Why do RPGs have rules?

[clearstream]

OK. We can ask how this is operationalised. We won't get there by pretending that imaginary things actually have causal properties.

But this is precisely how we do get there. We pretend that imaginary things actually have causal properties!


EDIT I wonder if you would agree with the following.

A. No-myth modes of play cannot be simulationist.
B. FKR modes of play cannot be simulationist.

 

[pemerton]

In (2) the GM can enjoy embodying the simulation, i.e. instantiating models in their mind and notes, and having ideas or rubrics for causality.

GM can experience the simulation unfolding. I have certainly experienced that when I have been GM, and I have heard others attest to it.

Vibrant imagination - a feeling of what else would it be or of course, THAT's what follows - doesn't make it a simulation or a model. That's still authorship.

In this thread I've given concrete examples: Gygax's advice to GMs, in his DMG, on how to create "living" dungeons. Those are not accounts of how to instantiate models. They're advice on how to author certain things. In each of those scenarios, there are many other ways things could unfold. For the players, the GM's decision "reveals" how the internal causes unfolded. But what is the GM's rubric? Referring to "rubrrics for causality" gets us nowhere in my view. Because - as @AbdulAlhazred likes to point out, and as I've just pointed out in relation to Gygax's examples - from a given state as described in a RPG, just about anything can happen!

Here are examples of the sorts of principles that occur to me, but given that I'm not the one advocating for this play approach, it seems to me that others ought to be able to do a better job:

* In your extrapolation, don't have regard to off-screen causal factors that are not known to the players, unless the players are culpable for their ignorance of them;

* In your extrapolation, don't rely on magical phenomena that a skilled player of the game can't be expected to have regard to;

* In your extrapolation, don't rely on mapping mechanical edge-cases to the fiction (eg don't rely on the fact that falls can't be fatal to high level D&D NPCs, nor that single crossbow shots can't kill them, nor on the difference in most versions of D&D between dodging a giant's boulder and balancing on a narrow beam);

* In your extrapolation, don't rely on physical laws that are put into obvious question by the fantasies in the game (like FTL starships, flying dragons, etc).​

That last one is of course participant-relative (what's obvious to a group of engineering PhD students may not be obvious to a group of 12 year olds).

 

[pemerton]

But this is precisely how we do get there. We pretend that imaginary things actually have causal properties!

All RPGing, except perhaps Toon, does this. So either simulationism becomes a trivial category (because all RPGing exemplifies it) or else this is not the way to do it.

Given that I've done a lot of simulationist RPGing, I know which one of those options I think is correct.

I wonder if you would agree with the following.

A. No-myth modes of play cannot be simulationist.
B. FKR modes of play cannot be simulationist.

B I have no stong view on - to the best of my understanding, it is mostly GM decides and so may be an instance of my second category of simulationism. But that's working from a reasonably thin knowledge base.

A I do have a view on. Unless you count the Traveller PC build rules as contradicting no myth (because they have professions, nobility, equipment, etc), then Classic Traveller can be played no myth and can be played as a type of purist-for-system simulationism. In my view it will be rather boring played that way, but not everyone would agree.

 

[Manbearcat]

An invitation to a Rorschach Test (or steeped analysis...whatever is your mode of doing); see the bottom:

* I've been a martial artist (grappler) most of my life. I've played basketball most of my life and I played football for a large percentage of it (artificial "squad based combat" sort of play featuring serious physical contact, feints/parries/ripostes, various forms of grappling, distance control, action denial, and area denial). I've been involved in an embarrassingly large number of physical fights in my life, three of which involved 3 plus people (one a legitimate "Donnybrook"); nearly all of these associated with the basketball court or some sort of escalation from physical sport.

* When I GMed D&D 4e for the first time (and every time since) I was taken aback by how the cognitive loop that one undertakes when engaging with its conceived and executed Defender mechanics (on either side of the equation) was as "like the real thing as a TTRPG can get." It felt (and feels) quite immersive to me.

