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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6794007" data-attributes="member: 6790260">...something I already get. I get why people want it. Just like I get why people want to watch horror movies. But cognitively understanding what people get from it, and emotively understanding it, are two distinct things. I get no--zero, zip, zilch, nada--catharsis out of watching horror movies. They leave me feeling depressed, upset, even anxious--I have to "unwind" after watching them by doing some other thing entirely. I can cognitively understand that, for other people, going through the emotions elicited by a good horror movie is cleansing, relieving, an outlet for all sorts of things. But I don't feel any of that when I watch them--so I choose not to. Same for strict-rolled characters. I'll do it, if a friend or the like is offering a game where it's required--I get a good portion of my enjoyment of an RPG from interacting with the other players. But that character creation method will not contribute to my enjoyment, and may reduce it (slightly, but still)."The perfect is the enemy of the good." Also, it's a rookie mistake to assume that a character that's great at everything will be a character that wins audiences or naturally/easily produces compelling stories. Superman is quite possibly the most iconic superhero--and yet he's often reviled for being a boring, impossible-to-challenge, powers-on-demand character. It IS possible to write good, even great stories that revolve around the Man of Steel (who is, in fact, one of my favorite superheroes)--it just takes dramatically more work than other characters, because (near-)perfection makes drama harder, not easier. To challenge Superman, you basically have to go outside the limits of the superhero story--because he's already won that--and into something else. Like Superman: Red Son, or Kingdom Come, or What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?, or For the Man Who Has Everything. The last two, incidentally, were also adapted as stories for the DCAU, and are fairly faithful adaptations. If you're not big on comics but have the time to watch (respectively) an animated film, Superman vs. the Elite, or TV episode, For the Man Who Has Everything (JLU ep 2).What you ask is sort of the logical opposite of an actual question in virtue ethics: can we truly call effective, challenging evil completely unvirtuous? The answer given is usually no: an evil being that was completely, utterly devoid of all virtues would be incapable of any meaningful action. Evil, then, lies not in a total absence of virtue, but the privation of virtue. (As Aristotle put it in the Nichomachean Ethics, "Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feeling or in action, but Virtue finds and chooses the mean.") Having a story where all of the villains are so cowardly they cannot take actions, or so stupid that they never take actions that benefit them, or so reckless that they always get themselves killed through constantly challenging opponents--well, that would be a pretty gorram boring story! Instead we must mix just the right amount of steel and rot and sweetness into each villain, so that they are capable threats, and compelling characters, while still being revolting. A good author, similarly, knows to give protagonized characters a touch of clay to go with their steel, because you can't have drama if there was never a challenge to overcome in the first place.Finding the balance between "sufficiently capable and likable" and "sufficiently flawed and incapable" is hard! But fortunately, point-bought or array stats guarantee that you can get such a character. Dice rolls, on the other hand, cannot guarantee such things--in fact, they essentially guarantee that at least some portion of them, in the long run, will be all flaws (sub-10 stats across the board) or all awesome (no stat less than 15).I can create a story for just about anything. But it will be flat to me. Lifeless. It will exist, not because it reflects or contains anything within me, but because an inanimate object "told" me to do it. And that completely taints my enjoyment of it. Like I said, I will constantly be reminded, "This wasn't my creation. This was made by someone else, or rather something else, and handed off to me." I *have* tried. Truly I have. And even with the dice on my side (as I said above), it wasn't enough. I was able to enjoy the game because the DM was good and the world was interesting. My character? I really couldn't have cared less if it died, except that that might mean I'd sit the rest of the session out, which would be boring and unfortunate.A character I create is one that inspires me--perhaps like an old favorite dish, redolent with memories and pleasant nostalgia; or perhaps like a new experiment, a challenge to meet and investigate. A character handed to me, even by the dice, is neither of those things.I don't expect you to change your mind about what you like or dislike. I am absolutely 100% supportive of your choice to roll and play such characters, because that is what gives you joy. All I ask is that you recognize that it does not bring everyone joy, and for some people (like me), it opposes what gives them joy in RPGs.</blockquote>

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