Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

I think it is obvious why this sort of RPGing is experienced by many participants as centring the GM's conception of the fictional situation.

Under most game texts players are active here, describing what their characters do in a situation that they grasp. Under some texts they will say what rule their act falls within the scope of. In many cases game texts will set the target for success.

OK? This may be true. It doesn't seem to bear upon what I said. A player can be very active, intently asking the GM to tell them more about how they conceive the fictional situation, perhaps with some of those answers being gated behind rolls that have to meet a certain target for success. That is not at odds with play centring the GM's conception of the fictional situation: it seems to be an obvious example of it!

None of that is at odds with failure without setback. Here a GM need say nothing at all, but as referee encourage the upholding and carrying through of the lusory attitude. Perhaps explaining the lusory means - pointing to the rule.

I don't really see how references to lusory attitudes and means are shedding much light here. I mean, yes, the GM can encourage the player to keep playing the game by continuing to reflect on the situation as conceived of and narrated by the GM, continuing to ask questions about it via their declared actions for their PC, and so on. Such urgings will maintain the centring of the GM's conception of the fictional situation.

The concern of yours that I have quoted does not turn on inclusion or otherwise of failure without setback.

flat failure can act to derail story much as called out in @andreszarta's third paragraph in #1646.

<snip>

How is failure-with-setback any different? In many cases it's exactly where GM does add twists to the fiction. If that is not to also derail player stories there must be a principle relating the setbacks to such stories.

I think that the claim in the first of these two quotes is false. Abandoning failure without setback is a key means that RPGs use for centring the participants' conception of the fiction rather than centring the GM's conception of the fiction. This works in two interrelated ways:

(1) Requiring failure narration to include setbacks requires identifying what would be a setback here? Which requires imposing a normative or evaluative attitude onto the situation (thus investing the situation with stakes). In games such as AW and BW, the relevant norms/evaluation are provided by the player: that is to say, it is the player who - directly or indirectly - plays the key role in setting stakes.

(2) To achieve (1) requires the GM to frame situations in which there are things at stake, which can then be won or lost based on whether the players succeed or fail on their roll (or card pull or whatever mechanical process is being used). So the players, being the stakes-setters, now play a role - directly or indirectly - in contributing to the content and trajectory of framed situations.​

There may be other means to achieve RPGing that centres the participants', rather than just the GM's conception of the fiction. But (1)+(2) is a very common means. Abandoning failure without setback is not, on its own, sufficient for (1)+(2), but is clearly necessary for (1)+(2).

We can therefore see that abandoning failure without setback is a necessary though insufficient condition of achieving a sufficient though perhaps unnecessary condition of RPGing that centres the participants', rather than just the GM's conception of the fiction. Which is to say, to use Mackie's terminology, it is an INUS condition of doing so. (Mackie thought this was sufficient to show that it is a cause. I've confined myself to characterising it as a key means.)

To the extent that "story" in the second of the above two quotes means something beyond stakes, then BW and AW are not really relevant. The use of "failure with setbacks" to drive the GM's pre-conceived story seems like a type of trad play: the GM uses the setbacks to keep things moving in their pre-authored direction (eg the PCs not only lose the combat but are taken prisoner, thus finding themselves in the NPC headquarters which, had they won the combat, they would have headed to next). The use of "failure with setbacks* to drive the player's pre-conceived story seems like a type of neo-trad play: the GM uses the setbacks to keep things moving in the players' pre-authored direction (eg the NPC doesn't just decline the PC's request but storms off in a huff, with this fiction reaffirming the player's established conception of how the PC and the NPC feel about one another).

One route away from that is to let the chips fall as they may on all sides, i.e. ensure that any stories on GM's side are equally subject to flat failure. The BBEG rolls to see if they draw the army of darkness to their side.... nope, that fails. That kind of roll can play a part in play prioritising gamism and simulationism.

Baker talked about this back in 2003:

So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush? . . .

3. Sometimes, mechanics. "An orc? Only if you make your having-an-orc-show-up roll. Throw down!" "Rawk! 57!" "Dude, orc it is!" . . .

4. And sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have a combat system that works like this.​

And as I posted not all that far upthread,

Stipulating that someone's job is to decide something impartially doesn't make their decision-making impartial.

