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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9003029" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I think I missed that part, I'm afraid I've been skipping pages (this thread moves frightfully fast.)In that case, where is the "rule can change rules" occuring? It cannot occur during play. If anyone is permitted to employ that power, it would, as I said, break the premise of the game. But if it is not employed during play, it is only being employed outside of play...when there are no players yet. Just people thinking about how Mao could be played. We don't think of game designers as exercising either "Rule Zero" or "Rule-can-change-rules."* Instead, we think of them as designing, a task which precedes play and thus precedes any concept of either "Rule Zero" or "Rule-can-change-rules."Okay. My assertion is that there is no assignment of this power, while play is happening, that is compatible with the premise of Mao. You cannot assign it, because the instant you do, at least one part of the premise is lost. To state that premise clearly: "Mao is a game where there are rules, but these rules are not permitted to be spoken, written, or shared, so that the process of playing the game reveals, by inference, observation, and experiment, what the rules must be, and thus the player who can navigate these rules successfully wins."*NGL, that particular structure is super confusing to me--I thought it meant "the rules can change the rules," which is nonsensical, rules can't do anything, only people can.__________________________________________Separately from the above, it occurred to me that maybe we got off on the wrong foot. That is, it seems that you're focused on why it matters to me that something is a behavior vs a rule. That, for me, is not strictly the core issue. Instead, the core issue is, I do believe it's just a behavior--that is, something people-who-play-games just do, a part of play no different from "communicating" or "concealing" or what-have-you. Thus, the issue is not whether it can be a rule (for it certainly can), nor whether it is a behavior whether or not it is a rule (for demonstrably it is), but rather, the issue (for me) is people insisting that it is only a rule, and not a baseline behavior of people playing games. That "Rule Zero" is special and different. That it truly creates, effectively ex nihilo, the ability to change rules, especially because it is vested in only one person, who (by being just one person vested with such ability) can have the clarity and consistency and vision** to use this newly-created "can-change-rules" power to better the game.There is no ex nihilo creation here. Changing rules is a thing people who play games do; they do not need, nor have they ever needed, an official "Rule Zero" to do it. Much less anything special or unique about assigning exclusive use of that power to a single person. Rule Zero is presented as being something new, a power that simply did not exist at all before and now does, and because it does a whole bunch of things are now possible. Yet it isn't new. It isn't even mildly unexpected; it is something people-who-play-games do and have done for as long as there have been people playing games. To make a mountain out of this molehill--especially in a "so giving this absolute power is super important!" way--is a big part of why I push back.**I'm on record as saying I don't think DMs are actually as clear or consistent as a lot of folks seem to think.And yet, as anyone with experience with Dungeon World will tell you, you should not break DW's rules. Doing so is a very bad idea that is essentially guaranteed to result in problems. Which can be summarized, admittedly without much nuance, as "the rules control the game."I as GM am not allowed to give false answers to certain player questions. Ever. Doesn't matter what I feel about it; doesn't matter if I think a false answer would be better for the game. I'm not allowed to answer falsely when someone asks Discern Realities questions. I'm certainly not required to divulge absolutely every fact ever, but nothing I say can be false. In return, Discern Realities only permits six questions (unless changed, e.g. I believe my group's Battlemaster has a move that would add another question to Discern Realities, he just hasn't chosen to learn it.) Likewise, on a full success with  Spout Lore (10+), I am required to give an answer that is both interesting and useful--and, in return, I can ask the player to tell me how they learned this information, and they are required to tell me the truth. Etc.The rules of Dungeon World are very, very carefully designed. That doesn't mean they're brittle, far from it, the system is quite robust in the face of changing circumstances and interests, at least IME. What it means is, if you're going to run it, you really, really should run it as written. It is legitimately a bad idea to run it not as written. But, thankfully, one of the core parts of running DW is making new moves (monster moves, location moves, sometimes new "basic" or "advanced" moves for the players collectively, etc.) There's plenty of guidance for how to do this, and (as I noted above) several useful templates to start from. No move is ever particularly complex, and since they need either a clear trigger action (e.g. "when you closely examine a person, situation, or location..."), or a move they feed into which already has one (e.g. "when you Hack & Slash"), they're always grounded.Assuming, of course, you actually play by the rules. Because, sometimes, the wise course of action really is to stick to the rules as much as humanly possible. It helps, of course, if the rules are actually good rules that have been tested to make sure they work as intended across a broad range of situations!</blockquote>

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