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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ainamacar" data-source="post: 6113755" data-attributes="member: 70709">First off, thank you.  I wrote it in a spirit of good faith, and I'm gratified it has been received that way.  I hope we can keep that tone.By no means do I think you have to completely divorce yourself from the fiction until the very end, just as I would not ignore mechanics in determining what means are available. (I did try to keep that nuance intact in my post.)  Still the reliability and purpose accorded the rules as a proxy does vary.  In one view the world tends to precede the rules, and the rules attempt to model it well (but fall short).  In another, the rules in some sense precede the world, and the world attempts to reflect it well (but falls short).  Design tends to be iterative so that neither is strictly true.  (It can even vary depending on how one is designing a game.  When I create a D&D campaign I tend to build a world that reflects the  existing rules well, so that at the table I'm not constantly fighting them while running in a means-primacy fashion.  If I'm adapting an existing world to non-native rules I'm more likely to change the rules to preserve the world once we finally sit down at the table.) At the table both are largely fixed.  The means-primacy view will tend to make the rules bend to reflect the world, but how much it bends is constrained by the existing rules.  The effect-primacy view will tend to make the world bend to reflect the rules, but how much it bends is constrained by what makes sense given what the rules do.  In neither case do we have a free-for-all.Therefore I find that statement to be a significant exaggeration.  "Every model is wrong, but some are useful" as the saying goes.  Both  means-primacy and effect-primacy give models that are wrong, and both  provide the player and DM a model that is useful.  (I believe this theoretically, but also empirically because everyone in this discussion says their preference works for them, and I have no reason to believe otherwise.)  They are making  different tradeoffs, but the tradeoffs are not unbounded: unless your DM is a slaad the mechanical system of resolution in his or her head is still constrained by what the rules say, even if the fiction has logical primacy.  The means-primacy DM *wants* the rules for that very purpose!  Another method may work better for you, but in both sorts of games if a character falls in lava you can reasonably expect it to be burning or dead.  The rules are probably silent about whether the character sinks or not, but you can reasonably suppose that the character will not grow wings due to falling in lava -- the model is less constrained than normal due to rules silence, but still not gonzo.  The actual ruling may depend on whether the DM identifies with movie physics (sinks) or real-world physics (buoyant for a typical organic creature in typical molten rock), and perhaps that will lead to an argument since the consequences in either case could be drastically different.  My point is that if even when there are no written rules it is possible, even likely, to generate a model with some usefulness.  In most cases usefulness will fail gracefully.  I will not dispute that enjoyment depends on usefulness of some sufficient degree or that you are wrong to dislike how that usefulness degrades in some DMing styles.</blockquote>

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