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Xiahou Dun posted:I mean this is totally off the rails of the point of this thread but : I feel like I need to go to bat for pedagogy here because I think it's really important. I've spent a lot of time with professors who have a ton of experience in private industry and were hired to teach me law because they're famous. And I've spent a lot of time under professors who went out of their way to study the art of teaching. The gulf in effective technique can be enormous. Pedagogy is often taught in a way linked to the subject matter, but it really depends on the field because there is more work done in some areas than others. For example, my wife and a few of my friends did language pedagogy for teaching specific languages, the result of that research formed the basis for the language program I did my undergrad in. It's got its flaws like any other, but when I traveled abroad and interacted with students from other programs I realized that the structural understanding the program instilled in me of that language gave me a tool I had to figure the rest out intuitively that others didn't. And it wasn't because I was smart, it was because people spent their entire PhDs trying to figure out the minutiae of how to build the schema I needed to understand the language in very specific and applied ways. Then I went to law school, where I did not have the benefit of there being a well developed field of effective law education (which boggles my mind, because now as a lawyer it's my loving job to teach law to judges so that seems like an important skill). It was often a total crapshoot as to whether I was going to get professors who would just assign readings in the order the book gave it, or whether I would get professors who actually tried to research effective ways to teach their subject matter. I found it immeasurably easier to stay engaged and build a more complete understanding of the law in the classes where the professors cared about and pursued information on pedagogy. In the case of law this is usually in the form of conferences because a formal field of law pedagogy isn't a thing as far as I know. All this is to say that having a way to learn techniques for conveying information and ensuring that it's properly internalized is absolutely a vital thing. And while I think there's a limit to how well that can happen with generalized education classes, it definitely needs to happen in specific areas of study. Of course we'll have good teachers who learn from experience, even without that. But the point is to build more consistency so that that some kids don't get shafted because their teacher isn't the one who was smart enough to figure it out intuitively.
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Nov 8, 2017 16:57
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There is no worse feeling than getting in front of a bunch of people nominally interested in a subject you are passionate about and completely failing to impart that passion because very few of them understand anything you said about it. It is also funny that there are people dismissing the usefulness of pedagogy in a thread for a hobby that revolves around books intended to teach people how to do something, but that might actually explain a lot about the quality of most RPGs.
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Nov 8, 2017 17:16
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I mean, there's a sizable fraction of the hobby that gets at least a little mad if you even imply that design is technological and progressive.
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Nov 8, 2017 17:26
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Halloween Jack posted:I mean, there's a sizable fraction of the hobby that gets at least a little mad if you even imply that design is technological and progressive. They're right, unless I've misunderstood what you're saying here. There's plenty of bad design that happens to coincide with old design and resistance to change of any kind but this is an art, not a science.
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Nov 8, 2017 17:50
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Mr. Maltose posted:Iceman. He's an accountant. I hope he doesn’t freeze my assets. 
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Nov 8, 2017 18:03
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:They're right, unless I've misunderstood what you're saying here. There's plenty of bad design that happens to coincide with old design and resistance to change of any kind but this is an art, not a science.
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Nov 8, 2017 18:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:They're right, unless I've misunderstood what you're saying here. There's plenty of bad design that happens to coincide with old design and resistance to change of any kind but this is an art, not a science. It's still possible for design based on old design to be good, but it tends to in some way be progressive from previous material--Kevin Crawford's stuff, for instance. He's actually a good designer using the OSR framework to try and evoke what he wants from his games. I tend to think that the AD&D framework actually holds him back, and it's looking pretty frayed at the edges--turns out it does have limits. In other areas that aren't resistant to change RPG design is progressive in that it literally progresses. Fate is a big deal to us today (love it or hate it) but you can trace where it came from and see its various iterations back to Fudge, and most other games show some similar obvious roots. Also going to speak up for teachers who actually learn how to teach, organize lessons, offer a framework that lets you understand more fully what's happening. I've had exactly one math instructor (statistics) who tried to explain a framework for what we were doing and help us understand what statistics actually measure and why, and that wasn't till college. Useful stuff to know, really. All others just threw problems at us and expected mechanical imitation. Algebra may as well still be sorcery to me to this day and I still don't know why it should matter to me. Likewise literature, we often just got books thrust at us without more than vague gestures at trying to explain what a literary canon is, but read Dickens again he's inoffensive and the PTA is unlikely to try and get anyone fired over it. Again, no structural education until college, and barely even then--I had to develop a lot of that understanding myself. Teaching is a skill and sadly one that gets overlooked in the rush to publish--the undergrads will be there whether you teach well or not, so get that tenure. At the high school level as well, it's not like the kids have any other option.
