I didn’t acuse you of being too nuanced. I accused you of being pedantic, which you were in both your previous comment and on the one I’m replying to right now because you’ve been making this an argument over semantics.

It’s absolutely wrong take on the dillema. GOOD group doesn’t have to play in good faith - they are good players, experienced veterans, that know the art of role playing well. But they don’t have to put all their skills into good outcome. They may, for many reasons try to undermine the experience, break the game, test the ruleset for weaknesses, focus on one singe aspect of the game (for example, on combat) rather than on the whole adventure. And the other way around - bad gamers, clueless and inexperienced might still try to save their game, make the best of it.

I never said “a group of good players” or “a group of bad players”. I think it’s extremely obvious from context that by “good group” I meant the scenario you were talking about, so “a group of people playing in good faith”, and likewise meant “a group not playing in good faith” when I said “bad group”.

You’re still making this an argument over terminology (literally an argument over semantics) rather than addressing my point, which is that the thrust of your argument hinges on a false binary. Groups with players playing in good faith can still grow frustrated with each other, such as when two different existing friend groups are playing together for the first time and there are two competing ideas about how best to play or communicate. Different people are comfortable with different things and a session zero can help eliminate a lot of that friction, especially in groups with lots of new players.

Otherwise you might find your sessions devolving into pointless arguments over semantics due to a simple miscommunication, for instance. I’d much rather have this debate with you before a game ever started rather than mid-session.

As far as I can tell we’re both trying to engage in good faith, but talking past each other. If I knew you had no tolerance for the kind of conversational context I relied on with my initial comment in advance, I wouldn’t have said “good/bad” as shorthand for “people playing in good faith/people playing in bad faith” and we would’ve finished talking about this already. This type of miscommunication is extremely easy to avoid in-game by using a session zero to establish everyone’s communication styles and gameplay preferences in addition to integrating characters with the setting and balancing the party composition.