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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5985660" data-attributes="member: 27160">Sorry - that was mostly happenstance. Because I am in the UK I tend to be posting "out of phase" with the majority (US) posters; as a result I come to a thread with a whole shedload of replies since my last viewing. I read through the entire thread, marking the posts I have a reaction to as "multiquotes" - in this case I marked some of Lanefan's and one of yours...I picked out your post because it seemed to me that you, too, were using "Rule 0" to mean established houserules rather than disregarding rules on the fly and making up new ones. I understand from this post that you think that's not the case, but I'm still not entirely convinced because your players, it seems, expect and accept the changes as "natural"? If so, then I wonder if there is some set of "meta-rules" that are understood, expected and accepted by the whole group concerning how various things work in the game world? If so, then I would still class those "rules" as houserules; distributing them in written form is not the only way of "publishing" them.Here is where I get the idea of the "meta-rules" I referred to - I would be interested to see where this "common sense" originates. "Common sense" doesn't seem to me to be a particularly "social contract" thing - more of a common understanding of what the rules are, even if they are not written down.OK, noted; you are claiming correlation only. I am saying that what, at least, looks like GMPC overempowerment and railroaded plots stems directly from on-the-fly use of "Rule 0" and/or the use of ambiguous rules (i.e. rules designed specifically to require on-the-fly rules creation/assumption).Yes, I do agree with your preference for clear, unambiguous rules and no, I did not miss the content of your exchange with Hussar. I do still think that tis preference flies against on-the-fly rules changes that the players don't expect - and, if they do expect them within the context of that preference, then I think it's worth exploring how and why that happens.What I suspect, here, is what I have seen many times with D&D groups; that the game world in fact runs by a set of rules that are only tangentially related to the game system as written in the rulebook, which are understood through long acquaintance by all in the gaming group and that represent a set of established preferences for that group. I may be wrong in my suspicion - please feel free to say so - but it's a phenomenon I have seen around and I get a sense that it's the case, here.It's a bit of a tangent, but I think that this is the cause of quite a bit of resistance to changing editions. What causes the real angst with the edition change is not the actual rule changes, but the fact that the underlying "meta-system" is difficult to adapt the new system to - and the resistance to changing the meta-system is very high indeed (in fact, in some cases, I get the impression that the very notion of changing the meta-system is beyond even cursory consideration).Well, to begin with, I didn't think I was disagreeing with you! Now, however, it seems as if I am - but maybe that just covers another layer on which we agree but aren't expressing our thoughts in quite the same language?Well, de facto, the group - not even just the GM - always has an "override button", since even the famed "WotC ninjas" aren't real (are they?? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)...The interesting (and key) question, to me, though, is "why override?" If it's purely GM aesthetics, I see issues. If it's some underlying "meta-system" understood by the gaming group, I see less problems, but maybe some profit to be found by analysing what that "meta-system" actually is, since that is the system the group is actually playing by.Even when already playing what you like, knowing what you like can be a good thing... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />OK, so clear, unambiguous rules are needed for magic, at least. Which leads to the next issue - what, exactly, is "non-magical" in a magical world?All of this I regard as non-system "colour" and, as such, this is a bit of a tangent, to be honest, but...Assuming that we postulate a universe where a fifth, "magical" force exists in addition to gravity, electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces (which I assume was what you were referring to) - a "magical" quint-essence, as it were - then I find it hard to believe that this fifth force will be absent from a whole swathe of objects and processes in the postulated universe. The established "real world" forces interact with each other in a myriad ways and in almost every conceivable process; I would expect the "fifth force" to do likewise. In other words, if there really is a fifth, "magical" force then the whole world will be "magical".Yeah, once you have go to that point you are essentially using a new and different ruleset anyway! I understand how folk ended up there in the early days, since there were so few starting points - you had to choose one, and if it really didn't suit you you just had to start "kitbashing" it. Nowadays, though, I think it's well worth looking around for a "best fit" starting position before starting to build that houserule edifice!I also assume, somewhat, here that folk want different things out of different campaigns. I know I do, but I also know that it's not universal to do so. If you want the same game each time, it makes perfect sense to use the same rules every time.OK, this confirms that what you are describing is what I would call "houseruling" as opposed to full "Rule 0", where the rules are just guidelines that the GM can modify at whim. As I said, I think houserules should be approached with care, because messing up a well balanced system is easy, but they are a legitimate way to get exactly the rules you want.Sure - but that's different from them "happening" to have only stuff they can use.As a complete aside, 4e modules have, on occasion, handled this well. The powers of the item in question are included in the statblock of the creature in the encounter; this means that it's crystal clear to the GM that the creature may use that power in the encounter, and then, at the end of the encounter, the party get the item as it is listed in the creatures "items carried" section.In principle there may be an equalisation, but the main priority is party optimisation. I regard this as an aspect of teamwork and a Good Thing. It certainly gets the players discussing party teamwork and "balance" in constructive, non-selfish ways.That's all very well, but the models of Vincent Baker et al still describe pretty accurately what is actually going on in the real world around an RPG table in this respect. Sticking one's fingers in one's ears, closing one's eyes and reciting purple prose loudly is not going to change that.</blockquote>

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