Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 23, 2020, 02:05:54 PM
On a broader note, what RPGPundit's video calls attention to is a polarization, in gaming, between what are often mutually exclusive types of psychological payoff, or what could be called therapeutic feedback vs. tempering feedback.

Tempering feedback is what might be called the whole point of engaging in any type of contest at all: the point is to put an agent under stress through conflict, and the process of surviving the conflict leaves the agent stronger even if it doesn't obtain actual victory. For the stress of the conflict to be legitimate, there have to be stakes the agent cares about and a genuine chance of losing those stakes; a conflict which lacks these things generates no stress and thus gains no useful tempering or strengthening effect.

Therapeutic feedback, on the other hand, is oriented towards relieving stress upon an already-stressed agent so as to slow or arrest long-term weakening of that agent, so conflicts can only be therapeutic where the agent is secure in being able to withstand the loss of whatever's staked -- in other words, there has to be no chance of losing anything the agent really cares about; a conflict which is perceived as a genuine threat only increases stress beyond an already intolerable level.

Now it's possible for a game to provide both kinds of feedback so long as the perceived stakes of a game are orthogonal to the player's own personal areas of needed feedback, whether that's tempering or therapeutic. The mistake of the SJ advocacy movement is to demand that personal player identity has to be represented in the game, which immediately forces that identity into becoming part of the conflict stakes in a way therapeutic feedback can't handle. (To use a personal example, part of the reason I don't play Call of Cthulhu is because succeeding at the game, so far as one can succeed, would require my PC to abandon philosophical beliefs I don't want to abandon, even in pretense; to make the game more philosophically comfortable for me would require all my co-players to agree with turning it into something it simply isn't.)

Like everything else about the SJ movement, this seems like ultimately an attempt to eat one's cake and still have it: demanding that games be both therapeutically supporting, and validating through tempering, on the same stakes is simply not going to work, and will make it impossible for groups with differing priorities to play the same game together.

Solid and insightful analysis.  I'm glad you posted it and I read it.  This is the kind of discussion that makes a massage board worthwhile...

Edit: should be message board, but LOL!

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 23, 2020, 02:05:54 PM
On a broader note, what RPGPundit's video calls attention to is a polarization, in gaming, between what are often mutually exclusive types of psychological payoff, or what could be called therapeutic feedback vs. tempering feedback.

+good stuff+

Damn! That was solid.

You got any other references you could direct me to on that, because that's something I feel like needs to be addressed in the "How to GM" section of my book. I somewhat address it in terms of player types (and their associated goals; challengers as I call them love the tempering feedback while punishers are there for the therapeutic feedback of smacking down baddies without danger to themselves... at worst they lose their current avatar, but get to try again), but that really strikes me as the core of what I was trying to address in my "Setting your tone" section under the descriptor of "serious (actions have consequences) vs. silly (actions don't have lasting consequences)" and, to an extent "heroic (you're often stronger than your foes) vs. horror (you're often weaker than your foes)."

The other key takeaway I took from your post was that the issue is not so much that the SJWs want therapeutic feedback, as it is that they're trying to make tempering feedback be therapeutic feedback (which immediately calls to mind the shrinks from horror films where their first solution is electroshock therapy... we'll stress you back to the land of the de-stressed).

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 23, 2020, 03:32:45 PM
Damn! That was solid.

Much obliged! 

QuoteYou got any other references you could direct me to on that, because that's something I feel like needs to be addressed in the "How to GM" section of my book.

Not in terms of more detailed examination of the idea; it was just something I noticed because recently I've been thinking a lot about the idea that the nature of games, as games, actually renders them unsuitable for evoking the same kinds of psychological experiences and reactions that people get out of the books or movies they love. For one thing, a game by definition can't guarantee its results; a story at best offers the experience of not knowing results until it's finished.

QuoteThe other key takeaway I took from your post was that the issue is not so much that the SJWs want therapeutic feedback, as it is that they're trying to make tempering feedback be therapeutic feedback.

Basically, yes, it strikes me as an attempt to gain both kinds of feedback at once -- both validating identity as something beyond challenge, and celebrating it as something that has triumphed over challenge.  G.K. Chesterton wrote about something called "the Prussian Disease" (from The Appetite for Tyranny) which is an example of the same self-neutralizing paradox:

QuoteAs most people know, (the Prussian Kaiser's) words ran, 'It is my Royal and Imperial command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and to walk over General French's contemptible little Army.'  ...If French's little Army is contemptible, it would seem clear that all the skill and valour of the German Army had better not be concentrated on it, but on the larger and less contemptible allies. If all the skill and valour of the German Army are concentrated on it, it is not being treated as contemptible. But the Prussian rhetorician had two incompatible sentiments in his mind; and he insisted on saying them both at once. He wanted to think of an English Army as a small thing; but he also wanted to think of an English defeat as a big thing. He wanted to exult, at the same moment, in the utter weakness of the British in their attack; and the supreme skill and valour of the Germans in repelling such an attack. Somehow it must be made a common and obvious collapse for England; and yet a daring and unexpected triumph for Germany. In trying to express these contradictory conceptions simultaneously, he got rather mixed.

