howandwhy99
Adventurer
But there is no absence of rules, if the DM is following them. I strongly disagree it is less satisfying, and again the evidence in the videogame arena alone is hugely against your point.It is. But if the player decides on an objective, it is much more satisfying to be able to realize that objective through application of well-defined rules, and say "I do this", than to ask the DM "do you permit me to succeed?", which is what a player must fall back on to in the absence of rules.
That's an absolutism and one I disagree with. It's a kind of soft bigotry that prevents any growth in RPG design beyond its current state.It's essentially inevitable that a DM will need to use fiat (that is, decisions made not on the basis of game rules) from time to time, if not frequently).
They aren't the rules known to the players, they are the rules of the puzzle design, the game system. It's why nearly 100% of them are called guidelines. You didn't have to use them as the known rules weren't the proverbial cartridge so to speak, but the console.And I don't think obfuscating the rules is a good thing, anyway, as the rules are a players only real means to impact the world they're playing in, without appealing to fiat.
It depends upon your game design goals. When designing a puzzle game guessing can be the point.I don't see a good reason to make them guess about what their options are.
I'll do a google search for a post of mine in the last couple months about the everfull beer stein we found. The rules of how it functioned are still unknown to us, but it provided hours of fun just by itself.I think specifics might be useful: can you recall a specific gameplay experience within recent memory which imparted a "sense of wonder" to you? What gameplay mechanic helped enable that feeling?
EDIT: It's in the spoiler
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