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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3227849" data-attributes="member: 42582">I never claimed to win any prizes for prose style! I'm just trying to explain my view as carefully and accurately as I can.Depending on who the audience of the argument is, the above may be true or false - please read my response to the next quote to see what I mean by this.I think you have got to the nub of it. There are two reasons I can think of why someone might post a question on a rules forum:*to engage in intellectual discussion about the rules;*to get an answer to a rules question that has arisen, or may arise, in play.These two possibilities create, if you like, two "audience types" for a rules answer: the intellectual-type audience, and the practical play-type audience.For the first sort of poster/audience, the FAQ is of no interest as an authority, and has no more weight than its reasoning and source suggest (eg if we know that Andy Collins wrote an FAQ answer, I think this on its own makes it more significant than a rules answer from me - he's likely to have thought harder and better about it, from a broader experience base).For the second sort of poster/audience, the FAQ is of interest, because they want an answer they can actually use in the game. The FAQ can help here, for the reasons I've said, and with which you have partially agreed. (Our remaining area of disagreement are taken up after the next quotes.)Whether or not the DM has this sort of authority I think depends very much on the game being played. In a lot of groups, I think decision-making is far more consensus-based, with the DM being just one voice among many. This is what I had in mind when I suggested that the FAQ may play an important role in generating such consensus.If in fact the DM does have the sole voice, then the FAQ will again be of no interest, because the sort of unanimity I talked about, and which the FAQ can play a role in bringing about, will not be needed.As it happens, I am a professional. I introduced the analogy because D&D rules were being compared by another poster to scientific theories, and I thought that comparison inapt.The second of these claims is generally not true in Anglo-Australian law. I think this is a case where practice may be different in the US and Anglo-Australian jurisdictions.</blockquote>

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