Now about the kid, there's a bunch of factors in place. I would be more obliged of the kid in that if he has a reason to hide the password I would suspect it more legitimately logical than necessarily deviant or tactical. I can think of a number of reasons for both arguments of bad and good intentions but the suspicion is that the brother being a part of the family is in a knowledgeable enough situation having grown up with the sister to make an appropriate decision in regard to said sibling's situation.
If I knew more about the individuals involved then I might agree with you. My hang-up is that I don't, I suppose. I don't know the parents or the kids, so I don't know which side (or both, or neither) is overreacting to the situation. Is the brother right in helping his little sister because their parents are extremely overprotective? Or are the parents just instituting some basic safety precautions and the children (as many do) are taking an it's-the-end-of-the-world approach to the whole thing because they aren't being allowed to do everything they want. Based on my interpretation of the actual question, I believe it lies somewhere in the middle. But, again, I don't know this family personally, so I can't say. All I can do is use a value judgment to say that I feel - from the tone and phrasing of the actual question - that this is a situation where the brother (who sounds like a teenager to me) is trying to circumvent his parents' rules and authority for his little sister (who is far too young to be at that stage of rebellion) because he feels they are too strict, but without any real thought to the reasons why they might be strict. It also sounds to me like the parents might be a bit too restrictive without explaining their reasonings behind things. Due to these two observations that I made from reading the original post, I feel that it would be morally wrong to help this person go behind his parents' backs. I think that the many people on slashdot who have encouraged the asker to give his parents access as root or other solutions that bring the parents into the loop are probably on the right track. Still, I feel that helping in his requested task (giving the sister a way to remember an overly complicated password in order to specifically keep his parents out) would be morally unjustifiable based on the limited information gleaned from the original post.
Wow... I feel like I may have rambled a bit there, but hopefully it is clear enough that it is legible. Oh, and some background on me - I'm 24 (so I do still remember what it was like to be a kid in my Mom's house!) with 2 young children of my own (4 and 1). My kids have their own dedicated computer that has absolutely no access to the internet unless I ran an ethernet cable through our living room. At their age, I feel that this is an appropriate level, since there's nothing on the internet they really need to be messing with anyway. We buy them Jumpstart games, install them, and let them have at. Perhaps, in a few more years, we'll allow our eldest to get her own internet-capable computer for a few minor things but I (thankfully!) have quite some time to decided exactly how much of a free reign to give her with it before that even comes up.
Had I been responsible for her or not I'd have wanted more details. Don't toss the baby out with the bathwater with blanket expressions like this. This is like a "if you support gun control you're a republican". Not everything is so black and white.
I don't understand what you are saying. Which blanket statement did I make? I thought that my reply was emphasizing that each case is different, and therefore can not have a blanket statement applied. If you're saying that my inaccurate blanket statement is that parents should be the ones to make the decision on how capable their child is, then all I can say is that there is no one else to make this decision. It is our responsibility and duty as parents to allow our kids freedoms and responsibilities as they become capable to handle them. Some of us over-protect, some under-protect, but there really isn't anyone better to be making the decision, even if it turns out we made the wrong one.
Do you mean my statement that I feel you would feel differently if your niece had been a child incapable of proper internet safety and putting herself at risk? I don't feel that this is an inaccurate or too broad statement either. It is a proven fact that people who have been actually involved in a certain type of bad situation feel differently about it than those who haven't. Would that necessarily change your stance on the situation? Perhaps. I think it might, since from your previous post you seem like an intelligent person who would take a situation into account individually. Therefore, had your niece proven herself unable to follow basic safe surfing guidelines, I think that you would have been more careful on monitoring her (or her parents would have) and restricting her access. But, maybe I'm wrong. I was just making a conjecture that if you had had a less-capable niece you would be more likely to see the reasons why some children need to be monitored and restricted. And that only someone who knows that child (ie their parent) and is responsible should make the decision on how much freedom to allow them.
I wouldn't overthink the situation with the kid for the basis of this article. Simply put, kids aren't great with passwords, no less than adults are. I think that was the basic summary of the situation was "how to deal with that" not "the internet is dangerousssss".
I think that they are all interconnected. The question posed was: how do I make a secure password for my 7 year old sister that our parents can not guess or break, but that she can remember? If all the person wanted to do was help a 7 year old remember her password, that would be a different issue. Then we could probably give the asker a quick and easy solution. But the fact that he specifically requested a way to do it so his parents can't break it means that not only are there plenty of things that now will not work (a birth date for example, although I agree with many people that teaching a 7 year old that she should put her personal information like that into the computer isn't a good idea) but that it opens up the discussion on whether or not we - as moral people - should assist this boy in his endeavors to circumvent his parents' attempts to protect his sister in her computer usage.
I was using an extreme example, obviously, to illustrate the point. No, I don't think there are many 7 year old is doing drugs, but drugs were the first fatal thing I could think about that a child could lie to their parents about.
