D&D 5E What is Quality?

[Reynard]

What is this, Facebook?

It's weird to assert a small, nearly irrelevant rule that most people don't bother with has a major impact on 5Es popularity or whether it is "quality." It would be like hinging the success of 5E on tracking ammo.

 

[Aldarc]

It's weird to assert a small, nearly irrelevant rule that most people don't bother with has a major impact on 5Es popularity or whether it is "quality." It would be like hinging the success of 5E on tracking ammo.

I'm sorry. Was I not obvious enough? Let me be clear for the humorously-impaired: I was joking. My joke was aimed at @hawkeyefan. Is my comment so weird in that light now?

 

[Helldritch]

Objective qualities about a physical product are easy to define.
Does it do what it is supposed to do?
Does it have a good expected life span?
Does it compare better than the competition?
And zounds of other qualities than can be measured such as : "Costs vs profits, amount of workers required, the materials needed (and their qualities), the energy required (electricity, steam), the dangers involved in creating the products (dangerous machines, chemical products needed to refine) and so on.

For an RPG. Some of the above can be used for the physical books. But most of the product is subjective by nature.
Art... subjective.
Rules... subjective.
Presentation... subjective.
The books themselves... Physical and this is the only thing which can be compared objectively.
Such as: The quality of the pages (whiteness, color holding capacity, roughness, lustrate, weigth and so on), the solidity of the cover, the way the pages are held together, the amount of pages, the ease of reference (index).

And if we stop at the objective parts only, we are literally judging a book by its cover. Which is something we do not want to do.

So to answer the OP, quality in judging an RPG is entirely and literally in the Eye of the Beholder. It is entirely subjective.
I know some movies that did not do well in cinema that are simply great to watch over and over again and some that won Oscars that I would simply fall asleep just starting to watch them. Some movies that cost hundreds of millions were flops and others that were on a budget made hundreds of millions in profits. So profits and sales are not necessarily a good indicator, but I do agree that it is one. But it is hardly the ultimate one.

 

[soviet]

What is this, Facebook?

It's weird to assert a small, nearly irrelevant rule that most people don't bother with has a major impact on 5Es popularity or whether it is "quality." It would be like hinging the success of 5E on tracking ammo.

Or positing that the success of a lavishly-illustrated, professionally laid out, extensively marketed, widely-distributed, giant corporation-supported cultural marker benefitting from 50 years of brand recognition is because of the game design.

 

[Oofta]

Lack of popularity does not necessarily indicate lack of quality. Saying that 5E is a quality product does not diminish the quality of other products, nor am I saying it is "the best" or without flaw.

I may make the best whatchamacallit in the world, but it may not catch on. On the other hand if I make a thingamajig in an environment where there are many alternative thingamajigs and it sells really well and continues to sell better every year, I think that's a measure of it being a high quality thingamajig.

D&D was not always the best selling TTRPG and there's no magic associated to brand names. Many brands that were once popular have disappeared into the history books. On the other hand 5E has seen double digit growth every single year since it was released a decade ago.

My definition of quality is simple.

• Does it meet the company's goals? Yes. It's exceeded expectations.
• Is it reasonably consistent, free of errors, internally consistent. Again, yes. There has been relatively little errata.
• Does it meet the needs of the people seeking entertainment? That's the difficult one to assess.

This is a game of entertainment. We can't look at crash test ratings, we can't look at nutritional value, we can't do a scientific analysis. All we can do is find a scale to try to determine if people believe it has entertainment value over the long term. Do a significant portion of people who buy the game continue to play it despite alternatives? Does it grow? For 5E, the answer is yes.

With the rise of tools like Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, if you want to play any TTRPG published, you probably can. If you want to find a group to play an older version of D&D, you can do that as well. Yet D&D 5E dominates them as well.

Sometimes what can be a fallacy is not a fallacy. Appeal to authority is valid if you are accurately quoting a well researched and respected source. Appeal to popularity ... is not what I'm really attempting, but when it comes to entertainment I do believe looking at a games popularity, and more importantly it's continued growth is one of the best indicators of quality that we have. That doesn't mean it's "better" than any other game, that's impossible to judge and changes from one person to the next. It's certainly not perfect, nothing is.

I simply believe that we would not see a resurgence of D&D relative to other TTRPGS, we would not see 10 consecutive years of double digit growth, it would not dominate online tools, if people purchasing the product did not view it as a quality product. Is quality of a TTRPG subjective? Yes. That's why you have to look at the effect of many people's subjective opinion. That's not always a good idea, for an entertainment product I think it's a valid measurement.

 

[soviet]

Let's settle this: whichever post in this thread gets the most likes is objectively the correct take.

 

[Morrus]

My definition of quality is simple.

• Does it meet the company's goals? Yes. It's exceeded expectations.
• Is it reasonably consistent, free of errors, internally consistent. Again, yes. There has been relatively little errata.
• Does it meet the needs of the people seeking entertainment? That's the difficult one to assess.

I would argue that you haven’t just described high quality, you’d described basic functionality. That’s the minimum standard you’d expect.

 

[Oofta]

One could - and just for the hell of it I will - argue that the quality of a(ny) piece of music can be objectively rated on two fronts: what degree of musicianship is required to play it well, and whether it is written and-or played in a consistent key at any given point in the piece (i.e. does the sheet music ask for a "wrong" note by mistake [or even intentionally!] and-or does the musician play one).

The perceived quality of the resulting sound, however, is in the ear of the beholder; and can be affected by many things including personal taste, the musician's choice of instrument, the sonics of the place/medium of performance, etc. etc.

I agree.

Voting - by any means - is an indicator of popularity, not quality.

But an indicator of popularity - especially ongoing year after year growth in popularity - is an indicator that a product developed solely for entertainment is entertaining. If it wasn't entertaining, if it was a low quality product it would not continue to be popular.

To go back to the example of the Rolex vs the Casio: is the Casio of higher quality because it outsells the Rolex 50 to 1, or is the Rolex of higher quality because it is better made using more robust parts and will - assuming neither watch is mistreated - almost certainly last for many years longer than the Casio?

The Casio is popular. The Rolex, however, is of higher quality.

Based on what? That the Rolex has higher bling rating? Because on all objective measures of functionality the Casio is as good or better.

 

[Oofta]

I would argue that you haven’t just described high quality, you’d described basic functionality. That’s the minimum standard you’d expect.

I would say that an entertainment product that is highly functional is high quality. There is no way to measure quality of an entertainment product objectively. We can only look at the subjective experience of the people consuming the product. Do people vote with their time and dollars and continue to do so year after year. That doesn't mean that entertainment that doesn't sell is necessarily low quality, just that you don't see ongoing success without a quality product.

It's similar to movies. Some movies have a big opening weekend and then tank. Some movies see a growing audience after release. That means that for a lot of people, the latter movie is a quality use of their time.

Or at least that's how I see it. Either you can't talk about the quality of an entertainment product at all beyond basic coherence and reasonable standard of editing, or you can look at objective measures of people's subjective evaluation. I choose the latter.

 

[Oofta]

I have to bow out of this for a while ... things got busy and I have a honey-do list. Oh, and a game this afternoon for what I, and apparently millions of other people, consider a quality game.