Why do RPGs have rules?

[Campbell]

There are certainly occasions when you can hit that in some times and places; a notorious (but now largely historical) case was when White Wolf was first hitting its stride back in the day, when you'd see proponents of Vampire (and later others) treat D&D players (and even people like RQ fans) like they were deliberately staying in the kiddie pool.

But as Aldarac references, you can also get really hostile reactions to someone even suggesting that the world doesn't begin and end with trad games in general and D&D in particular, and because of the lean of this board, there's enough people over in the D&D camp that you're bound to get some people who are persistently and aggressively in that group. That can make people who just want their tastes to be accepted as legitimate come across as more strident in response, sometimes simply as a perception because they're not just rolling over, sometimes because they've gotten sick and tired of being dismissed.

(I sit in an odd spot; I'm not a story gamer by any means and am pretty trad in my overall tastes, but I also am not a big D&D fan (5e in particular does not interest me) and even though my overall tastes are trad, I find some techniques from story games and other more modern designs useful, and even when not useful I'm too much a long time game hack to not think its interesting to see where they're going. This particular position can end up making me come across as either fence straddling or attacking either side in these conversations if I'm not careful).

I think the Vampire piece is more layered than many D&D fans like to acknowledge. There was absolutely an element of the Vampire community that placed themselves on a pedestal. However, just as much, there is a strong cultural tendency to see the pursuit of emotional intensity and self seriousness itself as inherently pretentious even when no pretension exists. The same absolutely applies when it comes to games like Sorcerer or Apocalypse World. Just actively seeking and using techniques developed to seek emotional intensity and more personal narrative forms is seen as elevating your play above others even if you acknowledge the strengths of other forms of play.

 

[clearstream]

No

Your answer implies that we have disparate fundamental theories of models. Mine includes as a truism that "all models are wrong". I then focus on the (to me) interesting question of "how can my model be wrong in ways advantageous to my concerns".

What we might go on to say about models - coming from disparate theoretical positions - may prove of little value to one another. That's not to say that it won't be of value to others of course!

In light of @Aldarc's observation up thread, I'll leave this line of conversation here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Let's see here:

• Dealing with 5e fans who believe that all games should just be 5e D&D and all gamers should play only 5e D&D as 5e can do everything well
• Dealing with OSR fans who treat 5e D&D (and its players) as casual carebear mode and inferior to OSR "hardcore" mode
• Dealing with FKR fans believing that FKR represents a purer form of ur-RP and people who enjoy crunch as unenlightened
• Dealing with Cypher System fans who likewise believe that it's a story game that does everything well
• Being algorithimically bombarded with D&D memes on Twitter about how aggressive PF2 fans are about proselytizing their game

It's definitely all out there.

Sounds about right.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think the Vampire piece is more layered than many D&D fans like to acknowledge. There was absolutely an element of the Vampire community that placed themselves on a pedestal. However, just as much, there is a strong cultural tendency to see the pursuit of emotional intensity and self seriousness itself as inherently pretentious even when no pretension exists. The same absolutely applies when it comes to games like Sorcerer or Apocalypse World. Just actively seeking and using techniques developed to seek emotional intensity and more personal narrative forms is seen as elevating your play above others even if you acknowledge the strengths of other forms of play.

There's almost always two sides of these things. That said, the fact people on the other side were also obnoxious does not change the obnoxiousness present on the first. And there was absolutely a period when in public spaces that Vampire fans were popping up and sneering at trad fans (and as I noted, this wasn't limited to just D&D players) when there had been no apparent trigger to that other than non-Vampire fans being present. Now that may have just been a kneejerk urge to get the first hit in when they figured as soon as they mentioned their game they were going to start attracting comments about "lame goth fanboys", but the problem with that is that's a snowballing problem; once you start taking shots across the bow, you tend to shoot back even if you otherwise wouldn't care and they weren't, per se, aimed at you (but they were unselective enough it would be hard to tell).

I pretty quickly lost patience (and an examination of my posting history will show its never returned on this subject) with explaining that, no, I really did want a working game in with my roleplaying and that people who thought that made me confused and/or out of touch could go do something unmentionable to themselves, and that shouldn't have been necessary just because people didn't share my gamist streak.

(Of course the irony here was that Vampire was still chock-a-block full of game mechanics (not, in my opinion, very good ones in a number of areas, but that's neither here nor there) so often people were championing Vampire the way people often championed AD&D in the past--the game that existed in their head, not actually the one on paper).

 

[Emberashh]

the game that existed in their head, not actually the one on paper

Not too dissimilar to the rather large subset of ostensible DND fans who have never actually played the game, and only interact with it via memes and online discussion boards.

