D&D 5E What is Quality?

[delericho]

Quality is completely subjective, there is no way to gauge it so is pointless in really discussing it. The best you can do is identify what, to you, is quality and discuss why something is quality with those who share your views.

The thing is that in most fields there are ways that experts in the field use to judge quality. Literature is judged based on the use of language - things like imagery, ambiguity, and so forth. The quality of wine is judged by things like flavour notes and complexity. And in the Olympics the more subjective events are judged by experts who are looking for particular skills and techniques being displayed.

But the thing is that, once you get beyond the basics, for most laypeople the more nuances qualities are largely invisible - any of those Olympic athletes are so far beyond the rest of us that we just don't have the means to judge between a superb performance and a best-in-the-world performance.

But that doesn't mean that those nuances aren't there. Quality, by and large, isn't completely subjective.

With RPGs, given that it's still a fairly new field with fairly little established art, I suspect the markers of quality in design just haven't been established. (And, indeed, with D&D looming so large over everything else, there's a good chance that they may not be established - because it skews the entire question of what an RPG even is, everything else is pretty much defined either by how it compares to D&D or in reaction to it.)

So more or less the best we can say about 5e is that it is, indeed, a good RPG (and a good edition of D&D) - that sustained popularity basically proves that. But going beyond that, to questions of whether it's better than any other RPGs or editions, is hard to judge. By and large, we're just lacking the metrics by which to do that.

 

[Mercurius]

The irony of this thread is that one of the basic assumptions the OP is making - that popularity indicates quality - is being ignored by the OP in terms of the weight of popular opinion about the error in his thinking.

Again, popularity does not equal quality, but if you really think so, why are you ignoring popular opinion, @Oofta ?

And to add a bit of humor:

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Any argument that 5e DnD is a low-quality product will run into this counterpoint: if the game sucks so much that it fails to be a playable or entertaining game, why do people keep playing it? Popularity does disprove this: 10 million people can't all be wrong about what "fun" feels like to them.

Ackshulllly!

I mean, I agree on D&D and tabletop RPGs - they have to be at least basically enjoyable to keep people playing. Marketing and brand identity can keep them on top even if they're not much more than that, but they need that.

I would suggest however you can make a game that is neither playable nor entertaining that keeps millions playing. Not with a tabletop RPG, but there are mobile games which manage to manipulate systems of quasi-addiction, gambling rush, FOMO, and so on to keep millions playing week-on-week even though those people aren't necessarily having any actual fun. MMOs have also sometimes created situations where a game was fun, but then becomes a FOMO-enforced grind, which can keep people playing long past where they last had fun. WoW's population crash in Cataclysm, for example, was because it finally did this so hard, and became so unfun for normal players, that people simply stopped playing.

(Specifically if you care, Cataclysm did three things at once - first off, it made an extremely heavy schedule of "Daily" quests basically mandatory - you were expected to log in and do 20-25 quests (I forget) every day. If you did not, you fell behind on stuff you "needed". Depending on which quests were up and how efficient you were that was 45 to 120 minutes right there. Every day. On top of that, the new dungeons were vastly more challenging to do than the previous expansion, expecting heavy, precise, coordinated use of crowd control - something that had been barely relevant for close on three years at that point - and thus causing people a lot of grief, esp. more casual players. Finally, the raids of the previous expansion had been nigh-universally pretty doable, even for average players. Not so Cataclysm - the raids were punishingly hard and guilds like mine found that for the first time, we had to serious look at cutting mediocre players, rather than just actually-bad ones. People who would have been absolutely fine in Wrath. All these together just ground people down, and loads of people just logged off and never logged back on.)

 

[delericho]

1) A number of systems seem to be tacked-on and not fully integrated, and some of the decisions don't seem to be fully considered.

2) The definitely-optional systems and so on in the DMG are very poorly considered and constructed.

3) The design of the game overall, despite some really modernist and brilliant stuff like bounded accuracy and its attendant systems, is more retrograde than I believe it would have been had they not decided to make it an "apology edition" specifically.

4) Failure to address the "post-10" problem in any meaningful way.

One thing I find maddening about 5e is that the rulebooks both manage to be massively bloated and yet seriously lacking in some areas.

By which I mean that about a third of the page count is filled with largely useless material (mostly in the DMG), and yet the handling of the Interaction and Exploration pillars is limited at best.

 

[Oofta]

"I have to bow out of this for a while ..." lasted a whole 22 minutes.

Hey, you try moving several yards of dirt without taking a break now and then!

Oh, wait. I'm getting an ichy feeling on the back of my neck. It's as if someone is staring intently because I've exceeded my two minutes of break time.

Need to look into a husband's labor union. Anyone know any good ones?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One thing I find maddening about 5e is that the rulebooks both manage to be massively bloated and yet seriously lacking in some areas.

By which I mean that about a third of the page count is filled with largely useless material (mostly in the DMG), and yet the handling of the Interaction and Exploration pillars is limited at best.

Definitely, and it reeks of haste, as per Sam Clemens/Mark Twain - “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

In this case stuff that should have been edited down, revised, or removed just wasn't, and as you say, there's a surprising paucity of material for two of the pillars.

