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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 2181507" data-attributes="member: 18832">I don't understand why you're assuming that "knowing the system" necessarily equates to "gaming the system", i.e., playing for advantage. I don't believe I ever stated that I believe players should adopt any measure of "game efficiency" in their choices on behalf of their characters.No, I believe it's perfectly possible to play a descriptive roleplaying game where the player's input is mediated into system terms by the GM or even simply adjudicated on the basis of intuition, story logic, or any other resolution system.What I don't quite appreciate is a GM style preference for a heavily-detailed system which is "kept from" the players, one way or another. If the GM is in control to that extent and players must simply react in descriptive fashion, I question the utility of a rules-heavy system like D&D.I wonder why you feel it's necessary to obfuscate the game system's description of the world and present it to players in your own terms.I mean, let's use a crude example. As a player, I know that the Dodge feat makes my PC more difficult for a particular opponent to hit in combat when she concentrates on avoiding his attacks. My character knows the trick of keeping an eye on one particular opponent to better avoid being hurt by him without compromising her defence from other attacks.How would you describe the difference between a player's choices on behalf of his character when he knows the feat and its function as opposed to when he has only received a descriptive explanation of it, devoid of game system terminology? What is the functional difference you see between "I'm using Dodge versus the ogre, not the orc" and "I'm going to concentrate on avoiding the ogre's attacks rather than the orc's"?The reason I ask is because a) You appear to be asserting a functional, rather than aesthetic, difference and b) I find it difficult to conceive of a way in which you could descriptively educate the player as to his character's capabilities in a way which fully enables him to take advantage of the PC's (invisible) mechanical features which at the same time avoids becoming simply a circituitous description of the mechanics in question.I fail, then, to see the advantage of a game system like D&D, which models a world in  fair detail which does not reflect the real world.I'm confused, to be perfectly honest. Either the rules of the game determine the "rules" of the world, or they don't. If they don't, then it's the DM's thoughts which determine the rules of the world and thus the advantage of a detailed system is entirely lost. If they do, then players who don't know the details of their characters' abilities have an incomplete and incorrect picture of the world in their minds, and thus are actually participating less in the world of the game than their better-informed compatriots.Unless they're meant to be playing someone who has no idea of what they can do, like Rincewind. <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=";)" />I think you're assigning "mastery of the rules" exclusively to tactical players and "ignorance of the rules" exclusively to immersive roleplayers, naming the former a vice and the latter a virtue, and I think you're utterly wrong to make those assignments. I don't think there's anything about knowing exactly how the system works which prevents me - or any other player first and foremost concerned with the story arising from our characters' actions and motivations - from making the decisions the character would make.I think the dichotomy you propose is false - I've seen many players with a firm grasp of the rules who would explore the possibilities of the system by asking if they could flip a table up for cover, and many players ignorant of the rules who wouldn't consider such a thing because they don't even know what the rules let them do. I've heard more cries of "How am I supposed to know that would help?" from players who never bothered to learn the rules than I've ever heard "You can't do that, there's no rules for it".More to the point, you're not responding to the substance of my question. The only virtue of a detailed game system of which the players are largely ignorant appears to be satisfaction on the part of the GM that it's being run "fairly". I think that's an illusory advantage - because the detail is entirely lost in the gap between a player's rules-free description of their character's actions and reactions and the GM's attempt to interpret that description into the terms of the system.Maybe I have a manifesto: If you don't know the rules, you might as well play Fudge.</blockquote>

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