TheCosmicKid
Hero
Could you point me to where specifically you did this? In post #251, you quote and respond to the sentences before the questions, and then you quote and respond to a sentence after them. In post #348, you say nothing about them. In post #366, you say nothing about them. And in this most recent post, you say nothing about them except that you have already responded to them, which is a claim that, as far as I can discern, is simply untrue.I already answered your extremely hypothetical, loaded questions as best I could without your actually committing to any sort is substantive position.
The problem is that the references you have made, however extensive, do not support the conclusions you want to draw. That's the substance of my position that you have, despite being told repeatedly, been unable to grasp. In formal terms: I am arguing the negative. When I ask "But then what? What have you actually 'refuted'?", I'm not just being contrary. I'm trying to point out to you that you need to do more logical work to connect the dots from "Reason R is nonsense because of X, Y, and Z" to Primacy of Magic being the Essence of D&D. After all, even false beliefs say a lot about what people perceive to be the essence of D&D. If people are saying that 4E is not D&D because, say, they think it doesn't use ability scores, then they're absolutely wrong for thinking that, but it's still strong evidence that ability scores are a part of the Essence of D&D in their eyes -- evidence which weighs against the Primacy of Magic hypothesis. So if you don't connect the dots here, you haven't proven your case.As to the point I made about the Essence of D&D likely being the Primacy of Magic, I've supported extensively with reference to the actual content if the various incarnations of the game itself.
I do rest the supposition, in part on the acknowledgement of 4e as being Not-D&D, and of clones like PF1 as being D&D.
Now, so much for the substance. The less said about the second half of your post, the better. Neither I nor anybody else here requires your invitation to speak our mind.