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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5744745" data-attributes="member: 23240">For me, both the article and the questions under it are meaningless. They lack a crucial part of context.How I approach rules and how I expect the GM to interact with them depends on what the rules represent and what they do. If the rules describe in-game actions and their results, they will never be complete. Allowing the GM to use his own judgement instead of the letter of the rules is the only approach that works - the alternatives being super-heavy ruleset with detailed rules for every situation (unusable in practice) or enforcing rules even if the results are absurd in fiction.On the other hand, if the rules are abstract and metagame, they may be strict without violating consistency of fiction. They should be - because there is nothing else that players and GMs may base their judgement on. The in-game events may be shaped according to genre conventions and common sense and the system guides the flow of game on higher level.In other words, the more the system tries to model and simulate the game world, the more flexible it has to be and the more it must leave to GM adjudication. The further it moves from simulation into abstraction, the easier it is to use it as written without creating absurd results in fiction, allowing for more defined mechanics.</blockquote>