Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8824653" data-attributes="member: 86653">People keep talking about this or that being "fun" or this or that being "not fun." Hopefully we can all recognize that fun is entirely subjective. There's no right or wrong way, either something is fun for you or it isn't and there's no point in arguing about why someone else doesn't have fun in exactly the same way as you.Some people have fun playing games on easy mode, some people have fun playing Elden Ring. There's all kinds of genres, all kinds of styles of game (board, war, tabletop, video, etc), and there's all kinds of fun to be had. From Civilization on settler to Darkest Dungeon on Stygian.This thread is about the different types of fun. In video games there's the MDA framework, which stands for Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics. The wiki article is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework" target="_blank">here</a> and the article that put forward the theory is <a href="https://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.For the purposes of this thread all that matters is the A, aesthetics. Because, according to the MDA framework, that's where the fun is for players.There are eight aesthetics, as follows:Sensation (Game as sense-pleasure): Player enjoys memorable audio-visual effects.Fantasy (Game as make-believe): Imaginary world.Narrative (Game as drama): A story that drives the player to keep coming back.Challenge (Game as obstacle course): Urge to master something. Boosts a game's replayability.Fellowship (Game as social framework): A community where the player is an active part of it. Almost exclusive for multiplayer games.Discovery (Game as uncharted territory): Urge to explore game world.Expression (Game as self-discovery): Own creativity. For example, creating character resembling player's own avatar.Submission (Game as pastime): Connection to the game, as a whole, despite of constraints.Now, first off, this is a video game framework/theory so there will be some bits that don't line up perfectly, like the listed Sensation above. Imagine the 5E equivalent to that, which would be something like the DM's narration of the setting.This is a subjective poll about personal preference. The thread not devolving into arguments and finger pointing would be great.So the poll. Using the MDA framework and the closest 5E equivalent to these eight aesthetics, what are your top three choices of what's fun for you?</blockquote>

Verification