Biggest tabletop system pet peeves

[Xuc Xac]

Speak the language? Well...

D&D? Common. Done.

Warhammer? High Gaelic or whatnot. Done.

M&M? There's rules for languages. Done.

RIFTS? I'm pretty sure that there were rules for languages in that game, too.

Oh, you speak Common? Which one? Just because you speak Common where you're from, that doesn't mean you'll speak the same language as the "Common" where you're going. I can think of three different languages off the top of my head from the real world that are all called "Common".

If you actually speak the local language, how did you learn it? They speak High Gaelic where you're from too? If you learned it after your arrival, how long have you been "here"? In all that time, you've only learned the language and haven't picked up anything else so you're still a total stranger? How could you learn a language with twenty different words for "goblin" and still be surprised when a goblin pops up?

[LordCdrMilitant]

Oh, you speak Common? Which one? Just because you speak Common where you're from, that doesn't mean you'll speak the same language as the "Common" where you're going. I can think of three different languages off the top of my head from the real world that are all called "Common".

If you actually speak the local language, how did you learn it? They speak High Gaelic where you're from too? If you learned it after your arrival, how long have you been "here"? In all that time, you've only learned the language and haven't picked up anything else so you're still a total stranger? How could you learn a language with twenty different words for "goblin" and still be surprised when a goblin pops up?

High Gothic is standardized by the Imperium of Man. People like Inquisitors, Rogue Traders, Sisters of Battle, Guard/Navy Officers etc. speak High Gothic. Guardsmen are likely given basic instruction so they can read their Departmento Munitorium-issue inspirational literature and to ensure effective coordination between regiments.
Low Gothic has a wide variety of dialects, varying drastically by worlds. It's generally assumed to be mish-mashes of real-world languages. Gangers, low ranking nobles, and people unlikely to meet people from other worlds primarily speak Low Gothic, and while there are several dominant variants, even within them there is massive variation. Someone from Praetoria may not be able to converse with someone from Valhalla.
Binary is the language of machines, and is spoken exclusively by adepts of the Machine Cult. Like High Gothic, it is also standardized galactically.


If you can speak High Gothic, you can speak with almost anyone with power in the Imperium, but you may not be able to converse with the lower classes and you will definitely always sound excessively pretentious. High Gothic is canonically fake latin. Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas, Navis Nobilite are in High Gothic, and Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle, and Navigator Houses are the names of those organizations in a common dialect of Low Gothic.

[Lapak]

D&D has so many ways to travel between worlds, it's not having such characters that would be the inconsistency.

For first level characters? Explaining how you got plane shifted or whatever is still simpler than just being from the region? It really does feel like you're reaching pretty far to justify this. If it's what you need to enjoy playing, fine, but trying to claim it's just as expected as having a character from within the setting seems disingenuous.

Now, understanding social... mores... is a bit more of a head scratcher. I've seen and played two options. One way, the character doesn't know the rules, and gets in trouble. Of course, this often happens to whole parties as they travel. The other is, the GM says something like, "sure, you can play Quertus, but let's get his initial 'troubles' with the local mage guild out of the way one-on-one before the game". This prevents the character from being a spotlight hog in ways that wouldn't be fun for the rest of the group.

That would be cool, except that it runs into the "and here's my 15th 'not from around here' character, as I struggle to build a character I'll enjoy playing. Now, if you ran a series if one-shots in this setting, until I had a character that I liked, worked well with the group, etc, and then started the real game, yes, that would be bloody awesome! I just hate imposing that much, though.

Here again: you've said several times that it's partly to avoid annoying the GM with inconsistencies and partly to avoid being annoyed yourself, but you seem pretty willing to put substantial burdens on the GM. If you're picky about what kind of character you get to play, just say that and don't couch it in concern for the rest of the table.

But I spend a lot of time developing my character's personalities, and, when pressured to run something quickly, I usually just run a deity playing an appropriate meat puppet just so that I don't run caricatures instead of characters.

You said a few times that people are too far apart from your mindset to have a useful conversation; this makes me suspect it may be true between you and I as well. This is not the shortest path to 'non-caricature' in any way I can see.

