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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8957975" data-attributes="member: 71699">To comment narrowly in this regard, following my rubric one might say that if my purposes include to play in a given setting S, then I can justify my rulings by how well they serve that purpose (of facilitating play in S.)One might ask - why bother with the circumlocution? One motive is that I can't rely on the ruling:reference binary to justify rulings that have purposes outside of facilitating the given setting. Those that might matter to play in any setting, and might be ruled in divers ways regardless of settting. I'm thinking in particular of meta-rules, such as specific beats general, and table rules, such as what to do about cocked dice.Purposes also seem to trump setting, in that if my purpose is to present a different setting (S' rather than S) then rulings justified given S' appear to trump those that might have been justified given S. Even though both have a setting as a reference and ought to be equally well justified. Purposes says something about this play, rather than any play.I believe that more or less restates what I have been saying: your rules and rulings are justified in view of your purpose of "characters having adventures in interesting settings".Another reason I put purposes early in the chain of justification is that it puts due emphasis on the rule-follower over the rule. Especially in TTRPG where the rule-follower gets to both interpret the rule (grasp it) and put it in force for themselves (uphold it). Perhaps it improves the quaddition/addition arguments by suggesting that we have no stake in whether at some point adding by 2 changes, but rather that we have the purpose in mind of adding by 2. In order to do that, we need to grasp and uphold the appropriate rule and no other rule will do: certainly not quaddition. And this too leads to a regress, because we're left wondering what we meant when we said that we had in mind adding by 2 (addition?) Might we not have just as well meant quaddition without yet realising it!?Hence I believe rules and rulings are justified according to complex rubrics, informed by their context or web - form of life as Wittgenstein famously put it - of surrounding meaning, including other rules. No one rule or ruling in isolation can be considered justified. You and I can point out members of the rubric that carry weight with us. You have made yours somewhat clear: setting has priority. Mine seems more about purposes.I defend mine on the basis that while I can picture rules and rulings that are not obviously justified by any given setting, I find it hard to picture rules that matter to players of games that are not justified by their purposes in playing those games.</blockquote>

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