Why do RPGs have rules?

[Thomas Shey]

I'd say hardship being a reward is a necessary component of any PvE game (which RPGs tend to be).

I'll just direct you to my response to Aldarac above. While on a certain intellectual/structural level, you have an argument, that has no impact on how people respond to it at all.

 

[Aldarc]

Not all players are looking to be constantly drowning in trouble I expect.

I'm not sure if I would necessarily describe PbtA as being about characters drowning in trouble. The GM's agenda in AW is "to make the PCs' lives not boring." In DW the equivalent agenda is "to fill the PCs' lives with adventure." And in Masks, it's "to make the PCs' lives superheroic." In Avatar Legends, it's "to make the PCs' stories meaningful and important" and also make their lives exciting.

This is really all to say that the PCs aren't necessarily meant to be drowning in trouble; however, their characters' lives should be filled with dramatic interest and excitement.

But it doesn't seem that far off of the kind of base premise of PbtA from the point of view of people who don't like that sort of thing. That's always been the issue; as a design, PbtA thinks that avoiding trouble is a flaw. On a certain level, there's some argument to that; if you don't have things going wrong (at least on some level) there's nothing to do in the typical structure of an RPG. But a lot of people don't enjoy the sense the system really wants to chronically push you to that, because that seems like a failure state; for them it both feels fatiguing and feels like they're rolling a rock uphill all the time (and that's over and above how it can project on people who find failure synonymous with incompetence, on the part of the player, the character, or both.)

I agree to an extent, though I do think that you are overselling the failure aspect harder than the reality of play IMHO, but I do think that this is partially the result of roleplaying expectations.

There will always be a certain degree about setting expectations with the game's norms. Like I don't go into a game of CoC expecting that my character will retain their sanity. It's part of the conceit of the game that my character is likely to either suffer debilitating psychological trauma or die. But I also understand that this is not fun for some people. Likewise in some OSR games or things like DCC, my character may die a grim and grisly death early on, and I may be expected to roll up a new character. Likewise with Blades in the Dark, there is the instruction to drive your character like a stolen car in GTA. But that clearly won't be to everyone's liking.

In the context of PbtA, much as I said above to Micah Sweet, I understand that the game is designed around characters whose lives are filled with dramatic interest and excitement. You are still pushing your characters to succeed and to avoid trouble when you can, but complications and dramatic consequences will arise.

The game isn't pushing you to failure. It's pushing you to the game's sweet spot: the 7-9 resolution. It's a mixed success, which I know for some people still feels like failure, but I can't control what those people feel or think about that because the game says that it's a form of success and that their success should be acknowledged. Some people would view a full success where they had to pick 4 out 6 things from a Move to be a failure, if it meant that they couldn't get everything they wanted. PbtA games aren't interested in player skills nor does it want the GM to test their skills. These are the sort of games where people shouldn't be concerned with failure.

If people are that concerned with failure, then maybe there are many more games that I would steer them away from before I would PbtA games, particularly games that pride themselves on skilled or tactical play like OSR games or Pathfinder 2. In that last one, those players can even get critical failures for their characters, which could potentially make those people feel critically incompetent.

 

[pemerton]

As per the OP, Vincent Baker says that the point of rules is to oblige participants to author fiction that - if left purely to their own collaborative devices - they wouldn't. This is what he labels "the unwelcome and unexpected".

Why do participants need to be "pushed" in this way? Because of the distinctive role-allocations in most RPGing: that is, some participants engage the fiction as characters within it; and another (the GM) is the orchestrator of the conflict and antagonism those characters face. Left to their own devices, players of characters will - somewhat by definition - only establish conflict and outcomes they are prepared to choose; and left to their own devices, orchestrators of conflict will not orchestrate conflict that they are embarrassed or otherwise unwilling to take responsibility for. Hence the utility of rules: rules which force the "unwelcome and unexpected" both (i) let GMs off the hook, and (ii) allow players to play non-masochists.

(In passing: my understanding of neo-trad play, as per this thread - https://www.enworld.org/threads/thi...mechanics-from-a-neo-trad-perspective.697190/ - is that the "unwelcome and unexpected" are not wanted in play, and hence the resolution of conflict is left to be done primarily consensually.)

The upthread discussion about GM-as-referee, in conjunction with @loverdrive's comment about Apocalypse World, makes me think that there are two ways the GM can orchestrate conflict:

(1) In advance of play, by authoring the puzzle/gauntlet/challenge.

