What makes an RPG good?

[kyoryu]

This is a good point. I think art is a good analogy. Obviously, there isn't cut and dry criteria for good art. But, if you narrow down your scope, you can start to define some guidelines. Like, good realism, or good impressionism, they have general guidelines that you should follow. Similarly, you can't define the rules of a "good rpg", but you can get close to some guidelines if you narrow it down to a good "rules-lite political intrigue game", or a good "tactical dungeon crawling game"

You're getting closer for sure but there's still variance.

Honestly, I think this is the key. Like, I'm not a fan of games that make choices for my characters, but I can still kind of tell the difference between when it helps characterization and when it's just obtrusive. Or like, I don't like the resource system in Fate, but I get that there are people who just don't care about that.

That also leads to "I hate this game, but others like it. I wonder why? What is it doing for them? What does that say about what they want and what I want?" which can also lead to being curious about other game styles, or at least gaining an understanding of them.

At the very least "yeah, it seems like a good game for X, Y, and Z, but honestly I'm not interested in those things" is wayyyyy more likely to lead to a productive conversation than "Game X sucks".

Though you can say "this methods can help to design good games".

Game design is a lot like cooking. Just because peoples have different taste, and that some peoples will find disgusting the favourite meal of other, doesn't mean you can't be a better cook than someone else, and that you can't have some overhaul guideline on "what to do" and "what not to do (unless you have a very good reason to)".

I'd agree with that. There are techniques and tools for sure, and knowing what those are, what they do, and when to use them is super useful.

Sadly, most people in the space don't have the objectivity to actually list those kinds of things out.... "how to design a game in general terms" almost inevitably gets intertwined with "what I like", at least if put forth into general conversation. If I were to try to do that exercise, I'd have to strongly limit the audience of that conversation.