And this attitude is part of the reason I have no intention of reviving your game now that you have jumped ship to another referee.
Adam--I've already stated that John has left my game a second time and I have no intention of expectation of picking it up again.
Ya know, it's kind of arrogant of you to assume that I would want to anyway. I've been thinking about leaving the board for some time. I don't go where I'm not welcome. I guess you got your wish MJ. I'll check back to see the responses to this, but I'll probably be gone within a week. I've been thinking about it for a while. I didn't think anyone would mind. You just solidified it.
Rather than leaving, I wish you would just grow up, but since it seems that will not happen, I bid you farewell.
As is often the case, Brock manages to express my thoughts better than I probably could.
Well, I wish MJ would grow up and admit the blatantly obvious fact that I was forced to get involved. You don't always get what you wish for.
To be clear, I was forced to get involved. I was NOT forced to warn them. However, I think it unquestionable that I was forced to get involved.
People are only influenced by reason, if they are open to reason. Usually, people are open to only certain arguements.
If you come to me with an arguement that sounds good about the wonders of Communism, I'm not going to agree. I'm going to assume I made a mistake in logic somehow, and once I figure it out, it will be completely obvious that my original opinion is still correct. So, in that aspect, I am unreasonable. Communism bad. Period. No discussion.
If you and I argued for five years about Communism,and no matter how great arguements you came up with, I always rejected them totally.... Well, at some point, you gotta give up don't you? Talk about something else? Agree to disagree, and move on?
Why not do this here? Mark is never going to agree with you.
And now a bit for Mark: Why don't you learn from your eminently wise (and devastatingly handsome) friend, Eric? And just say 'Not going to talk about it?' I put this rule down in my game. It works.
I, as I've stated before, saw a bunch of guys waste one of our few opportunities to play Champions by arguing about the difference between a few dice of damage for Five Stinking Hours! I thought that was ridiculous, and so created my Five Minute Rule which morphed into my One Appeal Rule on the Net. I have almost never seen the 'take it up after the game option' used, and if that got abused, i would have done something.
I'm hoping that you have some subtlety, some wisdom involved here, some compassion that the stone-hearted moi does not have, and that you're not simply continuing this arguement for the sake of continuing this arguement until you win.
Because that ain't gonna happen. John is not going to admit "I was wrong. You were right." Well probably not.
Perhaps you are motivated by mercy, by helping him to get sane. I hope so. I would be skeptical of it being the best way, but I've been known to be wrong before. I think the best way is to have him play, and see the results ofhis game with no arguement. Experience rather than logical arguements is my preferred technique. But I could be wrong for a couple reasons I won't go into now.
If I were the Moderator, I'd tell both of you to shet it. As it is, I feel like I'm sitting at that table in the library, getting perturbed, and then thumping the table and telling everyone not to be an idiot. At which point, they agree with me, and then less than a minute later, they're back to arguing.
Grumble. There is a good and sound reason why I believe I should be a Benevolent Dictator. Experience. Hard experience.
Ya know, it's kind of arrogant of you to assume that I would want to anyway.
I'm sorry, I assumed that you wanted me to return you to the Terminator scenario because you said so several times and had not since said otherwise. Apparently you changed your mind and failed to mention it, and I was so arrogant as to assume that if you said you wanted to do something that involved me and then changed your mind you would mention it to me. Of course it's not necessary for you to mention what you want; I should be able to guess.
I made some arguments about reason and logic in this thread; the short form is that reason does win arguments, but only when everyone agrees on the fundamental principles. That is, I an demonstrate logically that if 1+1=2 and 2+2=4 then 1+1+1+1=4. I can also demonstrate logically that if 1+1=3 and 3+3=5 then 1+1+1+1=5, but if you disagree with my premises my conclusions are invalidated.
The reason no logical argument will persuade Eric that communism is good is because communism is based on assumptions that Eric does not accept. I can speak for myself here. I do not accept that guaranteed everything we need every person will work as hard as he can for the benefit of everyone. That is Marx' fundamental assumption, and the reason why communism fails, in my opinion: if guaranteed everything we need and denied more than that, most people will do the absolute minimum they can. I have a joke line I picked up somewhere that I use sometimes when people thank me for small things like holding doors and letting them precede me in a checkout line. "It's the least I can do," I say, and continue, "and never let it be said that I didn't do the least I could do." I think that's the usual attitude: most people will do the least they can do. It's a reverse Tragedy of the Common: the share is based on everyone's contribution to the total, but my personal failure to contribute more to the total does not significantly impact the value of my share, so I don't worry about it; and as everyone else does the same, the total decreases and every share contracts; but there's not much point to me working harder, because the return that is my share is negligible.
