Why do RPGs have rules?

[Baron Opal II]

Well, its always going to be dicey to try to diagnose other people's games based on limited descriptions. ... I guess the only observation I would make is that in our ST game, or a DW/AW game, there isn't really anything else but the sort of thing I was describing above. If I attempted to run my character as pretty much just a generic guy, go around, do actions, really shallow character, play would basically collapse. ... Does that make sense?

Sure. Thanks for the discussion!

 

[Baron Opal II]

It would be challenging to play a completely generic, shallow character in a PbtA game.

And dull in any game. I mean, why would you?

 

[innerdude]

There is no such thing. It doesn't exist.

This, this right here? This is BY FAR the most difficult idea to shake coming from "trad" play styles. The notion of "the world the characters live in," that it somehow has its own independent existence outside the shared space of play.

The fact that the GM can spout fountains of lore surrounding it, can mentally connect wide swaths of contrived history and NPCs and their actions and landscapes and maps, etc., etc., somehow innately transforms this fictional creation of the mind of the GM into a "real place", with "immutable facts."

When really it's just because it's assumed that the GM is allowed to introduce their version of the fiction at will, without any prior consent. It's not any less fictional just because the GM holds a privileged space and function in introducing the assumed "truths" of the fiction.

This grounding assumption about the way the "living world" should take on a life of its own, and now has its own independent existence "above and outside" the more immediate fiction being generated in play is insidiously difficult to get away from.

This was by far the hardest conceptual barrier for me to overcome in really understanding PbtA / Story Now play.

 

[innerdude]

So, rules are not allowed to govern how people act at the table. Any rules that govern narrative don't attach to the character. They regulate things at the table. This is no different from initiative rolls in D&D, but you don't object to those.

In fact, INDIRECTLY all rules simple tell players what they can and cannot say at the table, or when they can say it, or how often they can say it, etc. One of the, largely unwritten, rules has to do with "you can't say things that would require breaking the fiction's consistency criteria" (which are themselves partly set by rules, which is part of the 'what you can say' etc.).

The idea that there is some sort of distinction which can be made that propels certain of these rules into a 'different category' (often labeled 'META-GAME' or somesuch) is simply not possible to support logically. No such distinction exists.

You said it better than I did, for the record. The entire conception of the RPG "living world" essentially rests on the assumption that the GM is allowed broad power to "say things at the table" regarding "what is true" about the fictional space, and that the "things (s)he is allowed to say" can be conceptualized long before the act of sitting down to play the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I know players whose reasons are essentially invalid...

• in one case, because it allows them to find victims for their toxic sense of humor.

Maybe they got bored, or frustrated by an inability to contribute in their preferred manner.

• Another is there simply because they enjoy causing in-party strife. And not at my table in the last 20 years.

Maybe its the only way they can exert control over the course of their character's narrative. They might like other ways better.

• Another reason I'd consider invalid is "because the significant other insists" or "to appease the significant other"...

This is just your hang up. You could try different styles of play that they might like.

 

[innerdude]

But going back to @pemerton 's original question -- what ARE rules for?

Some of Vincent Baker's thoughts only make sense in the context of a game where there's a need to carry over gamestate information across situational contexts, and where the conceptualization of the "rational actor" that exists changes as the situational context changes.

For example: consider taking Keep on the Borderlands and literally just playing the combats in some sequence. There's no gameplay at all of any kind between the combat sequences. The GM literally concludes a combat, and immediately shifts to the next site of combat and says, "Roll initiative," and instructs the players that all expended resources are immediately available again.

Very much like just playing 5 or 6 Heroclix combats in rapid succession, with no intervening roleplaying, exploration, etc.

If you played Keep on the Borderlands in this fashion, have the rules of D&D provided anything that any other set of wargame mechanics could not? Could you not swap out the D&D combat rules for the Heroclix combat rules, or the Gloomhaven combat rules, or the Journeys in Middle-Earth combat rules, or the Mythras combat rules, or the GURPS combat rules, and achieve largely the same experience?

Sure, some of the underpinnings and choice / resolution factors change, but at the end, either you've conquered all of the combats as a team, or you have not.

But the second you introduce a "rational actor" gamestate into the mix, something fundamentally changes. For example, after say, Combat 3 of 6 in the Borderlands sequence, one of the players is allowed to say, "Hey, we just killed Orc Leader #6. Doesn't that change something about what we're required to do next? Am I allowed to say now that my cleric pawn is no longer interested in continuing these battles, because conquering Orc Leader #6 was his whole motivation all along, and he has no need to continue?"

