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<blockquote data-quote="Vanveen" data-source="post: 7769777" data-attributes="member: 6874262">Still working it out myself, honestly. The best answer so far: reading RPG rules, for the reader, provides an experience equivalent to participating in--playing--the RPG. Reading the rules of chess, the player may imagine various moves and countermoves. But this experience is best described in terms of sheer mechanics--a rook moves so, a queen reacts so. In essence, a player is encouraged to experience aspects of the finite decision space. RPG rules provoke an experience outside the purported decision space. That is, a player reading combat rules is invited, even compelled, to imagine that combat inside a context larger than the combat rules cover or CAN cover. To wit: who is fighting? Why? What do they look like? What are the physical, emotional, and social contexts of the encounter? Etc., etc. The very act of reading RPG rules creates an RPG context, at the most immediate level that of the RPG one is reading. More experienced RPG rules readers--and let's not forget, there are far more rules readers than players--will begin to create their own highly notional RPG, a Platonic RPG. Perhaps not coincidentally, most long-running tables--especially those with stable DMs and relatively stable player bases--begin to resemble this in actual play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Vanveen, post: 7769777, member: 6874262"] Still working it out myself, honestly. The best answer so far: reading RPG rules, for the reader, provides an experience equivalent to participating in--playing--the RPG. Reading the rules of chess, the player may imagine various moves and countermoves. But this experience is best described in terms of sheer mechanics--a rook moves so, a queen reacts so. In essence, a player is encouraged to experience aspects of the finite decision space. [I]RPG rules provoke an experience outside the purported decision space. [/I] That is, a player reading combat rules is invited, even compelled, to imagine that combat inside a context larger than the combat rules cover or CAN cover. To wit: who is fighting? Why? What do they look like? What are the physical, emotional, and social contexts of the encounter? Etc., etc. The very act of reading RPG rules creates an RPG context, at the most immediate level that of the RPG one is reading. More experienced RPG rules readers--and let's not forget, there are far more rules readers than players--will begin to create their own highly notional RPG, a Platonic RPG. Perhaps not coincidentally, most long-running tables--especially those with stable DMs and relatively stable player bases--begin to resemble this in actual play. [/QUOTE]

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