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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 9662624" data-attributes="member: 58416">As the conversation has progressed, I feel that it makes more sense to me. I appreciate that an actual discussion is taking place. In regards, to the topic, I ponder if how the rules are structured and expressed can create something akin to "unknown rules" via which player agency is removed. Anecdotally and during times when I have taught people how to play various rpgs, a reoccurring stumbling block for teaching people modern (i.e. 4th and 5th Edition) D&D is that how the rules say the in-game world works is not intuitive to how someone unfamiliar with D&D would assume that something ought to work. One example is that it is difficult to use in-game information that a character (and by proxy the player) perceives to determine the capabilities of a foe. In a world where a Gnome baking cookies in a tree may have the same strength score as the hulking Orc warrior, what information is available from which a player can assess the situation and make a meaningful choice?What does it mean in-game that an ooze has 30 charisma? Is it gurgling and undulating in an especially convincing or an especially attractive way? Most often, it means nothing -or at least nothing that a character living in that world can see. As such, the player who is trying to make decisions through that character has a more difficult time answering the question "what do you do?"Sometimes, when a new players does what they think they should do, the game says they are wrong or that they fail, but for reasons that are unclear. For example, it is reasonable that the first instinct when facing a Beholder would be to target the huge eye in the center of it (and I have witnessed a lot of newer players having that very thought). However, even if the DM allows it via an adhoc decision that technically breaks the rules of the game, the effect is most likely the same as attacking any other monster: it loses some HP. That's most likely not what the new player expected; that Chekhov's Eyeball was unimportant is unintuitive.From that perspective, what [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] was talking about in regards to Gygax instructing new players how to play and how to interact with the game world makes sense. I haven't noticed the same stumbling blocks when introducing games other than modern D&D to people -at least not nearly as often. So, can unintuitive rules structure and unintuitive results born from a game's resolution methods remove player agency by making the value of choices less knowable?</blockquote>

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