Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[JohnSnow]

From my experience, 'Group A' and 'Group B' is not a useful distinction. In practice, the two groups can be and often are behaving in exactly the same way. The distinction tends to actually be most important in fact only in theoretical discussions.

That's because even if you hold 'A' as your nominal position, and I would say that I do, in practice you end up holding 'B' as your actual position as often as not. Because in practice, you are routinely turning to the rules to resolve the question of cause and effect.

Ah. I think you misunderstood what my distinctions mean in the context of actual play.

In play, when resolving situations, Group A types still follow the rules of the game. Because that's precisely what they're for. What they don't hold to be true is that each and every plot element in a particular adventure must be explainable by the rules of the game.

Let's say that Azoun IV was a mighty adventurer in his youth and slew a mighty dragon in single combat. Therefor, we can presume that, even though he's an NPC, he's got the stats of a 16th-level fighter, or a 17th-level warlord, or whatever is appropriate.

However, for the purposes of our story, he's now an elderly 60 (but still a 16th-level "hero"), and the DM wants to write an adventure dealing with a succession crisis in Cormyr. The Group A position is that the DM shouldn't have to work around the game rules to engineer an unexpected death for this once-mighty NPC. Because, since he's an NPC, he doesn't get the "plot protection" that the game rules exist to provide.

Make sense?

So when the PCs are involved, Group A uses the rules to resolve those interactions, in order to offer a consistent game experience. Similarly, no NPC who's interacting with the PCs is going to have anything happen to him that won't happen to a PC as long as he's "plot-relevant." However, that restriction no longer applies when said NPC is either "offstage" or when he becomes "plot irrelevant."

As another example, I'd never cut off a PC's arm, or put out his eye. But if a PC scores a critical hit on a goblin that puts him out of the fight, I, as DM, reserve the right to rule that the blow chopped off said goblin's arm or leg, put out his eye, or whatever other grisly injury I see fit.

That's because once the goblin is out of the fight, he's no longer "plot relevant." But the PCs are always "plot relevant," because they're PCs.

That applies even moreso when I, as a DM, decide that a given NPC has a limp, one eye, a nasty scar, or a peg-leg. By the rules, there's no way he can have any injuries that severe, but it's cool atmosphere, so I bend the rules.

When it comes to a decision like that for a PC, it's entirely in the player's hands. If Bob wants his PC to have a nasty scar from a streetfight as a child, or if he wants to decide that he gets one following a particularly nasty fight in-game, that's up to him.

Does that clear up my position?

 

[pemerton]

This is well said. Your whole post is well said. You are an excellent person.

Very kind of you to say so. I enjoy your posts as well!

 

[pemerton]

I personally enjoy consistency in rules.

<snip>

Well, if you're changing the rules, you're changing the rules.

You refine the rules, you don't ignore them.

As DM, if you break the rules, then it impedes the fun of KM.

I think part of the OP's point is that it is up for grabs what the rules are when the PCs are not involved.

I don't consider the 20th level neck-snap a break in the rules, because I am interpreting the rules to not apply to that situation already. Any arguments from me that levels are an abstract template for game play purposes and not factored into the world are not a house-rule or fiat advocacy argument, but a statement of my interpretation of the RAW.

Right.

The rules are there to resolve conflicts (challenges) with the PCs (actually the players and the DM) and allow the GM and players to share control of the scene/environment on different levels. If the PCs are not in conflict (this means all forms of social, mental and physical conflict) then the rules are not needed to resolve anything.

Possibly the rules could state something like this in D&D; in many systems they do.

I think an issue that this thread has raised is this: if the rules are silent on the matter (as D&D seems to be, in contrast with purist-for-system simulationism) then is it "breaking the rules" to do what the OP suggested.

I used to have a DM who fudged dice rolls behind his screen. It was very annoying. Play the game, but play it by the rules.

The sense that you're allowing it, that you choose not to stop them -- rather than actually not being able to stop them via the rules -- is what reminds me constantly that we're in the DM's universe, and that the DM gets to say what goes.

The It's more fun to play a game in which I, as a player, can use the rules to affect the world than one in which you, as a DM, just tell me what I am capable of.

I think that these comments miss a crucial presupposition of the OP and most of those posting sympathetic responses: that there is a crucial difference between situations in which PC/player protagonism is at stake, and situations (like off-scene NPC lives) in which it is not. The OP is not talking about situations in which protagonism is at stake.

