Unpopular opinions go here

[MGibster]

I got yelled at once for holding a door for someone because they could hold doors themselves.

When I was around 19, a woman at work read me the riot act because I didn't refer to her as ma'am. I apologized and explained that I didn't think she was old enough to be a ma'am. Some people are just jerks.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh sure, I believe you. I just don't get that attitude at all. No character is so important that a player needs to be forced to keep playing them.

It seemed pretty tied up in the "random or nothing" view, and as noted, you still see it around (though with random gen not being the default approach any more, its also become less common).

 

[Lanefan]

That is no good, if is purposeful IMO.
If I were the player, the survivalist in me would be to give it my best shot and have fun with it for the stories thereafter. Sadly, not everyone likes this approach.

Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm usually the same way as a player. But I have, now and then, had characters that were hopeless right from the get-go; and while I played them honestly I was also kinda hoping for a quick and entertaining death.

And one of those "hopeless" characters turned out, in the end and after a very long career, to be one of my best ever.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It’s this exact thing that lead me to drop rolling stats. If you’re just going to be boring, refuse to play the dice as they lay, and suicide every character you don’t like the stats of, there’s no point in rolling stats. So, to prevent wasting game time with endless character deaths until someone gets amazing stats, just be boring and take the standard array.

To me, it’s part of play to find out what happens. This time you rolled bad stats. Play that character as long as you possibly can to see how far you can take them. That’s fun. Other people seem to think it’s only fun if they have monster stats, all bonuses and no penalties, and are just amazing. To me, that’s the epitome of boring.

On the other hand, sometimes you want a problem area and sometimes you don't, and having the dice decide when those are wasn't even all that appealing in 1975, and we've long since gotten over it. I'll happily take a standard array over that, even a mediocre one.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It seemed pretty tied up in the "random or nothing" view, and as noted, you still see it around (though with random gen not being the default approach any more, its also become less common).

Not to me. Random is fun! Even when it turns against you. And new character ideas are always waiting in the wings. I dislike the trend towards players being too tied up in their PCs to accept having bad things happen to them, or just not succeeding as often as they like. PCs are not precious things to be protected from the GM, even when the PC is mine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

On the other hand, sometimes you want a problem area and sometimes you don't, and having the dice decide when those are wasn't even all that appealing in 1975, and we've long since gotten over it. I'll happily take a standard array over that, even a mediocre one.

I can't stand standard array. It seems deeply artificial to me.

 

[overgeeked]

On the other hand, sometimes you want a problem area and sometimes you don't, and having the dice decide when those are wasn't even all that appealing in 1975, and we've long since gotten over it. I'll happily take a standard array over that, even a mediocre one.

No “we” haven’t. It’s still a thing for a lot of players, referees, and games. I love DCC RPG for a lot of reasons. Random character creation is one of them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No “we” haven’t. It’s still a thing for a lot of players, referees, and games. I love DCC RPG for a lot of reasons. Random character creation is one of them.

If you don't recognize the imperial "we" when you hear it, man, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can't stand standard array. It seems deeply artificial to me.

It is artificial, but then, that describes almost any method of character gen, and there's only a limited number of schemes for assigning characteristics.

 

[pemerton]

See this part:

And lets be clear about what I mean by social mechanics; Im talking about trying to set and enforce rules for literally talking to your friends.

I am not referring to basic things like mechanizing NPC reactions (ie, does your Intimidate or Lie succeed), I am referring to trying to make the actual conversation between you, the actual, real life human person and another actual, real life human person, a structured, rule enforced thing segregated from any real, natural conversation.

Hang on - so by "social mechanics" you don't mean mechanics for resolving imaginary social interactions between imaginary people, but rather mechanics for structuring the conversation between actual people playing a game. So the D&D combat mechanics would be an example. They may have their flaws, but it seems a bit harsh to say that they don't work!