Why do RPGs have rules?

[Bedrockgames]

Im not getting dragged into relitigating nearly a decade of assessment of the core 5e books.

Everyone knows what these books are and how poorly they're set up to actually instruct anyone on running a game.

Trying to dispute nearly a decade of acknowledgement of this problem only now because its devastating to a side argument in this topic is a waste of time and I'll have no part in it.

If you think 5e does a good job at teaching DMs more power to you, but you're disagreeing with a decade of people saying and proving otherwise.

I don't play 5E but I only see a handful of people online making this argument and an equally small number offline. Most people I know who play 5E, when they have quibbles about the books, it is about other things, not whether the game is bad at teaching GMing. The only edition I think had a major problem in giving GM instruction is my favorite, which is 2E, because they put half the DMG in a separate release called the Campaign and Catacomb Sourcebook.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Do you think this still applies in traditional sandbox and hexcrawl play? I ask because your assumptions seem to be based, in large part, on the GM curating the experience in real time as the campaign progresses vs having something like an area where monsters, geography, settlements, etc. are pre-made, and motivations and goals (at least for major NPC's) are created without knowledge of the PC's and where the PC's are then allowed to explore it however they choose to.

EDIT: I think I'd add traditional dungeoncrawl as well as structured AP play as well to those I don't think your assertion above would necessarily apply.

I think it's so deeply embedded within the structure of these forms of play that it generally goes unnoted. Dungeons are layer cakes of increasing challenge from top to bottom, matched with the progression of the PCs. This is exactly what Gary was excited by about what Dave created. He saw the whole picture instantly.

Hexcrawls are largely just dungeons in a specific format, the encounters near town are low level, and the ones off in the terrible swamp are high level. Sandboxes largely follow the same sorts of conventions, and failure to signpost difficulty is generally frowned on. All of these forms are ideally suited to the meta-fictional considerations of play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's not generally how that phrase is used (to indicate something is of regular or equal importance to other similar things). Putting something on a pedestal usually means claiming it is objectively more important, of higher quality, etc. compared to other similar things. No one did that (instead stating it was there preference for consideration 7in decision making when running their games) and I don't think it was clear or I wouldn't have asked...

In fact, the whole point in the term is when you put something on a pedestal you elevate it over things around it. That's the whole analogy.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't play 5E but I only see a handful of people online making this argument and an equally small number offline. Most people I know who play 5E, when they have quibbles about the books, it is about other things, not whether the game is bad at teaching GMing. The only edition I think had a major problem in giving GM instruction is my favorite, which is 2E, because they put half the DMG in a separate release called the Campaign and Catacomb Sourcebook.

It's certainly not the first time I've heard the argument made, and I tend to agree. Quoting Whither the Dungeon? – The Decline and Fall of D&D Adventures

I’ve talked in the past about how D&D 5th Edition doesn’t teach DMs how to run dungeons. In fact, it doesn’t even teach them how to key a dungeon map (or provide an example of a keyed dungeon map).

(To understand how weird this is, consider that the 5th Edition Starter Set includes a detailed explanation of exactly how a DM should use boxed text, but still doesn’t tell the DM how to run the dungeon that’s included in the sample adventure. Like, there was a perceived need to very specifically explain how you read text out loud, but not a perceived need to explain how you’re supposed to run a dungeon… the thing that’s actually unique to being a GM. But I digress.)

By contrast, the original edition of D&D in 1974 contains very specific instructions for both things: How to prep a dungeon and how to run the dungeon.

This is not some newfangled failure on the part of 5th Edition. It’s the end of a very long trend line (briefly interrupted, but only partially reversed by 3rd Edition) in which the D&D rulebooks have slowly stopped teaching DMs how to run the game at arguably its most fundamental level. Snip

 

[Emberashh]

It's certainly not the first time I've heard the argument made, and I tend to agree. Quoting Whither the Dungeon? – The Decline and Fall of D&D Adventures

I’ve talked in the past about how D&D 5th Edition doesn’t teach DMs how to run dungeons. In fact, it doesn’t even teach them how to key a dungeon map (or provide an example of a keyed dungeon map).

(To understand how weird this is, consider that the 5th Edition Starter Set includes a detailed explanation of exactly how a DM should use boxed text, but still doesn’t tell the DM how to run the dungeon that’s included in the sample adventure. Like, there was a perceived need to very specifically explain how you read text out loud, but not a perceived need to explain how you’re supposed to run a dungeon… the thing that’s actually unique to being a GM. But I digress.)

By contrast, the original edition of D&D in 1974 contains very specific instructions for both things: How to prep a dungeon and how to run the dungeon.

This is not some newfangled failure on the part of 5th Edition. It’s the end of a very long trend line (briefly interrupted, but only partially reversed by 3rd Edition) in which the D&D rulebooks have slowly stopped teaching DMs how to run the game at arguably its most fundamental level. Snip

It can often be said that what a lot of people are desperately asking for, even if they don't quite realize it, is procedures.

