Yeah I've been observing the ongoing discussion in that meta question.

With extreme bafflement

@BraddSzonye is there an appropriate meta I should be looking at

oh I take it there is

Ill go find it myself

Mostly because as a designer myself I'd love to know if I did shoddy work

So that I can kill it with fire

Apologize

Commit the appropriate form of ritual suicide to regain my honor

So if I said, 'FATE lies to you. Its claim that it allows you to tell exciting stories is deceptive.', no one would have a problem with that either?

And then fix it

@Miniman If you can back it up, sure. In the hypothetical situation where your assertion is true, you are stating a flaw in the system and why it is a problem (that is, Claim X is made, but the reality is Y).

You shouldn't write if you can't handle criticism. The quality of your work, or the lack thereof, is not contingent on your fragile emotions.

Part of being in the professional RPG gig is learning to take even the most hair-raising critique and find the problem being discussed within it.

'D&D lies to you' doesn't even rate on the scale.

It's a perfectly acceptable criticism that would be accepted in academic discussions and, indeed, has been.

You're missing the context, though.

@Lord_Gareth Criticism is fine. Name-calling is not. If I want that, I know where to find Skeptics.

This isn't criticism for developers; it's not even a review! It's an answer on a Q&A site which relies on sweeping antagonistic statements without a whole bunch of specific support, and more importantly it's a vortex for bad site behaviour whether it's right or not.

caught up with the discussion

@BraddSzonye Pardon, what did you mean by that?

Since the bad behaviour isn't about the topic, but about the presentation, defending the topic is trivial and saying people shouldn't behave the way they are behaving is treating a real problem as theoretical.

@Lord_Gareth Pretty sure in academic discussions the statement would be closer to: 'D&D makes a false assumption that its rules are capable of supporting a playstyle which they are not'. Which would be fine, whereas 'D&D lies to you and deceives you' is not.

@BESW Is it really going to be different if I rephrase it to, "The claims made by D&D that it support this content is untrue," or "the idea that D&D supports these concepts is deceptive"? At some point the base fact that D&D is making claims it then fails to fulfill is going to need to be addressed.

dig your answer on meta @besw

D&D Lies to You would be the paper title followed by a colon and the subtitle would feature field-specific lexicon verbosity

@Lord_Gareth That's all it says, though.

Great! Who could have asked for clarification and didn't?

What if we preface that statement simply with "in my opinion" wouldnt that in fact cut through a lot of the chaff of the issue

It's a flat-out poor answer because it gives two paragraphs of inflammatory "there's a problem" rhetoric with one sentence of support for it!

@Metool Sorry, I was being grumpy and probably need to take a step back. I personally find the environment on Skeptics.SE too toxic to read for reasons similar to the discussion happening here now.

Lovely.

It says "D&D lies," gives a vague generic supporting sentence which never gets down to cases, and then proposes a solution to a problem it hasn't properly demonstrated exists! Of course people are going to get upset!

The worst part is that without the statements about deception it would be a really good answer.

It'd be useless as a critique of the system if a dev DID find it!

@Miniman I totally agree.

I actually like every part of that answer that isn’t a rant against D&D.

[Kicks perma-link to KRyan so he has the chance to improve the answer]

Which is why I recommended that he keep the basic argument but remove the ranty bits, because they were generating a lot of heat but no light. But KRyan vehemently disagreed, both on the original post and in the meta thread.

@BESW And people should be acting on that in a constructive way, by asking, "Oh? How does it lie?"

But yes, he does need to work on his answer.

@Metool My own constructive criticism was to excise the ranty bits but keep the rest because it was really good. I would have upvoted it instead of downvoting, without the rant.

He does get a lot ranty, as much as I agree with him on some things.

Kryan tends to feel - and I tend to believe - that the ranty bits are important, because they help shape an understanding of the system. But we've both got long, bitter histories with D&D and the culture around D&D that have shaped who we are as posters.

@BESW can tell you the tale of my RAEG

@Lord_Gareth I get that. But the ranty bits come across as trolling.

And in this case they have resulted in trolling and flamewars, intended or not.

Ekk.

@BraddSzonye They really do.

What definition of trolling are we using, to be clear?

There's a big difference between discussing a system's flaws, and raging about them in ways which are useless for understanding the flaws if you aren't already aware of them.

