Why do RPGs have rules?

[AbdulAlhazred]

But going back to @pemerton 's original question -- what ARE rules for?

Some of Vincent Baker's thoughts only make sense in the context of a game where there's a need to carry over gamestate information across situational contexts, and where the conceptualization of the "rational actor" that exists changes as the situational context changes.

What fundamentally changes about the game being played if that's the case?

And where do the rules come down on this? I mean, it clearly is -by observation- a truth that the construction of the rules, the game system, has a say in this.

 

[Pedantic]

So this got me thinking --- is something "unwanted" in the game's fiction a "fail state"?

And if so, what actually constitutes a "fail state" in an RPG?

There's two possible meanings of "fail state" that you need to disambiguate here.

1. A game produces failure when a line of play fails, either because it was incorrect/incomplete in some decision, or because of a random chance that goes against the player.
2. A game fails when a player plays it in an unintentional way, making a decision that is not encompassed by the game's systems, or finding a flaw in the game's processes that collapses the game's magic circle.

The former is often desirable to players. It is failure and unwanted (play in which it is wanted is usually described as degenerate, and often involves not inviting that player to return) but not unwelcome. The latter is strictly unwelcome.

Is it any state that any one of the players dislikes? Any two of the players? Three? Is it predicated on player participation continuing? Or only continuing in a way amenable to the player? If the player is allowed to continue participating, but his or her character has been altered in a way that they do not like, is that a fail state? (Neo-trad play would probably say that it is.)

So this got me thinking about what, precisely, are the possible "fail states" that an RPG can produce that are "unwelcome".

• Character death in the fiction -- This is at the very least a temporary "fail state" for a player in most instances. Even if their character is resurrected or the player is allowed to introduce a new character to the game, there is a period of intervening time where the player cannot participate at the generally assumed level of prior participation.

This is type 1 failure.

• Fundamental character alteration -- Something intrinsic to the persona / personality of the character has fundamentally, irreversibly changed in a way that the player no longer wishes to engage gameplay through their current avatar.

Type 2 failure, based on the description of the player's desire to play.

• Circumstantial modification of "situation" in a way the players did not wish. E.g., the Duke of Eliastair is now dead, and such eventuality is unwelcome.

Type 1 failure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This, this right here? This is BY FAR the most difficult idea to shake coming from "trad" play styles. The notion of "the world the characters live in," that it somehow has its own independent existence outside the shared space of play.

The fact that the GM can spout fountains of lore surrounding it, can mentally connect wide swaths of contrived history and NPCs and their actions and landscapes and maps, etc., etc., somehow innately transforms this fictional creation of the mind of the GM into a "real place", with "immutable facts."

When really it's just because it's assumed that the GM is allowed to introduce their version of the fiction at will, without any prior consent. It's not any less fictional just because the GM holds a privileged space and function in introducing the assumed "truths" of the fiction.

This grounding assumption about the way the "living world" should take on a life of its own, and now has its own independent existence "above and outside" the more immediate fiction being generated in play is insidiously difficult to get away from.

This was by far the hardest conceptual barrier for me to overcome in really understanding PbtA / Story Now play.

Oh, I understand the concepts of Story Now play, I just don't like it personally and don't buy into it. There's nothing inherently superior to that kind of shared fiction.

I thought this was a thread about why RPGs have rules, not about any particular set of rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's two possible meanings of "fail state" that you need to disambiguate here.

1. A game produces failure when a line of play fails, either because it was incorrect/incomplete in some decision, or because of a random chance that goes against the player.
2. A game fails when a player plays it in an unintentional way, making a decision that is not encompassed by the game's systems, or finding a flaw in the game's processes that collapses the game's magic circle.

The former is often desirable to players. It is failure and unwanted (play in which it is wanted is usually described as degenerate, and often involves not inviting that player to return) but not unwelcome. The latter is strictly unwelcome.

I'm not entirely sure it is meaningful to even think about your #1 as 'failure'. It is a purely fictional narrative state. That is, one of the character's goals was not achieved, they didn't get some reward, etc. Its only indirectly attached to the player, and it can only be undesirable in a style of play where the operational goals of the character are projected onto the player (IE classic D&D play where the goal of the player is 'skilled play' as measured by the character getting 'the gold' or whatever). In narrativist play there are none of these 'type 1' failures. "Oh, we got ambushed by orcs and everyone died fighting tooth and nail to save the holy relics, except Tasha, she hid in a tree." There's nothing uncool about that, necessarily, not unless everyone was of a mind that this 'unwelcome' outcome was somehow subverting some even more cool play to come. Even in that later case I'd cast a jaundiced eye on the idea of trying to eradicate those outcomes.

This is why we 'play to find out what happens' in narrative style play! Sometimes you get to find out if you will take an orc spear for your "protect the holy artifacts" belief or live to explore your love interest with Peter next week. Its not always a choice you're going to get! If it was, you'd be playing neo-trad, not narrativist! So think about that, the rules have a lot to say about what sort of agenda your play will be serving, although that's not really IMHO what rules are FOR, it is something they bear on and so is a designer consideration, or maybe a GM/player consideration, depending.

 

[Mark Cleveland]

What are the rules actually for? what do they do? ... I didn't mean "what emotional state..." I meant "what function do the perform in the overall process of play?" It's an engineering-type question.

I think it depends. As you noted in the OP, there are many reasons that rules might exist, from a design goal & performance perspective. And due to the complexities of a TRPG in terms of role, the designers of such games don't always deliver on what they want. Vincent (the Bakers, et al), for example, wrote many games. Some more consistent than others with the design ethos put forth in his public writings.

