They Lost Me

 For the past two years or so, I've been playing a mobile game called Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. While it had its annoyances (heavily pushing in-app purchases, making the free-to-play [F2P] a long slog, requiring you to unlock characters after weeks or months of effort, then more weeks and months to level them up, etc.), it scratched an itch I've had since I was a kid. 

Growing up just barely on the good side of the poverty line, I never had many Star Wars action figures. The few that I did have were like gold to me. I loved Star Wars. Still do. And looking at the back of those figure cards, or through the Sears Holiday Catalogue (remember those?) made me wish that I had so many more. 

Well, this game definitely scratches the itch of the would-be figure collector I was as a kid. And yeah, I could be spending money on the actual figures now. But I'm too old to play with them (maybe?). And neither of my boys ever got into playing with action figures. They have a lot of my (and my brothers') old figures, but never played with them much. So I didn't have that excuse. And my wife wouldn't be too happy if I was filling up our apartment with unused toys, making it look like every cringe "nerd" channel on YouTube. 

So I found this game to be a pretty good substitute to that. I was happily going about part of my day grinding for characters, or gear, or completing challenges in the game. Building up my Mando squad. My Rebel squad. My Empire squad. Slowly, little by little, putting some effort into improving the Jedi squad. Pretty much ignoring the sequel trilogy characters as much as possible. 

But this week, the game went through a big update. Before, there was one game mode that had a F2P and P2P (pay-to-play) track. It wasn't the main part of the game. F2P was slow, but you could still make progress without handing over tons of money to EA every month. The new update makes the main game a distinction between F2P and P2P. And that looks like it will slow down that slow grind even more. It will be hard to gather the ridiculously varied types of resources and in-game currencies that are needed to unlock and improve characters. 

So, today I uninstalled the game. 

Am I going to miss it? Maybe for a while. I had quit the game last year after playing for a few months. Then I downloaded it again and was really enjoying having it back. But I think this time, I'm done for good. 

Subscription-based gaming is not something I think I'll ever be interested in.

I've been banned!

Yes, I have been banned. This is not an exaggeration to get clicks. But what I was banned from and why is pretty funny. 

I know I've mentioned it before, but I play play-by-post games on Role Play Online (RPOL.net). My new Gamma World game is there. 

So there's this guy who's been for years trying to get new players into his d20 Star Wars game. Years ago I sent him a request to join, but it was ignored (first red flag!). But he kept asking for new players to join, so recently I decided to try again.

This time, he responded, but he was pretty condescending towards me, thinking my request from three years ago (which was still there) was my current request to join. Three years ago, he was looking for a level 3 or 4 character to join an existing game. Now, he was starting over at level 1. I figured hey, no big deal. He may not be a native English speaker, and gamers can be quirky anyway. We got past that when I explained that he'd ignored me before. (This was the second red flag, but I pressed on.)

So he says he is basing this Star Wars game at the end of the Clone Wars, off of some video game I'd never even heard of. Dark something or other. It's Star Wars. The enemies use The Dark Side. There are Dark Troopers. Dark Jedi. Dark this, dark that. Pretty par for the course. I didn't bother to Google the game.

So he posted that he wanted players, and specifically, the party could use a Jedi Guardian, a Soldier, or a Fringer. 

My first idea was to play a Fringer (Outer Rim survival/tinkerer type class). He said a Guardian or Soldier would be better. 

So I thought, how about a Mandalorian soldier? He said no, because there is a Jedi in the party, and as far as he knew, Mandos and Jedi are old enemies, so they wouldn't fit together. I suggested that there's plenty of precedent in Clone Wars, Rebels (the whole series has two Jedi and a Mando as leads!), The Mandalorian... He hasn't seen any of that. He's seen the movies, and played some games. That's his Star Wars. Well, fine. No worries.

He suggests I play a Jedi Guardian instead. I don't really want to mess around with the d20 Force rules (which are clever in a way, but kinda suck in actual play) and just not in the mood for a Jedi PC anyway. I tell him that I'd rather stick to a Soldier. So he suggests I play a Wookiee or some other big strong alien type. 

I've never played a Wookiee before. I think, not being able to directly communicate with the others and having to use descriptions of my gestures/mood might be kinda fun. So I make a Wookiee Soldier, and I'm accepted into the game. 

But then he says, hey, why not play a Wookiee Jedi Guardian? Wouldn't that be cool? No thanks.

