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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3504990" data-attributes="member: 4937">In my experience, maybe 25% of D&D players are first and foremost ego-trippers who play because of empowerment/compotence fantasies.  If this is what is in a player or DM's 'red beating heart', in my experience they socialize poorly and are very difficult to integrate into a play group.  Almost all the rules lawyers, munchkins, disruptive players, and players that turned in game issues into threats of violence, hysterics, and other sorts of out of game issues where in thier 'red beating hearts' primarily into the game because of empowerment fantasies.  I've gotten to the point that if I think I can identify you as an ego gamer, that I'll discourage you from being at my table.Fortunately, there are all sorts of reasons why people play D&D, and for most people empowerment fantasies are a secondary attraction.For example, I've never had a female gamer in my group that primarily played because it was a power trip.  D&D players include problem solvers that play D&D like it was a puzzle and are not interested in having powerful characters so much as proving themselves by solving puzzles through thier wits and not through in game abilities.   Ego trip?   Possibly, but it is a radically different one than the sort that demands big swords and powerful spells.  These players tend to dislike games where thier characters are given big swords and powerful spells, because they feel that these abilities detract from thier oppurtunity to show off thier problem solving ability.  It's not fun for them to be able to use brute force, even to some extent creatively applied force, to solve the problem because they see this as something anyone can do.   Other players are dramatacists, who are less worried about experiencing the thrills of vicarious success as they are about feeling vicarous emotions - including fear, despair, romance, joy and so forth.   Other players are primarily interested in socializing in a safe and playful environment.  They could care little about whether the group has earth shattering abilities - they just want to interact with the other players and be part of a team and engage in shared imaginative play.  Other players are artists, who mainly want to excercise thier wits, do interesting and dramatic things that will be talked about for years to come, and craft an interesting story for thier characters.  Players like this are often completely uninterested in success as it is normally defined, and are instead looking for interesting narrative arcs to create or to be a part of up to and including a 'good way to die'.  So by no means assume that every player out there is looking to have a powerful character.</blockquote>

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