thread: 2011-05-18 : Ben Lehman: Rules and their Functions
On 2011-05-19, Zac in Virginia wrote:
I think another angle on immediate rules is that they both condition people to play a certain way and provide an opportunity for mastery.
Continuous rules do that too, but if a continuous rule relates to genre trappings, setting, or suchlike, then it conditions us into a particular creative headspace, rather than into how we approach the fiction we're creating, say.
In Polaris, keeping Hearts from dying til they hit Veteran status probably helps folks think less about risk-of-dying and keeps that from coloring their play decisions. At the same time, the setting material is also continuous rules, right? So it colors play decisions at the level of Color, rather than at the level of Techniques, yeah? Maybe?
I think that latter group of continuous rules is what Emily is talking about.
Another factor is that setting material, functioning as a form of rules, can be/is just as important as other continuous or immediate rules. It colors what we think about, what excites us about the game, what angle we have for characterization and what have you, etc.