Then, I've made my PC. I take one of those useless but flavorful +2 to two skills feats. He's like, hey, why not take a combat feat? I say I'll get plenty of feats as a Soldier. This gives me a bit of flavor. He is dismissive, but whatever. Then he's complaining that I'm playing a Wookiee but didn't take a bowcaster. Honestly, the d20 rules for them are a bit suboptimal, and NOW he's worried about me going for an optimization choice instead of a flavor choice. Weird, but OK. 

Remember, I'd wanted to play a Fringer, a sort of jury-rigging rogue type PC, in the first place. 

Then I find out that EVERY PC and the DM PC (yeah, another red flag) can speak Shyriiwook (the Wookiee language). So my idea to have to play this guy who understands everyone but has trouble making himself understood is out the window.

So, my Wookiee is introduced, having been captured and frozen in carbonite, then rescued by the PCs. So I'm blind at first. Luckily, that doesn't last too long. But we're on an abandoned Star Destroyer (Venator I guess?) and there are bloody trails and remains of clones everywhere. Our DM PC is trying to lead us here or there, but players being players, we're trying to explore and investigate this. 

We finally get the GM to allow us to move where we want to go, and we're attacked by clone zombies. 

I am instantly turned off. I wanted to play Star Wars, not zombie survival horror. But I press on for a bit. 

First round of combat, one of the zombies bites my PC. It's a critical hit, meaning it goes to my Wound Points (actual damage hit points) instead of my Vitality (luck/wits/skill hit points). It's only 2 damage, though, and I'm a big tough Wookiee with 14 WP. But the GM is asking me, "Hey, you could take the 2 damage, or you could lose a limb. Wouldn't that be cool? You could get a cybernetic replacement."

Really? He wants me to gimp my character in the first round of combat, in a format where just getting through a round of combat can take days, in the off chance that some where down the line I'll be able to get a cybernetic replacement? Instead of just taking 2 damage? Weird. 

I didn't post for a bit because I was busy (it's a pretty slow game, the other players are equally slow to post), but he made a comment to me asking if I was still interested in playing. And I decided I'd had enough. I posted (publicly so everyone would know I was leaving) that I wasn't really interested in playing a zombie horror Star Wars game, and than I think I'll politely bow out. 

He replies in a derisive manner, saying that I must have known it was a zombie game because whatever Dark Something game he'd based this on is a zombie game. Remember that? Yeah. Still have no idea what that game is, and still no desire to Google it. And he was complaining that I'd wasted his time. Remember how he'd been trying to get players in this game for a long time? I replied privately that no, actually, I didn't know the game he was referencing, and that there was no hint at all in the game advertising he'd made that it was zombies in space. I tried to stay polite, and even thanked him for giving me the chance to play in his game.

This morning, I saw there was a private message reply. But I couldn't read it, because he'd banned me from the game. 

No loss there, though. I probably should have bailed during the weird demands of character creation. But I can say I've been banned from a game!

Going forward in my games...

 ...there will be a whole lot more Black mermaids. 

If this triggers any of my players, I will happily ask them to leave my games. 

That is all.

Silly Rules -- Recovering Ammunition

I'm rolling up a new character for a 5E game I'm in, and I noticed that on the entry for sling bullets, there is the rule that spending a minute after a battle allows you to recover half of your spent ammunition. Boy, that's a ridiculous rule.

First of all, owning a bow and arrows, I can tell you that in a wilderness situation, even if your arrow doesn't go that far, it's pretty easy to lose it. I imagine sling stones would be even harder to locate, considering they don't have brightly colored fletching to make them stand out. Or maybe you use day-glo colored sling bullets for that reason. I have literally spent an hour trying to track down arrows after a round of shooting before I finally found them all. Usually the arrows were still in good condition, but they sure weren't easy to find.

Indoors, sure, it will be easier to locate the ammo. But still, impact with your target or with a wall is very likely to damage your ammunition. Arrows break or at least crack from hard impacts. Sling bullets will be warped by the force of the impact.

There was a video on YouTube that I watched a few weeks ago from Tod's Workshop -- some of you may know this channel, as he makes and discusses medieval arms and armor. They were testing fairly authentic Medieval arrows versus an authentic steel breastplate. None of the arrows pierced the armor, and the ones they could locate after the test were ruined. I saw another video from Tod's Workshop yesterday where he was testing the force of a sling stone and comparing it to a 9mm round. I don't think he even tried to recover the bullets. A third video I saw last week was of a guy shooting a steel plate from a tactical vest with shotgun slugs. Some of the slugs managed to put dents in the plate, but none pierced it. And he did recover a few slugs and showed how deformed they were from the impact. I assume a lead sling bullet would have a similar reaction to hitting a breastplate or even chain armor.