> The idea that honesty and tact are mutually exclusive is a toxic false dichotomy which a lot of the Internet hides behind. Let's not be those guys. (BESW)

The kind where someone gets his laughs by making other people mad?

Or some other kind that I've not heard of?

I also agree with his general premise but also the idea that it could use some more finesse and that he could actually do a better job of supporting his argument

BRB, restarting browser.

@Metool Based on followup discussions, it seems that folks don’t intend these ranty bits as trolling. But to an outside observer, it’s tinder, and it burst into a flamewar more than once, so it’s practically indistinguishable from trolling.

@BraddSzonye That doesn't answer my question of definition.

See exhibit A: In Which Lord_Gareth Attempts to Be Dramatic for Humorous Effect But Is Mistaken for a Troll.

From that context, I infer that Bradd is using "troll" to mean "someone who deliberately says provocative things in order to get negative emotional reactions from the sincere."

I think making my answer a Community Wiki makes me more inclined to edit the jebus out of it

I don't tend to ask rhetorical questions. I actually strive for clarity when I care about these discussions.

to be really, really blunt, I have a huge problem with being accused of trolling because I dared show emotion and indignation about the poor way I perceive D&D to treat its players, and I am strongly considering refusing to improve the answer despite my own statements that it still needs work because now it feels quite a lot like doing so would be akin to accepting your condemnation of my position as trolling

Wait, who said it was trolling? I totally missed that.

We've said that it can easily be misread as trolling, but that's nothing like accusing you of actually, intentionally, trolling.

and I think that's preposterous

I "rant" because I want to demonstrate passion and conviction

Preposterous how? Bradd wasn't mistaken that Gareth was trolling last week?

I want to make it clear that this issue is serious, significant, and problematic

I think it's kind of preposterous to say that it's impossible for someone to mistake your intent.

that it should not be ignored

You're right. It's a big issue.

You should emphasise that by providing a good answer, rather than a loud one.

(And the better the answer is, the louder it can also be.)

I honestly thought I had, and I have gotten a lot of feedback from others suggesting that they thought I had

what backing up do I need to provide? how do I prove a negative? how do I demonstrate that D&D never supports these kinds of things as well as it makes itself out to do

And now you're getting more feedback. I, for one, upvoted your answer at first and now feel that I did so from a position of foreknowledge.

Put it this way: if someone doesn't already understand your position, how does your answer help them understand it?

@BESW There we go. That's what I was trying to think to say earlier and couldn't get out in English (because English is horrible aaaargh)

The position has trouble making sense in the absence of supplementary knowledge.

You make bold (and, I think, correct) claims, but don't really put much behind them. For someone who doesn't understand your reasons already, bold unsubstantiated claims they don't understand look like bold ignorant claims.

@BESW funny, the question-asker was quite appreciative of my answer, in a since-deleted comment

@KRyan At a start, you could possibly give examples of why something breaks down in play? Like, if you wanted to talk about why D&D is bad for tense political games, you could then explain it by demonstrating the flaws in the social skill system

@KRyan I'm glad of that! of course, the querent is not the only audience on Stack Exchange, or there'd be only an accept button.

@BESW my point was more that my answer apparently does help (at least some) who didn't understand it

again, anyway, at least for this answer, I would have to prove a negative in order to offer more than I have, I think

How about experience?

There is a little bit of an issue in providing backing facts for an argument that a game system does not support a certain type of game play. If you could post excerpts or page numbers, that would be a counter argument.

I assert (accurately) that there are not rules behind these items

Your experience-based solution is awesome.

If I were going to write the answer, I'd put in something about the many times my groups tried to do social-focused games in D&D.

@BESW experience covers the problems I've seen and the solution I offer, but how can experience back up a claim about a reality of the rules-system?

And how abysmally they failed without aggressive applications of multiple layers of Rule 0.

for that matter, the very question itself seems like evidence enough to me

Then refer back to it!

the fact that you have to ask – and no one can just point you to a page you missed – indicates that there are no such rules

be back in a bit

Honestly, the burden is not on me to tell you how to support your answer. If you can't give some kind of support for your claim, you have no business writing an answer predicated on it. I believe you can support your claim: with examples of rules which fail to accomplish their stated goals, with experiences from your table, and with the question itself, it shouldn't be hard.

Heck, a quick search through previous questions should give ample evidence of the problem throughout the history of D&D if you want to make that claim rather than focusing on the specific edition in question.