What makes a decision about weather impartial? Is the only impartial decision on that specifies that the weather is typical? But that wouldn't be very realistic, given that realistic weather (quite notoriously) departs from the typical!

This isn't a strange thing to ask, either. The impact of this sort of question on RPG play and design is evident, especially in the late 70s and early 80s. Classic Traveller doesn't ask the GM to impartially stipulate a cargo: it has a cargo table. Rolemaster doesn't ask the GM to impartially stipulate an injury: it has crit tables. Etc.

The move to purist-for-system design can be seen as driven, at least in part, by doubts about the meaningfulness of "impartial decision-making" in these sorts of contexts. (In contrast to, say, decisions about whether poking a certain curtain with a spear will reveal the empty space behind the curtain: it's clearer what it means to impartially adjudicate these sorts of exploratory action declarations, although the history of concerns over "gotcha" GMing of traps shows that these aren't foolproof either.)

 

[pemerton]

I see this rule as deconstructible, like this

If a player declares an action for their PC, and then makes a roll to determine the outcome of that action declaration, and the roll fails,
So this fits what I have loosely called "description" (I acknowledge a burden to find a better term.) What did we hear and see? It should be called attention to that at least one other rule is implied here. I don't think that is of importance to the discussion at hand. If it is, we can pick it up later.

the GM must say something about what happens next,
Where the description matches the rule it invokes it: functionally, GM must now say something about what happens next

and the thing that the GM says must clearly defeat or set back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC.
The rule will fail if the description does not include the goal the player is hoping to achieve. Therefore it applies that criterion retroactively to secure that the description contains a goal. You can see how that could go in play. With that in place, the rule supplies an explicit statement relating to fitting consequences: if whatever GM says does not defeat or setback the goal, then they have failed to choose a consequence that fits.

I don't understand what your italics are adding here.

What do we gain, in our understanding of rules, by relabelling the truism that they govern responses to certain actions or circumstances with the jargon "description"? What does the adverb "functionally" add to the proposition, that I stated, that the rule requires the GM to say what happens next, under certain constraints, if the player fails their roll? What does it add to my statement of what the rule requires to describe that requirement as a "fitting consequence"? "Fitting", here, seems to be a strained tautology meaning conforming to what the rule requires.

When, in the OP, I asked "Why do RPGs have rules?", isn't wasn't because I was puzzled by the general form of rules, which - in the context of game playing - are voluntarily-adopted normative standards pertaining to actions or circumstances that arise in the course of playing the game. I asked the question in order to promote a conversation about the reasons for adopting such normative standards: what does the adoption of rules add to RPGing, that cannot be obtained just by engaging in cooperative imagination play?

I can make the assumption that defeat or setback is unwanted, given that the rule solicited player goal and one assumes goals are things that players want, while defeat of goals is something they don't want. If that assumption is a good one, then this rule alone is an appropriate lusory means that can secure the unwelcome and the unwanted. Suppose that defeat did not debar further attempts? In that case the unwanted will come down to inefficient means (I have to spend an hour when I wanted to spend a minute, or perhaps must pay the costs all over again.)

There's more that can be said, but this seems like a good place to pause and take stock.

Well, to me it seems that you have restated what I stated in my post that you quoted: namely, that it the rule I set out, in conjunction with some other rules that I alluded to be didn't set out ("intent and task", "let it ride"), will make the unwelcome and unwanted part of our shared fiction. Thus, in Baker's view, this is the sort of rule we have a reason to adopt in the course of our RPGing. Hence, my disagreement with this:

My take away from what was quoted in the OP is that "who or what decides if what was just said is now true in the fictional game state" isn't a nothing, but it's also not the focus. The focus is securing that "what was just said" should include "the unwelcome and the unwanted".

<snip>

Baker focuses on "who", and he focuses on "what" (that being the unwelcome and the unwanted.) Even deconstructed, if there were a sole focus it should be on the latter, not the former

It is precisely by focusing on who - in the rule I stated, the GM - and thereby making use of asymmetric participant roles, together with the what - in the rule I stated, saying something about what happens next, that clearly defeats or sets back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC - that ensures that the rule will bring the unwanted and unexpected into the shared fiction.

