Minor game stuff from around the web for commentary...

[Voss]

So, whoever this new shadzar is, I'm pretty convinced he has to kick himself out of his own game now. I was pretty convinced he was the asshole on page 5, and the next 4 pages seem exclusively focused on digging the hole deeper.

[momothefiddler]

As cracked has pointed out several dozen times, it takes 7000 HOURS of practice at something to get to the point where you are proficient at it. For a musical instrument that is not the time to become good, that is just acceptable enough that people don't ask you to stop if you play around them.

In your world, maybe. In the one we're discussing, it doesn't take any hours of practice and, in fact, practice doesn't help a bit! It takes a dex check, and the vast majority of children (or, at worst, half of them, but I'm pretty sure dex bonuses for being a child, or at least small, are common) can pick up an instrument they've never seen and play it well enough to make people like them more. THAT'S what turns it into a musical. The fact that a huge number of people can just play instruments, combined with the fact that if you play an instrument, people are more willing to do things for you. These are both observable facts in-game and saying NPCs don't change their behavior as a result is like saying your world has trees that grow assault rifles but only PCs ever use them because NPCs don't notice them and thus only ever use penknives.

[Prak]

The NPCs shouldn't act like they exist in a gameworld, they should act like their world operates by the physics (and often metaphysics) that the fluff of their world described, even if its entirely unsupported by crunch. Unless the peoples of your fantasy world actually believe that everything is decided by the roll of cosmic dice they shouldn't act like they can hunt down bonuses to particular actions.

NPCs should make decisions based on observable truths about the world they fictionally live in, such as the observable fact that people of average dexterity tend to do better in social situations if they begin by playing any sort of small instrument--it could be a harmonica, an ocarina, a guitar, a lyre, a vevulzela, a kazoo, a jug or a spoon, it doesn't matter, what matters is "Play instrument:do better in social" is a demonstrable truth of the world, and so while it doesn't necessarily turn the game into a musical, it does mean that every character who is able to observe their world and make sound judgements carries some small musical instrument, and all negotiations start with


And it's not even weird! In the game world, the traditional start of all negotiations, bargains and social interactions is a pair of solos.

[brized]

Dice do not come packaged with a warning saying you'll be judged a dick if you shove them in the person next-to-you's nose while they're having an asthma attack.

Not the best example...that classifies as assault and possibly worse under the law, and it's a circumstance under which a judge will probably actually hear the case if the two parties don't settle out of court. Real-life rules influence behavior in society and explicitly inform social norms.

[GnomeWorks]

And it's not even weird! In the game world, the traditional start of all negotiations, bargains and social interactions is a pair of solos.

Honestly, as a cultural gimmick, that doesn't even sound that bad.

[Ancient History]

A rule that gives you a benefit to social rolls for playing an instrument is a bad rule that will get used by players all the time. There is, quite literally, no reason for a player NOT to do it.

Situational bonuses as a mechanic aren't always bad. There's a common sense rationality behind a lot of them. In Shadowrun, for example, you stand on a ley line and get bonus dice to your spellcasting. Totally situational. It doesn't have to be a gamebreaker, but there are two problems with it.

First, you can have some bonuses that are just subjective. Mister Cavern decides that your in-character oratory was so inspiring, you get a +5 bonus to your Diplomacy skill check. Inspired, the player to your left stands up and reads their erotic fanfiction out loud, expecting to get the same bonus, and is put out when the MC gives them a -5 penalty instead.

Second, you have bonuses that are static and pre-determined, but open to abuse or skew the success curve. Most of the time the problem is that the bonus is available out of context or too cheap. Obviously, you can't take a ley line with you wherever you go (that's called a focus, which you pay for), so you can't really take it out of context - at worst, you can plan your runs so that the people you're trying to hit come within range of you standing on the ley line. Applestacking is an example of an abuse of a static bonus. If the use is cheap or ubiquitous enough, it skews character concepts - in a world where Language(Magick) gives you a +2 bonus to Spellcheck, and there's no cost for it other than a spellpoint, any magician character that doesn't have Language(Magick) is behind the curve.