This breaks my suspension of disbelief as well, because it creates two categories of people in the world (at least), and the category is entirely dependant on a metagame consideration.

<snip>

In the real world, if my co-worker goes home for the night, they're the same person they were when they were with me during the day. In D&D, if my adventuring buddy retires, he's suddenly vulnerable to a host of mundane threats that he was immune to when he was with me on adventures?

There is one category of person in the gameworld. It's just that some people in the gameworld (ie the PCs) happen never to suffer certain sorts of misfortune. By analogy, Frodo and the Proudfoots are the same sort of hobbit, but (as it happens) Frodo never suffers certain sorts of misfortune. Protagonism is not an ingame status, it is a purely metagame status. If it doesn't threaten your suspension of disbelief in other media, I don't see why, of necessity, it must do so in a fantasy RPG.

Again, I'd feel robbed of agency and feeling impotent, because I am again reminded that the only reason I'm slaughtering them is because you're letting me.

Prof Phobos is extending the OP's point to cases where player protagonism is simply asserted by consent at the table ("We slaughter the skeletons", "We overcome the town guard") rather than game mechanics. I don't understand why, of necessity, such a set of rules (consensual drama in place of randomised action resolution mechanics) should make the players feel impotent, given that it is their request and consent that gives rise to it.

It'd be nice if you created a rule for what happens when you outclass an opponent, though. That way, I could use the rule, instead of letting you just do whatever you please.

<snip>

This is why "mother may I?" play is unsatisfying for me.

There is a rule: "If the players and GM agree, it happens." The suggestion that this sort of play (which is very common in many RPGs, and is not expressly excluded by the D&D rules) is "mother may I" play is - if I may be blunt - ridiculous.

It doesn't matter how good your intentions are. It doesn't matter if you understand that the spirit of the rules or the needs of the story are more important than the rules. All that does is delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, everything will either conform to the rules or the 'audience' will rebel because they'll feel cheated.

Again, to suggest that any non-simulationist ruleset will produce feelings of having been cheated is, in my view, ridiculous.

If you want a high-level NPC to be able to die from falling off a horse, you, as a DM, need to justify that.

If you don't make every king a 20th level fighter (and instead make them, perhaps, a 2nd level Aristocrat), it's not so hard to kill them. 20th level heroes are, by definition, difficult to kill.

That's one way to go. The problem is, it means that there is no King who is both vulnerable to horse-falls AND well-trained (= focus, specialised, improve critical) in swordplay. And this in itself puts limits on the gameworld that can easily seem arbitrary.

It's not as if the anti-simulationists haven't thought of the things the pro-simulationists are suggesting. It's that they, for various reasons that are cogent for them, have decided to play the game a different way.

This is one of those places where 'new rules' would be useful.

With exception of magic, the game world operates under similar mechanics that our real world does.

<snip>

It took just a slight bit of tweaking for wounds and death to work in my D&D game.

That's one way to do it. RM goes in a similar direction. But it is not the only way. And this sort of simulationism has the tendency to produce rules bloat (and again, from long experience, I'd put RM forward as an example).

No, they're just highly simulationist game systems. But plenty of stuff that happens in Glorantha was not possible in the Runequest 2e ruleset.

Fair enough. But I hope my point still made sense (more or less).

I think many problems begin in games when the rules are treated like the physics of th world, this is true even in high sim games like RM.

Agreed. But problems can also arise from the sort of system that the OP and others are talking about. For example, there may be corner-cases about what constitutes "relevant to player/PC protagonism." For me, the important point from this thread is not that simulationism is fatally flawed, but that it is not the only way to play an RPG.

The important thing, however, is to remember that the default assumption present in D&D is that the world does actually look a hell of a lot more like OotS than reality, and that regardless of what you find believable, this is what people mean when they talk about D&D.

And in my view the important thing to remember is that what you assert to be obviously true is in fact up for grabs. The rules (via their silence) leave it up for grabs, and this thread makes it obvious that different people play in different fashions.

I'm really weirded out that I'm taking the same side of this discussion as some of the others.

Come over to the Death of Simulation thread and join with the dark side!

 

[I'm A Banana]

This whole track started because of the loaded language you use to describe a different playstyle from your own. Nobody's calling you names because you insist on adhering to the game rules in contravention of all common sense.

