One quote for me in a sea of replies to Lanefan.
Sorry - that was mostly happenstance. Because I am in the UK I tend to be posting "out of phase" with the majority (US) posters; as a result I come to a thread with a whole shedload of replies since my last viewing. I read through the entire thread, marking the posts I have a reaction to as "multiquotes" - in this case I marked some of Lanefan's and one of yours...
I don't know if you did, but I feel like you're replying to my quote out of context. I was commenting on why I like "Rule 0" in a rule-heavy game -it allows the GM to say "I've overriding the rules for this reason" while still leaving the players very empowered, since they still have very clear rules in other areas (and lots of other areas, preferably).
I picked out your post because it seemed to me that you, too, were using "Rule 0" to mean established houserules rather than disregarding rules on the fly and making up new ones. I understand from this post that you think that's not the case, but I'm still not entirely convinced because your players, it seems, expect and accept the changes as "natural"? If so, then I wonder if there is some set of "meta-rules" that are understood, expected and accepted by the whole group concerning how various things work in the game world? If so, then I would still class those "rules" as houserules; distributing them in written form is not the only way of "publishing" them.
To me, this has nothing to do with "houserules" being set up beforehand (especially since it extends to an in-play decision by the GM to change the rules, if it lines up with "common sense" [as determined by the group's social contract], which I also mentioned).
Here is where I get the idea of the "meta-rules" I referred to - I would be interested to see where this "common sense" originates. "Common sense" doesn't seem to me to be a particularly "social contract" thing - more of a common understanding of what the rules are, even if they are not written down.
I want to point out that I didn't say this. I said that abuse of Rule 0 is also accompanied by GMs who also railroad you or have problem GMPCs in the game.
OK, noted; you are claiming correlation only. I am saying that what, at least,
looks like GMPC overempowerment and railroaded plots stems directly from on-the-fly use of "Rule 0" and/or the use of ambiguous rules (i.e. rules designed specifically to require on-the-fly rules creation/assumption).
So, you agreement with my preference for clear rules, as I stated in the post that you quoted? To be fair, maybe you missed the context of my conversation with Hussar; I do state it more explicitly in my previous post to Hussar that he then questioned:
Yes, I do agree with your preference for clear, unambiguous rules and no, I did not miss the content of your exchange with Hussar. I do still think that tis preference flies against on-the-fly rules changes that the players don't expect - and, if they do expect them within the context of that preference, then I think it's worth exploring how and why that happens.
I'm all for clear, codified, rules-heavy systems that the players can rely on. I just like Rule 0 for my group; the post goes on to say "It's just a different style of play, though. It's a terrible step for some groups; it's a good step for mine. Just a play style thing."
What I
suspect, here, is what I have seen many times with D&D groups; that the game world in fact runs by a set of rules that are only tangentially related to the game system as written in the rulebook, which are understood through long acquaintance by all in the gaming group and that represent a set of established preferences for that group. I may be wrong in my suspicion - please feel free to say so - but it's a phenomenon I have seen around and I get a sense that it's the case, here.
It's a bit of a tangent, but I think that this is the cause of quite a bit of resistance to changing editions. What causes the real angst with the edition change is not the actual rule changes, but the fact that the underlying "meta-system" is difficult to adapt the new system to - and the resistance to changing the meta-system is very high indeed (in fact, in some cases, I get the impression that the very notion of changing the meta-system is beyond even cursory consideration).
So, you can disagree with me if you'd like, but I'm not sure why you are.
Well, to begin with, I didn't think I was disagreeing with you! Now, however, it seems as if I am - but maybe that just covers another layer on which we agree but aren't expressing our thoughts in quite the same language?
You seem to be trying to argue with me over something I'm not trying to say. I'm not advocating "ambiguous" rules; I'm advocating the opposite of it, with a "GM override" button. Obviously, as I said, this is good for some groups, and not for others.
Well,
de facto, the group - not even just the GM - always has an "override button", since even the famed "WotC ninjas" aren't real (are they??
)...
