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<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7484568" data-attributes="member: 71699"><p>Yup, back in the good old days when DMs weren't allowed to alter or ignore rules. Oh wait...</p><p></p><p>There are two questions here that I'm finding interesting. 1) Are rulings in some sense superior to rules? 2) Does whatever we decide about 1) entail that rules mean anything we want them to mean?</p><p></p><p>In looking at those questions, I ask other questions like - why buy rule books? what allows us to recognise a D&D game as a D&D game? what did we want from rules anyway?</p><p></p><p>My working premise is something like - Rules are a stable and meaningful foundation. They continue to have meaning even if we can alter or ignore them as we choose. We can have meaningful, resolvable debates about rules. A claim that rules mean whatever a given DM wants them to mean is not only unhelpful, in terms of the analysis of rules, but also false. A DM can alter or ignore the meaning, but cannot erase the meaning. As an aside, I think their meaning can be erased through removing them from context, i.e. rules only have meaning, given context.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 7484568, member: 71699"] Yup, back in the good old days when DMs weren't allowed to alter or ignore rules. Oh wait... There are two questions here that I'm finding interesting. 1) Are rulings in some sense superior to rules? 2) Does whatever we decide about 1) entail that rules mean anything we want them to mean? In looking at those questions, I ask other questions like - why buy rule books? what allows us to recognise a D&D game as a D&D game? what did we want from rules anyway? My working premise is something like - Rules are a stable and meaningful foundation. They continue to have meaning even if we can alter or ignore them as we choose. We can have meaningful, resolvable debates about rules. A claim that rules mean whatever a given DM wants them to mean is not only unhelpful, in terms of the analysis of rules, but also false. A DM can alter or ignore the meaning, but cannot erase the meaning. As an aside, I think their meaning can be erased through removing them from context, i.e. rules only have meaning, given context. [/QUOTE]
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