Right, so my meaning then was that in the text you quoted in your OP, it seemed to me Baker is directing focus more toward the what than the who. Does that track for you?

Not really. He is concerned with both (for instance, in the "Advanced F***ery" chapter in the AW rulebook, there is an extended discussion of the importance, in the design of player-side moves, of ensuring that there is an interplay and structured sharing of entitlements to narrate the fiction). He is also rejecting the notion that "brute assignment of authority" is a good way to ensure adherence to rules such that play does not break down into moment-to-moment negotiation.

This is why the rule I set out gives the GM the job of saying something about what happens next, that clearly defeats or sets back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC - it does not require the player to cease advocating for their PC and inhabiting their PCs' situation and aspirations within the fiction. This is also a reason why it centres the players' goal for their PC: while the application of the rule means that the PC suffers in ways the player would not have chosen (given their advocacy for their PC) and that the GM would not have chosen (being a fan of the PC), it does not demand the player to abandon their concern with and focus on their PC as the core of their role in the game.

This is an example of how the rule, to us Baker's language (as quoted in the OP), sets expectations and confers permissions that will "make as sure as possible" the participants' adherence to the rule even when it brings the unwelcome and unexpected. This, in turn, is how the rule improves upon what would be possible via "vigorous creative agreement".

Contrast a neo-trad variant on the rule (as per my post not far upthread), which would presuppose that the player does not solely advocate for their PC, that the player may have an arc of suffering in mind for their PC, and that requires the narration of the defeat or setback to express that player pre-authored arc. I think Baker's view of that neo-trad variant would be that it is essentially redundant, as we could just collectively tell the story in accordance with the pre-authored arc with no need for mediation via mechanics. To put it as Baker does (quoting again from the OP), "if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention. Live negotiation and honest collaboration are almost certainly better."

 

[Lanefan]

It must defeat the players' goal. For instance, if their goal is to get safely through the door, that must be defeated. Failure of task may or may not be part of this.

Defeated once and for all, or defeated until-unless a different in-fiction approach is tried? Or put another way, must that defeat be permanent or is it merely a here-and-now defeat that can maybe be overcome later? There's a big difference.

For example, if the goal is to get safely through the door and the action declaration is to pick the lock, does failure on the lock-pick attempt mean the party can't then try other things - bash the door down, cast Warp Wood or Shrink on it, pop it off its hinges, etc. - in order to achieve the same goal?

Nothing happens probably doesn't count as saying something about what happens next ("nothing" is something of a degenerate case) and it also doesn't defeat a goal.

Except nothing happens does defeat, at least temporarily, just about any goal that involves something happening. What it doesn't always do is give the players an obvious next move and-or problem to deal with - they have to come up with that on their own; and forcing them to come up with the next move on their own is fine with me. As in:

"So your lock-picking attempt failed - you ain't getting through it that way - and the door is still closed. Now what do you do?"

Hence it is not an acceptable narration.

We'll probably disagree on this forever.

 

[Campbell]

@Lanefan

@pemerton is explaining how Burning Wheel works. What is and is not acceptable within the context of a particular sort of play. Nothing happens is not acceptable narration from a Burning Wheel GM. That might not be to your preference, but it is not something that can be argued. It's how the game works.

Whether or not you, @Micah Sweet or anyone else would prefer that sort of play is immaterial to the way the game works on a functional basis. It's one thing to say I wouldn't like that for x reason it's quite another to say it shouldn't work like that. The first is statement of preference. The latter is a suggestion that everyone who plays roleplaying games should take on your preferences.

This is a fundamental issue with the way we often talk about games on this site. We take on a normative tone instead of considering what a game is striving to do and what other people with different sets of preferences might getting from the games in question.

 

[loverdrive]

As an aside on "who gets to say", I think narrative authority can be a pretty decent reward. For beating a mini-game. For giving an interesting hook. For something. We hand out XP and gold and loot for smart decisions, for good roleplaying, for mesmerising voices, whatever.

Why not give out narrative authority?

Spoiler: Also, a draft of a new one-page game

 

[pemerton]

As an aside on "who gets to say", I think narrative authority can be a pretty decent reward. For beating a mini-game. For giving an interesting hook. For something. We hand out XP and gold and loot for smart decisions, for good roleplaying, for mesmerising voices, whatever.

