FrankTrollman wrote:Certainly, my own experience is that people are usually able to handle casting from a D&D magic user's list of prepared spells (where it is analogous to the drinks on the table where you ultimately get everything no matter what your choice is at the moment)
-Username17
This is definitely the booze talking, but I'm not following much beyond "Frank and Lago don't get to game much anymore and so keep posting more and more abstract theory arguments."
Yeah, sure I'll buy that people reach a point of more choices than they can handle.
Yeah, sure, I'll buy that when you slice that thinner, there's a point where adding just one more choice to a game system can be a negative.
Despite how easy it is to counter-argue with reductio ab absurdum, ( "OMG, I can turn to face any of 360 degrees worth of directions, that's so many more than six that I'll never be able to make up my mind and walk anywhere!" ) my own personal observations and experience seem to indicate that there's at least some truth to those assertions.
I'm pretty skeptical that you can pinpoint just where any such point lies with any degree of precision, or that it's even the same point for most gamers or even the same exact gamer for different types of choices.
But when it comes back around to the booze, I feel compelled to point out that I am both not dead due to alcohol poisoning and one of the older posters on this forum, and from those two facts alone it should be blindingly obvious that I do not in the course of a game session (or likely the entire campaign) get to drink everything in that picture. Frank - you're a doctor, you want to explain what happens to someone who consumes something like the 7.5 liters of 80+ proof liquor contained in the bottles in that picture (and that's not counting the softer stuff such as sake, soju and the chocolate girly booze ) in the course of a single game session?
Even figguring that the game goes as long as most campaigns I've been involved in, ten sessions means I'm still swilling 0.75 liter per session - and at 80 proof, even with my way-too-high bodyweight and slightly above-average alcohol tolerance, that still pushes me past "drunk" and into "falling down and puking" and flirting with "maybe we oughtta call an ambulence"
Drunk though I may be, I simply cannot plausibly drink all of that during the course of the game - which means there are options on the table that do not get chosen during the course of the game.
I can state with certainty, that knowing this does not reduce my happiness.
Furthermore, the argument that such contentment results from knowing that I will likely
eventually get to consume all of those, even if it isn't in the course of this game doesn't hold much water with me. Here's why: when I go to the nearest PA LCB State Store, I really do not care if they've added yet more flavor of infused vodka or yet more colors of Mad Dog or yet another brand of top-shelf champagne to their shelves - increasing the options there is irrelevant to my purchasing satisfaction. If, however they stopped carrying Sake or one of my favorite mid-range blush wines or Old Crow or one of my other standards, the elimination of that option would render me less happy. If they added a new nutty / coffee / chocolate liquor or high-proof fruity schnapps, that might either increase or decrease my enthusiasm, depending how closely such a product aligned with my tastes and how closely the price tag aligned with my available funds ( good and inside price range = more happy, good and above price range = less happy, bad = don't care ). The only additional choice that I can say for certain would make me unhappy to have to make is if they dug up a forgotten case of
Rohol - which I would want to buy as a collector's item, but have learnt the hard way to never ever drink - so I know I would regret either wasting money on booze I won't drink, or I would regret missing the opportunity to buy something rare and downright unbelievable.
So in the "Josh at the liquor store" scenario, my likely satisfaction and chance to avoid buyer's remorse can be increased or decreased by both adding or subtracting options, but overall has very little to do with the raw number of choices, and is instead tied to the addition or elimination of some pretty particular choices. And if you want to argue that, I, as a person either do not know, or am not being honest about my desires and likely happiness in such a scenario, I would like to refer you back to
Exhibit A as an illustration of my prior experience in purchasing items from PA LCB State Stores. If you're seriously making the case that I've been doing it wrong for these past 17 years, you are more than welcome to come on over and school me under the table - but until then, your arguments are about as credible to me as those of the Temperance League.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."