Posted by An Old Arbiter on March 31, 2000 at 09:22:45:
WAY back when I used to DM, I had a rule that I read in a dragon magazine. It was:
"If there is a choice between Fun and Realism, Fun ALWAYS wins."
Now this doesn't mean you make adventures super-easy, however, as people have more fun overcomming a challange than just blazing through those 20 kobolds protecting that +5 Vorpal sword of Lich slaying.
However, things like insta-deaths where that 17th level character someone's been working on for weeks gets killed by some trap with no saving throw, is just stupid.
In game like this, that people obviously take very seriously, some of this has been lost and it contrasts with those who do understand it.
Let's take Scarabaeus. for instance. IC, he's the most evil, perverted Immortal Thera has ever seen. But noone complains OOC about him being an ass, because his central motivation seems to be to have fun RPing rather than to ruin someone's RL day.
One of the reasons I complained about Astein, though he's gotten better about this, is that he never seemed to understand this concept. Yes, it is Realistic to have a Drow grill you more than usual for an induction, but sitting at your comp for 3 sometimes 5 hours answering the same freakin' question over and over again isn't fun. Most RL job and scholarship interviews worth tens of thousands of dollars never take this long.
This is probably another reason why the Knights fell apart, too, as the focus became more and more on a brutal, ascetic code, which resulted in people dying constantly, than about having fun RPing a Honorable warrior.
Because of this, perhaps Empire should conduct an selective interview before letting someone in. IC, why would you want to let someone in who's bascially an anathema waiting to happen? It must make the Empire look less attractive and less powerful to have loads of anathematized citizens running around. OOC this way there is less of a chance of having someone's character ruined that they've put weeks of work into.
This is a game. People play games to have fun. Players and Immortals both should remember this.
-An Old Arbiter