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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 4033756" data-attributes="member: 18883">But I'm still going off the reservation, am I not?You will say later in your reply that "Events in contravention of the rules require explanation."Fair enough.Event: High level knight breaks his neck.Explanation: "Level" is a metagame abstraction, not an in-world concept and is only selectively applied to the world.Heck, if you really need an in-game explanation: "The Fates decreed he die in that manner at that time."There's no difference, though, to selectively applying the Climbing rules and selectively applying the Level rules to the world. Or anything really.So? Having an NPC apprentice Call Up What He Cannot Put Down is interesting. It's a good way to start a story.I can understand the idea of the game rules being an established groundwork for what players can and can not do. I can sympathize with that idea, though I prefer to give them more power than what the strict rules allow. What I cannot understand, nor agree with, is the idea that NPCs are bound to the same agreement. No, see, there is no "point proving." The group agrees on an appropriate tone and genre conventions beforehand. I've never tried to run a game where one player didn't speak anything other than Medieval French either.No, that common framework is for how the players interact with the world, not how the world interacts with itself in the absence of the players.I shrug, take down my screen, pack up my stuff, and depart the GM's chair. I would absolutely never compromise on this basic point. Almost anything else I'd change if the players desired it. But the fundamental idea that I have ultimate discretion over the rules? That I will never surrender. I wouldn't want to run a game without it, nor could I run a game without it.Nope, because that Blackguard is interacting with the players, and so the rules apply.The DM decides what is reality, not the rules. The rules only govern the interaction of players with reality. They're only there to provide the tension of randomness, some fairness from PC-to-PC and that game mechanical crunchy goodness everyone likes so much.By the same logic, you have no reason to assume I haven't put poison in the mountain dew, no?Well, in this case there's an omnipotent observer (the DM), but the mistake you are making is in thinking NPCs have any kind of independent existence. They're constructs, no different than the weather, or buildings, or wildlife, or forests. I can burn a forest down, can't I? Trigger an earthquake? A solar flare? I don't need rules for those, nor do I need rules for the mundane calamities that befall people.It's a metagame thing, there is no in-universe explanation barring "The Fates" or somesuch. Besides, with NPCs important to a character (dependents, family, friends, etc) I'd clear storylines with the PC first, if only to share ideas.It's not realistic. It's not even slightly realistic. It's a blatant abstraction for gameplay purposes. Hit points make no sense. Levels make no sense. Classes make no sense. These things are for the players, not for the world. One of the few things I want out of players is an absence of metagaming- the player is aware of the hit point total of his character, but the character is only aware of a rough idea of his wounds, morale, will to continue, etc. I expect characters to react to a dagger to their throat like it could kill them. even if it can't. Why not? No, no it isn't, because these things are not the expected knowledge of the universe. They're metagame elements. They're out of the universe. To reference Vampire: The Masquerade, you can't discover the blood point. A vampire only knows he's full, or hungry, or starving. He doesn't know he has blood points. Blood points don't map to pints of blood. They're abstractions. In fact, I would propose the opposite: I expect a world, even a D&D world, to make sense. And by that I mean I don't expect it to be operating by the rules outside of the PCs and things interacting with the PCs. It makes much less sense to me that a world has people who can not die from a single stab. You put a knife in that cleric's eye, he dies no matter how many dragons or demons he's kicked the living hell out of. Actually, I'd probably allow that if they had mind-ripping powers. Why not?Not necessarily. I'd only want an in-universe explanation if I were breaking the rules for the PCs. If I had a PC Cleric die from a stab wound, I'd have to have a damn good explanation for it. But an NPC? They don't play by the rules. They don't have an independent existence. They have no rights.</blockquote>

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