Quote from: CRKrueger;590335Actually this and several other threads make it pretty clear it is constant and ongoing, unless you're not going to feel offended if I go full CharOp during generation and then start picking up random skills later.  You may however be talking about going Full Retard with CharOp and have my 1-20 plan pre-laid out, in which case I'd all say it's not defined to chargen since the plan is ongoing.

I do not know what this has to do with the fact that before you actually play the game there is no "in game" part and there is just the meta. I acknowledge that you can and will meta throughout the game (in fact by the virtue of it being the game I expect some amount of meta to be ever present).

Quoteand of course you always have the choice in life, and indeed you also always have perfect in-character information about your teammates. :rolleyes:

Not "always" because I,in real life, could not choose my back story, my height, my physical attributes, etc etc. However, in DnD, I can. I always can and so can each and every other player at the table just like we all came to a consensus about what RPG ruleset and setting we'd be using.

QuoteI agree, however, the key is the interview process needs to be handled in-game, not during chargen.  If the player is a backstory-whore and comes up with some special snowflake that's not going to pull his weight, you need to find that out in game and dump his character.  If the character tells you he's a {insert class} though and looks the part, how the hell are you going to know differently?

2 things. 1 If we're going to dump a character why the hell would it be better to do it after he's already in the game and then force him to write up another character after that? Not only does his participation possibly put everyone's characters at risk but it wastes that players' time and we all feel bad for having to exclude him after all the work was done.

2: "If" he looks the part but what about "if" he does not?

The reason I and anyone else can know the difference is because we are living breathing people about to play a game and we can ask each other that kind of info.

QuoteSo in the end it comes down to a per-table basis.  I agree.  I never have a problem with you wanting to run your table your way, why the fuck would I care?  Unfortunately, jackasses like LM and GC are willing to shit out 1000's of posts arguing it's the best way to play.

I don't know what the fuck GC has been trying to say or actually what he even does but as far as onetruewayism is concerned I feel about him the same thing I felt when jeff made a similar claim. No one's way of playing imagination land is intrinsically better than anyone else's.

Quote from: CRKrueger;590025This attitude however, is 100% metagame.  It's coming from the point of view of D&D as a sports team, where if I ask if you want to be the Wide Receiver(insert character role here), I expect you to only say yes if you can run fast and catch.

<...snip...>
I hope you can see that obviously, not everyone plays that way.

Agree with this totally but its not limited to 3e or 4 e its common in OSR as well.

Even on this site when I have pointed out issues I encountered playing 1e/2e with all thief or all fighter parties, which itself led to me houseruling the game to compensate for reliance on magical healing etc, I have been met with arguments that a party in D&D needs to be balanced and represent each of the major classes because that is how the game runs....

Likewise when I have pointed out that the sports or 10 foot pole approach to D&D is very common in the OSR where all charcters use the same professional adventuring techniques and rarely make sub-optimal ingame desicions for role play reasons I have been shouted down for being a wanky role-player.

just sayin....

Quote from: Mr. GC;589528A basket weaver is the antithesis of a good player, but ignoring that and only focusing on the subjective bullshit you like so much... Benoist has made it very clear he doesn't like me and probably doesn't like MGuy either, pretty sure Bill isn't a fan, MGuy has said he doesn't like me very much and probably doesn't like them either... Ok, maybe Benoist and Bill would like each other but for the most part it'd be exactly the opposite of what a game should be about - namely friends working for mutual betterment.

So I stand by that game being a mess. There's enough games like that without intentionally seeking them out.

And even if it were something like me and MGuy (who I'm really not sure why you're labeling on the same side, as he's fully drunk on the Den kool aid)... somehow I doubt that would work either. I suspect I would be very, very bored as you just wouldn't be playing on the same level as me, so I'd be facerolling everything and you'd get frustrated about that and well yeah. Still a mess.

It is possible to like a person socially, but not like the way they play rpg's.

Quote from: Bill;590542It is possible to like a person socially, but not like the way they play rpg's.

Not that it is really relevant now but I doubt that is the case either.

That said, personalities aren't just something you turn on and off.

Quote from: Mr. GC;590565Not that it is really relevant now but I doubt that is the case either.
.

Do you honestly believe this?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;590576Do you honestly believe this?

First I'd like to know what it is that you are actually arguing. That such an all over the place group would get along well? Because I definitely believe it would not, and it'd be best for all involved to not form it.

Since he's bringing up some long forgotten argument I don't even know what he's actually trying to say here and now.

Quote from: Mr. GC;590579First I'd like to know what it is that you are actually arguing. That such an all over the place group would get along well? Because I definitely believe it would not, and it'd be best for all involved to not form it.

Since he's bringing up some long forgotten argument I don't even know what he's actually trying to say here and now.

All he is suggesting is you can get along with someone socially even if you dont like their playstyle. For example i know gamers who are great to hang out with, but not so great to play a game with. He is essentially asserting that an optimizer and roleplayer could conceivably go to mcdonalds and have a nice conversation. Or they might even be able to put up with each other at the table on account of getting along despite having strikingly different approaches to play.

Not all such people can get along. But most people, in my experience, can get on just fine and even adapt their style to fit the make up of a particular group. The kinds of vitriol between play styles and design ideology are almost wholly absent from the tables i game at in real life.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;590583All he is suggesting is you can get along with someone socially even if you dont like their playstyle. For example i know gamers who are great to hang out with, but not so great to play a game with. He is essentially asserting that an optimizer and roleplayer could conceivably go to mcdonalds and have a nice conversation. Or they might even be able to put up with each other at the table on account of getting along despite having strikingly different approaches to play.

