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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9286487" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Which means the abstraction can, and should, change if doing so gets closer to the actual state of affairs.Not at all. It follows that the rules should prioritize efficacy and functionality. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Consistency is not an unalloyed good. It has many benefits, and thus we should not dismiss a wise consistency. I myself am an advocate for a wide variety of particular kinds of consistency, e.g. unified resolution mechanics, not on the brute fact that they are consistent, but rather because their consistency leads to something else that is valuable in itself, such as making it easier, simpler, and more natural to adjudicate, or to speed up the learning process (which is, was, and always will be the single greatest hurdle to getting people into the hobby.) Requiring that the rules rigidly produce only and exactly one description of something, when that thing's value is necessarily relative to the context in which it appears, is a foolish consistency, pulling us away from efficacy and functionality.But that was exactly my point...?But it does change. By definition! You don't get street view data when you're looking at the whole Earth. It isn't just too small to see, it is in fact not there. And once you zoom in to see the street view, geographic data like contour lines isn't there. It's genuinely not displayed. Because that's not what is useful or relevant in that context.The globe itself remains what it is. Main Street is always there, in terms of the territory. But when we look at states and continents, we do not render Main Street. When we look at Main Street, we do not render states and continents. The data isn't simply "currently out of view." It is genuinely not present on the map until it is called up--and other data is necessarily put away when one does this. That's the whole point.The map is not the territory--and different maps actually do have different information on them. The territory always remains whatever it is (I assume you grant that we're looking at the territory only in one particular moment.) But which parts of the territory are in fact on the map, and which ones are intentionally left off the map, varies by context. It is precisely the same with the level 2 solo ogre and the level 14 (or whatever) minion ogre. Different data has been represented in the abstraction, because we have proverbially "zoomed out."You have simply made the argument circular. It is consistent because it must be; it must be consistent because it is.I'm saying that it is useful to allow non-consistency in this context, because the thing we wish to represent--the danger posed by this threat--IS different today than it was six months ago. The creature is the same, but the context is different, and the context is always what matters.Except that there is a reason. The 88-HP ogre cannot produce the kind of experience you intend with this. It just can't. That's the whole point. You are hoping and praying that coincidence will fall in your favor. We can do better; we can design better.</blockquote>

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