defined as "hobby games". So yes, it's fair to say that they aren't meant to elicit quite the same affective/emotional response as games such as Unstable Unicorns, Doom, or Charades are. But at the same time, they are games, and they are hobbies, meaning they ought to be enjoyable while you are playing them.What you come across as asserting is that playing D&D ought to be a chore for players who aren't you, that its rules ought to force such players to engage in gameplay they don't value and don't enjoy in order to "earn" some sort of sense of "accomplishment". Well, that's simply wrong. Instead, players should be able to engage in the gameplay they enjoy according to their own lights - players who find logistical gameplay rewarding should be able to indulge in it, and players who don't shouldn't be made to endure it. If D&D is in the awkward position of having to please player constituencies with very different views on logistical gameplay, that is on D&D, but I do think it's nominally possible and I hope WotC can continue to do a better job threading that particular needle as the years go by.All that said, I hope that's not your position and that I'm misunderstanding. But I fear I'm not.</blockquote>

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