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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5715655" data-attributes="member: 42582">In his latest <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20111025" target="_blank">column</a>, Monte Cook saysThe game needs rules. They form the basis of the shared reality that allows everyone to participate in the same game.Monte says this as if it's uncontroversial, but I'm not sure that it is.I don't deny that the game needs rules. But is the purpose of the rules to form the basis of the shared reality among the participants?Here is another view on the purpose of rules, from <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">Vincent Baker</a>:Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game ... have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not... Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.The difference between these two view matters to design. It helps explain the difference between (for example) 3E and 4e. It also explains the difference, in AD&D, between rolling to open a door (if you make the roll, your PC was able to muscle open the stuck door) and rolling a saving throw (if you make the roll, you and/or the GM have liberty to explain how it was that the threat to your PC was avoided/negated).I think it would be a pity for WotC to lock it itself into a simulationist approach to mechanics by default, rather than because a deliberate view has been formed that this is what is best for the game.Others' views?</blockquote>

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