As for your personal example, may I just point out that from the beginning you have been involved. What if someone (if you only have the one child, an older sibling isn't a good example, but let's say an aunt or uncle) had gone behind your back and signed your child up for the swim team and then worked with them to keep it a secret from you. How would you have had the opportunity to teach them the dangers and help them understand how to deal with bad situations? Answer: You wouldn't. This is why the idea that a 7 year old would need to keep her behavior on the internet secret is abhorrent to me. Yes, the parents should teach her and then generally be hands off unless something bad happens, but how can they even do that if the older brother and the 7 year old are going behind their back? How would they be able to recognize dangerous behavior if it came about? They are being kept completely out of the loop, and I feel that that is wrong.
For another example: what if you found out that the swim coach was molesting children? Would you ask your child if they still wanted to be on that swim team, knowing that it was a dangerous place, but letting them make the decision? I would hope the answer would be "no". Allowing your child freedom to make their own decisions is fine in certain situations - teaching them to deal with dangerous ones should also be required. But you should still be able to have the final say on whether or not your child be exposed to a certain level of danger and when it would or would not be appropriate to step in. And you can only do that if you are involved.
Actually, the access to the internet is implied because the reason she wants to keep her parents out is that they installed very restrictive "nanny" software on the middle child's computer. Not because she wants a diary, not because she has secret poems stored on the hard drive, but because she doesn't want her parents to restrict her access to whatever she wants to do. What would that be if not the internet?
So, I do have to point out, you monitored and taught her how to use the chatrooms. Then, since you state that you know that people not only tried to talk to her but that she rebuffed them appropriately, you apparently had some amount of interaction with her on that level.
What would you have done if you had discovered that she was planning to meet someone from the internet? Or that she had told them her address? Would you be touting the same line now? Probably not. Each parent/guardian has to decided for each child what is and is not an appropriate level of restriction and monitoring. Each case is different because each child is different and has a different level of intelligence/understanding/irrationality that would lead them to either use safe practices or not. Advocating complete uninvolvement by parents is just asking for trouble.
In effect, you were lucky that your niece was a child that was both intelligent enough and mature enough at 8 to not be conned in by some predator's lies. Having an older brother who believes that it is his place to allow his 7 year old sister to engage in dangerous behavior without any parental involvement or instruction leads me to the impression that it is unlikely that the 7 year old is mature enough to deal with it. It is obvious that the older brother never had safety vs. convenience stressed in the right ways for him, or he'd be just as worried about his sister's potential harm at the hands of predators as his parents and would not be helping her get around them, but would rather be working with them and his sister to find a solution that works for everyone while still keeping her reasonably safe.
In essence, yes. Let's look at another situation:
You suspect that your child is doing illegal drugs. You know that illegal drugs are dangerous and potentially fatal. You ask your child to tell you if they are doing drugs or not, and they reply "that's private and none of your business". You ground your child.
Is this being a "bully" and "control freak"? Should you allow your child to engage in potentially fatal behavior simply because you want to be a little more "hands off"? Yeah, that's called "neglect" and they throw you in jail for it - as well as taking your kid away. As parents you are required to violate your child's privacy in order to keep them from harm. As has been stated previously in these comments, if the computer isn't connected to the internet, then there's no harm in letting her have a secret password (although this should be a decision made with the parents and not behind their back). However, if she does have access to the internet and all of the dangers inherent therein then the parents not only have the right but the obligation to violate her privacy and make sure that she is browsing in a safe manner.
And for those who believe that the internet is not dangerous, get your head out of the sand. There are many people out there - unscrupulous people - who would love to take advantage of a 7 year old girl who has never been properly taught (or doesn't properly exercise) basic safe surfing procedures. How much easier if that 7 year old can't be monitored in any way by a parent who might recognize the dangerous behavior before it escalated into something irreparable?
A parent should always be kept in the loop on what is going on with their child. If the child wants some secrets - who she likes, why she hates her history teacher, which other girl she hates at school - then that's fine. These are her personal thoughts and no one can make her share them. What she does, who she does it with and other details about her physical being should be something the parent knows so they can keep their kid safe.
I agree - there are plenty of times when a full compliment of various classes doesn't fit the game. But I think that that's something that should be worked out at the game level between DM and players, not something worked into the rules by design.
Still, I can't help but remember the game we went into a heavily-trapped sewer system without a rouge. You often heard us say "Okay, who has the most hit points? Good! You open the door!" Having clearly defined "party" structure might be there mostly to help any new players, while us "old-timers" can chuck them out as we see fit. Which, admittedly, we've always done with any rule we didn't like. Like alignment restrictions *shudder* which happen to be my personal pet peeve. *grin*
Hrm... interesting website full of good information. Although, after quickly reading through the various classes, it sounds like the entire set are going to be primarily focused on how much damage they can do, which saddens me. I suppose that that supports the idea that the MMO mindset is influencing D&D 4e, but, realistically, it's not like it hasn't been there previously. I've played with plenty of min/maxers long before the MMO craze got underway. It just saddens me that the game is going to cater to it even more than before. But, eh, if I want to play something where the combat is only there to flavor the fantastic role playing, I'll whip out my 7th Sea books.
