What Hill Will You Die On?

[Thomas Shey]

The pursuit of balance in various forms was important to the Perrin Conventions, on which RuneQuest was built, and Wayne Shawn’s house rules for Superhero 2044, which inspired Champions, and a bunch of Dave Harvgrave’s house rules collected in Arduin Grimoires, and a bunch of others before we even get out of the 1970s. Lots of people never cared much about balance; others always cared a lot about it.

I was being conservative in that by the 80's it was a common topic in general, while earlier it might have been more--isolated?

 

[innerdude]

I've been thinking for a couple of days now, and I can't come up with a "hill that I would die on" regarding my RPG hobby participation.

About the closest I can come is, "The inability to see and recognize multiple sides/styles/modes of play as being valid damages the long term interests of the RPG hobby, and needs to be eradicated from said hobby at every possible turn."

But even at that it doesn't muster a huge emotional response from me. On on academic level I suspect it's a true statement, but seems like a rather low hill to die upon.

 

[Umbran]

Because for some small fraction of readers out there their enjoyment is more than "just for fun." Their gaming might be their only social outlet, or their sole escape from drudge work or near poverty. They might be bullied teens or have learning disabilities or social anxiety. And when those few readers see commenters call it "just an elf-game", it could prompt them to think maybe there is something wrong with their own enjoyment. Which is obviously not true.

With respect, all those real difficulties that create pressures on our fellow humans are MORE reason to keep our games, and how we talk about them, based in reality, in perspective and in check.

Because, with respect, the "elf game" statement is far, far, far, far less frequent than people just treating each other like dirt. The general spitting on each other that happens day to day, the rejection of fellow human beings for having a different opinion, is the real source of risk. Folks would do better to be "viscerally repulsed" by that, I think.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Whataboutism is just a false dichotomy with extra steps.

 

[Shardstone]

Hit points suck.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There is no dichotomy in having "evil races" that are made up of free-willed sapient individuals of human-like intellect and outlook. It just means that, on the good-neutral-evil axis, each and every single member of that race has chosen evil of their own free will.

Is that improbable in the extreme? Absolutely. But the game world is one where the flat-out impossible is a routine fact of life (e.g. look at how many impossibilities there are in a flying, fire-breathing, spellcasting dragon), so things which are merely improbable are (in terms of verisimilitude) easy to countenance.

The improbable is actually vastly harder to look past for very large number of people. I’d guess most people.

 

[Alzrius]

The improbable is actually vastly harder to look past for very large number of people. I’d guess most people.

I disagree.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

• The rules significantly influence how people play the game, what choices they make about their characters, abilities, equipment, and the particularly profoundly control the general vibe of the game.

The above might seem like a milquetoast hill to die on in 2023, because I think most people agree now, but I can tell you, in 1993, that was some Hill 203-type stuff! This means that most "generic" RPGs are kind of doomed, because they're not really "generic", they're highly specific to some genre or style, they just have a lot of supplements allowing you to introduce superficial elements from other genres/styles.

• Designers who are mad about people "playing their game wrong" have literally only themselves to blame.

This is sort of a corollary to the first, but again, for me it's a major thing. I lived through the whole "Revised" era of the WoD, for example, which was basically just the WoD designers pitching a fit because some (most?) people played WoD games in ways that the rules, setting, and simply what was fun and cool made make sense (usually "Trenchcoats and Katanas" or "Superheroes with fangs"), rather than as the angst-filled body horror/existentialist games the designers apparently wanted, but didn't actually design (also, I don't think all the WoD designers agreed, given they were basically encouraging these modes of play with stuff like WoD: Combat or the rather fun 2E Mage supplement, Mage: Dark Adventure - which was basically "How to run Mage as an action movie"). They still didn't design them with Revised, I note, they just changed the lore and rules to make other play styles less viable without increasing the attractiveness or rules-support for their chosen play-style.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh! How could I forget the most controversial one!?

The DM isn’t “god”. Authority in a game inherently resides with the group as a whole. Therefor, the DM can be told no, and all “sure, the players have the right to follow the DMs rulings or leave the DMs game” statements are ignoring reality.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I disagree.

Okay