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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mkletch" data-source="post: 410338" data-attributes="member: 3396">You miss the most important point - inspiration teaches you that something is or has the potential to be important, either to you or society as a whole.  While Star Trek didn't teach a single Apollo astronaut how to make the space capsule go left, it did teach them that the exploration of space was probably an important thing to consider for their lives.Inspiration is teaching/learning, perhaps the most important part of such an endeavor.  If you are uninspired, even a book containing every known fact on, for example, molecular biology will not do you any good, nor teach you anything.  Nor would you learn from it. Now that is being argumentative for argument's sake.A teacher usually does not 'teach facts', or at least the good ones don't.  They show you what you do not know, and show you where to find it.  Then they encourage you to learn it, for learning something on your own (even with a little guidance) is far better than having someone pound fact after fact into your head for future rote recitation.  Good teaching, per the Socrates example, or any good teacher that I have had or known, is exactly what you are disequating with inspiration.The reality of the situation is that miniatures WWII games are a miniscule niche compared to FRPGs.  Football can 'teach' a lot, even if it is just because you practice some little used math to crunch some player data.  Going to work is largely irrelevant, especially when over half of the working population in the US dislikes their jobs, and I see few off topic threads in the general discussion forum about people who love their job.And here is where your argument descends into pure folly.  D&D is not a pile of books and some dice.  D&D is the interaction which is governed by the roll of the dice, the content of the books, and the content and imagination of the players' minds.  The interaction, which you so highly praise as being and teaching "everything", and the game which you scorn as a vehicle for learning are the same thing.As much as I like CRPGs and other forms of 'interactive entertainment', they are not 'gaming' to me, nor is Neverwinter Nights truly D&D.  D&D is the experience of sitting around a table with some friends and/or new acquaintences, killing paper monsters and eating rapidly cooling pizza.  In a CRPG, all of 'the work' is done for you, the work that is the impetus for learning new things or reinforcing the things you knew but seldom used.  I will repeat, the game IS the interaction:Game = InteractionInteraction = Teaching Potentialtherefore...Game = Teaching Potential (Q.E.D.)But "Clash of the Titans" can teach some basics about Greek mythology to someone who knows nothing, even though later learning/teaching may correct inconsistencies or embellishments.  Whether or not a fact is truly 'correct', it can be learned.  Learning does not exaclty map to "absolute truth".  If that is your benchmark, then nothing teaches! I'll agree with that.  But it might increase one's empathy for the truly destitute, and inspire one to think that doing something to alleviate their plight.  Unless one cannot learn such things from a game.You are assuming that such a brushing, slight contact with the concepts of good and evil is worthless.  You do not need to have bloodstains on your floor to realize that a particular act or event, which previously you thought fell into a 'grey area', is actually evil.  You trivialize the simple event of encountering something new, or encountering something from a new perspective which may or may not change how you consider that thing.  All of these are learning.Just because something cannot be rendered into a cold, heartless, largely meaningless fact in the form of "On this day in 327 A.D. ..." does not mean it has no learning/educational value.  Just because you understand that a^2 + b^2 = c^2 for a right triangle does not mean that you understand all of its implications.  Fact and knowledge are two different things, as are fact and wisdom.It is my unfortunate opinion that those you game with would be better off if you played computer games instead of D&D.  That way, someone who can learn from their games would then be able to fill your now-vacant chair.  Sorry, but that is how I see it.  If you cannot learn from them, they cannot learn from you either.  All would be better off if a learning/teaching/inspiring person took your place.This is like saying that, if you come across a new word in a book, but look that word up in a dictionary to confirm what you interpolated from the context of the passage, the original source did not teach you anything.  I would venture to say that almost anyone would agree that the original book did teach you a new word.  By analogy, a game is the exact same situation.And remember, reality is built upon people's perceptions.  The overwhelming perception is that people have learned from D&D, and your semantics have not made them unlearn anything.  Sometimes, life and truth are inherently democratic like that.-Fletch!</blockquote>

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