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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gban007" data-source="post: 9163458" data-attributes="member: 56488">An interesting OP I think, and I have a few thoughts on it, forgive me but this may get a bit meandering <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Leaving the physics side to the side, I think there can be a bit of a blur between World and Story, depending on the game and how 'world shaking' it is as such.  The more 'down to earth' a game is, I think the easier there is to be separation between the two, to allow one or the other or both to come to life more.I think older games tended to be more World mechanic heavy due to nature of beginnings, taking a start from Wargames, where you tended to want to model that more - to extend of some games where you may have tracking of fuel levels, how much fuel different vehicles use, how likely a vehicle is to breakdown in differing terrain etc.  Sometimes though that is more detail than people want to care about, and over time I think it has very much swung to skipping a lot of detail in favour of Story.Generally speaking I think I tend to play the games that err more to the Story side, like 5e DND, the One Ring, Call of Cthulhu - the latter two I think because they are inspired by books that very much focus on the story side of things, and leave a lot of how the world operates to a bit of mystery (e.g. Tom Bombadil, the nameless ones in the deeps) - and the games look to replicate the feel of those stories, so you can replicate similar stories, without worrying too much about how the wider world operates - a lot based on assumption that physics etc are the same as ours anyway, and so people can use those by default.  When playing other fantasy games, especially High Fantasy, I tend to worry more about story side of things, as World feels somewhat mutable in most cases due to prevalence of magic, but if I were to play something a bit darker or grittier, I would expect it to start showcasing the world more in terms of mechanics - even if just to extent of say classic dragonlance with no clerical spells (and as a comparison, 5e version does away with that to concentrate on story rather than world, not a right or wrong thing to do, but I think shows emphasis), or Dark Sun with a few things going on there.  When playing Sci-Fi I tend to want to have a bit more of the World detailed in mechanics, if it is stuff like how to achieve FTL travel, time taken to move from system to system, how long different suits (or species even) can last in a vacuum - the harder the science fiction, the more I want this detailed.  Star Wars I'm happier to wave a lot of that due to it being a bit more fantastical in nature, but if I was playing Star Trek I would want it more codified, and the mechanics to help describe how the World works as such.Where there is a source inspiration where it feels like the World is quite different, I like to see that supported in mechanics - like a Wheel of Time variation, male channelers going insane, people treating channelers different to others, different strengths of different sources etc.  Warhammer (40k and fantasy) I would like to see the influence of Chaos shown, and how uncertain the Warp is, how certain rituals can make things more likely to occur but at a cost (Whether to person doing ritual, or others).  A grittier World (e.g. Warhammer Fantasy) should be shown like that in the rules, as I think it is (I have recently through various bundles got a number of the rules, but haven't had opportunity to read them yet let alone play), with wounds etc taken and the like.A world that is slowly dying, I would like to see that portrayed, whether there is general timers going on with each day causing something worse to happen - something you can see in some CRPGS (one of my favourite series, Avernum, in it's third entry has an internal clock with various monster invasions going on, and if you don't go fast enough towns / villages will fall to the monsters before you get there - won't prevent you winning the game but will make it harder).  Free League has a game out called Death in Space - sounds an intriguing one, but when it talks about being in a collapsing universe, I would hope to see mechanics that show how that is eventuating / impacting on characters over time, to support getting the feel of a collapsing universe.I guess in summary it depends on the game as to whether the World is part of the forefront, or just part of a backdrop, as to how much the rules should support it, but I think in some games it should be at the forefront, and the closest I can think of a game getting there is my limited experience with Traveller from years ago, otherwise I don't have much exposure as yet.</blockquote>

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