Extrapolation is something else again. It's symptomatic of abuse, but not always synonymous with it. For example, if the player complains that his character is never leaving his ley line because he doesn't get his bonus and that it doesn't make sense for any magician to ever leave their ley line, that's crap extrapolation because it's neither practical from a setting viewpoint or a mechanical one. But if a player says that it doesn't make sense in context for a magician to not have Language(Magick), that's pretty fair. You'd probably have to work up a good explanation for why a magician in that world doesn't have it.

[DSMatticus]

you are equating:
A) Someone who wants to play a diplomat in a TTRPG (an inoffensive goal), discovers that under the game's rules the best way to be a diplomat is to also be a musician (a peculiarity of the game), and has his diplomat be a musician (an inoffensive act).

No. Strawman, it's "…and has his diplomat be a musician" despite not wanting to play a musician character or the scenes this requires (an incredibly offensive act).

Fun example time!

Player A wants his character to be a musician, but not a diplomat. Player B wants his character to be a diplomat, but not a musician. Unfortunately, because by the rules of the game musicians are inherently better diplomats than not-musicians, player A's character actually ends up being a better diplomat than player B's character entirely by accident. Player A is sad, because the party will do better and have more control over the story* if his character does the diplomatic stuff, but he doesn't want to. Player B is sad, because he wants to do the diplomatic stuff, but the party will do worse and have less control over the story* if his character does so.

*Fundamentally, a player making a check is attempting to use one of their abilities to make a specific change within the story's direction. Having a character who is more likely to be successful at those checks gives you, and the party, greater control of the story. That's what rolling dice and adding modifiers is for - to decide whether or not the players successfully modify the story in a particular way. This is why your "fuck players for wanting their characters to be good at the things they want their characters to do" attitude weirds me the fuck out. But anyway.

Question #1: Is it wrong of player A to have his character do the diplomatic stuff? Noting, of course, that this comes with greater narrative control.

Question #2: Is it wrong of player B to have his character become a musician if it would make his character a better diplomat than player A's character? Noting, of course, that this allows player B to have his character do the things he wants his character to do without hindering their control of the narrative.

Question #3: Are the rules in this situation adequate to the player's needs, or could they be improved?

Incorrect. Taunting people about their deceased relatives is actually in real life acceptable under the rules of sandlot baseball (because pretty much all speech is acceptable under the rules). So you need to take it up with Abner Doubleday. Dig him up and call him an asshole.

If the first baseman starts taunting people about their recently deceased relatives in order to win the game and you think "that is and should be acceptable under the rules," you're also an asshole.
...
that is and should be acceptable under the rules
...
is and should be
...
should be
...
should be

You should ought go look up should in a dictionary.

More seriously: I whole-heartedly believe you're an idiot, but I don't believe you're illiterate. There's nothing at all confusing about what I wrote. Are you really such a shitweasel that you'd make obviously fucked complaints and hope you just don't get called on them?

Rewriting the rules to find not-unduly-restrictive ways bar obviously evilly offensive speech is less efficient and just than barring individuals willing to resort to such speech.

You're arguing that writing a rule to punish people for excessively offensive speech is impractical because it's difficult to identify excessively offensive speech. Therefore, instead, you should just correctly identify excessively offensive speech as you hear it and then punish people. You're seriously arguing that you can't do X because X depends on Y and Y is hard and instead you should just do Y. The fundamental problem of deciding which speech crosses the line exists in both cases; you're not avoiding the problem, you're just committing to not letting people know in advance that there's a line at all, and that means eventually you're going to run into some case that isn't so black and white and blindside someone who otherwise would have been fine abiding by the rules. The obvious example is playful trashtalk, which for some people is a totally acceptable (and even amusing) part of a game, and to others is just obnoxious. Refusing to draw your line in the sand and then banhammering people for crossing it is insane and immature.

[Zak S]

You haven't addressed these things, just ranted after quoting them. Do you think these behaviors are morally OK for a person to decide to do? Yes or no?

Okay, we'll play this game again. You lost last time.

-play through a scene they don't want to play through just to get a mechanical advantage

Yes. People do a lot of things they don't want to in order to get things that they do want. There are plenty of people that want to just go slay the dragon, but maybe they need to grind rabbits or do a sidequest to level up and get the widget first. A dude not interested in playing the lyre that nevertheless plays the lyre when necessary to convince the Queen not to cut off their heads is completely justifiable.