@BraddSzonye I think your meta post's title may be part of the problem.

Your thesis appears to be that we should keep in mind our citizens may be personally moved by critiques of their favourite systems, so we should keep our language moderate in such critiques so that the conversation can remain objective.

But your title, while cute and relephant, may muddy the issue.

Flag/VTC off topic

@BESW I do not think it is unfair to ask what people find lacking in my backing it up. I did not (intend to, anyway) ask you to supply the evidence, but rather I was interested in characterization of the kind of evidence you expect to see/feel it currently lacks.

(which you more-or-less answered anyway)

That's fair.

@BESW Hm, good point. Didn’t think of that.

@KRyan Hey man, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were trolling, didn’t mean to imply it, and tried to make that clear in my meta post.

As much as cute titles get more views, I've seen them backfire on both mainsite and meta questions too much.

“Game criticism should be constructive, not provocative” gets my meaning across more clearly, but it’s not at all pithy.

Improvement?

@BraddSzonye Some might say you have to...[shades] take the pith out.

Heh.

BESW’s right though, being pithy only polarizes things.

...it's one reason aspects are so hard to write.

Good point!

@BESW At least your GM does not try and make you use song titles as aspects

@BraddSzonye I consider my statements accurate; I consider the description of D&D as one thing, but the reality of its rules-system being something else entirely, to be a deceptive situation. I agree with your general point about constructive rather than provocative, but I'm also not going to sugar-coat it. @BESW has a point about backing that claim up better, but it is still the claim I am making and going to stick to.

(or lines of lyrics)

I think it is important, I think it is problematic, and I think people need to know about it

I think that it is what it is, and trying to sugar-coat it, make it easier to ignore, only hurts people

Absolutely. But you can be clear and uncompromising without being abrasive.

Abrasiveness doesn't make people listen to your points; it makes it easier to ignore them as unreasoned angry froth.

@BESW and referring to the situation as deceptive, to the claims made but not borne out as lies, where do those fall?

With support, I think "deceptive" and "misleading" are quite apt.

I would personally prefer to avoid words that imply intent.

"Lies".... well, that's a lot more charged because it has more connotations of active, deliberate malice.

But then I personally consider failure a lot less serious than deception.

And I’ve been in way too many arguments with pedants who tried to insist that “intellectual dishonesty” wasn’t necessarily pejorative.

Or that personal attacks aren’t invalid so long as they’re true. I’m coming into this with some baggage.

Please remember that you were highly offended by the slightest implication that your post could have been mistaken for trolling--not even that it WAS mistaken, much less that anyone thought you meant it!--to the point that it made you consider abandoning the post altogether.

@BraddSzonye Keep in mind that so is everyone else. I've given @BESW glimpses into the alien horror that is the culture KRyan and I come from, and the way debates are carried on there.

You very much came across as judgmental and superior in the comments/discussion spawned from the meta, which was not a great way to ease tensions back down.

And consider that similar offence can be taken when you tell people they're being lied to by a thing they love.

Heh, I came from rec.games.frp.dnd and rec.games.frp.advocacy. It’s hard to imagine places more toxic.

@BraddSzonye Well, I can honestly say that I've been in an argument with a guy who claimed that compromise at the game table was morally wrong and the only ethical way to run a game involves unquestioning obedience of the DM.

It doesn't make them want to re-think their stance, it makes them want to yell or leave.

Hey, I’m extremely opinionated and outspoken, but almost never judgmental. People have a hard time telling the difference between the two though, so I try to keep a lid on it.

@Lord_Gareth Hey, I think I know that guy.

@BraddSzonye [Bro hugs his fellow victim]

Heck, I played a session of Mage under him.

Oh ouch.

Heh. Philosophy major who ran WoD games as "The GM's Story As Told By His PC Finger Puppets." It exploded in a bevy of personal drama, and when the dust cleared he joined my D&D 3.5 game, where he had to re-learn all his RP habits from scratch.

Another good reason to change the title is because some folks thought I was saying that we shouldn’t criticize games at all.

@BESW I have been accused of that... Which is odd, I consider myself a reactionary GM, with very little in the way of plot planned, just a general idea of what else is going on in the world.

If you've designed or chosen a world such that it's hard for players' agency to change it, then it can look very similar.

And I apologize for flooding the front page with 4 year old questions.

