Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Bard-of-all-trades 02-24-07, 01:07 AM	Is it possible to have a discussion about D&D on the forums now-a-days without a working knowledge philosophy, programming language, and logic--programming and the science? Doesn't anyone speak plain English anymore?
Seeker95 02-24-07, 12:57 PM	Yes. Yes.
fatal error 02-24-07, 04:32 PM	Is it possible to have a discussion about D&D on the forums now-a-days without a working knowledge philosophy, programming language, and logic--programming and the science? Doesn't anyone speak plain English anymore? I really have no idea what you're talking about, unless it is one of two things: 1) Acronyms, the fact that a majority of all books are often referred to by their initials, especially once the full name has been said once in the thread. 2) Logical fallacies, these only come up in some threads. Generally the subject of the argument in these threads has been discussed multiple times before, to the point that a fallacy has been created to deal with members of the discussion that refuse to listen to the other side's argument. The main fallacies of these boards are really quite easy to understand: Being able to House Rule something doesn't mean it isn't a problem in the rules. Being able to optimize your character doesn't mean you can't role-play it. Not everyone gains fun from the same type of games. So, care to refine your point?
Bard-of-all-trades 02-25-07, 12:09 AM	I really have no idea what you're talking about, unless it is one of two things: 1) Acronyms, the fact that a majority of all books are often referred to by their initials, especially once the full name has been said once in the thread. 2) Logical fallacies, these only come up in some threads. Generally the subject of the argument in these threads has been discussed multiple times before, to the point that a fallacy has been created to deal with members of the discussion that refuse to listen to the other side's argument. The main fallacies of these boards are really quite easy to understand: Being able to House Rule something doesn't mean it isn't a problem in the rules. Being able to optimize your character doesn't mean you can't role-play it. Not everyone gains fun from the same type of games. So, care to refine your point? "!=" and Straw Man and Stormwind fallacies are what I am specifically meaning. Straw Man I've heard about in some of my 300 level classes (which was many, many years ago) and I had never heard of this Stormwind one before the forums. There is another one that is escaping me at the moment that I've seen a lot in several threads. Posters toss them around like everyone is just supposed to know them. Just like the "!=", a friend of mine told me what that meant (it means doesn't equal.) They use the same kind of logic for what is and is not balanced in the game--allegedly. This class ability or set of abilities does not equal this ability or set of abilities. The one that gets me the most is when someone tries to compare a fighter to a spellcaster of any kind. How can you compare a sword and a spell? Talk about apples and oranges. Oops ranting there, sorry. Is it me or are posters who use these kinds of things making a realy big assumption? That everyone else is on the same page with them and knows everything they do.
Tempest Stormwind 02-25-07, 12:14 AM	The stormwind fallacy is an RPG-specific retelling of the False Dilemma Fallacy, which you may be familiar with and is self-explanatory from the name; it just was retold in the terminology of the game so people who kept on committing it finally understood the silliness of what they were saying. None of these are required to have a good discussion, by the way. They're only needed when you're trying to do something like, say, The Ghola Character (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=777565) (which is an attempt to do everything Pun-Pun can possibly do WITHOUT using Manipulate Form).
a_psh 02-25-07, 12:24 AM	How can you compare a sword and a spell? Talk about apples and oranges.Games exist on multiple levels. On the procedural level, chess with a set of pieces and some rules for moving them on the board. On the social level, chess deals with two players locked in a contest of wits. On the logical/mathematical level, chess deals with relationships between abstract objects: you could, potentially, express ideas such as "board control" and "piece advantage" in a highly abstract way and talk about chess as an optimizaiton problem involving elaborate states and transitions between them, completely divorced from the way chess actually looks to a guy sitting there and playing -- this is kinda like how Deep Blue plays chess, but its ability to evaluate board states is imperfect, so it builds these big trees of possible moves (to like 30 moves), then puts the states through these things called static evaluators, which assign an abstract value to each board position using some hand-crafted empirically-derived approximation of the perfect evaluation function, and then it recombines those numbers back up the search tree to find the best current move. (That is more about chess-playing computers than you'll ever need to know. Sorry.) On that kind of abstract level, swords and spells are the same. Heck, they're practically the same on a procedural level, too: you declare an action, roll some dice, and assign damage based on the results and some static attributes.
