"Think about this Rae, you are a teacher right? Imagine someone who has no clue about your job telling you how you should do it? And they tell you all kinds of things you know are contrary to doing that job and insist it must be done that way even when you know better. It is like fingernails on a blackboard after a while."
I'm a teacher too, this happens several times every day of my life...
Does it get my goat, no, life's too short to worry about that sort of thing. The issue I think is that people want differnet things out of the game. I play TK2 for fun and I've seen games fall down for these issues before. The problem isn't just Military veteran vs enthusiast, it's about expectations of the game and player interaction.
In real life or a novel, the bitching and criticisms that happen all day every day don't really matter because the object of the bitching either: A) Never gets to hear it or B) Doesn't exist because the author created them as a figure of disdain.
In a roleplaying game such as the ones under discussion, the bitching can be seen by everyone and the character that you've cast as a bumbling incompetent that deserves to be fragged is another player who probably feels really shitty that they're recieving all of this negativity.
The problem is that the classic war novel trope doesn't work in a game unless it's very well done and worked out between the players in advance. I see the game as getting together to tell an interesting story rather than an exact military simulation (that's probably because of my background, but there it goes), and in a piece of interactive fiction, nobody wants their character to be cast as a fool deserving of death.
Not me anyway, I've got real life for that....
|