Hey, can anyone tell me if there's a farming, livestock, or animal husbandry stack?

My wife's acquired chickens and goats

I am going to assume that, in the beginning, there was only one world-of-darkness tag and that later it was split into old and new, with the old tag being renamed old-world-of-darkness

manifests

allo Lord_Gareth

other people

Yo.

greetings BESW

What's new?

not a great deal

they've got me doing a megapost on the Beastlands

so that's a thing

@Lord_Gareth I can't find any; pets.se is explicitly not about livestock.

@BESW No farming or agriculture stack?

None that my quick word search of the list of sites found.

I'm quite unfamiliar with Beastlands, actually. Who're you writing the post for?

GiantITP people.

I run a Planescape thread on that forum

closets i could find

ooh, time to return home

victory

I am in an odd position, where one of the best slice-of-life/relationship webcomics I've read in awhile - in terms of writing, characterization, art quality and presentation - is too explicit for me to share with the people I feel would appreciate its qualities the most.

@Tritium21 yeah, we don't do animals for the most part.

ha, amusing string of posts ^^^ Lord_Gareth followed by wax eagle

@Adeptus Amusing, in a NSFW/NSF Real Life kind of way

@Tritium21 well yeah

@Lord_Gareth oglaf.com ?

@BraddSzonye No!

Though I do love me some oglaf.

OK, well that would also fit the description, heh.

Yeah, I should catch up. I haven’t read it in a few months.

@BraddSzonye Oglaf is very much not a slice-of-life or relationship comic, though. It's pornographic comedy.

Hey, I don’t judge. It could be a slice of your life or relationships.

@BraddSzonye I accept that my difficulties with the Fun God put me in the minority.

You have me curious

I'd post a link but I'm not sure what the Stack's policy is on NSFW links that are labeled as such.

However, I can cast Greater Summon Moderator

@waxeagle WHAT IS THE STACK'S POLICY ON CLEARLY LABELED NSFW LINKS?

BTW, @Lord_Gareth, you might find this interesting.

Eeenteresting.

@BESW Did I provoke that?

@Tritium21 Yes.

@BESW Pride, I feel it

Aside from aspects and the names of some of the stunts, it uses only default options from the Atomic Robo RPG.

@BESW Oo McClane.

@BraddSzonye For more than a year I've said Die Hard is a great example of the Fate storytelling ethos.

Last night I figured I'd put it to the test.

@BESW Interesting. I’d need to think about that.

@BESW It’s my favorite Christmas movie.

@Lord_Gareth lololol

It is indeed, Christmas time in hollas queens.

@Lord_Gareth I don't think there is one specifically (IE case by case basis), but I've not plumbed the depths of MSE to determine that

I am happy with how that meta discussion is going

Loosely related (because it is the first result on MSE for "nsfw"): meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115732/nsfw-proposal-on-area51 (the comments are glorious)

I had to disappear for ~3 hours for stuff, and probably at a good time too

@BESW Good analysis

@waxeagle Then I shall ask you, a moderator, point-blank: may I post a link to a webcomic which contains adult images and content? Webcomic is hosted on DeviantArt and its plot-to-porn ratio heavily favors plot over the course of its 4 current chapters.

@Lord_Gareth I don't see an issue with it.

meta.stackexchange.com/a/188886/170797 might be informative, though definitely not official policy as no one from SE staff chimes in

boils down largely to: context and intent are super important. In the discussed context and intent, you're in the clear.

@Tritium21 Since you were curious, the link. I will re-state that this webcomic contains explicit content of a pornographic nature. As a personal aside, the first chapter (linked at end of this post) has the most explicit content, and further chapters ease back on that heavily: shiniez.deviantart.com/gallery/35675685/chapter-1-completed

Noted.

thank you

And of course, now that I have the link, I have little in the way of time to read it >.< isnt that always the way it goes?

@doppelgreener - Hast thou time to speak via GChat?

I'm trying to get this ball moving soon so it'd be nice to confirm or deny your involvement.

@Lord_Gareth I do now

@BESW If you're there can you put Gareth and I in touch?

I sense a disturbance in the force

It's as if hundreds of nerds cried out in rage

Nope, just gas

Hey BESW, have you ever played BESM?

I have not.

@Lord_Gareth ooh, yeah, that comic is really solid. it's sexy without being objectifying (...says the straight male...), it's heartwarming and engaging and fun and serious and occasionally scary

I can chat again!

