I was tossing around the phrase "Collaboration vs. Utilization in RPGs" the other day, which I'm aware by itself sounds like a ridiculously pompous phrase – what actually happened was I was trying to boil the concept down to the fewest possible words, and those were the ones I got. I think the concept itself is fairly simple; it started out as a comparison in the back of my mind the other night, and I managed to tease it out and actually look at it. When I did that, I thought something along the lines of "... oh, well no wonder I feel that way!"

So, to explain it, I'll start with the comparison.

( I'm cutting this because it's kind of long and I'd like to be polite, but I'd really like it if you'd read it anyway. )

Dear Neighbor,

I don't know who you are. There are, after all, twelve apartments in this building, and you could live in any of eleven of them, as I know you aren't delight, and therefore you don't live in Apartment 8. For that matter, in theory you could live in one of the three other buildings in this complex – you might not even live here at all, and only know someone who does. You could, in fact, be almost anyone.

I would like to talk to you about a small matter of common courtesy.

You see, I know there's a laundry room downstairs. It's not the highest quality; the machines are a little bit overpriced, only one of the two dryers works worth a damn, and one of the washers regularly floods the entire floor. Still, it's a lot more convenient to do laundry downstairs (or, in the case of apartments 1-4, down the hall) than it is to pack everything into baskets or bags and haul them off to a laundromat, especially as there isn't one of those in the neighborhood.

And like I said – the machines are overpriced. I can understand the desire to get them to wash and dry the maximum load possible, so that you can save your quarters. I just want you to consider, a little, that if you over load the machines, they won't work as efficiently. You'll flood the floor more, and you'll end up running both dryers twice because your clothes will still be soaking wet.

And as for the reason I'm actually writing this, some eighteen hours after I started to write it –

When you overload a washing machine, you don't just flood the floor. You also prevent the machine from washing your clothes, ie, the reason you fed it the quarters in the first place. And when, then, you dry your overloaded load, not only are you overpaying the dryer, but you are also – and this is the important part – making the entire apartment building smell like your smelly, improperly-washed clothing.

The humidity dumped by the dryers and the flooding of the floor (which, last week, you might recall, also had a bonus sewage smell) is bad enough. Please let me walk through the hallways of my own building, up to my apartment door, without choking on the smell of your stinky clothes.

Cordially yours,
Apartment 8