Tim Carleton's page

I go to McDonalds with six people from organized play. I offer them a choice: We can eat here, and you know what you will get. Or across the street is this nice diner, where the food will be much better. But it is up to you, we will only get the diner burgers if we all vote to do so.

This is the better analogy. It would be an agreement between consenting adults. At this point it is not legal. But for the sake of many of the older scenarios I hope it eventually becomes legal.

OK, allowing GMs to make any modification that comes to mind is too much, I see the problem. But add one additional mook for each player above four, and use the advanced template for monsters if the group is playing down - rules of this nature would be an easy way to add to difficulty. I would love to see organized play develop rules guidelines of this sort. And if as a GM that is what my players want, I fail to see where there is a problem.

My impression is that Mike and Mark have given this problem plenty of thought, and at this point don't see a good way to create such guidelines, and have plenty of more pressing deadlines to meet. However part of the purpose of the forums is to air issues like this, in the hope that they will pay off in the future.

And for those of you arguing that PFS should be like fast food, ie of dependably mediocre quality, is that truly all you want for the society? I find it unlikely, and I suggest that there is perhaps a middle position in between the chaos of unlawful, rule breaking GMs and the rigidity of zero flexibility.

High School history should be, as Steve seems to be saying, age appropriate. To me that means it is a mix of celebratory patriotism and a look at some of the dark truths in America's past. High school students aren't idiots, mostly anyway, it is possible to present the heroic side of America's founding fathers while noting that many of them were slave owners, and thereby implicated in all of the ugliness, racism and cruelty of the plantation slave system.

As for the idea that the Native Americans didn't do too much with the country prior to the arrival of the Europeans, this is one of the key arguments used to justify dispossessing the Indians of their lands.

I recommend, for those who are inclined to explore this further, Jared Diamonds fine book "Guns, Germs and Steel." He asks the question, in effect, of why it is that Europeans sailed across the oceans to conquer the new world, rather than Native Americans sailing across the Atlantic to conquer Europe?