Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9293157" data-attributes="member: 6799660">I found (BX and BECMI) fighters to be interesting enough to play. Mostly in that, in the absence of any skill system or grand world-interfacing rules, playgroups and playstyles tended to let you do many things ad hoc, and a lot more of the challenges were anyone-can-try ). I know the old 'makes you not look to your character sheet for answers' adage has become something of a rhetorical bludgeon, but I do remember a whole lot of rube goldberg esque solutions** to getting through dungeons. Whether that's making do with what you had, or some emergent value in simplicity, I'm not sure. *(and the fighters will because they have AC, HP, and saves for when it blows up on them**'Kim you stand on the pressure plate while I turn the statue widdershins to lower the ramp while Shannon opens the hellhound cage door, and they'll come streaming out into the bugbear den and we won't have to fight either of them.'Obviously the example isn't a pure one, because the party at that time had absolutely-not-simple vancian magic users. And of course magic items -- which disproportionately benefited fighters, but again not as much as is sometimes inferred in rhetoric. Honestly, I get personal preference on the subject, but the strong opinions so often levied in D&D discussions I do not get.Look, I won't even pretend to have been able to follow the entirety of this thread, so I don't know if you are correct in this. If you think someone else in the conversation is behaving in a fashion that shuts down communication instead of moves the discussion forward, I would suggest ignoring them*. We're not here to 'win' these threads and the only influence we have here is to change minds. Just state that you do think there is a reasonable situation where you might want to call out someone for said behavior, and then move on to discuss the scenario. You will be talking to the people who had any interest in being persuaded in the first place. *manually; or with the function provided for us, which the mods repeatedly stress is neither mean nor cowardlyMyself, I think that yes this situation exists, and we've all likely seen it (outside of this forum and maybe outside of gaming, perhaps adult-league sports). Someone has joined in a collective entertainment effort but been uninvolved enough that the rest of the participants suffer for them being there (or not being there, as the case may be). And yes, without a good excuse, they just thought they were more interested than they are, but don't quit until they are in a better place to participate. I think when it happens, everyone else darn well knows it, and no 110% proof need be obtained. I also think it is pretty rare. Rare enough that the specifics of the individual group probably trump any broad-strokes points we can make on the issue. I don't have a specified list. Perhaps gamers who cheat, those who throw fits, those that pick fights, those who cannot accept rulings that come down against them, those that can't leave the game at the game table or real world disagreements off the game table, and so on. The specific list isn't important, so much as the point that this non-participating participant doesn't rise to the level (in frequency or frustration) to be on my top-10 problematic player's list*.*outside of whether my games have all that many problematic players.</blockquote>

Verification