Do You Use Your RPG Rules as Written?

[rosejzehner]

I would also like to add new ones.

 

[Celebrim]

To be honest, I look at your list, [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], and pretty much shrug and play on...just want to play. If the game says X and X is fun? Good enough for me.

Yes, but I don't just want to run a game. I'm trying to engage in an artistic and creative act of mythopoeic creation. (Pretentious, no? ) So if the rules get in the way of that, the rules have to change. Of the three pillars of gameplay identified by Forge, I'm very much firmly in the Simulationist camp as my primary aesthetic of play. The rules and the world have to make sense to me, one implying and acting to affirm the other. For every rule, there needs to be a pretty good answer to the question, "Why?" that has an answer in the game universe. Yes, there will always be questions that are answered ultimately by game needs like ease and speed of play or game balance or what not, but if two reasonably speed of play options exist, I'll always prefer the more natural one.

Note I'm not expecting you in any way to have the same aesthetic standards.

That being said, as a game referee and manager, I also recognize that at a typical table there will be multiple competing aesthetics of play coming from the different players. The game also has to be a game, which is why it needs rules. I am completely uncomfortable with running a game in such a way that the answer to a player's proposition doesn't depend on the setting or the rules, but only on my own whim and desires. I'm thus uncomfortable with rules that only work when the GM's whim and desires shape the outcome. That's not how I resolve unexpected propositions. That's why to me the answer 'rulings not rules' is so bizarre. Because to me, needing a ruling utterly slows down play as I try to imagine how the setting should be or what the rule should be.

I also to large extent hate to say 'No'. If a player comes to me and says something like, "I want to ride a dinosaur and shoot lasers out of my eyeballs.", I'm ok with saying, "That's a bit powerful for a starting character.", but I'm not ok with saying, "No, there is no path for you to do that." unless the issue is "There are no dinosaurs in the setting." Note however, if there are dinosaurs in the setting, I have to have a "Why?" answered, because the game universe doesn't have the natural history of this world. Dinosaurs aren't extinct animals related to birds if they appear in my homebrew. They have to have some other explanation.

Anyway, you probably don't care, because you just want to play a game. I'm just airing out why I do care that the rules allow you to make a Chaotic Good paladin in the core rules as a base class, as the same class as the Lawful Good paladin, that yet fits with the ideology that the character is supposedly championing and isn't identical to the ideology espoused by law. In other words, since Charlemagne and his knights weren't a thing in my world, and since Christianity isn't a thing in my homebrew world, and since the middle ages didn't happen in my homebrew world, and since Europe doesn't exist in my homebrew, it would be really weird if in the homebrew world there was this first order base profession that was Idealized Medieval Christian Knight such as was spoken of in the Arthurian myths or the tales around Charlemagne. If something looks like that, it has to have a completely different origin and it has to reflect the polytheistic game reality well. All of that sounds like pet peeves, but for me that sort of coherence is a big part of what makes RPing fun.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, it's nice to agree with [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], just for the novelty of it.

Yeah, I'm pretty solidly gamist, with a dose of narrativist in my play, so, yeah, Sim play is pretty much bottom of my list of priorities.

 

[Aenghus]

I answered "yes", despite the fact I use a few houserules, because all rulesets of any size have mistakes and contradictions embedded in them. It's always necessary to use some judgement on the grey areas within the rules and decide how to adjudicate them. When does the number of judgements and houserules rise to make the game a variant rather than standard? Who knows? Such classifications are as much done for the label as for any difference in the experience in-game.

By and large I prefer to run games in the spirit of that game, and encourage my players to do the same.

 

[Mercule]

Yes, but I don't just want to run a game. I'm trying to engage in an artistic and creative act of mythopoeic creation. (Pretentious, no? ) So if the rules get in the way of that, the rules have to change. Of the three pillars of gameplay identified by Forge, I'm very much firmly in the Simulationist camp as my primary aesthetic of play.

Yeah, I'm pretty solidly gamist, with a dose of narrativist in my play, so, yeah, Sim play is pretty much bottom of my list of priorities.

And, this is where the conversation starts to make a lot of sense. I'm pretty much narrativist, with a enough gamism to keep it from becoming a writing circle and to indulge a few math fetishes, and just enough simulation to avoid blatant issues with suspension of disbelief. Note that I'm not a LARPer and that just seems weird, but no each his own. I'm here to play a game. I just see RPGs as being uniquely able to include a good story in that game.

The game also has to be a game, which is why it needs rules. I am completely uncomfortable with running a game in such a way that the answer to a player's proposition doesn't depend on the setting or the rules, but only on my own whim and desires. I'm thus uncomfortable with rules that only work when the GM's whim and desires shape the outcome. That's not how I resolve unexpected propositions. That's why to me the answer 'rulings not rules' is so bizarre. Because to me, needing a ruling utterly slows down play as I try to imagine how the setting should be or what the rule should be.

