Why do RPGs have rules?

[Micah Sweet]

Right, but I don't think those interfere with play. I don't think they stop me from doing what I do, they're mostly telling me how to be most effective at it. I think part of trad's cross to bear is a lot of that sort of knowledge is like "Secrets of Being a Good GM" and you can dig around in the 5e DMG and a bunch of things are there, but most people never read the book. And then they're just cast as advice, where narrative play focused games generally are like "you MUST do this!" AW 2e actually cusses at you, like "Do this *****er!" Clearly designers are seeing a need there.

And, if someone tells me they do their idiosyncratic narrative approach that breaks all the "thou shalts" and it WORKS, more power to them! I'm not going to sit there and say they did it wrong. Not any more than I would tell my BF Mike that he's a complete railroading puppet master, because nobody cares, his games are fun as hell! But if I did what he does, I'd be playing solo in a month.

Fair enough. Then we're back to "I'm glad that works for you, but it doesn't work for me". In short, those things don't interfere with play for you, but they would and do for me.

All that stuff you referenced where, "you MUST do this!", and whatnot, drives me up the naughty word wall.

 

[Aldarc]

(I have no idea what Stonetop is, other than a regularly referenced game by a few posters on these kinds of threads, but I assume it is strongly narrativist in a way similar to PbtA games are).

Stonetop is an evolution of Dungeon World (PbtA), though before that (as far as I know) it was the author's homebrew game of 4e D&D. In the words of the Kickstarter:

Stonetop is a “hearth fantasy” tabletop RPG set in an Iron Age that never was. The players portray the heroes of an isolated village near the edge of the known world. Their adventures focus on dealing with threats to the village and seizing opportunities. These aren’t rootless mercenaries seeking fortune and glory; they’re exceptional people, taking risks on behalf of their friends, family, and neighbors.

It's my favorite iteration of Dungeon World or Dungeon World-adjacent games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Stonetop is an evolution of Dungeon World (PbtA), though before that (as far as I know) it was the author's homebrew game of 4e D&D. In the words of the Kickstarter:

It's my favorite iteration of Dungeon World or Dungeon World-adjacent games.

Thank you. Nice to know my vague understanding was essentially correct.

 

[pemerton]

I am not positing a rule whereby mechanics are or can be made silent. I'm envisioning the possibility of lacunae, i.e. cases not covered by mechanics. Where rules do not extend, what happens?

<snip>

A possible example might be where in DW players want to know what the weather is like, and no one yet has access to Control Weather (7th level Cleric spell) or Weather Weaver (Druid advanced move) so they use Discern Realities or possibly Spout Lore? Discern Realities seems straightforward as they can go with "What is about to happen?" The situation taken to be where we are now (say, in these foothills). To give Weather Weaver meaning I would likely want to read "about" as implying "in the very near future" in parsing the rule text. If it's Spout Lore then it's accumulated knowledge amounting to something interesting and possibly useful (10+). Either way, it seems like GM has to decide what the weather is.

<snip>

If they've succeeded on their checks (7+) it doesn't seem quite called for to treat it as an opportunity to introduce badness. How does GM decide what to say? (Or supposing they turn it back on the players, how does player decide what to say?)

I don't see what the problem is.

Suppose a player declares "I look up into the sky and study it closely. What weather seems to be coming?" That seems like it triggers Discern Realities, as the character is closely studying a situation. So the player rolls a check, and if they succeed they get to ask the GM the mandated question or questions. The GM is then obliged to respond: this will be a GM move, that follows the normal rules for GM moves. The obvious ones here are - if the player asks "What is about to happen?" - to reveal an unwelcome truth ("You can see that snow is already falling in the mountain pass"), to show signs of an approaching threat ("Storm clouds seem to be forming") or to offer an opportunity ("The skies are clear - it's propitious weather for a journey!"). Of course, nothing mandates that the GM's answers deal with the weather at all - the character might study the sky hoping to learn the weather, but see something else instead ("You study the sky - what at first seems like wisps of clouds resolves into a flock of birds - only they're not birds at all, they're the hawkfolk pursuing you!").

What counts as good GMing here will of course be contextual. And the GM can ask the player what weather they are hoping for, or why <insert PC's name here> wants to know the weather, and have regard to those concerns in framing an answer.

