Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2587214" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, the idea of "My way or the highway" suggests that there is no dialogue. That I can either agree, or leave. Effectively, that a player must compromise, but a DM doesn't have to (unless he wants to). If I want to play, I need to give up my idea of what is fun and trust the DM's. The key in the quote is the asking. It's not saying "I'm not having fun, we're changing." It's saying "Maybe this would work better?" It's expressing your needs without demanding they be met. Expressing them allows a compromise to be met. Demanding they be met results in a binary absolutism.I've never seen DMing as a job. I've never NOT enjoyed what I do. When I tell someone "no," I enjoy it because I know it will make everyone have more fun. And I know it will challenge me to meet their needs in other ways. Six adamantium swords and a minor artifact? Why? What's the need here? And how do I meet that need as a DM?It is everyone's right to have fun playing a game. It's childish to say that?No argument here. But I was bringing the argument into the context of the thread. That 3e is not flawed because it lets players expect what they want. Is it right for you? Maybe not. You seem to want something more out of D&D than a night of fun gaming. But that doesn't mean that's what D&D needs to cater to.Here's a major division between our positions as well. Cinema and literature, two things to which D&D is constantly compared, are one-way conduits. The audience for these is passive. The people absorb the information the film or words present. They are labors, works of art. They can be simply entertaining, but then they're popular culture, which can have it's own unintentional artistry. They can be very meaningful, and then they're GoodfellasD&D, however, is a game. It's closest analogues are not movies and books, but Poker and Monopoly. All games have some sort of meaning -- all play has some significance. But it is just play. It is safe. It is enjoyable. It is easy. It also has more than one input. A film is one director's vision. A book is one author's creation. Those have a message. A game does not have much of a message. Chutes and Ladders pretty much exhausts its analogic potential in a single metaphor of success. For me, trying to add deep and significant meaning to something that is primarily for play is going to devalue them both. Like a "very special episode" of Blossom, it comes off as shallow and disolyal to the true meaning, and as not that much fun. Perhaps isntead of trying to look for something deeper in five folks rolling dice around someone's table and pretending to be gumdrop fairies you should let it be fun, and look for deapth in things that are more capable of challenging your world. Deliverance is challenging. It's also an artistic work, a monologue from active film to passive audience. D&D has many active participants. It's also a game, a process of victory and defeat where choices can affect the result.A D&D campaign based off of Boyz in the Hood may be grim. But it would also carry none of that film's integrity and little of its artistry.</blockquote>

Verification