The interesting (and key) question, to me, though, is "why override?" If it's purely GM aesthetics, I see issues. If it's some underlying "meta-system" understood by the gaming group, I see less problems, but maybe some profit to be found by analysing what that "meta-system" actually is, since that is the system the group is actually playing by.
Even when already playing what you like, knowing what you like can be a good thing...
Fireball isn't the best example, as my original point amounted to "use real-world physics except when dealing with magic", and a fireball is magic.
OK, so clear, unambiguous rules are needed for magic, at least. Which leads to the next issue - what, exactly, is "non-magical" in a magical world?
What's needed is some sort of brief description of how magic might fit in with the rest of known physics. I long ago dreamed up the idea that magic is in effect a fifth force (along with gravity and three others I forget now) which a few people have learned how to shape and manipulate into effects that wreak merry hell on the usual laws of the other four forces. Many creatures - in fact, all non-mundane ones - rely on this fifth force in order to exist.
All of this I regard as non-system "colour" and, as such, this is a bit of a tangent, to be honest, but...
Assuming that we postulate a universe where a fifth, "magical" force exists in addition to gravity, electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces (which I assume was what you were referring to) - a "magical" quint-essence, as it were - then I find it hard to believe that this fifth force will be absent from a whole swathe of objects and processes in the postulated universe. The established "real world" forces interact with each other in a myriad ways and in almost every conceivable process; I would expect the "fifth force" to do likewise. In other words, if there really is a fifth, "magical" force then the whole world will be "magical".
By the time the houserules reach a book-full the last thing I want to do is abandon all that work and start over learning and tweaking a whole new system. Instead, I'll just keep on kitbashing the system I've already built as defined by said book-full of houserules.
Yeah, once you have go to that point you are essentially using a new and different ruleset anyway! I understand how folk ended up there in the early days, since there were so few starting points - you had to choose one, and if it really didn't suit you you just had to start "kitbashing" it. Nowadays, though, I think it's well worth looking around for a "best fit" starting position before starting to build that houserule edifice!
I also assume, somewhat, here that folk want different things out of different campaigns. I know I do, but I also know that it's not universal to do so. If you want the same game each time, it makes perfect sense to use the same rules every time.
Rarely if ever will I make a significant change during a campaign unless it involves only things that have not yet come up in play. For example, in my current campaign I can still mess around with high-level MU spells as 98% of them haven't been seen in play yet. But I wouldn't want to tweak the low-level ones until my next campaign.
Adding something minor that wasn't there before at all (e.g. new monster, new spell, new magic item) is almost irrelevant for these purposes. Ditto for removing something, particularly if it's never been seen in play in that campaign.
OK, this confirms that what you are describing is what I would call "houseruling" as opposed to full "Rule 0", where the rules are just guidelines that the GM can modify at whim. As I said, I think houserules should be approached with care, because messing up a well balanced system is easy, but they are a legitimate way to get exactly the rules you want.
That said, nothing bugs me more in published modules than supposedly-intelligent foes who don't use resources available to them e.g. the Fighter carrying around a potion of haste who doesn't drink it once things start going badly for her...
Sure - but that's different from them "happening" to have only stuff they can use.
As a complete aside, 4e modules have, on occasion, handled this well. The powers of the item in question are included in the statblock of the creature in the encounter; this means that it's crystal clear to the GM that the creature may use that power in the encounter, and then, at the end of the encounter, the party get the item as it is listed in the creatures "items carried" section.
OK, so you do equalize it later.
I've seen situations like this where no later equalization took place. They got messy.
In principle there may be an equalisation, but the main priority is party optimisation. I regard this as an aspect of teamwork and a Good Thing. It certainly gets the players discussing party teamwork and "balance" in constructive, non-selfish ways.
One obstacle seems to be that, for many of those who do see the mechanics as primarily "descriptions of what happens" in the fiction, it affronts their experience of immersion to see the mechanics discussed in a metagame sense at all.
That's all very well, but the models of Vincent Baker
et al still describe pretty accurately what is actually going on in the real world around an RPG table in this respect. Sticking one's fingers in one's ears, closing one's eyes and reciting purple prose loudly is not going to change that.