Its because of Communism isnt it?

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 23, 2020, 02:05:54 PM
On a broader note, what RPGPundit's video calls attention to is a polarization, in gaming, between what are often mutually exclusive types of psychological payoff, or what could be called therapeutic feedback vs. tempering feedback.

Tempering feedback is what might be called the whole point of engaging in any type of contest at all: the point is to put an agent under stress through conflict, and the process of surviving the conflict leaves the agent stronger even if it doesn't obtain actual victory. For the stress of the conflict to be legitimate, there have to be stakes the agent cares about and a genuine chance of losing those stakes; a conflict which lacks these things generates no stress and thus gains no useful tempering or strengthening effect.

Therapeutic feedback, on the other hand, is oriented towards relieving stress upon an already-stressed agent so as to slow or arrest long-term weakening of that agent, so conflicts can only be therapeutic where the agent is secure in being able to withstand the loss of whatever's staked -- in other words, there has to be no chance of losing anything the agent really cares about; a conflict which is perceived as a genuine threat only increases stress beyond an already intolerable level.

Now it's possible for a game to provide both kinds of feedback so long as the perceived stakes of a game are orthogonal to the player's own personal areas of needed feedback, whether that's tempering or therapeutic. The mistake of the SJ advocacy movement is to demand that personal player identity has to be represented in the game, which immediately forces that identity into becoming part of the conflict stakes in a way therapeutic feedback can't handle. (To use a personal example, part of the reason I don't play Call of Cthulhu is because succeeding at the game, so far as one can succeed, would require my PC to abandon philosophical beliefs I don't want to abandon, even in pretense; to make the game more philosophically comfortable for me would require all my co-players to agree with turning it into something it simply isn't.)

Like everything else about the SJ movement, this seems like ultimately an attempt to eat one's cake and still have it: demanding that games be both therapeutically supporting, and validating through tempering, on the same stakes is simply not going to work, and will make it impossible for groups with differing priorities to play the same game together.

So very well put. 

I cringe when I watch some of the transcripts/summaries  of shows that are big now.  I actually get a very unpleasant sympathy embarrassment.  I am not compatible with that style...

Dipping their toes into the waters perhaps...



Yes, you can actually buy one.

And naturally it is "Intended for adult collectors "...

Pundit should get one to put in front of the camera for future videos where he discusses similar trends.

We have been warned.

Behold, the future of D&D:

  Friendship and its magic looks a lot less benevolent nowadays.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 26, 2020, 03:35:12 PM
Dipping their toes into the waters perhaps...



Yes, you can actually buy one.

And naturally it is "Intended for adult collectors "...

Pundit should get one to put in front of the camera for future videos where he discusses similar trends.

We have been warned.

Behold, the future of D&D:

Wtaf

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 23, 2020, 02:05:54 PM
---snippp---
(To use a personal example, part of the reason I don't play Call of Cthulhu is because succeeding at the game, so far as one can succeed, would require my PC to abandon philosophical beliefs I don't want to abandon, even in pretense; to make the game more philosophically comfortable for me would require all my co-players to agree with turning it into something it simply isn't.)

Wait Just A Moment.
Philosophically?
Is that Didactically or existential or what?
I do *NOT* understand your statement at all.
Please elucidate.

Quote from: consolcwby on December 26, 2020, 08:36:21 PMWait Just A Moment.
Philosophically? Is that Didactically or existential or what?
I do *NOT* understand your statement at all. Please elucidate.

You caught me, I was being a bit weasel-wordy there. What I really meant was "religious" -- I'm Catholic, and so the basic cosmic nihilism that underlies Lovecraftian horror is simply something I can't buy into for any great length of time, not and still enjoy the story.  But calling it a "philosophical" difference tends to be less prone to side-tracking such discussions into religious arguments, which I've found the hard way seldom get anywhere productive.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 26, 2020, 08:58:23 PM

Quote from: consolcwby on December 26, 2020, 08:36:21 PMWait Just A Moment.
Philosophically? Is that Didactically or existential or what?
I do *NOT* understand your statement at all. Please elucidate.