What fundamentally changes about the game being played if that's the case?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It would be challenging to play a completely generic, shallow character in a PbtA game. A principled GM is going to be thrusting that character into adversity and conflict. Consider Haf, who was conceived as the itinerant mystic who showed up to help people. It’s kind of a neutral conception, really. That didn’t even last a session. He has an acolyte now, and he’s not sure what to do about it, though it’s an obvious first step in revitalizing Helior’s worship in Stonetop. Will he do it, and how will that go? I don’t know yet.

Right, so, it is interesting to think about what would happen? Its actually an easy trap to fall into, at least for me. Like, my high level AD&D wizard, Questioner. Questioner is basically an optimization of the most successful possible operational approach to AD&D Magic User play. Its simply an accumulation of such optimizations, carrying exactly the most potent items I could acquire or make, and using the most effective possible tactics in all situations. NO other consideration ever enters into that play! I mean, sure, the character has a sort of 'personality' and a kind of nebulous goal 'learn everything', lol. He doesn't have a homeland, a family, nothing. I mean, in YEARS of play no consequent personal decisions were made, nothing was discovered about his character, etc. I mean, maybe at some point he did some kind act or whatever it was, I don't remember, but that's just it, I don't remember, it wasn't relevant. I can tell you about a bunch of adventures the character went on, and name the other characters involved in many of them (dimly, its been 30 years since we played those characters) but nothing else.

I already know more about my Stonetop character, Meda. That was session one, and we didn't even get out of the 'town phase' yet! If I simply took Meda and said "what will make my character the most operationally effective right now" and did that thing, and repeated it over and over, I'd just be stuck in a loop of banging into basically the same situations over and over. Undoubtedly my character would get XP, so I would advance in level, right? But what is the point? There's no externally constructed setting to explore. Much of what challenges us is being generated out of the consequences of these choices, like convincing Ifrhys, or healing Ragan. Haf now has an acolyte, whatever that means, and I'm guessing Meda will have either a guilt complex and maybe angry relatives, or an unwanted love interest or something. Now, its interesting that I scan this as 'unwanted' too, because that's a purely visceral reaction, like what the author of @andreszarta 's friends blog is talking about.

 

[innerdude]

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create.

So this got me thinking --- is something "unwanted" in the game's fiction a "fail state"?

And if so, what actually constitutes a "fail state" in an RPG?

Is it any state that any one of the players dislikes? Any two of the players? Three? Is it predicated on player participation continuing? Or only continuing in a way amenable to the player? If the player is allowed to continue participating, but his or her character has been altered in a way that they do not like, is that a fail state? (Neo-trad play would probably say that it is.)

So this got me thinking about what, precisely, are the possible "fail states" that an RPG can produce that are "unwelcome".

• Character death in the fiction -- This is at the very least a temporary "fail state" for a player in most instances. Even if their character is resurrected or the player is allowed to introduce a new character to the game, there is a period of intervening time where the player cannot participate at the generally assumed level of prior participation.
• Fundamental character alteration -- Something intrinsic to the persona / personality of the character has fundamentally, irreversibly changed in a way that the player no longer wishes to engage gameplay through their current avatar.
• Circumstantial modification of "situation" in a way the players did not wish. E.g., the Duke of Eliastair is now dead, and such eventuality is unwelcome.

I'm having a thought, not entirely clear, but possibly something along the lines of, "Perhaps an RPG's rules should be most directly focused on the vectors through which the players are allowed to prevent the unwelcome." Thus, if a game's focus is on combat, then it should be a fair assumption that the players should primarily derive their ability to prevent the unwelcome through the exercise of their combat prowess.

 

[kenada]

And dull in any game. I mean, why would you?

It works in games where the primary sources of conflict are extrinsic to the characters. When you need to deal with the goblin threat or solve a mystery, it doesn’t matter much whether your character is plain or not because play those games are about solving problems rather than challenging the conception of or facilitating the players’ experience of their characters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And dull in any game. I mean, why would you?

Yeah, and I want to make it clear, I don't think people necessarily, or even normally, play completely shallow characters in most games. I mean, sure we all did when we were young, or maybe in 'that game', or whatever. Still, like your description of the things with the Paladin, the Cleric, the Shadow, etc. its not just 'operational' play. The Cleric player probably did not sit back and think "Hmmm, controlling a shadow would be pretty cool! I can do X, Y, and Z with that!" I just find it cumbersome to attempt to get that kind of play out of games like D&D.