* Come to find out that there is a very vocal contingent of TTRPG players that "boo hissed" at these 4e Defender mechanics. "Gamey nonsense" was a typical refrain.

...

So, is the type of system architecture that makes up the suite of 4e Defender mechanics (and invites the associated cognitive loop) Simulationist/Immersionist? Or are they "Gamey nonsense" (or some other label)? Or are they neither/something else?

 

[pemerton]

@Manbearcat

I can tell you why I have doubts about their simulationist character. I'm working through this real-time, so let's see if I change my mind by the end of the post.

In terms of my categories upthread, they fail at (2) because the GM isn't the one extrapolating the internal cause. The player has too much decision-making power.

So let's turn to (1), which is the trickier case.

I think the fact that the player gets to impose their will on the fiction, and generate consequences, without that being mediated via a dice roll, is what puts pressure on here. I can see your position (I think I can - I'm just about the opposite of a martial artist, but I can read and hopefully understand your words), and so if "impose their will on the fiction" = the PC imposes their will on the opponent then I can see the simulationist character you're pointing to. But the number of borderline cases - eg marking a dragon while poking it with a dagger, or marking only two of three foes one attacks because of a choice about how to divvy up the foes among the various PCs - makes me think there is sufficient metagame, or at least "fortune in the middle", in there, that it doesn't quite hit the RM/RQ sweet spot.

The fewer the borderline cases, the more the claim to be simulationist. But even that's not quite right: in RM, if you hit a borderline case then you rework the mechanic (or ad hoc it in some fashion - at my table that was generally consensual with the GM in the chair but not the boss); in 4e D&D, you make up some fiction to explain it. Which reinforces the FitM-ish character of 4e.

What do you think?

 

[clearstream]

All RPGing, except perhaps Toon, does this. So either simulationism becomes a trivial category (because all RPGing exemplifies it) or else this is not the way to do it.

I am most likely mistaking your arguments. On surfact, to me, it feels like you could be eliding the "cause" part. What I have described as proper subjects for attention in simulationist play. I would say all RPG play is normative. Simulationist play attempts to be highly causative.

Additionally, I suggest (and dug my heels in on suggesting, in our previous thread) that simulationist play also requires referents. Some mistake this to mean it must take the real world as a referent, and they get stuck on wanting to simulate the real world or nothing at all. That's not the case: it is only the case that there must be referents.

Thus I describe distinctive simulationist play as requiring models (structured referents) with functions (causes, however we've chosen to embody them.) These are not only necessarily incomplete, but also pragmatically.

When another poster described reaching a scene with a dragon up thread, they were not concerned for causation. It was not of concern to them if they had a model in mind that included dragons, nor whether any imagined causalities in that model should lead to a dragon appearing in this instance. Their focus was the drama of the thing.

B I have no stong view on - to the best of my understanding, it is mostly GM decides and so may be an instance of my second category of simulationism. But that's working from a reasonably thin knowledge base.

I'd agree with placing it into your second category. I then draw from that, that simulationist play can occur even if models are not externalised. That among other things inclines me to say that models are internalised. Etc.

A I do have a view on. Unless you count the Traveller PC build rules as contradicting no myth (because they have professions, nobility, equipment, etc), then Classic Traveller can be played no myth and can be played as a type of purist-for-system simulationism. In my view it will be rather boring played that way, but not everyone would agree.

Yes, I would count PC build rules as myth. I also count system parameters that imply specific meanings myth. Perhaps I should see my views in this respect as a denial of the premise that no-myth play ever arises... but of course to see these things in stark black and white is seldom correct. If no-myth allows character build rules and game parameters that imply meaning, then I agree with you that it's not inconsistent with simulationism.

 

[Aldarc]

@FormerlyHemlock, I would argue based on the creators’ own words that Diablo 1 & 2 was interested in simulating how they played D&D back in the day. That is the nature of its simulation. Not simulating any arbitrary sense of reality, but, instead, it’s about simulating their sense of hacking and slashing their way through D&D, i.e., killing monsters and taking their loot.

