"Ducant fata volentem, nolentem trahunt."
Once again, I enjoyed reading the comments. Even those in opposition.
Once again some made me think of things I hadn't quite thought of before in the way you expressed them.
Well, I got a few minutes before I hit the sack after traveling about today.
So instead of trying to answer everybody separately I think I'm gonna respond in the following way.
I think some of you got perfectly what I was driving at. And some of you didn't understand at all. C'est la vie. Some people are gonna get what you mean, some are not, and some people are gonna argue with you that the sun is green even at noon when it's there for all to see, because you said it was yellow. That too is life.
But instead of all that minutiae I'm just gonna tell ya a little story to illustrate the point and see if this makes what I'm saying any clearer.
When I was a kid and played D&D, or DM'ed D&D, and was the usual case, it was not uncommon, as a matter of fact, it was the rule, that during any particular gaming session, the game itself would stimulate a discussion about literature, about ancient warfare and/or the Cold War with the Soviet Union (we were in it at the time), about religion, God, the church, myth, education, the future, history, science, business, economics, gaming itself, technology (this was before the PC and public internet so we usually discussed World War II fighters, nuclear submarines, or not yet built spacecraft), art, music, chess, different languages (I don't mean drow elvish or hellpsawn, I mean Latin, Greek, Korean, etc.) other games, film, what we intended to do in real life (our goals and possible occupations), crime, school, taxes, politics, women (females anyway, we were really too young to date women) and so forth. After the game, because of the game we had just played or because of something that happened in the game we would often hang around for hours and discuss or argue the very same subjects, ranging around everywhere, discussing almost everything, how it affected us, what it meant, where it might lead us, and so forth.
This was the norm and it happened almost every game whether I was DM, or player, and no matter what gaming group I ran or found myself in.
This is the way my friends and I gamed and the way the game functioned.
When we brought in people who had never gamed before, or gamers from other groups, it still functioned in that way.
Then I gave up playing for a long time. I had too much else to do. In the intervening years I went to several colleges, got married, had a number of different occupations, had children, bought houses, bought land, invested, started some businesses, became a officer of different organizations and agencies, became involved in my church, became a coach, did some missionary work, became a writer, and involved myself in other matters in the world.
Then after my children began to age I wanted them and my nephews and some of the kids in the church and neighbor kids to be able to have some of the same types of beneficial gaming and role playing experiences I had when young and which had been inspired by D&D. So to get back into gaming before devising my current setting I decided to investigate and join some of the local gaming groups. So I found a few and attended some sessions, playing off and on in each for a few months. All the groups employed the 3.0 or 3.5 systems.
During the game the conversation ranged all the way from this rule to that rule, what spells are best used in this situation or that, how many and in what way skills can best be used in any given situation by a particular character given the number value, what the flavor of the game and setting and campaign really was supposed to be and how it functioned (Oh Lord, how many, many, many pointless conversations about "flavor"), what character had the most potent set of feats, what magical device might best be seized by assassination, and so forth. Not that there's anything wrong with that in and of itself, but ... every game, with every group... WENT... THAT ... WAY. Oh, every now and then I'd try to change the conversation from, "do you think Penecalifar should take another to hit bonus or do you think it would be best to up his armor class by a combination of upping his dexterity and buying a +4 Shield of Protection from Interdimensional Teleportation?" (I mean, heck, they had a few extra at the local armory, so why not, right?) to something less interesting, like international terrorism or "you know what Erasmus says about Interdimensional Teleportation don't ya?"
One time something ironic happened in the game and I quoted Shakespeare's John Falstaff. From the looks I got not only did they not get the joke they didn't know where the reference had come from or what it even meant in relation to the present situation regarding the characters. Once we started talking about the way a Paladin was behaving and I asked the guy playing him what his deity would think of his behavior and he told me, "My character doesn't really believe in him or care what he thinks, I just play this guy cause it fits the flavor of the stetting and rounds out the party well."
Now if that were one group, one setting, one game, okay, I understand the occurrence probabilities of empirically unverifiable anecdotal situations as well as the next statistician. But when it was every game, with every group, and in every setting, my astute powers of deduction and observation began to make a few calculations regarding likely and on-going catalytic agents of cause and effect.
Now if ya get the point of this story, then you do, and nothing else need be said. And if ya don't get the point of this story, the ya don't, and no further explanation is probably gonna help. And if ya get it and still don't care, well then, it doesn't really mater either way at all, does it?
But in my considered opinion the correlation between in-game atmosphere and corresponding value, and in-game method and system of execution is just a little bit more than coincidental synchronicity.
Anyway just think about it for awhile and next time you're at your game see how much time you spend preparing for and discussing feat progression and rules clarification versus something far less important, like, oh, I don't know, like living...
Well, good night all.
I got stuff to do in the real world tomorrow.