Suppose a player declares "I've read many almanacs and treatises on the skies and their weather. I look up into the sky - what weather does it suggest to me?" That seems like it triggers Spout Lore, as the character is consulting their accumulated knowledge about the sky and the weather. So the player rolls a check, and if they succeed the GM says something interesting about the topic, and - if the check is 10+ - useful too.

You suggest that "about" in the Spout Lore rules implies "in the very near future". I don't see that. Here's what Spout Lore says - "You spout lore any time you want to search your memory for knowledge or facts about something. . . . The knowledge you get is like consulting a bestiary, travel guide, or library." So the interesting thing is the sort of knowledge one might get from a library or travel guide - that certain sorts of skies (or certain sorts of bird calls, or whatever it might be - the player is the one who proclaims the subject matter of their PC's learning) betoken certain sorts of weather.

It seems to me that there are many interesting things that the GM might say about the sky, and what weather it suggests: a storm is coming, it looks like there will be no rain, snow is falling in the mountain pass, etc. What might be useful will depend upon what the player is hoping to have their PC do ("useful" is obviously situation-relative).

Weather Weaver seems quite different to either of these: "When you are under open skies when the sun rises the GM will ask you what the weather will be that day. Tell them whatever you like, it comes to pass." That gives the player the ability to do something normally only within the remit of the GM, namely, to specify what the weather is. Whether or not it's a useful ability will depend on what sorts of action the player wants to declare, and how being able to establish the weather as a part of the shared fiction will affect those.

The Control Weather spell is similar to Weather Weaver, with slightly different constraints both on triggering it, and on how the fiction is specified by the player: "Pray for rain—or sun, wind, or snow. Within a day or so, your god will answer. The weather will change according to your will and last a handful of days." But using it requires a roll to Cast a Spell.

I am not seeing the problem that you are seeing.

 

[pemerton]

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

To add to others' answers to this: in future sessions of play, the material that has been established in previous sessions of play contributes to framing. As @AbdulAlhazred said, that might mean - for instance - is that part of the framing is that the PC is trapped in a prison cell with no physical way out (no secret doors, no bendable bars, etc). Which will, in turn, constrain action declarations and consequence narration.

You've repeatedly pointed to extreme bad faith DMing to say that player skill doesn't exist, why doesn't the above extreme bad faith DMing mean that No Myth doesn't exist?

What does that look like? I mean, if the GM is following the rules of the game - framing when appropriate, narrating consequences when appropriate, etc then as @loverdrive posted it doesn't matter one bit where they are taking their ideas from (loverdrive identified some colourful possibilities: "from her mind, from her ass, her notes, the module, a random table, or from heavens above on a clay tablet. . . . from an erotic chatbot, cellular automata designed to simulate post-apocalyptic wasteland, or sms from Vincent Baker himself").

Conversely, if the GM narrates a consequence that breaches the rules of the game (eg in DW/AW, makes a hard move when the rules don't permit it; in Burning Wheel says "no" without calling for a roll of the dice), then it is obvious to everyone at the table what is happening, and now the situation is no different from any other game where one participant is breaking the rules: there can be a discussion about it, everyone can storm off in a huff, whatever seems best in that social context!

But there is no prospect of play that appears to be no myth but secretly is not.

I think its still possible to appear to be following a No-Myth agenda but direct play (at least in a general sense) using pre-constructed notes...

Can I make the sister just choose not to help her brother...no

Can I make the difficulty so high it effectively has a much higher chance to go that way... yes (at least in some games).

What RPGs do you have in mind? In AW/DW there's no such thing as making the difficulty high or low. In Classic Traveller (an example I referenced above), there is a reaction table with rules for establishing modifiers. In Burning Wheel, there are rules of establishing the obstacles faced. In MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, the GM is constrained by the Doom Pool. Etc.

The idea of setting difficulties so high as to be de facto saying "no" is somewhat distinct to some approaches to D&D (and perhaps some similar systems), I think.

As an aside, it is in large part the fact that the constraints are mostly or entirely on the GM and not on the players that leads me to believe that narrative/storygame play as the GM makes them exist primarily as a servant of player desires.

Only in the sense that the GM is expected to say things that are interesting to the players, and that speak to the dramatic needs they have established for their PCs. As @loverdrive posted, this is "pretty much the same as on a player in any other RPG", who is expected to create and play a PC whose dramatic needs are established by the GM in virtue of the GM's scenario and setting design.

