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It seems like the kind of thing Gygax said all the time: feel free to ignore the dice when you feel like it. I'm sure he wouldn't bother about lying about the number though; he probably didn't even say what dice rolls were involved in the first place.

Clearly you get the point of the definition I'm using, but reject it because you dislike the implications (including for 5E). There's nothing more for me to say beyond, "no really, that's what I mean when I say RPGs are not complete in the same sense chess is: there's no uniquely determined next...

I would frame this a little differently: it's an advantage that they are playable in an incomplete state. An incomplete CRPG would just crash. (Unless the Everett Many-World hypothesis is true! In which case I guess you could theoretically build a quantum CRPG that forks the universe and...

If your point is that it's possible for good play to generate stories, emergently, but the story isn't pre-known to the DM... I agree. Slightly off-topic, but this is why destinies and oracles are relatively hard to use in RPGs. A DM or GM can theoretically roleplay an omnipotent being but not...

It is productive for contrasting TTRPGs with other things, like CRPGs, chess, or Monopoly. I think we're all talking about different things here, EzekielRaiden. I am getting the sense that maybe your point is that dictators are bad, and that a DM who says something like "starting now, Fighters...

That would fall into the camp of being just like every other RPG I'm aware of: needing a GM or GM substitute (like player consensus) to fill in gaps. It's sometime that can only be done by a human, not a CRPG, and to bring us back on topic, it's the primary purpose of GM fiat/Rule Zero/whatever...

Method 2 is interesting and not something I'd ever thought of before. Obviously there are limitations to both modes but it's thought-provoking! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks. I think you're saying that the term "rule zero" adds nothing to discourse about any particular game and might as well be dropped. I wish I knew if that was the point Aldarc was trying to make.

Yes. Semantic arguments are arguments about what things are called, rather than what they do. What's your substantive point? Are you trying to ask a question about what fiat does? (See above discussion of incompleteness...

Semantic arguments are boring. What's the substantive difference underlying this analogy? Apparently you believe that it's important whether "that which causes storms" is called "Thor" or "Zeus". Why, and what actual point are you trying to make about game rules?

I think that's a pretty good working definition. I would hope that G and G' are both consistent enough that the transform from State to State' via Unwritten Rule will be consistent from today to tomorrow, but for proving incompleteness it's enough to show that there's no existing unique mapping...

I found this custom move on a Dungeon World wiki: As I predicted; sounds like rule creation/fiat exercise to me.

I haven't played Dungeon World, but if you're using "sufficient" the way I think you are, meaning "no creativity or rule interpolation/creation" is required, I find that claim hard to believe. I hear dungeon worlders talking about making up "custom moves," with defined prerequisites and effects...

Yeah, in Monopoly if you get put in jail, and then on your turn you say "I fake being sick so the jailer will come in, and then I punch him in the throat and run out of jail," nothing happens except that everyone rolls their eyes and tells you to just roll the dice already. You can't go outside...

In rulesets that are relatively complete for most purposes, GM fiat is invoked more infrequently IME, and usually to patch one of the infinite-but-relatively-infrequently-encountered holes in that ruleset. I honestly can't think of a better way to use GM fiat, which we're apparently calling...

I know! And if you look at my posts in this thread, that's why you'll see me saying things like "AFAICT it's not possible to design an RPG that cannot deliver you to an ill-defined game state". (Paraphrased, but I'm pretty sure the "AFAICT" is in there literally.) I've never seen one that could...

IME it would alter the game quite a bit from a Combat As War standpoint, though not necessarily for the worse. In today's 5E ruleset, having a Sharpshooter in the party trivializes certain problems, which means you can solve certain other problems by reducing them to already-solved problems...

Why not make the VTT generate the details? A good VTT should be able to accept GM input stating something like "fill in the quarter mile between the road and the farmhouse with rough terrain: wheat fields in the process of growing and occasional rocks, trees, or creeks." Isn't the whole point...

Mostly the new spells and spheres in Tome of Magic, and things built on top of them. They feel priestly, not wizardly (except for maybe Mental Domination), but in a way quite different from PHB priestly spheres. As a result, a priest of mathematics feels very different from a priest of thought...

To feel like I'm playing a TTRPG? Minimalist. To be glad I'm playing this specific RPG? Enough well-crafted and asymmetrical rules to be interesting (probably "heavy", although those heavy rules might come from spells and magic items a la BECMI instead of being core) PLUS enough structured...