(2) During play, by a process of framing and consequence-narration.​

In case (1), the overarching rule that governs the GM during play must be follow through on what you've authored. The GM needs to be unflinching in this respect. (Here, I depart from what I said in the OP about "the unwelcome" not seeming applicable in this sort of play. I think that was wrong.) There are also very strict rules that apply to the pre-play authorship phase: the puzzle/gauntlet/challenge has to be, in some sense, beat-able. Because parts of it are not only hidden, but operate on the basis of "logical extrapolation within the fiction", the process of extrapolation must be sufficiently knowable to and learnable by the players that they can, if they pay attention and play well, beat the challenge. I continue to believe that this puts significant limits on what the fiction can involve, as per my (and @AdbulAlhazred's) posts upthread, as well as in other past threads.

Players in case (1) have an incentive to minimize the risks to their characters, as part of the process of beating the challenge. This means that case (1) play is unlikely to produce a story in the literary/aesthetic sense, for two reasons:

(a) The characters risk being somewhat incoherent, being risk-minimisers locally (always poking with their 10' poles, etc) but ludicrous risk takers in their overarching goals (always taking on these puzzles/gauntlets/challenges with insane kill rates). We can lampshade this by imagining that all our 1st level wizards also have the personalities of extreme sports enthusiasts, but I think the characters remain a bit weird.

(b) The better the players play, the less that the game will produce rising action => climax/crisis => resolution. Although, in the fiction, the situation might involve intense physical stress and drama, at the table the challenge is essentially intellectual (like most other table-top games). And intellectual puzzle solving simply doesn't produce that narrative structure. It's true that in some cases there will be the thrill of the dice roll, but skilled play tries to minimise dependence on lucky rolls.​

In case (2), the overarching rule that governs the GM in play must be something like be true to the dramatic needs of these characters. (I won't lie: AW's "Always Say" rule has helped me clarify this.) The resolution rules both constrain and spell out this overarching rule: they toggle play between rising action, climax/crisis, and various sorts of resolution; and they establish limits to prevent the GM being too soft (no real challenges, no "unwanted and unwelcome") or too hard (crushing the characters altogether).

Players in case (2) know that the process of play will generate new conflicts that they can't avoid. They need to have a degree of confidence that the resolution mechanics won't crush them.


Are there other, or intermediate cases? Probably! But some problems and resulting tendencies can be predicted.

For instance, consider case (1), but where the authorship of the puzzle/gauntlet/challenge is dynamic, during play. This will tend to reduce the knowability of the puzzle, and hence reduce the scope for skilled play. Lewis Pulsipher wrote cogently about this back in the late 70s, in White Dwarf.

This sort of change also puts pressure on the rule follow through unflinchingly on what you've authored. If it's being authored during play, following through unflinchingly can seem tantamount to just flipping over the board, or decreeing victory. As rules are introduced to try and constrain the GM to reduce this sort of arbitrariness, it seems that we get something much closer to case (2) (eg MHRP with its Doom Pool; or 4e D&D with its complex interplay of encounter building, level gaining, treasure parcels, milestones, etc).

Now consider a variant of case (2) that exploits the fact that RPG play happens over the course of sessions, and that therefore makes the orchestration of conflict an aspect of between-sessions-prep for the GM. During each session, though, the GM's role is more like case (1). I think at least some "trad" play uses an approach something like this. (I call on @Campbell to correct and clarify here, if he'd like to.)

I see two sources of pressure that will tend to push this variant towards full-blooded (2). The first is that it risks being slow; and speeding it up, by allowing dynamic authorship during play, will generate the same pressure towards (2) as I noted would arise if case (1) is made more dynamic. The second is that this variant is likely to be very demanding on players in terms of knowability - as the fictional situation changes session to session with each new bit of prep - and once again that generates pressure to impose constraints (especially constrains that stop the GM going too hard) that will push towards full-blooded (2).

A final thought: in long-running groups, informal understandings and familiarity may provide a type of ad hoc solution to the problem of "knowability" and the risk of GM arbitrariness, which means in those groups dynamic case (1) play, or the session-by-session variant on case (2), might be viable without experiencing the pressure towards full-blooded (2) at that particular table. (I get the impression that Gygax's game probably was an instance of the first of these possibilities.) But I don't think this means the pressures don't arise at a more systemic level.

 

[Maxperson]

I think this is the problem. People are insisting that the authority is absolute, but then pointing out how it's really not. "I could do this, but I never would". Then you can't do it. It seems to be a matter of semantics.

