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Why does 5E SUCK?
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6667871" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>Want to do a post about this thread's drift toward complex vs non-complex. However, as usual, I don't see how I can abstract this into something pithy. So I'll just have at it and see where my mind takes me.</p><p></p><p>Disclosure purposes: </p><p></p><p>[sblock]I'm coming at this from a lifelong athlete. Played baseball through college. Football through high school. Still play basketball competitively. I've played pretty much everything under the sun, most of it competitively. </p><p></p><p>However, I have never refereed nor managed a game from a coaching perspective. It is basically the inverse of my position in running RPGs. I've always run the games while only playing in a couple of one-off sessions here and there (Dread, Cthulu primarily and a game of Dogs). </p><p></p><p>This likely colors my analysis some, but I think I've got a pretty fair glimpse into the nuance of refereeing/managing and the implications of rules design and their complexity.[/sblock]</p><p></p><p>With that out of the way, I want to compare TTRPG design to spectator sports. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to focus on American Football.</p><p></p><p>We've got four different parties at work here:</p><p></p><p>1) The referees - Gm role.</p><p></p><p>2) The players - Player role..</p><p></p><p>3) The managers/coaches - Primarily a GM role, but also a player role to a certain degree.</p><p></p><p>4) The spectators - For our RPG analogue purposes, these will be the people who are potentially interested in engaging with the game</p><p></p><p></p><p>American Football is at the uppermost level of complexity with respect to sports. Accordingly, the barrier for entry (group 4) is extremely high when compared to something like soccer/normal football. This is one of the primary reasons (there are others) that American Football is rabidly followed/adored by its relatively niche American fanbase while soccer is the "world's sport" (and not by a small margin).</p><p></p><p>The referees have an enormous amount of responsibility and impact on play, and this has only increased over the last 16 years (starting in 1999). They are responsible for managing a litany of mundane clerical items (line of scrimmage, line to gain for 1st down, various clocks and stoppages, etc). Also, they are responsible for a large number extremely nuanced calls that must take place at the speed of the game (which is frighteningly fast and in close-quarters). That nuance has only increased over the last 16 years and ever encroaching interpretation and subjectivity have been embedded into a massively impactful set of rules. A few examples are:</p><p></p><p>a) interpreting when a QB is tucking the football versus when he is actually throwing it (therefore when the ball is "live" should it come out of his hand).</p><p></p><p>b) interpreting when possession is established on a forward pass by a receiver. This one is truly a rabbit hole that has morphed and waxed and waned over the last 15 years. You can have multiple specialists view the same play and they will disagree, sometimes vociferously, on the outcome (eg what "a football move is" in the first place and if one was made...if the ball touched the ground/shifted before posession, inbounds, was established, etc etc)</p><p></p><p>c) interpreting if a QB is "in the pocket"</p><p></p><p>d) interpreting if defender impact upon a receiver was made with the "crown of the helmet" or with the "forehead/face" and where this impact was made with respect to the head/chin > shoulder > chest interface....and where on the field this occured. Also interpreting when (with respect to the time from the beginning of the catch to the defender's impact on the offender) this occurred and if "the receiver was defenseless". </p><p></p><p>There are dozens more, but a - d are sufficient for our purposes. The rules language that create determinants for adjudication is not terribly precise. It aimed to be sensible and helpful, but in practice it doesn't work out as such. This has a pretty severe effect on groups 2 - 4 above.</p><p></p><p>2) <strong>Players</strong>: Players have an enormouse number of vectors to consider both during the lead-up to the game (gameplanning and practice), pre-snap, and during the play. They must understand not only the general rules of the game but they also have to understand the nuance of the very specific subset of rules that govern play at their position and how those rules interface with the other rules. They have to understand their own playbook. They have to have ingested the other teams tendencies and system during the week's gameplanning. They have to understand their game-specific (which will change subtley from week to week) responsibilies and "read their keys" (information that will guide them through their personal OODA Loop during play). It is an enormous amount to digest creating a situation where each player's mental overhead is VAST.