Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 4158222" data-attributes="member: 1879">I'm really not sure how I could be more clear or specific, but I'll take a shot at it.When I say the rules are the physics of the game world I do NOT mean to say that the rules must cover the entirety of what is physically/magically/socially possible in the game world. Nor do I mean that they must attempt to model the physics of our world.What I do mean is this: The rules are the lens through which we view aspects of that game world. We can best comprehend what our characters may or may not achieve when that aspect of the rules is spelled out clearly. While the rules do not, and cannot, cover every eventuality what they do cover can be viewed as certainty. In D&D an object with a hardness of 7 cannot be harmed by a 10' fall. In Ars Magica 4e a magical spell cannot pierce the lunar sphere. In both games a human cannot normally fly but can with the aid of suitable magic. These things are a given and a character inside that world who deals with these things can be expected to know them.Therefore a rule that clearly and correctly portrays an aspect of the world to the players is a good rule. A rule that misleads or confuses the player as to what is or is not taking place in the world is a poor rule.For example: In 3e a normal melee attack adds the Str mod to damage. This lets the player know that a strong foe hits harder than a weak one and his character can guess that someone bulked out like a pro-wrestler is probably a bigger threat in melee that one who looks like Don knotts. OTOH, as frequently cited in this thread, the rules make it quite clear that bringing the dead back to life to fairly easy to the rich and powerful and yet this is frequently not a facet of the world that GMs want to portray. Therefore this is a poor rule.Similarly a midlevel character may easily have 60 HP and yet may be expected to somehow not know that a 40' fall cannot possibly kill him. Therefore this is also a poor rule, in the eyes of those who dislike regarding HP totals as existing in game.My problem btw is not with large HP totals, but with GMs who expect my characters to act as though they do not know that they have a lot of hit points. To my mind expecting a character to go toe to toe with a giant swinging blows that could crush a car and somehow not know he is tough after taking a few of those blows is laughable.</blockquote>

Verification