Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Rules Transparency - How much do players need to know?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6968676" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>How much a player needs to know isn't quite the same as how much rules a player prefers to know. </p><p></p><p>I have no problem with players obtaining as much system mastery as they desire, but strictly speaking I don't think such mastery is necessary for them to enjoy or play a game. And how important gaining such mastery is to a particular player will depend on playstyle and their particular aesthetics of play. </p><p></p><p>For my part, I'd rather a player focus on learning how to roleplay before learning system mastery, but I'm not going to force them to stop reading rules if they have different priorities than I do. My experience with highly experienced players is on average they are worse at playing RPGs than players with no experience. The bring too many biases and baggage to the game, and they frequently have developed all sorts of bad habits. They've often become really narrow in their preferred aesthetics of play, very aggressive in pushing for their preferred way of play, inflexible, and have huge gaps in their skills. Introduced to a new system, invariably they attempt to immerse themselves into the rules of the system rather than into the 'play' of the system or expected by the GM. Armed with deep knowledge of many rules sets, they want to interact with the game environment solely through offering rules propositions, and invariably they spend more time negotiating the rules proposition through the metagame than they do actually thinking about their character or the game fiction. They'll test out continually what mechanical rules I intend to use to resolve their proposition, trying out several variations hoping to find some edge, before settling not on what they want their character to do, but what they think gives them the most edge (and since they are operating in a fog of war, many times they are wrong anyway). Basically, their attitude is, "I will only offer a proposition if I'm in full control of the outcome, and my job as a player is to figure out the proposition that produces the result that I'm most comfortable with." This results in slow tedious and uninspired play, and I have to spend an enormous amount of time fighting their ingrained instincts until they finally start to realize that the purpose of the rules is to facilitate play and not be the play itself. Sadly, this usually only happens by way of less experienced players at the table leading by example, winning themselves shining moments of awesome that make for good stories that more experienced would never even try.</p><p></p><p>I can't imagine a really good reason to hide rules from a player unless the rules in question reflected some aspect of reality that characters couldn't know and could only learn from trial and error. Such rules subsystems would never cover 'kindergarten playground' rules of movement, combat, and skill use that would be available to a character to learn about his environment since a very early age. They might theoretically cover investigation into alien technology, aspects of magic which were truly numinous, or the workings of the larger multiverse in a setting where the existence of such a multiverse was not well known. Rules systems like that to me fall into the same category of rules as the exact structure that a DM has set up for a particular skill challenge, where knowing the rules would give the player metagame knowledge that their player couldn't have. But such cases are in my opinion inherently rare. They don't apply to the normal fortune/resolution mechanics.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6968676, member: 4937"] How much a player needs to know isn't quite the same as how much rules a player prefers to know. I have no problem with players obtaining as much system mastery as they desire, but strictly speaking I don't think such mastery is necessary for them to enjoy or play a game. And how important gaining such mastery is to a particular player will depend on playstyle and their particular aesthetics of play. For my part, I'd rather a player focus on learning how to roleplay before learning system mastery, but I'm not going to force them to stop reading rules if they have different priorities than I do. My experience with highly experienced players is on average they are worse at playing RPGs than players with no experience. The bring too many biases and baggage to the game, and they frequently have developed all sorts of bad habits. They've often become really narrow in their preferred aesthetics of play, very aggressive in pushing for their preferred way of play, inflexible, and have huge gaps in their skills. Introduced to a new system, invariably they attempt to immerse themselves into the rules of the system rather than into the 'play' of the system or expected by the GM. Armed with deep knowledge of many rules sets, they want to interact with the game environment solely through offering rules propositions, and invariably they spend more time negotiating the rules proposition through the metagame than they do actually thinking about their character or the game fiction. They'll test out continually what mechanical rules I intend to use to resolve their proposition, trying out several variations hoping to find some edge, before settling not on what they want their character to do, but what they think gives them the most edge (and since they are operating in a fog of war, many times they are wrong anyway). Basically, their attitude is, "I will only offer a proposition if I'm in full control of the outcome, and my job as a player is to figure out the proposition that produces the result that I'm most comfortable with." This results in slow tedious and uninspired play, and I have to spend an enormous amount of time fighting their ingrained instincts until they finally start to realize that the purpose of the rules is to facilitate play and not be the play itself. Sadly, this usually only happens by way of less experienced players at the table leading by example, winning themselves shining moments of awesome that make for good stories that more experienced would never even try. I can't imagine a really good reason to hide rules from a player unless the rules in question reflected some aspect of reality that characters couldn't know and could only learn from trial and error. Such rules subsystems would never cover 'kindergarten playground' rules of movement, combat, and skill use that would be available to a character to learn about his environment since a very early age. They might theoretically cover investigation into alien technology, aspects of magic which were truly numinous, or the workings of the larger multiverse in a setting where the existence of such a multiverse was not well known. Rules systems like that to me fall into the same category of rules as the exact structure that a DM has set up for a particular skill challenge, where knowing the rules would give the player metagame knowledge that their player couldn't have. But such cases are in my opinion inherently rare. They don't apply to the normal fortune/resolution mechanics. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Rules Transparency - How much do players need to know?
Top