Hence why framing it as a matter of "service" seems to me unhelpful. The real difference is, Who is establishing what play will be about?

 

[Micah Sweet]

To add to others' answers to this: in future sessions of play, the material that has been established in previous sessions of play contributes to framing. As @AbdulAlhazred said, that might mean - for instance - is that part of the framing is that the PC is trapped in a prison cell with no physical way out (no secret doors, no bendable bars, etc). Which will, in turn, constrain action declarations and consequence narration.

What does that look like? I mean, if the GM is following the rules of the game - framing when appropriate, narrating consequences when appropriate, etc then as @loverdrive posted it doesn't matter one bit where they are taking their ideas from (loverdrive identified some colourful possibilities: "from her mind, from her ass, her notes, the module, a random table, or from heavens above on a clay tablet. . . . from an erotic chatbot, cellular automata designed to simulate post-apocalyptic wasteland, or sms from Vincent Baker himself").

Conversely, if the GM narrates a consequence that breaches the rules of the game (eg in DW/AW, makes a hard move when the rules don't permit it; in Burning Wheel says "no" without calling for a roll of the dice), then it is obvious to everyone at the table what is happening, and now the situation is no different from any other game where one participant is breaking the rules: there can be a discussion about it, everyone can storm off in a huff, whatever seems best in that social context!

But there is no prospect of play that appears to be no myth but secretly is not.

What RPGs do you have in mind? In AW/DW there's no such thing as making the difficulty high or low. In Classic Traveller (an example I referenced above), there is a reaction table with rules for establishing modifiers. In Burning Wheel, there are rules of establishing the obstacles faced. In MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, the GM is constrained by the Doom Pool. Etc.

The idea of setting difficulties so high as to be de facto saying "no" is somewhat distinct to some approaches to D&D (and perhaps some similar systems), I think.

Only in the sense that the GM is expected to say things that are interesting to the players, and that speak to the dramatic needs they have established for their PCs. As @loverdrive posted, this is "pretty much the same as on a player in any other RPG", who is expected to create and play a PC whose dramatic needs are established by the GM in virtue of the GM's scenario and setting design.

Hence why framing it as a matter of "service" seems to me unhelpful. The real difference is, Who is establishing what play will be about?

Well for one thing, I don't think I've ever played a character about whom I thought in terms of "dramatic needs". That phrase really bugs me, not sure why.

In general I am looking for a much more casual game experience at the table, as a GM or a player, than the rulebooks for these games as presented suggest. I'm sure that contributes to my issues with unfamiliar jargon and cute new names for actions these games keep inventing. The experience as presented is too structured for me to enjoy it.

Now I'm sure that, if you can get behind the mechanics, and the narrative priorities, AND acquire some experience, then these games can flow quite smoothly. But I cannot get behind those things, so it is a negative play experience for me.

 

[pemerton]

@clearstream, you have referred multiple times in recent posts to this earlier post of yours:

Anyway, why do RPGs have rules? In a nutshell, here is a proposed partial answer*


Each candidate description must be matched to a norm/rule that will explicitly state or imply its consequences. (Explicitly state more often for change to system; imply more often for change to fiction.) Along the D -> N/R -> C chain are a number of tasks -

1. Supply a candidate description
2. Match that description to a norm/rule
3. Read off the norm/rule the explicitly stated consequences, or propose fitting consequences
4. If more than one consequence is possible, select one

2. is not always a trivial task. Unless a description exactly matches a game text there is room for ambiguity. The AW game text calls attention to this (p10 in the 2nd edition.) D&D gives DM the job of matching descriptions to rules.

3. can get pretty nuanced. PbtA moves are compound rules that do a good job of directing toward the system and fiction consequences connected with any description that matched the move. D&D spells in most cases spell out the exact consequence. D&D skills on the other hand define scopes of effect that often imply a wide range of possible consequences. Again, D&D gives DM the job of fitting consequences.

In many games 4. is down to a dice roll that selects between some or all of - progress, progress+complication, no-progress, and no-progress+badness. The word "progress" shouldn't be read too literally here. Candidate descriptions are usually supplied with an ends in mind ("I climb the wall"... to get to the top. "I swing my mace"... to deal damage to the squirrel.) Progress generally means toward that ends.


*It's partial, because while rules set up to model things - simulations - can be made to fit this answer, it doesn't say quite enough about them. Likewise meta-rules - rules addressed to rules. It's one lense, not the only lense.

