Why do RPGs have rules?

[Imaro]

And can a player take a look at the encounter at hand, calculate the CR and say "hey, this encounter is way too easy" (or "this encounter is way too hard", the difference is non-existent too)?

Ok I'm confused on why this can't happen? My group has done this, especially with beginning DM's if something goes awry with an encounter they set up... How else do they realize if they made a mistake or not?

 

[clearstream]

Ok I'm confused on why this can't happen? My group has done this, especially with beginning DM's if something goes awry with an encounter they set up... How else do they realize if they made a mistake or not?

Any player can easily go to kobold fight club or dndbeyond and calculate the encounter CR.

That said, this conversation shouldn't be confined to D&D. The opinion offered is a sweeping denial of game skill in RPG. It could accord with a view that RPGs are not games.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Perhaps the bear appears on an encounter table, but the construction of that table only takes into consideration what is challenging to the characters, plausible and genre appropriate. The idea that some sort of model of how bears are distributed, their population, behavior, etc has nothing to do with it.

If you can say to your GM, "hey, it normally doesn't make sense for bears to live in the Sahara desert. They're adapted for temperate forests. Should I view the fact that I just encountered a bear as more than an oopsie?" and they say, "oops, I'll change it," then they care about the quality of the simulation.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I regard myself as something of an expert on "simulationist" RPGing. I GMed Rolemaster for nearly two decades (thousands of hours). I know (or once knew) RQ fairly well. I've played quite a bit of Classic Traveller.

I'm not confused about those game systems, or how they differ (or can differ) from (say) Agon 2nd ed, or MHRP, or 4e D&D.

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 which I think can benefit from extrapolation. (Eg producing the experience of "being there" looks like a metagame agenda to me.)

I am far less familiar with RE etc al than you are, but it seems almost like this whole immersionist/high plausibility 'feels real' is more agenda and things like purist-for-system seem more like ways to get it (technique/approach). RE never claimed to have exhaustively cataloged all kinds of 'S' so maybe there's an agenda that isn't mapped here? Or was his approach to just label these as individual genres and lump them within genre sim?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There is also the issue that the GM is constrained by the players judgment of his or her decisions. A GM who drops 10,000 tarasques, won't be GM after that session (unless there is an extremely compelling reason for 10,000 tarasques showing up).

Now THAT'S a fun idea! "Somebody just opened a portal to Falx!!! Ten thousand tarrasques and a million mind flayers incoming!"

My players once did something far less destructive but still wound up gathering up a shipload of refugees from the capital city and fleeing to a nearby planet to form a space refugee colony. The planet was not salvageable (or at least wasn't salvaged). A portal to Falx would be worse.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't see 'heuristics' exactly. I see post hoc evaluation of what was depicted in terms of its sounding plausible. A need exists within the game to have some kind of fiction and the idea of the bear is surfaced and then evaluated, with the result being 'indeed a bear is plausible' and assuming it also has the requisite game function then it is deployed.

Perhaps the bear appears on an encounter table, but the construction of that table only takes into consideration what is challenging to the characters, plausible and genre appropriate. The idea that some sort of model of how bears are distributed, their population, behavior, etc has nothing to do with it.

First, my tables don't ever take into account what is challenging to the characters. All those other things combine to form a model to answer the question, "what's in that forest?" It's certainly not a perfect model, but it simulates an answer to that question adequately. "Good enough" is good enough for RPG sim.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I am far less familiar with RE etc al than you are, but it seems almost like this whole immersionist/high plausibility 'feels real' is more agenda and things like purist-for-system seem more like ways to get it (technique/approach). RE never claimed to have exhaustively cataloged all kinds of 'S' so maybe there's an agenda that isn't mapped here? Or was his approach to just label these as individual genres and lump them within genre sim?

I'll take that as an invitation to say what I like about simulationism. For me it's not strongly tied to "feels real," although I appreciate that too. For me the best thing about it is satisfying curiosity, and "feels real" is merely a prerequisite for that.

Finding out "What would happen if...?" is a strong drive for many humans and the root of much creative activity[1]. It can range from micro-scale curiosity about "what would really happen if my 11th level Sharpshooter tried to kill Tiamat as presented in Rise of Tiamat?" to larger questions like "what would really happen if the sun went out?"

[1] Random example seen today:
I get a lot of enjoyment from exploring "what would really happen?" in various RPG scenarios. It satisfies my curiosity.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Right, but we're unconstrained as to what we can imagine, and imagination doesn't have casual properties. A simulation is a tool in which there is a logical mapping of constraints in the model into the actual system such that a constraint in one matches the analogous one in the other. This is why the simulation has predictive or didactic value. The upshot being there is no simulation here, simply a surface assessment of plausibility. I mean, sure the two will converge for very simple cases, but the upshot is, your world's realistic nature is exceedingly thin!

 

[Maxperson]

Right, but we're unconstrained as to what we can imagine, and imagination doesn't have casual properties. A simulation is a tool in which there is a logical mapping of constraints in the model into the actual system such that a constraint in one matches the analogous one in the other. This is why the simulation has predictive or didactic value. The upshot being there is no simulation here, simply a surface assessment of plausibility. I mean, sure the two will converge for very simple cases, but the upshot is, your world's realistic nature is exceedingly thin!

You're still conflating real world simulation with RPG simulation(not my creation). Until you join the same page as RPG simulation, you're wasting your time with these arguments.

 

[loverdrive]

This restates the same issue @Pedantic drew attention to. It is premised on a distrust or disbelief in the GM role.

The way I see it if
A) GM can just conjure an obstacle from thin air
B) It's impossible to distinguish obstacles conjured from thin air and obstacles prepared beforehand

Then, as I said, the only limiting factor is GM's willingness to conjure obstacles from thin air.

PCs defeated five goblins! But five seconds latter, a dozen of them poured out every little cravice far too small for a human to squeeze through!

Was it planned beforehand that more goblins will show up D6 rounds latter if one of their kin dies, or did the GM conjured them because players had it too easy? It's impossible to tell!

(or no more goblins shown up: was it because they weren't prepped in advance, or because players go their asses kicked? it cuts both ways)

Since it's impossible to tell, and making stuff up on the spot takes less effort (costs less, if you will) than prepping stuff in advance, the only possible conclusion is to treat everything as if it was made up on the spot.

We used to play a "game" after each session to determine who will do the dishes. The rules were simple: I secretly decide on a number between 1 and 10, whoever guesses the farthest loses and puts on the gloves.

The real rules were even simpler: everyone names a number and then whoever pissed me off does the dishes.