I do have some faith in WotC to put out something decent, I just don't necessarily have faith in them to put out something that I'll want to trade in my 3.5s for. I will admit that I felt the same way when the switch over to 3 from 2 happened, so I'll at least give it the benefit of the doubt before saying it sucks. That's why these questions are good - if we could get some straight answers from marketing - because it can help those of us who are current players to understand a bit better what's being done. I don't know if WotC cares or not that we understand, but it is nice of them to even make the effort at answering our questions.
And.... Druids and bards not 'Broken' in 3.5? Druids became, shall we say, Amazing with splatbooks, and bards really needed splatbooks to fully work in a party of less than 5. Bards straddled too many roles to hold down a party role without some help, but were, undoubtedly, the best 5th party member ever.
When I mention that they are not broken, I mean in the PHB. There have been plenty of things that were "broken" by later-released books. Monk with a vow of poverty, anyone? Right now we have a character with some class out of the PHB II who's a fighter that can cast crazy amounts of spells while striking! So, yes, there's some broken material out there, but that doesn't mean that the classes were broken originally or by design. As for the bard, I've played plenty in 3 PC groups and it works out pretty well. The bard, if done right, can actually fill up any roles that are lacking, which is one of the reasons I love them. They're not truly fantastic at anything, really, but they are marginally good at everything which makes them ideal in small parties that simply can't have everything. And this is without using anything but the base abilities in the PHB for them and my own personal ability to tweak the definition of various things to suit whichever need they might have to fill. In recently switching to playing a druid in another campaign, I realized quickly that not having someone with the Bardic Knowledge ability around could really suck - and not having a diplomat with a bs skill of about 20 can be a draw back for any party *wink*.
How is it that whenever you get more than 2 gamers in a room together all we can do is talk about how cool our characters are/were-in-that-last-campaign-where-we-slew-50-beholders? Oh, and because I'm thinking about it, yes, I am a gamer girl. I don't think I'm hideously ugly and I'm married to one of our DMs... unfortunately, because we haven't played Munchkin yet, that hasn't really netted me much bonus in game, but at least I know that we're always only 2 friends away from a game! *grin*
It seems to me that - since none of those things were "broken" in 3.5e and they took all the time to transfer over (presumably) the "good" things in 3.5 to 4 - it would have been simplicity to keep them in. Therefore, either they aren't keeping anything from the previous edition (an unlikely scenario, IMO) or they removed certain elements for some other reason.
If they don't want to release something that doesn't work, but in order to make it work with the things that people loved previously, why not wait a little longer until you've got it all pounded out? It's not like they were losing money on 3.5 with a new book out every couple months. Would taking the time to perfect 4 before release have been such a problem? It seems that, according to your statement, they have taken what I refer to as the Microsoft approach. Don't worry about getting out a good product right now. Just get out the product and try to make it good with patches and upgrades later.
After rereading some of the answers for the third or fourth time it seems that they are saying that the four core groups would be able to be "specialized" - or made more "complex" - in order to produce the characters that were there previously - ie Bards, Druids, Barbarians, etc. The trouble that I have is, I guess, how? Are thieves going to be able to "customize" to having some illusion magic to make them into Bards? Will fighters have access to the "customization" of rage? If so, why wouldn't you take it? All of the pluses of both classes from 3.5? At this point, not knowing exactly their plan, all we have is conjecture.
Hence why I asked the question. It may not matter to you if they remove Bards (which probably just means that you don't tend to play them anyway, which is fine), but they are my favorite class and I will not be playing 4e if there is no way to play them. Incidentally, my other favorite is Druid, so I suppose the new class structure hits a bit close to home for me. Therefore, I would like the question of the new class status addressed. Why did they choose to do it this way? Are they going to use the customization scheme to allow in the "missing" classes? Or are they merely content to loose some of their current player base to appeal to the MMO group?
And you may look down your nose and scoff at the idea that they are appealing to the MMO players, but they said they were, so really we're just repeating what they have said by stating that 4e is attempting to appeal to MMOers. They would be foolish to not try to tap into that market - which could be argued to have come out of table-topping to begin with. Just looking at many of the structures that they have stated will be in 4e shows a decided leaning towards the MMO mindset - even and especially the idea that you would pick a class and then "customize" them to be exactly the kind of character you want, instead of having a variety of classes to choose from right at the outset. What I want to know is whether or not they have thought about the fact that they might be alienating currently loyal customers with this bent and how they plan to accommodate old players with the new generation they are trying to attract.
