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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8637038" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, I kinda follow the deontological perspective on this one. Cheating entails a fundamentally self-contradictory viewpoint: it means to benefit from the rules, while simultaneously consciously disobeying them. Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it, "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." (The Man Who Was Thursday, ch. 4) To cheat is to simultaneously will that the rules bind, and also will that they not bind.I'm not sure how one could accidentally follow a rule one is aware of, nor how much relevance there is to following a rule one is ignorant of. Again, with interpretation, it seems rather silly to me to do any amount of "interpretation" on something one thinks is a mere suggestion, a cobweb, an airy aspiration. What value is there to sitting down and hashing out the merit of something that has no normative force? And if it has normative force, then it binds. "Following a rule conditionally" simply means following the same rule but with specified conditions (or, if you prefer, following a very similar rule that differs only in having additional exceptions.) I'm not even sure I understand what "following a sufficiency of rules" means, to be honest.Does that not contradict your statement, then, that you follow rules initially in order to discover what their consequences might be? How can one follow rules because of enjoyment one has not yet witnessed? That, to me, says that you follow the rules because they are things to be followed, and then upon review decide whether following them will be worthwhile going forward.I mean, I'm not saying these are the only thing we have no choice but to obey, namely, physical laws (though it's worth noting how many games IRL do in fact invoke physical laws as part of play...) The rules of a game are obviously still a choice. But I very much grant your earlier best-practices example of accepting the rules without knowing whether they will be beneficial, because modifying rules requires some amount of experience or expertise first (humans are imperfect abstract reasoners, much to my chagrin!) Once we have that expertise--which can only be obtained by first being (willingly) bound by the rules--we can then challenge that binding, asking whether it is worthwhile to do so (whether because the rule may be faulty, or because the purpose may be faulty).I still kinda am saying that though. "DM decides" means being unbridled by rules. The players are, of course, so bridled--by the DM's will. But what bridle does the DM bear? She is the one holding the reins, sitting in the driver's seat. What could possibly constrain her? The only "constraints" on a DM in such a position are the limits of good taste, which are not, never have been, and never will be "rules" in the way a game has rules (particularly since breaking them or cheating on them is incredibly rampant!)</blockquote>

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