GM's Knowing the Rules

Saelorn said:

...but I won't intentionally go into a game without having read the book, and I expect the same courtesy from the GM.

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Each year, I go to a house-con, which is organized into 4-hour blocks, so people get to play something like 5 games during the weekend. The con has leaned specifically toward running games folks aren't familiar with. I cannot remember a single year in which I knew and owned the rules for every game I played. I remember years when I didn't own *ANY* of the rules to the games I played. Getting and reading the rules for them all before the con simply isn't practical.

I usually run at least one game during the weekend - I don't expect any player to have read the rules, as I'm usually running something obscure, new, or in playtest. The other GMs are similar. The con assumes that all required rules will be taught.

And it all goes pretty darned well, for that.

Umbran said:

Each year, I go to a house-con, which is organized into 4-hour blocks, so people get to play something like 5 games during the weekend. I cannot remember a single year in which I knew and owned the rules for every game I played. I remember years when I didn't own *ANY* of the rules to the games I played. Getting and reading the rules for them all before the con simply isn't practical.

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In a con setting, where you are often doing one-shot trial runs of a system? Of course not. Its a sample, you arent expected to know the rules or system before going in.

But the guy running it really, really should.

Also, a con setting is...well, not at all like a steady group in terms of play or in terms of how it is run and I would argue you often will get a false impression of a system if your only experience of it is at a Con.

HJFudge said:

But the guy running it really, really should.

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I think there's a bit of expectation that comes with formality. If you are playing at Gen Con, there's an expectation that, if you are running a game, you are 100% on top of the rules.

At this house con, it is way more loose than that. It is an extended bunch of friends of the hosts, relaxing with games for the weekend. The guideline is more like: The people at the table don't know the rules? Then they won't know when you've gotten them wrong! Consistency, and keeping up pace of play and table enjoyment become far higher priorities than Knowing The Rules or Getting It Right.

Also, a con setting is...well, not at all like a steady group in terms of play or in terms of how it is run and I would argue you often will get a false impression of a system if your only experience of it is at a Con.

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Yep. No argument. My point is that exactly how much rules mastery the GM needs is largely based on the needs and expectation at the particular session, and not any generalization.

I've had a couple of times at this house con when I have run things to cover for a last minute cancellation, and I, as GM, got my first look at the rules of a game the night before I ran it. And folks had fun. But I make no claim that I gave them the Iconic Game Experience.

You learn to manage, and to give people a fun time, regardless of exactly how well you know the rules.

HJFudge said:

In a con setting, where you are often doing one-shot trial runs of a system? Of course not. Its a sample, you arent expected to know the rules or system before going in.

But the guy running it really, really should.

Also, a con setting is...well, not at all like a steady group in terms of play or in terms of how it is run and I would argue you often will get a false impression of a system if your only experience of it is at a Con.

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A very long time ago I wrote a tourney for Champions. I was a floor resource for the GMs running and had to correct a couple a few times because they didn't know the basic rules of the game they were trying to run. I mean really basic stuff like how the combat turn functions or Entangle powers don't inflict damage type stuff. Guys running really need to understand the basics.

Fun is just such a...hard thing to discuss. People find a wide variety of different things fun...and its hard to argue against having fun.

This is one reason that the concept of Fun is kinda meaningless when it comes to discussions such as this.

We have to separate ones enjoyment of a thing from the quality of a thing. Whether someone has fun/enjoys something or not has no bearing on a things quality. For instance, I very much enjoy reading silly pulp fantasy novels. The quality is poor, the characters are one-note and cookie cutter, the plots paper thin. The writing is generally sub-par. But I enjoy them! I love reading them, far more than many super well written, quality works of literature. I'd never be so bold as to claim, however, that the thing I enjoyed more was of the same quality or on the same level as Actually Good Literature.

So when someone says 'Its okay, everyone had fun. The game mustve been good!'...I mean, maybe they did have fun? But that doesn't mean anything in terms of whether a game was run well.

