How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Thomas Shey]

Not every weapon by any means.

In OD&D? He absolutely had. There was no distinction made.

Remember, in old-school D&D even a Fighter was limited in how many specific weapons he-she could be proficient with (four at 1st-level in 1e, not gaining another until 4th-level).

Not in OD&D there wasn't. You're thinking of something later. There's no reference to a limit on weapon familiarities for fighters in OD&D whatsover. There are for the other two classes, and for later ones that arrived, but not Fighting-Men.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd be happy to change to open exploration.

Who's with me?

I'm generally willing to use most terms people want to as long as it doesn't seem to have a baked in unstated agenda.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Whoever wanted the PCs to be rubes?



I don't think of it as being discouraged from using their own ideas so much as how they come up with the ideas. What is the impetus for the GM's new idea? Is it related to the PCs in some way? This can be specific (a relative or an enemy or similar) or can be broad (a danger to X when one of the PCs is sworn to defend X).

It's just a different way to channel your creativity. We've talked about this kind of stuff before. You actively don't want the game to be "about" the PCs. They're all interchangeable in your eyes (or very close to that). These games are inherently about the PCs. So everything the GM does is meant to be in service to that idea.



I think that shift happened much earlier than 4e. I'd say mid-90s, although I think there was plenty of that stuff sooner. At most, that was a phase that you were meant to endure and move past as quickly as possible. And there's a reason... it stinks.

Over ten years of staring every game that way was enough for me. I don't need to try and control the power level of the PCs just like I don't need to limit their knowledge to of runic circles or what's over the next hill.

I'd like the ability for some PCs to be rubes. It's interesting; while in many ways what a PC can look like and is capable of has expanded greatly over the years, what a PC actually is or starts out as has in some ways and in some systems contracted IMO. What if I don't want my PC to be (or at the very least start out as) a special forces heroic protagonist with a broad understanding of everything such a person might find useful in their occupation?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Obviously Burning Wheel is not as widely played as 5e D&D.

That is a numerical fact. That doesn't make it a normative fact.

"Outlier" is a statistical (and thus numerical) term.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd like the ability for some PCs to be rubes. It's interesting; while in many ways what a PC can look like and is capable of has expanded greatly over the years, what a PC actually is or starts out as has in some ways and in some systems contracted IMO. What if I don't want my PC to be (or at the very least start out as) a special forces heroic protagonist with a broad understanding of everything such a person might find useful in their occupation?

The problem is that at least as a baseline, you can't easily have characters able to be rubes and able to be something more in the same game, at least with class based systems (and I'd debate you can in others; a starting Fantasy Hero character you could if you really want to actively avoid giving any adventuring-capable skills, but he's built on enough points he's still going to be outstanding at something, or somewhat knowledgeable in a really wide range of skills). You could have power tiers that did that, but they'd be different tiers of campaign setup, like the very old RuneQuest take where if you didn't use the previous experience system all characters were teenagers with nothing but the basic skills everyone in their culture had by that point.

 

[Corinnguard]

Could a 1st-level character be considered to be something a rube in D&D? The character at this level has just left behind their background profession , and has only begun to take on the life of an adventurer. They have only begun their training into their given class and have a ways to go before they become as @Micah Sweet put it, a special forces heroic protagonist.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I know from experience that trying to run Rolemaster in a proto-BW-ish fashion gives rise to some of these issues too (and other ones, like the way that consequences in RM don't interact well with a scene-frame-y approach).

Didn't you folks say that every RPG uses scene-framing? I thought that was the reason why disliking the term was a personal problem I need to get over. If that's true, how can Rolemaster have an issue with a "scene-frame-y" approach?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

This is a big part of why I don't care for those systems personally. They seem to me to downplay or worse cut out the main thing I enjoy about GMing: creating a world and fun stuff for the PCs to do in it. I'm fine with PCs coming up with some stuff on their own, but I don't see my job as GM being primarily a facilitator of the player's gaming needs.

Obviously a lot of folks here either do enjoy that style of GMing, or I don't understand that kind of game.

I'm not sure it's that limiting in practice. I admit I haven't played any PbtA-like systems or even Fate, but I have played Nobilis. Nobilis has the interesting quirk that detailed prep is impossible, because the characters are so overpowered that a D&D-style level 20 wizard is weaksauce by comparison. What this means is that you cannot make detailed prep work. There's no reason to plan for Guinevere and Faust, the Duke of Candles, to encounter some particular thing, because it is very likely they won't encounter it.

Instead your planning has to be broad strokes. You plan a number of characters and some kind of plot, maybe create a couple of locations (not too detailed) and then you try and connect the plot to the characters somehow.

 

[Micah Sweet]

He'd learned to use every weapon, and somehow become tougher than any other farmer by a factor of one and a half to two (since OD&D did not actually have any examplar normals).

So, no. I have no sign this was anything we'd consider an everyman hero.

In the TSR editions, even fighters weren't proficient in every weapon, just more than other classes. Thinking otherwise is assuming WotC's position on the matter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

5e has what, three whole classes who aren't magical, and of them, each of those three could be. Heck some races even have innate magic. So by this logic, most 5e D&D characters would have some idea about things like barrier circles...

Perhaps, but that's not the logic I would use. For example, magic circles aren't necessarily a part of every magical tradition.