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Nov 8, 2017 18:09
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Yawgmoth posted:You've terribly misunderstood (or are terribly wrong). RPG sourcebooks are, to a large extent, the same as a textbook for biology or tort law or whatever - a book that is (or should be) designed to teach you something. It doesn't matter if it's art or science or history or elfgames, the design intent should be the same: teach you a thing. Dismissing an entire field of study out of hand because "this is how we've always done it" or "well that's X, this is Y" is a really great way to get left behind by everything that doesn't. Didn't we just have a discussion a dozen pages ago about the subjective preference for sourcebooks as teaching tools vs. reference tools? You can absolutely talk about the best way to achieve a certain goal in this context, but there's a lot of room for personal preference in what those goals should be.
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Nov 8, 2017 18:10
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Or to reiterate my (thoroughly subjective) position, the first purpose of an RPG sourcebook should not be to teach you a thing, it should be to enable you to do the thing it describes as quickly, easily, and effectively as possible once you've achieved relative mastery. You only have to learn how to do something from scratch once; you have to actually carry it out many times, at least hopefully. Similarly a lot of the discourse in this forum treats mechanics that are designed for (and work very well for!) story games as if they were universal principles of good RPG design, which isn't the case at all. D&D is a goddamn mess but it's important to draw the distinction between the way D&D is a mess because it undermines its own goals (a mostly technological problem), how much of it is a mess because D&D, itself, tries to achieve contradictory goals and muddles and compromises between them (partly technological and partly aesthetic) , and on the other hand stuff that isn't actually a mess at all, and is simply trying to achieve something completely different than what you would prefer (which is completely aesthetic.)
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Nov 8, 2017 18:20
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Didn't we just have a discussion a dozen pages ago about the subjective preference for sourcebooks as teaching tools vs. reference tools? You can absolutely talk about the best way to achieve a certain goal in this context, but there's a lot of room for personal preference in what those goals should be. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Or to reiterate my (thoroughly subjective) position, the first purpose of an RPG sourcebook should not be to teach you a thing, it should be to enable you to do the thing it describes as quickly, easily, and effectively as possible once you've achieved relative mastery. You only have to learn how to do something from scratch once; you have to actually carry it out many times, at least hopefully.
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Nov 8, 2017 18:30
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I'm not disputing that a book should do what the author wants it to do, but I think we've kinda "solved" reference materials for the most part, no? Most popular systems have a wealth of reference charts, rules-on-a-page, spell cards, etc. You tend to be spoiled for choice when it comes to having convenient ways to look up rules once you understand them overall. It's the learning the rules and what the game is about/how it should be played part that is really difficult and generally something an author gets fewer shots at having her audience willingly do before they give up. I probably will never go back to Exalted 3e, for example, because the book has very little interest in getting me oriented to what the gently caress it's even about. Meanwhile Tales From the Loop is all about getting you on board and having an eagle eye view of what the game is about and understanding what the hell it's talking about when it mentions Loops and Mysteries. We're discussing how important it is for RPG book writers to get this only because we're acknowledging that most of them want their game to be played, and learning the game is a much bigger hurdle to jump than referencing it. Theoretically an author could, as part of their artistic design, want only the most dedicated reader to be able to play their game, yes. I think this conversation is mostly about the people who want their book to be accessible. Nickoten fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 19:11
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Yawgmoth posted:I suppose it just depends on if you want people to play your game or read about your game. No, it does not. Both of those are always going to be necessary. Yawgmoth posted:Once you've achieved mastery you aren't going to need the book at all. But you're never going to get that mastery if the game doesn't teach you in the first place, because if people can't figure out what the game is or how it's played they're never going to reach the point that you're aiming at. You're not just putting the cart before the horse, you're giving people a cart and telling them that the horse is their problem. This is also obviously not true. Nobody, not even world-class pro players, memorizes the entire comprehensive rules for Magic. No tax lawyer can recite the entire US Tax Code by heart. (And, I might add, the comprehensive rules and the tax code are not formatted as teaching aids, because that would be awful, counter-productive bloat in that context.) Rules, including for games, are sometimes too complex to be completely held in mind, and this can sometimes have benefits that outweigh the cost. Similarly, the blunt reality is that when you're playing RPGs with busy adults, most of the time you end up teaching the game at the table anyways. Or, alternatively, you play something everyone is already familiar with from when they did have time. In both of these cases, a reference manual is more valuable than a teaching aid; in the former case because you have one expert who needs to be able to answer questions or check their own knowledge quickly and is acting as a interpreter between the rules and the audience, in the second case because nobody needs to learn from scratch in the first place. Similarly, not making the rules themselves the teaching aid does not preclude the existence of teaching aids in other forms. Separating them can be beneficial to the function of both. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 19:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Or to reiterate my (thoroughly subjective) position, the first purpose of an RPG sourcebook should not be to teach you a thing, it should be to enable you to do the thing it describes as quickly, easily, and effectively as possible once you've achieved relative mastery.
