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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7473617" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's not true. Kids who play chess will often not use en passant, or even castling. That doesn't mean they're not playing chess. Or to put it another way: the boundary between &quot;chess&quot; and &quot;chess variant&quot; is nowhere near as tight as you suggest. I've played cards with people who allowed reviewing the previously-played tricks. That's a house rule that (personally) I think undermines the fun of the game (which includes following the play), but they were still playing five hundred.And it's not as if RPGs are unique in having loose rules. Part of the rules of a card game might include &quot;shuffle the deck&quot;, but what counts as a permissible method of shuffling, and as sufficient shuffling, is left up to the table. This is analogous to &quot;season to taste&quot; in a recipe.And you still haven't said what you think RPG rules are describing. Page 3 of the Basic PDF has a heading &quot;How to Play&quot;, under which are found instructions - &quot;The DM describes the environment. . . . The players describe what they want to do. . . . The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.&quot; That is not a description of anything - it's a prescription (rules, advice, guidelines - take your pick, they're all modes of prescription) for how to play the game.And page 71 has a heading &quot;Attack Rolls&quot;, which is followed by this:When you make an attack, your attack roll determines whether the attack hits or misses. To make an attack roll, roll a d20 and add the appropriate modifiers.That states a rule. The second sentence even uses two imperative verb to do so. (I've bolded it in the quote.)What are you suggesting it is a description of?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7473617, member: 42582"] That's not true. Kids who play chess will often not use en passant, or even castling. That doesn't mean they're not playing chess. Or to put it another way: the boundary between "chess" and "chess variant" is nowhere near as tight as you suggest. I've played cards with people who allowed reviewing the previously-played tricks. That's a house rule that (personally) I think undermines the fun of the game (which includes following the play), but they were still playing five hundred. And it's not as if RPGs are unique in having loose rules. Part of the rules of a card game might include "shuffle the deck", but what counts as a permissible method of shuffling, and as sufficient shuffling, is left up to the table. This is analogous to "season to taste" in a recipe. And you still haven't said what you think RPG rules are [I]describing[/I]. Page 3 of the Basic PDF has a heading "How to Play", under which are found instructions - "The DM describes the environment. . . . The players describe what they want to do. . . . The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions." That is not a [I]description [/I]of anything - it's a prescription (rules, advice, guidelines - take your pick, they're all modes of prescription) for how to play the game. And page 71 has a heading "Attack Rolls", which is followed by this: [indent]When you make an attack, your attack roll determines whether the attack hits or misses. To make an attack roll, [B]roll [/B]a d20 and [B]add [/B]the appropriate modifiers.[/indent] That states a rule. The second sentence even uses two imperative verb to do so. (I've bolded it in the quote.) What are you suggesting it is a description of? [/QUOTE]

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