Why do RPGs have rules?

[Bedrockgames]

I think your mention of tables is a key element here. I feel like that is what helps maintain some kind of simulation that doesn't just devolve into the GM deciding things. So if you have a weather table, and the results on the table have taken into account the kinds of weather possible for the time of year and location, and then you roll on the table, that to me seems far more like simulation than simply deciding on one of those results.

When I think of simulation, I think of the outcome of the simulation being beyond control. That's usually the point of a simulation... to see how things turn out. Simply deciding the outcome seems contrary to the idea of simulation, in that sense.

This is why I'm struggling to accept a GM deciding the outcome as an example of simulation.

I think that this then leads us to deciding the method of determination. How we decide what's on the tables and similar concerns.

It really depends on what a person means by simulation. I don't think there is a single definition. It is a term I generally avoid, though in these discussions I often do see some of the things I like to do filed under simulation and so I defend the position. But like I said before most campaigns are a mixture of different styles and approaches, not just focused on one thing. What I think we are really talking about here for most people is a sense of believability and realism and a sense that the world outside you exists. That can be achieved by random tables (personally I love random tables for that reason). But I have been in campaigns where it was handled by fiat and or prepping things in advance and I am fine with that too as long as the feel remains.

In terms of simply deciding, I think if the GM is genuinely trying to logically work out what might happen, then it is fine. Obviously a lightning strike is hard to figure out in your mind, so maybe a dice roll is called for. But even if their method is just picking something that seems realistic, I am fine with it, as long as it doesn't feel overly arbitrary or convenient (or happens to push us a long a path they had in mind in advance). For instance if a GM just decides that Old Jeb's house burned down from a lightning strike and we meet up with him weeks later and learn about it, that is sufficiently plausible and external that it fits what the GM is trying to do in my mind

Personally I don't get too hung up on methods or procedures. I see them as tools groups can use or not, as they wish.

 

[clearstream]

But if I'm the person who created the "there" and also created the "dragon" then of course I can decide that a dragon would be there.

In this case, it appears that I am simulating my imagination.

I see that some folk do have that intuition; as I would put it, they don't feel a sense of access to an internal model. One exercise that might cast light on that is to do some game design in which you externalise (write out) models that were formed internally.

Oh, absolutely! Having evidence of things happening beyond the PCs immediate area is a way to help portray the world in a way that feels more real. I just don't think it needs to involve simulation. You can just make up stuff. Which sounds like what would be happening with mention of a random lightning strike or two, and many other examples that have been offered as simulation.

If the stuff you make up is consistent then as it turns out you're not just making stuff up.

I think your mention of tables is a key element here. I feel like that is what helps maintain some kind of simulation that doesn't just devolve into the GM deciding things. So if you have a weather table, and the results on the table have taken into account the kinds of weather possible for the time of year and location, and then you roll on the table, that to me seems far more like simulation than simply deciding on one of those results.

When I think of simulation, I think of the outcome of the simulation being beyond control. That's usually the point of a simulation... to see how things turn out. Simply deciding the outcome seems contrary to the idea of simulation, in that sense.

This is why I'm struggling to accept a GM deciding the outcome as an example of simulation.

I think that this then leads us to deciding the method of determination. How we decide what's on the tables and similar concerns.

The reverse of the exercise I suggested above is to internalise such a table. Learn it by memory. School yourself to apply it intuitively.

 

[clearstream]

I feel like these things must be considered. If you don't think about game concerns or dramatic concerns, then play is likely to suffer for a variety of reasons. Like, if a first level party wanders into the lair of some truly dangerous monster like a great wyrm or something similar... this thing can stomp them out easily, no matter what they do. Do we just have it do so? Do we have it speak to them instead? Does it consider them below its notice? Do we signal its presence in some way so maybe they avoid it?

Just to check, do game concerns only apply to simulationism? Or do they also apply to narrativism?

 

[pemerton]

I think your mention of tables is a key element here. I feel like that is what helps maintain some kind of simulation that doesn't just devolve into the GM deciding things. So if you have a weather table, and the results on the table have taken into account the kinds of weather possible for the time of year and location, and then you roll on the table, that to me seems far more like simulation than simply deciding on one of those results.

When I think of simulation, I think of the outcome of the simulation being beyond control. That's usually the point of a simulation... to see how things turn out. Simply deciding the outcome seems contrary to the idea of simulation, in that sense.

This is why I'm struggling to accept a GM deciding the outcome as an example of simulation.

For me, this leads right back to the point I made upthread:

Purist-for-system simulationism is a simulation for everyone at the table, just as you describe here. It uses tables, often rather complex resolution processes, etc. The whole table gets to see "the imagined cosmos in action".

Whereas (what Edwards calls) high concept simulationism is a simulation for the players, in the sense that they get to experience a fiction beyond their control. But it is not a simulation for the GM, because the GM is deciding what happens (perhaps with some input from mechanical systems at least some of the time).

These are very different approaches to RPGing. And I say this based not just on the theoretical analysis, but my experience of the radical difference between RM and RQ play, and AD&D 2nd ed play, as I lived through these in the 90s. (Which is when I was active in club and convention play.)

This is likely my biggest gripe with simulation...it's utterly indifferent to the quality of the experience for the participants. Where as the players' experience is essential to gamism and narrativism.

