What do you mean by that?
Ive had a number of issues with tables that cannot see the different between Role-players, those that want to let story and characterization rule, and Roll-players, those that enjoy the simulation system and want to maximize their rules-manipulation. Im not saying one is better than the other, or that one is more fun, but I think that if you are unclear up front on which your table is goign to be then you are asking for lots of trouble and otehrwise avoidable headache. For example Ive had DMs that fancied themselves heavy Roleplayers and legitimately tried to have a deep story; but in their heart of hearts they were in DnD for the Simulation aspect, so they ended up being a hard-core rules-nazi for everything but the rules they arbitrarily set aside because it conflicted with their planned course of events (or worse to shoehorn the PC back on track). On the flip side Ive seen tables that were intended for light play and are more on the boardgame end, but because nobody was clear on the distinction you end up with a social monkey in a dungeon crawl. There was one guy I knew in an RPGA game that was determined to be true to his socialite character and eventually made a guy too martially useless to reasonably be traveling with adventurers, even if it made sense in his backstory.
The counter-argument seems a lot more reasonable to me. But honestly, I don't think it addresses the biggest problems with the original article. Namely the self-contradictory incoherence of its whole argument, the ridiculous distinction between board games and RPGs, and the basic awfulness of telling other people that they're having fun the wrong way.
To each their own I guess. While I certainly didnt agree with everything he said it didnt bother me as much as it appears to have bugged you. I didnt think the distinction was ridiculous at all, even if it wasnt nearly as black&white as the author made it out to be.