It's really not. Don't be a jerk =/= there is never a time when it is appropriate to engage that authority.

To me, if you're going to argue for absolute GM authority, then you're going to exercise absolute GM authority.

On very rare occasions I have engaged that authority, overriding player objections to something. It has only happened twice in the last 10 years, but the authority is sitting there waiting in the wings because the game gives it to me.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's a good point. The situation in "Ceasar at Alesia" is I would guess balanced, but it is also one of an already-framed tension. Presumably the players are committed to PvP. As I noted above, I would primarily put emphasis on reevaluating techniques from linear media in the light of games as games. Player agency is characteristic of games and so I note it as potentially in conflict with in media res, which has a story in mind. As other posters have outlined, it looks like there may be ways around that.

One thought here is that if we think of RPG as a game containing games (as was briefly discussed above) then the selection of which game is being played at any moment is an exercise of agency. In the "Ceasar at Alesia" example, I think we are considering play that has commenced after the moment when that game has been selected out of other available games. In media res might seem to deny players agency over choice of game - whether to play "Ceasar at Alesia" or some other game. In immersionism, I want to leave those other games on the table for players to choose.

Yeah, but as a campaign opener, or adventure opener I think the question of agency might be fairly moot. It's logically similar to the dungeon entrance, the fact that you always enter the same way isn't restricting choice, those just come later.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not sure if I would necessarily describe PbtA as being about characters drowning in trouble. The GM's agenda in AW is "to make the PCs' lives not boring." In DW the equivalent agenda is "to fill the PCs' lives with adventure." And in Masks, it's "to make the PCs' lives superheroic." In Avatar Legends, it's "to make the PCs' stories meaningful and important" and also make their lives exciting.



I agree to an extent, though I do think that you are overselling the failure aspect harder than the reality of play IMHO, but I do think that this is partially the result of roleplaying expectations.

Possibly, but I'll just note that's in the eye of the beholder. I know a lot of people who feel like they fail too much in a lot of games; most PbtA games aren't going to lessen that feeling.

There will always be a certain degree about setting expectations with the game's norms. Like I don't go into a game of CoC expecting that my character will retain their sanity. It's part of the conceit of the game that my character is likely to either suffer debilitating psychological trauma or die. But I also understand that this is not fun for some people. Likewise in some OSR games or things like DCC, my character may die a grim and grisly death early on, and I may be expected to roll up a new character. Likewise with Blades in the Dark, there is the instruction to drive your character like a stolen car in GTA. But that clearly won't be to everyone's liking.

Right.

In the context of PbtA, much as I said above to Micah Sweet, I understand that the game is designed around characters whose lives are filled with dramatic interest and excitement. You are still pushing your characters to succeed and to avoid trouble when you can, but complications and dramatic consequences will arise.

The game isn't pushing you to failure. It's pushing you to the game's sweet spot: the 7-9 resolution. It's a mixed success, which I know for some people still feels like failure, but I can't control what those people feel or think about that because the game says that it's a form of success and that their success should be acknowledged. Some people

You can't control it, but on the other hand, not accepting that really is how they feel about it is asking to be essentially telling people they "feel wrong". Oddly enough, that's not liable to get you anywhere.

would view a full success where they had to pick 4 out 6 things from a Move to be a failure, if it meant that they couldn't get everything they wanted. PbtA games aren't interested in player skills nor does it want the GM to test their skills. These are the sort of games where people shouldn't be concerned with failure.

But again, in practice, when talking about the attraction or lack of a game, "shouldn't" is pretty useless. As you say above, people who understand what they're getting into with CoC shouldn't be surprised if they go insane or die horribly. But that just means they'll avoid CoC. Its not bringing them anything they want, and bringing them plenty they aren't.

If people are that concerned with failure, then maybe there are many more games that I would steer them away from before I would PbtA games, particularly games that pride themselves on skilled or tactical play like OSR games or Pathfinder 2. In that last one, those players can even get critical failures for their characters, which could potentially make those people feel critically incompetent.

There's some issues of degree there. PF2e may sometimes drop a critical failure on you, but you have to kind of actively work to have that be particularly frequent. A lot of failures in PF2e don't feel particularly impactful because they're easily recovered from. Most the PbtA rolls are far more impactful so a failure or a partial success can feel worse than a random fumble in PF2e (because some of the time that's almost meaningless, including in most combat rolls).