-create scenes or characters which you don't want to play just to get a little mechanical bonus

Yes. Lots of people get stuck being the cleric because the party needs a healer. Obviously you might like to play a tank or artillery support, but sometimes you have to take one for the team. And if you're going to play a character you don't particularly like, they might as well be damn good at what they do.

Then this is your moral failure. Inflicting boredom on your friends and grinding and being uncreative just to accomplish selfish in-game things (just to "win"--gain a small advantage really--in a game) is terrible and it shows you are a bad person. You don't bore people just to (basically) level up faster or make surviving easier. That's evil. The whole point of the game is anti-boredom.

You play a cleric if you want to. You don't act like a martyr and be one despite not wanting to. So this is the thing you're not getting: it's not about playstyle, it's about right and wrong in the real world. Never bore your friends unnecessarily. It's a thing only bad people do.

[GnomeWorks]

If the use is cheap or ubiquitous enough, it skews character concepts - in a world where Language(Magick) gives you a +2 bonus to Spellcheck, and there's no cost for it other than a spellpoint, any magician character that doesn't have Language(Magick) is behind the curve.

You don't seem to be taking opportunity costs into account.

If the other places to put that skill point provide similar bonuses to other parts of the game, such that none of the options is clearly "best" (which then just leads to that being the only effective option), then your scenario here stops being the case.

[souran]

In your world, maybe. In the one we're discussing, it doesn't take any hours of practice and, in fact, practice doesn't help a bit! It takes a dex check, and the vast majority of children (or, at worst, half of them, but I'm pretty sure dex bonuses for being a child, or at least small, are common) can pick up an instrument they've never seen and play it well enough to make people like them more. THAT'S what turns it into a musical.

Again, this is nonsense that sounds like an asshole. That only happens if the GM runs the game where the physics of the universe are the cosmic d20s. Otherwise its dumb and illogical. If you pick up an instrument you have no idea how to play and have never played any other kind of instrument before you don't get a check, you fail! Just like how you don't get a balance check to walk on the fucking air. As a PC you fail because you didn't invest character resources. As an NPC you fail because you have not spent the time it takes to learn the fucking insturment.

The fact that a huge number of people can just play instruments, combined with the fact that if you play an instrument, people are more willing to do things for you. These are both observable facts in-game and saying NPCs don't change their behavior as a result is like saying your world has trees that grow assault rifles but only PCs ever use them because NPCs don't notice them and thus only ever use penknives.

Assuming that people of various levels and characteristics interact with each other all fucking day how would you ever figure out that playing an instrument provided any specific bonus. Even a specific individual would have a hard time figuring it out because his fucking variance is huge.

Also, assuming the NPCs don't see their world as one that operates by the rules is actually the EXACT OPPOSITE of your assault rifles example. The NPCs don't use a masterwork plow because it adds a +2 bonus to farming, they use a masterwork plow because it will last forever and be passed on to their children. Its a solid investment not because it increases their yield (an idea that is fundamentally stupid), but because high quality tools provide them a quality of life improvement.

However, because a PC is fundamentally driven by an actor that experiences the world through the games rules the only way they would ever shell out for a plow at all is if it was either absolutely required or gave a bonus. Players will have their characters sleep in the streets and will sell their starting clothes for extra gold to buy shit that gives +1s if you let them. This doesn't mean that the NPCs should do the same or that should be considered "normal" for the gameworld.

[GnomeWorks]

You play a cleric if you want to. You don't act like a martyr and be one despite not wanting to. So this is the thing you're not getting: it's not about playstyle, it's about right and wrong in the real world. Never bore your friends unnecessarily. It's a thing only bad people do.

...what the fuck is this shit?

In D&D, somebody has to pony up and play the cleric. I've been that guy, a few times. I don't like playing the healer, but somebody has to, and sometimes it's your turn to fall on that grenade.

Just because I don't want to play a cleric doesn't automagically bore other people and make me literally evil if I play one.

Goddamn. I thought you were possibly a reasonable person just overreacting to what you see as getting dogpiled on... but holy fuck dude, I hope for your sake that you aren't ever involved in an actual discussion of morality, because... no. You just fucking fail.

