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<blockquote data-quote="jmartkdr2" data-source="post: 9034697" data-attributes="member: 7017304">I would say that's only usually true, or at least it comes up enough in Dungeons and Dragons to feel like it. Good, well-designed rules, when used with the correct understanding of what kind of fiction they're trying to produce/emulate/whatever, should not have cause to supersede the fiction. The Fiction and the rules should mesh, if the game is well-designed and the game book is well-written.This seems to me to be why PbtA games work so well so often: by defining the Fiction rather narrowly, they can do a much better job tailoring the rules to match, which in turn means you don't get a lot of rules/Fiction dissonance. But the ideal situation of everyone being in the same Fiction and the rules matching that Fiction is not permanently sustainable. Conflict of some kind isn't something that might happen, it's something that will happen eventually. Good design and good communication combined can put it off, but they only delay. Conflict will occur. When it does, we generally grant authority for rules - or referees - to pick a side and thus resolve the discrepancy by superseding one or the other, even if the ideal game experience has this not happening. Also, in the ideal platonic ttrpg experience, everyone is imagining the same Fiction and we're all playing in good faith. The latter is achievable, but the first two are things we hold onto as long as we can rather than expect to last forever. So we have rules/referees/procedures in place to deal with the inevitable conflict as smoothly as possible.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jmartkdr2, post: 9034697, member: 7017304"] I would say that's only usually true, or at least it comes up enough in Dungeons and Dragons to feel like it. Good, well-designed rules, when used with the correct understanding of what kind of fiction they're trying to produce/emulate/whatever, [I]should not[/I] have cause to supersede the fiction. The Fiction and the rules should mesh, if the game is well-designed and the game book is well-written. This seems to me to be why PbtA games work so well so often: by defining the Fiction rather narrowly, they can do a much better job tailoring the rules to match, which in turn means you don't get a lot of rules/Fiction dissonance. But the ideal situation of everyone being in the same Fiction and the rules matching that Fiction is not permanently sustainable. Conflict of some kind isn't something that might happen, it's something that will happen eventually. Good design [B]and[/B] good communication combined can put it off, but they only delay. Conflict will occur. When it does, we generally grant authority for rules - or referees - to pick a side and thus resolve the discrepancy by superseding one or the other, even if the ideal game experience has this not happening. Also, in the ideal platonic ttrpg experience, everyone is imagining the same Fiction and we're all playing in good faith. The latter is achievable, but the first two are things we hold onto as long as we can rather than expect to last forever. So we have rules/referees/procedures in place to deal with the inevitable conflict as smoothly as possible. [/QUOTE]

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