D&D 5E What is Quality?

[Minigiant]

Boy as a long time VtM fan, I can't agree with this enough. Just thinking about Obtenebration level 3 and trying to make sense of it (let alone all the arguments about it) is the stuff of nightmares.

Night clan. More like the Nightmare clan.

"Why can't you just play Brujah and punch stuff?"

Boy did we ignore and make up our own rules. I didn't think I know how to play by the rules it's been so long.

 

[Morrus]

I respond that millions of people disagree then out comes the retort "popularity is not quality".

Well, we should be clear about that -- popularity is not quality. They're two different things, with different meanings, and while they often coincide, they don't always. D&D is both popular and of high quality, but anybody who claims something is of high quality because it's popular is making a logical error.

So how else are we supposed to judge quality of a product other than how well it sells and meets or exceeds it's targets?

There are many ways to judge quality, some subjective, others objective, depending on the item in question. Art (including an RPG) is assuredly the former. A fire extinguisher or a medicine? That's very different.

I think in the case of a TTRPG you are not going to get a definitive, agreed measure of quality. Popularity assuredly isn't it; but there isn't one. The answer to your question "How else are we supposed to..." is "you can't, other than forming your own subjective opinion".

 

[GMMichael]

If a book uses "it's" when it should properly use "its," it's not quality.

Regarding D&D, 5e was supposed to be a lightweight return to 3e, given the pushback on 4e and popularity of 3e. But since lots of people liked 4e, they didn't leave it all behind. So 5e is a high-quality mashup of two earlier editions, but it's a low-quality offering of anything new and interesting.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is all about Pirsig's determination to figure out what Quality is.

Spoiler: it ends very, very badly for him.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

an inherently subjective idea of something being good.

Which is fine, but some people don't know what subjective actually means.

You can somewhat quantify quality, but people generally don't accept it and instead become snarky jerks upon you saying it.

 

[Helldritch]

If a book uses "it's" when it should properly use "its," it's not quality.

Regarding D&D, 5e was supposed to be a lightweight return to 3e, given the pushback on 4e and popularity of 3e. But since lots of people liked 4e, they didn't leave it all behind. So 5e is a high-quality mashup of two earlier editions, but it's a low-quality offering of anything new and interesting.

Hey! You summed it up quite accurately.
A combination of two or three editions.

But for the latter, I beg to differ. Bounded accuracy was a genius move IMHO and it may be exactly why 5ed was so well received. No more Xcell spreadsheet needed to calculate your bonuses and maluses to hit, save and damage depending on which spells work or do not work.

Concentration did also a lot of thing to contribute, but the mechanic could be better implemented. But it was a move in the right direction.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When you criticize something that I think works well, I don't think it's wrong to disagree.

It's wrong to attempt to claim that because it's popular, it's essentially anything but well, popular.

So someone says "5E is flawed in X ways"

and you retort "5E is popular, so your argument is invalid"

Then you're not making any kind of rational or reasonable argument, you're just attempting to stop discussion with an appeal to emotion, essentially. That being the irrational belief that popularity represents anything but popularity. There are more specific arguments where popularity might be used as supporting evidence, but the probative value re: anything but popularity is limited.

Quality re: RPGs is subjective. Period. End of story. This was one of the first answers you received. That fact, and it is a fact, remains. No amount of demanding people provide you a "definition of" or "way to judge" quality is going to miraculously transform the objective fact of popularity into the subjective opinion of quality.

EDIT - I'm surprised no-one has brought music into this yet (ignoring the "Classical is the best!" comment, which I think we should). That's a particularly great example of popularity not equalling quality. Otherwise we have to accept that Daddy Yankee, Ed Sheeran, and Zhao Xian are the greatest musicians who ever lived, and I dunno about you, but I'm not ready to do that yet lol.

 

[Yora]

"Well, there's Good and there's Not Good... This is Not Good."

 

[Quickleaf]

The 5e Player's Handbook has lots of interesting/useful rules & beautiful pictures, plus it has an index!

However, the binding fell apart & there are several rules hidden in sections that aren't intuitive for me and are not listed in the index.

While the class rules are streamlined, there are flaws with how certain parts are designed in the sense that the mechanics fail to reinforce the proposed fiction.

It's a great book. But obviously has some significant flaws.

 

[James Gasik]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is all about Pirsig's determination to figure out what Quality is.

Spoiler: it ends very, very badly for him.

How bad? Well it somehow led to the creation of Mage: The Ascension.