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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8389456" data-attributes="member: 7026617">Same.  I can only judge by my general and specific experiences with people here, but there's absolutely room for me to be wrong here.Possible, but I've seen enough GMs who think they can just forge ahead with what they're used to to be cynical, especially if they've been with a single game for a long time without exposure to others.  I suspect a GM who ran D&D for a few months, then tried to run one of the other games you reference would adapt far better than one who'd been in a D&D hothouse (and they aren't rare) for several years and then tried to switch streams.And I'm not sure its actually worse for players, though it may be for ones with low rules-engagement in the first place.Can't but shrug here.No, that's part of the same picture.  Its really, really easy to drop into D&D and never leave.  That's because if your original D&D group disintegrates, if there's any gaming population nearby at all, chances are there's more D&D games.But its also why gaming monocultures are more likely with D&D than with anything else, so if someone is going to hop out of a game they've only played, its pretty likely to be D&D because of the numbers game.  While its not impossible to find people who've only played, say, Mage, the number of people who that applies to compared to the number who've only played D&D is tiny; even people who may not have played D&D are probably more likely to have played a couple of different non-D&D games (though you might have people who've only played Storyteller, say, even if they've played multiple versions of it, but that's likely the only case where you'll hit a situation like that; I suspect the number of people who've played multiple games but all variations on Modiphus' house system is, shall we say, not large).So the most likely game people will have heavily imprinted on when finally trying a new one is D&D.  And there are all kinds of ways that can set expectations that do not apply (as I said, someone hopping from D&D to Shadowrun can probably conceptually adapt (both are heavily based around penetrating enemy areas and getting a particular result with violence on the whole, even if they're used for other purposes on occasion) but would run into much bigger problems in a typical Call of Cthuhlu campaign (or almost any horror game other than some very heavily action-horror focused ones).  The mechanics might be a different story (just in another thread I've seen people seriously bothered by games where successfully hitting a target doesn't necessarily translate into successfully damaging them for example) but those are separate axes.There can be two different causes for that, and both occur often enough for it not to be particularly rare.1. Decision paralysis.  Some people have trouble deciding, well, anything with any consequences.  Its true in their regular lives, there's no reason its going to suddenly not be true in a game even if the stakes are lower.2. Scar tissue.  People who've played with GMs who either were prone to gotchas, or were just very hard edged (or even some systems that can be that way) can develop a tendency to be very cautious and reevaluate constantly.  Ideally, they should be doing this while other people are taking their turns, but, well, surprise, people don't always do things in an ideal way.I've probably had at least four or five players over the years like that, and only rarely haven't had at least one in a group (of course some of this is while I've had many players over the years--between one campaign or another I'd say 20-30--some have been constants for, in a few cases, decades).</blockquote>

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