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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8267088" data-attributes="member: 6790260">For my part, the world definitely exists in a "imaginary but concrete" way, but its manifestation in numbers does not, exactly in the same way that a map is not the territory itself but depends on a real territory existing in order to have meaning and purpose.That concrete "existence" is necessary for players to be able to make informed decisions and adapt to the results of their choices. If there is nothing (imaginarily) "durable," no ontological inertia as TVTropes puts it, you can't really learn anything: there are no entities for you to learn anything about, no referents to hold the reference. But just because the world persists and has "durable" content, doesn't mean that the representation of those things in the abstractions is always identical, even for the exact same creature (e.g. not just the type "adult red dragon," but specifically Karithraxa the Inferno). Karithraxa has a specific history, specific non-combat attributes, etc. and those things can't be changed without justification (ontological inertia). (As always, as long as it really COULD be known, even if bad luck, coincidence, or lack of effort prevented it from actually being known.) But the question, "How much of a threat is Karithraxa the Inferno?" simply does not have a singular answer due to being context-dependent. That context comes from what the world is, but is not fixed in any meaningful sense. Just as "What is important enough about this location to include on a map?" is too contextual to give an absolute answer to, yet still arises from the durable, concrete nature of the territory itself. Every map is necessarily partial; if it is a good map, however, it is "partial" by way of being only the parts that are relevant to you when you're using it. A statblock is likewise: it is necessarily partial, contextual, but a good statblock is so by being only what information matters for the fight it appears in, nothing more and nothing less.</blockquote>

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