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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 2406630" data-attributes="member: 12332">Huh.  I'll be the voice of dissent now, I suppose.I'm, personally, siding more and more with Bob.  Maybe not Bob as a person and a personality ... I might very well not get along with him.  One of my BEST FRIENDS was the most horrible gamer in the world.  He just didn't "get" it.  It wasn't even so much that we had incompatible styles, but that he didn't like RPGs, didn't want to play RPGs, but didn't want to be left out of the game.I did something else when he was over.  Because he was a good friend and an RPG was nothing to not be friends about.  It was obvious that it wasn't going to work out, I did get frustrated about it for a while, but I took a moment, thought about it, and said "Bugger that."  I didn't stop playing RPGs, I just didn't play RPGs with him and I made sure there was enough time that he didn't feel like we were always leaving him out of things.It's a GAME and I, personally, think its a rather poor thing to give yourself stress about and a rather poor thing to ruin work relationships and friendships about.  In a perfect world the "odd duck" would be dis-included in the game sessions and you could decide that clerics are all gifted holy men blessed by the hand of their deity.  And in a perfect world the odd duck would be ousted from the game because he doesn't want to play with house rules making clerics subscribe to a particular faith and be holy men of high caliber in order to get spells.  And in a perfect world everybody at the table would love role-playing in depth philosophical and religious morasses about converting goblin women and children to new faiths and how to handle their cultural deviation.  But you've laid out that the situation is such that it's not going to be a perfect world.  If you make it about the game or your relationships, NEITHER will, apparently, survive.  Because it'll be hard to have a game if half the people involved in it are stressed out and/or not talking to eachother because of what happened in the GAME.  And it's a game.  You spend a lot of time on it, I'm sure, and it's quite involving and involved ... but in the end, it's just a game.So because its a game what it comes down to is:  Are your game-related stories about passionate religious savants worth not gaming and losing friends and having stress at work about?  The -game- doesn't say that he has to abide any particular tenant.  I think it even says that a "cleric" doesn't have to ascribe to any particular faith and can recieve spells based on his self-conviction or determination or whatever.  Basically, they were careful to say that you don't have to suscribe to playing a pagan priest of a pagan religion if that's going to make you uncomfortable, or, by extention, if it's not important to you.  Anything else is your house rule and you have to decide, again by extention, if this house rule is important enough for you to give yourself stress and/or ruin relationships over.I've wanted to "go places" and "do things" in games that just didn't work out because of a player.  Disruptive players, players with another style, players that make EVERYBODY ELSE at the table grit their teeth.  Just a week ago I had to get up from a table and walk into the hall because one of the people at the table was getting close to having me blow up at him.  But ... in the end, it wasn't worth the stress.  I can ignore, work around, and generally just pretend I'm playing with somebody else doing something else. So if he wants to play a cleric, let him.  If he wants to play him like a walking buff machine no deeper than numbers on a sheet of paper, let him.  Call it WHATEVER you want.  Decide that his character is a self-deluded psion with no divine powers beyond those of his own mind.  If he insists on saying that his cleric is selling Cures in the street for money just nod, give him a few GP, and go on with role playing the other characters doing their own thing.  In the very end, it is YOUR decision to be upset by these things.  If you could, you'd kick him, but you can't, so giving yourself an ulcer about it ... or "confronting" him and making him feel poorly for his personality ... or whatever ... in the end you have to decide "why?".  And, for my own 2 cents, I really REALLY hate those GMs who think the proper way to "handle things" is through the game.  "If you don't play the way I want you too, then I will punish you by turning your character evil and not giving him spells."  Not like, 'personally' hate, but it just bakes my biscuits when people use that sort of tactic.  That doesn't fix things unless the player wants to fix them.  I had a player who kept using OOC information about a large module (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil) and we used an in-game method for keeping him in check by writing in that he'd touched the mind of Tharizdeun, and his information was the dark god feeding him the future ... and that it cost him 1 permanent Con every time it happened.  But I didn't just "do it" to his character ... we sat down, we talked about it, I pitched the suggestion to him, he agreed to it.  Screwing with somebody's PC because you don't like how he plays is just going to further exacerbate the situation.In the end, there are alot of ways to handle the situation besides digging in your heels and being obstinant and upset about it.  Because being upset about a situation is always YOUR choice, and you can choose to remove the situation or find a way to stop being stressed by it.  --fje</blockquote>

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