[Prak]

Then this is your moral failure. Inflicting boredom on your friends and grinding and being uncreative just to accomplish selfish in-game things (just to "win"--gain a small advantage really--in a game) is terrible and it shows you are a bad person. You don't bore people just to (basically) level up faster or make surviving easier. That's evil. The whole point of the game is anti-boredom.

You play a cleric if you want to. You don't act like a martyr and be one despite not wanting to. So this is the thing you're not getting: it's not about playstyle, it's about right and wrong in the real world. Never bore your friends unnecessarily. It's a thing only bad people do.

...Um... am I the only one who sees the other side to this statement? Clearly Zak doesn't...

[Voss]

Then this is your moral failure. Inflicting boredom on your friends and grinding and being uncreative just to accomplish selfish in-game things (just to "win"--gain a small advantage really--in a game) is terrible and it shows you are a bad person. You don't bore people just to (basically) level up faster or make surviving easier. That's evil. The whole point of the game is anti-boredom.

You play a cleric if you want to. You don't act like a martyr and be one despite not wanting to. So this is the thing you're not getting: it's not about playstyle, it's about right and wrong in the real world. Never bore your friends unnecessarily. It's a thing only bad people do.

...Um... am I the only one who sees the other side to this statement? Clearly Zak doesn't...

Yeah, I see it too. I was about to start on a puzzled rant wondering when cooperative behavior for the benefit of the group became anathema.

[Ancient History]

Then this is your moral failure. Inflicting boredom on your friends and grinding and be uncreative just to do these selfish things is terrible and it shows you are a bad person.

Please note that in both the examples I gave, the person doing the stuff is doing it for the benefit of more than just themselves. You're trying to assume the conclusion here, but the thing is that you could as well argue the gamemaster is inflicting boredom by not having the player characters be a high enough level to take the challenge directly, or by having them face a threat that they can't handle if everyone plays what they want to play. I wouldn't argue that, because I like a challenge and the possibility of failure in a game, and if I get a group of four fighters named Dave that want to go slay the dragon, they might be at a comparative disadvantage to a well-mixed party, but I'd let 'em do it.

This isn't at all about playstyle: it's about ethics.

Well, you were talking about morals. Ethics, not the same thing. But let's not quibble about definitions and assume you mean morals.

You don't bore people just to (basically) level up faster or make surviving easier. That's evil. The whole point of the game is anti-boredom.

You don't write rules to bore people just to give them a mechanical advantage. That's evil. The whole point of the game is anti-boredom.

Seriously, your whole rule is based around the scenario of Player One using their turn to talk to gain a temporary advantage on a roll. It doesn't really matter to the other players if they're doing it because they're really into being a lutist and the mood is right, or if they're just doing it to get a bonus? Objectively, they can't tell a difference between roleplaying and rollplaying in that scenario.

You play a cleric if you want to. You don't act like a martyr and be one despite not wanting to. So this is the thing you're not getting: it's not about playstyle, it's about right and wrong in the real world. Never bore your friends unnecessarily.

First thought: Man, you must really hate Matrix rules.

Second thought: I agree, in an ideal game you play the character you want to. But, not every game is ideal, and there are plenty of not-ideal games. You sit down at a convention, somebody slides you a pre-gen, you roll with it or you get up and walk away. For myself, I'd rather do my best playing a character I that's not my favorite and achieving a group victory than to go walk around watching other people play. Not ideal, but then neither is life.

[Zak S]

Fun example time!

Player A wants his character to be a musician, but not a diplomat.

If he is actually sad because he has a +1 bonus to charisma checks thereafter, he is:
1-Being a whiny dick
2-Unlike any player I've ever heard of
3-Capable of then doing some small offensive thing to create a negative impression and offset the bonus

Player B wants his character to be a diplomat, but not a musician.

Then there are a bajillion other things besides music this person can do to curry favor that would cost as much or less money and (in game and out) time to curry favor.

Question #1: Is it wrong of player A to have his character do the diplomatic stuff? Noting, of course, that this comes with greater narrative control.

If they don't want to and it takes time: yes. The players will (as is so often the case) have to think of a clever work-around.

Question #2: Is it wrong of player B to have his character become a musician if it would make his character a better diplomat than player A's character?

It's wrong for them to be so petty and competitive about it, for starters, and it's wrong for player B to be a musician.

