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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5183376" data-attributes="member: 4937">Errr...so you are saying..."I've never seen groups with this playstyle so it can't be the default assumption of anyone" ['Envisioning a villianous sandbox game isn't the default assumption of anyone who has played the game before']...isn't actually refuted by..."My experience is otherwise, so it can be."?Are you sure about that?  Generally speaking, if you say something like 'isn't the default assumption of anyone', I don't think it a logical fallacy to suggest that this claim is disproved by the existance of at least one group where that isn't true.  My claim was that you needed to ammend your statement to "isn't the default assumption of anyone in my experience", which may well be true, but it is a very diferent claim.No.  Prior DMs may have enforced a social contract on the players which they felt was removed when he asked his players to 'be creative'.  Freed from the constraints imposed by other DMs, apparantly 3 of the 4 players opted for chaotic evil.  This does not surprise me.  You probably had some combination of players who self-identify/empathize with evil characters more than heroic ones, and players who want to free themselves from either real world or game constraints and act out something they don't normally experience.  I've seen both kinds.  I've met players who were incapable of playing evil PC's because they found it distasteful, and I've met players who were incapable of playing good PC's for the same reason.Heck, in the early '80's I knew of several groups (composed of older gamers than myself) who would have fit BADD's sterotype of drug abusing, satan worshiping, RPGer's who tried to cast real spells in the midst of their sessions.  In college, I wrote a couple of papers on the history of RPGs, and in my research I found a few graduate students who had written books/dissertations on similar topics and discovered, not really to my surprise, that these sorts of groups were - while by no means typical - not in fact that uncommon.  The novelization of the movie E.T. is in my opinion quite spot on its depiction of RP groups of the period, and this includes two adult groups I knew of (one an older cousin was in, the other a teacher).  Honestly, towards the end of the 80's and in the early 90's based on my experience talking to other players, I felt like I was the one oddball who didn't prefer CE characters and who didn't disparage Paladins as being an empediment to play (mind you, these players never seemed to think Assassins fit in the same category).I read the above story and I say, "Yeah, I've been there."  I read the above story and I imagine the players saying things like, "Can you believe that #$!#@ created a paladin!", or "He's just not cut out to be a DM, railroading us like that after he asked us to be creative!"No, I don't think so.  I think it takes DMing experience to go into these situations with eyes wide open, and he clearly doesn't have it.Sure, and neither is Cattlepunk, but KotDT is quite spot on in some ways albiet in a manner exagerrated to make the point humorously.  But, just as many metal bands reported not finding 'This is Spinal Tap' to be humorous because it frequently struck so close to home that they felt too much empathy for the performers to laugh at them, so I think at times KotDT ought to strike the same sort of chords in a DM.  Some times, it's funny because its true, and sometimes it's too true to be funny.</blockquote>

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