I guess a better way to put it is this: My goal is not that my players have Fun. This will happen regardless of activity, because I am awesome to hang out with. My goal is to run an excellent game. And fun has nothing to do with it.

Internal consistency is far more important to me than getting the rules bang-on right every time.

What this means in play is that ideally once a DM makes a ruling, then as far as possible that ruling becomes baked in for the rest of that campaign even if it's wrong (i.e. it becomes a house rule); particularly if that ruling had any significant impact on what happened in the fiction. Yes this puts more pressure on the DM to get it right, or at least get it right enough, as she has to (or certainly ought to!) look at the long-term implications as well as the here-and-now effect of whatever ruling she's got in mind.

Sometimes an error is so bad or so potentially game-breaking that it has to be fixed - fair enough, but to me this somewhat invalidates the run of play in which the error occurred and sometimes whatever came after as well. In rare cases, say if the error occurred right at the end of a session, a retcon and-or replay using the correct ruling fixes it all.

At a con game - well, who really cares? There are no long-term implications beyond the next few hours if that, and IME most con games I've ever been in have played fast and loose with the rules anyway, in order to streamline things such that we could get through the adventure content in the time allotted.

EDIT TO ADD: That all said, the DM really ought to know the rules well enough that situations where she has to make potentially game-changing rulings don't happen very often.

Lanefan said:

At a con game - well, who really cares? There are no long-term implications beyond the next few hours if that, and IME most con games I've ever been in have played fast and loose with the rules anyway, in order to streamline things such that we could get through the adventure content in the time allotted.

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That's fine to some extent, but there's also the factor that people will often play con games in order to try out a new or obscure system and see whether it's for them. If they then buy the system and find out that it's glaringly different than what they experienced, that's not going to be fun for them.

Rules knowledge isn't as important during the session.
Rules issues can be brought up in between sessions and settled.

Sometimes things that look like rules issues to the players is the result of something the GM is allowing for that NPC. Consider the point that some times the players nor the characters have all the information.

In general I like to have a strong system mastery but as long as the game is fun, I'm not that concerned about all the rules.

So, I'd say if things are consistent between players and NPCs having a missed rule here or there isn't that big of a deal.
But if there are things that only NPCs can do that appear to break the rules, consider the rules are being broken for a reason.

HJFudge said:

We have to separate ones enjoyment of a thing from the quality of a thing. Whether someone has fun/enjoys something or not has no bearing on a things quality.

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Um... It is a luxury entertainment. Ultimately, the only value it has is whether people enjoy it. If people don't enjoy it (in whatever sense that means to them), then how well the game was run is completely irrelevant, as the game has failed at its only reason for being. "I ran a perfect game! Too bad everyone was bored and wished they'd been doing something more worthwhile, like organizing their sock drawers..."

Running a game technically well is a means to an end - that end is the enjoyment of the players. If it meets that end, that is awesome. If the means does not lead to that end, the means is rubbish. There is no great register in which you win points for a job well done if the people don't find it a positive experience.

I guess a better way to put it is this: My goal is not that my players have Fun.

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I may be having a Poe's Law failure here - I cannot tell if you are being serious or facetious.

Umbran said:

I may be having a Poe's Law failure here - I cannot tell if you are being serious or facetious.

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Very serious.

Think of it this way. Making a goal of 'my players should have fun' is like hosting a marathon with the goal that the participants will run. I mean...yes. Running is assumed to happen, and if that is where you end your aspirations, its probably not going to be the most interesting of marathons. Which is fine, if all the participants wanna do is run. Nothing wrong with it. Perfectly servicable.

But we can do better, can't we, then just the literal bare minimum bar for a successful experience?

If you are concentrating on making the experience enjoyable to your players, you are missing out on a lot of the nuance that can maximize the experience and the entertainment value of this luxury we call Tabletop RPGs. Think bigger than fun. Fun should happen, regardless. How can we achieve 'more fun' or the ideal 'most fun'?