[georgie_leech]

You said a few times that people are too far apart from your mindset to have a useful conversation; this makes me suspect it may be true between you and I as well. This is not the shortest path to 'non-caricature' in any way I can see.

It does bear a certain resemblance to how someone far beyond the reality of game world is making decisions from on high in a way the completely sidesteps the decision-making progress in-universe. I mean I've got nothing against self inserts in principle, but this seems a little on the nose for my tastes.

[Quertus]

Be careful when you edit multiple quotes. You are attributing to me in many places what others have written.

Whoops, sorry! I think I fixed it.

Oh, you speak Common? Which one? Just because you speak Common where you're from, that doesn't mean you'll speak the same language as the "Common" where you're going.

If all the plane shifting characters, spell jamming characters, and plane-hopping demons, let alone multi-world deities haven't standardized "common" between worlds, that's a hit to that v-word. Just saying.

And the fact that these creatures that, in cannon, travel to multiple worlds, have stats, with just one instance of "common" listed? This doesn't strike you as indicating that "common" is universal?

For first level characters? Explaining how you got plane shifted or whatever is still simpler than just being from the region? It really does feel like you're reaching pretty far to justify this. If it's what you need to enjoy playing, fine, but trying to claim it's just as expected as having a character from within the setting seems disingenuous.
Here again: you've said several times that it's partly to avoid annoying the GM with inconsistencies and partly to avoid being annoyed yourself, but you seem pretty willing to put substantial burdens on the GM. If you're picky about what kind of character you get to play, just say that and don't couch it in concern for the rest of the table.
You said a few times that people are too far apart from your mindset to have a useful conversation; this makes me suspect it may be true between you and I as well. This is not the shortest path to 'non-caricature' in any way I can see.

So confused. In what way do you perceive my desire to have a GM put zero effort into explaining the world beforehand, zero effort into integrating my background into the story / my backstory into the world, and zero effort into custom tailoring things for me to be putting any burden, let alone a substantial one, on the GM?

And, yes, having an actual played-through character, rather than just a few broad strokes, makes the character much more a known quantity, much more predictable. Thus, I am much better able to determine whether the character will fit or not, in addition to knowing whether or not I'll enjoy the character.

Now, if you happen to be playing in the same region of the same world that the character is in / from, then, sure, I don't have to be "not from around here" to play an existing character / the existing character that I believe would be the best match, but a) what are the odds of that, and b) what are the odds that the GM won't be upset at - what were the words again - handing creative control of their world to assume random weirdo they've never met? "Why, yes, there is a bakery here, and, ever since I rescued the baker from a fire, I get free bread every day, because that's what happened in this world under my old GM".

Personally, I think my way, of just being "not from around here" is better.

It does bear a certain resemblance to how someone far beyond the reality of game world is making decisions from on high in a way the completely sidesteps the decision-making progress in-universe. I mean I've got nothing against self inserts in principle, but this seems a little on the nose for my tastes.

If I read you correctly, then yes, I get no small amount of amusement out of a similar line of thought.

[1337 b4k4]

[QUOTE=Max_Killjoy;22842232]From my perspective, it's a system with a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in.[quote]

I guess that's one way to look at it.

My favorite system overall is still HERO 5th ed, despite a few flaws, and I take a lot of my approach from that angle -- so to me, the divide between the system as a toolkit, and the actual setting, has no real ambiguity.

So what about games like Apocalypse World, Stars Without Number, Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

[Florian]

That's not my RPG experience, but then until recently I've mostly DM'd (and occasionally played) D&D official play since 4e came out. Often in game stores, but also as part of a large-scale email distro list where people run official play games out of their houses in my city.

Open tables, gaming at a FLGS or at conventions are practically a non-issue where I live. Organized play, like RPGA or PFS, is also very uncommon. The huge gamut of groups are closed home tables that play the big campaigns that are available.

Would you be glad that players are invested in their character and the setting, as opposed to invested in their character and exploring the setting, and, if so, why? Exploration is my greatest joy in gaming; it is thus of value to me to be able to identify GMs who will best give me what I desire vs those who consider it detrimental to the game.