I said the OP's examples felt lazy and they, to me, lack creativity. They feel this way because they circumvent the rules, rather than working with them, and part of the reason I play D&D rather than write stories with my friends is because I enjoy working with the rules. A DM who doesn't work according to the rules (which is cheating, even if it's allowed cheating, even if it's cheating that makes the game better for some groups) isn't a DM I would enjoy playing with. To me, the abandonment of internal consistency and the resort to fiat scuttle believability and make me feel impotent as a player.

I stand by all those statements, but I fail to see how my opinion really criticises anyone, rather than pointing out that my demands for believability in my games might just be unreasonably demanding for some DM's and for some players. I accept this. It's okay. People can go have fun seeking their narrative game all they want.

I won't. I don't want. There are many very good reasons why I don't want it. This doesn't mean my games are lousy or that I am a problem player. It just means that your game doesn't amuse me. My game probably wouldn't amuse you. I'm not particularly offended by that.

D&D has never been anything more than a beer & pretzels fantasy adventure game IMO. That means it has some light simulation like any wargame, but it doesn't get too deep. It's not ASL for goodness sake. We don't need dozens of books to play. Everything else is just gravy.

I wouldn't want it to be. I don't really want a hardcore simulation game. What I want is a rules system that everyone obeys at all times. This includes rules for when fiat or making up new rules are okay, but mostly it includes rules for describing what happens in the game. When people get injured, they take damage. This is a rule for the game. If we abandon the rule, we're not playing the game anymore, in my mind. And if we're not playing a game here, how about we pick up the Wii and play a few rounds of Smash Brothers instead, because what I want to do is play a game.

Maybe what you want to do is tell a good story (and use a game system to do that). That's cool. Have fun. I wouldn't. I'm far too harsh a critic on storytelling for D&D to ever really satisfy me.

Your real objection is that it interferes with your "suspension of disbelief." And that's a wholly subjective criteria.

Indeed, so you can see why I was surprised when suddenly I was accused of having badwrongfun.

Surely you can keep the two distinct?

Yeah, but that doesn't get at the fact that my heroic adventurer is deathly affraid of these horses and their slippery saddles of heroic doom, now, because obviously being able to face a terrifying dragon's jaws doesn't mean you also can't just have a fatal 'whoopsiedaisy.'

Behaving in-character, 20th level heroes dying from falling out of saddles creates a truly un-fun experience for me, because I need to now play my character as if he could die from falling out of a saddle. This would, in short order, lead to a lot of pretty absurd behavior on the part of my character. "Hmm...the necromancer king is giving us some trouble. Maybe we can give him a gift, perhaps some sort of horse, that can then endanger his life!"

Again, Batman acts as if his neck can be broken. But we all know his neck will never break falling off a horse. But Batman doesn't know that. And we expect Batman not to act as if he knows. With the exception of She-Hulk, Deadpool, the Discworld, Jack Slater and Ambush Bug, we don't expect fictional characters to recognize that they're fictional and act accordingly.

But Batman, again, isn't really in the same heroic model that Superman is, which is why Superman is a better comparison. Superman doesn't just fly as a matter of narrative convenience, he actually flies. He has heat vision. He is invulnerable to bullets. These are literal truths about him.

In D&D, a 20th level fighter can avoid death from the jaws of a dragon. Actually, not just as a matter of narrative convenience. That same 20th level fighter can kill the necromancer-king. Not just because the DM thinks it would be cool, but because he can actually walk up to the Necromancer King and put something pointy in his gut. That fighter has a cleric friend who can raise people from the dead. Not just because it makes for a good game, but because he can actually raise people from the dead. These are literal truths about these characters that don't go away just because they aren't on the scene.

Batman knows he can step out of the shower without slipping and falling and cracking his head and dying. He knows he can probably take Gotham's junior martial arts champion in a fight. Despite the fact that, realistically, an awkward push from the kid could cause Batman to sprawl face-first into a chair. A 20th level D&D fighter knows that a short fall is something he can walk away from. Despite the fact that, realistically, a normal person doesn't. Superman knows he can fire lasers with his eyes. Even though, realistically, no one else can. None of these are narrative expedience; these are all true statements about these characters. These abilities don't go away just because they're not the center of attention.

Basically, I cannot understand the idea behind building a car but never driving it. If the only interaction you want out of a given session is through the mechanics, why not just play a CRPG or a MMO or a miniatures game? Why have a roleplaying game without the roleplaying?

"If all you want to do is build, why not build something useful?"

"If all you want to do is tell a story, why not write a novel?"

"If all you want to do is simulate a world, why not play Runequest?"

