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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4710723" data-attributes="member: 54707">I've been really busy lately but there are a couple of comments people made earlier I'd like to respond to as I get the chance. I'm gonna try and avoid overly complex responses though as I sometimes have the bad habit of engaging in, and so I'm just gonna try and take comments I want to respond to one at a time.Maybe I didn't explain this very well. I have a tendency in my mental analyses to see trends, and to just subsume the details thinking everyone else will just instinctively understand what I mean by implication. As my friends, associates, and family often remind me, not everyone looks at A and then can, or will, jump to J without having explained to them all of the letters or elements in-between. I often jump around things in my mind making connections that others might not immediately see without going through all of the other intermediate steps. But I often do that's just the way I think. So I often have the tendency to jump around, even in time. With casework for instance I often (not always but often) jump from my first examination of evidence to the right conclusion, but then I have to backtrack from the end all the way back to the beginning to explain to everyone else how I got there, even when I'm sure I'm right and am not even certain how I got there myself - I can't initially prove it. Whereas I've often seen a lot of other fellas who go from A to B to C to D and so forth before they feel comfortable drawing any kind of conclusion. I get that difference in approach and respect it, it's just not my normal way of thinking or making an analysis, analyzing clues, or making deductions.So, that being said here is what I was actually implying. Not that, as I think you are thinking, that a certain way of playing D&D or a certain edition of D&D or any other game is WOWey, or video gamey, in the sense of modern video games and everything that implies. What I said was:What I meant by that was:  I am looking forwards (not as in hopefully, but I can easily foresee the time) to the day when video games and computer games are a type of Virtual reality in which the end user self-programs or programs the game himself to ignore the rules of the world and instead gives himself the power to shape the world as he sees fit. You do though already see that with Cheat Codes. Cheat Codes often allow the user to ignore certain "Game Rules and World Structures," in effect creating a totally user-advantaged world in which the player can ignore the effects everyone else would be subject to. For instance a cheat code might make you invulnerable to harm, give you so many "hit or health points" that you cannot in effect be killed, cause you to automatically regenerated if injured, or give you the perfect and unstoppable killing weapon.So in addition to those types of things I am also looking forwards to the day when the challenge of any video game is like a Virtual World without the threat of real risk, and eventually of RPGs that are similarly able to be programmed by the user (I'll give the DM my Wish List of things I desire, which are in effect my individual and personal Cheat Code) being, in effect, the same. I am of course exaggerating the idea a bit to make a larger point about the Game World.Why should my wish list not include eventually the ability to regenerate whenever I fall below a certain number of hit points, why not give me a suit of armor that makes me invulnerable, and while we are at it why not let me program the game world DM, it is after all made for me, the end-user? (I could easily create such devices and defend them on purely mechanical and gaming notions, if my only criteria is that the game should be about what the player really wants above all other considerations.) So my Wish List or my Cheat Code becomes my ability to re-program the game world so that if effect "I Nero" become the world, not the character interfacing with the world. Take the idea far enough and eventually why have the DM design the world at all or structure how it works? Just let me (the world exists for me anyway) do it and I'll skip straight to level 3000, make myself invulnerable, give myself the best weapons and armor and so forth and I can go straight to butchering the gods and remaking the world in my Own Image? That is more fun after all than facing any sort of limitation to my ultimate aim of ultimate power and bad-assery.Now does that often happen as I've just described above? Probably very, very rarely? As I said I am exaggerating for implicational effect.But take the idea of wish lists and cheat codes and give-aways far enough and that would be the ultimate end, a Virtual Reality world in which the world is merely a plastic stage backdrop, worse yet it would be nothing more than a blue-screen that bears no virtual resemblance to anything other than a self-programmed and self-serving non-reality.So that's what I meant even if that's not what I said.By the way I think there is another good discussion about programming and role status in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/252239-roles-d-d-4th-edition-d-d-combat-non-combat-roles.html" target="_blank">This Thread</a>. I won't repeat here what I said, or what others said, there, but I think it is really a related discussion.Because I think that certain forms of player-programming are good (within reason), even necessary to good games, such as when players program and reprogram their own characters to better interact with and interface with "their world." When they start programming and re-programming the World at Large, I personally see no value and nothing at all heroic in that. Because heroism is not programming the world to your best advantage, it is using the world as it is to create something better for everyone else. And that is definitely not programming, though it may subsume certain ideas about how you want the world to be, it is struggle. Heroism is not a wish for how the world will be, it is the hard work required to make it that way.Anywho I gotta go. But I'm glad this thread kinda took off. (Though I wouldn't have imagined it before hand.)Some of the comments have made me think about a lot of interesting ideas.So, thanks for the comments.</blockquote>

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