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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurker37" data-source="post: 4047617" data-attributes="member: 9522">Thanks for replying Celebrim. I'll admit that I'm trying to draw you and people like you out on this topic so I can better deal with players like you in the future. By responding in detail to the points I've made, you're helping to understand what you want from a game. I'm never going to agree - that's a matter of personal preference. But it will head off arguments and ill feeling if I can anticipate what such players want.Except when such things become plot relevant. When a PC is stabbed, they bleed. Ergo they have cardiovascular systems. A victim of a grisly murder could have their entrails strewn across the room. No player is going to stand up and declare that since there are no rules for digestion, characters in this gameworld don't have intestines. (Are they?  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /> )And I seem to recall that there are indeed bleeding rules, which would be an attempt to model the effects of blood loss on significant characters - generally PCs. ( Monsters generally are assumed to die at zero. Let's face it, in 99% of cases no-one's going to stabilise them. ) So I'd actually argue that although there are no rules for blood circulation, the rules do point to circulation systems existing. And I point to that of an example of the game world being more complex than the rules would otherwise appear to imply.Taken to an extreme, that could be mistaken to imply that when a PC's blade cleaves a kobold in two, there should be no blood or guts. That all biological organisms are some sort of homogenous matter clad in skin, scales or fur. When a commoner loses an arm in a sawmill accident, they have a clean flat flesh-coloured stump with no bone, no muscle, and no bleeding. That if you walk too far from the village you're going to reach a flat expanse of nothingness where the published maps end and the DM hasn't made anything new. I know that's not what you're saying, but I'm using extreme examples to point out that every game assumes that the game world is at least a little more complex than what is explicitly spelled out in the rules. The only argument is about where you draw the line.My position is that the rules do not model the gameworld. They present a model for the players to interact with the gameworld. There are no rules for many aspects of the gameworld because the model assumes that such things will not be plot relevant, and therefore makes no attempt to handle their impact on the PCs, or vice versa. If that assumption fails, then the DM has two options: fiat, or house-rule.Actually, offstage is where the model breaks down, IMO. When's the last time the DM ran three succssive NPC vs Monster battles because the players' party was the fourth group sent to deal with the ogre problem?  And here again this is a difference in our styles of play. In most games I've played in, the assumption is that these things indeed do exist, but are either static enough that there is no need to describe how they change, or so complex that no rules could model them to the DM or player's satisfaction. Taking the example of weather, most DMs I've played with at least take the time of year in-game into account when describing the weather, but do not roll on charts. And weather is rarely described in more then a terse fashion (cool, and overcast) unless something is happening that would give it plot significance. EG, the players are trying to evacuate the villagers to the other side of the river before the rain starts and the river floods.Good for you on the house rule! I approve! Unfortunately my experience is that ability damage is far more often the result of disease or poison, neither of which lend themselves to a description of 'sprain', so I never made that leap of intuition. *yoinks house rule* Yes, but your post requires a ravine. I deliberately presented a case where the local geography was well known, and no such ravine existed. I live in an area where we tend to have gentle hills rather than steep slopes and ravines, and I think that may be why most of our homebrewed geography tends to also omit them. Sadly, I think most players I know would have more problem with the sudden appearance of a deep and dangerous ravine than with the original death from the short fall!I think I'm beginning to understand now. In your view of the game, game systems such as hitpoints and dice of damage are absolutes, and the gameworld conforms to them no matter how many minor incongruities that introduces. I'm struggling with this concept because every game I've played in the GM and players have either all assumed that the gameworld defaults to the real world, and the rules are an attempt to simplify that world for play, or a situation of this type has never arisen to reveal which opinion people at the table hold.It's also clear that someone who holds the one opinion is unlikely to be persuaded to the other.So I have two final questions: 1) Has anyone ever played with a group where the difference in opinion on gamerules as gameworld physics became an issue, and how was this handled?2) Who be able to enjoy a game where the DM held the opposite opinion, and what, if anything, would facilitate this? (e.g. announcement at the start of the game which philosophy was being followed)</blockquote>

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