I mean, that's why I'm posting in this thread, isn't it? Because I can, currently, use D&D to indulge something I find very satisfying, and I'm concerned, in the next edition, that I will find it less satisfying, and I am an opinionated little jerk who has a platform to voice those concerns on.

I'm not telling you to go write a novel (though I might say that to someone who, in my games, wanted special treatment for the sake of the story). I'm telling you that what you seek from the game isn't the same thing that I seek, and that in getting to what you seek, you will make the game less fun for me.

And you're telling me what I seek is wrong?

RPGs have the unique distinction of serving multiple purposes. It's a hybrid sort of leisure activity. There is storytelling, there is world-building and there is straight-up gaming. RPGs are a mixture of the three.

It's a mixture of a lot more than that, and what individual groups decide to place first and foremost is largely a matter of what the individual players (including the DM) want to get out of it.

I'm concerned that 4e will make it harder to get what I want out of the game. It might not, but the purpose of this thread seems to be "You are wrong if you want the rules to be more than just an abstract description of a given moment."

I do want more than that. I'm not wrong. My opinion is valid, and shouting me down, telling me I'm trying to be simulationist, telling me I'm a bad player and a boring DM and that my goals are absurd, that D&D never did what I wanted it to, and that my fun is a slave to the rules isn't really going to change what I (or many others) enjoy about the game.

I have every confidence that the 4e designers are trying for a middle ground, that they are well aware of players like me, and that they are trying to keep it in mind as they design. I think they are taking steps away from 3e's heavy simulation, and I think this is a good thing in moderation. I don't have a major problem with 4e as it stands, though I do have some (what I see as) completely legitimate concerns.

So if you tell me, as the OP did, that I'm just thinking about things all wrong, I'll tell you, as I did in my first post, that thinking about things in the way proposed would not satisfy me. If you tell me I'm wrong to be unsatisfied, I'll defend it. If 4e concieves of the rules like the OP did, I won't be satisfied with the game.

Fortunately, I don't believe that this will be the case, though I think it will allow for this thought more readily than 3e did.

 

[howandwhy99]

But the fact is that it tends to happen that way because rules are also empowering and imagination inspiring.
-snip-

Interesting ideas. I'd like to first point out that source material - books, movies, history, myth, whatever - is where I get inspiration from. RPG rulesets may be an inspiration for playing make believe games, but I really don't think they are necessary with the whole world here.

Your main point, that even a bad rule is better than no rule, doesn't really fit in how parse things. With a bad rule, one all my players have read about, they are repulsed from even trying the option. If there is no rule, and again they know, then again they skip it any attempt. Blind spots. In truth, both mean I have to make my own rule. But that's basically what I'm doing anyway no matter how good a rule is. As a referee, my job is to use rules I've decided upon to present as consistent and intriguing a world as I can. Predetermining rules beforehand is a good idea. And published rulesets can go a long way in aiding that endeavor. But there is just too much ground to cover. No designer or DM has perfect prediction of players' predilections. (say that 3x fast )

At best I have a workable ruleset that enables me to run the game as best I can. If it helps me facilitate most of the desires of the players playing, that's enough really. Just as I don't need an exactingly detailed setting to memorize what lies where, neither do I need a ruleset attempting to cover my players boundlessly zany ideas with only specific and situational options rather than those and suggestions built for on the fly adjudication. A good ref has to be able to come up with rules on their own and a good game assists with that.

Really, this is the same sort of thing that has gone on since the beginning: a breaking out of artificial barriers. How many times even in the last few months have we heard folks begging for a rule to be changed? Or stay the same? Or be made an "official core rule"? It's kind of ridiculous that designers have more pull at a gaming table than the participants themselves. Not that I begrudge the designers anything. Any help is great. It's that seeing outside the box, which was so essential to early play, is still going on in groups figuring out they can play however the wish. A bad rule or no rule doesn't stop that.

When is the last time your 3rd level wizard tried to cast a 5th level spell, and what's the likelihood that - outside of this current context where I'm bring it up - that anything interesting one way or the other would have happened even if some new player 'that didn't know any better' made the proposition?

I started a thread awhile back in the Rules Forum on how 3e would handle baseball, just as a test to get in the habit of extrapolating d20 you understand. Sadly I had no takers. Constructing the initial post though was eye opening on just how many basic physical actions simply aren't covered under d20 and are never thought twice about. I prefer the motto: "You can try anything. But I can't guarantee it'll work how you think it will."