Here I don't think I agree. Simulationism has a concern about the quality of the experience - it should have a "this is how it is" character to it. In purist-for-system play, that's the experience of having those tables etc "reveal" the fiction to you. (Some narrativist RPGs have elements of this too - eg Burning Wheel. Others don't - eg MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. I'm happy to elaborate as to why if that would be interesting.)

In high concept play, it's a type of "experientialism". As per my posts way upthread about rule zero, I think this can come very close to being told a story by the GM, although the story-telling process is structured a little bit differently from normal, via the imposition of the form of the RPG.

 

[clearstream]

Is "narrativism" here meant to have the meaning Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker et al give it? In that case, it's a shared goal for play revealed over the course of one or more sessions. It's not a GM technique that one pivots into.

If you're meaning something else, are you able to say what that is?

I meant to hand wave toward techniques prioritised in game texts that are often characterised as narrativist.

Play is (and shared goals for play are) always revealed over the course of one or more sessions. If that's all narrativism amounts to then all RPG is narrativist.

 

[pemerton]

It simulates the nature of monsters in a fantasy world.

Huh? Upthread, you equated simulation with realism. But now you're simulating monsters and magic? I've lost track of what your position is!

The world doesn't care about PCs level at all. It just can't be full of monsters so powerful that the PCs would die if they ran into them on even a semi-regular basis.

Yet in D&D play the PCs never meet the relatively few powerful ones when they're first level.

 

[pemerton]

I am just saying some people want a sense of a world, a sense of a concrete place, people in these threads sometimes call that simulation.

To me, all serious RPGing seems to have this. I mean, Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World are full of rules and guidelines intended to produce this sense.

This is why, upthread, I've asked some other posters what their contrast is with (what they call) simulationist RPGing. In my imagination, the sort of contrast I am seeing is with "arena"-style play, or some "dungeon of the week" play. But in that case "simulationism" becomes a label for the scope and depth of the fiction, and not for any sort of GM technique or (what the Forge would call) creative agenda.

Now maybe I've got the contrast wrong: but that's my conjecture, until it gets corrected.

 

[clearstream]

I feel like if these are removed entirely, then the GM is just deciding how everything goes without any consideration for the satisfaction of the players. This is likely my biggest gripe with simulation...it's utterly indifferent to the quality of the experience for the participants. Where as the players' experience is essential to gamism and narrativism.

There is an implicit assumption here that the experience of play that players want is not that of simulationism. You essentially erase - avoid even admitting the possibility of - any quality of experience of play other than those qualities gamists and narrativists value. You then critique simulationism for its failings to satisfy gamism and narrativism. This is the chief and recurrent lapse of empathy that I have mentioned previously.

 

[pemerton]

I meant to hand wave toward techniques prioritised in game texts that are often characterised as narrativist.

Play is (and shared goals for play are) always revealed over the course of one or more sessions. If that's all narrativism amounts to then all RPG is narrativist.

Well, when I talk about "narrativism" I mean it in Edwards et al's sense: play that is aimed at generating, via the distinctive forms and techniques of RPGing, an experience that emulates narrative fiction - rising action leading to crisis/climax (which is a function of protagonist dramatic needs).

I've played the G-series of modules, decades ago now. It was not narrativist!

 

[Emberashh]

Something I think gets missed about simulations is that, when they're done well, narratives can arise emergently.

In the video game world, DayZ has no imposed narrative to speak of other than what "lore" can be gleamed from the world map.

But, that doesn't stop stories from being possible. And in fact, so able is DayZ at providing for this that the stories I can tell about my experiences in it are some of my favorites to recount, and much unlike any typical gaming war story, recounting an experience in DayZ is enhanced by the abstract simulation of real life, which provides a critical context to the story.

For instance, if I recall that one time in Battlefield when I almost got sniped, theres not really a story there.

But if I recall a night in DayZ, I can talk about how I decided to travel through the western forest in the dead of the night, only to be beset not just by sudden hunger, but a heavy thunderstorm, making my trek through the forest a matter of navigating practically pitch black darkness.

But fortunately, I had recently acquired some NVGs from a shootout I had on the southern coast, so despite the elements I could see pretty well.

Now hunger in DayZ isn't that devastating, but when you're freezing cold you use up more energy, so it was important that I find food asap, and lo and behold despite the weather I stumbled upon some deer, and for whatever reason i got it into my head that I was going to try and sneak up on a buck and stab it with a knife rather than just take it down with my rifle.

So for the next 10 minutes or so I crawled on my belly trying to sneak up on the deer, and when I eventually got up to it I was ecstatic as I managed to not spook it. But as soon as I raised my knife, a loud familar CRACK pierced the air and the buck fell dead. Somebody had sniped the deer and I was left just standing there with a knife, in pitch black darkness, with no way to know where the shot came from or if they could even see me. But fortunately I hauled ass out of that clearing, and no other bullets seemed to follow me.


However, come morning when the rain cleared, I heard a shootout ring out somewhere close in the forest, so before I logged for the night, I took my rifle and emptied a mag in that general direction. Probably didn't hit anything, but guaranteed whoever lived was as spooked as I was.


You can't tell that kind of story and have it have the same oomph without the context that this was a survival shooter, and likewise, while an imposed story could be well done, an emergent story has a quality you can't really manufacture, even if parts of your story are emergent.

Like, most people will love recounting the dice inducing some wack situation, but often times the context that you were playing Curse of Strahd or Kingmaker or Sailors on the Starless Sea is basically immaterial.