Question #3: Are the rules in this situation adequate to the player's needs, or could they be improved?

Maybe they could be. If you find a better version email me. I never claimed perfection on this score.

To answer your dumb question:

You're arguing that writing a rule to punish people for excessively offensive speech is impractical because it's difficult to identify excessively offensive speech. Therefore, instead, you should just correctly identify excessively offensive speech as you hear it and then punish people.

To quote a man we all know:"The supreme court has roundly rejected prior restraint"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_restraint

If you disagree with the Supreme Court's reasoning here, then you are saying the rules of baseball should be changed. Is that what you are saying?

[Voss]

If you disagree with the Supreme Court's reasoning here, then you are saying the rules of baseball should be changed. Is that what you are saying?

But it inflicts boredom (the number one complaint about baseball). So by your logic reasoning fallacy the NB Commissioners and, by extension, the Supreme Court, are all assholes and should be kicked out of the game.

Because they're Evil

[souran]

Extrapolation is something else again. It's symptomatic of abuse, but not always synonymous with it. For example, if the player complains that his character is never leaving his ley line because he doesn't get his bonus and that it doesn't make sense for any magician to ever leave their ley line, that's crap extrapolation because it's neither practical from a setting viewpoint or a mechanical one. But if a player says that it doesn't make sense in context for a magician to not have Language(Magick), that's pretty fair. You'd probably have to work up a good explanation for why a magician in that world doesn't have it.

Ancient History:

First of all I am not trying to argue that all situational bonuses are bad. That would also be stupid. Honestly, its not the bonus itself that makes it bad but it has no context and doesn't require any choice by the player. However, in a particular adventure, or as the thing that makes a particular NPC willing to interact with you or something like that it makes an interesting situational bonus.

Its if you can make it defacto permenant that it starts to seem silly.

Further, we pretty much accept that every adventure we play will have special case rules or things that can't really be replicated by the players. So why is every advantage the players have replicated in the world at large.

Its the extrapolation from one dumb situational rule to a statment about how it changes the entire nature of the game that is just a step way to far. There are lots of reasons why it doesn't change anything about the game except the players and the only reason for why it should change large scale vision of the game is based on the NPCs effectively knowing they live in a game.

[Zak S]

Second thought: I agree, in an ideal game you play the character you want to. But, not every game is ideal, and there are plenty of not-ideal games. You sit down at a convention, somebody slides you a pre-gen, you roll with it or you get up and walk away. For myself, I'd rather do my best playing a character I that's not my favorite and achieving a group victory than to go walk around watching other people play. Not ideal, but then neither is life.

Yeah: I don't write rules to Harm Reduce in bad situations you, Ancient History, find yourself in. I write rules to function well in situations I actually find myself in. Anyone who buys them will find they work well in situations like that.

Or, to put it another way: I don't write rules for assholes. And, yes, being a martyr because "the group needs a cleric" is a classic passive-aggressive asshole thing to do. Inflicting your own boredom on your friends so they can have fun is, in the end, self-defeating and gets…..(wait for it)…..boring even for them.

Don't willingly add characteristics you aren't excited about to your character for mechanical advantage. Instead, use all that brainpower you were gonna use to mope about having to play fiddle against your will and use it to think of clever diplomatic strategies.

[momothefiddler]

If you pick up an instrument you have no idea how to play and have never played any other kind of instrument before you don't get a check, you fail! Just like how you don't get a balance check to walk on the fucking air. As a PC you fail because you didn't invest character resources. As an NPC you fail because you have not spent the time it takes to learn the fucking insturment.

Stop making up new rules and pretending they're the one the argument is about. You don't need any special training or character resources to make a dex check. If you succeed at the dex check, you play the instrument. That is the rule. That is the way things work in a world where the rule that started this whole thread exists.

Assuming that people of various levels and characteristics interact with each other all fucking day how would you ever figure out that playing an instrument provided any specific bonus.

Wow, gee, you know that thing where people wear suits to interviews? I wonder why that is, if it's literally impossible to know if that helps you get a job.

Its a solid investment not because it increases their yield (an idea that is fundamentally stupid), but because high quality tools provide them a quality of life improvement.

Are you serious? Are you fucking serious? Why use a plow at all, if tools don't affect yield? The absence of a plow can be passed down even more generations! Hell, skip the ox and the field, too! It's cool how nobody in the real world uses tractors, because their hands are just as efficient at growing corn!

