Section 05
The Table
Five people, one rulebook, and what actually happens. Every entry is a mechanism examined on its own, with the arithmetic shown and the table consequence stated. No system is treated as canonical.
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025
Two tables, one rulebook
The same system produces different games in different rooms. Which parts of a ruleset survive that and which are decoration.
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026
The screen as a rule
A referee screen is a mechanism: it hides information and makes some results renegotiable. What it changes whether or not anyone admits it.
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027
Session shape
Three or four hours has its own structure — the slow start, the middle, the thing that always overruns. Designing for the clock.
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028
From wargames
Scale, facing, morale and the six-second round all came from moving blocks of troops. What was inherited and what was quietly dropped.
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029
House rules
Every table amends. The amendments cluster in the same few places, which says more about the systems than about the tables.