Quote from: Kyle Aaron;751763You've never heard of Crossfit, have you?

A good, point. But I thought the proper subject compliment for someone who does Crossfit was champion?


-E.

Because the a metric, eg a month, is too tight, doesn't mean the concept is necessarily unsound. If you haven't played games for years and yet you act an expert on mechanics ...

Quote from: Sacrosanct;750658I think the hostility isn't so much directed at non gamers per se, but to people who never game but insist on shoving their opinion of said games down your throat like they have some sort of authority.

Essentially, the hostility is towards adamant theorycrafters who don't actually play.  Not just people who don't play that often in general.

Bingo. Pundy believes, as do I, that theorycrafters have had a malignant influence on the hobby. Whether it's forgists crawling up their own ass to design games nobody plays, or char op obsessives and their insatiable appetite for more options and sublime balance, or grognards chasing after some platonic ideal of Gygaxian D&D - if you're not actually playing the game, you're probably advocating stuff that simply doesn't matter to most people who are playing. And when that theorycraft comes to dominate online discussion, and when publishers make the mistake of thinking these online theories, complaints, and schools of thought represent the real playing market, a lot of real useless shit can end up being published.

Quote from: Old Geezer;750655Considering how condescending this site is towards non gamers, and Pundy in particular, it's a very understandable perspective.

Is it? That must have passed under my radar.

What's even funnier is that I game more than many so-called "gamers" by this definition, yet it isn't something I consider part of my identity at all. Martial artist, certainly; gamer, nope. Playing RPGs is something I do, not something I am.

Quote from: BrandonKF;748676Are we talking video games, RPGs, wargames, or just all games?

-Brandon F.

While I'm pretty sure it's RPGs, I think that's as silly as the last month thing.  "Gamer" means video games to way more people than any other kind of game, with serious board or card gamers coming in second I think.  I also think the multitude of Warhammer (40K or Fantasy) players likely count as gamers too.

So, in addition to my previous post, I play Guild Wars 2 almost every day.  To the vast majority of people that makes me more of a gamer than playing any TTRPG once a month.

Quote from: Panjumanju;749890I don't understand why you're getting personal. You're making the assumption that I'm arguing that a regular gaming schedule is somehow a superiour lifestyle. It's obviously not. There are always other, superiour, priorities in life. This isn't a qualitative judgement - people who are playing regularly are not better or wiser than people who are not.

But if you have not played a roleplaying game in a month, you are not playing regularly. This is a participatory medium. Your daydreams and intentions to game do not count.

Our D&D group tries to meet once every 3-4 weeks. Sometimes we don't meet for over 4 weeks. I have a regular boardgaming group a couple times a month, so I get my gaming fix other ways. But I know for some of the other guys in my group, D&D isn't just the only gaming they do, D&D is the only social leisure activity they do outside their family. Some people just have very busy lives between work and family. Even if they can only play D&D 10 times a year, if it's their primary leisure activity, it's fair to call them gamers.

Quote from: dragoner;751773Because the a metric, eg a month, is too tight, doesn't mean the concept is necessarily unsound. If you haven't played games for years and yet you act an expert on mechanics ...

I think it's not entirely sound.

If someone's wrong about the mechanics, they're wrong about the mechanics whether they've last gamed a month ago or ten minutes ago.

If you're looking at the validity of an argument, you should do so without caring about the source of the argument -- trying to dismiss non-gamer arguments because they come from non-gamers, is simply weak ad hominem rhetoric.

There are a very small set of discussions where knowing how much or little a person actually games might be useful in evaluating where they're coming from (I wouldn't heavily weight game design preferences from someone who never gamed and wasn't likely to buy my product, for instance), but for the most part? I say let the argument stand on its own and leave the person out of it.

And in any event, I wouldn't frame this as saying "they're not a gamer" -- it's needlessly tribal.

Cheers,
-E.

If it's just RPGs then I am not in this circle as I run two games a week.

If it's "gamer" in the broad modern sense then I run two RPG tabletop games a week and get around 10-15 hours a week on different video games.

Quote from: -E.;752024If you're looking at the validity of an argument, you should do so without caring about the source of the argument -- trying to dismiss non-gamer arguments because they come from non-gamers, is simply weak ad hominem rhetoric.

The depends on what you're talking about. The RPG hobby is rife with issues that many forum wonks obsess about in theory, that aren't really problems at the table. Or not nearly as big of a problem as the theorists believe. Tyrannical GMs. Interaction between GMs and players that isn't strictly mechanically defined. LFQW. Minor imbalances in PC power. Minor imbalances in spotlight time. Rules sets that aren't comprehensive and iron-clad. A great deal of RPG forum debate is angels dancing on the head of a pin stuff. And the problem is, RPG publishers have demonstrated a vulnerability to letting theorycraft drive design decisions, while the preferences of the much larger community of people who are actually playing are neglected.

Quote from: -E.;752024I think it's not entirely sound.

If someone's wrong about the mechanics, they're wrong about the mechanics whether they've last gamed a month ago or ten minutes ago.

