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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8214285" data-attributes="member: 16814">Except... if you accept that what's modeled in the game session is not the general way things are always modeled in the reality, this breaks down quickly.  I don't apply the combat rules to everything off camera when I run 5e -- and I have stories of fights, heck I've run fights, that haven't used the combat mechanics (I ran a fight about 2 years ago that was part of a skill challenges, and that fight didn't involve the normal combat rules, but rather skill uses and narrative techniques, and I did this because it was embedded in a larger plot -- it was the diversionary gladiator fight during an attempt to lure and capture a notorious and dangerous criminal)!  So, yeah, this requires leaning into the concept and isn't a function of having rules.More to the point, some games, like Blades in the Dark, actively fight against this concept.  The rules there do no modeling of reliable physics because they sit at the level of narrative rather than task resolution.  You might make a check in one moment to determine who what happens next in a knife fight, and then make that same check to see what happens during a gang war clash!So, no, I'm not sure I can agree that this is a logical outcome of having rules rather than a choice of approach.Except that... it doesn't have to work this way nor does it mean that such things, which are parsed out for us as players so that they're simplified, are actually observable with any such granularity in the game world.  This, however, does move you much more closely to the understood version of rules as physics than what you've argued above.  This is saying that the rules are the model of the physics in the world, rather than a game resolution mechanic, and are universal in all cases throughout the world.  This, however, is not a system function, but a worldbuilding function.This is really what confuses me about this argument.  On the one hand, you clearly suggest that not being thrown by a massive creature swatting you is non-realistic (for a given value of realism), but then say that good modelling of physical processes is important to people that prefer this approach!  D&D is a poor physics engine, at the best of times, but it's often held out as an example of where this approach is applied.  What it seems like to me is that there's an amalgamation of understandings and preferences that have accreted over time, or perhaps been taught when a player is first introduced to the game, that results in a hodge-podge of when it matters and when it doesn't.  Nothing at all wrong with this!  If you have fun, it's the right way, I just have difficulty grasping holding D&D out as an exemplar of rules as phsyics, especially with the core of the combat system being a metagame mechanic (hitpoints, talking about hitpoints)!</blockquote>

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