Re: (TFT) Justifying an aspect of combat...

["Steven K. Mariner" <skmpu@bhmk.com>]

Dear Gavin,

I think you may misunderstand my motivation.

 > Shucks, Steven, don't quit posting!! David does mean
 > to be Grouchy - he just can't help himself sometimes,
 > that's all.  No filter, and all that.

Well, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly a frequent poster 
here.  I've had my bursts over the years, but they're generally pretty 
short, separated by fairly notable tracts of time, and I think most of 
them were actually about the publishing rights as opposed to the game 
system itself.

Generally, I stop posting when I think I'm done contributing usefully to 
the thread.  Unfortunately, that's often about six messages after 
everyone else has come to that same conclusion.  :-D

I love David's candor, actually.  But I'm pretty candid, myself.

I once saw a judge reprimand a lawyer, saying, "The law need not be 
written with mathematical precision.  It need merely be worded 
sufficiently that an average citizen understands its meaning."

With me having spent most of my life as one of those nth-degree lawyer 
types when it comes to communicating in English, this moment gave me 
pause to reconsider that perfection in communication may be *my* goal, 
but I don't get to force that goalset onto others.  THEY get to choose 
what's important to them.

I also worked in an NCO club once, where the maitre d' misspoke himself, 
grammatically.  The person whom he'd addressed responded with, "do you 
mean, '[corrected statement]'?".  The maitre d' went into Master 
Sergeant mode and said, "You understood me well enough to correct me. 
Therefore there was no failure in communication.  Therefore there was no 
need to correct me.  Right?"

These two incidents weigh heavily in my (admittedly occasional) bouts of 
conversational flexibility and tolerance.

So when I see others who appear to be trapped in that same cycle of 
demanding precision from others in conversation, I am from time to time 
moved to poke at it a bit and see if there's room for growth.

Sometimes there is.  Sometimes there isn't.  Sometimes I'm mistaken.

And then I move on.

Don't get me wrong -- there is huge danger of miscommunication in making 
assumptions.  This issue is compounded by the fact that, generally, the 
speaker and the listener are both doing so.  That's *why* honest 
miscommunications occur.

But I find there's generally room in any friendly forum for a little 
less efficiency in communication to permit such miscommunications to be 
corrected, all in the spirit of being able to type messages more quickly.

:: looking around ::  Wow, how did I get on this soapbox?

:: stepping down ::

Anyway --

If you think I'm going to stop posting because I've irritated 
David...well, all I can say is you don't know me very well (and 
congratulations on that, may you live long and prosper from that trait).

I love David for all his occassional irrascibility, because his 
contributions are generally priceless.  But I can always count on one 
thing from David's posts:  Honesty.

And I value that VERY highly.  I can filter the rest as needed.


On the other hand, I've run out of useful things to add to this thread.

Hmm...several messages ago.  :-D  So I guess I'm still me, after all.

:: sigh ::

Seeya!

- Steve M.
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