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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6942040" data-attributes="member: 6775031">The characters can only observe the in-game reality which corresponds to the math, rather than the math itself, but it doesn't take a master of physics to understand that a bigger weapon hurts more. It might seem simplistic, and it could even be mis-leading in some cases, but in this case it's exactly as obvious as it appears.In real life, you might actually fight better with your particular weapon. I'm fairly confident that a real-world test would indicate that people perform better with the tool they're used to, rather than one with a slightly superior design. Real life is complicated. Likewise, I know for a fact that a game-world test would indicate that people perform better with the better tool, and comfort isn't a factor at all. The game world is a less complicated place, and for characters to treat is as though it was as complicated as our world is disingenuous.If that's where you think I'm going with this, then you don't understand my point at all. I'm all about role-playing. If I'm guilty of one-true-way-ism, then the true way which I advocate is role-playing above all else and the absolute admonition of any form of meta-gaming. (Which is more extreme than my actual position; I'll admit that there are times when meta-gaming is the lesser of two evils.)It's just that people have a lot of mis-conceptions about role-playing. Some people seem to think it means you should play the character as though their world operated like our own world -- which is actually a form of meta-gaming. The character doesn't know anything about how things work in our world. The character only knows what they can observe about their world, of which we only know that the rules of the game are an adequate reflection under certain circumstances.Going back to the previous example, the characters within the game world absolutely do not know that scimitars are better than long-swords when you're attacking from horseback. It may be true in our world, but it's not true in the game world. A test that we perform in our world, which might verify scimitar superiority under certain conditions, would have a different outcome in the game world. In order for it to have the same outcome, you would have to add rules covering that condition to the game in order to make it so -- which is also a solution, of course, because then it brings those factors into the realm of what the character can observe!Otherwise, though, you'd be like the poor wizard who proclaims the impossibility of a twenty-foot tall humanoid, claiming that there's no way it could possibly support its own weight. You're making an argument based on information that you don't have, which isn't even true.(I am over-stating the assumption that you're all playing competent professionals, which is far from as universal I seem to imply, but that's only to get to the larger point about role-playing based on observable realities rather than meta-gaming.)</blockquote>

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