That said, people who are failure sensitive often aren't super thrilled with big linear die rolls like D&D or BRP has, either.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's really not. Don't be a jerk =/= there is never a time when it is appropriate to engage that authority.

On very rare occasions I have engaged that authority, overriding player objections to something. It has only happened twice in the last 10 years, but the authority is sitting there waiting in the wings because the game gives it to me.

Then you’re for absolute GM authority.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see this in a different way, closer to @FormerlyHemlock. Formally, simulations are always incomplete. That's both a pragmatic reality and fundamental to their usefulness. Generally one aims for a less expensive (informationally smaller, efficient to run, etc) model with sufficient fidelity on essentials to be useful.

Thinness of the formulation of the world is not at issue for simulation. Incompleteness is expected. It is also of concern how well it helps us with the tasks we want to perform at the price we are able to pay.

Well, from a PRACTICAL standpoint, simulations, that is models plus state, are generally incomplete. While this is, again practically, a kind of 'feature' it is not a basis upon which they acquire utility. Were I to be able to perfectly simulate the World's weather 3 days in advance by pure brute force application of processing power to a complete model and state, nobody would argue that 'fundamentally' this is a bad simulation. Quite the contrary! Obviously they wouldn't like the electricity bill though....

Thinness ABSOLUTELY IS an issue, it is THE issue, an utterly insurmountable issue. To not understand that is to fundamentally not understand how a model has to be constrained, how it has to have enough of the relevant data to even conjecture about what might take place next. Yes, there are very simple models out there, like the simple 1D atmosphere models, and they can provide a very general answer to very specific questions, but they don't PREDICT much of anything at all. Calling them 'simulations' is just reducing the word to nothing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

For whatever reason…I was chewing on this notion today. I read one of snarf’s essays about free kriegspiel sp? And also came to the same conclusion.

If the referee sees a group marching forward under rifle fire with certain cover, military analysts may have determined probable casualty rates or unit behavior based on observations.

I don’t necessarily need a rule about the sun to know it’s light out more often during the day than night. It’s not a rule—-it’s an assumption.

But how many orcs does a fireball kill? How tough are they? How much can they dodge? How hot is that fire?

If I make those decisions they seem to be the root of rules….

Right, and I think that, whether via some actually codified, or uncodified, rules a sufficiently expert person CAN make determinations as to something like "If 50 infantrymen rush through a 36 meter long field of corn stubble at dusk under enfilading fire of an MG42, then 37 of them will be casualties (give or take, add some dice if you wish)" I'm a bit divided as to the degree to which this is a simulation, but lets imagine we can combine it with many other similar observations, and generalize the parameters such that we can predict the probable casualties from most similar situations. Lets assume these models are tested under real world conditions and produce reasonable results. I think we can call a resulting system, overall, a "system for simulating small unit combat" or something like that. This is very immediate cause/effect stuff, so its certainly doable. You can also construct logistics models that will tell you, based on past experience and some general parameters like "how actively am I attacking along the front?" and get out of that "I need to supply 42 train loads of ammo to my forces every day." The remarkable thing though, people still cannot predict, even at coinflip levels of accuracy, the outcomes of wars!

As for how that relates to rules, they will serve well in certain domains, but yet overall, when dealing with greater complexity, simply prove inadequate, or impossible to formulate in a way what is concrete enough to matter.

 

[Pedantic]

But it doesn't seem that far off of the kind of base premise of PbtA from the point of view of people who don't like that sort of thing. That's always been the issue; as a design, PbtA thinks that avoiding trouble is a flaw. On a certain level, there's some argument to that; if you don't have things going wrong (at least on some level) there's nothing to do in the typical structure of an RPG. But a lot of people don't enjoy the sense the system really wants to chronically push you to that, because that seems like a failure state; for them it both feels fatiguing and feels like they're rolling a rock uphill all the time (and that's over and above how it can project on people who find failure synonymous with incompetence, on the part of the player, the character, or both).

I generally think the player's role should be to mitigate failure, and try to succeed at all times. At a certain point, of the game is determined not to let me do that, or to ensure that any effort to do so is inherently futile (not futile because of an outside, evolving circumstance), then engaging with the mechanics at all starts to feel like a violation of the Czege principle. I cannot press a case, because any action I take is more likely than not to make the situation worse.

Fundamentally, my action declarations become my own primary source of opposition. So why am I doing things? Laying down and dying is more efficient. Trying to succeed and getting ahead of the obstacles is the primary appeal of PvE games. Consider Slay the Spire.