Why do RPGs have rules?

[clearstream]

One of the more compelling things I discovered with Ironsworn was that I-as-GM actually got to start having some of those fun, "Oh my gosh, how cool is that!" moments myself, and it was at least as rewarding to have those moments with my players at the same.

Ironsworn drifts GM from referee to player. So it seems quite right to start feeling those things, even though they are not focal to GM as referee.

But at some point, I've had to reconcile the idealization against what I saw and felt when GM-ing in a "sim" fashion, which was, Don't fool yourself, despite your best intentions, you're pulling far more strings and exerting far more will on the outcomes of events than you want to admit.

Sustaining simulationism is challenging, for sure. It's interesting that you were able to recognise when you drifted from the idealization. I think modes of play can be (and very often are) expressed in an ideal version that differs from their vanilla (let's call it) version. I'm not sure if that delta is solely as to practicalities, or also aspirations?

 

[innerdude]

There could and should be reasons why a dragon wouldn't attack optimally, yes. But as the DM, if you're not thinking of those reasons when you're running the dragon, but are instead thinking it would be nice if the PCs without ranged attacks could contribute, then imo you've stopped simulating.

Well just deciding that something happens moves us away from what I think of as simulation. I think of simulation as starting with something external, right? Some process or event that we’re trying to replicate in some way.

So to use the dragon as an example, how do we replicate a fictional creature? I expect you’d say we give it some thought and ask “what would happen if…” as you mentioned. But then there are all those many factors to consider. The dragon’s intellect and cunning, its ability to communicate and work with others. Its stamina for flight, its ego and other personality quirks… all those factors that need to be considered, how are they determined?

It seems to me that all of that is up to the GM, right? If the GM is the source of all those factors, then they’re determining the thing that’s being simulated. And that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me.

So if you’ve decided your dragon is clever and cautious and can fly for extended periods with no problem, then you have your dragon attack the PCs from the air at a distance, never getting close enough for them to do much… you’re simulating.

If I imagine my dragon as cruel and megalomaniacal and overconfident with a desire to see its foes crushed in its claws, and so my dragon attacks from the air and then lands and closes with the PCs… I’m also simulating.

Are both of these true? If so, how do we keep it all straight? I mean, did I design my dragon that way for the purpose of including all the PCs in this scene? Or did I design it that way because it felt right? Is there tension there between simulation and narrative or gamist goals?

If the GM decides all the factors that need to be considered for simulation, then is it simulation?

Of course, @hawkeyefan ! All you have to do is justify/rationalize every decision you make, ever, upon valid causal grounds, as per Micah Sweet's comment, and you can stay on the "simulating a living world" high ground, which as everyone knows, is the only place to be if you're a "real" roleplayer, and not one of those poncy "story gamers".

Pox be upon you and your house if you just "make stuff up just because it sounds fun and dramatic and appealing"! No no, we must always assiduously provide causation, even if it means creating stuff up on the fly and revising secret backstory, lest we fall prey to the curse of non-simulation, and ruin our benighted players' sense of immersion.

On a more serious note, I think the juxtaposition of these two comments side by side illustrate the problem @pemerton and @hawkeyefan are having.

And look, I don't have a problem with sim as an agenda. I LIKE sim and deep character immersion.

I just agree with @pemerton, based on my own experience, that it does no good to mystify and put "living world sim" play on a pedestal, without really trying to come to grips with what the actual play process entails.

And in my experience, it's way, way, way harder to separate the "causal functionality" decisions as a GM from the "I really want to run engaging play" than we want to admit.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Whereas the opposing view would be, you've been pulling nearly all the strings, all the time.

I don't want to dismiss the emotional payoff, because that really is rewarding. But I think @hawkeyefan points out pretty astutely with his dragon behavior example that the GM isn't just "extrapolating", (s)he's determining all possible baseline details that presuppose the extrapolation.

One could reasonably ask, what's so special about the players having that reaction to your specifically curated set of string pulls? Is it less rewarding if it's someone else's set of strings?

One of the more compelling things I discovered with Ironsworn was that I-as-GM actually got to start having some of those fun, "Oh my gosh, how cool is that!" moments myself, and it was at least as rewarding to have those moments with my players at the same.



This goes back to @loverdrive 's comment about "all things ultimately being reliant on GM restraint". I regularly struggled in GM-ing trad play with the notion of, "Well really, if the BBEG is really as powerful as I believe (s)he is, and the PCs really are mucking with her/his plans as much as they are, isn't BBEG going to eventually just go nuclear and drop an army of 50 liches and 50 balors on them at some point and just be done with it? And am I being untrue to 'the simulation' if that DOESN'T happen?"

I'm very, very sympathetic to the goals of sim. On a certain level I, even to this day, find it an appealing idealization.

But at some point, I've had to reconcile the idealization against what I saw and felt when GM-ing in a "sim" fashion, which was, Don't fool yourself, despite your best intentions, you're pulling far more strings and exerting far more will on the outcomes of events than you want to admit.

3/4 of the way through a 20-month Savage Worlds campaing---one of the better campaigns I've ever run---one of my players came to me after a session and said, "You're kind of just making stuff up so we can keep playing now, aren't you?" And he said it with a smile, completely non-accusingly, but fully recognizing that after 20 months of endless "extrapolating" and "string pulling" to maintain "fidelity to the game world", that he and his character were really just along for the ride at that point.