If you're looking at the validity of an argument, you should do so without caring about the source of the argument -- trying to dismiss non-gamer arguments because they come from non-gamers, is simply weak ad hominem rhetoric.

There are a very small set of discussions where knowing how much or little a person actually games might be useful in evaluating where they're coming from (I wouldn't heavily weight game design preferences from someone who never gamed and wasn't likely to buy my product, for instance), but for the most part? I say let the argument stand on its own and leave the person out of it.

And in any event, I wouldn't frame this as saying "they're not a gamer" -- it's needlessly tribal.

Cheers,
-E.

If it is based upon empiricism, same as science, ie such as actually playing the mechanic and seeing that it works, then it is very useful. Sans empiricism, how does one know?

Quote from: Haffrung;752035The depends on what you're talking about. The RPG hobby is rife with issues that many forum wonks obsess about in theory, that aren't really problems at the table. Or not nearly as big of a problem as the theorists believe. Tyrannical GMs. Interaction between GMs and players that isn't strictly mechanically defined. LFQW. Minor imbalances in PC power. Minor imbalances in spotlight time. Rules sets that aren't comprehensive and iron-clad. A great deal of RPG forum debate is angels dancing on the head of a pin stuff. And the problem is, RPG publishers have demonstrated a vulnerability to letting theorycraft drive design decisions, while the preferences of the much larger community of people who are actually playing are neglected.

I don't disagree -- there's a lot of pointless online wankery.

I don't even disagree that people who don't play are likely to have poor ideas about where the issues lie, or what would work / not-work in practice.

But I don't think the way to address that is to attack the person making the argument. Think of it this way: a person who rarely games making a good argument doesn't magically make it a bad argument. Someone who games constantly can still argue about angels dancing on pin heads.

I can see your point about game designers listening to the wrong people, but really, but that's really their problem and I think the market will take care of that.

Either way, coming at this from the standpoint of calling people who don't game enough 'non-gamers' is basically being a pecker. To the extent that recent, practical experience should be accounted for in evaluating someone's position, it can be done without any identity politics framing.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: dragoner;752036If it is based upon empiricism, same as science, ie such as actually playing the mechanic and seeing that it works, then it is very useful. Sans empiricism, how does one know?

I hear what you're saying, but I think a lot of self-reported empirical experience is hopelessly biased and subjective -- as awful as any hypothetical imaginsturbation of an pure theorist.

Take GNS as an example: the theory was that adolescent, on-going power struggle was somehow the fault of the game. Lots of people claimed to experience it. Hell, in the Brain Damage thread, you can find people standing up and saying "I Was Brain Damaged" by games.

Ridiculous, right?

In practice, someone who games a lot is going be a lot more credible, not because of their gaming resume, but because they'll be able to explain things clearly and obviously from practical experience.

I mean look at the mapping thread: lots of direct experience. People talking about what works for them. Not everyone comes to the same conclusions about  how to do it, but most of it seems to come from direct experience and the people responding were both able to explain what worked for them and why.

That's what matters.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;752050In practice, someone who games a lot is going be a lot more credible, not because of their gaming resume, but because they'll be able to explain things clearly and obviously from practical experience.

I mean look at the mapping thread: lots of direct experience. People talking about what works for them. Not everyone comes to the same conclusions about  how to do it, but most of it seems to come from direct experience and the people responding were both able to explain what worked for them and why.

That's what matters.

Cheers,
-E.

That is empiricism.

I don't know GNS theory, and from what little I have seen of it (like on Wikipedia), don't care. It is the same as someone using labels pejoratively, they hurt themselves more than anyone else. I know people attach something other to the name gamer, other than a player of games, however, there isn't another simple term for someone who plays games. I usually say I am a casual gamer in those discussions, though those discussions are largely irrelevant, so it doesn't matter anyways.

Quote from: Haffrung;752035The depends on what you're talking about. The RPG hobby is rife with issues that many forum wonks obsess about in theory, that aren't really problems at the table. Or not nearly as big of a problem as the theorists believe. Tyrannical GMs. Interaction between GMs and players that isn't strictly mechanically defined. LFQW. Minor imbalances in PC power. Minor imbalances in spotlight time. Rules sets that aren't comprehensive and iron-clad. A great deal of RPG forum debate is angels dancing on the head of a pin stuff. And the problem is, RPG publishers have demonstrated a vulnerability to letting theorycraft drive design decisions, while the preferences of the much larger community of people who are actually playing are neglected.

I think its more that people freak out over games that aren't designed for them. Every one of those things could be an issue for SOMEONE's table, whether its legitimately an issue at yours or not.

I can list a bunch of things that have never been a problem at my tables: Hero point/bennies, Fate Compels, Marvel Heroic's Doom Pool, Leverage's flashback mechanics, etc.

And actually... none of the things on your list have been problems at my tables either. Some rules are just wrong for some tables is all, and a lot of people want to yell really loudly how the ones that are wrong for their tables are travesties.