Sorry about the novel below. I felt compelled to reply in an encompassing manner. I get a little preachy. Maybe a lot preachy, depending on your view. I hope that my goal of expressing what I see as a desperately important point does not float over to the appearance of personal attack. I bear no ill will to anyone, especially Fusangite.
fusangite said:
This is a very poor analogy. A blender is also a tool. So is a horse. So is the California legislature. So what?
If you are going to make analogies, why not try to draw comparisons to things that are actually like the rules rather than comparing the rules to random objects.
I say that it was anything but a poor analogy, and here is why. I chose a random object for just that purpose; it truly applies to anything and everything. The absurdity of the item in relation implies the vastly encompassing nature of the statement.
A person
always has a choice to do something or to not do something. To imply people are simply sheep that will, or even worse that they
should, go after whatever the biggest carrot you dangle in front of them no matter what it is you are trying to have them do strikes me as incredibly disrespectful of free will and the intelligence of everyone. What's more, you are also
grossly trivializing the need for everyone to take responsibility for the decisions they make.
To draw the lines for anyone not following this mental path, you can apply this to literally everything mentioned. You can
choose to take the blender and smash it through someone's car window, you
could steal someone's horse (which was a severe crime at many times in history), and you
can manipulate the California legislature's laws to benefit your business unfairly. Just because it is a choice available and perhaps you appear to benefit directly (or greatly, depending), there are consequences to every action. Taking each situation as a case-by-case basis is what you should do. Trouble begins when you start making blanket statements like “I was just following the rules”. That is just as bad as saying you should do drugs “because all the cool kids are doing it.”.
fusangite said:
The rules reward certain kinds of behavior more than they reward others. For instance, the rules provide an incentive for rogues not to enter melee alone because they cannot deal sneak attack damage unless they can flank an opponent. In my view, rules should not provide incentives that reward people for making certain choices unless the rules want people to make that choice.
For instance, if we replaced the death penalty for murder with a $10,000 reward for the scalp of any male US citizen, we might reasonably expect more people to commit murder because an incentive has been provided for doing so. Would it still be the individual's choice? Yes. Would it still be murder? Yes. But it's still a bloody stupid idea to come up with rules that encourage people to do the opposite of what you want them to.
I'm
aghast at this assertion. This is exactly the sentiment the Nazi officers and soldiers presented as a defense after World War II. Just because someone says "I'll give you a million dollars to kill someone",
that doesn't make it right, and in that moment of being asked
you have a moral obligation to make the correct choice (Specifically stated as
Principle III &
Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, which were written for the
Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi Party). In this example, of course, it is to not kill. In the end, it is just as the tribunal found with the Nazis: While the ones who make those laws are indeed guilty, so are the ones who blindly follow rules that they know to be unjust. Personal responsibility for those actions is just as important as not making those types of rules/laws/etc.
Aside from the mentally disabled (which would pose exclusion to physically being able to understand choice), to do otherwise means you are throwing away your responsibility as a person. That sets your inherent personal power aside, which is contemptible.
Everyone has the ability to say "no, that is wrong" and do the "right" thing, be it not kill, not min/max, not steal candy from babies, etc.
Please note, I continue the killing/Nazi train of thought not because I think min/maxing is anywhere as important as real life horrors such as the Nazi movement, but because taking personal responsibility for your actions IS as important.
fusangite said:
If you don't want to encourage certain kinds of behavior, don't write rules that encourage them. The RAW encourage certain kinds of behavior. That's what is at issue in this thread. This simply is not true. There are dozens of game systems out there. It is grossly irresponsible for a player to blame a GM or another player for doing what the system is telling them to do. If people always attributed blame to one another and never to the system, new systems would never be designed and bugs in existing game systems would never be fixed.
I'm sorry, but it *is* the player's fault or DM's fault if they follow rules that are not balanced, or present situations that will kill them constantly if they are not stacked for "optimum effect" for two very good reasons.
They can think for themselves, and clearly thinking for himself/herself is
desperately needed. My whole point is that
you are not a slave to the words written in a D&D book! To begin with, the first "rule" in the very ruleset discussed is that the "rules" are all
guidelines and can/should be ignored by the DM as he sees fit, or even at whim! Otherwise, we have the DM
choosing to not do anything about it. That's
his fault.
He chose to
not change it or get rid of them.
Secondly, personal responsibility would trump the rules EVEN if that first "rule" was never there. In the end, it is
your responsibility to make sure what
you do is fair and just. No one can or should, in the end, make you do anything you don't want to do.
In reality, the view you expressed is shared by MANY people, especially Americans. Generally, I find that it is held by anyone who has had too much success or prosperity and not had to suffer for it. It is a great thing to be given the benefit of the work, sacrifice and toil of those generations who came before you, but all of that is
nothing without the wisdom to apprecaite the cost of those benefits. Especially when you were not the one to pay that cost. You disrespect the mothers and the fathers who worked all day, every day and lived in poverty for years so that you could have something better. I can't understand anyone who would let another person take that honor away from you just because they told you to do something you know isn't the "right" thing to do. To follow along blindly without so much as a wimper is tantamount to telling those millions of people that came before you that their entire lives were worthless.
As a side note: The total lack of understanding of personal responsibility, or willingness to accept it in today's world scares the holy heck out of me. I seriously am afraid to have children, I fear for our future so much. In an age of so much wide-spread intelligence and communication, that anyone would simply fall over to laziness and herd mentality without a fight is mind-boggling. Is this what the world is teaching everyone? That if you follow corrupt rules and don't incite change, you'll make out in the end and it won't be your fault? How can anyone ever believe that with the centuries of history that say otherwise over and over again?!?
Every raindrop doesn't think it is responsible for the flood.
