A note from your friendly neighborhood Devil's Advocate

[Lyle H Janney <lhjanney@adpc.purdue.edu>]

First off, Steve, you should maybe have posted much, if not most,
of your note to me to the list; you make several good points that I
feel would benefit everyone to hear/read regardless of whether
they agreed with them.  I will leave it to you to decide to make your
words public or not (if you need a copy of what you wrote, let me
know).

Secondly, Joe, you may be right; I may be a big idiot, but you have
the mass advantage on this one.    :-)    And I am not a "filthy ignorant
slut"; I shower every day.    :-)    In all seriousness, I am quite surprised,
and somewhat flattered, that you not only recognized (guessed?) my
intent, but even went so far as to call me on it.  Impressive.  Oh, by the
way, you may want to bone up on your logic terms.  I think you meant
to say that my argument was not _sound_ (i.e., containing fallacy); it
was, as far as I could tell, perfectly _valid_ (i.e., logically correct).  The
difference is subtle, but real nonetheless.

Finally, I agree for the most part that very little good, if any, would
come from inviting Dan to leave the club.  Preston put it very well, but
Steve's personal response to me also made many good points (and
you folks haven't had a chance to read that one yet).  John's post made
what I feel to be the most important point.  In case you deleted it, here
it is, "What really confuses me are the lengthy rules debates and calls for
continuity on fairly minor flaws in the system...".  At some point, gaming
stopped being _just_ about playing a character in a fantasy setting and
having fun.  Munchkinism, power gaming, and rules-torqueing began to
become more and more prevalent.  If I have an agenda (as I have often
been accused of having), it is nothing more than to return to the days
when we just took for granted that the system is not a true model of
our individual version of 'fantasy reality'.  Despite that, it was more than
good enough for _all_ of us to have an excuse to give up whatever else
we could be doing on a Saturday night and instead enter a fantasy world
were we could do fantastic things.  But, true reality doesn't work that way;
we can't go back, only forward.  However, I'm not certain that anyone
would be willing to give up the negative behaviors they have carefully
cultivated over the past few years.  It is those behaviors that have made
the game much less fun for me, and I would bet 2:1 that they play a _big_
part in what has made the game less fun for Dan and many others.  To all
of you whom I am speaking for, if I am incorrect, please hasten to correct
me (and if I am correct, please feel free to support my claim).

So, I leave you this, do what you feel you must, but I prefer my fun the way
it used to be, without the munchkinism, power-gaming, and rules-torquing.
When I do play, I'd rather it not be with any of the people who do these things.
Those who have lately been taught these behaviors, I will try my best to
provide an example of how much fun can be had without spending all that
time trying to max-out their characters and instead focusing more on the story.
Also, please, _please_, for the sake of the club, do not spread this corrosive
behavior to this years newbie group.  We need to engender a more positive
way of having fun while gaming in order for the club to have any possibility of
not falling apart at the seams.  So far, we have lost more regular players (most
of them show up occasionally if at all) as a result of the negative behaviors I
have mentioned than we have gained in last years and this years newbie groups
combined.  This is a bad, but real, trend that we need to fix.

Lyle