Sarella Starshine 02-25-07, 12:26 AM	Well, to be honest, the Stormwind one is a D&D board specific version of a logical fallacy. I can't remember the name of the fallacy off the top of my head, but if you actually studied logic, logical arguments and fallacies, you should be able to recognize what type of fallacy it is. It just uses different words that are specific to D&D game styles. The entire '!=' thing was just a shorthand that people thought that a lot of people knew what it meant. I mean, they could have used '=/=' which is used in higher math, but coding and computer jargon apparently is more common than math..and they prob thought it would be easier to understand. Though, honestly I rarely see '!=' on argument threads. Strawman is brandied about tons however. And while I took courses in Logic in college myself, I never got into the fuzzy, philosophical side of it (I was into more of the 'hard' logic if you will, for programing reasons), it did not take me long to realize what it meant buy how it was used in the debates. Other than realizing what the real logical fallacy behind the Stormwind, you do not need any background in logic or philosophy or comp sci to understand what certain terms are, because for the most part, if you are of reasonable intelligence, it should be apparent what they mean by how they are used.
Myree 02-25-07, 08:16 PM	Um, I hate to say this, but after reading through these posts, my initial point of view has changed, at least on one point. While I agree with the sentiments of some of the other posters, by going through the actualy wording here, the OP has a valid point. That is, some of us (myself at the head of the list, I'm afraid) do seem to bandy about logic and philosophy like everyone is really interested. But, I have also sat through a thread reading many times asking the exact same kind of questions. The short-cuts like "!=" saves what, 12 characters when compared to "does not equal", but for anyone unfamiliar with it (out of context I even missed what it meant the first time and I use it at work all the time!). That is like the abbreviation "Y2K", which saves a whole 6 characters over "Year 2000", which is much more descriptive AND ironically it is because of an abbreviating short-cut like it describes that we even HAD a "Y2K" problem. We all want to get our point across in the shortest possible way, and taking a shortcut like throwing out "it's like the Stormwind Fallacy" does seem to do that -- BUT ONLY if our audience is on the same page that we are (I won't bore you with a Communication Class lesson here on "noise" and "filters"). If they aren't coming from the same point of view or background, then you have just lost getting your message to a portion of your audience due to feeling put out at not understanding, mis-understanding, or just shutting down because of a perceived offense. So, if we want to be clear, we should be willing to make the effort to be sure everyone has a common point of reference (i.e. spelling something out or giving a brief description or at least a link to a site or Wikipedia entry on something we don't want to provide further details on ourselves but would go a long way to getting our message across. I know, I know .. that is more work than we want to go into in a quick post -- but it WILL go a long way to getting your message across without losing it in transmittal. Ah, shoot, I just realized I had gone and written another book... sorry, I'm off to get someone to cast Atonement for me....
Leo 02-25-07, 09:59 PM	It's funny like they make the fallaccies with words without clear meaning, and then manipulate that meaning to their liking. Outside of D&D boards, optimizing IS powergaming for example, so anyone who comes here and sees people saying optimize this and that will of course get confused. Anyway, since the thread managed to get itself locked away, one can think of the validity of some fallaccies... In the end, it's a game about magic and dragons, where good and evil are not relative terms, and no laws of reality are fixed. How can you even think logic and philosophy really work in D&D? If I wanted to care about logic and philosophy, I would have gone to study laws or humanities.
