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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8637486" data-attributes="member: 42582">The conventional meaning of "deontic" is "pertaining to duties". I'm not sure what you mean by "deontic consequences". Do you mean that people won't like it if you break the rules? But that doesn't seem consistent with asserting that people are free to ignore the rules.Also: I don't see how, in a game like AW, a GM can choose not to agree to any rule. For instance, a GM who doesn't follow the rule "if you do it, you do it" probably isn't playing AW any more. That rule is constitutive of AW as a game.There is some tolerance here: "touch move" probably isn't constitutive of chess, though perhaps is constitutive of competition chess; children play chess although they don't know or use the "en passant" rule; etc. Vincent Baker has a whole discussion, in the AW rulebook, of custom moves and of using the system beyond the apocalyptic setting. But none of that touches on the centrality of "if you do it, you do it".5e D&D is a bit less clear about what rules are constitutive of it, but certain key features of PC build and action resolution are candidates. Putting 3d6 or 2d10 in place of 1d20 might be within the tolerances, though it will change the play a fair bit. But substituting the 20-ish point spread with a d4 while keeping everything else intact wouldn't really count as 5e D&D any more, I don't think. Or dropping the idea that PC build is based on choosing from lists of bundles of mechanical features with associated colours (say in favour of free descriptors).Of course any rule-governed social activity requires the participants to buy into the rules in some fashion or other, but that's not a distinctive property of RPGs and I don't see that it's even especially interesting in the RPG context.</blockquote>

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