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<blockquote data-quote="Vanveen" data-source="post: 7769764" data-attributes="member: 6874262">The distinction here is that board games consist of a finite decision space. Board game rules must be capable of managing any state the decision space produces, *and must be agreed upon by all players before playing*. That agreement is necessary owing to the finite decision space. Precision is usually very useful in this regard. While it is not strictly necessary, it is such a powerful design method that it has become internalized in most game design attempts. &nbsp;In a game such as chess, novel and unpredictable decision states are still managed by a very small rule set; this is one of the reasons why chess is played as often as it is, for as long as it has been. Truly enduring games often offer &quot;more than your money's worth&quot;--in other words, an unbelievable amount of novelty and surprise for a low &quot;cost,&quot; that of learning and applying the rules correctly. Again, chess and Go are immediate, probably cliched, examples.The real issue here is that nobody, in this thread or elsewhere, seems to have realized that RPG rules are very different from a common-sensical definition of &quot;rules.&quot; From a structural or rhetorical perspective, they have some very peculiar features. I would go so far as to say that *RPG rules are indissolubly part of the RPG experience*, on a par with *actually playing the game itself.* In some important ways, they are *equivalent* to playing the game itself.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Vanveen, post: 7769764, member: 6874262"] The distinction here is that board games consist of a finite decision space. Board game rules must be capable of managing any state the decision space produces, *and must be agreed upon by all players before playing*. That agreement is necessary owing to the finite decision space. Precision is usually very useful in this regard. While it is not strictly necessary, it is such a powerful design method that it has become internalized in most game design attempts. In a game such as chess, novel and unpredictable decision states are still managed by a very small rule set; this is one of the reasons why chess is played as often as it is, for as long as it has been. Truly enduring games often offer "more than your money's worth"--in other words, an unbelievable amount of novelty and surprise for a low "cost," that of learning and applying the rules correctly. Again, chess and Go are immediate, probably cliched, examples. The real issue here is that nobody, in this thread or elsewhere, seems to have realized that RPG rules are very different from a common-sensical definition of "rules." From a structural or rhetorical perspective, they have some very peculiar features. I would go so far as to say that *RPG rules are indissolubly part of the RPG experience*, on a par with *actually playing the game itself.* In some important ways, they are *equivalent* to playing the game itself. [/QUOTE]

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