It´s a difference in mindset. Players already invested and knowledgeable about the setting don't just play their characters for themselves, they try to play them for the enjoyment of the others. Depending on the system, you can also share a lot of narrative and creative power with your players, as they will want to improve the setting. Using L5R or d20 Rokugan as an example, people into this kind of game know what they're about, already know what their characters are able and unable to do (and why) and willingly go for it. Having a "foreign godling" along for the ride might be a good way to explore that setting, but it will be grating for the other players and puts a burden on the gm to explain stuff that is already common and basic knowledge for the gaming group.

So what about games like Apocalypse World, Stars Without Number, Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

It´s not so much the in-build setting that's an issue, but rather that some editions of D&D tried to sell themselves as more generic systems that you can use to play and setting or style with, while what they actually delivered were rules for playing Greyhawk.
Looking at the old Alternity game by TSR is interesting, the core rules are only half the thing, it needed the setting rules to be finished. There's a stark contrast between Stardrive and Dark Matter.

[Mordaedil]

If all the plane shifting characters, spell jamming characters, and plane-hopping demons, let alone multi-world deities haven't standardized "common" between worlds, that's a hit to that v-word. Just saying.

And the fact that these creatures that, in cannon, travel to multiple worlds, have stats, with just one instance of "common" listed? This doesn't strike you as indicating that "common" is universal?

This is how the real world operates right now though. Most people these days can speak English where I live, but not everybody can, and I imagine many countries don't bother learning English that extremely well because it's not something that occurs to them to apply much in their day-to-day reality. In a setting with, as you put it, plane-shifting, plane-hopping, spell jamming, yes, there's going to be various cultures and while some of them might agree on a certain dialect to speak, it might not actually be "common", which is the tongue of the material plane. Instead, they might heavily emphasis Abyssal or Infernal (maybe a real world parallell to French and German) or maybe Celestial and Draconic (Spanish and Chinese) because these languages are more commonly used in trade, especially when it comes to exchange of magical supplies between dragons and angels.

All of a sudden, common, the tongue spoken by material plane farmers, isn't going to carry you very far.

[Quertus]

It´s a difference in mindset. Players already invested and knowledgeable about the setting don't just play their characters for themselves, they try to play them for the enjoyment of the others. Depending on the system, you can also share a lot of narrative and creative power with your players, as they will want to improve the setting. Using L5R or d20 Rokugan as an example, people into this kind of game know what they're about, already know what their characters are able and unable to do (and why) and willingly go for it. Having a "foreign godling" along for the ride might be a good way to explore that setting, but it will be grating for the other players and puts a burden on the gm to explain stuff that is already common and basic knowledge for the gaming group.

Lemme try to tease this apart.

Some GMs have an unspoken "no noobs" policy, whereby those who don't know the ins and outs of the setting, and have to have things explained to them, will be grating. Yeah, I've met those GMs. And are you then saying that "cares about the setting" is a decent indicator of this anti-noob, anti-exploration mindset?

Some players are egocentric, and play only for themselves; others are abnegation, and play for the group. Yes, both exist - and good and bad versions of both exist. For example, players and GMs who would sacrifice the character of the character for "the needs of the story" are antithetical to my style. But a player who can metagame enough to consider making better choices for the fun of the group is an asset. But I see this as being invested in the group - I don't see how this behavior really had anything to do with connection to the setting.

Some GMs want to give players narrative control. ... Depending on what you mean by that, my response will range from, "OK, sure", to, "not my cup of tea".

Some players will want to improve the setting. ... If you mean what I think you mean by this, with players changing and creating content for the world, I think I'll pass. I came here to play a character, and to change the world in character. If I'd wanted to build a world, I'd have built a world. Further, the idea that the world isn't static, but keeps changing during play, tends to produce an inconsistent mess that isn't worth my time to Explore.

Some players don't just play a (statistically appropriate) character, they play the character playing a (statistically appropriate) character. Yup, that's me.

Out of all this, the only actionable item I see is, "if the GM cares about their setting, they are unlikely to want a player exploring it".