 

[Campbell]

There's almost always two sides of these things. That said, the fact people on the other side were also obnoxious does not change the obnoxiousness present on the first. And there was absolutely a period when in public spaces that Vampire fans were popping up and sneering at trad fans (and as I noted, this wasn't limited to just D&D players) when there had been no apparent trigger to that other than non-Vampire fans being present. Now that may have just been a kneejerk urge to get the first hit in when they figured as soon as they mentioned their game they were going to start attracting comments about "lame goth fanboys", but the problem with that is that's a snowballing problem; once you start taking shots across the bow, you tend to shoot back even if you otherwise wouldn't care and they weren't, per se, aimed at you (but they were unselective enough it would be hard to tell).

I pretty quickly lost patience (and an examination of my posting history will show its never returned on this subject) with explaining that, no, I really did want a working game in with my roleplaying and that people who thought that made me confused and/or out of touch could go do something unmentionable to themselves, and that shouldn't have been necessary just because people didn't share my gamist streak.

(Of course the irony here was that Vampire was still chock-a-block full of game mechanics (not, in my opinion, very good ones in a number of areas, but that's neither here nor there) so often people were championing Vampire the way people often championed AD&D in the past--the game that existed in their head, not actually the one on paper).

Not sure how this is a response to the point I was trying to make about how self seriousness gets treated in our hobby.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This why I avoid both memes and Twitter, and actively dislike using memes as a response to words.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the Vampire piece is more layered than many D&D fans like to acknowledge. There was absolutely an element of the Vampire community that placed themselves on a pedestal. However, just as much, there is a strong cultural tendency to see the pursuit of emotional intensity and self seriousness itself as inherently pretentious even when no pretension exists. The same absolutely applies when it comes to games like Sorcerer or Apocalypse World. Just actively seeking and using techniques developed to seek emotional intensity and more personal narrative forms is seen as elevating your play above others even if you acknowledge the strengths of other forms of play.

That is definitely how I've read it. To be fair though, I also don't hear much "acknowledging the strengths of other forms of play" from  any side.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Agreed. First, there's the general idea of it being fun to try new things (assuming you're the type to enjoy novelty). As for the "find a better gaming mode" idea, I feel like the idea that's trying to be pushed is that trying new game styles will make you a better gamer in general, and the techniques you learn from different games will be applicable to all the games you play.

I used to think "gotcha" traps that trigger automatically when you enter their space were pointless "wandering damage rolls" that you should never use, and should always prefer OSR-style traps that make players think instead of rolling dice. See Traps Suck for the logic.

Then I went back and played some 1980s-era Bard's Tale and realized or remembered that you CAN use simple gotcha traps constructively: they make the geography of a locale part of the adventure! Normally it's boring to describe for the players whether a room is T-shaped or L-shaped, whether it bends to the left or right, or to ask the players whether they go through the middle of a room or skirt the edges or crawl on their bellies. Like, who cares about the room by room descriptions? Just skip ahead to where they find a lurking demon or a gelatinous cube or an INTERESTING trap like three holes in the walls, one above another. But Bard's Tale reminded me that spatial patterns are interesting, and gotcha traps make mapping a more interesting activity and raise the stakes on solving labyrinths efficiently (so you don't have to hit all the traps, and don't have to hit certain traps more than once).

A deadfall for 4d6+12 damage (DC 15 Investigation to spot the 3' wide pressure plate; automatic avoid if spotted; DC 12 Dex save to evade if triggered) from 800 lb. of falling rubble isn't going to kill a 7th 5E level PC, isn't dramatically interesting per se, and isn't worth spending more than 10 seconds of table time on in and of itself. But by the second or third deadfall, not only will players be looking for opportunities to turn the deadfalls to their advantage, they'll also be trying to deduce patterns to either solve the maze without exploring the whole thing or anticipate traps without needing lucky Investigation rolls or both.

Traps make places a character in the story.

 

[Autumnal]

The harsh truth is something I said a lot.
Fantasy and Gaming have both expanded in volume and diversity in the last 3 decades that the assumption that you are at the same base is now false.

And really, it was false for fantasy even in the 1970s. That’s the decade when it became no longer feasible to read enough of the field to count on seeing every story worth nominating for the Hugo awards. It was the decade of Nine Princes In Amber, Watership Down, Elric Of Melniboné, Tje Forgotten Beasts Of Eld, A Spell For Chameleon, Lord Foul’s Bane, The Sword Of Shannara, A Wizard Of Earthsea,
The Silmaeilliom, The Dark Is Rising, Deryni Rising, Night’s Master…it was not really likely that any given reader would be into all of these.

And precisely that allows them to matter. To work as a tool of expression. If they had stats (like they used to, which is, thankfully, a thing of the past), the choice of an outfit would be a simple optimization problem.

They don't, so you are free to dress in a way that you think looks cool.

Yes! I loved it when Robin Laws treated guns that way in Feng Shui, and realized very belatedly that OD&D had something smart with its weapons all doing the same damage. Transmogrification in World of Warcraft has the same liberating effect. Your actual gear has its stats, but you can make it look like anything you’ve previously collected. I’ve become a fan of the concept applied widely.