MichaelSomething
Legend
I'm misunderstanding you and you're misunderstanding me. When I say Improv, it's not what you're describing. I'm not too sure what you want?
Rules Transparency - How much do players need to know?
I'm misunderstanding you and you're misunderstanding me. When I say Improv, it's not what you're describing. I'm not too sure what you want?
I think that this misses the real point.
You referred to the "movement of pointy metal objects" as something that is a physics issue which the rules answer. But they don't. The questions of whether a character can make one, two or ten attack rolls per minute; and whether a character can typically withstand the outcome of one, two or ten successful attack rolls; are not physics questions.
They are entirely questions about game design. Different games answer them differently, for their various reasons. But there is no "physics" answer which tells you that a fight between a typical mercenary soldier and a typical orc should last less than a minute and perhaps as little as 10 or fewer seconds (as 3E will tend to give you), two to five minutes (as AD&D will tend to give you - hit chances are lower, and damage less relative to hp, while rounds are longer), or something in between (Moldvay Basic keeps all the numbers much the same as AD&D but reduces rounds to 10 seconds, so the combat will probably last up to a minute but no more; 4e keeps the rounds the same as 3E but increases the hp relative to damage, and so more rounds will be required to bring the fight to an end).
But, as I have said, this choice of action economy will matter to the decision to climb a tree, because few systems are going to require more than 1 minute to do so (so with 1 minute rounds its a fairly low-cost action declaration) but many may require more than 6 seconds to do so (so with 6 second rounds it is a fairly high-cost action declaration, particularly if - while it is being resolved - a penalty to defence is suffered).
I think that whenever players are making decisions whose prospects of success are mediated by these sorts of rules constructs, they are entitled to know the rules - at a minimum, what the action economy is.
(The same things could be said about facing: in 3E and 4e it doesn't matter, but in AD&D it does - players can't know this just by intuition; or about the effects of attacks with lethal weapons - in RQ, RM, BW etc these can be deadly to an otherwise uninjured person, but in D&D above the lowest levels typically not - players can't know this just by intuition either!)
If players don't know about these rules constructs, and yet the GM is using them as tools of adjudication, then at best the players are just guessing; at worst the GM is the only one really playing the game.
GMMichael
Guide of Modos
Game design questions - I agree 100%. Physics questions - don't worry about it. Not that important.
What I hear you saying is that players need enough information to make meaningful decisions, and they aren't really doing that if choosing to climb a tree is effectively suicide. No dispute there.
I also hear the answer to the question: how much do players need to know?
A: Players need to know, at least, if they're playing a game in which climbing a tree in battle is a bad idea.
So, here's my question to you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]: since every game has rules, and it's highly likely that the majority of these games will have rules affecting the outcomes of combat, are you saying that players always need to know the rules of the game? That there are no situations in which it's okay for the players to not worry about the rules? (Not building a straw man here, just trying to clarify.)
[video=youtube;ABRkIGxK7FM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABRkIGxK7FM[/video]
S
Sunseeker
Guest
More specifically, they need to know if climbing a tree is a bad idea in context. The context being: the system, the situation and their character. Climbing a tree is likely a bad idea is the system strongly punishes your defenses while doing so. Next we must consider the situation, your defenses are being punished, but is anything actually threatening to hit you? (perhaps a flood is coming, not a hail of arrows). If nothing is going to hit you while your defenses are down, punishing your defenses is an irrelevant point. Finally, we need to consider the sort of character you have, perhaps you are a sort of cat-person, and you get a bonus to climbing trees.
This is what a character needs to know in the situation: first, the rules around "what are the consequences for climbing a tree?"
-There is a massive difference between the system saying: Your AC is reduced by 5. And: When you climb a tree you trigger a free OA from every archer within line of sight.
Those two items have now determined what the player needs to know next. What does a -5 AC mean? Is it the difference between being completely defended and being completely open? Or is it a minor change, because AC ranges from 10 to 45. Bringing your AC from 40 to 35 is a far less meaningful change than bringing your AC from 5 to 0. If say, climbing a tree provokes, they need to understand what they're risking. What constitutes LOS? The player needs to know. What is the range of an average bow? The player needs to know this to determine if making himself vulnerable is worth the risk. What is the damage of the average bow? The player needs to know this to make a risk assessment. Not being able to make a reasonably informed judgement call leads to players thinking their judgments are meaningless.
Finally, the character needs to know if they're actually any good at climbing trees. Maybe they're half-cat? Maybe they have high skill points in climbing. Maybe they have a special talent that lets them climb trees without disadvantage.
