Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

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.

Slightly tangential: I think the default theological orientation of FRPGing, inherited I think from REH via D&D, is more-or-less nihilistic.

What I mean by that is that, while many gods/deities/powers are imagined to exist in the gameworlds, the play of the game generally denies their importance in the world - eg d20 rolls are generally treated as modelling luck, not providence. In my view this is connected to assumptions about which participants "own" the gods: because the GM is seen as "owning" these beings, but the player rolls the d20, the d20 can't be an expression of providence. While a player might play their PC as believing that (say) a lucky success was an intercession by the gods, the system tells us, the participants, that that character is deluded, and that is was mere impersonal chance that produce the outcome in question.

A system that really departs from this nihilistic orientation is HeroWars. I also think that 4e D&D does, but that may be a slightly more idiosyncratic approach to the game.

To connect this back to the current topic of this thread: I think there is some sort of connection between the purist-for-system simulationist ethos, and the nihilistic orientation I've described.

 

[clearstream]

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.

Reading those lines (contrasting theological frameworks with scientific models), I felt that there was something informing different views that we have not yet gotten at. For example, my physicalist metaphysical commitments might lead me to be dissimissive of any essential difference between the two. I would say instead that theological frameworks are simply models much in the same sense that I am arguing that models of imaginary domains are models.


(Please note I'm not here intending to be dissmissive of the metaphysical commitments of other folks, which are entirely matters for their own reflection and satisfaction, only trying to understand how those might go on to inform views that will prove difficult to reconcile.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Children can answer @clearstream's questions. Because they have beliefs about, and ideas about, bears, water, wells, etc.

But if is able to use some language to describe things = is simulating, then it seems to be the notion of simulation has been deprived of meaning.

A wind tunnel isn't just a collection of beliefs and ideas about wind: it has a very specific, technical relationship to the phenomena it models. A weather forecasting model relies less on physical instantiation, and more on mathematical reasoning, than does a wind tunnel, but it still has quite specific, technical relationships to the phenomena it models.

If someone describes (say) the setup in Graham Greene's The Quiet American to someone who's not read the book, and then asks them to guess how it turns out, that person might be able to extrapolate from what they've been told. They might even do a good job (especially if they have some knowledge of Greene as a writer). But that's not a model of anything. It's just reasoning.

Hard disagree. You're conflating "crude, low quality model" with "not a model."

 

[chaochou]

Hard disagree. You're conflating "crude, low quality model" with "not a model."

And the example of bears going fishing conflated GM daydreams with role-playing, in that it featured no game, no players, and no point.

The argument now being put forward is that any act of imaginative speculation is sufficient to qualify as a role-playing game.

Again, a bar so low as to be pointless.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But no one here seems to accept my account of how those games permit the participants to "make stuff up in a certain way". So, like @hawkeyefan, I'd be interested to hear what others think that way is. So far all I've heard is "plausible extrapolation" which does not distinguish between RPGs; and (from @FormerlyHemlock) without a metagame agenda (A) which I think can benefit from extrapolation. (Eg producing the experience of "being there" looks like a metagame agenda to me.)

I don't understand (A). What does "which I think can benefit from extrapolation" mean in this context? Extrapolation to what domain? Is that a phone typo for "elaboration"?

Are you ready to move on from asking or proclaiming what a simulation is to discussing what are some pros and cons to dramatism, gamism, and their presence or absence?

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah. Even a simple Fighter can be played well (action surging at the right times, choosing targets wisely, spending superiority dice on effective maneuvers in the right fights) or poorly (attacking low-priority meatsacks when everyone else is desperately trying to kill a glass cannon, action surging immediately in the first fight after every rest, spending superiority dice like a drunken sailor on low-value maneuvers). Those are just simple examples; past level 5 or so Fighters have even more sophisticated options available to them, e.g. voluntarily choosing to take opportunity attacks can be a smart move in some cases.

Yep. Agreed.

Not everyone reads Internet threads, not many Internet threads are about tactics as opposed to builds, and not everybody understands everything they read and is able to apply it.

@loverdrive , it boggles the mind to hear you say that you've never seen players who are noticeably bad at 5E. How is this possible?

Two things.

First, they don't even have to be noticeably bad. Even good vs. average is very noticeable.

Second, she plays a very different style of game. I'm not that familiar with her style, but it may very well be that skill doesn't play much of a part in that style of play. If she self selects to a great degree and doesn't really see much or any traditional play, she might not see the skill differences.

