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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6710132" data-attributes="member: 5143">I only said that she HAD to side with him regardless of how she felt.  I knew she would never admit one way or the other to me.  It is presumptuous, but, as I said, I saw solid evidence of her disagreeing with him about this sort of thing multiple times.  But in the end, agreeing with him because she had to.  At least twice, she was angry at HIM when the situation ended, then as soon as I opened my mouth to say anything at all, her anger changed to me.  Not because I did anything "wrong" per se but because the words out of my mouth were expressing frustration with him.  It was clear that she was ALLOWED to be frustrated at his behavior.  I was not.Mainly, it appears because she feels I'm causing it.  My position is that unless I'm physically pushing someone around or I just killed your dog or something, you can disagree with me, you can get angry at me.  You can tell me you are offended and wait for me to apologize.  But you can't run out of the room while punching walls, slamming books against the table and slamming doors.  It's immature and I won't stand for it.It was probably the wrong time to say it.  But it was the only time I had left.  I was never going to talk to her again.It's true that when I believe in something, you need to make a pretty convincing argument to make me change my mind.  It's not a matter of being "right".  It's a matter of having discovered the best answer to a question over many years of having the same discussions over and over again.I believe in stating my opinion and letting people know that, yes, *I* think it's the right answer.  But simply because I think it's the right answer doesn't mean it is objectively right.  I'm perfectly ok with disagreement.  But I'd like constructive disagreement.  A statement of "This battle doesn't seem that well balanced" will probably get me to say "I don't know, it seems fine to me."  A statement of "This author is a moron, he's trying to kill us all." tends to get me angry.  I know a bunch  of the Organized Play authors from past experience and I know most of them are good people.  When someone insults people I respect, they tend to make me a little angry.  I've likely lashed out a little because of that.  But once again, I expect constructive arguments, not personal insults and wide reaching generalizations.  You can believe the author is a moron all you want, but you don't SAY that.The same way I believed the guy in question was a moron for years, but I never actually SAID it.  That's rude.  People are entitled to their opinions, but they should be polite in expressing them.You are correct that I have a need to make the people around me understand my thinking and my point of view.  I believe that my viewpoints are well thought out and well reasoned.  Which means, deep down, I believe that if people can see all the facts from my point of view that they'll come to the same conclusion I did.  When people come to different conclusions than I do, I assume either one of 4 things is true: 1. The person doesn't understand all the facts2. They understand all the facts but they are letting their emotions cloud their judgement and aren't thinking rationally3. One of the facts that I'm basing my decision around is wrong and I haven't realized it yet4. I am letting my emotions cloud my judgement and my decision was not made rationallySo, I spend a lot of time explaining my rationale for making decisions in the hope that I can minimize all 4 factors.  It helps the other person understand the facts so they can come to the same conclusion.  If they have more information, they are less likely to respond emotionally.  If I have made an error in judgement due to basing it on incorrect facts, they can see those incorrect facts and point them out to me.  If I'm being emotional, they can point out what I should logically do based on the facts that I provided them and I should be able to see that if presented in a logical way.That's why you'll see a lot of me over-explaining on this thread and over-explaining to my friends.  I feel that disagreements are mostly misunderstanding and given enough information, they often turn into agreements.I don't consider being opinionated to be a character flaw.  I prefer to be around opinionated people.  Even when they disagree with me.  To me, being opinionated is a sign of intelligence.  In this guy's case, he was also opinionated, which means we clashed sometimes.  But I enjoy clashing.  It helps to be a more well rounded person if your opinions are challenged on a regular basis.  I don't want to be stuck in an echo chamber of just people who agree with me.  Which means, sometimes, I argue.  But I'm still friends with the people afterward.I wasn't trying to argue with him any of the times.  Every time he blew up it was an issue that required an answer.  Failure to come up with an answer meant an end to the D&D game we were playing and that involved everyone else at the table.  I don't think I was putting myself into a situation where I was likely to clash with him simply by DMing for him.  I'd DMed for him hundreds of times and although he complains a lot and is a little annoying, it usually doesn't go too badly.But by the same token, I couldn't just drop the issue of whether or not the enemies spotted the PCs.  It determined what happened next in the adventure.  He felt that I was having the enemies purposefully spot him because I didn't like him and I was making all his plans fail despite the obvious superiority of the plan.  Only one of our opinions can be right if we are going to keep playing D&D for the rest of the evening.The same thing was true of the argument about alignments.  He was stating that he was thinking of not coming to our Tuesday Adventurer's League games anymore because of how stupid the authors were and how they were out to get him all the time and writing adventures that no rightful thinking person would ever go on.  I wanted them to keep coming to the games because I enjoyed seeing them there.  So, I was trying to figure out what the root of his problem was so I could help to fix it the best I could.I wasn't arguing, per se, I was just trying to make him see reason and not let him unwarranted hatred of mod authors prevent him(and the rest of us) from having fun.  Once again, I couldn't exactly give that one up.  Because giving it up would mean them withdrawing from the Tuesday game.  And I needed his girlfriend as a backup DM.  She is one of the only people who will run tables except me.  And, frankly, is the best DM there.  Even better than me.  So, agreeing with him meant not seeing them come to our games anymore.  And given, we were about to start running a game for everyone so that we could prepare for the Tuesday game, it was pointless to play the game we were about to play if he hated the games that much.Why shouldn't I cast personal value judgments on their qualifications to play with me?  It's my game.  What other things should I use to determine which people to play with other than my opinions of the players?One of the two players in question has an obsession with hiding with every character she plays.  She has been explained the hiding rules about 40 times now since every time she wants to hide, it's is impossible.  She'll be standing 5 feet in front of someone and say "I hide, then I steal his money without him seeing it" and I'll say "You can't hide, he's looking right at you.  You'd need cover or some sort of obscurement so that he doesn't know where you are.  Then you could hide." and each time she gets angry at me because she has a good hide and I'm "trying to prevent her from using it".She is one of our Tuesday Organized Play players and no matter how many times she's explained how hiding works, she insists on trying it again the next week.  My roommate who is the other DM has noticed it as well and complains to me about it all the time.When she used to be in my old home group in 4e, she kept asking me to break the rules constantly.  She wanted to be a race from a novel she read where there were elves who changed into wolves.  I said no, only things from the book.  She pretty much complained continuously and asked me why I wouldn't allow her to be a perfectly valid option.  She pretty much refused to play until I agreed.  But I told her it would be cosmetic only and more an illusion of a wolf than being an actual wolf to avoid game balance issues.  But then she insisted on taking the Vampire class, so she took damage from sunlight.  But kept trying to change into a wolf to avoid taking sunlight damage.  I explained to her that I agreed to her race choice only as long as it didn't give her a real power bonus and being able to change into a wolf at will to avoid the sun removed the disadvantage of being a vampire.  She got very angry at me for making the game make no sense.  She was covered in fur, how could the sun affect her?She eventually left our group and everyone was rather happy she was gone.  So, now she wants to join the new group and I don't want to be rude and say "You were causing a lot of problems last time you played with us and we'd prefer not to have those problems in our new group."I used the phrase "role playing ability" more generically to mean their ability to play the game.</blockquote>

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