Why do RPGs have rules?

[Pedantic]

So to explain my thought a bit further, in 1978 a philosopher name Bernard Suits introduced the concept of the "lusory attitude" to game studies. As he put it -


There are virtues and flaws with that view (the latter hopefully won't matter here). Anyway, one thing one might say about players as players is that it suits them to adopt a lusory attitude (heh) and if they could change the rules on the fly that might put them in breach of Suits' observation. Traditionally, GM has been appointed to change rules, presumably not putting them in breach as they're not a player.

Some ideas about rules, in particular how and by whom they might be changed during play, seem to skirt either making GM a player, or voiding the lusory attitude. At the very least, some sort of balancing acts or constraints probably need to exist. So let's suppose that GM becomes a player and thus loses their making-rulings power... what then?

This gets at a fundamental question about GM authority in such games. I generally contend that GMs are inhabiting several roles, which have separate powers and separate functions. GM-as-Worldbuilder creates a setting and populates it with people, places and things. GM-as-Adjudicator resolves rules disputes and makes rulings (a role/need I think emerges primarily by having insufficient/incomplete rules). GM-as-Cast provides decision making power analogous to the players to all the non-player entities, with the caveat that the motivations thus portrayed likely vary significantly from those PCs possess.

I view these as separate, distinct functions that happen to reside in the same person, and view the GMing role as having a professional responsibility to maintain each position's distinction. Discussions about declarative authority usually press the assumption this is impossible, and further that there is no ultimately value in striving for it; authority must be constrained by some other principle.

Rule 0 is a bad piece of design, and a worse piece of rhetoric. As a design point, it's primarily an abdication of the need to build a complete ruleset. As rhetoric, it encourages the GM to inhabit another role, that of GM-as-Designer, and to conflate that role with GM-as-Adjudicator, which is corrosive to a cohesive board state and player agency.

 

[clearstream]

This gets at a fundamental question about GM authority in such games. I generally contend that GMs are inhabiting several roles, which have separate powers and separate functions. GM-as-Worldbuilder creates a setting and populates it with people, places and things. GM-as-Adjudicator resolves rules disputes and makes rulings (a role/need I think emerges primarily by having insufficient/incomplete rules).

As I pointed out above, any set of rules whose explicit job is creating momentum from mechanical rules to fictional meaning or language rules is necessarily incomplete.

GM-as-Cast provides decision making power analogous to the players to all the non-player entities, with the caveat that the motivations thus portrayed likely vary significantly from those PCs possess.

I didn't really intend to drag conversation about rule zero here, but rather to raise questions about what it would mean for players to make rulings, or GMs to be constrained by rules, in relation to why we have rules? GM-as-Cast in accepting the constraints of rules and thus adopting a lusory attitude becomes a player (players may have asymmetrical roles).

I'm still working through these thoughts, but if finding Suits plausible it seems one ought to have in mind a prelusory goal (the state of affairs in view of which rules are accepted) and the lusory attitude (acceptance of those rules in view of that goal.)

I view these as separate, distinct functions that happen to reside in the same person, and view the GMing role as having a professional responsibility to maintain each position's distinction. Discussions about declarative authority usually press the assumption this is impossible, and further that there is no ultimately value in striving for it; authority must be constrained by some other principle.

It could be that as you say, the MC or GM etc adopts a dual-nature. That fits with other ideas about the plurality of roles and relationships that each participant accepts in order to play.

Rule 0 is a bad piece of design, and a worse piece of rhetoric. As a design point, it's primarily an abdication of the need to build a complete ruleset. As rhetoric, it encourages the GM to inhabit another role, that of GM-as-Designer, and to conflate that role with GM-as-Adjudicator, which is corrosive to a cohesive board state and player agency.

Rule 0 isn't important here. We're focused on the why of rules, right?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Some ideas about rules, in particular how and by whom they might be changed during play, seem to skirt either making GM a player, or voiding the lusory attitude. At the very least, some sort of balancing acts or constraints probably need to exist. So let's suppose that GM becomes a player and thus loses their making-rulings power... what then?

