Why do RPGs have rules?

[Maxperson]

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!

 

[Darth Solo]

And this, m'Lord, is why RPGs have rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Your post starting with assumed value judgements that have nothing to do with the question under discussion makes it difficult to lend credence to your remarks.

 

[loverdrive]

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?

If you only allow for actions explicitly stated in PHB, and basically turn it into an overcomplicated boardgame, yeah, it will be a fair and unbiased test of skill, I guess. Would be a pretty different game, though.

It all flies out of the window the moment one of the players decides to, say, improvise a trap from a piece of rope connected to a bow and lure one of the goblins into it.

 

[Maxperson]

Plenty of sports use judges to measure performance (for example gymnastics or the forms category for Martian arts). You just need criteria for how skill would be measured. You could easily do the same for player or GM performance

That sort of judging isn't even necessary. You could just pick categories that are trackable. Damage taken. Damage dealt. Traps triggered. Traps disarmed. Resources left at the end. Monsters killed. PC deaths. Treasure found. Whatever. Then the DMs running the tournament just track that information as they run PCs/groups through the module.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That sort of judging isn't even necessary. You could just pick categories that are trackable. Damage taken. Damage dealt. Traps triggered. Traps disarmed. Resources left at the end. Monsters killed. PC deaths. Treasure found. Whatever. Then the DMs running the tournament just track that information as they run PCs/groups through the module.

Sure my point is the unmeasureables can still be scored

 

[Maxperson]

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?"

It depends on the BBEG. What you describe there is a god, not a BBEG, and gods have limitations built in. They are more forces/aspects of nature than free beings, so their natures might keep them from dropping 50 liches on the party. For other BBEGs, waiting for the group to get to them so that they can personally kill them just when the party thinks their victory is assured might taste sweet, so they just accept the trivial losses and work to achieve their goals a different way. A weaker BBEG than what you describe there might go take out the PC group and then sell them into slavery, frame them for crimes, etc. to get them out of the way.

There are lots of ways to run a BBEG in a traditional game that don't involve killing the PCs, but sometimes they do and we go to the next campaign.

 

[clearstream]

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.

It feels here like the idea of referee is not finding any purchase in your conceptual framework. So it is quite hard to explain anything further about that.

Perhaps one can say something like - Given I believe that GMs are unfair and biased, I ought not to preference GM'd modes of play that rely on fairness and impartiality. That's not an irrational position, even though I disagree with the premise.

 

[clearstream]

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.

The same question came up for me. In discussing specifically simulation, we had been discussing elements that might be counted good for simulation. At no point did I understand that we were proposing superiority for any one mode versus other modes of play.

Well, for avoidance of doubt, @innerdude there is no intent on my part to put forward any one mode of play over another. I feel I've been consistently clear in that, but if you see some particular way that I seem to be saying that one is better than another I am happy to have that called out and amend.

Perhaps we've spent too much digital ink on simulation and should move on to other whys of rules?

 

[Imaro]

If you only allow for actions explicitly stated in PHB, and basically turn it into an overcomplicated boardgame, yeah, it will be a fair and unbiased test of skill, I guess. Would be a pretty different game, though.

It all flies out of the window the moment one of the players decides to, say, improvise a trap from a piece of rope connected to a bow and lure one of the goblins into it.

I would argue running an AP is not the same as running a boardgame... and wouldn't be out of the normal for certain styles of D&D.

As to your second point... do the games of football, basketball or soccer all fly out the window the minute a ref makes a call? You seem to have this criteria where the DM must be constrained in order for skill to be judged but when the tools of D&D are used to constrain the DM, regardless of the why... there's always a reason why it doesn't count.