This seems to deal primarily with action declarations - which is what I take the "descriptions" to be. Maybe descriptions are also supposed to include descriptions of consequences?

In any event, this "partial lens" doesn't seem to say anything about allocations of roles (eg player vs GM), nor about who has what sort of "ownership" of what sort of stuff. A single-player storytelling game could be set up that follows your pattern.

This is because, with the symbols stripped out, your 1 to 4 are: a rule tells us what to say next ("consequence"), given what has been said ("description"), including how to choose among different possible things to say next. That is an extremely partial description of RPGing rules. In fact I think it's pretty radically incomplete.

rules serve a normative purpose: they convey candidate descriptions to consequences in game state (fiction + system.) I suggested that they can even invite descriptions that would otherwise not occur.

This is just reiteration that rules tell us what to say happens next, given what has happened so far. Whether or not they "invite descriptions that would otherwise not occur" depends entirely on what the rules actually are. A rule that says "say whatever you like", or even "say whatever you like provided it follows from the fiction" doesn't seem like it will do that. The rule has be more precise, and to impose constraints that will produce things independently of what would otherwise be decided by the person the rule governs - which is also where participant roles start to matter (eg "Tell the other participant something they won't enjoy hearing, given their orientation to the fiction.")

This purpose of rules - to fabricate a mechanism that successfully controls and simulates the desired play - falls outside of viewing play as narrative that "by its very nature places specific people front and centre rather than the world itself." As it turns out, the nature of an RPG can include modelling the world itself. Almost all do, to a greater or lesser degree.

This seems to be a trivial consequence of the failure to say anything about rules that differentiates RPGing from any other rule-governed storytelling activity.

Once we take seriously that the rules are rules for RPGing, it is not obvious that lay can be such that it does not, by its very nature, place specific people front and centre. This would need to be shown, and hasn't yet been shown. All the attempts to show it involve characterising one person writing fiction on their own (eg GM authoring setting; or player authoring PC backstory) as engaged in RPGing. Which is at best a highly contentious description of such activity!

Way up thread (my #709) I proposed that rules override and extend norms. So that if I would normally expect X to happen (things to fall down, say) then a rule that conflicts with that overrides it (e.g. not if they are metal and suspended by magnetic powers.)

As my quote of the post just above makes clear, you did not make such a proposal. You used the phrase "norm/rule", which implies a type of synonymy or at least functional interchangeability of the two notions.

I don't know what such a proposal would look like, given that norms and rules are similar things. It seems therefore to be a proposal that norms override and extend norms, or perhaps that rules override and extend rules. (There are other sorts of norms beside rules, at least in some accounts - eg principles, standards etc. I don't think I've seen an argument yet that drawing those sorts of distinctions is helpful for understanding RPGing.) As I've already posted, with reference to Suits and other philosophers in that sort of tradition, there are various approaches to this: eg the rule "things fall when not supported by a solid object" is really an oversimplification, and the true rule includes a caveat ("unless suspended by some other force, such as magnetism"). In some contexts it may make sense to talk about power conferring rules, which permit the rule-wielder to change other rules. I've already explained why I think that is not a useful analysis of rule zero, which is better analogised to Hart's "scorer's discretion" - ie it is a permission conferred on the GM to say whatever they like when it comes to them to say what happens next.

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.

Again, whatever you have in mind here, your post does not say that, and I don't think it implies it either.

But in any event: the only way that I can make sense of your reply to @Campbell is that you are meaning by "norm" something like what I the GM feel might happen next given ideas about what the setting is like, how a given NPC feels, etc. And then by "rule" you mean a rule of the game that tells the GM they must have regard to some other constraint in saying what happens next. That would be a very idiosyncratic use of "norm" - but if that's not what is meant, then I can't make sense of your post at all.

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.

I have quoted your post just above. It does not use the word "mechanics", and it does not say anything about RPG mechanics, let alone something universally true about those mechanics. The only thing it says in the neighbourhood of mechanics is that in many RPGs dice play a roll in selecting between consequences. This is banal, and tells us nothing at all about (eg) the difference between no-myth and "yes-myth" RPGing, nor about the differences between playing (say) AW or DW as written, and the DL modules as written.

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.)

<snip>

I'm not sure that what is distinct about no-myth is that the rules must be all-encompassing.