Then you get to have arguments over whether the DM is "breaking the rules" when he refuses to let Necromancers permanently increase their HP by shapechanging into a Dragon Turtle, or having Aid cast on them, because "the rules say that Necromancers can't have their max HP reduced, and losing an increase is a reduction, so the increase is permanent."

Or whether the DM is breaking the rules by not "giving you" enough short rests, or exceeding Hard difficulty, or not giving out magical halberds to Polearm Masters.

Or whether a discussion about a hypothetical scenario is illegitimate because it involves a DM doing something which someone on the Internet considers against the rules, like ruling a certain way on Stealth. (E.g. are Eldritch Knights good because they can cast Magic Weapon so you're guaranteed to be effective against demons and whatnot, or bad because DMs who don't give you magic weapons before sending you up against demons are bad DMs?)

Much Internet arguing is rooted in trying to informally impose rules on DMs or discourse about DMing.

Blech. (I assume that's your point, right?)

Edit: typos fixed.

 

[Pedantic]

Rule 0 isn't important here. We're focused on the why of rules, right?

I wish this were true, but I don't think you can have a coherent discussion about the structure and nature of rules if you don't resolve the question of whether any player should have explicit authority to modify them in real time. The function of rules is very different in a situation with or without that authority. I generally contend such authority is a bad thing inside a game, or more precisely, should live outside both the game, and the meta-game.

Players can (and do) play board games with houserules that are derived from social contracts absent the rules, ranging from folk-designs of dubious value (i.e. money on Free Parking in Monopoly) to new games derived from existing ones (say, a fan produced board for a scenario not originally covered in a war game) to entirely social agreements (avoiding the known degenerate strategy in a Few Acres of Snow). Those agreements exist on a plane entirely separate from the rules of the game, being placed above the magic circle of the game itself.

The game doesn't need to provide for or even suggest such authority exists, because that authority isn't derived from the rules, it's derived from the agency of people coming together to play a game in the first place, and exists above and before those players bind themselves to rules to enter a game. It acts on the rules, instead of emerging from them. When it's placed into the rules, it corrodes the agency of everyone acting inside that system.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This gets at a fundamental question about GM authority in such games. I generally contend that GMs are inhabiting several roles, which have separate powers and separate functions. GM-as-Worldbuilder creates a setting and populates it with people, places and things. GM-as-Adjudicator resolves rules disputes and makes rulings (a role/need I think emerges primarily by having insufficient/incomplete rules). GM-as-Cast provides decision making power analogous to the players to all the non-player entities, with the caveat that the motivations thus portrayed likely vary significantly from those PCs possess.

I view these as separate, distinct functions that happen to reside in the same person, and view the GMing role as having a professional responsibility to maintain each position's distinction. Discussions about declarative authority usually press the assumption this is impossible, and further that there is no ultimately value in striving for it; authority must be constrained by some other principle.

There's also GM as Game Scheduler, Host, Pizza Provider, Adjudicator Of OOC Player Friction, and so on.

One reason I like blorby play is because it clearly distinguishes prep (GM as Worldbuilder) from running (GM as Adjudicator, GM-or-player as Cast) and even facilitates offloading worldbuilding.

The only role which absolutely needs to go on the GM is Manager of Still-Secret Information, which is a subset of (Adjudication + Cast) which excludes rule adjudication and onscreen dialogue/actions. This is because it's impossible to un-know things that you already know, and difficult to pretend not to know them well enough to roleplay not knowing them. (If you know for a fact that Door A leads to certain doom and Door B leads to freedom, any clues given about A and B are meaningless! You already know what not to believe.)

 

[Maxperson]

FWIW I use it the latter way: rulings are inherently case-by-case. Rules produce rulings, hopefully consistent ones.

"Bob has disadvantage on this attack" is a ruling.

"Attacking uphill on a slope of more than 45 degrees gives you disadvantage" is a rule.

I have an additional category that for me qualifies as a ruling, even though it's more permanent like your rule. If a rule is vague enough that I need to clarify it for the future, I count that as a ruling. As an example...

