John Aegard yeahhh. I think it really does have to feel very strange, if you’re coming from a long tradition of wargame-rooted roleplay, to put tools/rules in place that absolutely rely on trust and good will. Like, yeah, if you’re playing a winnable game and there are rules available that would help you win, then no shit you’d be scared to cut folks loose with them. It literally breaks the game. Because the game they’re playing isn’t the game we’re playing, yet we’re all at the same convention.

And it’s not even true, like, all the time either. I’m totally certain there are plenty, maybe even a majority, of D&D/Pathfinder/OSR players who aren’t playing in the kind of competitive vein that mandates you pursue every advantage regardless of consequence. But having had a player in my home group who frequently slipped into that head space, ye gawds, I have no idea how he would have reacted to the prospect of having such a thing available to him.

He never played at conventions. I’m not sure if he’d have ever signed up for a competitive event. But I’m not sure what he’d have done with the cognitive dissonance of electing to not use a tool to his advantage.

I imagine I’m mischaracterizing the size and amplitude of deeply competitive tabletop play. I don’t even know how the adventurer’s guild and pathfinder society type organizations structure their win/lose conditions. And that’s leaving out big swaths of players who don’t even have formalized organizations they’re playing in. It’s just their mode of engagement.

I mean is that what this comes down to? A segment of aggressively competitive/confrontational players for whom this safety tool actually does break their engagement? (I feel like I’m having to bend way way backward to accommodate that.)