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[Barastrondo]

Originally Posted by Korgoth

"The majority". Great. Well, I guess I don't let the majority play in my campaign. Power gamers need not apply.

While I definitely agree that "the majority" is a fairly useless barometer for whether or not something is useful to any one particular group, especially one that's been playing together for a while, I don't think you're fairly using the term "power gamers." People don't have to be obsessed with power gaming to want to start a game with the same sort of fun trinkets everyone else has. They may just not be "disempower gamers."

There are a lot of RPGs out there, and I mean a lot. And I can't help but believe that this is because there are a lot of different things people want out of RPGs. New designs show up because folks aren't 100% happy with the last RPG they played. New games succeed because there are enough people who want to try a fusion of D&D with cyberpunk aesthetics and dice pools, or who are interested in a game with heavy social mechanics, or who like to play superheroes. And as such, it doesn't surprise me that there's a strong audience for fantasy game systems, including editions of D&D, with more emphasis on heroic action than tactical survival. People are wired differently.

I can certainly appreciate when a player sees "earning his stripes" as the fun part of the game, having to make do with less and hope for some luck. However, I don't think there's any flaw in someone's character if he looks at that process as "earning his fun" — a hazing ritual he has to go through to get to the part of the game he likes. Especially if the other players are already there. I don't see it as power lust. I just see it as a player wanting to do what the other players are doing, not what they did.