However, because a PC is fundamentally driven by an actor that experiences the world through the games rules the only way they would ever shell out for a plow at all is if it was either absolutely required or gave a bonus. Players will have their characters sleep in the streets and will sell their starting clothes for extra gold to buy shit that gives +1s if you let them. This doesn't mean that the NPCs should do the same or that should be considered "normal" for the gameworld.

If there's literally no penalty at all to sleeping naked in the streets, then yeah, it should be considered "normal" for the game world. People don't take time out of their busy day planting corn with plows made out of live cats to build houses and weave cloth if they don't do anything for them.

[Voss]

Further, we pretty much accept that every adventure we play will have special case rules or things that can't really be replicated by the players. So why is every advantage the players have replicated in the world at large.

Wait, whatnow? Last time I checked, the default assumption for any D&D discussion here was 3rd edition. Which explicitly doesn't do the special snowflake shit of 'only Cyclops Pureminds have the Heart Laser eyebeam power' that 4th edition tried to pull or the 'fuck you, the DM changed the rules and is encouraged to do so' of 2nd edition and earlier. NPCs are made out of the same box as a PC, and even the weirder racial abilities and shit are achievable if the player can make a successful (metaphorical) Dumpster Dive check in all the splats.

You're also somehow conflating 'they know its a game (the horror!)' with 'they can't know what goes on around them (in universe).' And having seen an actual teenager pull out a guitar and start playing soft music to get female attention at a fucking cancer charity fundraiser, the idea that people can't know that playing music can benefit them in a social situation is fucking bizarre.

[PhoneLobster]

However, when a person jumps from that to "This turns the game into a musical"

You actually want to press that stupid argument you made about "sure all PCS so lots of music but (for no reason) no NPCS so not ENOUGH music!"?

It's a stupid semantic argument, it's not even a good semantic argument (to the limited degree those can be).

For your stupid semantics about "not enough music!" to hold you would have to be able to say that you could sit down, watch a movie where all the main characters always sang or played music before speaking in each scene, and that would NOT be a musical just because the minor characters did not. THAT is the claim you are making. It is a stupid claim.

or "Every NPC learns the Kazoo!"

While I'm all for NPCs sometimes making sub-optimal choices or doing irrational things. Making NPCs irrationally immune to knowledge of how the world functions is fucking stupid. And your arguments for it are stupid.

Also your arguments for NPCs flat out not having rules that effect them is also bug fuck insane.

All we are left with is the rule exists, it effects NPCs, NPCs are aware of this effect. NPCs either act accordingly OR there is this giant irrational elephant in the room that makes everything weird and unpleasant forever. ESPECIALLY if you, as you appear to, agree that this motivates the PCs to all learn and constantly use kazoos, because that means everyone is constantly having their face rubbed into the glaring inconsistency of the NPCs NOT doing that.

Its the sort of thing that gets pilloried on something awful.

Something Awful? You mean the stupid grognards thread? The one which achieves pretty much nothing in relation to this place other than to convince ME to agree with and defend Frank. Is that what you are talking about? You want to placate those guys?

[Ancient History]

Souran: Again, it depends. Usually there's a degree of hyperbole in extrapolation, but mechanically the argument is sound - they just take it out to such an extreme of scale that the brokenness becomes absurd.

Special cases tend to exacerbate the issue more than resolve it; artifact-of-the-week syndrome is very annoying and I'm generally against NPC-only rules. If the goblins can have demonforged swords from the Anvil of Inferno, then realistically if the PCs should be able to do it too - maybe not easily, but as a matter of personal philosophy I find it more fair when PCs and NPCs operate under the same basic rules. Everybody casts the same fireball, even if their caster level is different.

Second thought: I agree, in an ideal game you play the character you want to. But, not every game is ideal, and there are plenty of not-ideal games. You sit down at a convention, somebody slides you a pre-gen, you roll with it or you get up and walk away. For myself, I'd rather do my best playing a character I that's not my favorite and achieving a group victory than to go walk around watching other people play. Not ideal, but then neither is life.

Yeah: I don't write rules to Harm Reduce in bad situations you, Ancient History, find yourself in. I write rules to function well in situations I actually find myself in. Anyone who buys them will find they work well in situations like that.

