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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5745349" data-attributes="member: 27160">It's a bit of a sideline, but I'll bite, just once:Referees in sport don't get to decide what the rules are - at most, they get to decide how the rules are applied in this specific case. Generally, all they decide is matters of fact. Take the offside rule in football (soccer) for example; the referee and the linesmen don't confer along the lines of "well, the rule is two players, but he was pretty advanced so maybe we should say three in this case...". They just decide "were there too few opposition players between the potential offender and the goal line at the instant the ball was played?" Matters of fact; maybe also matters of interpretation in some cases, but not matters of "what the rules are". Not "that was too easy - I think he should have to touch the ball to the ground on both sides of the posts to get a touchdown in this instance"...It's a big difference.If this is actually happening it's a good indication that the players don't want to play exploratively/simulationistly/immersively - they want gamism. If they feel they are stepping up to "beat the monsters", they have left Sim territory behind.The same issue is noted for PTA; it's a system designed to play with a Narrativist agenda, and if players play to "win" it breaks pretty much immediately. In much the same way, actually, as D&D breaks if you try to play with a Simulationist agenda and simultaneously use the Rules exactly as Written.This is a concern, yes - and it's why I tried to indicate that the details of the mechanism might have to be very different from those used in PTA. The crux of the issue though, is this:Sim/immersive play is about "living" as your character in a strange and novel world. It's about seeing the world through their eyes - experiencing situations and dilemmas in their shoes. The biggest enemy of such play is, in my experience, what is sometimes labelled "assumption clash". This is when the situation in the game is understood differently by different people - generally (because of the "traditional" way of playing) by a player and the GM. By "situation", here, I mean not just the physical locations of the protagonists and so on, but the way the world works; the likely outcomes of a situation based on how the components of this alien world interact with one another. This is based on the "world models" - both of the real world and of the unique features of the game world - carried in the minds of the players, including the GM.What this means for Sim/immersionist play is that there is a potential conflict, that the rules need to be ready to resolve, between the player(s) with authority over the setting and resolution and those without.The picture I see, then, is (following an excellent post about legal analogies somewhere around that I read recently) a "game system" that consists of a body of "precedent" about what the game world is like. Some of this will have been defined by the game originator at the campaign start - either from a publication or from their own invention, some will be introduced by the other players as they define their characters and their contacts and background, and some will be formed by judgements and interpretations during play. What I am saying, is that it will generally be better if all of the players have a say in these "precedent-forming" judgements that arise as play progresses.This is important for two reasons: (1) it maintains player buy-in to the world setting as it develops, making sure that it will not challenge their "suspension of disbelief", and (2) it makes sure that the players are aware, at the point of decision, what these judgements are and so are not blindsided later when they assume something different.The answer to the "break out of immersion to vote" issue, then, is that, yes, this may happen from time-to-time, but it will be in the interest of forming a mutually acceptable body of "common lore" (you see what I did there? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) that will usually be what is used to form/guide judgements that can be made without the need for a vote. In other words, once the "world rules" are formed, they can just be used without any "fiat" at all - the voting only happens to clarify the "page 42" or maybe "Rule 0" moments.Hopefully, the clarification of what I had in mind addresses your concerns, here? I'm saying the "rotate or educate the DM" mechanism should be a natural expression of how the rules work, not a last-ditch extremity used only after everyone has become frustrated.</blockquote>

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