thread: 2011-05-18 : Ben Lehman: Rules and their Functions
On 2011-05-23, Josh W wrote:
The distinction makes sense to me, continuous rules tend to be more higher level than immediate rules; one might say, "be agressive", when another says "this attack action has these consequences". In a fundimental sense both of those rules are acting via players, but the player has more space in the former to express themselves and improvise within the rule.
Another distinction is that I can't really think of a definition of "handling time" for immediate rules. Play might take longer or shorter, but there isn't that mind shift to see what the game suggests.
It's funny to say that of course, because the biggest part of interuption of play when dealing with principles, turn order, setting structure, etiquette etc is learning them. People don't expect themselves to memorise tables then apply them instinctively, but these kinds of mechanics are much more likely to be treated that way, in fact, perhaps they are used for most of the time because they are intuitively memorisable.
