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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4035675" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, 'yes' and 'no'."Yes" in the sense that it is a clear and detailed description of your position, but "no" in the sense that the given description completely accords with what I already believed it to be and as such doesn't change my critique of it in the slightest.That criticism being that in actual application, the two groups were doing functionally the same thing and hense the distinction was meaningless.  For example:But this is exactly what the 'Group B' players would describe as well.  In particularly, it is a stance much closer to 'Group B' than even my own stance is, in so much as I wouldn't always use the rules to resolve interactions between the players and thier environment if I had reason to suspect that the results of applying the rules would be (IMO) 'silly'.  Your stance as you describe it is not even that distinguishable from 'Group B'.By way of distinguishing the two you are noting that actions involving offstage NPC's are not resolved under the rules, but rather by DM fiat.  In practice though, no matter how grand of a simulation they desire, do you actually think there are any group B DM's who resolve all offstage actions by playing them out under the rules?  Of course not.  Rather I think you are suggesting that the 'group b' DM's will insist that all offstage actions could have been resolved according to the rules.  And this is true, but whether you insist on it or not, you are too!I'll give you some examples, not so much because they in and of themselves are pertinant, but rather that they illustrate the problem.  Earlier I mentioned that I thought low level wizards ought to be able to try to cast spells normally beyond thier ability.  The rules certainly imply that this impossible.  But supposedly if we are 'Group A' players that should not concern us if the events were to occur offstage.  We could simply explain that it happened.  But, if we did, then this would create a problem, in as much as you are thereby informing your players that under certain conditions a 3rd level wizard can attempt to cast a 5th level spell.  Maybe its foolhardy to attempt it, but your narration is implying that its possible.  In effect, your offstage narrative has created the need for a rule, and suddenly we find that one way or the other the rules are indeed the 'physics of the universe'.  We find that we aren't really that different from a 'Group B' referee at all.  And in particular, I'm claiming that unless the rules existed, neither the 'Group A' nor the 'Group B' referees would probably think to have a narrative involving an apprentice casting spells beyond his ability because we'd be stuck in the paradigm dictated by the rules.  And if either thought to do this, they'd both find that the creation of narrative and of rules was so intertwined that you couldn't really separate the two.Similarly, its frequently been mentioned in this thread that we should not forgo the ability to insert a maimed vetern into the story despite the fact that the rules do not explicitly allow for PC's to be maimed.  The claim is that 'Group A' referees would do so, but that 'Group B' referees wouldn't.  But this isn't true, and in fact ultimately both referees would find themselves doing the same thing.  If a 'group A' referee placed a maimed NPC into the story, if the status of his being maimed was anything but a prop he'd need some ruling on what it meant.  At that point, his narrative is creating rules.  If a 'group b' referee placed a maimed NPC into the story, if the status of being maimed made any difference in the game at all, he need some rules to cover what it meant to be maimed.  You might claim that the 'group b' referees would never think to put maimed characters into the story.  But this is a fairly easily dismissed complaint, in that the rules do provide for characters to have different Dexterity scores and more to the point do allow for permenent ability damage.  The only thing that might be true is that the 'group b' referees are more likely to think that permenent ability damage, being the tool that is available, is more likely to be an adequate description of a character maiming.  And I'm not even sure that is the case either, since I think it likely that 'group a' referees are likely to turn to the same rules to describe what it means to maimed.I feel quite free to describe limps, scars, and one-eyed NPC's by interpreting that there low dexterity, wisdom, strength, charisma or whatever describes these things, or alternately that thier limp, scar, or single eye describes low dexterity, wisdom, or strength.  I see no functional difference, and since its possible that I could start with either a description or stats and work in the other direction depending on which I happened to have first to work with, what exactly is the functional difference?If the goblin (or PC) is dead or at least 'out of the fight', then whether or not the goblin has been maimed has no mechanical effect at all.  In this case, I think it quite likely that referees you are classifying as 'group b' would have no problem describing lethal wounds in any fashion that they chose without feeling they are violating the letter of the rules, and likewise that restoration from the dead cures completely any extra fluff as well.  You are only doing something different if the two groups treat there 'fluff' as having some mechanical effect, and for that, see the above discussion.</blockquote>

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