Not all such people can get along. But most people, in my experience, can get on just fine and even adapt their style to fit the make up of a particular group. The kinds of vitriol between play styles and design ideology are almost wholly absent from the tables i game at in real life.

That might be true for some differences but basket weaving is a life style, and same for optimizing, so they're not going to get along any better outside the gaming table.

Case in point: There's no game here. People are acting the same way as they say they play.

Dude, get out of your house and spend some time with people in real life fact to face situations.

The internet is not a reflection of how people are in real life.  The internet makes the average person a shitcock.

And basketweaving or min/maxing is not a lifestyle.  It's a personal preference when playing an rpg.  A game.  Played occasionally.

I hate the Raiders.  My good friend loves them.  We get along great.  There are other parts of social interaction than one narrow focus.

I see that we are back to useless posts then. Yawn.

So back to the actual subject. People going into a dangerous situation have every right to know the capabilities of their teammates. If those capabilities are that they don't have any capabilities, they have a right to know that as well, so they know who to leave in town while they take care of business.

Some lazy, selfish jerkass who expects the party to just carry them, and then gets offended and calls the people that would say no to this jerkasses are not only a blight upon the game they are present in, they are a blight upon the hobby as a whole. The only reason this mentality is so persistent and so prevalent is because so many people enable it. Look at any game that isn't tabletop, or anything that isn't gaming, and you won't see incompetence extolled as a virtue anywhere near as often. And yet people have these mental blocks that make them play elf games like idiots.

It's an easy problem to fix. Just play the actual game. Not pretend instead. When you play the actual game, what happens is the good characters survive and thrive, and the bad ones die consistently and repeatedly. This results in a quickly self correcting problem if you get it early, and if not - if their preconceptions have set in from heavy enabling it will take a bit longer but the solution is literally that the slaughter will continue until play improves.

Sure, the solution might be that the basket weaver ragequits and you need a replacement player, but take a look at the basket weaver personalities. These aren't people you'd want to associate with in game or not, because their personality of "everyone must be as incompetent as I am" extends beyond mere elf games. People like say, Sacrosanct have absolutely nothing of value to contribute to anything at any time, ever. You miss nothing by telling them to fuck off and gain quite a lot.

Make D&D gaming a better place, gank a gimp today.

Quote from: Mr. GC;590594I see that we are back to useless posts then. Yawn.

I know you're only like 13 in real life, but here's a hint.  When you say something or otherwise make a claim, and someone points out how fundamentally flawed it is?  You can't just say something like you just did without coming off as an immature spoiled brat.

Just saying.  No one is ever going to take you seriously if on every time you are presented with something that shows how you are wrong, you just dismiss it rather than actually back up what you said in the first place.

If you want to have an adult conversation, start behaving like an adult.

Quote from: Mr. GC;590594Make D&D gaming a better place, gank a gimp today.

The problem with this line of thinking is, it's 100% metagame in what should be a roleplaying game.  I have nothing wrong with ganking a gimp, however, it should be my character ganking a gimp character after my character finds out in game, that the gimp is a gimp.

As a player I have no interest in looking over someone's character sheet to see how he's optimized.  His character tells my character what he can do and how qualified he is.  If he's lying and is a threat to my team, I'll bury him, or cut him loose, or part ways after we get back to safety, depending on the game we're playing and the character I'm roleplaying.  You know, exactly how your character would actually handle it.

If I want to make people pass checks to group with me based on spec, I'll play a MMOG.

I'm have no interest in enabling a useless backstory whore who wants everyone to support his Special Snowflake Syndrome, but all that is going to be evident in the character he makes.   A lot of players who have behaviors that get the better of them because no one has ever called them on their bullshit ends up getting stopped at my group's table.  Some of them never come back, some of them simply stop their bullshit, and we get along great.

I'm sorry, do these "basketweavers" that GC is describing actually exist, or is this just some elaborate internet strawman? Because it just seems like he's talking about some mythical RPg saboteurs who sound less and less realistic the more he talks about them.

Quote from: TristramEvans;590600I'm sorry, do these "basketweavers" that GC is describing actually exist, or is this just some elaborate internet strawman? Because it just seems like he's talking about some mythical RPg saboteurs who sound less and less realistic the more he talks about them.

In part they exist like the quasi-mythical CatPissMan(I've actually met one and he did actually smell of catpiss among other things).  GC's talking about people who will consistently create interesting (to them) characters that are suboptimal and end up being a chain around the party's neck.  How often does this really happen?  I don't know, I've run into one person who wasn't invited back after three characters that came with 25-page backstories, special problems, etc...  Over the years I've run into a handful mainly at cons and pickup groups.

Anyone else, all it takes is "Dude, you're not the only one at the table." and they reign it in.  You talk to people like they are adults and they act like adults, or you don't invite them back, zero problem, zero issue.

All the rest is typical Internet bullshit.

Where GC goes Full Retard (and fake internet personamode) is assuming that it's something other then a voluntary, and thus correctable behavior.

Quote from: Mr. GC;590585That might be true for some differences but basket weaving is a life style, and same for optimizing, so they're not going to get along any better outside the gaming table..

On what planet is Optimization or "basket weaving" a lifestyle?