I'd also say that 5E's post-core setting books in general suffer by comparison with the best non-5E setting books of the current era. Spire's Strata and Sin for example are absolute masterworks of building totally playable lore and embedding hooks constantly (without even having to call them out). Sin is particularly remarkable in how often authors forgo ego and ensure the lovingly constructed NPC they have made has flaws and idiosyncrasies the PCs will be able to take advantage of, should they discover them. That the elite organisation of badasses has problems and is misguided in certain ways, rather than just being awesome. Such a stark contrast to the omni-competent villains/organisations one sees in so many RPGs. And closer to 5E, PF2 has some pretty great setting books, like The Mwangi Expanse, which whilst it occasionally falls into the failure to "kill your darlings" trap Strata/Sin largely avoids, just provides a tremendous amount of really playability-focused stuff that it doesn't feel like, say, SCAG or Theros really manages.

(NB the same adage re: length applies to about 90% of my posts, but hey I'm not being paid for them, nor published!)

 

[DND_Reborn]

The thing is that in most fields there are ways that experts in the field use to judge quality.

Any yet in most cases many experts disagree-- because again it is subjective. Few things can be measured in absolute terms where subjectivity is not an issue.

Literature is judged based on the use of language - things like imagery, ambiguity, and so forth. The quality of wine is judged by things like flavour notes and complexity. And in the Olympics the more subjective events are judged by experts who are looking for particular skills and techniques being displayed.

And even in the case where judges are given rubrics for scoring such things, they can still (and often do) differ. Five judges might see the exact same dive, and score can range from 5.5 to 7.5 for instance. It happens, especially amoung experts.

any of those Olympic athletes are so far beyond the rest of us that we just don't have the means to judge between a superb performance and a best-in-the-world performance.

Very true, which again is why nearly any discussion about quality is subjective. One person might rate a performance good, another great, another good, another fantastic, another best-in-the-world.

So more or less the best we can say about 5e is that it is, indeed, a good RPG (and a good edition of D&D) - that sustained popularity basically proves that.

While I agree 5E is good for what it is, sustained popularity has little to do with quality. Millions of people love fast food, but few would argue the food is "quality". Most know it is inferior but convenient, etc. so they eat it. 5E is what is "out there" to most people--so they play it. A lot of modern players are what I think of as "casual" players, and so have little interest in finding out about the prior editions, investing in them to try them, etc. but if they did, might find those editions to be more enjoyable to their preference of play.

 

[LadyElect]

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.

Is there not? There are certainly both pros and cons that come with having an already established brand and public opinion, but having an existing recognizability helps to draw more attention for whatever opinions may then form over its resurgence. It’s certainly a benefit over a brand starting from 0. No such thing as bad press and all that jazz.

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

And I don’t want to derail off into every analogue that may get presented here so I’ll try to extrapolate out the necessary generalities off this: First you have to present what those objective measures are for any X thing (timepiece or not). And then you have to approach the question: Is the benefit of this existing objective measurement still subject to opinion? Because no matter how far you need to drill down to hit the subjective analysis of a measurement, it trumps merely having that measurement for all purposes of determining an individuals perception of “quality”.

Quartz vs automatic, case and band materials, cost vs longevity, etc. It’s reductionist to try and limit your lanes of comparison for any object’s quality because someone will inevitably call another measurement into question, and that one may be the one that more importantly confers quality to them instead.

 

[Maxperson]

"Achieves basic functionality" is a level of quality. Not one normally to be praised (call it a C-) but a level above "lacking in quality entirely." Popular products rarely if ever fall below this line - McDonald's is definitely food, a Casio will stay on your wrist and display the current time, etc.

McDonalds is actively bad for you, even if it tastes good. If C- is what you are shooting at for basic functionality, McDonalds fails to hit that mark. A C mark for food should not be unhealthy.

Any argument that 5e DnD is a low-quality product will run into this counterpoint: if the game sucks so much that it fails to be a playable or entertaining game, why do people keep playing it? Popularity does disprove this: 10 million people can't all be wrong about what "fun" feels like to them.

As noted above. Something can taste good(be fun) and still be bad for you(low quality). And as I said in my last post, Little Caesars is a popular low quality pizza. The last time I had one, I had to double check to make sure I wasn't eating the box. The very, very low quality Little Caesars pizza is popular because you can get a large pizza for $5. That price alone for a pizza that size should tell you that despite the popularity, the quality is poor.

I'm not saying 5e is low quality. I'm just saying that popularity isn't the metric you should be using to determine even a C grade in quality.

Now, popularity is only a litmus test for this middling standard: you can't prove something is high-quality via popularity. But you can prove that it works.

I mean, you can eat McDonalds or Little Caesars for every meal, but if that's all you eat it's going to kill you. Death =/= working in my book.

"Eating McDonald's regularly — and fast food in general — isn't a sustainable diet. The 2004 documentary Super Size Me followed documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock as he ate three meals a day at the fast-food chain for 30 days. He gained almost 25 pounds and was told he suffered from irreversible heart damage."

"Researchers obtained 64 food samples of hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets, chicken burritos and cheese pizza from the chains. They found that over 80% of the foods contained a phthalate called DnBP. And 70% contained the phthalate DEHP. Both of the chemicals have been linked to reproductive health problems."

That ain't a C- grade.

 

[delericho]

Any yet in most cases many experts disagree-- because again it is subjective. Few things can be measured in absolute terms where subjectivity is not an issue.

I didn't say there wasn't a subjective element to it. My objection was to quality being described as completely subjective - because it isn't.

While I agree 5E is good for what it is, sustained popularity has little to do with quality.

When it comes to popular entertainment, I disagree - IMO sustained popularity does speak to at least a minimal level of quality. And, again, the counter-example is 4e, which had the same pedigree and backing as 5e, was initially popular, but then dropped off.