No, the idea of spending a "minute" to recover three or four arrows is ridiculous. Either the time it takes to locate the ammunition is way too short, or the amount of usable ammunition that can be recovered is unrealistic.

And ammunition is cheap anyway! If you're worried that you will run out, buy more before you head out adventuring.

So it comes to this...

A week or so ago, Stuart Robertson, who I consider one of the cooler heads in the OSR scene and who I respect quite a bit, posted that he didn't want this OSR logo, which he designed, being used on products, blogs, or other places that supported and contained hate speech.

He politely asked that if you want to post content or publish content which might be considered hate speech under Canadian law (where he lives), to not use this particular logo.

And of course the shit hit the fan immediately. A small number of very vocal people started bitching that somehow this was gatekeeping the OSR, and that their free speech rights were being abridged unilaterally. Another small but vocal group were complaining that they now felt compelled to use this logo or else be perceived as a hateful chud.

And so Stuart dropped off of G+ (it's dying anyway) and possibly the OSR scene in general.

Well, I feel bad because I didn't speak up right away about the issue. Life is hectic, and there are a lot of bigger concerns in my life right now than the latest round of "what is the OSR?" navel-gazing and arguments about what should or shouldn't be allowed in the OSR, and who should or shouldn't be allowed in the OSR. But now that Stuart is gone, all I can do is write this post as a better-late-than-never move to show my support for him.

First of all, let's look at the various claims. Is what Stuart posted gatekeeping? Is it abridging the free speech rights of other OSR publishers and bloggers?

I say a resounding NO. He never said you can't publish hateful content, or questionable content, or risque content, or anything of the like. He said if you do that and it might possibly be considered hate speech under Canadian law, don't use the above logo. You can publish a book on OSR Nazi baby rape if you like. Just don't use THIS logo on it. Your right to free speech is in no way affected by this, just your ability to use this symbol.

Second, is every member of the OSR who's not a hate-filled low life now required to use this logo to show that they're not a hate-filled low life? Of course not. Before this logo appeared, and after this logo appeared, there were plenty of other OSR logos to choose from. Check Google for examples. Yes, Stuart's one is at the top of the list, but there are plenty more.

Now, using the logo created by I think Benoist Poire immediately in the fallout of the above might seem to send a message like that. Hopefully not, as I don't think that was the intention of Benoist (but he'll have to speak for himself on that). But it does kinda look bad when one member of the OSR says he doesn't want his logo associated with hate speech and another member makes a new logo in response. It implies the new logo was created specifically for use by people who want to create hateful OSR products/blogs. Again, I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intention, but it does seem to send that message.

So what should you, the OSR blogger/publisher do? Well, if you're sure you're not creating hate speech products, use whatever the fuck OSR logo you like. If you think your products might contain hate speech under Canadian law, use whatever the fuck OSR logo you like EXCEPT for Stuart's one.

How is this a controversy again?

And it finally happened...

I had made quite a few final(ish) changes to Chanbara last month. I added a chart with various shinobi activities and standard TNs (target numbers) for them. I'd made a bunch of charts for rolling up random magic item powers, and charts for determining randomly what sort of item had been enchanted (more fun than having lists of standard items). I'd moved the campaign setting information to another file, to be released as a PWYW web supplement in order to free up those pages for the magic item charts and so on. I'd also come up with a random weather chart and some more concrete rules for wilderness exploration (based on the D&D Expert Set but not entirely identical).

Yesterday I lost my USB.

And I hadn't saved a back-up of the file on my work computer. I'm pretty sure I also didn't save a back-up on my home computer. But I'll need to wait until I get home from work this evening (and get the boys to bed) before I can check.

Yes, today, I kick myself.

Never fear, though. I more or less remember what I'd done. It'll just take time to re-do all of that.

Oh, and I'd copied the weather chart to use in my upcoming face-to-face 5E West Marches game, so at least I've got that.

I may not like what you have to say, but I'll defend your right to say it

So, I doubt there's anyone on the OSR blogs/G+ scene that hasn't heard about the DrivethruRPG/Onebookshelf happening. If you're one of the few who hasn't, someone made a module about a rape tournament and people went crazy over its existence.

Now, would I ever purchase something like that? No. It doesn't interest me, and could offend people I might play with to suggest such a game.