We could fill a whole topic with a lot of hot air over whats wrong with, say, Exploration in 5e, but regardless of whats one perspective is on how it ought to be as a pillar of play, the fundamental reason such topics focus on what ought to be, rather than what is, is because the only procedures for Exploration in 5e have to be reconsolidated from the 5 winds they got scattered to after DND Next.

The game to this day is designed around dungeon turns, but the procedures for them can only be parsed from the core books if you either A) read the original playtests and can thus recognize where the rules went, or B) sequester yourself to a shack in the desert so you can spend ten years piecing together all the pieces.

So much of 5e's problems, not just in educating would be DMs but just in being a well designed game are rooted in an very apparent undervaluing of explicit procedures.

And, yet again, the reason why is no secret; it was deliberate because 5e by design is not trying to tell already experienced DMs how to run their games.

 

[Maxperson]

You've hit the nail squarely on the head here. It's ridiculous to describe something as a simulation when all the parameters and conditions are arbitrary and decided in light of desired outcomes! That's just playing pretend and post hoc explaining why the story looks like it does by reference to some made up reasons. ALL RPG play has fiction explain situation, at least in principle, though probably most of it is never really explicated.

It's not arbitrary. People just looooooove to use that word to try and dismiss what others are saying.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But how is this different in a Story Now game. The players certainly don't have experience in medieval warfare.

Nobody is pretending that they do! The point is, basically the same sort of thing happens in each case. Some sort of other criteria, ones the GM and players can actually evaluate, is used. The assertion here is that objectively sim play is not possible, or at the very least only loose plausibility can be asserted such that the factors involved in the decision about what fiction to deploy are overwhelmingly related to some other agenda.

 

[Manbearcat]

I take this to raise questions of the following kind

1. Are the 4e Defender mechanics to be assessed as a simulation of a real-world reference "squad based combat"
2. Are the 4e Defender mechanics to be assessed for their satisfaction of gamist qualities (we've discussed those elsewhere)
3. Are the assessments proposed in 1. and 2. dichotomous?
4. If one was not concerned with 1. (or had no basis for a view on it) might one still reach whatever conclusion one arrives at with 2.?

Your example shows that 3. is false and 4. is correct. What it reveals about simulationist play is that to have referents in mind matters. Without shared referents, any assessment is unable to judge if the play is simulationist. In part, to play in simulationist mode requires caring about playing in simulationist mode. But we have said all of this already.

Well, my questions at the bottom (is this Simulationism/Immersionism..."Gamey Nonsense"...something else) were actual questions for folks to interrogate and answer independently of my own thoughts on the matter, because the interrogation of this issue I brought up seems a pretty central to this conversation. Further, "Gamey Nonsense" (as one of the epithets that was levied at 4e Defender mechanics) here isn't invoking Forge Gamism as an agenda (the design agenda whereby a system has integrated imperatives and system/procedure architecture which enables and demands that GM's devise and players, step up, face and defeat challenges via the skillful play paradigm embedded in the game). "Gamey Nonsense" here means sufficiently (or totally) artificial with respect to how the design of game engine levers, widgets, et al (design paradigm in total with respect to 4e Defender mechanics) work outside of the constraints of Simulationist/Immersionist priorities. There were many iterations of this attack levied at various 4e design elements (Defender mechanics well among them). One of the more prominent ones was the Dissociated Mechanics attack of days of yore.

Outside of that, I do agree with your 3 and 4 and, much more importantly, that shared referents by the participants at the table are necessary (but not sufficient) to avoid Simulationism/Immersionism-prioritizing games from breaking down. And along those lines, that is one of the primary reasons a moment of play will break down. And I'm not just talking about Simulationism games (although that is the vast number of instances of breakdown). I'm talking about moments of Narrativism-designed games where a player might unconsciously smuggle in a Sim orientation to play whereby they map an outside (external to the game engine or the game's fiction or both) referent onto a moment of play that isn't/can't/shouldn't be governed by that outside referent.

 

[hawkeyefan]

That's not generally how that phrase is used (to indicate something is of regular or equal importance to other similar things). Putting something on a pedestal usually means claiming it is objectively more important, of higher quality, etc. compared to other similar things. No one did that (instead stating it was there preference for consideration 7in decision making when running their games) and I don't think it was clear or I wouldn't have asked...

It's precisely how the phrase is used. It's about thinking of something in some idealized version, beyond the reality of it. It's often used to refer to a person... Mike puts Sally on a pedestal. It's strictly subjective.

But aside from that... what do you think of the actual point?

To me also it was not clear, especially in light of



However, if the intent was as you say then I can very much accept that it simply came across badly, and move on.

Generally when people use some pretty clear hyperbole, and then follow it up with "But more seriously..." it's safe to assume that they were joking or exaggerating.

Again, I'll tag @innerdude in case he thinks I've misunderstood his point.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There are guidelines for coming up with DCs and damage from traps. There are rules for persuading/tricking creatures. How is it all out the window by using official guidelines and rules for that improvised trap?

Sure, but those rules have nothing in them which is derived from any actual experience with or practical knowledge of real trap design. In fact they're designed along UTTERLY gamist lines!