 

[clearstream]

An invitation to a Rorschach Test (or steeped analysis...whatever is your mode of doing); see the bottom:

* I've been a martial artist (grappler) most of my life. I've played basketball most of my life and I played football for a large percentage of it (artificial "squad based combat" sort of play featuring serious physical contact, feints/parries/ripostes, various forms of grappling, distance control, action denial, and area denial). I've been involved in an embarrassingly large number of physical fights in my life, three of which involved 3 plus people (one a legitimate "Donnybrook"); nearly all of these associated with the basketball court or some sort of escalation from physical sport.

* When I GMed D&D 4e for the first time (and every time since) I was taken aback by how the cognitive loop that one undertakes when engaging with its conceived and executed Defender mechanics (on either side of the equation) was as "like the real thing as a TTRPG can get." It felt (and feels) quite immersive to me.

* Come to find out that there is a very vocal contingent of TTRPG players that "boo hissed" at these 4e Defender mechanics. "Gamey nonsense" was a typical refrain.

...

So, is the type of system architecture that makes up the suite of 4e Defender mechanics (and invites the associated cognitive loop) Simulationist/Immersionist? Or are they "Gamey nonsense" (or some other label)? Or are they neither/something else?

I take this to raise questions of the following kind

1. Are the 4e Defender mechanics to be assessed as a simulation of a real-world reference "squad based combat"
2. Are the 4e Defender mechanics to be assessed for their satisfaction of gamist qualities (we've discussed those elsewhere)
3. Are the assessments proposed in 1. and 2. dichotomous?
4. If one was not concerned with 1. (or had no basis for a view on it) might one still reach whatever conclusion one arrives at with 2.?

Your example shows that 3. is false and 4. is correct. What it reveals about simulationist play is that to have referents in mind matters. Without shared referents, any assessment is unable to judge if the play is simulationist. In part, to play in simulationist mode requires caring about playing in simulationist mode. But we have said all of this already.

 

[clearstream]

Vibrant imagination - a feeling of what else would it be or of course, THAT's what follows - doesn't make it a simulation or a model. That's still authorship.

One way I would put it is that the bare fact of having a feeling is insufficient; it is about being able to articulate that feeling as a cause and apply such an imagined or externalised cause to shared referents.

Here are examples of the sorts of principles that occur to me, but given that I'm not the one advocating for this play approach, it seems to me that others ought to be able to do a better job:

* In your extrapolation, don't have regard to off-screen causal factors that are not known to the players, unless the players are culpable for their ignorance of them;​

This is not a concern for immersionist play. It's okay to have off-screen causes.

* In your extrapolation, don't rely on magical phenomena that a skilled player of the game can't be expected to have regard to;​

Depending on what you mean by having regard to, this one is partly right. Sometimes a partly or completely unknown supernatural cause can be used to drive engaging play.

* In your extrapolation, don't rely on mapping mechanical edge-cases to the fiction (eg don't rely on the fact that falls can't be fatal to high level D&D NPCs, nor that single crossbow shots can't kill them, nor on the difference in most versions of D&D between dodging a giant's boulder and balancing on a narrow beam);​

Agreed. The mode of play emphasises proper conduct in respect of meta-game knowledge. Using it can be suspension of disbelief breaking. It can also fail to respect the incompleteness of the simulation.

* In your extrapolation, don't rely on physical laws that are put into obvious question by the fantasies in the game (like FTL starships, flying dragons, etc).​

Be intentional about departures from the real-world as a common reference seems like good advice!

 

[Autumnal]

I think that JRRT on "sub-creation" is better approached through a (broadly) theological framework, rather than through a scientific or analytical framework in which simulation, model etc are key concepts.

I’d agree with that. Occasionally I think about writing a more extensive treatment of gaming-related matters as subjects of theology, but the fact I just don’t have the energy for it these days.