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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5099208" data-attributes="member: 22779">It might help to change the comparison.  Instead of comparing RPG's to other games, with which RPG's certainly share a number of traits, why not compare to the other activity that RPG's share many traits with - theater.  RPG as highly regimented improv theater isn't all that bad of a descriptor IMO, and it's certainly how I tend to approach RPG's.Trying to get a "common" framework in theater is extremely difficult.  "I was in a play" doesn't tell you all that much.  Until you start being very specific about what play, where, how much improvization occured, etc.  you can't really talk about the play you were in.The problem with RPG discussions comes when people presume that their experience is universal.  I'm certainly guilty of this from time to time, and I think everyone is.  We tend not to think too much about why our games look like they do, we just assume that that's how its done, because that's how everyoen we play with does it.The problem gets exacerbated to a great degree when people presume that other people who have different experiences, do so because they fail to understand the rules, fail to grasp something about the system, or have included elements that do not belong in the game.How many "Adding ______ to D&D is bad" threads are there out there for example?  For some people, they presume that D&D is a specific kind of fiction and the inclusion of anything outside of that is a bad influence.  They could be right, but, the problem comes when they start from the position that they are objectively right.As another example, I remember talking about the CR/EL rules for 3e and many people claiming that they could regularly defeat EL+4 or +5 encounters.  It took a while, but, eventually we nailed out a few reasons why this was happening - high character stats, very good coordination between the players, using primarily classed humanoids as opponents being three that come to mind.If people are willing to explain how they arrived at a certain point and are willing to accept that others might not arrive at the same point, everyone's happy.</blockquote>

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