Funny enough I touched on this recently in another thread that dealt with illusionism and fudging. I said it was all illusionism. I was actually curious to see what pushback I would receive. Enworld did not disappoint. Not one person actually agreed.

From your response, I'm now interested to see how the RPG Ironsworn handles it or mitigates it, according to you.

 

[Imaro]

Of course, @hawkeyefan ! All you have to do is justify/rationalize every decision you make, ever, upon valid causal grounds, as per Micah Sweet's comment, and you can stay on the "simulating a living world" high ground, which as everyone knows, is the only place to be if you're a "real" roleplayer, and not one of those poncy "story gamers".

Pox be upon you and your house if you just "make stuff up just because it sounds fun and dramatic and appealing"! No no, we must always assiduously provide causation, even if it means creating stuff up on the fly and revising secret backstory, lest we fall prey to the curse of non-simulation, and ruin our benighted players' sense of immersion.

On a more serious note, I think the juxtaposition of these two comments side by side illustrate the problem @pemerton and @hawkeyefan are having.

And look, I don't have a problem with sim as an agenda. I LIKE sim and deep character immersion.

I just agree with @pemerton, based on my own experience, that it does no good to mystify and put "living world sim" play on a pedestal, without really trying to come to grips with what the actual play process entails.

And in my experience, it's way, way, way harder to separate the "causal functionality" decisions as a GM from the "I really want to run engaging play" than we want to admit.

What? Who is putting it on a pedestal? Who is claiming some type of high ground, all I've seen is people continuously trying to explain how and why they enjoy a particular play agenda/playstyle.

 

[AnotherGuy]

What? Who is putting it on a pedestal? Who is claiming some type of high ground, all I've seen is people continuously trying to explain how and why they enjoy a particular play agenda/playstyle.

To be fair there's also been a discussion about
(1) whether player skill exists and if that is mitigated or even important when much of the difficulty is decided upon by the DM; and
(2) simulation cannot be free of bias, whether that's good, bad or neutral.

 

[Imaro]

To be fair there's also been a discussion about
(1) whether player skill exists and if that is mitigated or even important when much of the difficulty is decided upon by the DM; and
(2) simulation cannot be free of bias, whether that's good, bad or neutral.

Was simulation put on a pedestal in these discussions? And if so, can you point to where because I honestly don't remember an example of it.

EDIT: If anything I think there have been subtle (and not so subtle) jabs taken at the preference/playstyle throughout the thread but I also feel like its par for the course with these discussions.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, maybe. A skill that is impossible to test (and one that bears exactly zero difference on the outcome of the game anyway)

Can you tell that Joe is 15.4% better than Ed? No. Can you tell that Joe is just plain better than Ed? Easily. Can you test it? Absolutely. Just stick them both through the same 10 modules and Joe will consistently outperform Ed. Joe will use less PC resources, find more treasure, kill more monsters, do more damage, etc.

Edit: And those things do make a difference on the outcome of the game. A rather significant one.

What a ranked competitive leaderboard for dnd would even look like?

Why is a ranked leaderboard necessary?

 

[loverdrive]

Dread, Mujik is Dead, Swashbuckling!, and Inner Sanctum. Just those?

Also blorb-style, which I'm completely unfamiliar with, but at first glance it looks like it can enable skill play. Those I can name.

So the additional constraint - notwithstanding that the play was to be competitive - is that it be not too competitive. Not a tournament?

No, that's not what I mean. Like, for example, a competition where participants submits screenshots of their Dark Souls characters and judges, well, judge their virtual drip, would be a competition, sure, but would not be representative of the process of playing Dark Souls. Or, OK, a less silly example: Dark Souls Any% Glitchless speedrun is way more representative of Dark Souls than Any% (where glitches are allowed) because the latter tests a completely different skillset. Which, by the way, is not a condemnation, glitchless DS is, in my opinion, mind-numbingly boring.

Regardless.

The idea that player skill at playing the game is a major factor determining success in a game with a participant with unlimited power who ultimately decides whether the player is successful or not, sounds, at the very best, dubious to me. One can pretend like the GM can possibly be fair and unbiased, and players' "creative solution" worked (or failed) because it would work (or fail) in the fictional world and not because GM liked how it sounds, but that will be an act of roleplaying in of itself. A pretense.

 

[Imaro]

The idea that player skill at playing the game is a major factor determining success in a game with a participant with unlimited power who ultimately decides whether the player is successful or not, sounds, at the very best, dubious to me. One can pretend like the GM can possibly be fair and unbiased, and players' "creative solution" worked (or failed) because it would work (or fail) in the fictional world and not because GM liked how it sounds, but that will be an act of roleplaying in of itself. A pretense.

I'm still not understanding this line of thinking... If I have a square room with 4 MM goblins... and I have two different players try to defeat said goblins in combat as a test of skill... How is this biased? How does it not determine skill in the rules of D&D?

EDIT: Even if I add terrain or traps or a locked door as long as I as DM am consistent with DC's and stats how is this biased?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

OK, so I understand now, its an ideological lightning bolt. Whenever you need it to be a 'simulation' it is, and whenever your rhetoric demands that it isn't one, then it isn't. I won't draw any further parallels between this and other aspects of the conversation. Honestly things are entirely clear! Thanks!