On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 Noctifer@aol.com wrote:
> Well, it's kind of like the concept that war is bad. War is a bad
> thing...just about everyone would agree on that topic...you want to
> fight as little as possible, but sometimes, you have to fight. Peace
> is something that should be aimed for, but not if its going to result
> in worse consequences. I guess it's kinda an "eastern" philosophy
> towards gaming..."you can never attain perfection, but should should
> always try" sort of concept.
It seems to me that you were saying just the opposite... "You can never
attain perfection, so don't bother trying." You're saying that nobody can
GM perfectly without dice, so nobody should play without dice.
> Funny thing is, one of my biggest complaints to my players is that
> they're not independent enough. If I don't throw something at them, I
> sometimes get the impression that they'll sit around and do nothing.
I've had players that literally *looked* for the railroad tracks and got
lost if they couldn't find them. I understand your frustration.
> way you're going to get me to enjoy a game, though. If I think you're
> stacking the deck because the players are suddenly getting overwhelmed
> too early in the adventure or because they're having too easy of a
> time with it, I'm going to take issue (more the latter than the
How do you know that the too hard/too easy encounter was caused by
intentional stacking of the deck and not the randomness of the dice? Or
that the encounter mis-match wasn't caused by the GM making a mistake
during the setup and not realizing how difficult/easy this encounter would
be? To me, a good GM will just correct for either of these and balance
out the encounter on the fly. By your requirements, he can't do that...
he has to let the imbalance lie and then you're going to take issue with
it because he made a mistake you won't let him correct, or the dice are
doing weird things that you won't let him correct.
Seems to me that you're asking for your cake and wanting to eat it to.
Either you *want* this imbalance to occur and be left just as-is, or you
*don't* want it to occur and the only way that'll happen is to have the
freedom to adjust it on the fly.
> Because it detracts from playing the role. RPing is a social
> activity. In my games, if you feel like you're not a good speaker,
> you have two options. 1) Don't play a character that is socially
> strong or 2) grow as a person (note: not "grow up"...I don't want any
Yet roleplaying is also escapist fantasy... what's the point in escapist
fantasy if you can't _escape_ the limitations of reality? If I'm not
suave and debonaire, why should my fantasy then exclude me from playing
James Bond? _I'm_ never going to _be_ as cool as James Bond... nobody is,
'cause he's not a real person. So the option to "grow" is an unrealistic
one... I cannot grow to fulfill my fantasies. If I could, I wouldn't need
_fantasy_.
I'm not "cool". So you're telling me I can't play a character that's cool
unless I can become cool myself. That's silly.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ The Fudge List -- http://fudge.phoenyx.net/ ]
If at first you don't succeed, try 2nd or shortstop.
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