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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8917918" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Don't...don't use Syndrome to try to prove anything. He is explicitly both wrong and stupid, and his entire argument rests on an intentional and willful equivocation of what the word &quot;special&quot; means.&quot;If all food is tasty, then no food will be!&quot;&quot;If all people are intelligent, then no one will be!&quot;&quot;If everyone is kind, then no one will be!&quot;&quot;If all rooms are dark, then no rooms will be dark!&quot;The one and only way his argument makes sense is if you actually use two different definitions of &quot;special,&quot; but that reveals the underlying flaw of his beliefs. The first sense of &quot;special&quot; is &quot;has superpowers.&quot; The second sense of &quot;special&quot; is &quot;a unique and worthy individual.&quot; When spelled out this way, his argument becomes, &quot;When everyone has superpowers, no one will be unique or worthy as individuals.&quot; This is clearly stupid, because there are so many other ways for people to be &quot;special,&quot; to be unique and worthy. It is his erroneous belief that having superpowers IS the one and only way to be &quot;special,&quot; to be unique and worthy, that makes him both wrong and (because he rejected several opportunities to learn and change) stupid.Don't use the Syndrome argument. It is dumb and even in the context of the work where it was written it doesn't fly (if you'll pardon the pun.)While adversarial DMing is a concern, it is not the only source of problems. Misunderstanding, miscommunication, tacit assumptions, differences in experiences or genre expectations, talking past one another...there are all sorts of things that can lead to problems here, and the &quot;you're the DM, you figure it out&quot; approach (advocated by both the actual DMG and the culture of play for 5e) doesn't help this at all.I have seen it, or heard of it, at enough tables to consider it a relevant factor. Particularly if the DM is all huffy about &quot;DM Empowerment.&quot;I mean, sure, that's ideal. I can tell you right now, it's really friggin hard to find such a group, and with 5e has in my experience been even more difficult to find such groups. I went looking for over a year. Found not one such group. Extremely demoralizing.Your suspicion is not well-evidenced IMO.The bold is where you are very, VERY wrong. We DO NOT &quot;all...think alike.&quot; We in fact often think EXTREMELY differently, and that very thing is what causes a huge chunk of the problems.Perfection is a straw man. No one here is asking for it, or anything remotely like it. Claiming someone is trying to make something perfect when they are simply looking for improvement is an automatic bad-faith argument. I respect that you are (in essence) trying to argue &quot;it's fine, what we have is already good enough!&quot; But you're going to need more than a straw man to back it up.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8917918, member: 6790260"] Don't...don't use Syndrome to try to prove anything. He is explicitly both wrong and stupid, and his entire argument rests on an intentional and willful equivocation of what the word "special" means. "If all food is tasty, then no food will be!" "If all people are intelligent, then no one will be!" "If everyone is kind, then no one will be!" "If all rooms are dark, then no rooms will be dark!" The one and only way his argument makes sense is if you actually use two different definitions of "special," but that reveals the underlying flaw of his beliefs. The first sense of "special" is "has superpowers." The second sense of "special" is "a unique and worthy individual." When spelled out this way, his argument becomes, "When everyone has superpowers, no one will be unique or worthy as individuals." This is clearly stupid, because there are [I]so many other ways[/I] for people to be "special," to be unique and worthy. It is his [I]erroneous[/I] belief that having superpowers IS the one and only way to be "special," to be unique and worthy, that makes him both wrong and (because he rejected several opportunities to learn and change) stupid. Don't use the Syndrome argument. It is dumb and even in the context of the work where it was written it doesn't fly (if you'll pardon the pun.) While adversarial DMing is a concern, it is not the only source of problems. Misunderstanding, miscommunication, tacit assumptions, differences in experiences or genre expectations, talking past one another...there are all sorts of things that can lead to problems here, and the "you're the DM, [I]you figure it out[/I]" approach (advocated by both the actual DMG and the culture of play for 5e) doesn't help this at all. I have seen it, or heard of it, at enough tables to consider it a relevant factor. [I]Particularly[/I] if the DM is all huffy about "DM Empowerment." I mean, sure, that's ideal. I can tell you right now, it's really friggin hard to find such a group, and with 5e has in my experience been even more difficult to find such groups. I went looking for over a year. Found not one such group. Extremely demoralizing. Your suspicion is not well-evidenced IMO. The bold is where you are very, VERY wrong. We DO NOT "all...think alike." We in fact often think EXTREMELY differently, and that very thing is what causes a huge chunk of the problems. Perfection is a straw man. No one here is asking for it, or anything remotely like it. Claiming someone is trying to make something perfect when they are simply looking for improvement is an automatic bad-faith argument. I respect that you are (in essence) trying to argue "it's fine, what we have is already good enough!" But you're going to need more than a straw man to back it up. [/QUOTE]

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