Community

Dec 17, 2009 -- 1:33PM, Wavester wrote:

In no way did we tell judges to do that. Nor marshalls nor anybody at HQ. Nor would I ever say such a thing. Now a marshall may have talked to another about what to do, this judge gave his opinion, and hey look this one overheard it and suddenly we have a little miniature 'policy' over in this corner of the room. It's happened before and I stomp them out as fast as I am made aware of them. With 218 judges and volunteers working for me at a show the size of Gencon it's just not possible for me to be 100% informed on everything going on everywhere. I just have to trust my judges and coordinators are doing their jobs.

Sure.  I completely understand how something like that could take place.  My issue is more that, when it did happen, the response from campaign staff was not the expected "Mistakes were made; this never should have happened." but rather something more along the lines of "Eh, the best case scenario is to follow the rules, but better to break the rules than give someone what they think is an unfair result, and besides, other campaigns did this too."

That's a quite different philosophy than "The rules are more important than whether your group is having fun" and I have a difficult time rationalizing the two.

Dec 17, 2009 -- 1:53PM, Thanlis wrote:

Dec 17, 2009 -- 1:43PM, Elder_basilisk wrote:

What's more, I'd venture to guess that, far from saying, "you know, I'm impressed by how you stuck to the rules even when they screwed you; you're a capital fellow," the other guys in his local community probably say things like, "I really don't see what all the fuss is about; everyone else just changed their character sheets and was done with it."

I'd go with the former, actually. That kind of behavior does impress me.

Anyone (myself included) who's justifying their response to the situation based on what they assume people will think ought to be careful about it. As human beings, we are remarkably good at pretending other people agree with us.

Part of me sees it as commendable; the rest of me simply sees it as foolish. So I guess I have both reactions myself. They're not mutually exclusive.

However, I'm not assuming--I'm quoting (imprecisely) part of the conversation I heard at a table after the errata came out and one player was deciding whether or not to play an avenger and if so, what to do. Perhaps I am assuming that my local community is typical in its adherence to the rules (or lackthereof). But in the LG days when there was actually a reason for gaming travel, it seemed like my current area was if anything slightly more lawful-minded than other RPGA communities. I doubt that has changed a lot.