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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4486742" data-attributes="member: 42582">I adressed this in my post. Consistency in the gameworld doesn't require treating the mechanics as an infallible guide to ingame power. For example, the mechanics can be interpreted as giving effect to certain narrative conceits (such as that the PCs are the dragon slayers of the world). Other examples are given in the replies to Irda Ranger below.There are a lot of threads in which non-simulatoinist play gets described as not having a consistent gameworld. This is not true (and, to be honest, comes across as a bit derogatory). What is true is that non-simulationist play does not use the game mechanics as the measure of consistency in the gameworld. That doesn't mean the gameworld is inconsistent.No one is disupting that. The question is - what do those numbers mean in the gameworld?Who is talking about not following the encounter building and XP rules?I don't understand how this relates to anything in my post. I am talking about the correlation between metagame (ie mechanics) and game (ie what is true within the gameworld). It is of the essence of an RPG that the former has an impact of some sort on the latter. But my claim is that there is room for slippage (ie for non-simulationist play).For example: who is to say that a PC's +0.5 per level doesn't represent moral authority against deserving foes (a thematic device, not an ingame phenomenon), that a dragon's +0.5 per level doesnt represent physical prowess (an ingame state-of-affairs), and that a drow's +0.5 per level doesn't represent the fact that underworld faeries are dangerous foes for the most seasoned traveller (a genre convention, not an ingame phenomenon)?If the stats are read in that way, then from the fact that the PC handily beats the dragon, and barely beats the drow, it doesn't follow that the drow would have a good showing against the dragon. That is what I mean by "slippage" between game and metagame. It has nothing to do with disregarding the rules of the game. The notion that non-simulationist play is cheating is even more bizarre than that it involves an inconsistent gameworld.Nowhere do the rules state this.The purpose, as I see it, is to set the mechanical parameters for the resolution of combat. But nothing in the rules stops me interpreting those stats as I would spiritual attributes in The Riddle of Steel. Indeed, some of the Paladin, Cleric and Warlord attacks, which use CHA as the stat, actively encourage a TRoS-type reading.</blockquote>

Verification