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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7768937" data-attributes="member: 29398">I'm not so sure it's a red herring at all.  The discussion is regarding OS v NS, and one open-to-argument distinction between them is how they view and-or handle metagaming in general.It's at least halfway believable, however, that a character would realize there's only so much it can do in a given amount of time...quite reflective of reality.All of which are mechanics I neither use nor like; square spaces because they're unrealistic and the others due to their metagame quotient.True, but my immersionist (and simulationist) side says the ideal goal should be to eliminate such things where possible and minimize the rest.OK, that's cool.  Thanks for the explanation. "New school" does not necessarily equate to "chronologically new".  One can argue Dragonlance was in many ways new - or at least newish - school even though it came out in 1984 (or 83?).  DCCRPG, on the other hand, is fairly hard-core old school despite its 201x release date.If you want a believable and consistent game world with the PCs as otherwise normal residents within it except they have a player attached, then having PCs follow the same basic rules as everyoen else is requirement number one.  Unless you're playing supers, in which case all bets are off; but we're not (I hope!) talking about supers games here.Want an evil wizard as a foe?  Roll it up using the same mechanics a PC wizard uses.Monster design, using 1e as an example, by hard-defining what a particular monster could and couldn't do and by hard-wiring the hit dice etc. kind of put itself into a box that it then had to use kludges like you note above to try and escape.3e got the theory bang-on right in this regard, though the system's mechanical overkill kinda made it all a bit less useful in practice.  In doing it this way 3e was, I think, following the masses rather than leading them.In 1e and 2e there was little enough difference between a 1st-level (or 0th-level) character and a commoner that it didn't matter very much, and one could easily interchange the design rules/guidelines form one to the other and probably not notice the difference.  Hence, easier just to make 'em all use the same rules - the ones for PCs - and stop there.</blockquote>

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