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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 6391975" data-attributes="member: 16760">No arguing that it was nicely fortuitous!Nevertheless, I have met those people, though not in a while.  I don't think they're outliers, though.  I think there's a selection effect that can make them seem like outliers to experienced gamers.My own experience in gaming I think is not unusual.  When I started, I was introduced to the game by other kids in school.  I played haphazardly in several different groups that were frequently in flux, and often were run by people only slightly more experienced than I was.In that milieu, many people took the Monster Manual pretty much as gospel.  It was Holy Writ.  (Though, like Holy Writ, it wasn't always read as closely as one would like!*)In college, I eventually settled down to a single group that stuck together.  We became experienced together, got to know each other.  We tried all sorts of different things - new game systems, new assumptions in existing ones, and so on.  I still game with these people even years later, typically via Google Hangout.EDIT:  I should add that I also had the good fortune in college to meet a highly skilled and experienced GM.  Not everyone does!In the process of all those years of gaming and experimenting, the D&D lore got put in proper perspective.  It became one possible tool in the toolbox, a possible starting point from which one could go many different directions.  It's been that way for literally decades now.But plenty of people, I think, are very much still in that milieu of occasional in-flux play.  They are still out there to be encountered.  If you try to form a new group in an area, you will probably run into them.But you aren't likely to see them often on EN World.  We're a self-selected subset of mostly experienced gamers.  I suspect most of us have our own stable groups and have for some time.  So that milieu is largely invisible to us, or recalled only from the good/bad old days when we were starting out.EDIT:  I also have the impression that EN Worlders are heavily tilted toward GM's, and GM's naturally tend to view lore with a more jaundiced eye.*An amusing story from grade school when I was first starting out.  I had borrowed the AD&D Monster Manual from a friend and read it.  A bookish lad, I read it closely and with attention.Later, a friend regaled me of stories of a Monty Haul campaign he'd been in, in which he'd fought several "Tiamats".  Puzzled, I said, "But isn't there only one Tiamat?  She rules the top layer of the Nine Hells, doesn't she?"The other fellow gleefully told several others, "Get this!  He thinks there's only one Tiamat!" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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