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Nov 8, 2017 19:37
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Nickoten posted:I'm not disputing that a book should do what the author wants it to do, but I think we've kinda "solved" reference materials for the most part, no? Most popular systems have a wealth of reference charts, rules-on-a-page, spell cards, etc. You tend to be spoiled for choice when it comes to having convenient ways to look up rules once you understand them overall. A lot of these times these goals just aren't in conflict. Simplicity and clarity are valuable for reference and teaching alike, for example. Probably the largest points of conflict are ordering, where the way you introduce ideas in sequence to explain them for the first time and where you need to find them quickly are different, and then some presentational stuff like "here's an extremely condensed flowchart of how combat works" vs. "here's a lengthy step-by-step explanation of how stuff works, common misconceptions or misinterpretations to avoid, and asides about why things work the way they do." Anyways, I didn't even initially raise this point to have an argument about reference vs. teaching. I raised it to show that this is not a purely (or even primarily!) technical question, and not one that can be reduced to just design getting objectively better over time.
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Nov 8, 2017 19:42
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Splicer posted:How are these different things? Teaching is about establishing broad, structural ideas -- sometimes even at the cost of accuracy! -- and developing comfort and familiarity. Teaching usually involves repetition, it's sometimes aided by talking about why things work the way they do, and it tends to be less condensed because getting the point across at all is more important than getting it across right now. Reference is about pinpoint accuracy, being able to definitively resolve conflicts or confusion, and dealing with highly specific cases. Whenever possible you want cross-reference, not repetition, because repetition is either wasteful (if it's exactly the same) or introduces potential for error (if one explanation differs from the other); the "why" question is almost completely irrelevant, and condensing explanations is very valuable because it makes stuff both easier to find and quicker to read once you find it. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 19:48
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Nobody, not even world-class pro players, memorizes the entire comprehensive rules for Magic. I did at one point, back when I was a young dumb nerd willing to dedicate enough brainspace to something like that.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:20
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I don't think Tuxedo Catfish knows that Magic hast "Judges", people who have to, or are supposed to know the rules by heart. The last one I met could recite the rules to the dot.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:34
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Mr.Misfit posted:I don't think Tuxedo Catfish knows that Magic hast "Judges", people who have to, or are supposed to know the rules by heart. The last one I met could recite the rules to the dot. I'm perfectly well aware that Magic has judges. We're also talking about a 226-page document with entire sections dedicated to rules that may not even occur unless both players have specific cards in their deck. Even if your claim about this judge is true, the existence of the rules in a reference format is still vital for anyone who isn't that guy to resolve conflicts that come up in play. e: You know, gently caress it, I'm probably just wrong about judges and underestimating the astounding capacity of the human brain. That said, that's an incredible level of commitment that most people won't ever reach, and the very existence and necessity of judges (as, essentially, walking reference manuals) speaks to the necessity of having reference materials available in some form. Meanwhile, if you want to teach someone Magic, you hand them a deck and walk them through it and maybe give them a 10-15 page pamphlet to review on their own. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Nov 8, 2017 |
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Nov 8, 2017 20:44
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Teaching is about establishing broad, structural ideas -- sometimes even at the cost of accuracy! Education is the process of lying less to the student over time. Reference texts are really bad at doing this, because a good reference text doesn't lie about anything, ever.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:52
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NinjaDebugger posted:Education is the process of lying less to the student over time. Reference texts are really bad at doing this, because a good reference text doesn't lie about anything, ever. Absolutely.
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Nov 8, 2017 20:54
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Definitely something that I encountered when I was writing introductory CYOA adventures - put all of the rules for everything into a single encounter, and it was way too much to learn all at once
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Nov 8, 2017 21:17
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Hi folks, just a heads-up: I've put up the 2017 TG secret santa thread. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3840013
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Nov 9, 2017 00:53
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This is all just fan art but someone might find it inspiring.         
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Nov 9, 2017 01:28
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Nov 9, 2017 01:30
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is darkest dungeon still like, obnoxiously hard to cater to the people who'd mastered the game while it was still in early access? it looks like a dope game but hearing about that kind of stuff made me put off giving it a try when it got its actual release
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Nov 9, 2017 01:33
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Few pages back, but:Halloween Jack posted:A 40 on the curb for Nigel D. Findley. I bought 2XS in the early 90s and by god it was genre trash but so much better than most gaming fiction. And he kept improving. The man could have become a legit mainstream talent.
