The dark ages of communication

A big part of the indie designers movement has been about good communication. It's something I identify with strongly,

What I find unusual is that some people actively resist communication. They say they don't want to talk about their characters, or what they want from the game. I just don't get that.

But once in awhile, I run across someone that makes me go, "Huh?" From a recent "game opening" post I saw…

If you want to play non-human, you will have to roll a 1 on 1d10. Otherwise you have to play a human.

Wow. People still play like this? No "let's talk about it," just "one in ten chance you get to be something I don't want you to be." (Or something I don't want more than one character to be.)

Instead of negotiation and collaboration, we just throw an important decision about characters to the dice. The GM gets to wash his hands of the matter… no being blamed for poor judgement, favoritism or whatnot.

But that's just an illusion… the GM set the arbitrary rule in the first place. If the dice produce an unsatisfactory character group composition, it's the GM's fault, not that of the dice. The GM is shirking his duty to help create a cohesive group by shuffling hard decisions off to the dice.

I think much more satisfaction is derived by discussing characters and collaborating on the total character group, to create characters everyone is happy with. But I'm probably preaching to the choir here.

Nice fodder for [[http://www.theartofroleplaying.com/|The Art of Roleplaying]], though. I happen to be planning out a series on communication, and this will fit right in.

Got any "bad communication" stories? I could use even more fodder. :)