Why do RPGs have rules?

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.


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.

Yeah, this is essentially what we did when I ran core 1977 CT. I generated the Home World and the PCs followed the core book trading, patron, and encounter rules, etc verbatim as they wandered the subsectors. Up to a point it does work, but of course the setting gains details over time, and we had to make rules tweaks and add stuff to make new things happen. That and we ran into stuff like the lack of any system for on-planet stuff.

What Traveller lacks mostly though is some way to really drive a story aside from needing money.

 

[Campbell]

There are absolutely play imperatives where conjuring threats out of thin air is not considered playing in bad faith. On the fly encounter adjustments have been advocated for by several people on these boards.

I do think you can run a game in a way that is sensitive to skilled play in trad games, but it is seldom the case that playing skillfully is required. Most games are just not tuned that tightly.

 

[Maxperson]

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!

It doesn't matter. Either you trust your DM or you don't. If you don't, you have no business playing in that game. If you do, then you trust that the DM is being fair and impartial about things.

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.

A False Unichotomy!! Another conclusion is to trust the DM. Trust is the key to any RPG.

 

[loverdrive]

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.

I can imagine an RPG that includes a genuine test of skill. Well, I can name some: Dread involves Jenga, my beloved MUJIK IS DEAD is all about player's skill at weaving established issues the character has into a coherent narration, my Swashbuckling! hinges upon one's ability to come up with witty insults, and my current Inner Sanctum involves a fighting mini-game.

Blorb style @FormerlyHemlock brought up also sounds like something that can actually enable skill expression, but I need to dig more into it.

Skill at navigating fiction, though, is something I do reject. It's arbitrary, unknowable, and GM's credibility to judge the outcomes is... dubious, unless it's a game set in a real world ran by an expert in the field (like a friend of mine used to conduct cybersecurity training in a way very reminiscent of RPGing)

 

[clearstream]

GM's credibility to judge the outcomes is... dubious, unless it's a game set in a real world ran by an expert in the field (like a friend of mine used to conduct cybersecurity training in a way very reminiscent of RPGing)

Got any friends who are experts in neo-vancian magic?

 

[clearstream]

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

I can accept you experience anxieties in that regard. I just don't share them.

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.

Another possible conclusion is that GM is not concerned about or can easily afford the cost of prepping in advance.

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.

If you base your convictions about the behaviour of others upon your own behaviour, that is more likely an accurate description of the latter than the former.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.


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.


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.

You're already forgetting what was established previously. Since we have no referents for, say, Orcs; all we can use for criteria here is how we feel about the resulting fiction. Thus even all your models and functions and whatever you are playing with, all they can do is present an aesthetically pleasing result!

You may try to insist that bears and such fare better, but do they really? Sure we have a slightly more substantive idea of how bears act, their capabilities, etc. However we don't have any of the inputs required to gauge a given bear instance. Is it male, female, has cubs, hungry, feeling territorial, what? Again, we simply have to go by some sort of aesthetic judgement.

We're talking plausibility, challenge, drama, genre adherence, etc. Now, I can see a genre being something like high realism survival drama or something like that where the game focuses on a high level of overall realism and within that 'zone' where it focuses you have what RE called purist-for-system play. Maybe that takes on a certain FKR-like aspect where the referee is a genre expert. I still see only a veneer of sim and frankly the few games I've experienced which tried to do this were not much fun, or proved largely unplayable.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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.

What do you know about the energy of a magical lightning bolt? I showed you a picture of an ordinary lightning bolt that ARGUABLY cut a house in half. At most we're arguing edge cases and semantics here. I call it sim, and I'm not clearly wrong, nor more wrong than someone claiming their depiction of orc behavior is sim.

 

[Maxperson]

Skill at navigating fiction, though, is something I do reject. It's arbitrary, unknowable, and GM's credibility to judge the outcomes is... dubious, unless it's a game set in a real world ran by an expert in the field (like a friend of mine used to conduct cybersecurity training in a way very reminiscent of RPGing)

RPG playing is a skill like any other. You can reject truth all you want, but it won't change.

 

[Maxperson]

What do you know about the energy of a magical lightning bolt? I showed you a picture of an ordinary lightning bolt that ARGUABLY cut a house in half.

LOL No, you didn't. It's not arguable that a hole in the roof is the same as a building cut in half. They are two objectively different things.

And a fantasy non-simulation lightning bolt can indeed cut a house in half. I acknowledged that in my response to @pemerton