Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
This is the key, I think. If you've had bad experiences with something in the past, there's no reason to think it won't happen again.
A better analogy would be if you saw dark clouds in the sky, would you think it is going to rain? Maybe, maybe not...but there's a much greater chance of rain than if it is a sunny day outside. Would you schedule a picnic on the cloudy day and hope for the best or simply wait for a sunny day and hold it then?
Same thing with the drinking. Are people going to act all stupid because they have one or two beers? Maybe, maybe not. But there's certainly a much greater chance than if they've had no beers at all. Better to find people who don't drink.
From my reading of this thread, it appears to have a lot to due with the fact that people who drink don't see anything wrong with drinking. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. They haven't had really bad experiences with people who drink. So, in their mind, a couple of drinks have no ill effect on anyone around them at all. That no one can even tell they've been drinking. That it's normal to drink and that people who don't drink are odd.
And I can certainly understand from that point of view, thinking that it is completely unreasonable to "discriminate" against someone for drinking.
But, I mean, if you replaced "drinking" with something else that YOU really didn't like I think you'd have no problem with it. For instance, take "nudity". Say you instead found out that a group of people liked to play D&D in the nude. You come to a session and someone starts taking their clothes off. Would you leave? If someone told you they always played in the nude, would you go to the session? How is them playing nude affecting you at all? Isn't it unreasonable to discriminate against them because they are nudists?
Isn't it enough to not be comfortable with something to ask someone to stop? I certainly wouldn't have any problem with saying "I'm not comfortable playing D&D with a bunch of nude people. I'm just not into that. I'd prefer if you weren't nude while I was around. You wear clothes when you leave the house, I'm certain you could do so while playing D&D if you want me in the group. If you'd prefer not to, that's fine, I'll find a different game."
In the same way, I don't see any problem asking people not to drink while you were around. There certainly isn't any requirement to be drinking in order to have fun playing D&D. If drinking IS a requirement for you, then there may be other issues to work out.
