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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marius Delphus" data-source="post: 4920883" data-attributes="member: 447">Continued edits to the OP aside, this footnote, here, is an example of circular thinking. In essence: players who limit themselves limit themselves.So what?We've already discussed the notion that the terms of the argument in the OP still haven't been defined. This should serve to destroy the idea that an "optimized" character is antithetical to a "roleplayable" character in any way, because the two terms have yet to be understood as contradicting each other, and several posters (including me) counter that, to the extent those terms can be defined, they are not antonyms.But here's the reason I don't buy the argument or the quoted footnote, indented and colored:The universe of options considered by an individual player creating a game character is never and cannot be identical to the universe of possible characters that may be created within the game system. In other words, high-falutin' syllogisms (especially invalid ones) about character creation options are irrelevant because they disregard what real people think about and do at real game tables. Let's say I'm starting a new D&D 4E campaign, but I don't want to create a dragonborn barbarian. Doesn't matter what my reason is; I won't do it. I am not thereby restricting my options; I never had that option to begin with. Put a different way, I haven't discarded anything; instead, that option is a non-option and isn't within my universe of possible characters.Let's now suppose that on game day, I'm handed a dragonborn barbarian, pregenerated, and told by the DM to forget playing anything else in this campaign. Well, now my universe of options is, we can say, entirely different from the universe I had before: whereas it didn't include a dragonborn barbarian, but included a host of other potential characters, now it includes one particular dragonborn barbarian and excludes any other potential character (given that I'm going to play in the first place).And who knows? I might have a good time.Character creation, in the abstract, isn't about plucking options from the Platonic Ideal tree; it's not about Venn diagrams, statistics, or probability math*; it's about real people trying to have a good time at real gaming tables [EDIT: or virtual replacements therefor]. Something I think the quoted footnote and the mercilessly pruned OP ignore.* These things might come up in the context of the game system itself, but in this context I consider the game system to be within concrete reality.And I still can't figure out a rationalization that makes "roleplayable" antonymous with "optimized." It just doesn't compute. My Hidden Agenda Sense is tingling.</blockquote>

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