Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4033502" data-attributes="member: 32164">I have to agree with the OP.The game rules are a useful, simulative abstraction within the context of playing a game and constructing a narrative. At the point at which you decide they represent the "physics of the game world," you're on the verge of creating a game that has Order of the Stick style silliness.In the context of the game, we want the results to be mostly predictable, with a degree of randomness that it makes for an exciting gameplay experience.Real world physics equations are far too complex for a game, so D&D (and every other RPG) instead creates a playable abstraction that has nothing to do with simulating real probability and everything to do with simulating narrative probability. We don't need to know all the potential outcomes, just have a way of deciding between the ones that we've decided are acceptable in a story sense.But just 'cuz we've decided it's bad for the game if "Kenjo the PC fighter" dies from falling off a horse doesn't mean that it's impossible for a character to die from falling off a horse.In the real world, people break bones. They lose limbs to serious injuries. Their eyes get put out or they go blind, sometimes by something as simple as getting kicked in the head. They get cancer. They can die if they slip in the bathtub and crack their skull or if they get an arrow in the eye. They get scars from injuries. And they can even get struck by lightning. D&D has no rules to cover the probability of any of these things. Does this mean that nobody in a D&D world ever breaks a bone, loses a limb or an eye, is scarred, gets cancer, or gets struck by lightning?Of course not. Suggesting such a thing is patently absurd. So why don't the rules cover it?Because for the most part, things like this just don't happen to the main characters in a narrative. Put another way, it isn't "fun" for the fighter's player if his character slips in the shower and breaks his neck, or falls off his horse and gets paralyzed on his way to town, or whatever. So that gets left out of the rules because in our game, we don't want the player to lose his PC to an ignominious death.But if the local king, who's a mighty warrior, dies because he gets an arrow in his eye, or his heir dies from falling off a horse, either of those events can be the beginning of a great story arc, which is "fun" for the PCs, and the game.Clearly, no DM rolls for every little thing that happens to every NPC in his gameworld. He usually just decides their fate, unless they're interacting with the PCs, in which case their fate is covered by the rules, because it's tied to the fate of the PCs.That's what the game rules are for. And that's all the game rules are for.Deciding they mean anything about how the actual physics (or "rules of reality") of the game world differ from "real life" is just flat-out silly.</blockquote>

Verification