Why do RPGs have rules?

[clearstream]

Its all basically rumors. There are two games which were PbtA games that 'spawned' BitD. I haven't read them, but there is really supposed to be some information around. John Harper has run a lot of stuff and created quite a few games/hacks. Ghost Lines apparently talks more about the whole world, BitD itself mentions the apocalypse but obviously doesn't say anything about prior games.

"Blades creator John Harper said the setting was inspired by events in a fantasy campaign he was running several years ago. A wizard destroyed the Gates of Death, unleashing all the dead upon the living. Harper asked his players “if they wanted to continue playing during the spirit apocalypse, or jump ahead 1000 years into the post-apocalyptic world that survived the cataclysm. They said they wanted to jump ahead.”

BitD stuff


So there you go. I mean, its fantasy "a wizard did it" and the players wanted to see what the world was like in 1000 years. Its that simple.

I recall (wrongly, apparently) reading elsewhere that the earlier game was DW, but the linked article asserts or at least strongly implies that it was SWN. I'm probably mixing up ST and BitD origins! OTOH SWN isn't fantasy... maybe WWN is intended (although that came after SWN so the timing might not fit.)

Anyway, to get the claims here straight, by your lights playing SWN is running a simulation? Implying I think that the SWN play must have been strongly simulationist? (SWN like WWN is "old-school inspired". I'm only familiar with the latter, though.)

Is there any better evidence that BitD had its world origins in SWN?

 

[clearstream]

Anything established in play is binding, it's now part of the fiction. The GM framed a wall, the wall exists. I don't know what the difference between established and binding is. The fiction is the fiction and all else is not the fiction.

A query on my mind was whether - once it is binding - that could result in future sessions of play becoming yes-myth.

 

[loverdrive]

I recall (wrongly, apparently) reading elsewhere that the earlier game was DW, but the linked article asserts or at least strongly implies that it was SWN. I'm probably mixing up ST and BitD origins! OTOH SWN isn't fantasy... maybe WWN is intended (although that came after SWN so the timing might not fit.)

WWN could not possibly be the original campaign, as it came six years latter than BitD.

My bet is that it was World of Dungeons (which is what I recall being mentioned, but can't find sources now).

 

[loverdrive]

A query on my mind was whether - once it is binding - that could result in future sessions of play becoming yes-myth.

How? The only binding things are things that are established in the game (aka known to players). The only way it can become yes-myth is if the players get replaced, and GM forgets that they can't know things that happened before they joined, and refuses to elaborate and explain.

 

[clearstream]

This is difficult because in the games where No Myth (or at least Low Myth) play is the norm there are rules that are always in effect that take priority (when players look to you to find what happens next make a move, frame scenes that challenge their beliefs, frame scenes that reflect their kicker, etc). Those always take precedence over ideas you might have of how a given NPC feels, what the setting is like, etc. The lack of myth is pretty much there to provide the flexibility to ensure there is always a way to keep the action focused on character premise. That regardless of how things turn out that there is always a way towards dynamic and interesting conflicts centered on the characters.

I felt my #709 was on the money, certainly! And among its implications are those you lay out here. Rules supersede norms including those that might have been established e.g. by writing them down, which itself might have occured during the process of play.

Stuff thought of in advance (of any given session) can't be used to decide how things go independent of game mechanics. My #709 has said that is true of all RPG. Pursuant to @pemerton's reading of what you say here, it is responsive to say that there are rules that are always in effect covering every case that arises in play. I'm not yet sure if I find that plausible*. Supposing for the sake of argument it were, then that would be a claim about the expansiveness of rules in certain games, rather than that in some RPGs rules don't supersede norms. (*The claim seems an overly strong one: that in seeking a description|rule match as discussed in #709, one will always be found.)

(Interestingly, of course, above we have examples of groups resisting rules that supersede norms they feel strongly about! Reminding that while it's a property of rules that they supersede norms, the following of a rule never resides in the rule.)

Anyway - to be clear - I am agreeing with what @pemerton wrote as it matches something I wrote earlier, which applies to all RPG. I'm not sure that what is distinct about no-myth is that the rules must be all-encompassing. Do you think so?

I really wonder if it is not something else... some other prelusory goal, lusory means, or facet of the lusory attitude that we should be calling out. @loverdrive seems to be thinking along those lines.

 

[clearstream]

How? The only binding things are things that are established in the game (aka known to players). The only way it can become yes-myth is if the players get replaced, and GM forgets that they can't know things that happened before they joined, and refuses to elaborate and explain.

Is it right that you make the distinction between yes-myth and no-myth just whether it is known to players?

Doesn't that agree with what I'm implying, i.e. that myth established in no-myth session 1 is just the same as yes-myth (known to the players) in session 2.

The theory that it matters what is known to the players could be relevant, and if so then I will want to ask - does yes-myth become no-myth the moment I disclose all the myth to players?

 

[loverdrive]

Is it right that you make the distinction between yes-myth and no-myth just whether it is known to players?

...yes? That's the entire point of No Myth: only things that are known to players can be used as a basis for application of mechanics.

No Myth isn't particularly deep: it just rejects the notion that things that GM knows (what she prepped, what is written in the module, what she made up right now), but players don't, are a part of the game. That's it.

The theory that it matters what is known to the players could be relevant, and if so then I will want to ask - does yes-myth become no-myth the moment I disclose all the myth to players?

Yes. Or if you don't use "myth" as a basis for invocation of mechanics.

 

[clearstream]

...yes? That's the entire point of No Myth: only things that are known to players can be used as a basis for application of mechanics.

No Myth isn't particularly deep: it just rejects the notion that things that GM knows (what she prepped, what is written in the module, what she made up right now), but players don't, are a part of the game. That's it.

A challenge to this is that at times what is said next must be down to a process that includes the inner state of participants*. The inner state of one participant is not known to another participant.

If you agree that general claim is right (at times what is said next must be down to a process that includes the inner state of participants) then what resources do you draw upon to address it?

 

[Campbell]

A challenge to this is that at times what is said next must be down to a process that includes the inner state of participants*. The inner state of one participant is not known to another participant.

If you agree that general claim is right (at times what is said next must be down to a process that includes the inner state of participants) then what resources do you draw upon to address it?

Could you unpack why you believe the inner state of participants must be known?

 

[clearstream]

Could you unpack why you believe the inner state of participants must be known?

@loverdrive distinguished no-myth from yes-myth on grounds of scrutability.

only things that are known to players can be used as a basis for application of mechanics

It struck me that to player A, player B's inner state may be inscrutable. Yet players make decisions in application of mechanics. They can choose to trigger a move and they go on to decide details of its application. It seems plausible to suppose that those decisions must be down to some extent to their inner state.

So I wondered where the limits were? What is it about the inscrutable inner state of GMs that is distinct from the inscrutable inner state of players?

The question isn't designed to cast doubt on the distinction, but on the work done by scrutability. Suppose a group had a tremendous amount of preestablished myth but made that all scrutable (ST might in fact fit this description), does that scrutability just of itself make their play no-myth? (What might remain inscrutable being of course the inner states of participants.)

I am mindful here that another theory of no-myth has been proposed... but that theory seems true of all RPG. I don't aim to cast doubt on no-myth, but on the explanations to hand of what it is.