[drohem]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

And if it was one person out of all gamers, I'd find that a relevant statement, but given I've personally seen it be an issue for at least a dozen people at one time or another, and heard of many more, that's clearly incorrect, so I return to my statement that the only question can be how widespread a problem it is.

You stated that if one person had a problem, then it was problematic. This is a ridiculous claim. I would say that if even a dozen or more gamers had an issue out of the number of potential gamers out there, then it is still not a problem.

Except they clearly weren't the default case, and as such, if a GM had no problem with it but a player did, he was simply stuck. In addition, the alternate methods had their own issues.

The GM is the finally arbitrator in their game, so that statment is nonsensical. Find another game and GM if you don't like the rules the GM chooses.

To a degree, but I don't think there's much subjectivity in saying that a character who does everything worse than other characters is inferior by a reasonable objective metric.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. I guess I can find value and potential in almost any character. The potential for objectively inferior characters is a possibility for any game system that uses random generation. Accept it or don't play a game with random generation.

No, I'd say its a desire to have a character that doesn't feel like a second stringer. To dismiss that as poor roleplaying is to have an essentially pointlessly elitist definition of roleplaying.

No, I'd say it's child mentality that forces them to always play superior characters. In any RPG game or group, there are players who will have to play second stringer to one or more characters. It's the nature of the beast, and to say otherwise is foolish.

And I'd characterize it as poor design that makes it necessary for him to do so. A routinely generated character shouldn't require extra effort on a GM's part to feel involved.

That is another ridiculous statement. All game sessions and campaigns require extra effort for the players and characters to be involved.

And I'd claim that if I needed to do so in every session, that's the game expecting more than is reasonable. It shouldn't be necessary to make sure every adventure involves a boat to make a character feel useful.

Now are you being ludicrous: there are plenty of ways to engage a sailor character without having a boat in every session.

Sorry, I don't know how to do the quote-in-quote thing, so please don't read anything into it.