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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4017796" data-attributes="member: 54707">Of course you're pretending. All training is pretending. If training were not pretending, it would be the real thing, not training. When a soldier trains he pretends, the pretence is practice for real life. It is acting, though it has a very different end than stage or film acting, which is entirely motivational and/or entertaining. Though to be fair to what you mean, and I understand your point, not all pretending is training. And that should not be overlooked, as you pointed out.And, of course, I'm not saying you're gonna learn to be a hero, or anything else, through gaming alone. That's a rather silly conceit. It's just a game. In and of itself it would be a very dangerous gamble upon which to bet the success of any real enterprise.But what I have said before is that anything can be employed as training if one so wishes and uses it for that end. But that doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design, though one can gain skills and capabilities by accidental exposure to a thing and not really realize it til later. That though is another matter.But I really wasn't making that particular point this time.My point this time was that the game started out as an exercise, training or pretense, or both, of heroism. Heroism was the point. (So I'm not saying heroism and training have the same gaming end, a game can also be used merely as inspiration towards the ideal of heroism, rather than as training for it - or any other ideal for that matter.) I'm saying the inspiration towards and even the possibility of training for heroism through the game and the ideal of heroism the game once mostly embodied are related matters. Not the same, but related.That has long since changed, and I don't think that is so great a thing, trading heroism for cartoon super-powers disguised as magic, but one of the reasons it has changed is because heroes die in their cause (they also live, conquer, and overcome in their cause), but the deathless can never become heroes.They can only become immortal.The ideal of heroism spurs on a certain kind of game mechanics, the idea of becoming a god another.But basically they are incongruent and even mutually exclusive ends.In one game the point is to become a paragon of manhood, and to face danger regardless of consequences, in the other to become a non-man who doesn't really have to fear any consequences, even his own death.Well, gotta go.I'm an old man with lots to occupy me tomorrow.Nice yakkin with you people.</blockquote>

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