Can someone explain to me why I got a thirty-minute ban for content I posted days ago which was resolved at the time?

Because now I'm irritated.

It was a rather silly thing to say. I think I've predicted before that your cultivated attitude of tongue-in-cheek darkness is asking to get misconstrued by people who aren't in on the "joke."

Silly or not, the matter was dead and done.

What foul necromancer decided to bring it back up?

Yes. It was also rather silly to necromong [coins new verb] it.

@Lord_Gareth What I don't get is, I thought you didn't like D&D 5e.

[ducks]

@Miniman I...don't. Why would your perception of this change?

@Lord_Gareth >On a scale of 1-10 in terms of design quality, 5e is a unicycle made entirely of half-melted fudge

That's a tremendous compliment.

Unicycles are awesome, and half-melted fudge is one of life's greatest pleasures.

In any event, when/if someone can, I'd like an explanation. Because frankly I'm more than a little offended; not that I got moderated (not like my messages haven't been deleted or moved before) but that something that happened, conflicted, and then was resolved got dredged back up.

@Lord_Gareth might've been a weird case of cross-site moderation... on a really large delay?

I linked to that conversation earlier today in this chat, as an example of mistaken-for-troll.

@BESW Might this and the chat context have set off some kind of heuristic watchdog?

I don't know of such a thing.

I doubt there is one

ugh

the meta is pissing me off

Brian unilaterally editing my answer pisses me off an awful lot more

@Lord_Gareth Well, who has the power to chat ban?

I really feel that the current trend on that meta question amounts to banning any serious criticism of any gaming system that someone happens to like

it seems that the only acceptable way to do so is to couch any criticisms in tons of caveats and qualifiers to "soften the blow" even when not warranted

@KRyan I've been observing this as well. I really don't like the, "The designers are members of our community," line of reasoning either.

I'm a designer. If my work is bad I would like to be informed.

If others lack the professionalism to handle it, that's not the Stack's fault.

Welcome to writing.

Ah hey Miniman

I answered your question a while ago

[raised eyebrow]

it seems strongly like you cannot claim something is bad, which implies that everything is purely personal preference and there is no such thing as even being allowed to claim some standard by which you're judging a system

Mxy has effectively demonstrated that the "deceptive business practices" defence is not relevant because it's hyperbole.

If D&D were engaging in deceptive business practices, then you'd probably be on to something.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton for what it's worth, I was unaware of the recent turn of events in the meta thread discussing the answer

@BESW honestly, I feel like the shoe fits

I feel like D&D purports to be and offer things that it does not actually offer

and I think it hypes those very things up to garner and maintain a fanbase

@Sandwich Yep, I upvoted it

so now my answer's been deleted

You'll need to find the book though

the only acceptable answer, apparently, is the same tired "Same Page Tool!" answer we use for everything else

Ballsun deleted the link because it wasn't OGL, even though that book is no longer published

@Sandwich "Keep circulating the tapes" is not a legal defence.

True enough I guess

@KRyan Does it actually advertise realism/simulationism? As far as I can recall, all its hype is in the epic adventures, powerful heroes, fearsome dragons direction.

@Miniman that's not how RPGs advertise, though

RPGs are mostly word of mouth

giving people false impressions can advertise features you don't have

but I suppose it's not legally the crime that mxy refers to

I don't think you can say that word-of-mouth giving a wrong impression is deceptive business practice

I still feel it is a dishonest approach that has misled consumers

I'm not even sure you can say the originator of a product is in any way responsible for the word of mouth regarding that product

whatever

it's not really relevant, and I am so many kinds of disinterested in this now

where 'this' right now means 'this site'

I disagree massively with the meta and with the moderation team

@Miniman You can when they keep up active community involvement. WotC marketed 3.5 as a general system that could tell any kind of story. When that claim fails to meet reality, there is an issue.

@Lord_Gareth Indeed. There's a page in the 3.5 DMG which kept me banging my head against the "social D&D" wall for years.

there is an issue

it's probably not a legal/criminal issue

I never intended to suggest it was

@Lord_Gareth With "the golden rule" in place, any system can be used for any sort of game. Not necessarily well...

the fact that my phrasing happened to match the name of a crime is something I wasn't even aware of

@Adeptus this is at the heart of my issue here