How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Thomas Shey]

Nothing is true until it goes from your mouth to the players' ears. Once it is established as true, it should require something extraordinary to make it not true.

Eh, I'd argue the moment you start making decisions based on it its true, even if you haven't revealed it to the players yet.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This sounds very much like a person trying to score rhetorical points. I never said my sense of immersion was objective, but I also don't have to agree with what someone else thinks is realistic. That said, make an argument for your case, and I'll listen.

There's a legitimate way to respond to that: "That doesn't feel realistic to me." That makes clearly an internal process that can't be argued with. "That isn't realistic" or coming back with "I care about realism" on the other hand, I'm going to firmly stand on is wrong; the other person can care just as much about realism, and in fact, in the specific matter at hand, know what it is more than you do. Your disbelief in that doesn't make it incorrect, and if you're going to argue based on reality (rather than your perception of it) then frankly, denying someone else may know more about it than you do is even more a case of trying to score rhetorical points. I'll argue firmly with someone about certain things pertaining to swimming because of my history, but if I'm unwilling to accept someone may know more about climbing than I do, I'm either being disingenuous or a fool.

 

[Corinnguard]

I'm talking about the idea that all information must flow from the DM, and should be doled out only when "appropriate".

So if a player came to you at the beginning of your current adventure and asked you to hand over all information on the BBEG, you would give it to them without any strings?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Good luck.

For many people they apparently are; most mechanical processes have been so subsumed they don't seem to interfere with their immersion.

As an example, I have a player who does so mostly from an immersive stance. Once she knows mechanics well they disappear from her. She can even engage with metacurrency without pulling her out. On the other hand, the TORG/Masterbook card minigame was a bridge too far.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So if a player came to you at the beginning of your current adventure and asked you to hand over all information on the BBEG, you would give it to them without any strings?

You know, taking a statement someone says and assuming they're meaning the exact opposite is the virtue rather than some more nuanced point doesn't actually do most discussions a lot of good.

 

[Corinnguard]

You know, taking a statement someone says and assuming they're meaning the exact opposite is the virtue rather than some more nuanced point doesn't actually do most discussions a lot of good.

I know. Headbutting can only take you so far before your head really begins to hurt.

 

[Reynard]

Eh, I'd argue the moment you start making decisions based on it its true, even if you haven't revealed it to the players yet.

You don't want to contradict the fiction you have established without good reason, but you can still adjust the truth behind the revealed fiction as long as you respect that line.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You don't want to contradict the fiction you have established without good reason, but you can still adjust the truth behind the revealed fiction as long as you respect that line.

That might work some of the time, but a lot of it pretty much demands you stick with that first decision, because anything else will not make sense in retrospect.

 

[Reynard]

That might work some of the time, but a lot of it pretty much demands you stick with that first decision, because anything else will not make sense in retrospect.

That depends on how rigid you are being in general, I suppose. I generally play fast and loose with lots of off the cuff ideas and improvised details, so it isn't often a problem for me.

 

[thefutilist]

I’m one of the GNS faithful, I have a little shrine to Ron Edwards in my room and everything. When I’ve gotten deep into these types of conversations before I’ve found that everyone (almost) who declares they’re into immersion is actually a gamist. Now if you don’t believe in the GNS model then fair enough but allow me to translate some stuff.

In almost all cases where someone says that something is destroying immersion, that exact same thing is destroying the type of challenge based play that the role-playing medium provides.

The reason this is invisible is because of the whole fish doesn’t see water thing. The sense of vividness and reality is based around the challenge game play loop that in actual play would feel like exploration (if the challenge part was a given).

For instance. You’re searching some study in a Cthulhu mystery game and the players and GM just spend hours doing it. The loop is:

Players ask questions about the fiction stuff > GM provides answers. All the while you’re building up both a very vivid scene that adds to the reality and ‘trying to figure something out.’ It’s the two in unison that makes challenge based role-play exciting*. Part of the challenge is asking the correct questions to elicit further information based on the previously established facts.

You’ve spent like half an hour describing a book case on the books on it and the players asks if any of the spines look more worn, one does and that’s the book that has the hidden note revealing the access code to the safe (or the summoning ritual or whatever).

Anyway, if you try and undercut this process on a mechanical level then you really are destroying the reason for play.

Another interesting thing. Immersion can be used in different ways and all that. When you drill down you often see two things come up again and again.

For the Gamist, immersion must mean calculating risks based on current knowledge and this requires a very specific conception of what it means to embody a character. A Narrativist simply doesn’t do this, it would undercut theme in all cases. Which is why one of the first things a lot of Narrative games do, is change how the resolution works. Narrativist immersion in character tends to embody values and the gameplay revolves round the testing of those values. In some sense all Gamist characters are hyper rational and all Narrativist characters are emotional wrecks.

Hopefully someone can make sense of this and I haven’t gone off the deep end.

* I mean exciting to them, I find it unbearably tedious. I want to do theatre kid stuff.