Am I likely to purchase something from that author/publisher again? Not if I remember they're the ones that put this thing out.

But do I think it should be banned from DTRPG? Of course not. I'm opposed to banning books in any way. If you want to read/play that sort of thing, it's no business of mine. And it in no way affects me one way or the other for someone else to actually purchase and enjoy the product.

Did I for a moment consider ending my involvement with DrivethruRPG as a customer/vendor (hey, buy my stuff, it's good and wholesome and I actually make attempts at gender/racial inclusivity!) because one disgusting product happens to be sold there? Never for a minute. Not for a second. The fact that I buy and sell stuff on this website is in no way whatsoever connected to the fact that that product is available for sale on the same website. I don't feel tainted by association.

Tim Brannon just posted a social contract on his Other Side blog. I agree to it, and you should too. It's an adult way to handle stuff like this, rather than the immature rush to ban books/publishers whose work is "icky" or "offensive" and the opening up of some sort of "guilty until proven innocent" report button.

Crap

Twice now I've started the next Mentzer Cover to Cover post, and both times my Android phone (Galaxy S6 if you're wondering) has erased the text when the screen locked as I was checking the pdf on my tablet (Nexus 7).

Screw blogging from the phone I guess. My old S2 never deleted the text like that.

I will try to write the post later, but I will be running the guys through Under the Hillfort Ruins tonight so I might not get to it until tomorrow.

Where are the bullets?

Josh, of the old Board Game Group, is planning on running a post-apoc game via play-by-post, and I've signed up to play.  He selected the Darwin's World RPG, a game based on d20 Modern, as his ruleset.  He likes it because it dispenses with a lot of the silliness of Gamma World, like mutant plant and animal characters.

I've gone over the book (in .pdf) and created a character.  So far, it looks like a decent mod to Modern, which is a d20 game I always enjoyed, even if most of my play-groups back in the heyday of d20 System preferred D&D (and now Pathfinder). 

The thing is, this is the second game I've looked at recently in which the price of bullets/ammunition is nowhere to be found.  The first was the free OSR Western game, Go Fer Yer Gun!  GFYG is a nice little mod of BX D&D to the Western genre.  I'd like to take it out and play sometime.  Again, most of the people I play with like to stick to fantasy or SF though, and I've got other plans at the moment, so I'm not gonna be running it soon.

So, neither of these games tells you how much your bullets cost.  Darwin's World goes a bit overboard on the d20M gun-porn thing, giving all sorts of firearms (luckily not all of the Ultramodern Firearms book's guns though).  But no where can you find bullets for them.  GFYG is simpler, giving general classes of weapon (light revolver, heavy revolver, etc.) but still no bullet prices.

GFYG I don't mind so much.  First of all, it's a free game.  I tend to cut free games some slack.  Hell, there are mistakes and ommissions in Flying Swordsmen I plan to fix eventually.  Nobody's perfect.  Also, since it's historical, with a bit of research I could probably find out how much bullets actually cost back in the 1880's if I wanted to.

Darwin's World is another story.  First, some of you might be saying, "Hey Gwydion, it's d20 Modern based.  Just look for the prices there!"  And here's why that won't work.  d20M uses an abstract Wealth Score system to avoid having to figure out how much your college loans, credit card bill, mortgage, allimony, etc. run you each month.  It's a heroic (cinematic) system and accounting is rarely heroic or cinematic.  Darwin's World, being post-apocalyptic, uses cash.  And I've got a feeling just converting the "purchase DC" to cash wouldn't be right, since bullets would be premium items in the post-apocalypse. 

The real reason DW's ommision bothers me where GFYG's ommision doesn't is the fact that DW is a game you have to pay for.  It's $12 in .pdf or $30 in print (2nd edition).  If you're gonna charge people money for your game, I'd expect such a glaring error to be fixed before it goes on sale.  Am I expecting too much?

Or maybe it's there somewhere but I'm not finding it due to the nature of skimming a .pdf.  It's not on the equipment tables.  It's not in the gun descriptions (Flying Swordsmen does 'hide' ammo costs there -- I did that to save space with the charts).  I've done a search for "ammunition" and got plenty of descriptions of guns that use odd ammo, but no prices.  If anyone who has (or created?) the game knows where they are, please let me know!

Anyway, it's Josh's problem to fix for his game.  I just hope my telekinetic mechanic Rastafarian can afford some bullets for his M16 before the game starts.

