this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's interesting, I hope this research leads to a higher population to back it up. I mean, you could probably just reach out to different groups of people and pay for the snacks/connect them with a dm/supply the adventure and amp the population much higher.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, then you have many compounding and interacting variables. Maybe it's free snacks that improve mental health. Maybe it's the features of the room. Maybe it's specific adventures.

Even with large numbers, experiments need some controls. You either need to know the context details so you can account for them, or ensure they're the same across all observations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Good points. Could you control for those factors? Granted thr room features one would be hard to do in an inexpensive way, so third parties may not be the option. Food for thought, thank you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

With a large enough test, you could provide several adventures, several systems even (there's zero reason to make the claim specifically about one commercial product when TTRPGs are a whole hobby category), with or without snacks, in a controlled environment, with a set roster of GMs. It would just take many thousands of participants over years to run the study.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Sounds like a good set of campaigns and some needed data, win win. When do we start?