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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythusmage" data-source="post: 3285542" data-attributes="member: 571">(Nota Bene: Too much to reply to in this thread, so I'm restricting myself to a few representative ones. Do not assume that simply because I do not replyto your post I have not read it or given it de consideration. A. k.)Reguarding the square mile: Not even wrong. How interesting it is has nothing to do with it, it misses the point. As does another poster's solution to traversing that mile. It serves as a mental experiment to demonstrate how large a square mile is in comparison to an individual. Before the automobile, back when people had to walk to get anywhere, it was a rare city that got much larger than a square mile. Modern American cities are spread out because they can be spread out.Going on to Delericho's point regarding situations; here we have a great divide. Delericho says a designer can ignore certain situations, focusing on those that can, in some fashion be balanced. Sorry my friend, the mere fact such encounters can occur unless the designer rigs things so they can't renders the design ipso facto unbalanced. A good RPG design takes into account uneven, unfair encounters and plans for them. When you've got elder red wyrms and first level commoners runing around in the same world, they're going to meet each other. That's what I'm getting to with the matter of scope.The game of checkers can be balanced because the field of play is so extremely restricted. small territory, little variety in playing pieces and what they can do. The typical RPG world is orders of magnitude larger, and has a vastly greater selection of playing pieces with a vastly greater selection of what those pieces can do.It's an example of Chaos Theory in action. That being; in any complex system you cannot predict the outcome of a series of events based upon initial conditions. Just not doable. The best you can do where RPGs are concerned is create a situation where there is a temporary balance. One that could, and likely will, become unbalanced once the situation changes. Balance overall simplf cannot be achieved in any real sense, without placing such unrealistic restrictions on what players can do that the RPG looses what makes it unique in the field of participatory entertainment.More coming, but now I have other comments to reply to.</blockquote>

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