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If you share the rule with your sister (even if you don't write it down), then you get the benefits of having a rule, such as increased predictability.The amount of benefit varies with the specific rule, but practically any communicated rule is an improvement in predictability over GM As Black...

I said rules are needed to add predictability, so that Q&A with the GM isn't needed, and you contradicted that. If you think that having a rule that says to roll dice, add modifiers, and use the result to select between the player's imagination and the GM's imagination (basically extreme FKR...

I don't know why people keep getting so emotionally defensive on this thread, interjecting remarks like "I don't think that the story now type games I play have a very high instance of this" into discussions on what contrivance is as well as the larger discussion on what rules are for. You think...

For the first time ever I find myself wishing I could actually play a game of Traveller because the techniques you're describing for making a profit sound pretty fun! Like the old school Starlight game.

[polite cough] Um, you're describing a rule. You know, the thing @pemerton said was a "needless intermediary."

Less contrived than Bob and Bruno? Yes. It could still feel somewhat contrived but if you introduce Bruno mere minutes (or even seconds) after Bob plops Bruno's character sheet on the table it could hardly feel more contrived. That's an example of something that's both contrived and good for...

The group could talk it out, but you've missed the point: talking (Q&A) takes longer than thinking, which increases the cognitive separation between player and character. You're a wizard with 12 spells including Defensive Teleport, Earthen Grasp, Web, Explosive Lightning Bolt, and Magic...

In GM-less solo play or novel writing, sure. In normal play though, a player cannot read the mind of the GM, so in the absence of rules, Q&A would be required to learn how the GM imagines the result of snaring a horse in a giant web.

It's impossible for me to believe that you aren't familiar with the concept of narrative contrivance. In fact I gave an example of justified contrivance (IMO) in the post you quoted: introducing a character in a contrived way in order to prevent a new player from having to sit and do nothing...

Oh, okay. I would have thought that was a truism not worth proving, but okay. The other big thing I think your argument is overlooking though is that rules aren't just events in G, they are a procedure for (hopefully uniquely!) producing events drawn from G. Otherwise you wouldn't need rules...

Is this a typo? Don't you want an o that belongs to E but not to S, instead of vice versa? Or am I missing your point? I agree that rules exist to say no, but they also increase predictability for players and therefore make it easier to get into character. (If the character knows from the...

I can't take credit for that because I was thinking more of Fridge Logic (things that make less sense when you think back on them, like a movie plot hole that's not quite obvious enough to bother you the first time you watch the movie). But I agree! That's where a GM or DM who has earned trust...

Simon gets eaten by the dragon, but then a new sorcerer named Sam who turns out to be Simon's cousin joins the party, following the Law of Conservation of Party Size.

How could he do that when he was clearly a low-level Rogue? :p

I think I probably agree. Even in blorb play you'll run into situations, e.g. in roleplaying an NPC, where details have to be invented on the spot in order to extrapolate from them. PCs try to hire a mercenary for $400 a week (20 silver). He says yes. They say, "oh by the way, we're never...

With too much power comes too much responsibility. This is one reason I like blorby play. If players and GM have both bought into blorb principles, the GM does not even have power to save you from the looming TPK! You must save yourselves.

This statement from Fritz Leiber strikes me as an interesting contrast to Tolkien's method of plotting out world details exhaustively in advance (e.g. the Silmarillion): "It must always be remebered [sic] that I know no more of Nehwon than I have put into my stories. There are no secret volumes...

Question to PBtA fans: do PBtA GMs have the social authority to add tags ad hoc in order to make things make more sense? If I have an enormous hammer that gets +1 vs. targets with the Immobile tag, and someone casts a Superglue spell on a log to give it the Sticky tag, and then a halfling sits...

I suspect this is due to you being more familiar with Ron Edwards and GNS instead of GDS: Edwards IIRC is pretty down on mixing S with G or N--he calls it "incoherent play" IIRC--whereas GDS expects G, D, and S to be intermingled. So maybe your GNS bias is why you're interpreting "XYZ decreases...

Count me as someone who does believe that contrived narratives harm my willing suspension of disbelief, and feeling of verisimilitude. Sometimes that price is worth paying, e.g. so that a new player doesn't have to sit around waiting for his character to be introduced into the narrative...