Blatant

I've been reading a lot today about people...well, not just normal people really, Star Wars fanboys...offended by the idea of a black stormtrooper.

Seriously, even if all the stormtroopers in Episodes 4 to 6 were still clones of Jango Fett twenty years or so after he died, this new movie takes place another 30 YEARS after the fall of Palpatine and supposedly the Empire at the end of "Jedi."  Why do they still have to be using clones of Jango Fett fifty years or so later?

If you've got problems with a black stormtrooper (to misquote Jeff Foxworthy), you may be a racist.

If somehow you've actually got quibbles about the actor's performance in the five to ten seconds we see him, rather than the color of his skin, then maybe you're not a racist.  You may want to withhold judgment until you see more of his acting, though.

On the other hand, the soccer ball droid looks ridiculous.  Feel free to bash on that.

Unhappy Blogversary

Well, I was planning to do a post highlighting some of my better blog posts, as this is the 3rd anniversary of What a  Horrible Night to Have a Curse...

But checking Mediafire, some French douchebag is claiming Flying Swordsmen is one of his company's copyrighted properties and the file downloads have been suspended.

I filed a counterclaim.  If it doesn't work, I'll be looking for a new place to host it (and it's still available from the OSR Conservation Process).

Anyway, in the six months Flying Swordsmen has been out, over 1200 people have downloaded it.  Thanks!

WTF WotC?

OK, I've been trying to download the 5E Playtest documents. 

Keep getting errors and redirects and messages telling me I'm sending scripts over unsecure lines.

And this is AFTER making sure I still had a Wizards.com account, signing the little agreement, having to wait another hour to get the email with the download link...   If they really want people to playtest their stuff, why do they make so many hoops to jump through to do it?

Anyway, I'll try it again after work.  If it doesn't work, screw it.

What the hell?

Over at Tenkar's Tavern, Erik's alter-ego the Grumpy Dwarf has been posting a series of interesting articles where he takes WotC's various postings about 5E and then skewers them with his commentary.  I'm enjoying the series.

The latest is on Mike Mearls' latest post on the ideas for Wizards in 5E. 

Even without the Grumpy Dwarf's reading between the lines, the article is a big WTF?

They don't want the Wizard to overpower the other classes.  They don't want the Wizard casting too many spells per day.  They want the Wizard to always be able to cast a spell.  They want the Wizard to be a versatile toolbox of creative solutions to problems.  They don't want the Wizard to be a "buffer."  They want the Wizard to be good at buffing the rest of the party.

Seriously, what is going on here?

They want to cut down the Wizard's spell list so they don't have so many options.  But they want to give "at will" cantrips (stolen from Pathfinder) which will include at least one attack power (4E).  So the Wizard will always have "something to do."  But the "real spells" will be more limited.  And with the limiting of the spell list and the desire to not have too many buff spells or 'utility' spells that can lead to creative problem solving, doesn't that mean a spell list limited to mostly attack/defense spells?  I've played a 4E Wizard, and that's what they're describing right there.  And trust me, it wasn't fun. 

Yet at the same time, they want to encourage Wizards to get all creative, and DMs to use the dreaded DM Fiat to rule on such creative uses. 

So instead of trying to build an edition that will bring everyone together, it sounds like they're right on course to piss off EVERYONE, with the Wizard at least.

This blog bows before Zod!

And yours will, too!

Benefits of bowing before Zod include remaining alive, being able to continue blogging, and getting to kneel and grovel to your heart's content!

Happy April Fools Day, everyone!

"D&D Next"

So the working title for 5E is "D&D Next."

Damn, they better come up with something better than that before release time. I've never studied marketing, but that sure sounds like "buy this crap now, we'll be selling you more crap later" to this customer.

Very superstitious, writing's on the wall

I'm not actually a very superstitious person, but I do have a few.  My one dice superstition is that the old dice I collected from my TSR box sets are now MY dice.  No one else gets to touch them. 

Back in the day, we just didn't have that many dice.  KillingMachine, my cousin Ben, and I each had two sets from our Basic and Expert sets, an extra pair of d10s each from Star Frontiers (which usually stayed in the SF box), and whatever extra d6s we scrounged from old board games.  And if one of us was at another's house and didn't bring our own, of course we shared our dice.

Now, though, I've got more than enough other dice that the old ones stay safely far from others in their own little gray dice bag.  And I mostly use them when rolling up my Megadungeon encounters or monster hit dice or number appearing and all that, not much for actual gaming.