I agree with this statement. My prior statements about outright ignoring rules were extremely flip. I just don't feel a strong need to know whether a katana and long sword should have different stats. I'm actually mostly fine with the Fate method of just using the Fight skill for all weapons and don't bother with modifiers because you could argue the dual-wielding dagger master gets inside the zweihander-wielding tank just as easily as the opposite and it all washes, in the end. Similarly, I don't feel a need for various bonuses at +1, +2, +3, advantage, +1d4, +1d6, etc. It's mathematically interesting, yes, and I kinda enjoy running the numbers, but it doesn't actually move my game forward. All I really need is normal, good, great, whatever those numbers are. Once I get it down to those, it's generally pretty apparent how good something is during play. With D&D, you do have the breadth of bonuses, and it's a bit more finicky, which is where I say I like the room to play test, then solidify.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm actually mostly fine with the Fate method of just using the Fight skill for all weapons and don't bother with modifiers because you could argue the dual-wielding dagger master gets inside the zweihander-wielding tank just as easily as the opposite and it all washes, in the end. Similarly, I don't feel a need for various bonuses at +1, +2, +3, advantage, +1d4, +1d6, etc. It's mathematically interesting, yes, and I kinda enjoy running the numbers, but it doesn't actually move my game forward. All I really need is normal, good, great, whatever those numbers are. Once I get it down to those, it's generally pretty apparent how good something is during play. With D&D, you do have the breadth of bonuses, and it's a bit more finicky, which is where I say I like the room to play test, then solidify.

I largely agree with this. Where I don't agree is if the rules act to create something visually interesting and exciting to imagine. My ideal combat system acts like I've said I want all my rules to act, "one implying and acting to affirm the other." The idea of having combat rules at all is that they are a generative system for creating a combat narrative, where the relationship between a particular rule and something that is happening in the fiction is clear and vica versa. The idea here is that regardless of whether my player is prioritizing narrative or prioritizing the game as tactical wargame, both end up creating a shared experience the other can appreciate. As much as possible, I want to encourage the players to call out propositions that can be represented in the mind's eye by everyone at the table, even if they call them out only at a metagame level of the rules that they are using.

There are a lot of systems out there that encourage the player to describe their combat action in a narrative manner, and then resolve it with rules. The problem typically is that the act of narrating your attack adds nothing to the game, the game itself doesn't help you imagine what your attack looks like, and in the long run the act of narration becomes perfunctory or even is dropped and neglected. In my opinion that's the systems fault, and not the players fault. Some systems try to resolve this with a stunt bonus on the attack, but that bonus is usually just GM's whim and the rules that resolve the stunt ultimately don't really alter regardless of what the stunt is.

What I want to create is a system where if the play makes a rules proposition it turns into narrative, and where if they make a narrative proposition it turns into rules. While there is no way to have speed of play and also have a generative system that creates the fight choreography of an action movie, I think there is a compromise area where you have enough speed of play and enough generative choreography. I'm not there yet, but I learned more about to do that from 3.X than any other system I've ever played.

One of the reasons I read Luke Crane is that I can tell he has the same goal of his combat engines. Like me though, I think he's not there yet. One of the most difficult problems to solve is how to actually encourage variation rather than simply using the same optimal action round after round. Actually, I think 4e was trying to solve the same problem, albeit I think they ended up with a system that was too rigid to encourage the sort of free form play that I think an RPG thrives on. 5e on the other hand seems to have solved the finicky problem and speed of play problems to some extent, but lost sight of the goal of marrying narrative to game, fiction to metafiction, imagination to resolution.

 

[Mercule]

I largely agree with this. Where I don't agree is if the rules act to create something visually interesting and exciting to imagine. My ideal combat system acts like I've said I want all my rules to act, "one implying and acting to affirm the other." The idea of having combat rules at all is that they are a generative system for creating a combat narrative, where the relationship between a particular rule and something that is happening in the fiction is clear and vica versa. The idea here is that regardless of whether my player is prioritizing narrative or prioritizing the game as tactical wargame, both end up creating a shared experience the other can appreciate. As much as possible, I want to encourage the players to call out propositions that can be represented in the mind's eye by everyone at the table, even if they call them out only at a metagame level of the rules that they are using.

I can totally see where you're coming from. For me, it's a matter of prioritization. Given a set of rules that played fast; didn't require me to memorize a bushel of rules, tables, etc.; and had mechanics that worked with all those tiny "reality" bits, I'll take it. But, in the immortal words of Meatloaf, "Two outta three ain't bad." In my experience, every system makes pretty broad hand-waves to focus on what's important to that system (or its authors).