 

[I'm A Banana]

that there is a crucial difference between situations in which PC/player protagonism is at stake, and situations (like off-scene NPC lives) in which it is not. The OP is not talking about situations in which protagonism is at stake.

The issue is that for my character, this distinction does not exist, and thus in playing the role of my character, I cannot allow this distinction to exist in thier mind (or else I feel like I'm metagaming too much and it removes me from the game). This means that my character has to fear the mundane more than the epic, that a fall from a horse, to my character, is more deadly than the jaws of the great wyrm Galgathraxas, because an old country nag can succeed where Galgrathaxas has failed.

There is one category of person in the gameworld. It's just that some people in the gameworld (ie the PCs) happen never to suffer certain sorts of misfortune. By analogy, Frodo and the Proudfoots are the same sort of hobbit, but (as it happens) Frodo never suffers certain sorts of misfortune. Protagonism is not an ingame status, it is a purely metagame status. If it doesn't threaten your suspension of disbelief in other media, I don't see why, of necessity, it must do so in a fantasy RPG.

This doesn't match with the expectations for a heroic game (Frodo most definately is not the same sort of hobbit as the rest of the Shire). It shatters my suspension of disbelief in an RPG when it doesn't in other media because an RPG is a game, and is thus interactive, whereas a story or a movie is passive, and thus is beyond my reach of affecting. In an RPG, there aren't really protagonists as much as there are PC's, which must succceed or fail by the rules to have any meaningful success or failure to me. And if the DM doesn't play by the rules, then it means less when my PC does.

It shattered my suspension of disbelief when Aeris died, too, and that's one of the huge and frequently accurate criticisms of a lot of single-player CRPG's: they're a 30-hour long movie you press buttons to advance through.

I'm not interested in gaining that at the gaming table.

I don't understand why, of necessity, such a set of rules (consensual drama in place of randomised action resolution mechanics) should make the players feel impotent, given that it is their request and consent that gives rise to it.

Because playing the game is not, for me, about narrative control. There is, essentially, no real narrative to control. The narrative is a framing device, not a goal, not a tool, it is an excuse to roll dice, not an end in and of itself, so I wouldn't request such a thing, and I'd only grudgingly consent to it in a limited degree, because it feels empty to me, devoid of meaning in a context where meaning is defined by the roll of a die, not the progress of a plot (which is what stories and movies gain meaning from, but not where D&D gains meaning from, for me).

"If the players and GM agree, it happens." The suggestion that this sort of play (which is very common in many RPGs, and is not expressly excluded by the D&D rules) is "mother may I" play is - if I may be blunt - ridiculous.

The hinge is how it happens.

Does it happen because I talk with the GM in a metagame context? This is unsatisfying to me: "Can I do X? Can I do Y? Can I do Z?"

Or does it happen because I roll some dice and make it happen, and the GM gives me rules by which I can do that? This is satisfying to me: "I roll X. I attack for Y. I get Z, is that enough?"

That's one way to go. The problem is, it means that there is no King who is both vulnerable to horse-falls AND well-trained (= focus, specialised, improve critical) in swordplay. And this in itself puts limits on the gameworld that can easily seem arbitrary.

It's not as if the anti-simulationists haven't thought of the things the pro-simulationists are suggesting. It's that they, for various reasons that are cogent for them, have decided to play the game a different way.

The solution, for me, is to use or create a rule where this happens, not to violate the rules to force it to happen.

For instance, a mechanic to gain BAB without gaining HP that is available to all players as well as NPC's would be fine. In my own games, I just largely accepted that skill at swordplay was relative. A 1st level warrior or even fighter, in comparison to 90% of the world, would be quite skilled at swordplay, though I could still buy his death by horse-fall. He wouldn't be skilled in comparison to the PC's, but do I just want him to be known as skilled (vs. the general rest of the world), or do I expect him to be trading blows with my 15th level heroes?

Breaking the rules means that my confidence in the DM, and my ability to believe his world, and my trust that the game is in my hands in a way that is meanignful to me, is also fairly well broken.

I'd also like to assert that this isn't about simulation for me. Indeed, it is about as purely a gamist argument as you can get: all the players obey the rules of the game at all times. The narrativist, in this case, is the one who wants to ignore the game for a good story. I'm not happy with Amber Diceless, nor am I happy with Harnworld.

 

[apoptosis]

KM,

Question for you (not a leading question, an actual truly looking for an answer question).

