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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4044842" data-attributes="member: 4937">I hate going in circles, but back to the beginning.Imagine I have a new game system: 'd2'.  D2 is the most simple game system ever devised.  It has at its heart one conflict resolution mechanic.  "For any proposition, determine the success by flipping a penny.  If the penny comes up 'heads', the proposition succeeds.  Otherwise it fails."With a few additional rules (mostly to describe what the above words mean, particularly 'fails'), that's a complete game system.It does not however describe a world that has physics anything like the real world.  In fact, the world described by D2's rules is so much different from ours that not only is it probably unplayable, but it is probably unimaginable. To see this, consider the following propositions:a) I try to jump over the child's building block.b) I try to jump over the 10' wide trench.c) I try to jump over the Empire State Building.d) I try to jump to Mars.All of these are valid player propositions.  They are in fact valid propositions in the real world.  I can try to do any of these things in the real world, and the real world physics will determine my chance of success for each thing I try to do.  In the universe described by 'd2', the real physics are, 'You get where you are going half the time, regardless of distance, interveening obstacles, or local gravity'.  Moreover, in d2, the fact that the proposition 'I try to jump to Mars', had for that player's character the resolution, 'Ok you are now on Mars', doesn't imply that the proposition 'I try to jump over the child's building block' is likely to succeed.  Rather, its just as likely to invoke a failure mechanic as jumping to Mars.In short, 'd2' describes a universe where time, space, mass, energy, and so forth have no real meaning.  Even if this isn't explicit in the rules, it will eventually be explicit in actual play - especially when the player realizes that his character is not constrained to behave in ways that would be valid in the real world.  If the poor game referee of 'd2' didn't realize to start that the 'd2' rules described a universe without time, space, mass, energy, or anything else as we know them, and had set about trying to recreate a gritty historical drama, he's probably going to be really frustrated and complain about either a) the system, or b) the poor job of roleplaying by his players.But really, the main problem is that the universe described by the rules of d2 bears absolutely no resemblence to the universe described by the rules of the real universe.  They aren't even close enough that the we can get by with not looking too closely.  And if you think about it, what would you expect?  The rules of d2 are so simple that naturally they can't possibly describe all the nuance and sophistication that you find in the real world.  To approximate that, we are going to need more robust rules.So far I haven't addressed whether the rules of D2 apply to NPCs offstage as well.  In theory, the referee could in fact assume that the rules of this universe governed NPC off stage behavior as well.  That is, you could assume that everywhere the PC's went the universe behaved as described by the rules, but elsewhere for the purposes of story things worked like the real universe.  But the problem of course with this description is that it runs into huge problems whenever an NPC makes an active proposition concerning the PC's.  That is to say, if the NPC's can shoot back, the idea that they off stage lived in something that looks like the real universe, whereas onstage the PC's observe that time, distance, space, mass, energy and the like have no real meaning is going to create distinctly conflicting descriptions.  We could probably try to get around that in the fluff, by saying that perhaps only the PC's (and maybe a few others like them) are actually aware of the real nature of the 'd2' universe, and then leave it up to the DM to decide what 'realistic' means.  For a game as silly as 'd2' is, we might even get away with it (because its going to drive anyone with the slightest gamist inclination away eventually anyway).  Either the physics of the d2 universe are inescapably created by the rules.</blockquote>

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