Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

Can someone provide a definition of "lusory" for me? Several here, especially @pemerton , are using it a lot, and since I've never seen that term in any RPG (or indeed anywhere else) I'm having a hard time understanding why it's the most appropriate way to describe a process about RPGs.

I picked it up from @clearstream, as his preferred framing of these things. Here is a link to a wikipedia page: Lusory attitude - Wikipedia

 

[Micah Sweet]

No shared fiction exists outside the imagination of those who share it.

GM notes don't create a shared fiction. They create a resource that the GM can draw on when adjudicating action declarations and thereby stating what comes next in the shared fiction.

Hard disagree, for reasons I've explained many times to you and others.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The immediately subsequent edition appoints a referee, so your doubt with Traveller might not be an example of incompleteness according to your definition.


5e is complete by your definition. Basic Rules appoint a referee so perhaps that covers it.


There's a sense here of a Goldilocks standard for having everything necessary and appropriate. Too many such guidelines would be cumbersome. You're identifying the Basic rules as having too few. I don't mean this pejoratively.

I see this as a question of ELEGANCE OF DESIGN. As an engineer, I have a deep appreciation for this trait in things generally. The PbtA core RPG design pattern is extremely parsimonious and super elegant. It handles ALL questions of authority, the regulation of who speaks next and what they can say, etc. in a very concise and well-described set of simple rules. D&D OTOH, in all editions, does not have this characteristic! It exists as a mass of specific rules, which sometimes have been kind of almost post-hoc generalized into things like d20-based checks and such. I mean, sure, 5e (and previous WotC D&Ds) were built with this concept in mind at the start, but they have NEVER really cleanly and clearly articulated a single unified "all actions flow through this loop without need of exceptions" process such as that which every PbtA is built on.

It is interesting to look at the history of criticism and analysis of these two different game families, and their evolution over time (albeit that D&D has a much longer history, etc.). People argue about PbtA games in terms of the quality of the moves provided, the coherency of playbooks, and questions surrounding the quality and thematic appropriateness of 'supporting rules' (IE harm, equipment, money, situation generation, etc.). There have been ELABORATIONS made on the core 'move loop', such as with 'FitD' games, which are clearly related to PbtAs, but have elaborated move processing in various ways. The basic ideas behind PbtA seem pretty uncontroversial however in terms of their applicability and appropriateness, or structure.

D&D OTOH is still arguing about core systems design! While every iteration of D&D has certainly carried forward many of the 'traits' of the original game, there is little similarity at this point between 5e and original D&D in a rules sense. There seems to be little agreement as to even what are the important principles and concepts that make a game D&D! And this started right at the earliest days, when Jim Ward developed the Metamorphosis Alpha game, which is clearly based on D&D. Yet it discards major parts of the D&D rules, and uses a lot of the rest in a very different way. I think you would be hard pressed to find a PbtA as divergent from AW as MA is from D&D, especially when you consider that the tone and much of the sorts of action are not really that different between MA and D&D!

 

[pemerton]

To put it a different way, our shared aim is to play a game. Some posters are concerned that assigning any participant unfettered power to change the rules would forestall that ends. Thus they count into their completeness condition for game texts the inclusion of the necessary fetters. Note that the fetters envisioned are voluntarily accepted for the sake of achieving our shared aim.

What I point out is the institution of GMing that provides fetters a GM can voluntarily accept. By institution I refer to a culture of game-mastering found in debate, exposition, social behaviours, etc: the received norms of proper conduct. In virtue of which satisfactory procedures are in place.

I consciously use the word "satisfactory" to remind of its subjective nature - satisfactory to who?

That's true, albeit here my focus is to think about how well participants might switch modes during play? For instance, 4e appoints DM both player and referee (they are characterised as both.) Is that a mis-characterisation, or is it right and a participant can indeed switch between modes of engagement in the game?

So I take it you are no longer accepting Suits's account of gameplay, in so far as you are departing from his account of the role of the lusory attitude, and his account of the relationship between it, rules and lusory means, and from his account of lusory means being less efficient means?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I picked it up from @clearstream, as his preferred framing of these things. Here is a link to a wikipedia page: Lusory attitude - Wikipedia

It was explained to me. I still don't see any value for the jargon.

 

[pemerton]

What makes it confusing is that the word is being hijacked as jargon: "lusory fabric" probably means something specific to pemerton based on a paper Suits wrote at some point, but without reading Suits' work I couldn't say what. It's not, like, a widely-recognized usage among game designers or anything.

I've not used the phrase "lusory fabric". That is @clearstream's term.

More generally, if you or anyone else (eg @Micah Sweet) object to references to Suits in this thread, please take it up with @clearstream. He is the one who introduced Suits's frame of analysis. I adopted it as a courtesy to him.

 

[pemerton]

It was explained to me. I still don't see any value for the jargon.

Please lodge your complaint with @clearstream. I was being courteous to him in following his preferred terminology and frame of analysis.

 

[pemerton]

Hard disagree, for reasons I've explained many times to you and others.

I don't see how you can characterise solitary imagining as shared.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't see how you can characterise solitary imagining as shared.

I'm against it because your claim implicitly devalues worldbuilding IMO, and as I've said many times before, it is to me the most enjoyable part of the RPG experience.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Can someone provide a definition of "lusory" for me? Several here, especially @pemerton , are using it a lot, and since I've never seen that term in any RPG (or indeed anywhere else) I'm having a hard time understanding why it's the most appropriate way to describe a process about RPGs.

'lusory' is just a fancy way of saying 'gaming'. Academics like to generate terms like this so they can avoid contaminating their discussions with common language arguments I guess. So, 'lusory attitude' simply means "playing a game" and 'lusory means' simply means "game process of play" (at least this is my interpretation, I think its at least roughly correct). So when someone says the players "adopt a lusory attitude" they mean they agree to play a particular game, and by implication follow its rules. Then when they play they use the 'lusory means' to actually play the game. Now, I think those 'means' may or may not be said to include things like boards, dice, pieces, etc. but I think its easiest to assume these fall within the 'means'.