NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8413268" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Sure, this all makes sense. To my understanding, this is the kind of reasoning that led to the Free Kriegsspiel movement; the rules for the Kriegsspiel games had become complex to the point of being a burden. So the idea was to remove a lot of the rules and replace them with someone whose expertise would serve as a fast substitute for the rules. But as others have already pointed out, that eventually leads us back to rules. The referee is meant to be consistent. So once he starts making his rulings and establishing his reasoning, what he's doing is recreating the rules. It's a chicken-egg type of situation. My preference is to find a rules system that is simple enough at its core, but which can be applied in a variety of ways. To me, such a system can largely serve the purpose of the referee in Free Kriegsspiel.Yeah, I would agree with this. I think no matter what, there needs to be some framework involved. How structured or robust that framework may be will vary by taste, but I think it's necessary.I get the idea of hiding mechanics for the purpose of having players engage only with the fiction, I just don't think it's necessary. I think a player can both be aware of the rules, and engage with the fiction. I think there are some systems that make this easier to do. I would agree with you that the more rolling modes or other elements that get added to a game, the harder this likely becomes. I think one area where D&D struggles with this is it gates certain action types behind feats and spells and the like, making something that seemingly anyone should be able to try (like, disarming a foe, for example) possible for only a select few. This complicates things because then you either are blocking engagement with the fiction by saying "oh sorry you can't try and disarm this guy because you don't have the proper feat" or you create two sets of rules, one for characters with the feat, and then another for characters without. This is the kind of complexity I think makes engaging with the fiction harder. There are other ways to add complexity to a game that don't have this kind of effect.</blockquote>

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