Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6569925" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think he is exactly saying this, probably because that was the way I framed it a couple pages back. I equated exploring the nature of magic with exploring a dungeon. Its an apt analogy I think. [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s theory seems to be that both should be mapped out at a very high level of detail such that any likely question about their nature can be answered by the DM referencing some pre-determined material (or perhaps exercising some already-built random generator perhaps). He's literally saying that the DM's job includes recording in some form a set of 'rules of physics' from which principles any question arising in game can be explored. I assume the alternative being the same thing you'd say if the PCs got to the edge of the dungeon map where you don't know what is behind the door which would be "that door is stuck" and I guess for say ad-libbing some magic it would be equivalently "You're not sure if this is possible, but you lack the understanding to try" or some such. I don't want to sound condescending to [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], but IMHO he's at an early point in the trajectory of evolution of gamers mastery of the more abstruse areas of RPG theory and practice. There was a time, probably in the early 80's, after I'd DMed for several years, when detailed process simulation and the achievement of the 'ultimate system' that would somehow present answers to all the possible questions players asked and produce satisfying narrative harmoniously coupled with simple mechanics was the omega point of my conception of RPGs. That day has LOOOONNNNNGGGGG since faded to dust and been replaced by a great appreciation of agenda and cooperative shared world building/exploration. Not that the process sim phase wasn't fun, it was, but it really only worked for a pretty limited realm of play, roughly Gygaxian dungeon exploration.</blockquote>

Verification