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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9032520" data-attributes="member: 71699">Just to make sure we're addressing the same text, here is the part I wrapped in quotes, in that post (which therefore omitted it from your requote.)So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.The "/" was simply an "or" as I clarified in the interim in my repost as a separate thread.That was my first intuition - that this seemed to only cover action declarations - but then I found it hard to find exceptions outside of those I called attention to, i.e. simulation rules, meta-rules, procedural rules. The first of those three I have now proposed to bring in through the inclusion of questions in description.Say the question "What is the weather tomorrow?" That can be matched to the Balazaring Weather Table, which will output the consequential answer.Yes, and one has been. Ironsworn.That's not quite correct. It's important to retain the superseding and extending norms part.Again, this is failing to put proper weight on the full implications of superseding and extending norms. I can ask questions like this<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In the absense of a rule, can I say what the weather will be tomorrow in Balazar? I believe yes, it's pretty straightforward. Especially if I had in play a calendar with seasons (like the Calendar of Harptos for FR.) I can follow a norm - "hmm, well it's summer and Balazar is mostly plains so I'm going with hot and let's say cloudy... light but constant winds".</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">So I've got an answer, what do I need the rule for? The rule supersedes and extends that. Superseding means I use the Balazaring Weather Table instead of what I might normally expect. Extending means introducing things I would not normally expect, and that can invite questions I couldn't have without the rule.</li> </ul>As I now find based on your previous, the key distinctions to bring in are going to be the inclusion of questions (so that there are rules that answer questions, which I think can be wrapped up into producing a fitting consequence) and the inclusion of rules that care about what the player wants (not just to do it, do it, but also "I wish it would turn out this way.") I might include in "wants" the demands of story and role-play.Again, I feel some just cannot accept the possibility of immersionist play. For the folk doing the play it is about their experience. I can enjoy the blue sky, right? But that does not mean that the sky is blue for my sake! I read some wording in The Elusive Shift that I found usefulimmersionrole-playingstoryto which I might addstrivingIt's interesting that immersion is one of the foundational intuitions of narratologists (i.e. that games involve immersion, agency, and transformation.) Anyway, this possible fourfold model of RPG separates immersion out from role-playing and story. Those might put people front and centre, where immersion is the experience of the world. The enjoyment of the blue sky for its own sake. I don't here mean to exclude that the fourfolds interleave: I think they do.I'm not sure if you say this based on the omission of text, but anyway.So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.The / was an "or". It acknowledges that when there is a norm we can match to the norm (no rule required) and a rule can supersede that. This can play out as described above, where a norm competes with a rule. Generally speaking, the lusory attitude gives it to the rule, not the norm, to prevail. Here I see again that I have been unclear: the notions are not interchangeable, but I am not voicing just yet a theory of how to separate them.Let's not go back to rule zero, which for one thing is a compound rule with contents that apparently differ per poster. A few times you've explained what you think rules are in terms of making them compound. I am focused on saying what rules simply are. One can go ahead and compound as one likes from there.As my concerns are generally ontological - Hart's scorer's discretion might not be especially relevant to me. I'll have to give that some thought. I might say something like - if it applies, it introduces or makes desirable just such strategies as you seem to employ, which by my lights amounts to adding more rules (so back to "it's compound.") We'd get hung up on disagreement about "whatever they like". I prefer my atomic regulatory rule, seeing as the rest varies by poster! Anyway, the additional rules I would have in mind include those yet to be brought into the description: meta-rules. (So I suggest that power-conferring rules are meta-rules, rules about rules, or at least have punted them to here.)I recently learned of Frederick Schauer's work and perhaps my description of rules is more like his. He recognises the need to link a factual predicate to a consequent (that then is what a rule is or does.) He notices as I do the problems of matching (of ensuring that the rule captures just the cases it should capture). I have more reading to do to see if I have this right. TTRPG as a domain has concerns and features that are interesting once one gets a foundational idea of what an RPG rule is in place, among them how to say what counts as a good rule?Why are apprehensions about what might happen next limited to GM? I think they're visibly held by everyone in the room!As I noted, D&D gives it to GM to match descriptions to norms (this should usually be a gimme, but actually I believe GM is intended to prevail if there is doubt) or rules (where they exist.) AW has a brilliant scheme of forcing the description to fit pretty closely to each move, reducing as much as possible doubt (but not dissolving it entirely, MC still gets to say what matches.)Here we will need to say what game mechanics are, versus rules. Mechanics are made up of rules. They're almost always (maybe even always) compound. My description does not deal with mechanics, it deals with rules.I agree, and it is something that I've had in mind during my exchange with those posters. I wondered if anyone would eventually speak to it (and it seemed most likely you would given your insights.) Where no-myth fits my general description of rules is this<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I allowed my description to contain an oversight, which is - what about things GM might write down that are it seems intended to override other norms but aren't really rules? Should I say they are rules? For example, if GM notes down that the sister hates the brother. Is that a rule?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">My take is that in doing so GM is establishing a particular type of norm, one that is a norm of the game world. That's because a player could invoke a rule that had the consequence that the sister not hate the brother, and one would expect play to respect that. Or one could feel instead that the GM's note established a rule, and compare the rules for specificity (specific overriding general).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As an aside, one might note that a TTRPG rule is just a formulated or prototyped norm: or at least, I do intend to imply that. It's particularly interesting to think about how we decide that a description matches a rule, requiring of course some norm or rule for deciding, with the obvious regress. Those sorts of regresses often appear in discussion on (the forming of) meaning. I've recently come to feel they are skirted by accepting circularity, but that might not be right. I'm not wholly against a dispositional account.</li> </ul>So what about when those things GM notes down are not only normative (or are rules) but also secret or unstated? It seems pretty clear that, that's what no-myth banishes. As I intended to imply in some of my questions, what happens if those are simply said out loud? Say the GM has a printed book of Star League protocols that players are at liberty to read any time? Is it then okay for the faked distress signal to fail if as it happens printed openly in that book is a distress-signal-ignoring protocol?Above it is implied that norms as they are formulated or prototyped blur into rules. That's intentional. Seeing as I don't think anything can prevent that, it seems right to land where we have for no-myth. One can also have rules about GM freedom to manufacture rules, which invokes my description of RPG rules to make anything GM manufactures submit to the premanufactured or consensus game rules.As I lay out above, I was thinking of a difference between them. I wanted to know what others thought, and for my part their patient answers, questions and comments helped make things clearer. Turning a nagging doubt into a more concrete concept.Agreed also. I think it is not that the moves are taken to be comprehensive (although Baker did an incredible job of casting a wide net) but that the work in conjunction with principles that bring in the exceptions. I want to take a closer look at principles next, actually. Anyway, practically speaking, it's not even necessary to cover every possible case (and on surface I would guess that to not be possible) but only those cases mainly arising.So for avoidance of doubt, I agree there is a distinction.</blockquote>

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