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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 2127126" data-attributes="member: 18280">Fanboy2000,Your analogy is fine to a point.  However, the difference between physics and models in the real world is that, no matter what model you use, the travel time at a constant speed from Venus to Neptune is the same....but, if you pick a bad model, Neptune might not be where you expect it to be.(Yes, I know that the orbits of planets will affect where they are, and that therefore the distances will not be constant.  That, however, is beside the point.  The point is that a real-world model doesn't change the results of what happens to you; it merely reflects it to a greater or lesser degree.)A set of RPG rules, however, does change what happens to you.To use your example again, if model 1 & 2 were instead rulesets 1 & 2 and we assumed that they modelled the same setting, then travelling at a constant speed in the direction of Pluto in ruleset 1 would have a different effect than in ruleset 2.  Simply put, travelling at a constant speed in ruleset 1 (which models different distances between planets as being the same) would result in shifts in net speed depending upon where you start and where you are headed.Similarly, the difference in falling damage implies something about the world.  There is a big difference between a model and the thing it models.  When rules are used in the game system, they become part of the thing being modeled.RC</blockquote>