Rules And Fiction – From Deeper In The Game

There is an interesting article over on Deeper In The Game on Rules and Fiction in role playing games.  It talks about two ways rules interact with the fiction in a game.  Those two ways are to declare and to delegate.  They propose that declarative rules add directly to the fiction while delegating rules tell who gets to affect the fiction and how they do so.  Now this may sounds simple and obvious and it is on a level.  But these are things that we really don’t think about in this way.  When we play, we just do what the rules say.  But from a design standpoint it is good to say these things and think about how your rules work with and on the story you are creating.