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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7900486" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think that that is actually a pretty solid answer. Many enjoyable games depend on having a functional table contract that serves to set standards for how you think about playing the game, and how you think about playing a game is often much more important to the actual process and results of play than the rules are.So I get where you are coming from, but at the same time I also think that you are handwaving away a powerful observation about flaws in a game.Take D&D 3.5, a game system that I mostly like and which many people have as one of if not their favorite game system. But D&D 3.5 implicitly depends on finding a table contract where everyone either agrees to not break the game for a given value of "breaking the game" or at least agrees to create a character that breaks the game to roughly the same degree. And most Supers systems by reputation (full disclosure, I haven't played a Supers system) have the same reputation. For example, an optimized Speedster can often break the game.However, the fact that you can enjoy the game and play the game as intended does not at the same time mean that the flaw that the table contract is working around doesn't exist. D&D 3.5 being a game system which heavily prioritizes the aesthetic of Challenge, and yet at the same time has absolutely no balance what so ever, is in fact incoherent design that works against its own ambitions as a game and people who point out that D&D 3.5 is an incoherent design are not wrong just because at a particular table you had an enjoyable game because everyone agreed to optimize their PC's to the same level and the GM was able to provide a challenge scaled to the power level that the table had agreed on.Nonetheless, if you go and look at an example of play that involves one of the actual designers of the game running it, for example, the Tabletop game hosted by Wil Wheaton and guest starring Felicia day and Ryan Macklin, and you analyze the play involved I think you'll find that it absolutely is incoherent in the way that I described.   It was watching that video that convinced me that I wasn't doing it wrong, and that in fact all the problems I was seeing and experiencing were inherent in the system.   Is John Rodgers - who absolutely dominates that session - doing it wrong?  I feel bad for Felicia Day because she I think actually tried to play it 'right' but got absolutely no traction from the system.   And Wil Wheaton, saw his desired aesthetic of play get taken from him because he failed to have John Rodger's system mastery (which involves all those aspect fishing things you say people won't do.)  If those aren't the "right players" then who is?</blockquote>

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