Considering your considerable record, it is the height of my joy today to know that you have been insulted by being compared to my trolling noobishness.

Drano019-Thank you for your excellent synopsis of how I feel, and I believe most people feel. It seems like COMMON SENSE!!

Great discussion , thank you MM and Draug for starting it.

Draug, I hate to admit I agree with everything you said EXCEPT for your specific comment about me. There was one game we played where I vengefully stabbed you yes. You left your borders too unprotected yes, but my primary motivation probably was revenge for an earlier stab you did of me in a previous game (metagaming! ban me!) BUT that is past history now and I don't usually play like that, so you can't assume I'll always be a vengeful bitch in every game.

SO I guess my general points are
1. in FtF or in RL every human ALWAYS takes in other factors about their opponents , as many people have described above . (Remeber the original board game rules never conceived of an anon game where people from different continents would comunicate only in wiriting and never see or know each other.)

but

2.) Just because I was a vengeful bitch in Game A doesnt mean I will play like that in Game B

Metagaming is an interesting thing and I know my personal interpretation of the definition and attitude about it continues to evolve over time. I do my best to ignore all past experiences with all players, even though it is pretty much impossible, and then I just talk a lot with everyone to get a sense of that person within that game. The most ruthless types often have a "tell" that I can pick up on, at least eventually. I do like anon games because I stink at figuring out who is who, so now I don't even try and make part of the challenge trying to figure out exactly how trustworthy everyone is merely based on in game actions and press.

As far as revenge goes, I'm a firm believer in getting revenge within a specific game, but after that game I will do my best to ignore recent stabs. Some people are extra nasty or however you want to describe them, so I'll do my best to not play with that person anymore because I've learned with a few people that it can be a personality thing and will never go away.

Anyway, I think this is all good to think about, there is a lot of grey area out there and we all have our line in the sand drawn in different places, but I suppose that's part of what makes games so interesting.

@Crazyter - I didn't call you vengeful or a bitch. My point was the stab was at an inopportune time for *both* of us. Had you stabbed and not caused our line to fall, I would have actually congratulated you. But that particular stabs timing was stupid was all. And it was more as an example. I'll align with you any day if the opportunity presents itself for a logical alliance.

By the way, who were the nations in that judge game where we should have gotten a draw but the one player let his partner consume him to spite the two of us?