How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Corinnguard]

I think players ought to know some of the rules and still be able to immerse themselves in the game. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive. Knowing the rules can lead to better role-playing because they can minimize any feeling of uncertainty you might have regarding what your character can and can't do. Also, a good player is one who can abide by the rules when they are in-character or out-of-character.

As for immersion, a good way to do that is to come up with a backstory that ties a character to whatever setting a player happens to be playing in. Look at a map of the setting and pick a location as to where the character hails from. In the current adventure I am role-playing in, my Bugbear Ranger hailed from The Reaching Woods. Before he became an adventurer, he was an urban bounty hunter who operated out of the towns that sat next to The Reaching Woods ( Scornubel, Triel and Berdusk).
Another backstory element that can help immerse a player into a given setting are connections with NPCs and NPC organizations. My Bugbear character when he was young was saved by Leosin Erlanthar, a Half-Elf Monk and a member of the Harpers. Leosin taught my character that earning a reward through patience, diplomacy and negotiation was it's own virtue. So my character grew up to be very different from the typical bugbear. Later on, he himself became a member of the Harpers. At the beginning of Tyranny of Dragons, a burnt and blood soaked letter from Leosin makes him go to Greenest where he joins a group of fellow adventures and finds himself in the middle of a bandit invasion.

So get your feet wet and immerse yourself into whatever adventure your character finds themselves in.

 

[Breaking Star Games]

I believe rules are supposed to make the conversation of playing TTRPGs easier. A lot of them end up adding more crunch/complexity than they're worth. But there is a lot of value in having permissions and setting expectations by everyone having a shared understanding what consequences may unfold for taking certain actions.

 

[Celebrim]

Learning the rules of an RPG is a good thing, in the long run. In general though, it's not the best way to learn to play especially if the rules are actually good. I much prefer to start teaching players that have no idea what the rules are because they learn to roleplay first and then optimize actions via rollplay decisions (which ideally will have some relationship to plausible tactics regardless of the situation or challenge). Whereas if you learn to optimize actions through rollplay first, very often the player never learns to roleplay - all that player does is pick moves and push rules buttons. As a result, me especially and the rest of the group generally are deprived of that player's entertainment value. They do things, sometimes useful things, but they don't make the game fun for me and others by their play and it's a pain in the butt to try to get an experienced player to come out of their shell and play.

Whereas children, novices, they just start playing make believe and are entertaining and challenging right from the start. The only thing that they really need to know is, "What is my character competent at doing?" And they really don't even need to know how that happens, only what it is.

 

[TwoSix]

Over the last few years, I've become a fan of diegetic progression for characters, which pretty much means the rules of leveling and progression are invisible to the players. They know they level, and they know they'll get something when they'll level, but the actual choices they'll be presented with aren't known to them until they get there. And the choices they do get are all based on what they encounter and their actions within the story.

 

[Celebrim]

I think there is a line of reasoning that suggests the PCs shouldn't even have a character sheet. They should just know who they are playing and tell the GM what they are doing (in character).

I have played that way but...

a) It puts too much burden on the GM to keep track of everything.
b) The one thing a character sheet is good for besides recording changes of the character's position in the fiction ("I found a sword.", "I've been hurt.") is it hints to what a character is competent at and you need that in order to decide what to do. In the real world we have (if we have more than 5 Wisdom) a certain amount of self-revelation we gained through experience that helps us know what sort of things we can and can't do. To me the character sheet is serving the player as a marker of that character's self-knowledge: "I am a pretty smooth talker and people like me." or "I'm good with my hands" or whatever.

As such I don't choose to run games that way.

 

[Reynard]

I have played that way but...

a) It puts too much burden on the GM to keep track of everything.
b) The one thing a character sheet is good for besides recording changes of the character's position in the fiction ("I found a sword.", "I've been hurt.") is it hints to what a character is competent at and you need that in order to decide what to do. In the real world we have (if we have more than 5 Wisdom) a certain amount of self-revelation we gained through experience that helps us know what sort of things we can and can't do. To me the character sheet is serving the player as a marker of that character's self-knowledge: "I am a pretty smooth talker and people like me." or "I'm good with my hands" or whatever.

As such I don't choose to run games that way.

I don't either, but that style seems to be having a renaissance of its own (if the internet is to be believed).

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think the rules should be utterly transparent to the players. There's nothing that needs to be hidden from the players. They should be allowed to take part in the game.

 

[Reynard]

I think the rules should be utterly transparent to the players. There's nothing that needs to be hidden from the players. They should be allowed to take part in the game.

Emphasis mine.

Does this mean that you think that say, monster hit points and armor class, or skill check DCs should be known to players up front?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Emphasis mine.

Does this mean that you think that say, monster hit points and armor class, or skill check DCs should be known to players up front?

Should is a matter of preference. They certainly can be and nothing bad happens. They don't need to be hidden.

I know there's a sentiment that the characters don't know how many HP an enemy has so the players should not know. But I don't think that sentiment makes much sense, nor is it very tenable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A person doesn't need to know the physics and mechanics of the world around them or even the details of how their actions affect it in detail in the real world. They just need to know what happens when they do something, and have a clear picture of their surroundings so they can make fair decisions on what to do. Now a game definitely benefits from having all players understand how their own character works, but beyond that it is a matter of taste and preference. Ultimately that is what the the GM is for IMO.