Devil in the Details

What is it with people who are against role-playing games? Well, ok. I guess I haven't heard of too many people who are against role-playing games in general, but I think that's probably because DnD was the first and is still the most generally popular for whatever reason.

Anyway, for any of you that may be wondering, there is nothing occult about DnD, or, at least, nothing occult about it that isn't occult about the Lord of the Rings movies. If you have no objection to them, I can't see any reason that you could object to one of my DnD games.

And there's the caveat. More so than any other brand of media, role-playing games are as fun or weird or whatever as the people who are playing in that specific game. This means, more than any other type of media, the acceptability of role-playing games to one who is enjoying them is up to the person enjoying that particular game. You can leave out things that offend you, put in things that don't, change things you don't like, and no one will come along and shut you down because you're messing with their 'artistic vision'. Which, to me, is the greatest appeal of the whole thing. I get to be the hero. (Or in my case, since I'm usually the gamemaster, I get to be all the bad-guys that beat the crap out of the heroes until they finally win in the end by the skin of their teeth. It's a fantastic job. I love it!) I, with my group of friends or family, get to determine how things turn out. We get to decide on the family friendliness of our 'movie' and we get to take the things that make us most go 'ooh' and 'aah' and make our own story!

And who knows? Maybe one day one of these stories will turn out so great that one of my players will turn it into a novel or a movie and make millions! And I can watch it and say, "Man, those were good times."

"While these rules do not address [constantly powered] flights, players are encouraged to independently investigate the rewarding and interesting problem of suborbital and orbital flights at supra-orbital velocities under constantly varying acceleration vectors." - Battletech: Strategic Operations (See? These games even encourage learning!)