On a podcast about tabletop game management: "When you have to make a call, you need to consider three things at once: Rules as written, Rules as intended, and Rules as fun"
he goes on to talk about how there are oftentimes situations where the rules point out simple interactions and it's easy to point players to the lines where things resolve neatly
for the second case, following the letter of the rules sometimes leaves people feeling unsatisfied or like the game mechanics are missing an element oif what people wanted to play in the first place
and in the third case, sometimes rules will contradict other rules. And when managing the way the game is played, that's when things have to be more situational
The assassin has the ability to kill whomever they target, but the Goon has the ability to avoid having powers work and instead switches their own alignment
as written, two power sets are diametrically incongruent
and in those situations it's more about knowing your players and your game and why everyone's shown up to play in the first place
it feels like there are a lot of different ways to talk about this same thing
"the rule of cool" vs minmaxing tendencies
but I think about how that applies to the games we play
where the rules haven't been edited and tested for years before release
and how often we're trying to play off of something in its first or second draft
largely unpolished