Fiduciary responsibility (split)

[contracycle]

Everyone is someone else's "damaged." You and me included. Thinking someone is stupid because they think differently from you and appealing to "reality" is more common in political debates than gaming.

Actually you are completely wrong.  In real politics, everyone is so aware that even interpretations of What Reality Is are highly divergent and therefore CANNOT be appealed to at all; it almost always constitutes arguing your conclusion.  Appealing to "reality" simply indicates you do not respect your opponents point of view.

Bu by contrast, this hobby has exhibited a lot of conflict based on unilateral interpretations - the whole threefold itself being an attempt to escape the sterility of mutual accusations of "not playing right".  Then there is the whole stpid "rollplaying vs. roleplaying" argument that is never really an argument but an accusation.

I think these things are indiciative of RPG as a self-reinforcing environment, and this has serious implications if we talk about becoming more mainstream.  And I also think that much of the hostility, and division into camps, that RPG exhibits as a subculture are themselves products of this self-righteousness, matured and tempered in the environment of the local gaming group.  This I think gives an illusionary sense of the reasonableness or generality of the local opinion.

[Ben Lehman]

Here we are discussing it, Ben. Give me an example of somebody damaged by RPGs, and how it happened, and how it was the fault of the RPG and not the humans playing.

I'm trying to think of a way to do this (or the realistic goal of explaining how having the hobby of "RPGs" has been a negative influence on someone's life, rather than Mike's "shirt without any stitching or needlework" request) without violating the trust of my friends by bad-mouthing them on a public board.

I think I will figure something out.  It just might take me a while.

yrs--
--Ben

[Mike Holmes]

Go ahead and change the names of the innocent, and the facts such that the example is hypothetical or merely parallel to the one you're thinking of.

OTOH, if it happens that this is the only example you can think of, then perhaps you're not talking about a phenomenon, but an individual problem? In which case, perhaps there's nothing to do about it? Just like you wouldn't redesign a particular car because it had a freak accident once on one particular curve of a particular road.

I'm not claiming that nobody has ever heen hurt by an RPG. I'm saying that if and when it's happened, it's likely been just happenstance, and not something that could have been prevented.

I'm for bikers wearing helmets - there's a consistent threat of head-damage that's being checked by their use. But if you said, hey bikes are still dangerous, without pointing to some particular phenomenological problem of their use, I'd tell you that there's nothing really to be done about the situation.

If you're saying that life is dangerous, well, sure. But there's nothing to be done about that general statement. And that doesn't make life bad, it makes it life.

Mike

[Jason Lee]

I see a whole lot of nothing to disagree with here.

Remember Chun Li?  She stuck her butt out and threw fireballs that looked like jellyfish.  Bounced all over the screen.  Did that kick thing if you mashed the arcade machine buttons.

People these days, arcade goers or not, seem to associate fast with small.  Is this Chun Li's fault, or is Chun Li the fault of a societal preconception?  Because this has no basis in reality.  Doesn't matter I suppose.  The point is, whatever premise (literary non-Forge definition) or genre conventions you toss at your reader might be believable to them outside of the context of the individual story.  (Hell, that can be good craft.)

For example, your premise might be that gnomes live inside the hollow earth and make all the world's buttons.  Your reader might accept the premise in the context of the tale you are telling, but probably won't start digging up their rose bed looking for gnomish button smiths.  However, one of your genre conventions for a detective story might be that shooting people in the knee is relatively safe.  People might just believe that and go on a knee-shooting spree.
 
It can be sophistry and still impact the reader's view of the world.  Maybe RPGs have you believing that reflexes are linked to flexibility (the ubiquitous Dexterity stat), or maybe a sci-fi show convinced you exposure to outer space makes your blood boil, or maybe Biology 101 convinced you that a meteor impact led to the KT extinction, or whatever.  

This isn't some sort of Sim thing - it's just a human thing.  I don't see anything particularly dangerous, unusual, or unique to RPGs about it. :)