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<blockquote data-quote="loverdrive" data-source="post: 8593897" data-attributes="member: 7027139">They can. In D&amp;D (and all old- and mid- school games), yeah, rules operate strictly with in-universe stuff, story concerns be damned. This allows for undesireable, from a storytelling (in this context, read as: creating a story that can stand on its own legs and isn't a collection of anecdotes from the trenches) perspective to happen sometimes. This requires fudging because the rules failed, and now the DM needs to manually override them.What is the point of the rules, anyway? To prevent bad stuff. All rules, be it traffic code, code conventions, or rules of role-playing games. When they are fit for the job, they act as guardrails, saving you from accidentally falling into a pit. When they aren't, they get in the way of good stuff, and don't save from bad stuff. You have to hop the guardrail, and watch your step.In, say, Fate, you never have to fudge for the story's sake (not like you really can, but anyway) because situations where fudging is warranted just never happen. PCs can't die in a random encounter with 2d8 goblins, they can only ever die in a climactic battle for everything they believe in. So, you don't ever need to fudge, don't need to worry that you'll accidentally kill someone, it's not something that would ever happen. So, you can safely focus on what would goblins do, how would they fight, all that, no extra mental workload.A situation, where you look at the dice and decide that it's bad stuff is no different from your Photoshop crashing or your rifle jamming. Tap-rack-banging it every time will not make the issue magically go away.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="loverdrive, post: 8593897, member: 7027139"] They can. In D&D (and all old- and mid- school games), yeah, rules operate strictly with in-universe stuff, story concerns be damned. This allows for undesireable, from a storytelling (in this context, read as: creating a story that can stand on its own legs and isn't a collection of anecdotes from the trenches) perspective to happen sometimes. This requires fudging because the rules failed, and now the DM needs to manually override them. What is the point of the rules, anyway? To prevent bad stuff. All rules, be it traffic code, code conventions, or rules of role-playing games. When they are fit for the job, they act as guardrails, saving you from accidentally falling into a pit. When they aren't, they get in the way of good stuff, and don't save from bad stuff. You have to hop the guardrail, and watch your step. In, say, Fate, you never have to fudge for the story's sake (not like you really can, but anyway) because situations where fudging is warranted just never happen. PCs can't die in a random encounter with 2d8 goblins, they can only ever die in a climactic battle for everything they believe in. So, you don't ever need to fudge, don't need to worry that you'll accidentally kill someone, it's not something that would ever happen. So, you can safely focus on what would goblins do, how would they fight, all that, no extra mental workload. A situation, where you look at the dice and decide that it's bad stuff is no different from your Photoshop crashing or your rifle jamming. Tap-rack-banging it every time will not make the issue magically go away. [/QUOTE]

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