Knowing these things adds consistency to gameplay, just like knowing certain things adds consistency to real life.
Can you change a tire? I can. So when I need to change a tire, I can assess the situation, get the required tools, and get the job done. I don't have to ask my dad if I can change the tire, I know I can change the tire. Maybe I'll need to make one strength check to pop the lugnuts off, but I won't have to make an intelligence check to even know what I'm looking at. People who know what they can do take definitive actions.
Can you play football? I know the basic rules, and I'm not very strong. So while I can play football, it might be reasonable that I need to make some strength or endurance checks. I might need to make some intelligence checks to understand the rules. I am unskilled in football, so I cannot take definitive actions.
It is sort of a straw man though. You're using absolutes. I know I'm not Permeton, but still your question is couched in protective language. Not worrying about the rules is different from not knowing the rules. I know the rules of multiple systems and there are often times when I don't worry about them because of the Rule of Cool or whatever other reason. I'd argue knowing the rules makes it easier to not worry about them, since knowing them mean you can determine when you benefit or not from their lack of application. It lets you determine when the lack of consistency in rules/rulings has become detrimental to the game. Without it you're just left up in the air.
IMO: it is always better for the players to know the rules. But that does not mean it is always better for them to concern themselves with the rules.
There are times when games without rules work. There are times when rulings are superior to rules. These are decisions the DM must make and these are also decisions that the players must make. They may have different answers as to when these times are and there's nothing wrong with that. But a player can't make a good assessment of a situation, of a game, of a ruling, without knowing the rules first.
EX: in my current "gonzo" 3.5 D&D campaign, the DM has allowed casters to have iterative spellcasting, just like fighters have iterative attacks. Does this make casters more powerful? Yes, but the drawback is the eternal problem of novaing. It's very easy to burn through many spells quite quickly and then find yourself in trouble only a few minutes later. But I can make this determination because I understand the rules regarding iterative attacks, spellcasting and so forth. With that rules knowledge, I can make a judgement call about the situation on if I should take advantage of this to nova the bad guys, or not.
Knowing the rules has allowed me to make an informed decision regarding the actions my character takes.
As I posted upthread, it depends on the system. If you are running a system like RQ, or perhaps Classic Traveller, then from the character sheet you can basically tell what the PC can do. (In RQ, the sheet is a list of natural-language skills with % chances of success next to them.)
And the damage rules are also simple - if you get hit, you probably get crippled unless you have armour.
Modern versions of D&D, on the other hand, have complex action economies and often non-intuitive consequences for being hit in combat.
Then there are games like Dungeon World where the resolution rules for each "move" are easily written down on the character sheet, and there is no action economy - the GM just manages the fiction.
If you want to run a game in which the players don't know the rules but just work from the fiction and a simple PC sheet, I strongly recommend RQ, or perhaps DW, but not D&D.
GrahamWills
Hero
Players need to know enough to be able to make informed decisions, and not to slow the game down by needing to ask questions. They don't need to know all the rules, but they need to know what the rules cover.
So, in my Night's Black Agents game, there are a ton of stunts, special cases and cherries for all sorts of things., but in combat, players don't need to know all of them. But they do need to know the it makes sense to try something. So I don't have players saying "I punch through the wall" or "I interrupt his shot with a plea to talk" (which would be fine in a superhero game, and in a Doctor Who game respectively).
So, last night, one player was having bits of a car thrown at him by a vampire who hadn't been invited in and was irritated. He'd just killed a wolf and wanted to use the idea wolf as a shield. He had no idea if there were rules for that, but he DID know it was the sort of thing that the genre and system supported. Another player said there were rules for a mook shield, but it assumed the mook was alive. We made a slight adaptation of the rules and used that (good call too -- the vampire maxed out a throw of the broken windshield, and the wolf's corpse took half the damage).
For me, this is a good way to run. No-one needs to know everything, but standard actions (shoot, hit, flee, cower, hide, jump in, take extra shots) are well known. When an unusual case comes up, the game is slightly slowed as the player learns the new rule, but it isn't common and players don't waste much time asking for things that don't make sense.
As a mathematician, I guess I could derive some formula that minimizes the time spent on learning rules and looking them up in play, weighting the latter as more serious than the former, but it basically boils down to "if it's common, you should know the rule. If it's uncommon, you should know it's possible. If it's not possible, you should know that too"
So, in my Night's Black Agents game, there are a ton of stunts, special cases and cherries for all sorts of things., but in combat, players don't need to know all of them. But they do need to know the it makes sense to try something. So I don't have players saying "I punch through the wall" or "I interrupt his shot with a plea to talk" (which would be fine in a superhero game, and in a Doctor Who game respectively).