I think, for some rights, you can--or at least the universality of those rights. Often a tribe would recognize its members right to life or liberty, but a conquered people were not afforded those same dignities. Monotheistic religion generally makes absolute statements about the equality of all people. That's what makes the Cyrus Cylinder so impressive: in it, Cyrus declares that all people, regardless of race, creed, or even gender (women's rights were remarkably progressive during the Achaemenids), have the right to live freely (not be enslaved), choose their ruler, and worship as they please. Now it's doubtful that Cyrus is promoting absolute democracy in this case, but he did allow his subjects considerable autonomy in determining their own governments. He collected a tribute, but in exchange he provided a great deal of protection (and ultimately prosperity, thanks to his organization of the empire).
Interesting... in the context of this conversation all I can think of is the way the Romans (after adopting Catholicism) treated some of their conquered peoples, which was admittedly not with universal rights. I guess that no religion or people is perfect in the enforcing/recognizing human rights. I still feel that there were recognized and enforced human rights before monotheism, but perhaps monotheistic cultures were the first to put them down so that now, many many years later, we can examine them. But, then again, I didn't live back then either. I often wish we could perfect a way of looking into the past without the color of historians who recorded the events, and if we could do that then we would have a much better chance of learning from the past and avoiding repeating it.
So, I've been playing D&D since 2nd Ed. I moved over to 3rd when it came out, and then 3.5 even though many people chose to stay behind. I did this because each new edition seemed to only add to the game, not subtract from it. I could play a fighter/mage/thief in 3 and 3.5 - only they called them "bards" now. This, to me, meant that you never felt like you lost anything by "upgrading" to the latest edition - only gained new stuff with new rules to better game play.
Now enter 4th ed. It seems to me that there is a distinct deviation from the feeling that I'm not losing anything by changing over (except my old rule system). Why the hatred for the bard? Admittedly, this question is spawned because this is my favorite class, and I am a little offended to hear the bard called a useless class. They were the natural diplomats and party leaders in most of my games - and I'm annoyed that the cleric is now taking over that function. I guess my question in essence is this: Why take away aspects of the game that - although you might not have seen the intrinsic value - other players dearly loved? It seems like you are just trying to alienate people who have played D&D for a long time while attempting to appeal to the new "MMO" set of players. Couldn't you have accommodated us both?
It is very interesting, though, that you can directly trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion.
Hm... this makes me wonder: can you really trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion, or is it just the formal declaration of such? I don't have any references handy, but I've read in many places about various different polytheistic cultures that believed in everyone's right to defend themselves from harm and some other of the basic human rights that we believe in (although, admittedly, not all of them). It was never set down in law because it just was. There was no declaration needed. Now, without my references handy, I can't be sure of the veracity of my memory, but it does make one wonder...
Did monotheism create the idea of human rights, or were they merely the first that felt that human rights needed to be made into laws instead of merely universally accepted as something so profoundly obvious that no one should need to be told?
And, when thinking about it now, wouldn't any set of laws put down originally been to protect human rights? Admittedly, they were abused as they went on (even our own laws have become ridiculous in some areas), but at their onset wouldn't all laws have been written to protect a person's rights from the violation of others?
These are just some thoughts I had while reading this.
With our 3.5 books, my husband and I used stick-on tabs (the kind post-it makes) to label important pages. It makes the books MUCH more useful. I think that having some sort of indexing in this fashion - or even just having the different chapter markings be different colors and staggered along the edge of the pages - would be of an enormous help.
Forgive me for not reading through the 4 pages of comments to see if anyone else mentioned this. Oh, and by the way, the spirit of ANY role playing game should be the story you create together. The rules just help settle disputes, the essence should always be the adventure.
That being said: My question is, will alignment restrictions be lifted in 4th ed? Kinda a personal pet peeve of mine, but I always felt that if you played the character right there was no need of those types of restrictions. Good players just don't need them and bad players will work around them anyways. Besides, why CAN'T you have a CN assassin?:)
So - while I agree with many people on here who say that banning tag would be ridiculous, did anyone catch the one *key* word in the article?
No, nobody? Well, let me just point it out for you then. The key word is "unsupervised"! Now, I'm not sure exactly how people in Massachusetts mean this, but I take this to mean that as long as a yard duty is out there to keep an eye on things (and deal with accidents if they happen) then the kids can go ahead and chase after each other all over the playground.
Perhaps they have a different definition of "unsupervised" than I do. However, if my kid got hurt at school because there was no adult in sight, you better *believe* that I'd have quite a few choice words for that principal! As long as there is an adult around to deal with problems as they crop up, I have no issues, but I would never want my kid to be running around unsupervised at that young of an age. What if some crazy stranger pulled up and decided to try to abduct a few kids? Small children should *never* be left unsupervised. This doesn't mean the adult watching them needs to coddle or bubblewrap them from any and all possible dangers - just the major ones, like running out in front of cars, or getting abducted by strangers, or, yes, touching the stove (as I read someone mention already).