But to answer you, I think rules do different things in different games. But they generally exist to guide play, so it continues until it's designed to end - which will necessarily vary from designer to designer, and game to game. And from arguably a higher level overview (I think you have to play to understand sometimes, how this works) I sometimes think of rules as uniting the players in the actual playing of the game, IE through mutual understanding of what is "game" and what is not.

 

[Mark Cleveland]

EDIT: I was tempted to chain this together with the previous reply. This is related to the above, but Also a slightly different matter...

I'm utterly lost

I see why. Asking good questions, but it's just not a natural way for most people to think about games or their design. But thinking about things this way might help.

Game rules are a social contract.

Even in a physical game with no real win state or in depth rules like Tag, notice there are multiple sets of concerns within each person. There's all the usual ones that exists outside the game like "I gotta pee" and limited interest level in playing and winning, and then there's those of a player (when I'm "It", I can must tag someone else as "It" by touching them with my hand).

Also observe that if I'm tagged "It" and I walk away, rather than chase others, it's clear I'm no longer a player. Go tag someone else, or the game ends, basically - which kids intuit pretty naturally without any words or rules about that. It's the basics of gaming, but not talked about enough. The unspoken rules of any game start off sort of exclusionary: you aren't playing the game unless you're following the rules of the game. Or more to the point: Games are typically a participatory experience. Squid Games and Hunger Games aside...

In a tabletop role playing game, there's all of that, plus the additional role of portraying a character in a fictional story. Rules exist in these games to guide and manage the conflicting desires of the narrative, the character, the player, and even the person outside the game at various times! It just depends* (which rule(s) you're talking about). Hope this helps

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think it depends. As you noted in the OP, there are many reasons that rules might exist, from a design goal & performance perspective. And due to the complexities of a TRPG in terms of role, the designers of such games don't always deliver on what they want. Vincent (the Bakers, et al), for example, wrote many games. Some more consistent than others with the design ethos put forth in his public writings.

But to answer you, I think rules do different things in different games. But they generally exist to guide play, so it continues until it's designed to end - which will necessarily vary from designer to designer, and game to game. And from arguably a higher level overview (I think you have to play to understand sometimes, how this works) I sometimes think of rules as uniting the players in the actual playing of the game, IE through mutual understanding of what is "game" and what is not.

Yeah, there's the (I think even more Ron Edwards position) of "game rules as describing how to regulate the game-as-activity, but then there's the point that Baker made and @pemerton pointed. That is the 'introducer of unwelcome/unexpected truths'. It feels to me like, without that last piece you are, at best, in a sort of neo-trad territory. Interestingly I noticed in another non-EW conversation I was having that participants talked about the question of whether neo-trad (at least at its extreme, like OC) is EVEN A GAME AT ALL. If all the action is simply going to produce expected and desired outcomes, then where's the game? Yes, you have an 'activity' and 'rules', but fundamentally there can't be any true conflict! I think such things are still colloquially called 'games' in many cases, and there's not firm agreement on where the lines should be drawn, but there seems to be a feeling there IS a line there!

So, it may be that this 'unwelcomeness introducing' function has to exist for the activity to become an RPG.

 

[Mark Cleveland]

So, it may be that this 'unwelcomeness introducing' function has to exist for the activity to become an RPG.

Oh, I didn't realize things had quite gotten on to the reasoning for the existence of competing roles in RPGs in particular, but on that topic..

I don't find the "introduction" of unwelcome truths by the rules to be essential.

But I do think that rules which give players competing roles (ex: each player say what their individual characters do, but one is a special player says what the rest of the world does) tends to create a more interesting narrative.. and player dynamic! A narrative ceases to be interesting without some thing (or some one) introducing unexpected twists.

And I generally prefer that to be combination of judgment calls and dice.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Oh, I understand the concepts of Story Now play, I just don't like it personally and don't buy into it. There's nothing inherently superior to that kind of shared fiction.

This is true. Ultimately there's no fundamental distinction between canonizing information at the point where it's known to two people (No Myth) and canonizing it earlier, perhaps before it's known even to one person (blorb). Neither is objectively superior, but it's fine to prefer one or the other.

Quoting Realism and blorb

The blorb and the gloracle are game components (another word for game components is “ludemes”). The blorb is the make-believe world we play in, the gloracle the set of rules, prep, principles and die rolls we use to give us answers about that blorb world.

A subset of the game’s make-believery is known to two or more participants. Let’s come up with a word for it, the SIS maybe. (Stay in school!)

If you think of this No Myth style SIS as the entirety of the “game state” and then a blorb DM starts talking about their more wider, blorby definition of “game state”, you are gonna have a hard time.

In No Myth, the SIS is a very important ludeme. The act of telling makes it real. To bring it back to the example of the hunt for criminal above, once the players have learned where the criminal is, then that location becomes fixed and real. That’s all fine in a No Myth game, that’s just how a No Myth game works.

In a blorby game, the rules for fixing/canonizing the location of the criminal (or any other entity) happens earlier, that’s all. There are some principles to follow. Why anyone would want to play blorby instead of No Myth?

I can’t explain why.

I just love it.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Yeah, and I want to make it clear, I don't think people necessarily, or even normally, play completely shallow characters in most games. I mean, sure we all did when we were young, or maybe in 'that game', or whatever. Still, like your description of the things with the Paladin, the Cleric, the Shadow, etc. its not just 'operational' play. The Cleric player probably did not sit back and think "Hmmm, controlling a shadow would be pretty cool! I can do X, Y, and Z with that!" I just find it cumbersome to attempt to get that kind of play out of games like D&D.

Crimony. What does "operational" mean in this context? I can't tell if you are agreeing, acknowledging, or disagreeing with me.