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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9146767" data-attributes="member: 7026617">You used a phrase something to the effect of &quot;let the rules see how things play out&quot;, and I was simply noting that in something like a supers setting without genre conventions, most of that question is not going to be revealed by the rules.&nbsp; Honestly, in a lot of supers games, some of the biggest conventions aren't baked into rules anyway (some are, like the relatively non-lethality of attacks that can blow through walls, but how society and the legal system are going to react to supers aren't).Yes, but all that's going to tell you--at best--is the physical realities of supers in the setting (and that &quot;at best&quot; is not a coincidence there; a theoretically simulationist rules set is still going to only be expressing the physical realities of how you've decided powers work, and in the end, those only exist in terms of some kind of convention anyway; there's no neutral ground to start with here).&nbsp; A lot of what goes on in deconstructionist supers is about the reactions of society to supers, and that could vary even if your physical mechanics are still otherwise following common supers conventions.&nbsp; It'd make some difference, but there's at least two big moving parts here, and you're only addressing one of them.That's fine, but my point is that at least some of this is inseparable from that in the case of many fantastic elements.&nbsp; As I said, is the fact supers attack powers are less lethal than they should be given other things anything but just another decision?&nbsp; At the level of deciding how those work, I'm not sure there's anything that can't be called &quot;a decision based on story&quot; broadly.&nbsp; You can say &quot;in reality something that blows through a wall isn't going to pulp a human&quot;, but in reality something that does that is not going to be something a quasi-human is generating in his body, either.&nbsp; Its not harder to come up with a rationale for one than the other.Now, you can make an argument that that sort of self-aware design is such that people in the setting will (or at least can) be aware of it, and that'll change things, and I think you'd be right.&nbsp; But that's not really an issue of how the process works mechanically.&nbsp; I could make that distinction with most representative superhero games, because that's not baked into the mechanics anyway.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 9146767, member: 7026617"] You used a phrase something to the effect of "let the rules see how things play out", and I was simply noting that in something like a supers setting without genre conventions, most of that question is not going to be revealed by the rules. Honestly, in a lot of supers games, some of the biggest conventions aren't baked into rules anyway (some are, like the relatively non-lethality of attacks that can blow through walls, but how society and the legal system are going to react to supers aren't). Yes, but all that's going to tell you--at best--is the physical realities of supers in the setting (and that "at best" is not a coincidence there; a theoretically simulationist rules set is still going to only be expressing the physical realities of how you've decided powers work, and in the end, those only exist in terms of some kind of convention anyway; there's no neutral ground to start with here). A lot of what goes on in deconstructionist supers is about the reactions of society to supers, and that could vary even if your physical mechanics are still otherwise following common supers conventions. It'd make some difference, but there's at least two big moving parts here, and you're only addressing one of them. That's fine, but my point is that at least some of this is inseparable from that in the case of many fantastic elements. As I said, is the fact supers attack powers are less lethal than they should be given other things anything but just another decision? At the level of deciding how those work, I'm not sure there's anything that can't be called "a decision based on story" broadly. You can say "in reality something that blows through a wall isn't going to pulp a human", but in reality something that does that is not going to be something a quasi-human is generating in his body, either. Its not harder to come up with a rationale for one than the other. Now, you can make an argument that that sort of self-aware design is such that people in the setting will (or at least can) be aware of it, and that'll change things, and I think you'd be right. But that's not really an issue of how the process works mechanically. I could make that distinction with most representative superhero games, because that's not baked into the mechanics anyway. [/QUOTE]

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