Bard-of-all-trades 02-26-07, 02:05 AM	Um, I hate to say this, but after reading through these posts, my initial point of view has changed, at least on one point. While I agree with the sentiments of some of the other posters, by going through the actualy wording here, the OP has a valid point. That is, some of us (myself at the head of the list, I'm afraid) do seem to bandy about logic and philosophy like everyone is really interested. But, I have also sat through a thread reading many times asking the exact same kind of questions. The short-cuts like "!=" saves what, 12 characters when compared to "does not equal", but for anyone unfamiliar with it (out of context I even missed what it meant the first time and I use it at work all the time!). That is like the abbreviation "Y2K", which saves a whole 6 characters over "Year 2000", which is much more descriptive AND ironically it is because of an abbreviating short-cut like it describes that we even HAD a "Y2K" problem. We all want to get our point across in the shortest possible way, and taking a shortcut like throwing out "it's like the Stormwind Fallacy" does seem to do that -- BUT ONLY if our audience is on the same page that we are (I won't bore you with a Communication Class lesson here on "noise" and "filters"). If they aren't coming from the same point of view or background, then you have just lost getting your message to a portion of your audience due to feeling put out at not understanding, mis-understanding, or just shutting down because of a perceived offense. So, if we want to be clear, we should be willing to make the effort to be sure everyone has a common point of reference (i.e. spelling something out or giving a brief description or at least a link to a site or Wikipedia entry on something we don't want to provide further details on ourselves but would go a long way to getting our message across. I know, I know .. that is more work than we want to go into in a quick post -- but it WILL go a long way to getting your message across without losing it in transmittal. Ah, shoot, I just realized I had gone and written another book... sorry, I'm off to get someone to cast Atonement for me....(Underlining is mine for reference) Thank you. This is what I ran into and what others have happen more times than not. I have been lost in threads and thought I had offended others and felt offended as well by the use of such things (unusual abbreviations and fallacies.) I like your take on it and will try to use that more in my own posts so as not to be guilty of this same this in the future. Thanks again. (Finishes casting Atonement....)
Squirrelloid 02-26-07, 02:50 AM	To the OP: The other fallacy commonly bandied about is the Oberoni Fallacy, which basically states that you cannot dismiss something as not a problem *and* propose a fix at the same time. If there needs to be a fix, there's a problem, and we can say so. If there's no problem, no fix is needed. This often gets directed at people who say "the rules aren't broken because the DM can rule 0/houserule/whatever them". That doesn't prevent the rules from being broken, and the fact that the DM has to intervene means there is a problem. It's funny like they make the fallaccies with words without clear meaning, and then manipulate that meaning to their liking. Outside of D&D boards, optimizing IS powergaming for example, so anyone who comes here and sees people saying optimize this and that will of course get confused. :nonono: :banghead: Every time you make a choice which is mechanically advantageous for your concept, you are optimizing. Believing anything else is merely self-delusion. Everyone optimizes - its a question of degree. Putting your highest stat in your most favorable attribute (Int for a Wizard) is optimizing. Now, coming up with a sequence of 13 classes and PrCs for 20 levels is the same process, its just at a highly advanced level. But there is *no difference* in kind, just degree. Anyway, since the thread managed to get itself locked away, one can think of the validity of some fallaccies... In the end, it's a game about magic and dragons, where good and evil are not relative terms, and no laws of reality are fixed. How can you even think logic and philosophy really work in D&D? If I wanted to care about logic and philosophy, I would have gone to study laws or humanities. Logic applies to anything with a set of rules. Given the D+D rules set, we can logically determine how effects interact based on those rules. If that isn't possible then there are no rules and we're just playing Calvinball. I'd consider that a problem. Philosophy comes up because the D+D morality system is ultimately bad for the game. Its supposed to be absolute, but *no one knows what it is*, and since no one can actually see in the DM's head, no one knows whether a given act will necessarily be good or evil for that DM. And the PHB makes no distinction at all between Law and Chaos, and pitifully little distinction between good and evil. I mean, heck, the rulebook even says something to the effect of (paraphrasing) so-and-so is chaotic because they're dedicated to their art, while other person is lawful because they follow their discipline. How is that a difference? At all? If WotC isn't going to draw the boundaries in black and white, the boundaries are not actually black and white, they're some confused muddle. The fact that you can *summon beings of pure Law* only makes this worse, because you should be able to know what the difference between them is. Fact is, players will often want to play characters who don't match D+D's alignment boxes. The best example I have is a character who is an Objectivist (philosophy of Ayn Rand)- depending on your own personal beliefs, you might put said character into any alignment from L/G to C/E. (L because they're dedicated to a strict set of philosophical rules, C because they're focused on individual rights. G because they're interested in promoting things like Liberty and natural rights generally (for instance - they're uniformly anti-slavery), E because they're not altruists and only act in ways that benefit themselves - what benefit means is a complicated discussion best reserved for a philosophy debate, but usually it means trading for things they value more while giving away things they value less - such as money for a good they want. What an objectivist won't do is behave altruistically - which is a lot of people's "definition" of good).