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More DMing analysis from Lewis Pulsipher
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6342344" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>But the rules of the game do suggest that, no matter how long the chain of peasants, the item can always be transmitted along it in exactly 12 seconds.</p><p></p><p>But I have never heard of anyone playing 3E or 4e as if this was actually a truth about the gameworld. Rather, it's treated as an oddity of the action economy when it is put to work in a corner case. Hence my contention that the action economy, in these games, violates ingame causality and so does not acbieve the purist-for-system sim design aspiration.</p><p></p><p>(You don't need to go to peasant railguns, either, to get these oddities. [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s example with the motorbike - or any other shadowing/shepherding example - will do, plus various other curiosities of motion and positioning that result from the turn-by-turn resolution.)</p><p></p><p>No dispute over PTA and similar games.</p><p></p><p>With cartoons, I think it is very easy to have a shared genre without any notion of "cartoon physics". Just as I can tell whether or not something fits the genre of Dr Strange or X-Men without needing a "sorcery physics" or a "mutant physics". The genres are characterised by trope associations, what is permitted and what is not - not by rules that identify and model the transmission of certain conserved quantities.</p><p></p><p>For instance, if you're writing a cartoon and, at some point you have a character fall off a cliff, the genre rules tell you "Do something absurd that violates normal gravitational principles". But there is no "cartoon falling" rule that you apply.</p><p></p><p>Or if you're scripting Dr Strange, and the story calls for him to do something sorcerous, the genre rule tells you "Have Strange call upon the X..... of the X..... (eg Crimson Bands of Cytorak)." But there is no "physical rule of the world of Dr Strage" that tells you that magic must involve alliteration.</p><p></p><p>What I think actually causes a lot of confusion in analyses of fantasy RPGing (and I'm not suggesting that you suffer from this confusion) is running together "genre rules" - which are the subject matter of literary theory, history and sociology of literature, etc - and physical rules, which are the subject matter of actual or hypothetical empirical sciences. (And I am taking it for granted that genre rules can't be mathematicised or even regularised in the way that the empirical sciences can. For instance, genre always permits of novelty - whereas novelty in the emprical world is just the refutation of an empirical theory.)</p><p></p><p>So, for instance, you get people who read Tolkien and think about Galadriel in Lothlorien, and instead of admiring it as an attempt to confer post-mediaeval verismilitude upon tales of forests ruled by faerie queens, start trying to anayse the economics of Elven society (eg where do they grow the wheat for their Lembas?). As if it was a travel guide to a real place, rather than a work of fiction.</p><p></p><p>Even in 4e, that notoriously non-simulationist edition of D&D, they shunted all the Lothlorien-style stuff into the Feywild. Tolkien put it square into the mortal world, recognising that the "rules" of his composition are genre rules and not imagined empirical ones.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6342344, member: 42582"] But the rules of the game do suggest that, no matter how long the chain of peasants, the item can always be transmitted along it in exactly 12 seconds. But I have never heard of anyone playing 3E or 4e as if this was actually a truth about the gameworld. Rather, it's treated as an oddity of the action economy when it is put to work in a corner case. Hence my contention that the action economy, in these games, violates ingame causality and so does not acbieve the purist-for-system sim design aspiration. (You don't need to go to peasant railguns, either, to get these oddities. [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s example with the motorbike - or any other shadowing/shepherding example - will do, plus various other curiosities of motion and positioning that result from the turn-by-turn resolution.) No dispute over PTA and similar games. With cartoons, I think it is very easy to have a shared genre without any notion of "cartoon physics". Just as I can tell whether or not something fits the genre of Dr Strange or X-Men without needing a "sorcery physics" or a "mutant physics". The genres are characterised by trope associations, what is permitted and what is not - not by rules that identify and model the transmission of certain conserved quantities. For instance, if you're writing a cartoon and, at some point you have a character fall off a cliff, the genre rules tell you "Do something absurd that violates normal gravitational principles". But there is no "cartoon falling" rule that you apply. Or if you're scripting Dr Strange, and the story calls for him to do something sorcerous, the genre rule tells you "Have Strange call upon the X..... of the X..... (eg Crimson Bands of Cytorak)." But there is no "physical rule of the world of Dr Strage" that tells you that magic must involve alliteration. What I think actually causes a lot of confusion in analyses of fantasy RPGing (and I'm not suggesting that you suffer from this confusion) is running together "genre rules" - which are the subject matter of literary theory, history and sociology of literature, etc - and physical rules, which are the subject matter of actual or hypothetical empirical sciences. (And I am taking it for granted that genre rules can't be mathematicised or even regularised in the way that the empirical sciences can. For instance, genre always permits of novelty - whereas novelty in the emprical world is just the refutation of an empirical theory.) So, for instance, you get people who read Tolkien and think about Galadriel in Lothlorien, and instead of admiring it as an attempt to confer post-mediaeval verismilitude upon tales of forests ruled by faerie queens, start trying to anayse the economics of Elven society (eg where do they grow the wheat for their Lembas?). As if it was a travel guide to a real place, rather than a work of fiction. Even in 4e, that notoriously non-simulationist edition of D&D, they shunted all the Lothlorien-style stuff into the Feywild. Tolkien put it square into the mortal world, recognising that the "rules" of his composition are genre rules and not imagined empirical ones. [/QUOTE]
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