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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brimshack" data-source="post: 3212757" data-attributes="member: 34694">I didn't check that thread out, but for the record my immediate reaction was to think a demon cohort would be very interesting for a Paladin. Less a question of yes or no for me than one of under what circumstances and how would it work out. I can imagine worlds in which that could NEVER happen and I can imagine worlds in which it could. For me the most interesting is one in which it could, and in which the real drama would then be the control of the cohort and responsibility for all of its actions. Whether or not the campaign could survive the tension between the Paladin and his cohort, or how long the relationship would last, I don't know. But I like the tension.I do think that many players endow rules for D&D with a normative value that is entirely unwarranted. It isn't uncommon for players to express the principles that guide their own gaming experience as absolutely binding on any and all possible games. Running rules structly in one's own campaign is fine, in fact you can accomplish some interesting things that way. What always mystifies me is the degree to which players often seem to assume the game has to be played that way as a matter of principle.This goes hand in hand with a reluctance to play with creative house rules, and a tendancy to imagine that common patterns are normatively enforced within the rules. I have had arguments in which people swore up and down that a rule existed and the only basis for the rule was the fact that things usually worked that way, or that they had been playing that way for years, so there MUST be a rule on it somewhere. It becomes a kind of closed loop, as if to say: "I only play by the official rules and I play THIS way, so that's clearly the way the rules work." I tend to think of it as a variety of fundamentalism, myself. It doesn't involve actual religious belief, but it does encompass a certain link between norms and canonical texts.</blockquote>

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