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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4045013" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes, but I was describing a hypothetical game system with one rule.&nbsp; Rules of the sort you describe have been discussed earlier in the thread.&nbsp; If d2 had such a rule in it, I would have had to list it among the rules of the d2 game system.But I wanted to talk about a theoretically 'most simple' game system, to avoid complicating the discussion.&nbsp; The more rules I added to the system, the more easily people would get sidetracked and start arguing things that were interesting but not particularly relevant to the point.&nbsp; In particular, a rule like 'Don't be an arsehat', turns out to not be a single rule at all, but a metarule that describes a whole huge set of house rules that are to be dynamically created by the referee.&nbsp; Most playable game systems have this rule, implicitly or explicitly.&nbsp; For example, I discussed earlier the notion of solid objects in D&amp;D.&nbsp; 'No you can't walk through a brick wall without magical aid.', is a house rule generated under D&amp;D's implicit version of what you are calling the 'Don't be an arsehat' rule.&nbsp; We could have a whole thread discussing just that sort of metarule, and what problems it either created or solved.For the purposes of this discussion though, what matters is that the rules created dynamically under such a metarule are themselves rules which are in force once created.&nbsp; After they are created, the general expectation is that everyone obeys the same rule unless they have an explicit exemption.&nbsp; If you tell a player, &quot;No you can't walk through a brick wall without magical aid!&quot;, if he sees a NPC walk through a brick wall, he has the reasonble expectation that something magical was involved.&nbsp; His first assumption won't be, &quot;The universe works differently depending on whether it is a PC or NPC&quot;, and I would argue that if that is your player's first assumption, you have or are about to have a problem.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4045013, member: 4937"] Yes, but I was describing a hypothetical game system with one rule. Rules of the sort you describe have been discussed earlier in the thread. If d2 had such a rule in it, I would have had to list it among the rules of the d2 game system. But I wanted to talk about a theoretically 'most simple' game system, to avoid complicating the discussion. The more rules I added to the system, the more easily people would get sidetracked and start arguing things that were interesting but not particularly relevant to the point. In particular, a rule like 'Don't be an arsehat', turns out to not be a single rule at all, but a metarule that describes a whole huge set of house rules that are to be dynamically created by the referee. Most playable game systems have this rule, implicitly or explicitly. For example, I discussed earlier the notion of solid objects in D&D. 'No you can't walk through a brick wall without magical aid.', is a house rule generated under D&D's implicit version of what you are calling the 'Don't be an arsehat' rule. We could have a whole thread discussing just that sort of metarule, and what problems it either created or solved. For the purposes of this discussion though, what matters is that the rules created dynamically under such a metarule are themselves rules which are in force once created. After they are created, the general expectation is that everyone obeys the same rule unless they have an explicit exemption. If you tell a player, "No you can't walk through a brick wall without magical aid!", if he sees a NPC walk through a brick wall, he has the reasonble expectation that something magical was involved. His first assumption won't be, "The universe works differently depending on whether it is a PC or NPC", and I would argue that if that is your player's first assumption, you have or are about to have a problem. [/QUOTE]

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