5e jumping. You can jump a number of feet = to your strength score is a rule. You can use Strength(athletics) to jump unusually far is a rule. However, what the hell is "unusually far" and how do we figure that out? No clue as there is literally 0 indication on how to go about it. As a result I was forced to come up with a ruling to explain how to go about it. I went with DC 10 for 1 additional foot and 1 more foot for every 2 points above 10 you achieve. So a roll of 18 would get you 5 additional feet.

That seems like a rule, but it's really just a clarification of a very poorly written rule.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I have an additional category that for me qualifies as a ruling, even though it's more permanent like your rule. If a rule is vague enough that I need to clarify it for the future, I count that as a ruling. As an example...

5e jumping. You can jump a number of feet = to your strength score is a rule. You can use Strength(athletics) to jump unusually far is a rule. However, what... is "unusually far" and how do we figure that out? No clue as there is literally 0 indication on how to go about it. As a result I was forced to come up with a ruling to explain how to go about it. I went with DC 10 for 1 additional foot and 1 more foot for every 2 points above 10 you achieve. So a roll of 18 would get you 5 additional feet.

That seems like a rule, but it's really just a clarification of a very poorly written rule.

Hmmm, it's possible I use "ruling" in that way too. As in, if someone asks me whether Inured To Undeath lets you keep temporary increases to your HP via Magic Jar/Shapechange/Aid because yada yada, "my ruling is no" might come out of my mouth. It's not a specific game situation but it's ruling on a specific interaction between spells.

So... good point, I think maybe I do too.

"Ruling" = "decision" I guess?

 

[Maxperson]

Rule 0 is a bad piece of design, and a worse piece of rhetoric. As a design point, it's primarily an abdication of the need to build a complete ruleset. As rhetoric, it encourages the GM to inhabit another role, that of GM-as-Designer, and to conflate that role with GM-as-Adjudicator, which is corrosive to a cohesive board state and player agency.

I don't know why people keep repeating this incorrect statement like a mantra. That's not the primary purpose of rule 0. It's not there to design because the game isn't complete. It's there to make the game your own.

In all my years of playing and DMings, I've played with hundreds of players and dozens of DMs and not one of them used rule 0 as a designer to complete an incomplete ruleset. Not one. Universally they used it to make changes or additions that they felt would make the game better. Give me a 100% complete ruleset and I will still need rule 0 because there hasn't been an RPG designed where I like 100% of the rules and would play it as written.

 

[Micah Sweet]

One way that folk talk about rulings is filling in gaps in the rules. Another way seems to be deciding case-by-case what the written rule means.

Interpretation is definitely a thing, yes.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In all my years of playing and DMings, I've played with hundreds of players and dozens of DMs and not one of them used rule 0 as a designer to complete an incomplete ruleset. Not one. Universally they used it to make changes or additions that they felt would make the game better. Give me a 100% complete ruleset and I will still need rule 0 because there hasn't been an RPG designed where I like 100% of the rules and would play it as written.

Since I'm positive that you've played with DMs who make up random encounter tables when they're not built into the modules already, and who fill in rules for jumping when the distance you can jump is unclear (see above), I'm certain that you must simply be in a semantic argument with someone over whether that counts as rule 0 or someone else.

I don't have a horse in that race, but wish to state: you can play chess (for example) without a referee because chess is "complete" in that from a legal game state, the rules will never fail to tell you what the game state is after a legal move. Chess is closed in a way that cops and robbers is not, and which D&D would not be if DMs were not authorized to spontaneously improvise. When someone says Rule 0 is necessary to complete the game ruleset, this is what they mean.

When the players capture some hobgoblins instead of killing them, and a player says he wants to sit down and talk one of hobgoblins about how cool magic is in hopes of making the hobgoblin want to become essentially his Sith apprentice and learn magic... No 5E rule will tell you the probability of that Hobgoblin eventually becoming a 1st level Sorcerer. And yet it happened! I had to improvise rules for it, and some people will say I did so under Rule 0. Others may call it something else, but whatever you call it, it was necessary because the game was incomplete w/rt the probability and methods of hobgoblins becoming magic-users.