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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6114008" data-attributes="member: 6696971">This is a very good post and cuts to the heart of many of the "stick" issues.Here is what I know:- I am a thoughtful, extremely learned person in morals/ethics/philosophy, who has well-considered and well-developed positions on these issues at the metaphysical level, the micro-social scale, and in the context of greater social systems.- I am fully confident in my ability to argue for and against my positions.- My players trust in my acumen and sincerity as an ethicist and as a GM.Boy.  That is a lot of confidence, right?  I should feel great about "absolute GM authority" when it comes to the imposition of ethos pass/fail judgements and corresponding dictation of player power loss, right?  Not even close.  Because I also know:- I am not remotely unique in this in the greater gaming community at large and, more importantly, nor even at my small table of myself and 3 players.- Losing power via the imposition of ethos failure judgements is not a "lacking in controversy" issue at a table.  No matter how smart, learned or convincing a person is as an ethicist, this issue will sow discord, potential disagreement or, at the very least, require explicit justification.  This, in turn, will create the need for contrived and unwieldy (i) "information dump" exposition at the table via interaction with NPCs, or (ii) outright dialogue (external to the fiction) at the table.- I don't want either (i) or (ii) at my table.  Contrived color via expository dialogue to clearly portray my reasoning and thus legitimize my "stick" is weak parlor tricks and wreaks of terrible movies which are unable to convey their plot underpinnings via implicit storytelling magic.  Overt dialogue (within the fiction or external to it) requires mental overhead and table handling time committed to legitimizing this anointed position (which means that its either only the illusion of anointment or self-anointment) as moral arbiter.  Both are game-disrupting.For all of these reasons, I will take the "carrot" approaches whereby a balanced class is 1 - tactically and strategically rewarded by merely playing to its tightly bound, thematic underpinnings and passively 'punished' (meaning not rewarded) by playing outside of the sphere of that ethos (eg 4e) or 2 - rewarded with thematic and tactically rich boons by having its ethos challenged, making difficult decisions and succeeding or voluntarily failing in an interesting way that empowers the player to propel the narrative forward via dynamic, thematic complications" (eg any number of narrative games) over 3 - the "stick" approach in which a fundamentally overpowered class causes game balance problems (requiring my mental overhead to handle in play) in its standard state but that can be stripped of that unbalancing power  and rendered underpowered (again requiring my mental overhead to equilibrate) by way of moral  adjudication by (self) anointed  arbiter...which implicitly mandates the commitment of mental overhead and table handling time (with a healthy side of potential trust erosion when two well-considered, reasonable, thoughtful people ultimately just disagree) in the way of contrived, "information dump" expository dialogue within the fiction or  external dialogue with players outside of it.</blockquote>

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