My daughter is 3 and she understands what "hot" means without having touched the stove and gotten severe burns. So, I tell her the stove is hot, and she *doesn't touch it*! She doesn't even want to... hot *hurts*! I guess this makes me part of the sissy-makers in that I don't let my child experiance all of lifes hurts without at least *trying* to warn her and keep her from the ones which would require a trip to the ER. Eh... I think I'm doing a fine job, so anyone who doesn't can just screw off.
Slashdot Mirror
If I knew more about the individuals involved then I might agree with you. My hang-up is that I don't, I suppose. I don't know the parents or the kids, so I don't know which side (or both, or neither) is overreacting to the situation. Is the brother right in helping his little sister because their parents are extremely overprotective? Or are the parents just instituting some basic safety precautions and the children (as many do) are taking an it's-the-end-of-the-world approach to the whole thing because they aren't being allowed to do everything they want. Based on my interpretation of the actual question, I believe it lies somewhere in the middle. But, again, I don't know this family personally, so I can't say. All I can do is use a value judgment to say that I feel - from the tone and phrasing of the actual question - that this is a situation where the brother (who sounds like a teenager to me) is trying to circumvent his parents' rules and authority for his little sister (who is far too young to be at that stage of rebellion) because he feels they are too strict, but without any real thought to the reasons why they might be strict. It also sounds to me like the parents might be a bit too restrictive without explaining their reasonings behind things. Due to these two observations that I made from reading the original post, I feel that it would be morally wrong to help this person go behind his parents' backs. I think that the many people on slashdot who have encouraged the asker to give his parents access as root or other solutions that bring the parents into the loop are probably on the right track. Still, I feel that helping in his requested task (giving the sister a way to remember an overly complicated password in order to specifically keep his parents out) would be morally unjustifiable based on the limited information gleaned from the original post.
Wow... I feel like I may have rambled a bit there, but hopefully it is clear enough that it is legible. Oh, and some background on me - I'm 24 (so I do still remember what it was like to be a kid in my Mom's house!) with 2 young children of my own (4 and 1). My kids have their own dedicated computer that has absolutely no access to the internet unless I ran an ethernet cable through our living room. At their age, I feel that this is an appropriate level, since there's nothing on the internet they really need to be messing with anyway. We buy them Jumpstart games, install them, and let them have at. Perhaps, in a few more years, we'll allow our eldest to get her own internet-capable computer for a few minor things but I (thankfully!) have quite some time to decided exactly how much of a free reign to give her with it before that even comes up.
I don't understand what you are saying. Which blanket statement did I make? I thought that my reply was emphasizing that each case is different, and therefore can not have a blanket statement applied. If you're saying that my inaccurate blanket statement is that parents should be the ones to make the decision on how capable their child is, then all I can say is that there is no one else to make this decision. It is our responsibility and duty as parents to allow our kids freedoms and responsibilities as they become capable to handle them. Some of us over-protect, some under-protect, but there really isn't anyone better to be making the decision, even if it turns out we made the wrong one.
Do you mean my statement that I feel you would feel differently if your niece had been a child incapable of proper internet safety and putting herself at risk? I don't feel that this is an inaccurate or too broad statement either. It is a proven fact that people who have been actually involved in a certain type of bad situation feel differently about it than those who haven't. Would that necessarily change your stance on the situation? Perhaps. I think it might, since from your previous post you seem like an intelligent person who would take a situation into account individually. Therefore, had your niece proven herself unable to follow basic safe surfing guidelines, I think that you would have been more careful on monitoring her (or her parents would have) and restricting her access. But, maybe I'm wrong. I was just making a conjecture that if you had had a less-capable niece you would be more likely to see the reasons why some children need to be monitored and restricted. And that only someone who knows that child (ie their parent) and is responsible should make the decision on how much freedom to allow them.
I wouldn't overthink the situation with the kid for the basis of this article. Simply put, kids aren't great with passwords, no less than adults are. I think that was the basic summary of the situation was "how to deal with that" not "the internet is dangerousssss".I think that they are all interconnected. The question posed was: how do I make a secure password for my 7 year old sister that our parents can not guess or break, but that she can remember? If all the person wanted to do was help a 7 year old remember her password, that would be a different issue. Then we could probably give the asker a quick and easy solution. But the fact that he specifically requested a way to do it so his parents can't break it means that not only are there plenty of things that now will not work (a birth date for example, although I agree with many people that teaching a 7 year old that she should put her personal information like that into the computer isn't a good idea) but that it opens up the discussion on whether or not we - as moral people - should assist this boy in his endeavors to circumvent his parents' attempts to protect his sister in her computer usage.
