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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9594022" data-attributes="member: 4937">Table arguments are a social issue; not a rules issue.&nbsp; You can't solve out of game problems within game solutions.&nbsp; While it is good to be clear and concise, it is not possible to make something clear and concise enough that people won't argue about it. That being said, there is difference in having an agreed upon set of rules and rule by fiat. I come at this from a very different perspective that most.&nbsp; Stereotypically you tend to hear players demanding rules rather than fiat so that they can know what to expect from the game and the propositions that they make in play, whereas you tend to hear GMs going, &quot;Rules are too limiting and I can always cover and handle situations better than any complex rules.&quot; or &quot;I hate interrupting the flow of the game to look up rules.&quot;I'm almost always the GM and I hate making up fiat rulings on the fly precisely because making good rulings requires so much mental headspace that I could be using for something else, and precisely because looking things up in any really well-designed rule set with an index is faster than making things up and less likely to involve regret.&nbsp; I hear a GM talking about how they'd rather have rulings than rules and all I hear is a GM that doesn't agonize like I do over being fair or who isn't self-aware about their own biases or the probabilities that they are imposing.&nbsp; So many of the board arguments aren't based on the actual rules of the game or how a game can be or should be run using those rules, but how the person or some person in their group approached a game in a novel way because the differences in the rules gave them a new perspective on play.&nbsp; So I'm all the time hearing about how &quot;I tried this rules light game for the first time and suddenly I realized that I could be creative in offering propositions and not just limited to pressing a button to initiate a well-defined move.&nbsp; Rules heavy games constrain your creativity!&quot; and then a few posts later someone else is writing, &quot;I tried this rules light game for the first time and I got very frustrated very quickly, because no matter how creative my proposition was it all got translated into this highly simplistic move and my creativity had no impact on the resolution.&nbsp; Rules light games don't reward your creativity!&quot;&nbsp; And none of that really has anything to do with the rules.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9594022, member: 4937"] Table arguments are a social issue; not a rules issue. You can't solve out of game problems within game solutions. While it is good to be clear and concise, it is not possible to make something clear and concise enough that people won't argue about it. That being said, there is difference in having an agreed upon set of rules and rule by fiat. I come at this from a very different perspective that most. Stereotypically you tend to hear players demanding rules rather than fiat so that they can know what to expect from the game and the propositions that they make in play, whereas you tend to hear GMs going, "Rules are too limiting and I can always cover and handle situations better than any complex rules." or "I hate interrupting the flow of the game to look up rules." I'm almost always the GM and I hate making up fiat rulings on the fly precisely because making good rulings requires so much mental headspace that I could be using for something else, and precisely because looking things up in any really well-designed rule set with an index is faster than making things up and less likely to involve regret. I hear a GM talking about how they'd rather have rulings than rules and all I hear is a GM that doesn't agonize like I do over being fair or who isn't self-aware about their own biases or the probabilities that they are imposing. So many of the board arguments aren't based on the actual rules of the game or how a game can be or should be run using those rules, but how the person or some person in their group approached a game in a novel way because the differences in the rules gave them a new perspective on play. So I'm all the time hearing about how "I tried this rules light game for the first time and suddenly I realized that I could be creative in offering propositions and not just limited to pressing a button to initiate a well-defined move. Rules heavy games constrain your creativity!" and then a few posts later someone else is writing, "I tried this rules light game for the first time and I got very frustrated very quickly, because no matter how creative my proposition was it all got translated into this highly simplistic move and my creativity had no impact on the resolution. Rules light games don't reward your creativity!" And none of that really has anything to do with the rules. [/QUOTE]

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