Let's just call a spade a spade, Zak. You don't write rules for other people, full stop. You write rules for your game where people play things your way. Balance is not in your vocabulary because you assume any situation where the rule isn't going to be used as you intended it doesn't fucking apply!

Or, to put it another way: I don't write rules for assholes. And, yes, being a martyr because "the group needs a cleric" is a classic passive-aggressive asshole thing to do. Inflicting your own boredom on your friends so they can have fun is, in the end, self-defeating and gets…..(wait for it)…..boring even for them.

I think you're conflating two things here: doing something you don't want to do, and boring other players with it.

I can play a character I might not be enthralled with and still have fun. It's like getting a bit part in a play or the fourth pick on MarioKart; just because you didn't get exactly what you want doesn't mean you can't make the best of what you got. There's no reason to assume my not playing Prettiest Princess means I make life boring for anybody else at the table.

And yeah, there's parts in every game where what one person wants to do is not what the rest of the group wants to do. It can be problematic, like in Shadowrun where a decker in virtual reality or a magician on an astral quest is basically in their own minigame, and it is also very typical - I bet dollars to euros that when your lutist is getting their diplomacy on, the rest of the table isn't chiming in with whatever the fuck their characters are doing. Sometimes, you give characters a moment to shine in the sun: as long as they don't dominate the game so that for long stretches nobody has anything else to do but wait, it's a good thing.

So if I choose to play a cleric because we need a cleric, that doesn't mean the group is being bored. And if your lutist chooses to do a solo to get a bonus on a diplomacy check, maybe the rest of the group takes a potty break and maybe they don't.

Don't willingly add characteristics you aren't excited about to your character for mechanical advantage. Instead, use all that brainpower you were gonna use to mope about having to play fiddle against your will and use it to think of clever diplomatic strategies.

Or, maybe, don't write a rule that gives an abusable mechanical advantage. You can keep trying to put this back on the player, Zak, but at the end of the day there really are some character builds and options that are better than others - bigger dice, more bonuses, whatever - and it's not wrong for a player to want their character to be good at what they do, or try to squeeze what advantage they can in the name of playing their character to the best of their ability. If you're not willing to take that into consideration when you write your rules, that's on you.

[PhoneLobster]

Its the extrapolation from one dumb situational rule to a statment about how it changes the entire nature of the game that is just a step way to far.

Justin Bieber explicitly states he runs his games with set in stone precedence. His rulings are ALWAYS perfect and only ever clarified with future rulings.

Seriously that is his whole thing. That he has gone into in MASSIVE amounts of material. This rule is a permanent rule that IS extrapolated to effect the entire nature of the game because that's just how Justin Bieber rolls.

[Kaelik]

You're arguing that writing a rule to punish people for excessively offensive speech is impractical because it's difficult to identify excessively offensive speech. Therefore, instead, you should just correctly identify excessively offensive speech as you hear it and then punish people.

To quote a man we all know:"The supreme court has roundly rejected prior restraint"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_restraint

If you disagree with the Supreme Court's reasoning here, then you are saying the rules of baseball should be changed. Is that what you are saying?

WHOLLY FUCKING SHITMUFFIN BREAKFAST SANDWICH!

I don't tell you how to fuck, or direct a fucking scene, or write fucking dialgoue, or whatever you do, so how about you don't fucking tell me what the Supreme Court thinks. Because it is literally fucking painful to see someone so fucking absurdly goddam ignorant.

The Supreme Court has rejected prior restraint by the fucking government because of the first amendment. You know who can still institute prior restraint? The goddam fucking MLB, or sandlot baseball, if they want.

But you know what else shitmuffin? Punishing someone for saying mean things is not prior restraint. It is literally the exact thing that the Supreme Court tells us is what the government should do instead, which is let them say the shitty thing and then punish them appropriately afterword.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK YOU!

Be a stupid fucking idiot about game design all you want, but don't fucking talk about the law when you are this goddam fucking ignorant.

[Ancient History]

Seriously that is his whole thing. That he has gone into in MASSIVE amounts of material.

Now, now. We don't compare writing dicks on the Den. Besides, I'm pretty sure I put out more material last year than Zak has in the last two.