D&D 5E What is Quality?

[Ruin Explorer]

"There is nothing wrong with Inspiration, but here are the fifty ways that I houseruled Inspiration to fix it and make it useful." Needless to say, it sends all sorts of mixed messages.

That is painfully accurate.

You see the same defence of a lot of stuff, like in the adventure nomination thread there's a post which is like "Dragon Heist is unfairly maligned. I ignored its structure, rebuilt it with a bunch of connecting tissue, and changed the end and it was great!".

It's not D&D-specific either. You often see other RPGs with some significant flaws defended with "Well I don't have any problems at all with RPG X, I just apply [a bunch of house rules or some massive change to the mechanics] and its fine!". Hell that was a common defence of LFQW - "I've never seen LFQW happen at my table! Separately and totally unconnectedly here are a bunch of house rules and methods I use to limit the power of casters and buff non-casters!".

 

[DEFCON 1]

Did no one learn anything from this thread about why not to make these sort of arguments?

IME, the responses from defenders of Inspiration on these forums typically don't post to say "Inspiration is fine," but, rather, typically post something more along the lines of "There is nothing wrong with Inspiration, but here are the fifty ways that I houseruled Inspiration to fix it and make it useful." Needless to say, it sends all sorts of mixed messages.

And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with mixed messages? If someone has the impetus to decry Inspiration (or anything in the game for that matter)... they presumably are doing it just to vent. And once that venting happens, what difference does it make if people respond back saying they were wrong, for whatever reasons they have? Whether it's as-is, or whether it's because they have house-ruled fixes?

"This rule sucks!"
"Here's how to fix it."
"No, it still sucks, don't argue with me!"
"You don't have to listen to me if you don't want to."
"Get out of my thread!"
"It's not your thread, it's all our thread. If you don't want people to disagree with you... don't make a thread in the first place."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with mixed messages? If someone has the impetus to decry Inspiration (or anything in the game for that matter)... they presumably are doing it just to vent. And once that venting happens, what difference does it make if people respond back saying they were wrong, for whatever reasons they have? Whether it's as-is, or whether it's because they have house-ruled fixes?

"This rule sucks!"
"Here's how to fix it."
"No, it still sucks, don't argue with me!"
"You don't have to listen to me if you don't want to."
"Get out of my thread!"
"It's not your thread, it's all our thread. If you don't want people to disagree with you... don't make a thread in the first place."

Your post goes wrong immediately because you assume that the person criticising Inspiration "just wants to vent", rather than to discuss something.

The rest of it is a weird self-regarding fantasy as a result, and doesn't resemble any conversation I've ever seen, and is genuinely a little creepy.

The reality is, if you've seen to fit to house rule a rule, coming in and saying it's "fine" is unhelpful and misleading. Saying that you chose to modify it X way(s) is helpful, but there's no reason to claim something is "fine".

 

[DEFCON 1]

Your post goes wrong immediately because you assume that the person criticising Inspiration "just wants to vent", rather than to discuss something.

The rest of it is a weird self-regarding fantasy as a result, and doesn't resemble any conversation I've ever seen, and is genuinely a little creepy.

The reality is, if you've seen to fit to house rule a rule, coming in and saying it's "fine" is unhelpful and misleading. Saying that you chose to modify it X way(s) is helpful, but there's no reason to claim something is "fine".

What's the discussion then? As I said further up... the threads could be "I have an issue, what are some solutions?" and then a handful of people give their solutions, the person who had the problem takes them and says "Thanks!" and the thread ends.

But if the thread doesn't end... it's because that's not what people actually want. If the people begin arguing back to the naysayers who show up, it's because they WANT to argue back. They WANT to prove to these people who say their issue isn't an issue that they are wrong. Like what you and I are doing right now. You didn't have to respond to me... you CHOSE to, because you think I am wrong. And I'm responding back now because I think you are wrong. And because I ENJOY these kinds of back-and-forths... I will be happy to respond back to you again should you quote this post at all and retort.

If someone is going to discuss something... they have to expect and accept that not everyone is going to agree with their take even if they don't like the response or think it's "unhelpful" (as though being "helpful" is actually any sort of requirement, LOL). And if they don't like that... they either probably shouldn't post a thread in the first place OR just not engage with the people who don't. But believing they can make a thread where they decry something in D&D and the only people who also come into the thread are other like-minded people responding with "Yeah! That's right! Preach on!" is rather kind of silly.