EDIT: and, maybe, "if the GM cares about the setting, they are more likely to be, to use the hatred GNS labels, a Narrativist GM (which is probably my least favorite style)."

Is that really supposed to be my takeaway?

This is how the real world operates right now though. Most people these days can speak English where I live, but not everybody can, and I imagine many countries don't bother learning English that extremely well because it's not something that occurs to them to apply much in their day-to-day reality. In a setting with, as you put it, plane-shifting, plane-hopping, spell jamming, yes, there's going to be various cultures and while some of them might agree on a certain dialect to speak, it might not actually be "common", which is the tongue of the material plane. Instead, they might heavily emphasis Abyssal or Infernal (maybe a real world parallell to French and German) or maybe Celestial and Draconic (Spanish and Chinese) because these languages are more commonly used in trade, especially when it comes to exchange of magical supplies between dragons and angels.

All of a sudden, common, the tongue spoken by material plane farmers, isn't going to carry you very far.

Well, sure. But if the GM didn't specify, "bring a character who can speak Celestial or Draconic", then gets upset that player didn't take one of those languages for their PC, that's on them, regardless of how many previous GMs the character has had.

[Cluedrew]

Well, this thread has become (for me at least) "let's talk about another alien thing Quertus does that I don't understand." Although, like other alien things he does, I'm not sure if it is good or bad its just confusing. Actually I can think of some situations it would defiantly be bad, but in world hopping D&D... maybe?

I want to paint a picture. Why keep painting on the same canvas when I could instead just grab a new canvas and start painting something like the picture that I already started? I can just have a pile of half-finished pictures, and that's just as good, right?

So this picture is your character that you would like to continue painting, I get that. I see the canvas though as the campaign. So to me it feels more like "repeating the same picture over and over again" rather than continuing the same one. And I do have characters that extend through multiple stories, but those stories are all connected to each other, with other characters (and the important relations formed in early stories) remaining. If you leave those and other community based parts of the character behind, is it really the same character?

[Max_Killjoy]

So what about games like Apocalypse World, Stars Without Number, Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

There is a difference between a system making assumptions about the settings it will be used to run campaigns with, and the assertion that a system IS a setting.

Take oWoD Vampire for example. Vampire made certain assumptions about the setting, but the system itself wasn't a setting. I could easily use that to run a campaign that doesn't use WW's assumed metaplot and setting, and ignore all their published worldbuilding beyond "there are vampires". A bit of tweaking could easily scrub most of their metaphysical and metaplot assumptions entirely out of the system and match the system up with a better setting.

The fact that there are multiple published and countless homebrew settings all being used in campaigns with some version of D&D as the system should make this an open and shut case, but evidently not.

[Max_Killjoy]

If all the plane shifting characters, spell jamming characters, and plane-hopping demons, let alone multi-world deities haven't standardized "common" between worlds, that's a hit to that v-word. Just saying.

Not really. Those activities represent a tiny tiny minority of what's going on in those worlds. Claiming they should have created a common language is like claiming that the 19th-century British explorers should have resulted in a common language across all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

(Not to mention the unfounded assumption that every GM's world/setting will be connected to the TSR/WotC "multiverse").

And the fact that these creatures that, in cannon, travel to multiple worlds, have stats, with just one instance of "common" listed? This doesn't strike you as indicating that "common" is universal?

Not really. "Common" is just shorthand for whatever "old Latin" or "trade tongue" or "lingua franca" or "commercial English" is used by the learned and the well-traveled in that setting.

[Quertus]

So this picture is your character that you would like to continue painting, I get that. I see the canvas though as the campaign. So to me it feels more like "repeating the same picture over and over again" rather than continuing the same one. And I do have characters that extend through multiple stories, but those stories are all connected to each other, with other characters (and the important relations formed in early stories) remaining. If you leave those and other community based parts of the character behind, is it really the same character?

I have gotten new jobs / traveled to new towns, and left my old community behind. Am I really the same person?

[Tanarii]

Open tables, gaming at a FLGS or at conventions are practically a non-issue where I live. Organized play, like RPGA or PFS, is also very uncommon. The huge gamut of groups are closed home tables that play the big campaigns that are available.

