Has anyone ever actually had a peasant railgun appear in play?
I agree that this is a "crunch point" for Purist-for-System play priorities, but I think that the "backing away" from the rules being game-world axioms is a quite definite backing away from PFS.
I assume that no one has ever had a peasant railgun appear in play (whether in its weaponised or its transportation/communication version).
But the mere fact that it is possible is an afront to purist-for-system play, because the fact of its possibiity shows that the game rules are violating ingame causality (on the premise that we know that, in game, the peasant railgun is in fact causally impossible).
Because of the limits on rule design, I think that any game system is going to be imperfect as a purist-for-system vehicle, but there are degrees of imperfection. I remember in my own RM play the rules for scrying defences also had odd side effects: you could place a scrying defence on yourself containing (say) a message, and then when an ally tried to scry on you using even a low-level scry spell they could read the message - which was a cheaper way of communicating then using the higher-level telepathy spells. We looked at various ways to eliminate this undesired consequence of the scrying defence rules, but couldn't get rid of it completely, and so a gentelemen's agreement was reached simply not to use this particular abuse.
That was a compromise in respect of a somewhat secondary mechanic, which we were able to tolerate within an overal purist-for-system approach. But compromises in respect of the core mechanics of the action economy are something else again. That's why there are so many published initiative systems for Rolemaster: RM players want a core action resolution mechanic that conforms to, rather than violates, ingame causality.
for a game world, there is no set of underlying axioms that are independent of ourselves. Any set of axioms must come either from the rules as written or from the imagination(s) of those playing. My understanding of PFS as proposed by Edwards is that it takes the first of these views, that the axioms of the game world are written in the rules.
But Edwards is also taking it for granted that there are game-rule-independent standards of adequacy - as do the actual design of games like RM, RQ, Classic Traveller, etc. Here is the key general description:
In this sort of design, there's no possible excuse for any imperfections, including scale-derived breakdowns of the fundamental point/probability relationships. The system must be cleanly and at the service of the element(s) being emphasized, in strictly in-game-world terms. A good one is elegant, consistent, applicable to anything that happens in play, and clear about its outcomes. It also has to have points of contact at any scale for any conceivable thing. It cannot contain patch-rules to correct for inconsistencies; consistency is the essence of quality.
As I see it, Purist for System design is a tall, tall order. It's arguably the hardest design spec in all of role-playing.
There are two things that make it hard. First, the need for consistency. Second, the need to serve the elements being emphasised. I am particularly emphasising the second of these: in the design of RM, RQ, Traveller, etc we have a rules-independent conception of those elements (eg motion is contiuous, not freeze-frame).
Typically, that conception is drawn from the real world (eg how we think a sword fight or gun fight should go), with deviations for reasons of fantasy, sci-fi etc. (There is scope for presssure here, of course: eg why does anti-magic shell not stop a dragon flying or a ghost existing at all? As a RM GM I used to allow dragons to fly in anti-magic, but ghosts and other incorporeal beings woud wink out of existence while it was in effect. I'm sure other GMs have resolved the same issue in different ways.)
The problem with the peasant railgun is that the mechanics that permit it fail to "serve the elements that are being emphasised" ie such elements as that human beings in the gameworld are subject, more-or-less, to the same physical limits as are human beings in the real world, and hence can't accelerate objects arbitrarily fast in 12 seconds if only you have enough of them in a line.
using "common sense" or changing the rules for these situations represents a compromise with PFS - a retreat from it - based on another agenda; that of "realism" (for whatever game "reality" is imagined separately from the rules).
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here is nothing about PFS play that says the game world must conform to the features of real-world physics.
In reply to the first of these two passages - of course! But sticking to the mechanics and tolerating the peasant railguns is a compromise as well - it is to proceed with flawed mechanics, that fail to "serve the elements being emphasised" because instead they distort them. That's why purist-for-system design is hard.
This is why I posted, quite a way upthread, that many of those 3E playes who describe themselves as sim aren't really sim by my purist-for-system standards. Because they tolerate a system that, under application, can fail to serve the elements being emphasised and instead violates ingame causality.
My obsessing over peasant railguns from a purist-for-system perspective is precisely an instance of what Edwards describes here:
The few exceptions have always been accompanied by explanatory text, sometimes apologetic and sometimes blase. A good example is classic hit location, in which the characters first roll to-hit and to-parry, then hit location for anywhere on the body (RuneQuest, GURPS). Cognitively, to the Simulationist player, this requires a replay of the character's intent and action that is nearly intolerable. It often breaks down in play, either switching entirely to called shots and abandoning the location roll, or waiting on the parry roll until the hit location is known. Another good example is rolling for initiative, which has generated hours of painful argument about what in the world it represents in-game, at the moment of the roll relative to in-game time.
If the
only constraint was consistency, then provided the initiative rules weren't incoherent there would be no need for those hours of painful debate: we would just read the gameworld off the mechanics (eg it contains units of time called "the round", and those units end with a "freezing" of everyone/everything and being with an "unfreezing" that is staggered by reference to a range of factors, including personal reaction time/reflexes).
What motivates the hourse of debate is that we (the purist-for-system players_ have a mechanics-independent conception of "the elements to be served" ie that people in the gameworld are acting in continuous time just like people in the real world.
Now I don't dispute that the mechanics-independent conception of the elements to be served could come from somewhere else. In fantasy RPGs, this is the case for dragons (must model Smaug), magic (must model Ged), etc. In sci-fi this is the case for FTL travel, aliens, etc. (Even C&S has sorcery as well as chivalry.) But historically, "realism" has always played an important constraining role in purist-for-system design.
those who explicitly want to play in a defined game world are also free to assume that there exists some explanation of these matters. If you start from the point that Middle Earth must be consistent/coherent, then it follows that there must be some aspect of the world's physics that allows for faerie queens and lembas and elves living with no apparent agriculture or whatever.
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Whatever the axioms of the literary/game world may be, they MUST be such as to allow th elves of Lothlorien. This occupies the same conceptual space as an observation in real science.
Sure, but as has often been noted with reference to MERP, the more you emphasise this sort of thing, the less Tokienesque your game will feel.
Edwards says, of purist-for-system as a priority:
In play, these games offer a lot of diversity because both the character-to-player relationship and the GM-to-outcomes relationship are fully customizable. Players might well utilize Pawn stance as Actor stance or any other, and the GM may care greatly about a given goal or situation to be set up during play, or not at all. The only required priority is to enjoy the System in action.
Once you are enjoying the system in action you are inevitably going to be emphasising aspects of the fiction - eg where does Lembas come from? - that play little or no role in Tolkien's fiction.