You caught me, I was being a bit weasel-wordy there. What I really meant was "religious" -- I'm Catholic, and so the basic cosmic nihilism that underlies Lovecraftian horror is simply something I can't buy into for any great length of time, not and still enjoy the story.  But calling it a "philosophical" difference tends to be less prone to side-tracking such discussions into religious arguments, which I've found the hard way seldom get anywhere productive.

Lol, I see. No probs. I get it!
Merry Christmas, then!

Quote from: Opaopajr on December 26, 2020, 04:39:23 PM
Friendship and its magic looks a lot less benevolent nowadays.

WTF!? Friendship and Magic is always benevolent!

You realize that you are causing real harm, literally physically hurting people, making them feel unsafe, and advocating actual violence when you spread such lies.

Blasphemer! Heretic! Burn him! Burn himmmmmmm......!

*The Pony cries out in pain as it strikes you*

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 26, 2020, 08:58:23 PM
...- I'm Catholic, and so the basic cosmic nihilism that underlies Lovecraftian horror is simply something I can't buy into for any great length of time, not and still enjoy the story.  But calling it a "philosophical" difference tends to be less prone to side-tracking such discussions into religious arguments, which I've found the hard way seldom get anywhere productive.
...

I agree, for anything more than a one-shot it is really hard for me to buy into the idea that playing into hopeless despair = fun!

Misery tourism is not my bag baby.

I would run CoC, but I would absolutely change the lore for my game so that the Old Ones were released from outer darkness by the Devil to corrupt the souls of man to the point where they would help them destroy our world. (One of Gods Creations.) But this bit of Lore would be something the PC's would have to discover in play.

And I would absolutely have a system of divine miracles that anyone playing a Priest or Nun would be able to do based on what Pundit has in Lion and Dragon for his cleric class. Christianity would be the bulwark against the insanity of the Old Ones.

After all, subverting established Lore and IP is all the rage these days right?

.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 26, 2020, 08:58:23 PM
You caught me, I was being a bit weasel-wordy there. What I really meant was "religious" -- I'm Catholic, and so the basic cosmic nihilism that underlies Lovecraftian horror is simply something I can't buy into for any great length of time, not and still enjoy the story.  But calling it a "philosophical" difference tends to be less prone to side-tracking such discussions into religious arguments, which I've found the hard way seldom get anywhere productive.

Same boat here; Catholic and not even really comfortable pretending to be a pagan in D&D. If monotheism isn't on the table I prefer to play agnostics and just not engage that element.

Probably my favorite part of 4E was that it enabled everyone in our group who felt similarly to completely sidestep religion because the warlord and later bard and atificer could do the basic functions that in the past were reserved to clerics (something I also appreciated about BECMI where my introduction to D&D was the Red Box and how it pretty much left the specifics of religion blank).

It's also why the setting in my own book I've been writing made the truth of the divine unknowable to mortals and included a monotheistic faith alongside the pagan ones.

Frankly, my fantasy world is fantastic enough that mortal accessible otherworlds doesn't add that much (you're already IN elfland with elves, giants, dragons and shades, so what is gained by adding elfland+ to the places one can travel?), but leaving the afterlife a mystery that must be taken on faith makes the occupants of the world much more relatable since they must grapple with the afterlife just as we all do (and that's worth a lot since I think if you bored down into what effect proof of the after would have your humans and their cultures would be almost unrecognizable as human).

Similarly, including a strictly monotheistic faith alongside the pagan ones adds a lot more than it restricts... particularly since the truth is unknowable in this life. Also because, despite its existence, the pagan religions are largely in control of the world and the monotheistic one is shunned and even persecuted (because that also feels more true and relatable given the present state of the world).

Quote from: Jaeger on December 26, 2020, 09:31:40 PM

Quote from: Opaopajr on December 26, 2020, 04:39:23 PM
Friendship and its magic looks a lot less benevolent nowadays.

WTF!? Friendship and Magic is always benevolent!

You realize that you are causing real harm, literally physically hurting people, making them feel unsafe, and advocating actual violence when you spread such lies.

Blasphemer! Heretic! Burn him! Burn himmmmmmm......!

*The Pony cries out in pain as it strikes you*

I have no publically permissible choice but to receive your burning self-righteous benificence at the stake!  In the name friendship I transcend my sins of free thought and confusion into the tickling flames of death-love-oppression histrionics.  May you too one day transcend yourself as I now shall.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 23, 2020, 12:24:31 AM"I'm not out to kill your characters, but I'm not going to stand between your choices and the dice, either."

Excellent quote. It effectively defines how (and why) I GM in a single sentence.