Okay then. Well ... I'll keep in mind our fairly vast gulf between our RPG experiences in all future discussions about what roleplaying and roleplaying games "means".

For first level characters? Explaining how you got plane shifted or whatever is still simpler than just being from the region? It really does feel like you're reaching pretty far to justify this. If it's what you need to enjoy playing, fine, but trying to claim it's just as expected as having a character from within the setting seems disingenuous.

At no point did I get the impression that the discussion on porting existing characters from another table was about first level characters.

In fact, doing a brand new character as a "not from around here" planar or across the world traveler definitely smacks far more of trying to do something different for the sake of different, or to workaround DM "here's the local race & class choices" for the setting. Similar to 5e SCAG's Far Traveller background, which exists so you can explain bringing in distant Forgotten Realms races to the local Sword Coast play area.

With the obvious exception of games like Rifts or D&D's Spelljammer or Planescape, which practically beg you to do have "not from around here" with brand spanking new characters. As well as port in characters from any previous games within the same system.

[exelsisxax]

I have gotten new jobs / traveled to new towns, and left my old community behind. Am I really the same person?

No, you aren't. You are you, but you right now is not the same as you 10 years ago.

[Quertus]

No, you aren't. You are you, but you right now is not the same as you 10 years ago.

That's an interesting position. So, if the campaign has a 10-year down time, do you feel that your character is no longer the same character? Is the character now lacking continuity, and you may as well just build a new character?

[exelsisxax]

That's an interesting position. So, if the campaign has a 10-year down time, do you feel that your character is no longer the same character? Is the character now lacking continuity, and you may as well just build a new character?

I don't understand how you have failed to understand me.

You are not who you were 10 years ago. This is a bare fact, not an opinion. Similarly, any being that exists in a non-immutable state(i.e. removed from time's passage) for an extended period of time will, after that duration, not be the same as they were before the span of time. If the span of time is 10 years, there could easily be large and significant changes in the personality, beliefs, moods, and body of that person.

Basically, people change.

So yes, if you're playing Steve one-sword before a 10-year timeskip you should certainly not have your character totally unchanged and unaffected by a decade passing. Steve remains steve, but maybe he's got 3 swords now and also loves cheese with wine. Steve is different, but barring some magic shenanigans like mind switch steve is still steve.

[Cluedrew]

I have gotten new jobs / traveled to new towns, and left my old community behind. Am I really the same person?

Although exelsisxax said a lot of the things I want to say, although I will confess that by the common definition the answer is yes, but that is not the one I'm talking about. It is more a snapshot view of a person, the culmination of everything up to this point. At the next point it might be different. People do change and to me the idea of repeated piling on the types of events that can trigger large changes in a person seems to go against the idea of exploring such minute points of a character that you can't fit it into a single campaign.

I mean I do have a character that I have brought across campaigns, but I re-interpreted it every time to see how it would fit into this new world. And not plane hopping, if it had been born and been raised here. And really, it was more of a re-used concept than a reused character in my mind.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'll try to add a pet peeve that's on topic--

I dislike systems that encourage/expect/require you to plan out your character's mechanical development from character creation. 3e D&D is a prime offender--if you don't, you'll be way less effective and be locked out of flavorful options later (due to prerequisites and feat chains).

This goes along with my top peeve--trap options. I HATE trap options. Systems that throw them in intentionally "to promote system mastery" should all burn in eternal fire...Ok, maybe that was a little much. But I hate those. I'd rather have options that all work rather than some that work, some that are meh, and some that are just stupidly stupid (but don't look it). This is true even if overall the second system has more working options.

Take two cases:

System | total options | "good" options
A | 100 | 20
B | 10 | 10

Ceteris paribus, I'd take system B in a heartbeat and not look back. Even though system A has twice as many good options. But I have to wade through 80 crap options to get there. And that's a waste of my time and only causes heartbreak and snobbery.

[FreddyNoNose]

Inspired by my previous thread and a conversation I had I was wondering what pet peves you guys have when it comes to the mechanics or setting of tabletop games.