I was using an extreme example, obviously, to illustrate the point. No, I don't think there are many 7 year old is doing drugs, but drugs were the first fatal thing I could think about that a child could lie to their parents about.
As for your personal example, may I just point out that from the beginning you have been involved. What if someone (if you only have the one child, an older sibling isn't a good example, but let's say an aunt or uncle) had gone behind your back and signed your child up for the swim team and then worked with them to keep it a secret from you. How would you have had the opportunity to teach them the dangers and help them understand how to deal with bad situations? Answer: You wouldn't. This is why the idea that a 7 year old would need to keep her behavior on the internet secret is abhorrent to me. Yes, the parents should teach her and then generally be hands off unless something bad happens, but how can they even do that if the older brother and the 7 year old are going behind their back? How would they be able to recognize dangerous behavior if it came about? They are being kept completely out of the loop, and I feel that that is wrong.
For another example: what if you found out that the swim coach was molesting children? Would you ask your child if they still wanted to be on that swim team, knowing that it was a dangerous place, but letting them make the decision? I would hope the answer would be "no". Allowing your child freedom to make their own decisions is fine in certain situations - teaching them to deal with dangerous ones should also be required. But you should still be able to have the final say on whether or not your child be exposed to a certain level of danger and when it would or would not be appropriate to step in. And you can only do that if you are involved.
Actually, the access to the internet is implied because the reason she wants to keep her parents out is that they installed very restrictive "nanny" software on the middle child's computer. Not because she wants a diary, not because she has secret poems stored on the hard drive, but because she doesn't want her parents to restrict her access to whatever she wants to do. What would that be if not the internet?
So, I do have to point out, you monitored and taught her how to use the chatrooms. Then, since you state that you know that people not only tried to talk to her but that she rebuffed them appropriately, you apparently had some amount of interaction with her on that level.
What would you have done if you had discovered that she was planning to meet someone from the internet? Or that she had told them her address? Would you be touting the same line now? Probably not. Each parent/guardian has to decided for each child what is and is not an appropriate level of restriction and monitoring. Each case is different because each child is different and has a different level of intelligence/understanding/irrationality that would lead them to either use safe practices or not. Advocating complete uninvolvement by parents is just asking for trouble.
In effect, you were lucky that your niece was a child that was both intelligent enough and mature enough at 8 to not be conned in by some predator's lies. Having an older brother who believes that it is his place to allow his 7 year old sister to engage in dangerous behavior without any parental involvement or instruction leads me to the impression that it is unlikely that the 7 year old is mature enough to deal with it. It is obvious that the older brother never had safety vs. convenience stressed in the right ways for him, or he'd be just as worried about his sister's potential harm at the hands of predators as his parents and would not be helping her get around them, but would rather be working with them and his sister to find a solution that works for everyone while still keeping her reasonably safe.
In essence, yes. Let's look at another situation:
You suspect that your child is doing illegal drugs. You know that illegal drugs are dangerous and potentially fatal. You ask your child to tell you if they are doing drugs or not, and they reply "that's private and none of your business". You ground your child.
Is this being a "bully" and "control freak"? Should you allow your child to engage in potentially fatal behavior simply because you want to be a little more "hands off"? Yeah, that's called "neglect" and they throw you in jail for it - as well as taking your kid away. As parents you are required to violate your child's privacy in order to keep them from harm. As has been stated previously in these comments, if the computer isn't connected to the internet, then there's no harm in letting her have a secret password (although this should be a decision made with the parents and not behind their back). However, if she does have access to the internet and all of the dangers inherent therein then the parents not only have the right but the obligation to violate her privacy and make sure that she is browsing in a safe manner.
And for those who believe that the internet is not dangerous, get your head out of the sand. There are many people out there - unscrupulous people - who would love to take advantage of a 7 year old girl who has never been properly taught (or doesn't properly exercise) basic safe surfing procedures. How much easier if that 7 year old can't be monitored in any way by a parent who might recognize the dangerous behavior before it escalated into something irreparable?
A parent should always be kept in the loop on what is going on with their child. If the child wants some secrets - who she likes, why she hates her history teacher, which other girl she hates at school - then that's fine. These are her personal thoughts and no one can make her share them. What she does, who she does it with and other details about her physical being should be something the parent knows so they can keep their kid safe.
I agree - there are plenty of times when a full compliment of various classes doesn't fit the game. But I think that that's something that should be worked out at the game level between DM and players, not something worked into the rules by design.
