I’m Just Taking It All In: Solving problems with on the Fly Design
If you run TTRPGs the realms of Rulings and Rules have a very evident border. You know when one or the other is being used. Rules are set in stone. Roll the D20, a 20 always crits, a 1 always fumbles. Rulings are for doing things we don’t have hard and fast Rules for. “I want to leap from the chandelier and do a diving attack onto the head of the vile wyrm”; congratulations GM you now have to do some on the fly game design to figure out what they have to roll, in what order they have to roll, whether or not the attack deals extra damage, has some blowback on the player and make it all vaguely fair and in line with the entire ruleset of the game you are all engaging with. This process can slow a game to halt if you are the kind of person who loves rules. I don’t mean that pejoratively, I love rules. Rules are necessary to make sure the things that happen are fair and unbiased. They absolve the GM from generating the consequences of their players' (often asinine) actions. They allo