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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4044772" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm really starting to get annoyed, so I'm not going to respond to anyone in particular.1) No one, least of all me, is saying that you can't play an RPG where the rules aren't adhered to for events 'off stage'.  Of course you can.  In fact, you could play an RPG where the rules aren't adhered to on stage either.   2) No one, least of all me, is saying that if something that if there isn't an explicit rule for something, that it can't happen.3) The objection, 'well, if the rules were adhered to then the rules would be unrealistic', doesn't really bother me at all, and is certainly no argument against my claim.  The game universe being simulated by the rules doesn't have to be realistic, and in fact in many cases its lack of realism is precisely what makes it attractive.  If in fact what bothered me about the rules was that they were unrealistic, it would stand to reason that I'd be far more bothered by the fact that they allowed for highly unrealistic on stage events than highly unrealistic off stage events.  4) The objection that most NPC's don't use the same rules as PC's in specific cases isn't really relevant either.  If heroes tend to suck up the experience and treasure when they are around, then that describes how the world actually works.  We can worry about why that might be the case, or we can say, "No, I'd rather the world didn't work like that."  If the world works that way on stage, we may presume that it works that way off stage.  Some particulars:4a) The leadership doesn't treat NPC's differently from PC's, except that it implies that PC's can't be cohorts.  It certainly doesn't say that NPC's can't have the leadership feat. It does treat cohorts and followers differently from non-cohorts and non-followers, but that is a very different thing.  Why it treats them differently is something we could speculate on, but isn't really relevant.  4b) A rule that says PC's have action points and most NPC's don't doesn't treat PC's differently from NPC's.  It treats heroic characters differently from ordinary characters, which is again, a very different thing.4c) Ditto for average wealth levels.  In fact, NPC expected wealth levels doesn't even rise to the level of a rule, since nothing in the text implies NPC's (or even PC's) can't have different levels of wealth than expected, any more than NPC's can have different ability arrays than 'elite' or nothing, or that each encounter must have the same EL as the parties average level.  That is to say, 'unexpected' wealth levels aren't against the rules.  Presumably, the PC's are expected to live lives that are 'unexpected'.  Hardly surprising.4d) Nothing prevents hypothetical rules from saying, 'PCs suffer 1d6 damage from falling off a horse, and NPCs suffer 1d100 damage'.  I personally wouldn't think that these are good rules because they don't describe the sort of world I want to play in, but I would point out that even so, the game rules would still be the physics of the described game world.  It would just be a 'wierd' world where certained people of special destiny fall off horses with less violence to thier persons than everyone else.  NPC's in that world would probably very quickly stop riding horses, to the extent that if they saw someone on a horse that would immediately assume that person was one of those special heroes of reknown and say things like, "Is it true that you can be thrown from your horse without breaking your neck?"I guess I shouldn't expect people that argue that logic and consistancy aren't important to show much logic or consistancy.I don't mind people disagreeing with me.  But when they think that they are disagreeing with me, it would at least be nice if they were.</blockquote>

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