</p><p></p><p>Finally, they have to deal with the "human element" and the growing subjectivity embedded into the rules. Resultantly, they try to develop relationships with officials to potentially affect outcomes. They have to try to understand a particular official's tendency to interpret that rules nuance and/or "see" it manifest on the field and throw a flag (call a penalty). This can be utterly maddening because you can be sure that you were within the rules (and you may very well have been), but the official interpreted it differently or "saw something that wasn't there" and suddenly you have a huge game-changing penalty where you have made the correct play (perhaps even a play that should be game-changing in your favor) but you and your team are now punished. </p><p></p><p>You could call it a "loss of agency" to use familiar RPG terminology.</p><p></p><p>3) <strong>Managers/coaches</strong>: They suffer from a lot of the same issues as players except their "agency" has some not so subtle differences. Game-planning, play-calling, and in-game management (clock, adjustments, crucial decisions) are central to their role. These things are all dynamically affected by the complexity of the rule system and by the (increasingly) interpretive nature of some of the rules.</p><p></p><p>They have a different sort of "information juggling" and "mental overhead" as individual players do, but it is no less severe. Further, they're subjected as much (not on an individual level as the penalties arent' being called on them) by complex rules (especially where the concrete rules interface with the interpretive rules and the utter punitive fallout when a call is either missed or made incorrectly).</p><p></p><p>4) <strong>The spectators (or prospective participants)</strong>: As one can surmise, the entry to being a fan/participant of American Football is very, very, very steep. The cognitive workload is daunting. One must ingest an enormous amount of rules information, one must deal with an enormous amount of responsibility (play-in and play-out) that must be within those rules, and, finally, you're subjected to the "human element" of interpretive rules language which can utterly change a game (not just from neutral to bad but possiblly from good to bad), demoralizing you and your team.</p><p></p><p>This is made doubly maddening when you consider that a healthy part of the success of American Football is predicated upon spectator gambling!</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>Contrast all of the above with soccer. There are a jillion less rules (both concrete and interpretive), therefore a jillion less rules intersections, a jillion less cognitive workload by all of the participants (therefore much more shallow entry), and where the rules are interpretive it is not very significant (nor very interpretive) such that player agency isn't potentially subverted (therefore leading to frustration, disinterest, or demoralization). Yes, you'll get the stray situation where something should or shouldn't have been a card or you'll get the VERY, VERY stray foul or bad touch (hand) on the perimiter of the box. That is about it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 6667871, member: 6696971"] Want to do a post about this thread's drift toward complex vs non-complex. However, as usual, I don't see how I can abstract this into something pithy. So I'll just have at it and see where my mind takes me. Disclosure purposes: [sblock]I'm coming at this from a lifelong athlete. Played baseball through college. Football through high school. Still play basketball competitively. I've played pretty much everything under the sun, most of it competitively. However, I have never refereed nor managed a game from a coaching perspective. It is basically the inverse of my position in running RPGs. I've always run the games while only playing in a couple of one-off sessions here and there (Dread, Cthulu primarily and a game of Dogs). This likely colors my analysis some, but I think I've got a pretty fair glimpse into the nuance of refereeing/managing and the implications of rules design and their complexity.[/sblock] With that out of the way, I want to compare TTRPG design to spectator sports. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to focus on American Football. We've got four different parties at work here: 1) The referees - Gm role. 2) The players - Player role.. 3) The managers/coaches - Primarily a GM role, but also a player role to a certain degree. 4) The spectators - For our RPG analogue purposes, these will be the people who are potentially interested in engaging with the game American Football is at the uppermost level of complexity with respect to sports. Accordingly, the barrier for entry (group 4) is extremely high when compared to something like soccer/normal football. This is one of the primary reasons (there are others) that American Football is rabidly followed/adored by its relatively niche American fanbase while soccer is the "world's sport" (and not by a small margin). The referees have an enormous amount of responsibility and impact on play, and this has only increased over the last 16 years (starting in 1999). They are responsible for managing a litany of mundane clerical items (line of scrimmage, line to gain for 1st down, various clocks and stoppages, etc). Also, they are responsible for a large number extremely nuanced calls that must take place at the speed of the game (which is frighteningly fast and in close-quarters). That nuance has only increased over the last 16 years and ever encroaching interpretation and subjectivity