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Couple of reasons... Among them that I've worked with people on other types of games who are very good at what they do. I know competence when I see it, I just rarely see it in my D&D groups. I've seen competent D&D groups, but they live in other cities or are full and insular. I watched...

I would put it to you all that Hussar's position is more common among the general population and even the general run of gamers than the position that the GM would want or need to step seriously into a design arena. I've said it before, but the GM commitment around here is leaps and bounds...

Oh, for the love of Pete! Here's the correct version of my post. If a mod were to delete those last two posts, I'd appreciate it. The site won't let me. That's so binary as to be an utter strawman. There is a lot room between "I can choose from a 100 page catalog of colors for my couch" and...

Please ignore that last post. The quoting messed up and for some reason the site won't let me edit. SNIP To put it bluntly, anyone subscribing to the above perspective might do well to try a far less free, privileged life for a while, and see how those fragile theories regarding the 'burden...

<< snip >> To put it bluntly, anyone subscribing to the above perspective might do well to try a far less free, privileged life for a while, and see how those fragile theories regarding the 'burden of options' (or what have you) hold up. That's so binary as to be an utter strawman. There is a...

I was speaking specifically of those editions of D&D I'm familiar with, primarily. Absolutely. The data about other choices in life suggests that this is not the case. Getting what you want is fine in the moment, but in the long run is not ideal. Getting something that is "sorta" what you...

If that is the case, the trick is making sure when you add more choices that you're not creating a distinction without a difference.

Which is why for the sake of quality of life, a designer should present options that abstract out as much as possible, to decrease the cognitive load on the DM, leaving him free to handle the world and not micromanage the fiddly bits unless he really, really wants to.

I find myself asking the same, with significant curiosity.

I'm not sure about that. I want a character that pops out of my head, not one that I have to reference 5 books to build right. In game I want to be able to do anything reasonable. Outside of combat, that's a lot. That's why I don't really care if they provide any hard and fast rules at all...

Oh, aye, a significant portion of the variance was accounted for in my early years by.... my early years. The issue continued to exist even after we were old enough to read and follow rules, however, and among new groups I met where everyone was older. This wasn't a rules issue per se, though...

Depends on the table and the people playing. It is very easy to get into the Superman effect (or the Neo in Matrix 2 corollary). You can't put the Heavy in the party in danger without automatically killing everyone else. So you're trapped into always pulling the Heavy away from the group and...

Because there was no standardization to the system. As I've said before, I never played at two tables that were playing remotely the same way. Getting really good at playing at Bob's table only mattered at Bob's table. You go play at Jim's table and almost nothing is the same (barring people...

I know conditioning. I've taught behavior. You're being obtusely reductionist. Culture has a LOT to do with it, especially in these sort of complex, social examples. Even were I to reduce it to something as schematic, unhelpful, and unrelated to real world behavior as reward schedules, your...

There have been examples in this thread of contributing non-combatants. All it takes is a willingness to take the descriptions of things as less than literal. Powers in 4e, for example, are about effects and narrative control. Where the effect comes from is up to the people at the table. For...

I would strongly argue that is patently false. At most, it's a pillar of certain Western cultures. This is addressed somewhat in the talks I linked, and I've seen the data from some of the studies. Wanting choice and having choice actually be good for you are two different things. In this...

I was drawing a parallel to existing data on everything from photos to decor to marriages. As far as I know, no one has done a version of this study with RPG characters. And some people have given good reasons why it might not work as cleanly.

The data shows that good feeling to be fleeting, however. People with more choices sometimes feel better about it on day 1 (while creating the character). On days 2 through 200, the people with fewer choices are happier (playing the character for the rest of its career).

A discussion of player choices sprung up in this thread in the latter pages. Here are a few of my statements from that discussion (this time with links to the relevant TED talks). It is worth reflecting that having more choices actually does NOT necessarily make people happier. Usually quite...

Fifth Element nailed it. I was schematizing a bit excessively. And there are differences depending on the nature of the choice to be made. In most cases, a small, manageable number of options leads to better outcomes than having everything under the sun available. Occasionally, having the...