Still, I can't help but remember the game we went into a heavily-trapped sewer system without a rouge. You often heard us say "Okay, who has the most hit points? Good! You open the door!" Having clearly defined "party" structure might be there mostly to help any new players, while us "old-timers" can chuck them out as we see fit. Which, admittedly, we've always done with any rule we didn't like. Like alignment restrictions *shudder* which happen to be my personal pet peeve. *grin*
Hrm... interesting website full of good information. Although, after quickly reading through the various classes, it sounds like the entire set are going to be primarily focused on how much damage they can do, which saddens me. I suppose that that supports the idea that the MMO mindset is influencing D&D 4e, but, realistically, it's not like it hasn't been there previously. I've played with plenty of min/maxers long before the MMO craze got underway. It just saddens me that the game is going to cater to it even more than before. But, eh, if I want to play something where the combat is only there to flavor the fantastic role playing, I'll whip out my 7th Sea books.
I do have some faith in WotC to put out something decent, I just don't necessarily have faith in them to put out something that I'll want to trade in my 3.5s for. I will admit that I felt the same way when the switch over to 3 from 2 happened, so I'll at least give it the benefit of the doubt before saying it sucks. That's why these questions are good - if we could get some straight answers from marketing - because it can help those of us who are current players to understand a bit better what's being done. I don't know if WotC cares or not that we understand, but it is nice of them to even make the effort at answering our questions.
And.... Druids and bards not 'Broken' in 3.5? Druids became, shall we say, Amazing with splatbooks, and bards really needed splatbooks to fully work in a party of less than 5. Bards straddled too many roles to hold down a party role without some help, but were, undoubtedly, the best 5th party member ever.When I mention that they are not broken, I mean in the PHB. There have been plenty of things that were "broken" by later-released books. Monk with a vow of poverty, anyone? Right now we have a character with some class out of the PHB II who's a fighter that can cast crazy amounts of spells while striking! So, yes, there's some broken material out there, but that doesn't mean that the classes were broken originally or by design. As for the bard, I've played plenty in 3 PC groups and it works out pretty well. The bard, if done right, can actually fill up any roles that are lacking, which is one of the reasons I love them. They're not truly fantastic at anything, really, but they are marginally good at everything which makes them ideal in small parties that simply can't have everything. And this is without using anything but the base abilities in the PHB for them and my own personal ability to tweak the definition of various things to suit whichever need they might have to fill. In recently switching to playing a druid in another campaign, I realized quickly that not having someone with the Bardic Knowledge ability around could really suck - and not having a diplomat with a bs skill of about 20 can be a draw back for any party *wink*.
How is it that whenever you get more than 2 gamers in a room together all we can do is talk about how cool our characters are/were-in-that-last-campaign-where-we-slew-50-beholders? Oh, and because I'm thinking about it, yes, I am a gamer girl. I don't think I'm hideously ugly and I'm married to one of our DMs... unfortunately, because we haven't played Munchkin yet, that hasn't really netted me much bonus in game, but at least I know that we're always only 2 friends away from a game! *grin*
It seems to me that - since none of those things were "broken" in 3.5e and they took all the time to transfer over (presumably) the "good" things in 3.5 to 4 - it would have been simplicity to keep them in. Therefore, either they aren't keeping anything from the previous edition (an unlikely scenario, IMO) or they removed certain elements for some other reason.
If they don't want to release something that doesn't work, but in order to make it work with the things that people loved previously, why not wait a little longer until you've got it all pounded out? It's not like they were losing money on 3.5 with a new book out every couple months. Would taking the time to perfect 4 before release have been such a problem? It seems that, according to your statement, they have taken what I refer to as the Microsoft approach. Don't worry about getting out a good product right now. Just get out the product and try to make it good with patches and upgrades later.
After rereading some of the answers for the third or fourth time it seems that they are saying that the four core groups would be able to be "specialized" - or made more "complex" - in order to produce the characters that were there previously - ie Bards, Druids, Barbarians, etc. The trouble that I have is, I guess, how? Are thieves going to be able to "customize" to having some illusion magic to make them into Bards? Will fighters have access to the "customization" of rage? If so, why wouldn't you take it? All of the pluses of both classes from 3.5? At this point, not knowing exactly their plan, all we have is conjecture.
Hence why I asked the question. It may not matter to you if they remove Bards (which probably just means that you don't tend to play them anyway, which is fine), but they are my favorite class and I will not be playing 4e if there is no way to play them. Incidentally, my other favorite is Druid, so I suppose the new class structure hits a bit close to home for me. Therefore, I would like the question of the new class status addressed. Why did they choose to do it this way? Are they going to use the customization scheme to allow in the "missing" classes? Or are they merely content to loose some of their current player base to appeal to the MMO group?
And you may look down your nose and scoff at the idea that they are appealing to the MMO players, but they said they were, so really we're just repeating what they have said by stating that 4e is attempting to appeal to MMOers. They would be foolish to not try to tap into that market - which could be argued to have come out of table-topping to begin with. Just looking at many of the structures that they have stated will be in 4e shows a decided leaning towards the MMO mindset - even and especially the idea that you would pick a class and then "customize" them to be exactly the kind of character you want, instead of having a variety of classes to choose from right at the outset. What I want to know is whether or not they have thought about the fact that they might be alienating currently loyal customers with this bent and how they plan to accommodate old players with the new generation they are trying to attract.