have been embedded into a massively impactful set of rules. A few examples are: a) interpreting when a QB is tucking the football versus when he is actually throwing it (therefore when the ball is "live" should it come out of his hand). b) interpreting when possession is established on a forward pass by a receiver. This one is truly a rabbit hole that has morphed and waxed and waned over the last 15 years. You can have multiple specialists view the same play and they will disagree, sometimes vociferously, on the outcome (eg what "a football move is" in the first place and if one was made...if the ball touched the ground/shifted before posession, inbounds, was established, etc etc) c) interpreting if a QB is "in the pocket" d) interpreting if defender impact upon a receiver was made with the "crown of the helmet" or with the "forehead/face" and where this impact was made with respect to the head/chin > shoulder > chest interface....and where on the field this occured. Also interpreting when (with respect to the time from the beginning of the catch to the defender's impact on the offender) this occurred and if "the receiver was defenseless". There are dozens more, but a - d are sufficient for our purposes. The rules language that create determinants for adjudication is not terribly precise. It aimed to be sensible and helpful, but in practice it doesn't work out as such. This has a pretty severe effect on groups 2 - 4 above. 2) [B]Players[/B]: Players have an enormouse number of vectors to consider both during the lead-up to the game (gameplanning and practice), pre-snap, and during the play. They must understand not only the general rules of the game but they also have to understand the nuance of the very specific subset of rules that govern play at their position and how those rules interface with the other rules. They have to understand their own playbook. They have to have ingested the other teams tendencies and system during the week's gameplanning. They have to understand their game-specific (which will change subtley from week to week) responsibilies and "read their keys" (information that will guide them through their personal OODA Loop during play). It is an enormous amount to digest creating a situation where each player's mental overhead is VAST. Finally, they have to deal with the "human element" and the growing subjectivity embedded into the rules. Resultantly, they try to develop relationships with officials to potentially affect outcomes. They have to try to understand a particular official's tendency to interpret that rules nuance and/or "see" it manifest on the field and throw a flag (call a penalty). This can be utterly maddening because you can be sure that you were within the rules (and you may very well have been), but the official interpreted it differently or "saw something that wasn't there" and suddenly you have a huge game-changing penalty where you have made the correct play (perhaps even a play that should be game-changing in your favor) but you and your team are now punished. You could call it a "loss of agency" to use familiar RPG terminology. 3) [B]Managers/coaches[/B]: They suffer from a lot of the same issues as players except their "agency" has some not so subtle differences. Game-planning, play-calling, and in-game management (clock, adjustments, crucial decisions) are central to their role. These things are all dynamically affected by the complexity of the rule system and by the (increasingly) interpretive nature of some of the rules. They have a different sort of "information juggling" and "mental overhead" as individual players do, but it is no less severe. Further, they're subjected as much (not on an individual level as the penalties arent' being called on them) by complex rules (especially where the concrete rules interface with the interpretive rules and the utter punitive fallout when a call is either missed or made incorrectly). 4) [B]The spectators (or prospective participants)[/B]: As one can surmise, the entry to being a fan/participant of American Football is very, very, very steep. The cognitive workload is daunting. One must ingest an enormous amount of rules information, one must deal with an enormous amount of responsibility (play-in and play-out) that must be within those rules, and, finally, you're subjected to the "human element" of interpretive rules language which can utterly change a game (not just from neutral to bad but possiblly from good to bad), demoralizing you and your team. This is made doubly maddening when you consider that a healthy part of the success of American Football is predicated upon spectator gambling! [HR][/HR] Contrast all of the above with soccer. There are a jillion less rules (both concrete and interpretive), therefore a jillion less rules intersections, a jillion less cognitive workload by all of the participants (therefore much more shallow entry), and where the rules are interpretive it is not very significant (nor very interpretive) such that player agency isn't potentially subverted (therefore leading to frustration, disinterest, or demoralization). Yes, you'll get the stray situation where something should or shouldn't have been a card or you'll get the VERY, VERY stray foul or bad touch (hand) on the perimiter of the box. That is about it. [/QUOTE]
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