 

[Maxperson]

Particularly given your final sentence, how do you know it was not a simulation? That is, how do you know that lightning bolts won't blast a house in two? I mean, I extrapolated from the extent fiction (a storm, in an area with a house). The players appeared to accept it as realistic (ie (i) that a lightning bolt might strike a house where a ritual has just gone terribly wrong, and (ii) that it might split the house in two).

Because you were not attempting to simulate the effects of a lightning bolt striking a house. A simulation is more than just, "is consistent with the fiction." Simulation also needs to attempt to model to some degree how real lightning bolts work. It doesn't need to be perfect or anywhere close to perfect, but it cannot be obviously wrong.

(And here's a picture of a lightning bolt smashing a tree: Man screams in panic as roof is smashed by lightning Suppose instead that it smashed the central post of the house, it seems to be the house might well be blasted in two!)

A tree is not a house. They are much thinner and a bolt can indeed split a tree. It cannot cut a house in two, even if it hits a load bearing wall. There's a reason why you can find lightning bolts splitting trees, but cannot find one on Google cutting a house in half.

 

[Maxperson]

If you are talking about dice rolls, they have nothing to do with it, "knowledge check" is a term from fighting games, and I've included the definition right into my post: "things that work if and only if the opponent has no clue how to deal with them".

Here's a more in-depth one from the glossary:


The only way, say, GWM can work if GM doesn't know how to shut it down. Or SS+XE. Or any other possible build and strategy.

God I hate(and this isn't your fault unless you wrote the glossary) when people use a fantasy term to mean something wildly different.

I still disagree, but on the grounds that decent DMs don't try to shut down methods that players use. That's adversarial DMing and is something that I certainly don't practice. Some monsters might inherently be able to do so, but it's not something I'm selecting against a player.

So... the success is determined by whether the GM is "acting in a good faith" (aka her willingness to crush PCs underfoot). I see.

No. It's pretty clear that you didn't understand what I said.

I've seen people who haven't figured out the game yet, yeah.

And never can/will, because they just aren't as skilled of a player as others. There are people out there who no matter how hard they try, will never be as good as me, and others that are better than I am.

Just like I've seen people who don't know where block button is located in Mortal Kombat. But they aren't bad at Mortal Kombat, they aren't even playing the damn game yet!

What I said invalidates this as a counter argument. My statement very clearly got rid of people who haven't learned. They've learned, but are simply incapable of being as good as others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

In RM, RQ, Travller, etc, the way this is operationalised is to rely on actual causal processes: dice rolls.

In systems that depend on GM narration and extrapolation (what Tweet and Edwards call "drama" resolution), the way we get it is by authorising one person to decide what the internal causes and effects are. As I posted not far upthread, that may produce something for the players in which internal cause is king. But the GM needs to have some other maxim by which to make decisions, as they can't look to their own decisions as a touchstone prior to making them!

In such cases, the GM will look to the rules of the game (presuming those rules are designed to simulate a particular process), or by their best understanding of how such a process would work in the real world. If you wanted to simulate a plausible economy, for example, you would either use your understanding of a real economy (current or historical) as a base, or the rules of the game would do so, based on the designer's understanding of those factors.

It is, as has been mentioned, about motivation. Why are these monster-filled dungeons here? Is it to provide an exciting challenge to the PCs? Is it to provide dramatic progress toward their emotional goals? Or is it because they're the ruins of an ancient temple built by a now collapsed civilization, overrun with local wildlife in the centuries since said collapse and now grown dangerous and avoided by travelers?

 

[loverdrive]

I still disagree, but on the grounds that decent DMs don't try to shut down methods that players use. That's adversarial DMing and is something that I certainly don't practice. Some monsters might inherently be able to do so, but it's not something I'm selecting against a player.

This is the point.

The only possible way a player can succeed in dnd if the GM lets them succeed. The only reason they won a fight is because GM decided not to bring reinforcements. Didn't, but could. Could, but didn't. Ooh but she needs a narrative justification! Yeah, those cost nothing. I'm not a particularly creative person, but I can create a logical explanation for a new pack of goblins showing up. Or a lich. Or a tarrasque. Or an orbital ion cannon locking on the PCs and evaporating everything within a kilometre of them into fine dust.

Yeah, the GM can show mercy (aka being unwilling to crush PCs underfoot) and decide not to field monsters/obstacles/environmental hazards/whatever that completely shut the players down.

Yeah, we can say that a "decent GM" shows mercy.

Doesn't change much, though.