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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8525505" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>I do not believe you can separate, in a meaningful way, between 'principles' and 'mechanics', it is all of a whole. I mean, I think you can classify some things as one and some as the other, but I think they are, in effect, often very similar. A principle might be constitutive, it tells you a thing to do, like "draw maps, leave holes", or it might be restrictive "never name your move." These principles ARE RULES, they may not be very 'mechanical' in structure, and they may have referents either in cues or in fiction, but they are certainly very similar to what you call 'mechanics'. Now, I've taken to using that term in the way you seem to use it, but maybe I regret it to a degree, as refactoring the debate into a discussion of cues and fiction seems to show us how fundamentally anything that tells us about playing is a RULE. I would state that RPG texts contain Rules, Advice, and Fiction/Color. That might be a fruitful parsing to explore (maybe there are other categories and subcategories, I am not trying to be canonical here).</p></blockquote><p></p>