snek_boi

It seems like you and I are both trying to make sense of democracy, how to make it inclusive, and how to have the best decision-making processes so that we, as a society, can have the best decisions possible. In other words, we're trying to have the best possible democracy.

Now, we both agree that the age filter is imperfect. It's a heuristic, a rule of thumb. You rightly point this out, and you interpret this fact as if there should be absolutely no filters at all. For you, any filter would be imperfect or problematic.

However, the way I see it, the age filter is a simple, cheap, and good enough heuristic. Age is ridiculously easy to keep track of, with current record-keeping technologies and institutions. In most of the world's bureaucracies, people's age appear right next to their face in state-issued documents. It's everywhere.

Additionally, age is associated with physical and cognitive capabilities. Human children require care and nurture. Socializing children into the abstract world of economics and ecology takes time. I see the fact that children are required to go to school as a success, as a way of assuring that that culture sustains its cultural and scientific literacy over time. Ideally, when children can vote, they understand their world differently. They can see ecological, historical, and social processes around them in different ways. Here, setting a voting age is a heuristic for avoiding children who have not yet developed these abstract worldviews (because, after all, they're… children).

I believe you will respond that "if the point is filtering for cultural and scientific literacy, then test for that, but not for age. There are children who are brilliant decision-makers and lackluster adults". And I'd agree with you. Age is an imperfect measure. I'm not denying there are people who are exceptional. But what I am saying is that, for most people, age is a good enough heuristic.

Of course, as a society we could say that we shouldn't go for the cheapest heuristic. We could say that we should include people in a better way. But you and I agree that the alternatives are tough. I'd say they're costly, controversial, and probably imperfect.

Could age not be an imperfect but good enough proxy for maturity and capability?

These two books have helped me enormously in having transformative conversations:

• Never Split the Difference
• Crucial Conversations

And you can understand their way of thinking and how to communicate better ideas with

• Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

I’m glad we both want to see fairness and kindness in the world. I see you interpret cruelty, abuse, and dishonesty’s effects as respect. I see it a bit differently. When I see cruelty, abuse, and dishonesty, I usually see fear, terror, hiding, lying— anything but respect.

If I see a serial killer who tortures people, I would never respect them. I’d probably fear them. But fear is not respect.

To me, respect is deep admiration. It involves feeling aligned in values, feeling that someone is doing things right and well. If someone is doing things wrong and cruelly, I’d feel deep disrespect towards them.

I suppose our cultures have wrongly conflated respect and fear. People don’t command respect. They deserve it and earn it. They deserve base respect for the mere fact of being human trying to be happy in a brutal world. And they earn admiration-like respect when their hearts are aligned with virtue.

Huh. I hope we can get to understand the post by talking about it. I'm not trying to be condescending or annoying. I'm trying to see what you see. What did you think at first the image showed and how did the comment about tankies lead you to second-guess?

Gotcha.

I see what you mean. Apocalypse World is not on the side of brutally hard or the side of trivially easy; it sits in the middle, in "yes, but". Some games make certain things impossible ("No, you can't jump to the moon"). Other games make things trivial ("Sure, use your 'ultra high jump' ability"). In other games, the difference between "you can't" and "sure" is just your character's level.

This means that, no matter how weak or strong your character is, you can try anything. This does not mean, however, that all characters in Apocalypse World are equally competent. In Apocalypse World, an incompetent character usually has a -2 stat, while a very competent character has a +3 stat. The difference between -2 and +3 is quite massive, even if it doesn't seem at first.

You can be sure of it by checking out this graph that Vincent Baker, the creator of Apocalypse World, made:

Notice that your odds of a strong hit go from 5% to 55%. Your odds of at least a weak hit go from 30% to 90%. If a teacher saw their student go from 30% to 90%, they'd think the student changed, grew, became more competent.

Well, but aren't other games more dramatic in their character stat growth? Aren't other games in the extremes of brutally hard or trivially easy? Probably, but I'm not sure that this is a bug. To me, it's a feature.

My players can try anything. They want to burn the whole realm in a single Move? They do it. And I get to think about how that changes the world. I get to think about how the fire destroyed their own home. I get to think about what new societies arise from the ashes. I get to think about how the players' NPC friends are now plotting against them. In other words, the fact that players can try anything at all makes the game very interesting to me and to my friends. I never tell them "nope, you can't". I also never tell them "obviously you can". Instead, they can always genuinely try. And the world constantly adapts. There is no status quo. That's the feature, not the bug.

If players can try anything, how come their character sheets are so over-constrained? This is a good point. I agree with you. If you dislike the character sheets in Apocalypse World, it's kind of a bummer. However, the way that Apocalypse World does characters is decidedly not how all PbtA games do characters. Vincent Baker himself has said that his character playbooks are a sort of historical accident and that other PbtA games could be entirely different (1). And, indeed, there are PbtA games that are entirely different.

Take Ironsworn or Starforged. Both of those games are Powered by the Apocalypse and have an explosion of options for character creation. During character creation, you're given a deck of cards, and you get to pick three of them for your character. Each card represents a special feat, ability, companion, tool, magic, vehicle, or other options. In Ironsworn there are 75 assets, which gives you 405,150 different combinations for your character. In Starforged there are 87 assets, which gives you 635,970 different combinations for your character.

How does Daggerheart fare in this regard? Does it over-constrain characters? In short, it's nowhere close to Apocalypse World. Yes, it doesn't have Ironsworn and Starforged's explosion of options. However, they do have a card system in which you can choose your character's ancestry and community. You also choose different cards every time you level up, cards that are specific to your class. This is definitely not an over-constraining game.

