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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 7126472" data-attributes="member: 6683613">For a long time I had trouble believing that anybody could actually be that level of horrible to somebody else's face when they're both ostensibly trying to entertain each other playing a cooperative game. The more I read about others' experiences, though, the more I realize that what I thought was social ineptitude in my own little band of geeks isn't even scratching the surface of just how sad, sick, and clueless people can get. I'm sorry to hear this. But can I assume from the fact that you're still here that your story has a happy ending and you did eventually find a group of decent human beings?Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot a single game book can do to fix the sad, sick, and clueless. I would like to believe that something in black and white like the PHB's entry on gender could be used as a sort of blunt instrument against a DM who had certain other ideas: you could point to it and say, "The rules allow me to do this, so let me do this!" But really, that's just the same misplaced optimism that made it so hard for me to believe players like that existed in the first place. A-holes are going to be a-holes regardless of some wording on a page. They're likely to reject it offhand, and even if they do acquiesce, that doesn't fix the underlying problem -- they're just going to find some other way to be a-holes. So no, I don't think the wording is there for them. It's there for the rest of us: to encourage those of us who might sometimes feel vulnerable in our lives to give this hobby the try, and to gently remind those of us who aren't committed a-holes but might still occasionally put our feet in our mouths to keep an open mind.</blockquote>

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