wizard boilerplate

i was talking to jack about a vertical tower-of-babel style adventure he's working on inspired by the endless stair where you jump and climb up to the top of the structure and then fight god or something, but you fall off the adventure and there are... mutators so its different on each ascent, and you want them to fall off

anyway the obvious problem is the pcs might have flying and how can you disallow or disincentivise flying. and we talked about various curses you can apply so that you can fly but it gets worse each time you do, or ways to build a dungeon so that if you miss stuff you just cant complete it, and so on

anyway i think this whole thing is sort of wizard boilerplate where theres like, a rule room where all the rules for this adventure are listed and by entering the dungeon you agree to these rules. if you do this thing the wizard doesnt like he'll zap you with the anti that thing device

but another approach would be just regular boilerplate where you put at the top "this adventure doesnt work if you're flying" or "this adventure is for levels 1-4 and fuck off aaracockras" or whatever

gyi outta hea

so i think this is probably a better solution because you dont have to map out all the implications, you dont, as the player, have to work out when the dragon isnt looking so you can cheat, its just not allowed, no to this thing

i may be overstating it with the room with the diegetic rules that you agree to... bascially we're talking about... systemic fiat constraints versus diegetic fantasy constraints... and its sort of a spectrum where... if there's a dragon who enforces the rule, they can be understood and subverted in the ways a dragon can be subverted. if its an explicit diegetic rule that you know about, you can decide whether to accept the diegetic consequence of cheating. if its an hidden version of that, where it's not telegraphed, it's just the dm zapping you when you do things they don't like. and if its like a rust monster or something... then its a ingame justification for the dm zapping you when you do things they dont like.

but i do think there's fun to be had with wizard rules rather than dm rules. like in the case where the dm doesnt allow flying, the fun youre having is working within the constraint. if the wizard doesnt allow flying, the fun youre having is working around the constraint. um... we're in that 'too many playstyles' problem where in one kind of game its fun to do the thing that would be disasterous in the other kind of game, and the game supports both playstyles. i like the thing where game mechanics are represented diegetically as in-fiction handles, if you can use them.  And im led to understand that there exists other (lesser) people hate that stuff.

anyway thats the post. wizard boilerplate