We gotta start telling people “you don’t actually like TTRPGs you just like critical role” more. Like if somebody joined a martial arts class and kept talking about signature moves and catchphrases and power slams and rivals like its pro wrestling that would be pretty fucking annoying to people who like to practice martial arts right
Ok but they do deserve a place in our hobby. TTRPGs are not a martial art where there are objective standards of what is good (wins fights) and what isn’t. People will learn on their own that its not critical role, no need to gatekeep
Extensive observation in toxic shifts in TTRPG play culture has shown me that no, they will not just learn that on their own, and they shouldn’t have to learn that on their own, because this isn’t gatekeeping, it’s advice. In any artform there are in fact practices that will tend towards getting you better results and practices that will tend towards getting you worse results, and the people who came before you have already made those mistakes and learned from them. A martial arts master telling you not to cross your feet when you advance because it makes you easier to knock over isn’t trying to gatekeep foot-crossers from his martial art, he is trying to get you better results in your martial-arting based on his own experience and that of the masters who came before him. And if you (general) think that playing and designing TTRPGs are not artforms and skills that can be studied, learned, and improved to result in a better experience, then you are just as ignorant as the people that think that medieval knights were just dumb cavemen swinging swords at each other randomly until one of them happened to win by accident.
We have learned things over the course of the past fifty years of TTRPGs being an artistic medium about where the strengths of the medium lie and what practices tend to get good and bad results. The practices which get good and bad results in a home TTRPG campaign, and the practices which get good and bad results in a high-budget for-a-spectating-audience “Actual Play” show tend to be the polar opposite of each other.
I am also linking three other comment chains because i feel that information in them helps me make this point.
Are ttrpgs easier for everyone involved if you take the time and look for advice from those who came before? Yes, definitely. Should we therefore exclude newbies from the hobby who prefer to experiment with what they know, and make their own mistakes without said advice? I don’t think so.
They are the ttrpg equivalent of the enthusiastic amateur who knows nothing of colour theory or picture composition, and who just wants to have some fun with colourful crayons, and talk about it online. And that is absolutely valid.
For those who want to get more into the art form, there is a ton of good advice readily accessible, and most of it mentions ‘it’s not like CR’ at some point.
The sentiment here isn’t to exclude anyone. It’s to invite them to engage more deeply with the medium, and a part of that includes realizing that you can’t and shouldn’t expect your home game to look like a highly produced actual play show made primarily with an audience in mind, because as stated before carrying those expectations into your home game can actually be detrimental to the game and thus everyone else’s enjoyment.
I think your art example is good, but it ignores the fact that with the exclusion of solo games TTRPGs are an inherently collaborative medium. I can broadly agree with the sentiment that the new blood be allowed to make their own mistakes and experiment, but since it is a collaborative medium there are other people at the table whose experience should also be a concern. Personally if they want to just try to emulate their favorite actual plays among themselves it’s no skin off my back, but when/if they do want to get deeper into the medium it’s going to interfere with a bunch of other people’s enjoyment if they bring in their expectations colored by actual play.
So the point isn’t to keep anyone out of the hobby but to get them to realize that they shouldn’t be trying to emulate pro wrestling at the dojo because they might hurt themselves and others. And also this needs to be an ongoing conversation because more and more people are joining the hobby each day and the quicker they learn that the GM at their table is not Matt Mercer and they are not one of Matt Mercer’s celebrity friends the better.
Well, I don’t think it’s very encouraging to tell people ‘hey, the thing you think you like, you really don’t like it, and I know that because I like the real thing, whereas you are a dummie who fell for the marketing gig that just pretends it’s this.’
I don’t think people generally take kindly to something like that, no matter what your intention actually is. Because tbh, this is what the op’s post reads like for me. That’s just me though, and I might be wrong.
Anyway, back to the more interesting discussion.
Essentially, this is kinda a railroading thing, isn’t it? Actual play has to have a lot more rails than a home game, because of pre-made battle maps with lots of production value, and a story that needs to be satisfying not just to the table but also to the audience.
In my opinion, it does not mean the players are robbed of all their agency, making this not a ttrpg; it just means the GM has to work a lot harder to give it to them. Brennan from Dimension 20 has an interesting idea, which he explains in their Exandria GMs Round Table: when a game has to have more rails, let those rails come from the characters themselves.
When the story is crafted with the characters in mind, and explicitly for them as an opportunity to learn and grow, with the GM as a sort of service top to provide them with situations and obstacles they can use for it if they wish, it becomes all about the PCs again, and a player’s agency is restored.
