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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5899096" data-attributes="member: 27160">Sure - it's all about communication of the world setting, in this respect. But I would then say that part of "being a stellar DM" is selecting and making known the rules to all the players. It goes right to the heart of "the rules are the language", which I'm beginning to see as a useful and appropriate analogy in several respects.I think they are very akin to a shared language in many respects. Even with a shared language, though, some concepts can be difficult to communicate clearly; you only have top look around here to see that! In such cases, you just have to do the best you can, using words that mean only close to what you want to say, or using sign language and other forms of illustration if you are face-to-face. This strikes me as very like an RPG rules system. Every system will have concepts that is struggles with; you just have to use the systems you have, mixed with general explanation and additional non-verbal/non-system communication to resolve the issue.And it's true that you can start without any shared language - maybe with just one person knowing (some of) the language - and develop a whole new tongue as you go along. That can even be fun.If I buy a dictionary and grammar for a language, though, I don't want a few root words and some vague paragraphs about grammar - I want some proper textbooks!As I say, I think the "langauge" analogy is not bad. You will get misunderstandings and confusions even where all parties to a conversation are fluent, but that's not really even comparable to the situation where most of them don't speak the language being used at all!With experienced players, as well as GMs, this can be slightly easier - to stretch the analogy even further, this is because most roleplayers eventually pick up a good deal of "practical linguistics"!Not really - I run and play all sorts, from one-offs to convention scenarios to mini-campaigns to full campaigns, but my yardstick for rules systems is, by default, the "full campaign". A 1-30 level 4e game just about counts, since you would be hard pressed to do it in a year; 2 years, maybe, but we don't get to play quite that frequently (that would need to be > 1 session per week).This might be why that "roll-playing" phrase sometimes bugs me; I see no useful purpose in conflating two quite separate issues. The first issue is failure to roleplay - which is to say, failure to portray a character through decisions and actions - which I find actually to be pretty rare. The second is lack of game-world flavour in action declaration, which I generally think is caused by a flaw in the way the game mechanics are working - usually at the "who decides what mechanic to apply" level.In which case you have a social contest between the player and the GM. If you GM the same players for years, that eventually gets old, because you (eventually) realise that the same people win out in those situations every time. Then, you might try adding in some more meta-type rules (e.g. "I deliberately screw over Fred in some contests because he usually convinces me every time"). At that point, as someone else put it very eloquently, "consistent DM fiat = houserule system".Although, saying that, even "if you can persuade the GM in a one-on-one negotiation you win" is a system - and quite a consistent one. The question I ask myself is "is it a better system than one based explicitly on character abilities and die rolling?" In general, my answer is "no".I thoroughly recommend it (for what that's worth! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />). It doesn't even need to cost you a penny: <a href="http://www.lythia.com/" target="_blank">this site</a> has a whole boatload of free "fanon" articles. Just to be clear; the guy who created Hârn, Robin Crossby, tragically died of cancer in 2008 (he lived in Maple Ridge, just outside Vancouver, so it looks like you might have been near neighbours!) Since then, a dedicated group of writers, editors and developers have been keeping Hârn growing in the tradition originally set by him. The original publishers (there are two - long story which you can read about on the site I linked to) still publish this stuff - but the same writers also create the fanon. This is not the usual highly variable quality of fanon you see commonly - it's vetted and edited and it's amazingly good stuff.But I'll stop the gushing commercial at this point... <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/blush.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":blush:" title="Blush    :blush:" data-shortname=":blush:" /></blockquote>

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