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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9015019" data-attributes="member: 42582">Have you ever read the rules for DW? Have you ever played it? Do you think that there is no rule for opening sewer hatches in DW played without that custom move?To put it another way: do you consider it a rule creation/fiat exercise for a GM in typical D&D play to draw up a dungeon and stock it? Because the "When you open a sewer hatch" custom move is exactly the same sort of thing.So . . .Have you heard of seven-a-side rugby? Does that mean that rugby is an incomplete rules system?[USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] sometimes plays street/pick-up basketball. My understanding is that often there is only one ring for both teams. Does that make basketball an incomplete rules system?I'm pretty certain that some people, once upon a time, decided to start their Monopoly game with a different amount of starting money. Does that make Monopoly an incomplete rules system?To me, it seems obvious that people can vary the rules of a game in all sorts of ways, including changing the starting conditions (in DW, that would mean authoring new playbooks; in 4e D&D, that would mean authoring new races, classes, themes, paragon paths, etc). That doesn't make the game incomplete. It just means that the game admits of variants. (This raises a question about the identity conditions of games. To me it seems a relatively unimportant question, given that nothing seems to turn on the answer to it. Of course, if we were setting up a tournament or an exhibition or a catalogue maybe it would matter, but I at least am not doing any of those things.)How is that incomplete?The rules tell the GM to make a call. The GM is at some liberty in reaching their decision.Cricket has rules which require the umpire to make a call: LBW and unsafe bowling. It also has rules that give the captain of the team a lot of liberty in reaching their decision, like the rules around field placement, or around who can bowl the next over.The fact that a game requires decision-making according to a relatively abstract standard, or a standard that will only be able to be cashed out in context; or requires decision-making within certain parameters but within those parameters with a high degree of liberty; doesn't make it incomplete.Monopoly is not incomplete because a player has to choose whether or not to buy a property they land on (but can't choose, outside the context of an auction, to buy a different one). Football (soccer) is not incomplete because each team has to make choices about field placement. Etc.The rule that a player gets to decide what their PC says, is a rule that confers permissions on players. The rule that a GM gets to say what happens when a ruby is prised from a statue is a rule that confers permissions on the GM.These rules are not incomplete. Structurally, they seem identical to some of the rules I've mentioned above, or to the rule in D&D that says a player gets to choose the target of their PC's attack (if within reach/range) and that the GM gets to choose the target of their creature/NPC's attack (if within reach/range). For that matter, they seem structurally identical to the rule in Australian Rules football that requires disposing of or bouncing the ball rather than holding it, but gives the player a permission as to where to bounce it (eg which side of the body) or to whom to pass it.On this measure every game that involves human decision-making is incomplete. So off the top of my head the only game I can think of that is complete is snakes and ladders.To me that seems a pretty worthless use of the concept of completeness.</blockquote>

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