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Nov 9, 2017 01:33
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Brother Entropy posted:is darkest dungeon still like, obnoxiously hard to cater to the people who'd mastered the game while it was still in early access? it looks like a dope game but hearing about that kind of stuff made me put off giving it a try when it got its actual release I've been playing it a lot lately. It is not easy if you just throw your adventurers into the quests willy-nilly, but if you engage with the game, it's not really that hard. You need to actually look at your stats, select parties that have interparty synergies, learn what different locations and enemies are vulnerable to, be judicious with your money and what upgrades you buy, and be willing to grind a bit to get characters to where you want them. During an adventure you need to carefully balance keeping spare items vs. clearing equipment slots for treasure, using food for healing vs. saving it so you don't starve, maintaining good light with torches vs. accumulating stress due to darkness, etc. It's an amazingly good game, though: for one thing, it seems to be basically bug-free, which is incredible for a PC game. There's very little in the way of total trap choices, although some options you should avoid unless you're going for a specific strategy (for example, it's generally not worth paying to wipe out the nega-traits over and over, but occasionally there's a specific flaw you need to get rid of if you're going to keep using a character). And I think the game is rewarding on a visceral level, too. It's artful and atmospheric. The biggest flaw of the game is that a certain amount of grinding may be necessary. I'm hardly an expert (haven't beaten it yet) but I have enough trouble beating Hard level adventures that I need to grind a few medium-level ones for cash before I can afford to lose two or three Hard ones in a row. Also as with games like X-COM it's a good idea to not stake everything on just a handful of characters: you need a bare minimum of two full parties, and actually since sometimes they get stuck during recuperation for a month you need fill-ins so you'd best have like 12+ good characters, with some lower-level guys you can level up fast if someone dies.
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Nov 9, 2017 01:49
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To add onto what Leperflesh said, there's actually a "Light" difficulty level added that makes the grind shorter and less grueling. The worst I will say about Darkest Dungeon is that, unlike XCOM, there's no threat coming to the town/overworld unless you play on the toughest difficulty level, so it can feel a little repetitive since the grind is all there is and there's no getting around it.
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Nov 9, 2017 02:24
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Also unless you're playing on the originally new game plus Stygian mode, you literally cannot enter into a death spiral. You can always recover from a setback with enough time invested.
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Nov 9, 2017 02:36
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My only major problem with the game was that it was tremendously grindy given the amount of actual content in it. I'm told the new mode fixes this, but I was seriously burnt out by the time I finished it.
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Nov 9, 2017 02:53
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*Really serious* Is there a contingency plan for PBPs and CYOAs going on here considering the last few announcements
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Nov 9, 2017 03:01
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Plutonis posted:*Really serious* Is there a contingency plan for PBPs and CYOAs going on here considering the last few announcements Talk to your other players and set up a different avenue of communication? Discord, Skype, Telegram? Signal?
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Nov 9, 2017 03:05
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thanks yall, i'll keep an eye out for it next time there's a sale (i just remembered EOV came out and i can only keep up with one hard kinda-grindy dungeon crawl at a time) Plutonis posted:*Really serious* Is there a contingency plan for PBPs and CYOAs going on here considering the last few announcements pray whoever buys the site has a better monetization plan than selling t-shirts
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Nov 9, 2017 03:11
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Plutonis posted:*Really serious* Is there a contingency plan for PBPs and CYOAs going on here considering the last few announcements Mass exodus to RPGCrossing.
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Nov 9, 2017 03:27
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Maybe Lowtax wouldn't be going broke if he hired an actual designer to do his t-shirts. Those things are hideous.
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Nov 9, 2017 03:29
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As with many aspects of the forum they appear to be trying hard to appear to not be trying hard in an ironically unironic but possibly actually unironic way.
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Nov 9, 2017 03:34
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Maybe Lowtax wouldn't be going broke if the content on the main site wasn't unfunny garbage for the last several years, if he bothered to spend time on the forums and understand them beyond FYAD and GBS, or if he ever hired anyone competent and experienced with any site function, ever. But yeah, the t-shirts are kinda funny but also ugly and not well done. When SA gets deleted, the world is going to be deprived of so many of my amazing posts, it'll be quite the tragedy.
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Nov 9, 2017 03:34
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Getsuya posted:Mass exodus to RPGCrossing. Why not RPoL (is it still around)?
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Nov 9, 2017 03:39
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https://twitter.com/tenderdnd/status/928605949060935680 You have nothing to lose but your +1 Unholy Spiked Chain of Obeisance
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Nov 9, 2017 14:14
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Leperflesh posted:Maybe Lowtax wouldn't be going broke if the content on the main site wasn't unfunny garbage for the last several years, if he bothered to spend time on the forums and understand them beyond FYAD and GBS, or if he ever hired anyone competent and experienced with any site function, ever. Hire someone competent and experienced? He did that with ZDR? And whenever he posts on FYAD he gets heckled and ran out for his lovely jokes and posts and only in GBS he gets the sycophantic attention he requires when he's not too busy faffing around on twitter or taking oxy or jumping on the LP/Podcast bandwagon two years after everyone else?
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Nov 9, 2017 15:37
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