I think it works very well for Dimension 20, but I also realise that their campaigns are a lot shorter than CR, with 20 episodes with an average of 2,5 hours or something being the maximum. And I can only imagine what a shit ton of work it is for the GM and their team.
To make this short, I think D20 and critical role are both ttrpgs, and should be recognized as such, with the caveat that they are the version of the art form that happens when you have a production budget, whereas homemgames are the version that happens when you don’t. We are in agreement that not everything that works in one version works equally as well in the other.
As for your argument that there are multiple people involved, I say what I always say: talk to the people at your table before you venture off together, and check in with them regularly as you go along. You’ll have to have these kinds of talks anyway, because no group is without its conflicts, so why not just include everyone’s expectations from the start?
I am going to try to be as polite as possible because I don’t think you mean to be malicious but I really am sick of responses like this, especially when they put words in my mouth from a place of ignorance.
I do not appreciate being finger-wagged about my tone when I, and some fellow game designers, have already expressed and clarified what I mean in a more nuanced way multiple times - multiple times in this very thread even - underneath this one short pissed off post I made. In fact having to be perfectly nice all the time to people who start yelling “gatekeeping! gatekeeping!” at the slightest twitch of my finger is what the original post is about.
I am a professional game designer, a disabled one, who has difficulty finding other means to pay my way through an expensive world. I have a stake in this that most others don’t. The health and financial viability of TTRPGs as an artform is my health.
You seem to have imagined that somewhere I said “that’s not a ttrpg”, when I didn’t say that anywhere. That’s like hardly even relevant. A TTRPG is a rulebook, and a tool that you use. From this point on, “tools” will be a metaphor for TTRPGs.
I make and sell those tools for a living, it’s a real skill that takes a lot of work and study for relatively little money, one that you won’t even notice the intricacies of if you haven’t really studied it, and my particular talents lie with a particular type of these tools. I actually do know quite a lot about what goes into tools, techniques, and their uses.
The tool industry is struggling under the weight of a mega monopoly called Wizards of the Coast, which has cultivated some of the most obsessive brand loyalty I’ve ever seen, and thus is a threat to my livelihood.
WotC sells butter knives as an “all-purpose tool.”
Butter knives are meant for spreading butter, but you can spread other things with them, or in a pinch you could maybe screw in a screw with them or a few other things. I personally think that WotC butter knives are of inferior quality compared to other butter knives but that is a different issue.
WotC, to increase butter knife sales, funded a butter knife soap opera with a celebrity cast in which characters celebrate butter knives and use them in all sorts of anime-ass ways, not even all of which involve spreading butter.
People knew and old to butter knives see this, and they want to live that out. They buy butter knives by the armful. Butter knives are a lifestyle.
They use fancy high-end butter for their butter knife show, butter that is far outside the price range of the average toast enjoyer.
But it is not just a matter of budget! Among other things, the butter used in the show is pre-warmed off-screen through TV magic, so no matter what ridiculous ways the characters in the show hold or use the butter knives, the butter goes on the toast smooth. Fans are now destroying their toast trying to replicate these tricks with cold butter.
Their marketing is so strong that when somebody needs to dig a ditch, that person reaches for their “all purpose” WotC butter knife, and starts digging a drainage ditch with a butter knife. You can dig a drainage ditch with a butter knife, technically, but that isn’t what it’s for and isn’t what it’s good at. You’re going to have a hard time at least, if not an extremely bad time. And many people clearly do have an extremely bad time, and want a more efficient way to dig ditches, or theyre so deep that they don’t even realize they want a better way, they don’t even conceive that there could be a better way, but they all just keep buying and using butter knives.
And then, when many of those people discover shovels, instead of holding shovels with both hands, they grip the shovel like they would grip a butter knife because they know literally nothing else. The shovels don’t work like this, they hurt their wrists, and they either conclude that shovels suck and they’ll never ever buy one again, or at best they continue to use the shovel very inefficiently. I know because I was just like them once.
I sell shovels for a (extremely meager, precarious) living, and friends of mine sell lawnmowers and hammers(in this analogy, people also use their WotC butter knives to cut grass, pound in nails, etc.)
