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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8398072" data-attributes="member: 6801228">1) I obviously understand there is a contention over whether or not DMs can cheat. As you said, I'm participating in that discussion elsewhere. I don't understand how that is relevant. I only talked about cheating because The Magic Sword did, here "Neutral between the entities that they're emulating (the world, the monsters, whatever) and the entities they aren't emulating (the players and their characters) in other words, the GM is playing the orcs, but isn't cheating in their favor, and in theory they may kind of want the players to win, they aren't cheating in the player's favor either, so the simulation is unbiased by a desired outcome, but instead plays to its logical conclusions based off the actions of both entities."       So, I engaged in their definition of neutrality, which relied on the idea that the DM is not cheating in either direction. If you have a problem with their definition, talking to me doesn't resolve that.2) Again, irrelevant. The Magic Sword defines Neutrality as not cheating. I asked how they view neutrality as possible if cheating is impossible, which it would be in a ruleless system. If you want to extend that further to DnD, feel free, but then the same question arises, if the definition of neutrality involves not doing the impossible, then every DM no matter what they do or how they favor one side, is neutral, because they are not cheating.3) Then, based on The Magic Sword's definition of neutrality, FKR games also don't lend themselves to a neutral referee. Since you will claim that they do have a neutral referee, one of two things must be happening. Either cheating is possible in a game without rules, or Magic Sword's definition of neutrality is wrong. You liked the post that had their definition, which puts you in a rather odd position to be saying that their definition is wrong, and that you liked their definition.Sure, multiple ways of running games is helpful in general to address tropes. But, if we agree that some rules are necessary and good (which it seems even FKR games do, since you state that they have rule-sets) then what are we discussing no-rule games for? It would seem that everyone has agreed that that is not offering much to us. I agree, perhaps thinking about how a rules-lite game runs, or the type of prep it requires can help understand how to improve our games, but giving it cursory thought (all I can afford since I'm an hour late to bed) I wonder what useful things we can pull from them? The first thing I can think of is that a FKR game would require extensive research into a subject matter, to be able to run it with expertise and answer any obscure questions that come up. This could be useful in DnD... except, as we often know, DnD rules sometimes break the reality that research would reveal. Like Brigantine armor, or the amount of crew a sailing vessel needs. In fact, I've often found that too much real-world knowledge of certain subjects makes running DnD harder, not easier. There is value in figuring this out, obviously, but it seems a difficult thing to reverse once done. So, what are some values you have found in studying these games that you think we could bring into DnD? You've thought about it far more than I have, but I don't recall you actually offering any fruits of that line of thinking. Other than reducing rules in general.</blockquote>

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