It would work if everyone were fully altruistic, eager to do as much as possible for the good of all. I think heaven is probably some form of socialism, full of people who have been converted from the selfish self-interested people who make capitalism so effective in this world to the selfless serving people who Marx imagines fill this world but are really residents of another.
And now a bit for Mark: Why don't you learn from your eminently wise (and devastatingly handsome) friend, Eric? And just say 'Not going to talk about it?'
Eric, I appreciate the suggestion. There are some problems with it, most notably that my dear but obsessive friend John not only does not let these things go, he demands a reply. I have sometimes ignored responses he posted here, only to have him e-mail me to complain that I did not respond to his forum post. I would rather have the discussions here, if only so that he has to demonstrate his obsessive demands for my time to others and so hopefully limit himself (not to mention getting the occasional support from others here who try to help him see the error of his arguments--if it were just what I say versus what he says, it would be harder to defend that what I say is logical, but when Mike and Brock and Adam and Eli and others are telling him the same thing, at some point he should realize that if no one gets it but him, it's not everyone else).
John is not going to admit "I was wrong. You were right." Well probably not.
Well, he's done so before. Sometimes he regresses and returns to previous problems, but sometimes he learns.
I feel like I'm sitting at that table in the library, getting perturbed, and then thumping the table and telling everyone not to be an idiot. At which point, they agree with me, and then less than a minute later, they're back to arguing.
I apologize. It's obviously one of the problems of having these discussions here rather than by e-mail, but I think if I told him to take it to e-mail it would wind up in both places at this point, because his paranoia has him feeling as if everyone is unreasonably against him, instead of that if everyone disagrees with him he's probably wrong. I don't know that I can fix that this time, but we'll see.
Now, to get to the beginning, and the real point of the thread:
I've been thinking about leaving the board for some time. I don't go where I'm not welcome.
John, it is never my desire or intention to drive anyone from the board. I have tolerated the presence of Wicker T. Bunglepoo and several others who seemed to be here over the years for the sole purpose of harassing me. You are not here for that purpose, and I can tolerate quite a bit from someone who means well no matter how confused or misguided they become. I've had my closest friends do far worse than you. Yes, I tire of it. No, I am not asking you to leave. I think your game with Eric has been a positive thing, and I hope you will continue to play and to enjoy it, and that whenever he for whatever reason concludes that he cannot continue to run it that you will have come to a place where other people here will feel comfortable taking you as a player. As a rule, I do not take players back unless there is no alternative that allows them to continue playing. That's not personal. That's because I get new players and wind up with a plate full looking to lighten my load by getting others to take over the games. It is complicated in your case by two factors, one that the world wound up being a very bad match for you such that I was becoming very frustrated by it, and the other that Eric plays fast and loose with a lot of rules which I play close and tight, especially concerning the creation of magic skills, and I would have a lot of trouble making sense of the character sheet of just about any player character who came from one of his games. His style is fast and flowing, and I'm pleased to have him run people that way, but I would be looking for answers to all the questions he never bothered to ask, and we'd probably spend a couple years just trying to convert whatever character sheet he has for you into something I can use in my games--time I don't have, as I get new players not less often than every year.
So don't go away, and certainly don't go away mad.
--M. J. Young
As a side note to Eric's and your style of play, Eric has come a long way from the worldwalker boards, where there really was no sheet to speak of, to using the mechanics, terminology, and including a sheet. I have been lax these last few weeks, not getting hard numbers from him for about 8-12 skills I have used since then, but on the whole, it is much more by the book than it started as. The tedious nature of your magic spells often breaks up play, where it exact, it disrupts the flow of the game. It is a small gripe, and no reason to waste time to respond to it, just an observation.
Ya know, it's kind of arrogant of you to assume that I would want to anyway.
I'm sorry, I assumed that you wanted me to return you to the Terminator scenario because you said so several times and had not since said otherwise. Apparently you changed your mind and failed to mention it, and I was so arrogant as to assume that if you said you wanted to do something that involved me and then changed your mind you would mention it to me. Of course it's not necessary for you to mention what you want; I should be able to guess.
No, I'm sorry. I'm sure you've said stupid things in a moment of anger that you regretted saying. This is one of those.