One of my pet peeves is how systems sometimes assumes certain styles of play without telling you like how in certain editions of D&D the to-hit and ac of monsters accelerates past you unless you focus on the right magical items. This annoys me because the first campaign tends to end in frustration because the monster was hitting the fighter on a three because you focused on giving interesting magic items to them so the fighter still had 21 ac.

Another is when systems are based on your party being part of an organization with few or no rules on how that organization works. For example in Dark Heresy you are part of what's essentially the FBI with a private army but outside of it being the source of your adventures the game gives very little info on how to work in this system so the GM has to figure out how to determine things that should already be covered like requesting equipment temporarily or getting in touch with other assets. This means as a person who likes mechanics for things like that over figuring it out on the spot ends up writing a significant amount of rules to make up for it.

I hear what you are saying. There was a GM who was running a cowboys/wild west RPG. As players, we were forced to play in a wild west game. Can you believe that? It was forced on us.

[flond]

I hear what you are saying. There was a GM who was running a cowboys/wild west RPG. As players, we were forced to play in a wild west game. Can you believe that? It was forced on us.

I do believe this is less. "Our GM told us we were playing a wild west rpg oh no" and more "I don't like how this wild west rpg soon loses any use for guns and becomes all about use lariet"

[ImNotTrevor]

[
So what about games like Apocalypse World,

The full extent of setting expectation is:
1. It's post apocalypse. Probably.
2. There is a thing called the Psychic Maelstrom and it's weird. What it is and how it works? Your problem.

(One time the PM was a literal giant psychic hurricane. Another time it was basically the leftovers of an alien wifi network from an invasion. Another time it was the remaining shockwaves of eldritch energy left behind by the passing gaze of a Great Old One. And each functioned a little differently. The book encourages you to go crazy.)

Stars Without Number

SWN does come with its own general setting and history. It's not impossible to divorce from it, though. But once you have a History Of The World section, the system comes with a setting.

Eclipse Phase, World Wide Wrestling, VTM or Traveller? All of those also fall at various points along the "system as a setting scale". Do you also view those games as systems with "a lot of very unhelpful assumptions baked in"? If not, how is D&D different for you? And for that matter, does D&D's "helpfulness" with its assumptions change between the editions for you, or does the fact that D&D has any setting baked in at all automatically make it unhelpful?

I don't know much about those others but it seems to be sliding upward.

What I think is unhelpful about D&D is that it comes with prebuilt setting expectations but markets itself as if it doesn't. Like most problems with D&D, that's what it comes down to:
It claims to be a thing, but it is not that thing in many cases. But if it owned its setting weirdnesses in a more forward way than mentioning Greyhawk occassionally ? No problems.



Now on to my pet peeve:
Apocalypse World 2e's Threatmap system is objectively worse than 1e's Fronts and it peeves me that I need to use two books to get the optimal setup going.

As someone who once had to flip between 8 D&D books on a regular basis.... that feels like a petty complaint. But it still peeves me.

[Florian]

@Quertus:

Roughly speaking, settings have the same sliding scale (no rules - rules light - rules heavy) as the rules system you use to play them. Some cases even include the "hard rule" clause that "setting rules" overwrite "system rules" when necessary. This is especially true when "setting rules" include mechanical elements that directly tie the character to the respective in-game reality. It´s also common that the system rules are based solely on the game world and only ever reflect and model what's part of the world.

So that's not so much a thing of being "anti noob" or "noob friendly", but rather the necessity of at least knowing the rudiments of two sets of rules, where possibly the "setting rules" are more important than the "system rules".

[Mordaedil]

That's an interesting position. So, if the campaign has a 10-year down time, do you feel that your character is no longer the same character? Is the character now lacking continuity, and you may as well just build a new character?

After 10 years, basically no atoms in your body is the same as it was then, as you shed skin all of the time. So you are not even physically the same person ten years in between.

[Cluedrew]

Apocalypse World 2e's Threatmap system is objectively worse than 1e's Fronts and it peeves me that I need to use two books to get the optimal setup going.

You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.

The worst cases are when people just stick it in front of a statement that... really it has nothing to do with objectivity. Or if it does, according so some standard that was never clarified. "This is objectively a bad mechanic." OK according to balance, ease of use, accuracy, scaling... your taste?

