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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 9498978" data-attributes="member: 85870">Thanks for bringing this up. I hope the player didn't feel I was treating him contemptibly. Something I need to be careful of.In terms of attitude toward the "gamist treadmill" style of play, I don't know that I would say my attitude toward it goes so far as outright contempt. Up to a certain degree, I have no problem with it. It is, as mentioned, almost expected from RPGs as a core play loop. And I'd be lying if I said I'd never pored over the old BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia random treasure tables and dreamed about acquiring most of the magic items listed in it for a character.I freaking love the original Baldur's Gate games (1 and 2). And I love gear stacking in those games. Cheesing the red dragon with that one cleric spell that reduces its HP to 1, just to get the Holy Avenger for your paladin in BG II? Yeah . . . totally done it. (I mean . . . come on, why wouldn't you?). But there's a context, time, and place for that. And frankly, I simply no longer have the will to tolerate it in tabletop settings. Which is why I brought up CRPGs in the OP. That is absolutely the appropriate context for it. Good grief, I've spent 500+ hours playing Deep Rock Galactic on the PC, and a solid 20% of that time was spent actively forging weapon upgrades and messing with the character "fashion designer." So I get it. I know that motivation intimately.  But in the tabletop RPG space, I've come to the point that I now know there's a vast breadth of gameplay experiences that go beyond the gamist treadmill.And I very much want to get to them.I'll admit to feeling frustration and perhaps disappointment that it's still . . . quite so hard to productively discuss the alternative narrative-style perspectives. Which is why I posted the OP; I was hoping to see if there were other productive ways to describe and discuss the kinds of play I was looking for without turning the conversation into a torpid session of jargon-y navel gazing. It felt like I had an opportunity to maybe bring the player and me into closer alignment on playstyle, goals, and expectations. I hope I didn't quash his sense of fun, was in no way my intent. But I do feel . . . hmm, cheated, maybe? Exasperated? when a game's focus turns to extreme gamist treadmilling.Every ounce of time and energy I spend addressing the gamist treadmill creates a negative opportunity cost. Not only am I no longer getting to focus on the things I find compelling in RPG play, I'm having to expend time, energy, and mental cycles on something that actively pushes away from what I find compelling. The more I think about it, this gets to the real crux of my negative reaction to it. It's not the thing; it's the opportunity cost of dealing with the thing.</blockquote>

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