What makes a game no-myth is what I, and @loverdrive, and @AbdulAlhazred, and @Campbell have stated: that the GM is not allowed to "say 'no'" or to make hard moves or to otherwise narrate states of the fiction that defeat that players' aspiration for their PCs simply by reference to pre-authored, secret fiction. loverdrive gave a clear example of "yes myth": the GM decides that the attempt to trick the sister by imitating the brother fails, because the sister hates the brother). I gave a clear example als0: the GM decides that the attempt to trick the starship captain by faking a distress signal fails, because the starship captain always follows certain protocols that preclude taking the PCs onboard his vessel.

Of course the contrast between this, and no myth, doesn't come out in your post 709 because your post 709 doesn't drill down into the relevant features of RPG rules! All it notes is that "rules direct or perhaps even dictate what to say next, given what was said previously" and of course both no myth and "yes myth" RPGing exemplify this. But the fact that you have not described any difference between them doesn't mean that there is no difference that can be described. Several of us have done that.

And as I and Campbell and AbdulAlhazred have expressly stated, and as I think loverdrive has implied, for no myth to work, there must be a way of working out what happens next other than by referring to pre-authored, secret fiction. This is what the rules, including the mechanics, are for. In DW/AW, the rules are if the mechanics aren't triggered, the GM can only make soft moves unless a golden opportunity is given. In BW, the rule is if the mechanics aren't triggered, the GM must say "yes". The mechanics, in turn, provide rules for working out what happens next other than by simply referring to pre-authored, secret fiction. Eg if in BW the player succeeds on the Falsehood or Persuasion check with the intent to persuade the NPC, then the NPC goes along with what the PC wanted them to do: the GM cannot appeal to pre-authored, secret fiction ("the sister hates her brother" or "the captain never departs from protocols") and thus insist on saying that something different happens next.

This is a pretty clear distinction.

 

[pemerton]

Well for one thing, I don't think I've ever played a character about whom I thought in terms of "dramatic needs".

OK. I can generate combustion (eg by lighting a match) without thinking about things in terms of "combustion". So likewise people can create characters who have dramatic needs without thinking about what they're doing in such terms.

That's not to say that all RPG characters have dramatic needs. I remember once I rolled up a 12th level diviner wizard to play in some AD&D module or other. That character had no dramatic needs - he was just a vehicle I created for participating in the scenario and (hopefully) succeeding at it.

In general I am looking for a much more casual game experience at the table, as a GM or a player, than the rulebooks for these games as presented suggest.

OK. I have to guess a bit at what you mean by "casual".

I think that DW could be played pretty casually. But that's not going to be the case for AW, I think, nor Burning Wheel. Torchbearer can be pretty casual in tone, but requires more than casual attention to the system and to inventory if a player is not to get utterly crushed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@clearstream, you have referred multiple times in recent posts to this earlier post of yours:

This seems to deal primarily with action declarations - which is what I take the "descriptions" to be. Maybe descriptions are also supposed to include descriptions of consequences?

In any event, this "partial lens" doesn't seem to say anything about allocations of roles (eg player vs GM), nor about who has what sort of "ownership" of what sort of stuff. A single-player storytelling game could be set up that follows your pattern.

This is because, with the symbols stripped out, your 1 to 4 are: a rule tells us what to say next ("consequence"), given what has been said ("description"), including how to choose among different possible things to say next. That is an extremely partial description of RPGing rules. In fact I think it's pretty radically incomplete.

This is just reiteration that rules tell us what to say happens next, given what has happened so far. Whether or not they "invite descriptions that would otherwise not occur" depends entirely on what the rules actually are. A rule that says "say whatever you like", or even "say whatever you like provided it follows from the fiction" doesn't seem like it will do that. The rule has be more precise, and to impose constraints that will produce things independently of what would otherwise be decided by the person the rule governs - which is also where participant roles start to matter (eg "Tell the other participant something they won't enjoy hearing, given their orientation to the fiction.")

This seems to be a trivial consequence of the failure to say anything about rules that differentiates RPGing from any other rule-governed storytelling activity.

Once we take seriously that the rules are rules for RPGing, it is not obvious that lay can be such that it does not, by its very nature, place specific people front and centre. This would need to be shown, and hasn't yet been shown. All the attempts to show it involve characterising one person writing fiction on their own (eg GM authoring setting; or player authoring PC backstory) as engaged in RPGing. Which is at best a highly contentious description of such activity!