And even if it is used properly it actually kind of weakens the argument because the final goal of most role-playing games is to have fun. Which is very defiantly a subjective thing, you need the subject to have any hope of getting a result. Yes you can generalize across subjects, but none of these things will be universal (see Quertus being bigger on trans-campaign characters than anyone else it this thread) so none of them are entirely of the object. Objective things are like rules, dates and numbers, none of which can really cover the actual quality of a system or rule.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.

The worst cases are when people just stick it in front of a statement that... really it has nothing to do with objectivity. Or if it does, according so some standard that was never clarified. "This is objectively a bad mechanic." OK according to balance, ease of use, accuracy, scaling... your taste?

And even if it is used properly it actually kind of weakens the argument because the final goal of most role-playing games is to have fun. Which is very defiantly a subjective thing, you need the subject to have any hope of getting a result. Yes you can generalize across subjects, but none of these things will be universal (see Quertus being bigger on trans-campaign characters than anyone else it this thread) so none of them are entirely of the object. Objective things are like rules, dates and numbers, none of which can really cover the actual quality of a system or rule.

That's very true. We often reach for "hard" rules where soft ones might work better. Unspoken behind those "hard" rules are a whole set of value judgements and carefully-selected metrics. How we measure something (and what we're measuring) is often more important than the actual result.

[Tanarii]

You know I don't know a lot about Apocalypse World 2e (I know one move it added (I think) from 1e) to actually comment on this, but it reminds me of one of my... tabletop criticism pet peeves.

Over use of the word objective.

My TRPG forum arguments pet peeve:
Using "logical" instead of "this way of thinking or doing things I personally prefer".

Actually, I hear that one a lot IRL too. I work with a lot of Engineers and Computer Geeks, and they often mistake their personal preferences as to a way of thinking or doing things as "logical". I almost never read or hear the word applied to actual logic, where the thing being claimed as "logical" actually logically follows from the premise.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My TRPG forum arguments pet peeve:
Using "logical" instead of "this way of thinking or doing things I personally prefer".

Actually, I hear that one a lot IRL too. I work with a lot of Engineers and Computer Geeks, and they often mistake their personal preferences as to a way of thinking or doing things as "logical". I almost never read or hear the word applied to actual logic, where the thing being claimed as "logical" actually logically follows from the premise.

Or the premises are built to justify the end result (arguing backward). Or just flat out unstated, but the premises are doing all the work. Those are some of the "hidden value judgements" that I was talking about above.

[Max_Killjoy]

My TRPG forum arguments pet peeve:
Using "logical" instead of "this way of thinking or doing things I personally prefer".

Actually, I hear that one a lot IRL too. I work with a lot of Engineers and Computer Geeks, and they often mistake their personal preferences as to a way of thinking or doing things as "logical". I almost never read or hear the word applied to actual logic, where the thing being claimed as "logical" actually logically follows from the premise.

Or the flip side "You're being irrational" or "your reasoning is asinine"... certain people in "my circle" are notorious for using that as a dismissive way of saying "I disagree with your conclusions" or "I think your subjective priorities are wrong compared to my subjective priorities".

These people have that lovely habit of using "logic" to argue positions that are plainly false based on observable facts, and doing their damnedest to demand and then distort/misrepresent other people's "premises"... to the point that it probably explains why I cringe away every time someone says "what are your premises?"

[PhoenixPhyre]

Or the flip side "You're being irrational" or "your reasoning is asinine"... certain people in "my circle" are notorious for using that as a dismissive way of saying "I disagree with your conclusions" or "I think your subjective priorities are wrong compared to my subjective priorities".

This may be strange for a science-trained person to say, but...
I think that we (western culture generally) over fetishize (in a cargo-cult manner) logic and "rationality." Blame it on Spock.

People want "follows from certain premises" to mean "correct" and want that to be the only way of saying that something is right or wrong. Humans aren't rational creatures--we have reason, but we also have subjective judgements. Both are necessary, neither one more so than the other. Both must work together to find truth and utility.