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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6278855" data-attributes="member: 4937">I didn't realize that the opinion, "There isn't one." was going to be a priori discounted as an answer.I also find that the most interesting answers to many questions involve disputing the unreflected upon premises of the question.I certainly wasn't attempting to rile you up about it, as I think my intial post in the thread demonstrates.Funny, but you are using definitions for mechanic and RPG that I don't recoginze.  Meriam Webster provides as the definition of game: "a physical or mental activity or contest that has rules and that people do for pleasure".   It sounds to me like you enjoy role-playing without the game aspect of it normally associated with an RPG.  I take great pleasure in just telling shared stories and role-playing as well, but they they aren't games in the usual sense.Likewise, mechanic is a term of art used in games to describe a rule or set of rules used by the players to arbitrate a proposition by a player from within a current game state and determine the new game state.   For example, the D20 mechanic where you roll a dice, modified by circumstantial qualifiers, to try to exceed a target number in order to succeed at a task is a mechanic.  The assertion, "No one should be forced to play an RPG if they don't wish to do so", is good table rule, but is certainly not a mechanic.   Now, feel free to tell me what you mean by games and mechanics.If this is in fact true and you truly prefer rules free form play, it seems incoherent to even expect that there is a mechanic which all games would benefit from.   In fact, I would have thought if anything, you're answer would have been the same as I just gave but in extreme - the clever thing to do would be remove all mechanics from the game rather than add to them.I assure you though that in this case, you are just voicing a personal preference about games, and not saying something universal about RPGs.   I've two 8 year olds and its fascinating to watch them engage in imaginative play of the sort you describe, without character sheets, dice, rules, or anything but the 'players' taking turns saying what happens.  I can and have engaged in that sort of play, and during stretches my own games - even D&D - can seem like that sort of free form play.   I will say though that first of all, Rule Zero isn't actually in force during such play.   Completely lacking in mechanics, or at least in the usage of mechanics, there is no need for a Rule Zero to override the game mechanics in the first place.   And secondly, that this sort of play isn't the sort of play that many or necessarily even most people who engage in RPG's prefer.   Quite a few gamers will walk away from the table if Rule Zero is openly enforced or enforced in particular ways, and I've played with many gamers that understand the rules to be a contract binding all involved.   I'm not saying that is necessarily my preference, but I certainly understand the motivation that is driving that.If you look at how RPGs evolve out of free form imaginative play and theater games, they do so to try to handle two problems you see repeatedly crop up in such play.  First, the problem of conflict familiar to any game of 'Cops and Robbers' or 'Cowboys and Indians'.  In its most simple form:Player #1: "Bang. I shot you."  Player #2: "No you didn't, you missed."Thus the first need for a mechanic is born.  In my own game at age 4, the mechanic we adopted was to throw a pine cone.  If it struck, "Bang I shot you."   If it missed, "No you didn't, you missed."The other problem mechanics attempt to address is the problem of equal share of the play - a problem I see continually interrupting my kids free form play.  Surely the best investigation of this problem in literature is 'Weekend with Wendall' by Kevin Henkes.   Thus, the need for more mechanics are born.It's precisely because Rules Zero threatens the mechanics that gaurantee each player an equal share of the play that many players of RPGs balk at its implementation.   Rule Zero is not in fact a mechanic.  It's a means of lifting mechanics when the players feel the mechanics are threatening the fun of play.  But not everyone agrees that is worth while, nor is it true that most or even every game benefits from it.   My game of Cops and Robbers as a 4 year old, surely an RPG by any definition, wouldn't have benefited from a Rule Zero that thwarted the pine cone rule.</blockquote>

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