D&D General How much control do DMs need?

[clearstream]

Heck, you yourself espoused something very close to this in this very thread, proposing that 'Rule 0 always exists'...

I did not espouse anything even remotely close to it. I queried an on-surface contradiction with prior positions by stating what folk might be understood as saying, in order to get at the differences between rule zero and freely hacking rules. Aside from allergic reactions, this has yielded a reasonably clear picture of what folk feel is at stake. Essentially -

Rule zero is connected with traditional GM empowerment, so to invoke it skirts invoking that empowerment.
Freedom to hack rules is either a preexisting behaviour, a principle, or a rule (it doesn't matter which and there are arguments for all three).

My contribution is to propose that if the second statement is true, then rule zero amounts to one or more regulatory rules that act upon it. Rule zero is only able to have any effect because there is a prior ability to hack rules. The practical upshot of rule zero then, is

1) to exclude others from similarly exercising their ability to hack rules
2) to put in place a prior agreement that will go on to effect moment-to-moment acceptance

 

[soviet]

So I am going to address this, because this, again, is an example of why I think people often fail to communicate effectively on these threads.

When we start with the statement, "D&D is also designed with a very specific goal ...." is where I think you will immediately get the pushback.

Start with the basic premise in that statement that D&D is designed for a very specific goal. Right there ... that's kind of the issue. As I've mentioned before, a big issue in TTRPGs ("RPGs") is second-order design- in other words, the variance between the game as intended (designed) to be played and the actual play when used by the group.

This problem can be approached in many ways- for example, extensive playtesting will often see how group will use the RPG. But given the lack of resources in RPGs (as compared to, say AAA videogames), this isn't foolproof. To use the Everway example, if every playtest group has a Tweet-level GM, then no one is going to notice that the game might not work so well with other groups.

Another way is to tightly integrate the rules and the game- for example, while there are a lot of different PbTA games using similar rules (they are .... powered by a similar system), each game is modified to fit a particular genre and game paradigm, and, further, the rules themselves are heavy-handed in terms of codifying what we would call "best practices" in other RPGs. In other words, by explicitly narrowing the scope of play and by telling you, in essence, this is how you play the game and other ways are wrong ... those games ensure that the game is more likely to be played as the designer intended.

For various reasons going back to the origin of the D&D as more of a toolkit than an actual complete game, and because of the reticence of the various editions to specify how to play, and because of the culture and community that allows "mix and match," however, this has never been the way with D&D. Other than, to some extent, 4e, there has always been room for a number of different approaches to D&D.

So while it is correct to some extent to say that you could drift other games around, you run into the issue that (1) some games are designed to be "tighter" and therefore shouldn't be drifted around, and (2) some games just don't have the history of being drifted.

No, I stand by what I said. Having unclear or incomplete instructions does not make D&D more open-ended than other games. The game itself is very focused, even if the text pretends (or misunderstands) that it is not.

 

[pemerton]

Right. Anyone can change any game. I've even seen variants of Chess Monopoly with different rules. The point of a written Rule 0 isn't to allow people to change the game. It's to make it easier for the DM to change the game as a written Rule 0 is perceived as official and that perception means that the players are far more likely to accept a change than if there was no written Rule 0.

The empirical claim you make seems doubtful to me, and to the best of my knowledge no one has done the research to try and find out.

 

[pemerton]

Rule Zero: there is no Rule Zero.

Can GMs use Rule Zero to declare that Rule Zero doesn't exist in their game?

No, because (given that we all know that the GM is god) they're too busy creating rocks so heavy they can't lift them!

 

[soviet]

If rule zero doesn't exist, is it possible to create it?

 

[clearstream]

If rule zero doesn't exist, is it possible to create it?

nope

 

[pemerton]

Picture another rule

N. Users of this RPG cannot change the rules.

So long as participants put rule N. in place for themselves (as they do for any rule, for any RPG) then it creates an RPG in which 1. isn't true.

This claim seems confused.

The reason I say this is as follows: there are constitutions that assert, of themselves, that certain elements are unamendable. Yet there are also participants in at least some of those constitutional regimes who believe that constituent power (as opposed to constituted power) can remake the rules of the constitutional order more-or-less at will.

Now the claim about the relationship between constituent power and constitutional orders can be a complicated one, particularly if the constitutional order is not based on a tradition of popular sovereignty (see eg the United Kingdom).

But in the case of a RPG, it seems trivially true: the participants in a RPG can choose to carry out their activities in accordance with whatever rules they like. (This is one way of stating the Lumpley principle.) So there is no such thing as the participants in a RPG putting N in place for themselves. It's not a coherent state of affairs to posit.

 

[pemerton]

If rule zero doesn't exist, is it possible to create it?

Trivially.

 

[clearstream]

This claim seems confused.

The reason I say this is as follows: there are constitutions that assert, of themselves, that certain elements are unamendable. Yet there are also participants in at least some of those constitutional regimes who believe that constituent power (as opposed to constituted power) can remake the rules of the constitutional order more-or-less at will.

Now the claim about the relationship between constituent power and constitutional orders can be a complicated one, particularly if the constitutional order is not based on a tradition of popular sovereignty (see eg the United Kingdom).

But in the case of a RPG, it seems trivially true: the participants in a RPG can choose to carry out their activities in accordance with whatever rules they like. (This is one way of stating the Lumpley principle.) So there is no such thing as the participants in a RPG putting N in place for themselves. It's not a coherent state of affairs to posit.

Highlighted for emphasis.

 

[pemerton]

I believe folk can enter into a prior agreement to a rule, that has a determining effect on their acceptance of that rule at subsequent moments within the governed activity.

For example, I enter into a beginner's Chess tournament with a rule that we'll suspend en-passant. Should a moment subsequently arise in which that is called into question (my opponent has a knight positioned to take my advancing pawn through en-passant), we will normally reflect on the agreement we made up front and that will have an effect on our acceptance of the rule in this moment.

As I said, the force of rules in social pastimes depends on moment-to-moment agreement to accept them. Your example illustrates that: at T2 you agree to accept the rule, based on the promise you made at T1.

Should w wish to, we can get deeper into the discussion of the nature of the agreement etc. (Eg Durkheim on social facts is one interesting account.) But I don't think we need to do that in order to discuss some of the basic features of RPGing.