I have to go out there to the ditches and convince people practically one at a time, that they are digging ditches wrong or at best very inefficiently, and have been their whole lives because a soulless CEO needed to buy a fifth yacht. I do this because I care about these people getting heat stroke and carpal tunnel from digging ditches with a butter knife, because I care about shovels AND butter knives, and because it makes up JUST enough of the difference that it keeps me able to afford things.
This is something that is often very painful for them to hear, I know, and if I make the slightest mistake during a very long process, they will cover their ears, crying “Gatekeeper! Gatekeeper!”, just like they were taught in the cartoon PSAs where Buddy the Butter Knife says “If a strange man comes up to you and says you should use anything except a butter knife, say ‘No, gatekeeper!’ and run away to buy the latest splatbook as fast as you can.”
You’ve caught me slipping with this post, expressing my frustration and saying “damn, I am pissed off at these butter knife idiots that I have to do all this in addition to making shovels just to get anyone to even consider shovels or else my shovel business might fail and leave me with nothing!”
And then, can you imagine what it’s like to have someone come in with their nice positive words and affirm butter knife fans actions with “Yes, you are valid, you can dig a ditch with a butter knife, that’s okay to do. Don’t let those meanies tell you otherwise.” Like.. sorry I was rude in public but I’m already playing for spare change on the sidewalk here man.
Now that they’ve been validated, the path of least resistance is that they can turtle up, they don’t have to learn anything new, don’t have to examine their behavior, and don’t have to exit plato’s cave. It’s a technical true statement, but it isn’t really one that they needed any extra help believing because it’s being poured into their ears by a million-dollar marketing team every day.
If they come to understand what a shovel is and how to use it, and what a butter knife is actually intended for, and they still choose to use a butter knife to dig ditches after, well, that’s fine. But not knowing or understanding that there are more options and other techniques is not a choice at all. To prevent anyone from making an informed decision that might prevent the sale of a butter knife through deliberate confusion of what a butter knife and shovel are, what you’re meant to use them for, and how you’re meant to hold them, is what WotC’s multi-million-dollar marketing budget is going into, which includes the formation and sponsorship of things like Critical Role.
And just in case somebody misreads this post down the line: No, I am not saying that the Critical Role cast is knowingly involved in a sinister conspiracy with WotC with a contract that says “you must deliberately misrepresent the use of butter knives.” They don’t need to be, it just happens as a byproduct, which is great for WotC.
And to anticipate something else that people have already been commenting on this post: yes, since the dawn of time there have been people using tools wrong. Critical Role did not invent bad tool-usage habits. WotC didn’t even invent bad tool-usage habits. However, due to financial incentive and massive financial backing, they perpetuate these bad habits on a previously unprecedented scale.
SirObvious is fighting the good fight.
I'll offer a slightly different direction though: just sitting by and shaking our heads while people dig their ditches with butter knives for fear of being called a gatekeeper doesn't just undercut the shovel-makers, it causes the indy dev market to stagnate. For every one SirObvious, there seems to be a dozen people who are more than happy to sell butter knives at the sides of the ditches. They even sell butter knives that are kinda sorta shovel shaped! Yessiree, this butter knife lets you play Cyberpunk! That one is for Magical Burst! Call of Cthulhu? Best believe it! Nevermind the fact that these variant butter knives require instruction manuals longer than the actual tools' and get the job done markedly worse! It's safe! It's familiar! It's everywhere! It's Butter Knife!
I don't care what you play at your home table. I'll mourn the misdirected creative energies you might spend on modding your butter knife into a pitchfork, but whatever, have fun... But when you throw money in the mix, that's where I'll say you are causing damage. You are not just ignoring the folks trying to make fresh and exiciting games, you are actively making sure that these pioneers will have a harder time finding their audience over the deafening white noise that is The Butter Knife.
There's a kickstarter project going on at time of writing. It's all about how to have a peaceful, wholesome, heartwarming game with little dragon buddies! No combat at all! That sounds awesome and I'd love to give it a try... It's 5e though. It's 5e without combat. It's 5e without, conservatively, 90% of the game system's rules. That's so backwards, you'd make more progress digging the ditch if you put the butter knife in your pocket and used your hands. Even if the creators didn't want to make their own bespoke system, they could have picked another pre-existing game at random and found better support for a game without combat than 5e. I'll bet you anything that they chose 5e not because it's the best system to support their vision, but because they're devout Butter Knifers or, more cynically, they know that's where the money is.
All I'm saying, when you have some dosh burning a hole in your pocket, throw it at a developer who's making a fresh system. Support shovel makers so we can make some truly amazing ditches.