As my quote of the post just above makes clear, you did not make such a proposal. You used the phrase "norm/rule", which implies a type of synonymy or at least functional interchangeability of the two notions.

I don't know what such a proposal would look like, given that norms and rules are similar things. It seems therefore to be a proposal that norms override and extend norms, or perhaps that rules override and extend rules. (There are other sorts of norms beside rules, at least in some accounts - eg principles, standards etc. I don't think I've seen an argument yet that drawing those sorts of distinctions is helpful for understanding RPGing.) As I've already posted, with reference to Suits and other philosophers in that sort of tradition, there are various approaches to this: eg the rule "things fall when not supported by a solid object" is really an oversimplification, and the true rule includes a caveat ("unless suspended by some other force, such as magnetism"). In some contexts it may make sense to talk about power conferring rules, which permit the rule-wielder to change other rules. I've already explained why I think that is not a useful analysis of rule zero, which is better analogised to Hart's "scorer's discretion" - ie it is a permission conferred on the GM to say whatever they like when it comes to them to say what happens next.

Again, whatever you have in mind here, your post does not say that, and I don't think it implies it either.

But in any event: the only way that I can make sense of your reply to @Campbell is that you are meaning by "norm" something like what I the GM feel might happen next given ideas about what the setting is like, how a given NPC feels, etc. And then by "rule" you mean a rule of the game that tells the GM they must have regard to some other constraint in saying what happens next. That would be a very idiosyncratic use of "norm" - but if that's not what is meant, then I can't make sense of your post at all.

I have quoted your post just above. It does not use the word "mechanics", and it does not say anything about RPG mechanics, let alone something universally true about those mechanics. The only thing it says in the neighbourhood of mechanics is that in many RPGs dice play a roll in selecting between consequences. This is banal, and tells us nothing at all about (eg) the difference between no-myth and "yes-myth" RPGing, nor about the differences between playing (say) AW or DW as written, and the DL modules as written.

What makes a game no-myth is what I, and @loverdrive, and @AbdulAlhazred, and @Campbell have stated: that the GM is not allowed to "say 'no'" or to make hard moves or to otherwise narrate states of the fiction that defeat that players' aspiration for their PCs simply by reference to pre-authored, secret fiction. loverdrive gave a clear example of "yes myth": the GM decides that the attempt to trick the sister by imitating the brother fails, because the sister hates the brother). I gave a clear example als0: the GM decides that the attempt to trick the starship captain by faking a distress signal fails, because the starship captain always follows certain protocols that preclude taking the PCs onboard his vessel.

Of course the contrast between this, and no myth, doesn't come out in your post 709 because your post 709 doesn't drill down into the relevant features of RPG rules! All it notes is that "rules direct or perhaps even dictate what to say next, given what was said previously" and of course both no myth and "yes myth" RPGing exemplify this. But the fact that you have not described any difference between them doesn't mean that there is no difference that can be described. Several of us have done that.

And as I and Campbell and AbdulAlhazred have expressly stated, and as I think loverdrive has implied, for no myth to work, there must be a way of working out what happens next other than by referring to pre-authored, secret fiction. This is what the rules, including the mechanics, are for. In DW/AW, the rules are if the mechanics aren't triggered, the GM can only make soft moves unless a golden opportunity is given. In BW, the rule is if the mechanics aren't triggered, the GM must say "yes". The mechanics, in turn, provide rules for working out what happens next other than by simply referring to pre-authored, secret fiction. Eg if in BW the player succeeds on the Falsehood or Persuasion check with the intent to persuade the NPC, then the NPC goes along with what the PC wanted them to do: the GM cannot appeal to pre-authored, secret fiction ("the sister hates her brother" or "the captain never departs from protocols") and thus insist on saying that something different happens next.

This is a pretty clear distinction.

I see norms as the things you usually do, and rules as the things you're supposed to do. I prefer norms, because they don't make me feel constrained.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Fair enough. Then we're back to "I'm glad that works for you, but it doesn't work for me". In short, those things don't interfere with play for you, but they would and do for me.

All that stuff you referenced where, "you MUST do this!", and whatnot, drives me up the naughty word wall.

I obviously believe you when you say that. Mostly I'm pretty unconcerned about the details of exactly what people want to run if it is fun, and while I've personally found the ideas of certain game authors work, I play in a lot of different sorts of games.