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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9039574" data-attributes="member: 42582">This suggests that the function of rules is to be a type of summary or &quot;aide memoire&quot; for the fiction: the setting is too big or complex to fully convey, and so we reduce it to rules.But then, why does the referee have any special role? Why can't any player who realises that the rules are getting the setting wrong suspend or amend the rules in order to make the fiction better?That's before we get to the sorts of comments that [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and I have made upthread, that the capacity of rules to summarise setting breaks down completely outside a very narrow range of cases. (Eg AD&amp;D has rules for how hard it is for various characters to force open various sorts of doors and similar portals; but when it comes to toppling various sizes of statue - a pretty classic fantasy trope -&nbsp; the rules have nothing to say and the game participants are left to make things up based on common sense.)In fact, experience in RPG design and play shows that there is no 'firm requirement&quot; that the system/mechanics need to reflect the setting accurately. The mechanics for AW don't &quot;reflect the setting&quot; in a way that can be accurate or inaccurate: they establish a clear set of processes for working out what happens next in the shared fiction. The same is true for most of the mechanics in Classic Traveller. Or MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. Or Prince Valiant.I don't find this very helpful. I mean, why aren't character described the way they are in novels: by name, appearance, aspirations, relationships etc? Why does &quot;armour&quot; particularly matter? (Let alone the concepts of &quot;avoidance&quot; or &quot;damage resistance&quot;, which only have meaning within rather tightly constrained conceptions of how a certain sort of action is resolved - in Cthulhu Dark or Wuthering Heights or Agon 2e or Marvel Heroic RP or HeroWars/Quest or Prince Valiant, a character may well be heavily armoured, or lightly armoured, or not armoured at all, but the way in which that matters to action resolution, if it does, has nothing to do with &quot;avoidance&quot; or &quot;damage resistance&quot;).Deciding whether to paint a car red or blue is (as best I'm aware) an utterly trivial decision from the engineering point of view, and matters only to sales and marketing. Working out why a RPG needs rules, and what rules it should have, is not trivial at all. It's fundamental to RPG design.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9039574, member: 42582"] This suggests that the function of rules is to be a type of summary or "aide memoire" for the fiction: the setting is too big or complex to fully convey, and so we reduce it to rules. But then, why does the referee have any special role? Why can't any player who realises that the rules are getting the setting wrong suspend or amend the rules in order to make the fiction better? That's before we get to the sorts of comments that [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER] and I have made upthread, that the capacity of rules to summarise setting breaks down completely outside a very narrow range of cases. (Eg AD&D has rules for how hard it is for various characters to force open various sorts of doors and similar portals; but when it comes to toppling various sizes of statue - a pretty classic fantasy trope - the rules have nothing to say and the game participants are left to make things up based on common sense.) In fact, experience in RPG design and play shows that there is no 'firm requirement" that the system/mechanics need to reflect the setting accurately. The mechanics for AW don't "reflect the setting" in a way that can be accurate or inaccurate: they establish a clear set of processes for working out what happens next in the shared fiction. The same is true for most of the mechanics in Classic Traveller. Or MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. Or Prince Valiant. I don't find this very helpful. I mean, why aren't character described the way they are in novels: by name, appearance, aspirations, relationships etc? Why does "armour" particularly matter? (Let alone the concepts of "avoidance" or "damage resistance", which only have meaning within rather tightly constrained conceptions of how a certain sort of action is resolved - in Cthulhu Dark or Wuthering Heights or Agon 2e or Marvel Heroic RP or HeroWars/Quest or Prince Valiant, a character may well be heavily armoured, or lightly armoured, or not armoured at all, but the way in which that matters to action resolution, if it does, has nothing to do with "avoidance" or "damage resistance"). Deciding whether to paint a car red or blue is (as best I'm aware) an utterly trivial decision from the engineering point of view, and matters only to sales and marketing. Working out why a RPG needs rules, and what rules it should have, is not trivial at all. It's fundamental to RPG design. [/QUOTE]

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