Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2388064" data-attributes="member: 172">I'm not insulted (though I must say, if it were my players you were referring to, it might have been) so much as I think it's a totally bogus cop-out when it comes to defending a game.Let me tell you a story. The title of this story is "Why Psion Doesn't Run Hero".Psion loves Hero. Psion thinks that Hero is a way cool game. In some ways, he thinks it out-cools D&D. Why? Because it lets him craft anything and have rigorous mechanical support for it that he much prefers to ad hoccing everything.But back in college, Psion had a group. There were many players in this group, but one of particular interest. We'll call him Rob. Because, well, that's his name.Psion is running a rip-roaring game of hero, but find that Rob routinely avoids running characters that use magic. I soon discover that Rob does not use magic because he doesn't grok the power system. Well, Rob's a college student, so he should understand the basic math that goes into making a Hero character right?I thought so, but it occurs to me that whether or not he's capable, that's work to him. It occurs to me that gaming being a leisure activity, it's not my place to make him do things he doesn't like. And by running hero, I was limiting his options.It was that moment that pushed me away from hero and back towards D&D. Yeah, it's not as flexible as Hero, or many other systems. But IME, most people grok D&D, and can play any character type they care to play if they can play at all.Later, I got into verbal fencing with GURPS fans, who in answering my charges that IME GURPS players too easily build characters with scads of half point skills it was my "players fault."Such arguments firmed up my philosophy that it is not the job of the players to support the game, but vice versa. If your players don't enjoy a game, that is not a slight to the players. You can't obligate the players to fit the game, much less judge them.I could easily slam rules light players for their lack of mathematical ability, but given my experience with Rob, I tried to avoid going that route because I consider it the "low road". It's not the player's job to fit the game. It's the game's job to support the players.So, I'll own that if D&D accounting is not too your liking, you should probably play something with less accounting, or (at the very least) make efforts to minimize it. But by the same token, if the lack of robustness is limiting the actions your players consider, I'd say that is on the game, not on the players.It is easier to change the game you are playing, or to change rules of a game, than it is to change people. Games are dispensible.</blockquote>

Verification