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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4037419" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not entirely sure what KM includes in the word 'rules' because I don't think he's made it perfectly clear.  (Though to be honest I'm not paying alot of attention to KM's thread of the discussion.)  I will say that 'action resolution mechanics' covers IMO alot broader of an area than the formalized rules of the game.  I don't think there is any table out there that has as its body of 'rules' only the RAW.  There might be tables that think that they do, but I believe that they haven't been terribly self-reflective.  It's not clear to me that KM thinks that the only rules are the rules as written and the a priori specified house rules.  I'm not sure that he would disagree with my claim that there is an equally important body of 'table common law' which resolves actions not clearly or fully specified by the RAW - such as the case of 'what happens when non-spellcasters do not sleep every 24 hours for prolonged periods'.  Ok, so if we've established that it remains to resolve whether every event at the gaming table is functionally equivalent to every event in the game world.Ewwww.... we are about to jump into the deep end of the pool.  I like.Let me make sure that I understand what you mean.  By 'saying yes' rules, do you mean a resolution system that involves one or more players voting on resolutions so that actions are resolved in a consensual fashion?  If so, let me first state that such a resolution system when generalized is for the most part so far removed from how D&D games normally resolve cause and effect as to be a totally new discussion.I won't discuss this in detail until I know exactly what you mean by the term, but I will say in brief that as I understand it 'saying yes' is a special case of referee fiat, differing only in that 'the referee' in this case refers to more than one person.  As such, most of what I've said about DM fiat already applies.Ok, you are quite correct here.  I meant to say 'player' and wrote 'PC' by mistake.  It seems to me that we must be very careful to define what me mean by the mechanics that govern the NPC's also govern the PC's if we are to avoid some red herrings.a) I've frequently had posters counter this claim by saying something along the lines of, 'Well, of course the players don't expect the same rules to apply to monsters and PC's, because monsters have all sorts of advantages PC's don't.  For example, dragons breath fire.'  This is a red herring.  Clearly, PC's don't have a reasonable expectation that things which are of different in game types won't follow the exact same rules.  No one expects the rules for elves and dwarves to be exactly the same, or the rules for dragons and humans to be exactly the same, or for that matter no one is surprised if maces and swords have different special rules attached to them.  They are distinguishable in the game, and hense mechanical distinguishing features aren't surprising.  But this is a red herring because the designation NPC and PC is a pure metagame distinguishment with no in game basis (or very likely none).b) A variation on the above is that you might claim that different rules applied to NPC's and PC's because NPC's had different feats or skills.  Same sort of thing.  So long as the PC could have qualified for the feat or ability provided they had the same background as the NPC, this doesn't apply.c) You have to distinguish between a situation where the PCs are uniquely different and merely different from the vast majority of the population.  The expectation is that PCs are heroes.  But if the expectation is that heroes are merely rare, and that the PC mechanics apply to NPC heroes (and villains) then this is not really a case of the PCs and the NPCs obeying different rules.  The elite, 'Heroes' - whether PC or NPC, still follow the same rules.d) Most recent systems that try to pull off game mechanics where the PCs and NPCs do have different rules try to alleviate player concerns by making it clear that the rules differences will always favor the PCs.  That is to say, being a PC is always strictly better mechanically than being a NPC.  I don't think I can reasonably claim that that will eventually gall everyone, as there is always going to be someone that doesn't think he's being cheated so long as the resolution system always tilts in his favor.  But I will claim that this is itself a slippery slope and that it will gall alot of players. e) I'd like to note just how important the perception of 'd' is to the trick of getting someone to accept the whole flim-flam.  If the designers of 4e quite correctly pointed out that the game is rigged in the players advantage anyway by the simple fact that most DMs create adventures where player and player character success is by design, and hense justified on that basis that the rules could (indeed should) 'cheat' in the favor of NPCs in order that the players would be suffiicently challenged to enjoy the game, I think that alot more people would be thinking harder about why having NPC's and PC's use the same rules is a good idea.  Having NPC classes and abilities far superior to PC abilities doesn't necessarily need to gall a player right away either.  Afterall, there is no particular reason why NPC's should be 'balanced' the way PC's are, and its all good as long as you win, right?  The trouble with this creeps up more subtly than you think.  It comes not from the obvious NPC with DM fiat plot protection, or the NPC that the DM gave 'die no save' attacks.  It comes from trying to interact with the world in the same way that an NPC just did and having the DM just flat out say, "No."  Not just, "No, you need to do X."   The guy that was asking, "What happens when the NPC the player is trying to protect gets reduced to -1 hit points?" is asking the right sort of question.   I would argue that this is a bit of sleight-of-hand, in that you are making a claim about the 'Saying yes' ruling that isn't in fact warranted.  Ok, so lets imagine that by some concensus (even just, 'I'm the DM and I make the rules.'), the table agrees to ignore PC urination and defecation.  Then it does not therefore follow that noone in the gameword never goes to the toliet, not because the ruling says that the PC's don't go to the toliet, but because the ruling merely says that we will ignore it as having no pertinant role in the game.  The ruling almost certainly is not literally that PC's never urinate or defecate, but merely that we'll ignore the fact that they do.  If in fact the ruling was literally that PC's never urinate or defecate, then my assumption is that NPC's never urinate or defecate either, and if they do, I'm going to wonder why they do and my character doesn't.  For example, I'm going to wonder why my character can't dry his own feces to provide fuel for a fire after he's been left for dead on a desert island if NPC's are assumed to defecate if hitherto my understanding is that we merely ignored the fact that my character does.  I don't think you got there yet or that you can, though I admit that I'm intrigued whether you can sustain your push for a strictly narrativist rule set.  But unless I fail to understand you completely, I think you are going to run afoul of my earlier statements about the role of referee fiat.</blockquote>

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