Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2907633" data-attributes="member: 7240">This strongly indicates you do not understand what analogies are or how they work.With you so far.I'm not suggesting people are sheep. I'm suggesting they are rational actors. Rational actors tend to do things for which they are rewarded and to refrain from doing things for which they are punished. Let's suppose D&D deducted 1000xp from your character every time you killed a monster. Do you think people would be more or less likely to kill monsters? By making this argument about murder you are using hyperbole to obscure normal human interactions with reward systems.No. I'm not. As another poster has observed, your argument effectively states that game designers do not need to take any responsibility for any decision they make and can blame players and GMs for every single failing in the design of their system.So you feel, then, that whether people are rewarded or punished for doing something has absolutely no effect whatsoever on whether they do it? I guess you don't see any point in disciplining children or having a criminal code if you believe that rules have no effect on what people do. Your argument seems to be that people who have free will are unaffected by rules and that it is disrespectful to people's free will to suggest that they would be. What are you even doing here if you think that's the case? If it doesn't matter what rules a game has, or whether it has any rules at all, why not throw out the DMG and PHB and sit around with your friends playing 'let's pretend'?Indeed there are. So, if killing a kobold suddenly gained the consequence of losing you 1000xp, wouldn't your reaction to the kobold change?How is having rules in conflict with making case-by-case judgments? In each case, the person will factor in a number of things, one of which is what the rules say. If, on the other hand, you wish to substitute case-by-case judgments in place of the rules, why don't you ship your PHB and DMG to Iraq? I understand there are still troops over there who need D&D books.Actually, to follow your analogy in a remotely rational direction, wouldn't the person refuse to do drugs because doing drugs was against the rules?Wow! Hitler showed up waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy faster than I could have imagined. Look buddy. If you think dialing up the rhetoric to these levels will help your case, you have not spent enough time on message boards.But just to clarify: believing that rules matter is not actually the same as gassing 6 million Jews to death.Tell me Dethstryke: do you believe we should have laws? Or do you feel personally insulted every time you see a DON'T WALK signal or a speed limit sign? Do you feel that our social order is threatened by these signs and that we're now a hop skip and a jump away from invading Poland?No. It doesn't. But it sure does increase the probability that someone will do it.I think personal responsibility is important too. Hence me devoting a decade and half of my life to fighting for environmental and social justice issues. Hence me intentionally getting arrested to protest unjust laws, pleading guilty and serving time in jail.But your argument that we can have personal responsibility or laws is silly. You seem to believe that because we have personal responsibility, laws are unnecessary and insulting. While anarchism is a legitimate political position to adopt, I don't think it's fair to argue that everyone who's not an anarchist is a Nazi.But sometimes it takes a little while, for those of us who are not great at math, to notice where and how the rules are unbalanced. We go into a store, buy a game that seems to have high production values and then, as we play, we discover the rules are unbalanced. Some shoddy designer has released a game before it was adequately playtested and we've paid them $60 for it and wasted hours and hours of time figuring out that it's a lemon.The designer is at fault. He has ripped off me and my friends, wasting our money and our time. When you go to the store to buy fish, you have a good faith expectation it's not rotten. When you go to the store to buy a lamp, you have a good faith expectation the wires are connected. I do not see what is so special about gaming products that their manufacturers should not also be held to quality standards by consumers.Again, I have to ask: how have you come to the conclusion that having quality standards in an industry is incompatible with free will? If your grandma buys an electric scooter and the battery stops working after two weeks, it does not mean she's not thinking for herself. It means that she didn't notice the scooter she bought was defective until after she had purchased it. If you think everybody who buys a defective product deserves whatever they get, let me just say I never want to purchase anything you are associated with manufacturing.I'm with you so far. I have house rules just like everyone else.You seem to be trying to argue that because of Rule Zero, no rules matter at all. Again, I have to ask: why did you buy the books at all? Your statement about whim suggests that you and your gaming group would have been just as happy to receive a bag of oranges and felt-tipped markers in exchange for the money you handed to the clerk at the game store.It's not my fault if I decide not to open up the defective blender I've been sold and try to rewire it myself. I've purchased the blender on the assumption that its manufacturer knows more about making household appliances than I do. The same holds true for games. I am not a system design wizard; I am not especially mathematically skilled; nor am I willing to spend the time and energy it takes to playtest a system myself. I've paid somebody to do that work for me. To expect value for money is not equivalent to shirking personal respsonbility; nor is it even remotely comparable to gassing 6 million Jews to death.I'm all for personal responsibility as a player and as a GM. As a player, I align my objectives with those of the other party members and attempt to meet challenges and explore areas the GM seems to want me to. That's just common courtesy. And I prefer games that enhance my ability to do these things; if a game system undermines my ability to do these things, its designer is blameworthy.Look buddy. People in every country on the face of the earth think that reward and punishment matter; that rules and laws matter. This terrible malaise you perceive is a nigh-universal human trait.So let me get this straight: wanting to purchase adequately playtested products is an insult to every single person who has every lived in poverty anywhere? And, furthermore, is the first step towards Naziism?This has just got to be a troll post. I have seen some serious asshatery on this forum but you win the gold star.I'm afraid of you having kids too, if that's any consolation. Evidently you won't be enforcing any rules while raising them, will buy them cheap shoddy toys because you don't care about testing and will teach them to accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being a Nazi. I sure wouldn't want my kids near them.I don't know. But what I'm saying is that if the rules are corrupt, the people who made the corrupt rules should be held responsible for the flaws in the rules. It is by holding people accountable for bad rules that we can exert the pressure necessary to make the rules better.</blockquote>

Verification