Interesting... in the context of this conversation all I can think of is the way the Romans (after adopting Catholicism) treated some of their conquered peoples, which was admittedly not with universal rights. I guess that no religion or people is perfect in the enforcing/recognizing human rights. I still feel that there were recognized and enforced human rights before monotheism, but perhaps monotheistic cultures were the first to put them down so that now, many many years later, we can examine them. But, then again, I didn't live back then either. I often wish we could perfect a way of looking into the past without the color of historians who recorded the events, and if we could do that then we would have a much better chance of learning from the past and avoiding repeating it.
Anyway, ramble over now.
So, I've been playing D&D since 2nd Ed. I moved over to 3rd when it came out, and then 3.5 even though many people chose to stay behind. I did this because each new edition seemed to only add to the game, not subtract from it. I could play a fighter/mage/thief in 3 and 3.5 - only they called them "bards" now. This, to me, meant that you never felt like you lost anything by "upgrading" to the latest edition - only gained new stuff with new rules to better game play.
Now enter 4th ed. It seems to me that there is a distinct deviation from the feeling that I'm not losing anything by changing over (except my old rule system). Why the hatred for the bard? Admittedly, this question is spawned because this is my favorite class, and I am a little offended to hear the bard called a useless class. They were the natural diplomats and party leaders in most of my games - and I'm annoyed that the cleric is now taking over that function. I guess my question in essence is this: Why take away aspects of the game that - although you might not have seen the intrinsic value - other players dearly loved? It seems like you are just trying to alienate people who have played D&D for a long time while attempting to appeal to the new "MMO" set of players. Couldn't you have accommodated us both?
Hm... this makes me wonder: can you really trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion, or is it just the formal declaration of such? I don't have any references handy, but I've read in many places about various different polytheistic cultures that believed in everyone's right to defend themselves from harm and some other of the basic human rights that we believe in (although, admittedly, not all of them). It was never set down in law because it just was. There was no declaration needed. Now, without my references handy, I can't be sure of the veracity of my memory, but it does make one wonder...
Did monotheism create the idea of human rights, or were they merely the first that felt that human rights needed to be made into laws instead of merely universally accepted as something so profoundly obvious that no one should need to be told?
And, when thinking about it now, wouldn't any set of laws put down originally been to protect human rights? Admittedly, they were abused as they went on (even our own laws have become ridiculous in some areas), but at their onset wouldn't all laws have been written to protect a person's rights from the violation of others?
These are just some thoughts I had while reading this.
With our 3.5 books, my husband and I used stick-on tabs (the kind post-it makes) to label important pages. It makes the books MUCH more useful. I think that having some sort of indexing in this fashion - or even just having the different chapter markings be different colors and staggered along the edge of the pages - would be of an enormous help.
Forgive me for not reading through the 4 pages of comments to see if anyone else mentioned this. Oh, and by the way, the spirit of ANY role playing game should be the story you create together. The rules just help settle disputes, the essence should always be the adventure. That being said: My question is, will alignment restrictions be lifted in 4th ed? Kinda a personal pet peeve of mine, but I always felt that if you played the character right there was no need of those types of restrictions. Good players just don't need them and bad players will work around them anyways. Besides, why CAN'T you have a CN assassin? :)
So - while I agree with many people on here who say that banning tag would be ridiculous, did anyone catch the one *key* word in the article? No, nobody? Well, let me just point it out for you then. The key word is "unsupervised"! Now, I'm not sure exactly how people in Massachusetts mean this, but I take this to mean that as long as a yard duty is out there to keep an eye on things (and deal with accidents if they happen) then the kids can go ahead and chase after each other all over the playground. Perhaps they have a different definition of "unsupervised" than I do. However, if my kid got hurt at school because there was no adult in sight, you better *believe* that I'd have quite a few choice words for that principal! As long as there is an adult around to deal with problems as they crop up, I have no issues, but I would never want my kid to be running around unsupervised at that young of an age. What if some crazy stranger pulled up and decided to try to abduct a few kids? Small children should *never* be left unsupervised. This doesn't mean the adult watching them needs to coddle or bubblewrap them from any and all possible dangers - just the major ones, like running out in front of cars, or getting abducted by strangers, or, yes, touching the stove (as I read someone mention already). My daughter is 3 and she understands what "hot" means without having touched the stove and gotten severe burns. So, I tell her the stove is hot, and she *doesn't touch it*! She doesn't even want to... hot *hurts*! I guess this makes me part of the sissy-makers in that I don't let my child experiance all of lifes hurts without at least *trying* to warn her and keep her from the ones which would require a trip to the ER. Eh... I think I'm doing a fine job, so anyone who doesn't can just screw off.