Tectuktitlay
Explorer
I do have to admit, the absolute need for random stats instead of simply having everyone having a firm mechanical baseline is actually fascinating to me. I prefer points-based systems to level-based systems, in no small part BECAUSE everyone has the same foundation; it's what they do with it that matters. Someone having a rolled set of stats vastly higher than another player at the table often leaves the latter feeling pretty useless in most situations, and having to hyperfocus just to contribute meaningfully. While the former is naturally able to accomplish much more every session by simple virtue of having better numbers. I am not in it to play a game where the character with the better luck in a single set of rolls has such far-reaching repercussions. It's one thing to win a fight on a lucky roll. It's another to perform vastly better than everyone else because of one set of lucky rolls at the start of the campaign. That, to me, is just not fun. For anyone but the person who rolled the lucky stats.
And yes, I know that you can roleplay and have fun with a gimped character. Been there, done that, and it can be amusing. But...it's much, much more fulfilling to do so when that is actually your idea, and not something you are forced into. When a campaign starts, and we all start talking about characters and what we want to play, I want everyone to actually get to play what they WANT to play, not what some dice rolls railroaded them in to. Fine, fine, you get to play a near-god because of your insane rolls, Jeff gets to play someone barely competent at tying their own shoelaces, and Beth gets to play Captain Meh, The Most Average Person in the World (tm). All because of a handful of dice rolls before the campaign even starts.
You know what that tends to cause to happen? PCs taking stupid risks on purpose so they can die, reroll, and play what they ACTUALLY wanted to play. I'd rather everyone just play what they want from the beginning, because the whole bloody point is for everyone to have fun playing characters they connect with.
So yeah, I am firmly the exact opposite of this. I prefer point-based character generation to random generation in all but the most outlier of games, or without some safety valves (i.e. roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, do two such stat arrays, pick one). The randomly generated everything of Gamma World? Sure, that's fun, and you know you're likely to have many character die horribly, so randomly playing a living swarm of cockroaches one session, and an insane android the next, can be highly amusing.
This one is equally fascinating to me. Life is change. Endless change, both large and small. I find that running under the assumption you'll be playing in any sort of campaign for any planned length of time is just asking for disappointment. Just one or two years? One or two years can be a LONG AS HELL campaign for many of us. If a campaign does last over a year, and life doesn't get too busy for various members with kids/grandkids, changing work schedules or situations, and so much more, that IS being in it for the long haul, imho. Not because we don't WANT it to last longer, but because life just happens, and never stops happening. And we're all much older, now, with many more responsibilities, jest generally juggling more day-to-day.
This is just amusing to me. The visceral loathing of Drizzt, a character that has obviously connected with an awful lot of people (hence being one of the few D&D series to hit the NYT bestsellers consistently), and who reads like so very many characters at so very many tables long before the character was released, is utterly fascinating. I personally find him to be eh, a pretty standard fare amalgamation of many common tropes and archetypes, not terrible, not fantastic. With some of his stories, especially the ones set before he left Underdark, being interesting enough.
Ok, and this I have to nitpick. Getting drunk is getting all drugged out. Alcohol is flat out, point blank, a drug. One of the more addictive drugs, to boot. One of the drugs that is most prone to causing violent outbursts, no less. You might personally have more fun on alcohol than other drugs, but a lot of people are really, incredibly, horribly unfun to be around when they are drunk. Even when they think they are the life of the party. And there are a lot of people doing other drugs that you might not even know are on anything, or they are actually interesting to be around. Pot is the obvious one, and some people are fun to be around while stoned, others aren't, just like any drug, including alcohol. But some of the hallucinogens? Especially when people are taking light doses and not tripping hard? Or on small doses of various cutting edge experimental synthetics and whatnot? Those can lead to some pretty neat places for a group.
Like anything, it's about trusting the people you are with.
But yeah, being drunk IS being drugged-out, and saying being drugged out is a deal-breaker, but being drunk is NOT a deal-breaker, is pointedly ignoring a fair bit of cognitive dissonance.
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