Why not give out narrative authority?

Prince Valiant does this, although probably not in as full-blooded a way as you're thinking. (Certainly not in the way your one-page draft does!)

For good/entertaining/table-blasting play, a player gets a storyteller certificate. This can be spent (and is then lost) for one benefit. Some of the benefits are buffs. But some are fiat narration (eg knocking a foe senseless in combat, or killing them; finding something hidden; escaping; etc).

Of our three knight PCs, one of them is only able to win combats by spending certificates (that's how he defeated the greatest knight in all of Britain, and also how he killed a dragon).

 

[Micah Sweet]

@Lanefan

@pemerton is explaining how Burning Wheel works. What is and is not acceptable within the context of a particular sort of play. Nothing happens is not acceptable narration from a Burning Wheel GM. That might not be to your preference, but it is not something that can be argued. It's how the game works.

Whether or not you, @Micah Sweet or anyone else would prefer that sort of play is immaterial to the way the game works on a functional basis. It's one thing to say I wouldn't like that for x reason it's quite another to say it shouldn't work like that. The first is statement of preference. The latter is a suggestion that everyone who plays roleplaying games should take on your preferences.

This is a fundamental issue with the way we often talk about games on this site. We take on a normative tone instead of considering what a game is striving to do and what other people with different sets of preferences might getting from the games in question.

Agreed. That's why I prefer to say what I do and don't like.

Often don't like, in the context of the conversations I tend to fall into.

 

[clearstream]

When, in the OP, I asked "Why do RPGs have rules?", isn't wasn't because I was puzzled by the general form of rules, which - in the context of game playing - are voluntarily-adopted normative standards pertaining to actions or circumstances that arise in the course of playing the game.

I don't want to derail the thread further into territory you don't want to explore, so will make just one remark on this definition of rules.

voluntarily-adopted
A normative standard of the right sort that I don't adopt would still be a rule. And it would still be a rule even if I were made to involuntarily-adopt it. The problem here is mixing up rules with playing the game. It is right to say that to join in a game playfully is to voluntarily-adopt its rules (i.e. accept them among its lusory means.) But while rules are used to play a game, we can still point to or describe them, and can identify them as rules, even when not playing that game. Even without any intention of playing it.

As playing the game is built into your definition of rules, what you ask when asking "Why do RPGs have rules?" is "Why do folk play RPGs?" The questions are not identical. You used the word "aesthetic" upthread, and answers to the second question are going to be of that nature. That can lead to great questions like "What are characteristics of rules that produce the RPGing that I want?"

 

[clearstream]

As an aside on "who gets to say", I think narrative authority can be a pretty decent reward. For beating a mini-game. For giving an interesting hook. For something. We hand out XP and gold and loot for smart decisions, for good roleplaying, for mesmerising voices, whatever.

Why not give out narrative authority?

Spoiler: Also, a draft of a new one-page game

View attachment 286561

There is a free condensed version of FATE you might take a look at to see some other ideas in that direction.

 

[Numidius]

I don't want to derail the thread further into territory you don't want to explore, so will make just one remark on this definition of rules.

voluntarily-adopted
A normative standard of the right sort that I don't adopt would still be a rule. And it would still be a rule even if I were made to involuntarily-adopt it. The problem here is mixing up rules with playing the game. It is right to say that to join in a game playfully is to voluntarily-adopt its rules (i.e. accept them among its lusory means.) But while rules are used to play a game, we can still point to or describe them, and can identify them as rules, even when not playing that game. Even without any intention of playing it.

As playing the game is built into your definition of rules, what you ask when asking "Why do RPGs have rules?" is "Why do folk play RPGs?" The questions are not identical. You used the word "aesthetic" upthread, and answers to the second question are going to be of that nature. That can lead to great questions like "What are characteristics of rules that produce the RPGing that I want?"

In a recent B/X mid-level, mini-campaign of mine, players, for whatever reasons, excuses, real time constraints, different in-game priorities etc, simply refused to prepare their spells in advance, and, of course, demanded to cast spells when needed.
(Me: I got you covered: roll to cast, just don't roll a 1).
Can we say norms superseded rules?