In the case of D&D, that means grabbing a bigger weapon always grants more damage, but the little guy has no way to "get inside" of that two-hander and completely negate it -- which is exactly what most martial arts instructors are going to tell you to do (right after they lecture you on being stupid enough to get into a fight to begin with). The "official" Gygaxian answer would be that a combat round is an abstraction that represents a lot of movements, feints, etc. over a segment of combat and the dice are just there to represent the one time there's an actual chance of connecting. Which is all fair, barring a Phoenix Command level of detail.

But, once we've let the abstraction in, we've already established what kind of gamer you are, we're just haggling over the price (apparently, I'm in a quoting mood, today). If your group has a brute with a greataxe, a sword-and-board knight, and a dashing swashbuckler who all say they excel at what they do, how do you compare them? Presumably, each sees themselves as the most capable in combat, just in their own way. I'm perfectly comfortable with "You already want to describe it, we just need dice." Others want much more detailed rules that require the swashbuckler to actually know how each action will play out. I get it. It's a bit like preferring Axis & Allies to Risk. In this metaphor, I'm a Risk person. Actually, it's more like I used to be an Axis & Allies person, but I only have time for Risk in my schedule and have found I actually dig it, now. Or, I used to like Axis & Allies, but only had time for Risk, which kinda sucked, but I found Spheres of Influence, which is actually more fun than either -- for me. The metaphor only goes so far, but I think it shows the point.

What I want to create is a system where if the play makes a rules proposition it turns into narrative, and where if they make a narrative proposition it turns into rules. While there is no way to have speed of play and also have a generative system that creates the fight choreography of an action movie, I think there is a compromise area where you have enough speed of play and enough generative choreography. I'm not there yet, but I learned more about to do that from 3.X than any other system I've ever played.

Have you looked at Genesys? I'm super intrigued by the dice, but decided the whole thing is about as "heavy" as D&D, so it wouldn't solve me current woes. But, it certainly seems to fit the bill of "D&D, but with better narrative".

 

[Celebrim]

I can totally see where you're coming from. For me, it's a matter of prioritization. Given a set of rules that played fast; didn't require me to memorize a bushel of rules, tables, etc.; and had mechanics that worked with all those tiny "reality" bits, I'll take it. But, in the immortal words of Meatloaf, "Two outta three ain't bad." In my experience, every system makes pretty broad hand-waves to focus on what's important to that system (or its authors).

That part is perfectly true. If there is anything that I have learned from decades playing games, running games, and fiddling with rules it's that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything is a trade off. You never are going to get a three for three. There is no such thing as a perfect system; there is only a system that is perfect for you, and if you get even that much, count yourself blessed.

In the case of D&D, that means grabbing a bigger weapon always grants more damage, but the little guy has no way to "get inside" of that two-hander and completely negate it -- which is exactly what most martial arts instructors are going to tell you to do...

It might come as no surprise to you at this point, that fairly early on with the 3.X rules I extended the combat maneuvers to cover one that handled abstractly "getting inside".

Which is all fair, barring a Phoenix Command level of detail.

Yeah, I use to regularly say in discussions like this that there was no such thing as a realistic TTRPG combat system, but now that I have some exposure to the Phoenix Command rules where you actually do die from shock and blood loss, I'm going to have to amend such statements to, "Unless you are playing Phoenix Command..."

Have you looked at Genesys? I'm super intrigued by the dice, but decided the whole thing is about as "heavy" as D&D, so it wouldn't solve me current woes. But, it certainly seems to fit the bill of "D&D, but with better narrative".

No, I haven't, but if I get the chance I'll look into it. I'm always trying to learn from different rule sets. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Mercule]

That part is perfectly true. If there is anything that I have learned from decades playing games, running games, and fiddling with rules it's that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything is a trade off. You never are going to get a three for three. There is no such thing as a perfect system; there is only a system that is perfect for you, and if you get even that much, count yourself blessed.

Definitely, which is why I've been trying very hard to not bash anyone else's preferences. It's a game and it's all good. Some tables I wouldn't play at, personally. Others, I'd play at, but not sure I'd be a good GM for.

Yeah, I use to regularly say in discussions like this that there was no such thing as a realistic TTRPG combat system, but now that I have some exposure to the Phoenix Command rules where you actually do die from shock and blood loss, I'm going to have to amend such statements to, "Unless you are playing Phoenix Command..."

My understanding is that they actually used Pentagon (or CDC or something similar) to come up with the lethality. I really doubt you're going to get more realistic. It also wasn't horrible to play, either. Might be worth a look, if you can find it. I never owned the rules, myself.

No, I haven't, but if I get the chance I'll look into it. I'm always trying to learn from different rule sets. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts, if you do. The PDF is $20 at DTRPG, FWIW.

 

[fjw70]

I typically stick with RAW for the most part when I play with my adult group. When I play with the kids then I just do whatever I want.