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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pentius" data-source="post: 5712896" data-attributes="member: 6676736">Yeah, I definitely see a huge disconnect in online forums and meatspace.  In my experience, people online are more polite and somehow also more prone to vitriol.  Yesterday, three friends and I were driving to the weekly game.  One of them mentioned, in an entirely conversational tone, that he'd rather we play 3.5 because 4e is just WoW on paper.  I responded, also without vitriol, that I give exactly zero ****s about 3.5.  We then continued to talk, joke and laugh, no arguing, nothing.  On ENworld this conversation would have never happened(not in those terms, anyway), at the WotC boards, it would have been a 40 page flame fest.  I see this, too, but I think it happens for a different reason.  I'm an optimiser.  I like to make powerful characters that excel at what they do, that is a part of the game I enjoy.  I have 2 friends that share this trait with me.  Neither of them live in my state.  Most of the gamers I game with in meatspace regard optimising as playing a race that compliments your class and maybe taking a weapon with a higher damage die.  That is as far as the process goes, for them(some disdain even that much).  If I want to talk about(or more often, just listen to conversations about) CharOp, I have to come online to do it.  That is the only real option. Honestly, a lot of DMing and theorycraft stuff is the same way.  If I tried to talk about, say, the relative merits of narrative support for different wounds in different editions with the people I play with, I'd get blank stares.  It isn't that they aren't bright, creative or thoughtful, they are(some of them more than myself, to be sure).  It's just that they've not thought about theories behind the game, or considered the differing facets of it in such a light, much as I hadn't before joining messageboards.</blockquote>

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