Anyway, last Saturday, for some reason I brought that set of old dice to the 4E game.  And they were rolling quite poorly.

I wonder if my dice were trying to tell me something.

Just in case, I'll be bringing a different dice bag to the next game.

I was gonna do an actual gaming content post but...

Apparently, the Korean internet police don't like my followers and have blocked them.  Hope none of you were planning to come visit soon.  You might want to look into fake passports or something.

Internet Trolls Win. News at 11.

You know, I've got no idea who is behind the waste of electrons that is Your Dungeon Is Suck, but this is more or less how I imagine whoever is behind it...as a stereotypical Japanese Otaku.

Now, you've probably heard the word, and know it as "Japanese for geek" but in its original form, it's really much more pathetic than that.  It literally means 'house' as in someone who's so socially unskilled that they never leave their home to interact with others.  It's lost some of that bite over the years, but 17-18 years ago when I first learned the term, I was warned by all of my Japanese friends NOT to call myself that simply because I'm a nerd who's into RPGs, video games, and comics (oh, and Japan/Japanese).  Back then, it was truly an insult to be called 'otaku.'

In Japan, the depiction of these guys as a stock character in the media are the ones who are in their thirties or forties, spend all day in a small cramped room in their parents house, watching anime porn, sniffing high school girl panties (which they likely bought online because they can't get up the nerve to actually approach the high school girls who park themselves in front of convenience stores with their skirts rolled up and their knees wide apart advertising that they're willing to sell so they can buy a new Prada handbag or whatever), and when they finally take a break from the porn, it's to switch to the feed of the camera they've secretly installed in the local high school girls' changing room so they can wank off to grainy images of half naked girls.  Because that's about as close as they're ever gonna get to a real one, and that makes them bitter and angry.  Obviously, this is a stereotype created from an amalgam of traits common among otaku, not the image of the group as a whole, similar to the Simpson's Comic Book Guy.  Japan is a country that's very friendly toward people with 'nerdy' hobbies, and if, as faustusnotes claims, his friends are self-identifying as otaku, the image has definitely changed over the years.

Now, whoever is behind YDIS is likely not this pathetic, but the pure nerd rage that pours out of it every time read it (which is very rarely) over the most trivial of topics always makes me think of that stereotypical stock character in Japan.

Anyway, Christian, if you happen to be reading this, hope you come back soon, dude.  YDIS, if you're reading this, fire away.  I'll be oblivious to your infantile ranting.

Self-Inflicted Punishment

Yesterday morning, and again last night, I sat myself down and forced myself to finish reading the 4E Essentials Rules Compendium's chapter on Powers. 

Man, that was a slog.  No wonder I put it off for so long.  It's not only a really boring explanation of all the terms used in powers, it's also apparently written for complete morons.

Seriously, people complain about the Mentzer sets being written at a young reading level, but this was painful. 

The skill chapter comes next, but Powers may have sapped my will to actually figure out 4E.  I mean, that's the heart of the game system right there, folks.  Who cares about the rest when the bread and butter is so stale?

We're here to play, right?

Disclaimer: This is not directed at anyone in particular.  But I recently joined an online PbP game on RPOL, and this situation sorta popped up to remind me how much it annoys me.

What is it with players these days, who get together to play an RPG, but then bog things down by forcing the other players and the GM to have to convince that player's character to go along on the adventure?  It sure happens quite a lot, in my experience.

The players gather, hear a report of some monsters rampaging or of huge piles of gold just lying around in some dank, nasty dungeon.  All the PCs are ready to go.  Except that one.  That one needs to be convinced eight ways from Sunday why it's worth his/her time to bother with fighting the gnolls, or why they should bother travelling to the Lands of Doom to try to find the Emerald Crown of Emperor Colwyn.  And anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour will be wasted just because that one player's got a bug up his/her ass about needing to be convinced to come.

And the other players never seem to just say, "OK, sit this one out.  We'll manage without a [class X] this time."

Have you seen The Gamers?  Remember that scene where the M-U bites it, the player rolls up a new character, and a couple scenes later in the game you get:
Magic-User: "It looks like your party could use a mage."
Fighter: "You seem trustworthy.  Get into marching order."

I've got no problems with that.

I realize a lot of people have fun getting so deep into the head of their PC that they want to evaluate every decision as the PC would.  But why oh why can't they ever create a PC whose mentality is to just get on with the show and bust some orc heads and loot some tombs?  Why is that so hard?