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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 8387111" data-attributes="member: 5142">It's worth considering whether your confirmation bias is at play here too.Consider this. From what I recall, you said earlier that the intent of the game didn't include any notions of the players accumulating power or wealth. I responded that if you read the Introduction of the PHB that there is more in the Introduction than that little snippet that you quoted, which also includes the writers talking about the player characters gaining power, levels, treasure, and magic artifacts as they adventure. So is your statement really true that nobody offered "no shred of evidence" against what you regard as the intent? This is one reason why I think it's safe to say that your statement was grossly exaggerated.What does it say about the game's intent when it writes, "The adventurers grow in might as the campaign continues. Each monster defeated, each adventure completed, and each treasure recovered not only adds to the continuing story, but also earns the adventurers new capabilities. This increase in power is reflected by an adventurer's leveI."To me at least, this suggests that part of the game's intent is for the PCs to acquire power and new abilities through gaining levels and acquiring magical items through adventures. There is also a Iot in how 5e is written to support this too. I also don't think that this somehow invalidates the idea that the PCs and GM are coming together "to create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils." But a lot of the game's intent is also built into the framework of character creation and progression as these often are meant to create incentives for continuing adventuring.And when "Optimizing" is a considered a valid play engagement for players or style of play in the "Know Your Players" section of the 5e DMG alongside "Storytelling" and "Acting," then maybe we shouldn't cast aspersions at players who like to optimize in 5e.It seemed to me that you were saying that it was my argument that these people are immoral. I did not make that claim that they are immoral. I said, much as you link here, that you seem to have attached an almost moral judgment to your accusations that these people (whoever they may be in a given argument) have not read the PHB or aren't running the game as you have declared "as intended." I don't think that sort of presumption of bad faith is necessarily the healthiest way to be going about this conversation. It can most definitely come across as a drive-by insult to people who you happen to be arguing against.My issue is more with bad faith accusations that people haven't read the book. There are IMHO better ways to broach the subject of what you may see as the designer's intent for 5e and/or your own game preferences when approaching it.That said, I do sometimes advise caution when it comes to what the writers say about the game, particularly when dealing with general statements in the Introduction. Writers saying that their game is meant to be about fun or telling stories together doesn't necessarily tell me much about how to approach playing/running the game. I don't disagree that the game should be about fun or generating stories with the participants, but the actual design of the system and the play culture around the game may actually be promoting something different from what the game designers have said about their game. For example, let's take the bit that you quoted earlier about the game's intent:What about this "design intent" is unique to D&D 5e and how it should be played rather than either another edition of D&D or another fantasy adventure TTRPG? I suspect that I could copy-paste these blurbs to nearly any fantasy adventure TTRPG without much issue.IMHO, this seems less like statements about designer intent and more about announcing that it's a fantasy adventure TTRPG. There's basically no talks of mechanics or system here that would suggest how the designer's intent manifests in any meaningful way. Our main hints about the system in the Introduction involve vague snippets about "rolling dice," a separate DM role, and that PCs have levels.</blockquote>

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