Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 3741182" data-attributes="member: 1713">Well, ehren37 pretty much hates 1e, as demonstrated by each and every one of his posts I have had the misfortune of reading on these forums, but here is my take on the subject anyway:A lot of people have this perception because of poor experiences with juvenile DMs. Teenagers often make dumb mistakes, especially when it comes to trust, fairness and human relationships. That is why they aren't adults - they have yet to learn all these things over several years. Here's the problem: in the hands of an immature person, games can lead to pretty f-ed up social dynamics, betrayals, unpleasant power fantasies, etc. It is not the fault of the game, but the participants will blame it anyway. This, in some, leads to negative stereotypes which are reinforced by a whole corpus of anecdotal evidence. I will have to mention that old school games are not the sole targets for these stereotypes: often, it is &quot;traditional&quot; games in general, or GMs in general, or gamers in general (RPGNet's &quot;Creepiest Gamer&quot; thread, for example, is a veritable treasure trove of self-hate and condescension towards one's fellow gamers, feeding on a sad and sick one-upmanship).I think there is a strong impetus on part of those who suffered from these negative phenomena in formative years to make games &quot;safe&quot; - to build anti-abuse catches into the rules or the social structure of the books. This, in many ways, has turned into a general crusade for &quot;fairness&quot;; today, it extends to initiatives to prevent item loss, abolish random ability scores and hit points, remove save or die for the last time, etc. etc. etc. Safety.I don't think this is the sensible way. I think we have to recognise the problem as human, and don't make (futile) attempts to fix it through rules. The only solution is itself social; the ability of adults to be selective with their friends, or occasionally aid the maturation of their fellows (as pretentious as this sounds). Juvenile people make mistakes, and some people always remain juvenile. In the hands of sensible, mature people, old school games are safe.That's all.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Melan, post: 3741182, member: 1713"] Well, ehren37 pretty much hates 1e, as demonstrated by each and every one of his posts I have had the misfortune of reading on these forums, but here is my take on the subject anyway: A lot of people have this perception because of poor experiences with juvenile DMs. Teenagers often make dumb mistakes, [i]especially[/i] when it comes to trust, fairness and human relationships. That is why they aren't adults - they have yet to learn all these things over several years. Here's the problem: in the hands of an immature person, games can lead to pretty f-ed up social dynamics, betrayals, unpleasant power fantasies, etc. It is not the fault of the game, but the participants will blame it anyway. This, in some, leads to [i]negative stereotypes[/i] which are reinforced by a whole corpus of anecdotal evidence. I will have to mention that old school games are not the sole targets for these stereotypes: often, it is "traditional" games in general, or GMs in general, or [i]gamers[/i] in general (RPGNet's "Creepiest Gamer" thread, for example, is a veritable treasure trove of self-hate and condescension towards one's fellow gamers, feeding on a sad and sick one-upmanship). I think there is a strong impetus on part of those who suffered from these negative phenomena in formative years to make games "safe" - to build anti-abuse catches into the rules or the social structure of the books. This, in many ways, has turned into a general crusade for "fairness"; today, it extends to initiatives to prevent item loss, abolish random ability scores and hit points, remove save or die for the last time, etc. etc. etc. Safety. I don't think this is the sensible way. I think we have to recognise the problem as human, and don't make (futile) attempts to fix it through rules. The only solution is itself social; the ability of adults to be selective with their friends, or occasionally aid the maturation of their fellows (as pretentious as this sounds). Juvenile people make mistakes, and some people always remain juvenile. In the hands of sensible, mature people, old school games are safe. That's all. [/QUOTE]

Verification