If you don't want your opinion rebutted... you probably shouldn't post it here on EN World.

 

[Aldarc]

What's the discussion then? As I said further up... the threads could be "I have an issue, what are some solutions?" and then a handful of people give their solutions, the person who had the problem takes them and says "Thanks!" and the thread ends.

But if the thread doesn't end... it's because that's not what people actually want. If the people begin arguing back to the naysayers who show up, it's because they WANT to argue back. They WANT to prove to these people who say their issue isn't an issue that they are wrong. Like what you and I are doing right now. You didn't have to respond to me... you CHOSE to, because you think I am wrong. And I'm responding back now because I think you are wrong. And because I ENJOY these kinds of back-and-forths... I will be happy to respond back to you again should you quote this post at all and retort.

If someone is going to discuss something... they have to expect and accept that not everyone is going to agree with their take. And if they don't like that... they either probably shouldn't post a thread in the first place OR just not engage with the people who don't. But believing they can make a thread where they decry something in D&D and the only people who also come into the thread are other like-minded people responding with "Yeah! That's right! Preach on!" is rather kind of silly.

If you don't want your opinion rebutted... you probably shouldn't post it here on EN World.

The mods like to remind people that "it takes two to argue," and it's not always the naysayers who perpetuate or aggravate conflict in these discussions. Being an ayesayer about a rules issue doesn't make you any less argumentative than being an naysayer. Laying all the blame to people who disagree with a rules issue presents an unrealistic and lopsided account of how discussion transpires on these boards (or elsewhere).

 

[Campbell]

Here's the thing - 5e can be a good game while other games are also good. By framing quality as a popularity contest, you create an environment where you pit fans of 5e against fans of other games which pits those of us who are fans of multiple games in a pretty tough spot. Like this constant need some 5e fans have to sideswipe previous editions or other closely related games in completely unrelated threads makes no damn sense to me. It only serves to raise the overall temperature and rancor on these boards.

 

[FrozenNorth]

By its nature, D&D has to appeal to a wide range of players with mutually contradictory preferences. It has to be acceptable to beer & pretzels players and hard core optimizers, to dungeon crawlers and players who never leave the city, to old school characters-are-disposable types and to characters-as-virtual-avatars types, to I-roll-Persuasion players and “Hirrah, good sir, what info hails from yon hills?” types. It has to cater to both solo campaigns and campaigns spotlighting 8-players.

What is more, in reality, the above aren’t binaries, they are continuums. So one party’s optimizer is another party’s table stakes, and yet another party’s “user of cheesy tactics”.

All of which is to say, generally speaking, D&D succeeds at its conflicting missions well enough. A specialized RPG will generally outclass it in its specialty, hence the OSR movement, and heist-based games such as Blades in the Dark. But those systems generally don’t switch gears as well as D&D.

With all that in mind, IMO, there are a couple of conclusions to draw.

First, D&D is far from perfect. The fact it’s popular is irrelevant to the fact that as designed, there are missteps (even as admitted by the designers) and in many places, things are poorly or confusingly presented.

Second, and more importantly (to me at least), the rules are sufficiently simple that it is relatively easy to tinker under the hood without breaking anything (I also found this true of 4e). I have recently played others games that I liked but for which the mechanics were so tightly bound to the system that changing one element required tweaking 15 other rules.

 

[GreyLord]

I have learned that....as per the thread...

Walmart clothes are the highest and greatest quality clothes in the United States of America.

BBC has the highest quality TV shows in the UK.

And China is the highest quality nation on the face of the Earth.

All though the objective lens of the item with the greatest numbers equals the greatest quality.

(PS: This doesn't mean that these aren't quality or produce quality items, but I'm not sure numbers equals the quality. I think I'm purely in the camp that on things such as art, or taste, or other things, or things that are opinion based on design interests rather than rigid statistical objectives, quality is more subjective than objective).

 

[Irlo]

I haven't read the entire thread, so this might be repeating what others have said.

When I assess the quality of a game, part of that quality is accessibilty, ease of use -- that is, ability to find other players who know the game and want to play it, availability of game resources in stores or online, etc. In that sense, D&D's popularity is one aspect of its quality.

That's not objective. I'm sure some people prefer obscure games for the sake of their obscurity.

 

[Eric V]

The rest of it is a weird self-regarding fantasy as a result, and doesn't resemble any conversation I've ever seen, and is genuinely a little creepy.

Agreed.