So, last night, one player was having bits of a car thrown at him by a vampire who hadn't been invited in and was irritated. He'd just killed a wolf and wanted to use the idea wolf as a shield. He had no idea if there were rules for that, but he DID know it was the sort of thing that the genre and system supported. Another player said there were rules for a mook shield, but it assumed the mook was alive. We made a slight adaptation of the rules and used that (good call too -- the vampire maxed out a throw of the broken windshield, and the wolf's corpse took half the damage).
For me, this is a good way to run. No-one needs to know everything, but standard actions (shoot, hit, flee, cower, hide, jump in, take extra shots) are well known. When an unusual case comes up, the game is slightly slowed as the player learns the new rule, but it isn't common and players don't waste much time asking for things that don't make sense.
As a mathematician, I guess I could derive some formula that minimizes the time spent on learning rules and looking them up in play, weighting the latter as more serious than the former, but it basically boils down to "if it's common, you should know the rule. If it's uncommon, you should know it's possible. If it's not possible, you should know that too"
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
The answer for me is "some".
Players need to know the basic rules: what dice to roll when and why, what all the various numbers on their character sheets represent, what a round is and what can usually be accomplished during one, what their spells and abilities (usually) do and - for spells - how they are cast and recovered, and so forth; along with what the game world bases its overarching physics on (e.g. can a player fall back on reality as a default or not when wondering how gravity affects something).
Players really don't need to know but can if desired (and more or less eventually will, in all likelihood): the various combat matrices (to hit, saving throw, turn-control undead, etc.), rules regarding classes/levels/etc. they are not themselves playing, and so forth.
Players don't need to know at all: anything to do with monster stats or abilities until encountered in the game (it's the Monster Manual rather than the DMG that really should be off-limits), anything to do with magic items other than those their characters own or have been exposed to or have heard of, and so forth - here, player knowledge should ideally reflect character knowledge as far as possible (though it never does).
"Mother may I" is a feature, not a bug; if someone asks me-as-DM if something's possible it usually means they're thinking outside the box...a good thing even if the answer's "no" that particular time. I find newer players who aren't yet hidebound by the rules - or knowledge of the rules - are best for this.
And the way to keep the MM- and DMG-reading players on their toes is to change things. The classic here is to change up dragon colours/abilities - greens breathe acid, reds breathe lightning, etc. - which characters in character may safely learn if they think to ask but will learn the hard way if their players are overconfidently relying only on metagame knowledge. (in case anyone's wondering, I haven't done this to my dragons but it's common knowledge they - along with giants and a few other things - are way tougher otherwise than the MM would have them)
Lanefan
Players need to know the basic rules: what dice to roll when and why, what all the various numbers on their character sheets represent, what a round is and what can usually be accomplished during one, what their spells and abilities (usually) do and - for spells - how they are cast and recovered, and so forth; along with what the game world bases its overarching physics on (e.g. can a player fall back on reality as a default or not when wondering how gravity affects something).
Players really don't need to know but can if desired (and more or less eventually will, in all likelihood): the various combat matrices (to hit, saving throw, turn-control undead, etc.), rules regarding classes/levels/etc. they are not themselves playing, and so forth.
Players don't need to know at all: anything to do with monster stats or abilities until encountered in the game (it's the Monster Manual rather than the DMG that really should be off-limits), anything to do with magic items other than those their characters own or have been exposed to or have heard of, and so forth - here, player knowledge should ideally reflect character knowledge as far as possible (though it never does).
"Mother may I" is a feature, not a bug; if someone asks me-as-DM if something's possible it usually means they're thinking outside the box...a good thing even if the answer's "no" that particular time. I find newer players who aren't yet hidebound by the rules - or knowledge of the rules - are best for this.
And the way to keep the MM- and DMG-reading players on their toes is to change things. The classic here is to change up dragon colours/abilities - greens breathe acid, reds breathe lightning, etc. - which characters in character may safely learn if they think to ask but will learn the hard way if their players are overconfidently relying only on metagame knowledge. (in case anyone's wondering, I haven't done this to my dragons but it's common knowledge they - along with giants and a few other things - are way tougher otherwise than the MM would have them)
Lanefan
MichaelSomething
Legend
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