So, to recap, the difference between a competent Apocalypse World character and an incompetent one is great. However, players can still always succeed or always fail, which I think is not a bug, but a feature; the world is always adapting to what players do! Finally, Daggerheart is nowhere close to Apocalypse World in terms of over-constraining characters.

(1) Here Vincent Baker shows that Playbooks are even optional to the Apocalypse World model.

Totally valid. I assume you like combat simulators like Dungeons and Dragons. Is that the case? If not, what do you dislike about PbtA?

Huh. Thanks for sharing. I'm totally up for critically evaluating Critical Role and Daggerheart.

I do agree that Critical Role's play style was a bit like a square peg in a round hole. Other games could've been more appropriate for them. Arguably a more appropriate game for them is Daggerheart.

As to not letting your personal feelings about Critical Role cloud my judgement, thanks for caring about not biasing me. At the same time, I'm sure you have good reasons to be critical of Daggerheart. Understanding why we say what we say sounds like a good plan, and I'm curious to hear what you think:

What is it about Daggerheart that makes you think it's nothing more than a platform to continue their failing brand?

EDIT: Oh… I just realized you asked how it DIVERGES from PbtA, not how it is similar to PbtA. lol my bad. I'll come back with a more informed response later!

So far I can confidently tell you that the Player Principles in Daggerheart are very much like the Principles of Apocalypse World:

• Be a fan of the character
• Address the characters
• Look through crosshairs
• Play to find out what happens

In other words, it gives clear guidance on what it means to be an MC/GM. It's explicit about not railroading. It's explicit about not pulling the rug underneath your players ("Oops! You didn't check for traps! That's 999999 bludgeoning damage coming your way!"). I like when games are this explicit; it's easier to have a conversation about what good and bad GMing looks like.

I also know that it doesn't just have success and failure (and critical successes and failures). Instead, it has successes and failures that aren't as extreme, so small complications pop up more often.

The character progression checklist also looks straight up from an Apocalypse World character sheet (in a good way!). [Edit 2: I learned that the checklist might be similar to Apocalypse World, but there's this whole card system where each level involves choosing new feats or abilities or things like that, all related to your class]

Fair enough. PbtA is not for everyone. In fact, sometimes PbtA is not for me; sometimes I just want to hack and slash and strategize with strict rules instead of creating dramatic stories.

Have you checked out the PbtA grandpa, Apocalypse World?

My grandpa was born and raised in an industrial town that didn't have access to pools or anything like that. He decided to learn to swim by reading a book and practicing in his living room. He would lay down on a bench or a seat and practice the motions. Every year, he'd go to a nearby town that did have a pool, and he'd sit for hours hearing how kids were taught to swim. He'd then go back to his living room and practice based on that.

So, how did he swim? Luckily, looking at him swim was something I could do with my own eyes. And just by the look of it, you'd never tell he learned on a bench.

After careful forensic analysis, I have concluded the entire thing was created by a single person. I call this the One Author Theory (OAT). Let me present to you OAT's evidence.

First, notice almost every tally is similar to its immediate neighbors. They have the same color and the same thickness. This suggests the tallies were all made with the same marker and with similar techniques.

We can see similar techniques elsewhere. First, notice that each category has tallies. Then, within each category (for example shit), focus on the rightmost tallies. Notice that the tallies tend to curve in a similar way. This suggests those tallies were created under similar conditions, with a similar technique.

You may have noticed that the piss tallies are thicker and straighter than the jerk it tallies. This may suggest my One Author theory is wrong, but my theory does incorporate this fact. The fact is explained by a change in technique. Therefore, the OAT cannot stand on its own. It requires another theory to grab onto. This other theory is the Progressive Degradation of Commitment (PDC) Theory.

I will now give evidence for the PDC Theory. Notice the shit category. Its topmost row has a consistent left-to-right pattern. The tallies become smaller and smaller. They also become curved at the end. This suggests a consistent loss of commitment.

The PDC Theory appears to struggle with the jerk it category. After all, the bottom row starts with small tallies and progressively has its tallies grow tall and straight. This we shall call the Jerk It Anomaly (JIA). However, concluding that the JIA proves that the PDC Theory fails is incorrect. If one uses the PDC Theory correctly, it can actually explain the JIA.

How? First, we need to remember that the PDC Theory shouldn't be limited to rows. We saw an example of this when PDC Theory explained piss' thickness in relation to jerk it's thickness. In other words, PDC Theory can scale. It can explain rows of tallies but it can also explain columns of categories. So, if we apply PDC Theory to the entire work, we can assume that the entirety of the last column (jerk it) was built with little commitment. The author could've been pressured for time. It is reasonable to speculate that the author felt a sudden urge to attend to his unfinished business, be it pissing, vaping, shitting, or jerking it. In either case, the PDC Theory comes out intact.

Ultimately, the OAT uses the PDC Theory to address validity threats like the JIA. The author may have attempted to dupe us into thinking the census was representative of a population. However, the One Author Theory lets us see that the author's work is more representative of his purposes, capabilities, and proclivities.

It's important to note that this does not necessarily reduce the author's merit and the piece's impact. Future studies could evaluate to what extent this apparent census creates a sense of community and connection in the bathroom-stall goers. I, for one, would appreciate going to the bathroom and finding this piece. I wouldn’t necessarily appreciate vaping or jerking it, but I would appreciate shitting or pissing next to it.