If D&D added a rule that said, if the players and DM agree on an event or result it happens,

would that make you happier that now this type of occurrence can happen without breaking rules

Or annoyed because while it is now a rule it just is a way to bypass other game rules

Just curious (and will give me a better idea of your thought process)

 

[JohnSnow]

The solution, for me, is to use or create a rule where this happens, not to violate the rules to force it to happen.

For instance, a mechanic to gain BAB without gaining HP that is available to all players as well as NPC's would be fine. In my own games, I just largely accepted that skill at swordplay was relative. A 1st level warrior or even fighter, in comparison to 90% of the world, would be quite skilled at swordplay, though I could still buy his death by horse-fall. He wouldn't be skilled in comparison to the PC's, but do I just want him to be known as skilled (vs. the general rest of the world), or do I expect him to be trading blows with my 15th level heroes?

Breaking the rules means that my confidence in the DM, and my ability to believe his world, and my trust that the game is in my hands in a way that is meanignful to me, is also fairly well broken.

I'd also like to assert that this isn't about simulation for me. Indeed, it is about as purely a gamist argument as you can get: all the players obey the rules of the game at all times. The narrativist, in this case, is the one who wants to ignore the game for a good story.

Emphasis Mine.

There you go again. You're referencing a different playstyle than yours with phrases like "violate the rules," "breaking the rules," and "wants to ignore the game." You previously used "cheat" and "cheater" to describe said playstyle.

Do you even realize that you're just as guilty of the "badwrongfun" attack as the people you're saying attacked you? Or do you truly not realize this is loaded language you're using?

Once again, the counter-argument is this: the game isn't "in play" when the PCs aren't "on-stage." Therefore, anything that happens when the PCs aren't involved doesn't have to be governed by the game rules.

That's not "cheating," nor is it "breaking" or "violating" the rules, no matter how you view it, because the rules are utterly and completely silent on whether the game rules can, or even should, be used to govern all actions in the game world. Ergo, the game's "rules" aren't being violated if something that can't, by the rules, happen to a PC happens to an offstage NPC.

The rules are clearly written, and intended, to apply whenever PCs are involved. Nobody's disputing that. Every single one of us is saying "the rules always apply when PCs are involved." Different rules for PCs and NPCs may bother your suspension of disbelief, and it's fine if you want to avoid it because of that, but it's a perfectly legal playstyle.

So, let's have no more "badwrongfun" accusations coming from either side, 'kay?

 

[I'm A Banana]

apoptosis,

The reply I did above hit on this:

The hinge is how it happens.

Does it happen because I talk with the GM in a metagame context? This is unsatisfying to me: "Can I do X? Can I do Y? Can I do Z?"

Or does it happen because I roll some dice and make it happen, and the GM gives me rules by which I can do that? This is satisfying to me: "I roll X. I attack for Y. I get Z, is that enough?"

It also, perhaps more relevantly, depends on the scope of the rule.

If that was the only rule for the game, it would be unsatisfying to me (effectively, I would never agree with the GM. ).

If it was a rule to cover corner cases or metagame considerations, I'd be more amenable to it (if we're thinking in metagame terms anyway, it doesn't take me out of it; if it's a corner case, it's an exception).

A lot of this is my mantra: "Make Stuff Up" sucks as a rule. I want the game to tell me how to play it, ideally while allowing me the flexibility to play it in different ways if I want to (Monopoly does, D&D does, Poker does). I don't want it to tell me that how I play it is entirely up to me, because then it's not much of a game, and I can make stuff up without buying a $30 core book (GURPS is slightly too heavily moddable for my tastes, for instance).

This is why Rule 0, and the DM's Authority are good rules (they allow flexibility and to cover corner cases; they let you make stuff up when you need to or want to), but not the ONLY rules (a dead king can come from a thousand-and-one different ways without once having to resort to fiat).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Once again, the counter-argument is this: the game isn't "in play" when the PCs aren't "on-stage." Therefore, anything that happens when the PCs aren't involved doesn't have to be governed by the game rules.

That's not "cheating," nor is it "breaking" or "violating" the rules, no matter how you view it, because the rules are utterly and completely silent on whether the game rules can, or even should, be used to govern all actions in the game world.

The dissonance for me comes when you say that the rules are only 'in play' when PC's are 'on-stage.' For me, if there are no rules, then there is no game, so to say that there is part of the game where you don't use rules is exceptionally counter-intuitive to me. If there aren't rules, then it really *is* just collaborative storytelling in between 'on-stage' scenes.

For me, there is never any off-stage.