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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8200679" data-attributes="member: 7023840">TwoSix: Are these the Nazis, Snarf?Snarf: No, TwoSix, these men are nihilists. There's nothing to be afraid of....things (objective, real things) matter. Maybe not to a nihilist, even one who enjoys the occasional lingonberry pancake, but they do make a difference.People make decisions based around these differences. Let's take two different examples:1. Coke and Sprite. There is an objective difference between these two things. Whether you discuss measurables (such as nutritional information, or caffeine) or taste, they are objectively different. But the preference will be different. Even if you make a statement based on an objective difference ("You should drink Sprite because it is a citrus-y beverage, and therefore more refreshing"; "You should drink Coca Cola in the morning because the caffeine will get you going!").2. New MacBooks and PC Laptops. The new macbooks have a newly-designed chip that blows the doors off of the intel chips in terms of performance and heat. That is an objective measure. That makes a difference. However, people can (and do) still have a difference in preference based on everything from "The PC/Windows laptop runs games I want to play," to "I just don't want to run MacOS, and I never will." For the second, imagine the person is a computer user that only runs basic web browsing and word processing from their laptop, so you could probably even go so far as to state that the new macbook would be better for their uses ... and it still might not matter to them. It's an intersection of subjective and objective that seems to get many people confused. People describe a game system and say that it is better for X use case (which is a difficult thing to do, but let's assume it is correct). They may even give specific examples of how their play group uses that system and how well it works for them. The trouble is when they generalize that use case to other cases- in other words, for other people. Other people not only have different preferences, but they also have different groups (and those groups contain other people with different preferences). The elevation of the system over the people at the table is what I often find baffling. I don't think it is too much to say that "players matter" or "preferences matter." But that's also a truism, isn't it? It all matters.</blockquote>

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