Why do RPGs have rules?

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Fair enough, though I didn't experience it that way in my play. WHILE PLAYING at least I was just basically in character. What does Takeo want to do? I guess if I got to a point where I was adding to the fiction then I'd consider the overall story, but a lot of that can happen away from the table, or at specific points, like before a score when we could stop and bounce some ideas around OOC.

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.

Sure!

 

[clearstream]

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.

That creates some distinction between sim and nar, as the former would ordinarily not be concerned with what anyone hopes the weather would be, while for the latter it follows.

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.

Could be.

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.

I suggested that discern realities is about the very near future. I wrote that "I would likely want to read "about" as implying "in the very near future". That "about" is from "What is about to happen?" In hindsight I can see that it is readily confused with an "about" in spout lore, even though that was not intended.

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.

The line of thought has been productive, in that I can see that one set of descriptions are those that include questions, so that a sim rule is one that includes a question in the description (and produces a consequential answer.) When I described world processes that reveal themselves based on your above to simply be rules where what the player wants is not taken into account. I think there will be a way to frame that.

Something like -

• sim rules accept a question in the description
• nar rules accept player desires in the description

That's not quite right, but directionally useful.

 

[clearstream]

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

Just to make sure we're addressing the same text, here is the part I wrapped in quotes, in that post (which therefore omitted it from your requote.)

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.

The "/" was simply an "or" as I clarified in the interim in my repost as a separate thread.

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?

That was my first intuition - that this seemed to only cover action declarations - but then I found it hard to find exceptions outside of those I called attention to, i.e. simulation rules, meta-rules, procedural rules. The first of those three I have now proposed to bring in through the inclusion of questions in description.

Say the question "What is the weather tomorrow?" That can be matched to the Balazaring Weather Table, which will output the consequential answer.

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.

Yes, and one has been. Ironsworn.

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.

That's not quite correct. It's important to retain the superseding and extending norms part.

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.")

Again, this is failing to put proper weight on the full implications of superseding and extending norms. I can ask questions like this

• In the absense of a rule, can I say what the weather will be tomorrow in Balazar? I believe yes, it's pretty straightforward. Especially if I had in play a calendar with seasons (like the Calendar of Harptos for FR.) I can follow a norm - "hmm, well it's summer and Balazar is mostly plains so I'm going with hot and let's say cloudy... light but constant winds".
• So I've got an answer, what do I need the rule for? The rule supersedes and extends that. Superseding means I use the Balazaring Weather Table instead of what I might normally expect. Extending means introducing things I would not normally expect, and that can invite questions I couldn't have without the rule.

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.

As I now find based on your previous, the key distinctions to bring in are going to be the inclusion of questions (so that there are rules that answer questions, which I think can be wrapped up into producing a fitting consequence) and the inclusion of rules that care about what the player wants (not just to do it, do it, but also "I wish it would turn out this way.") I might include in "wants" the demands of story and role-play.

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!

Again, I feel some just cannot accept the possibility of immersionist play. For the folk doing the play it is about their experience. I can enjoy the blue sky, right? But that does not mean that the sky is blue for my sake! I read some wording in The Elusive Shift that I found useful

immersion
role-playing
story

to which I might add

striving

It's interesting that immersion is one of the foundational intuitions of narratologists (i.e. that games involve immersion, agency, and transformation.) Anyway, this possible fourfold model of RPG separates immersion out from role-playing and story. Those might put people front and centre, where immersion is the experience of the world. The enjoyment of the blue sky for its own sake. I don't here mean to exclude that the fourfolds interleave: I think they do.

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'm not sure if you say this based on the omission of text, but anyway.

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.

The / was an "or". It acknowledges that when there is a norm we can match to the norm (no rule required) and a rule can supersede that. This can play out as described above, where a norm competes with a rule. Generally speaking, the lusory attitude gives it to the rule, not the norm, to prevail. Here I see again that I have been unclear: the notions are not interchangeable, but I am not voicing just yet a theory of how to separate them.

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.

Let's not go back to rule zero, which for one thing is a compound rule with contents that apparently differ per poster. A few times you've explained what you think rules are in terms of making them compound. I am focused on saying what rules simply are. One can go ahead and compound as one likes from there.

As my concerns are generally ontological - Hart's scorer's discretion might not be especially relevant to me. I'll have to give that some thought. I might say something like - if it applies, it introduces or makes desirable just such strategies as you seem to employ, which by my lights amounts to adding more rules (so back to "it's compound.") We'd get hung up on disagreement about "whatever they like". I prefer my atomic regulatory rule, seeing as the rest varies by poster! Anyway, the additional rules I would have in mind include those yet to be brought into the description: meta-rules. (So I suggest that power-conferring rules are meta-rules, rules about rules, or at least have punted them to here.)

I recently learned of Frederick Schauer's work and perhaps my description of rules is more like his. He recognises the need to link a factual predicate to a consequent (that then is what a rule is or does.) He notices as I do the problems of matching (of ensuring that the rule captures just the cases it should capture). I have more reading to do to see if I have this right. TTRPG as a domain has concerns and features that are interesting once one gets a foundational idea of what an RPG rule is in place, among them how to say what counts as a good rule?

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.

Why are apprehensions about what might happen next limited to GM? I think they're visibly held by everyone in the room!

As I noted, D&D gives it to GM to match descriptions to norms (this should usually be a gimme, but actually I believe GM is intended to prevail if there is doubt) or rules (where they exist.) AW has a brilliant scheme of forcing the description to fit pretty closely to each move, reducing as much as possible doubt (but not dissolving it entirely, MC still gets to say what matches.)

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.

Here we will need to say what game mechanics are, versus rules. Mechanics are made up of rules. They're almost always (maybe even always) compound. My description does not deal with mechanics, it deals with rules.

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.

I agree, and it is something that I've had in mind during my exchange with those posters. I wondered if anyone would eventually speak to it (and it seemed most likely you would given your insights.) Where no-myth fits my general description of rules is this

• I allowed my description to contain an oversight, which is - what about things GM might write down that are it seems intended to override other norms but aren't really rules? Should I say they are rules? For example, if GM notes down that the sister hates the brother. Is that a rule?
• My take is that in doing so GM is establishing a particular type of norm, one that is a norm of the game world. That's because a player could invoke a rule that had the consequence that the sister not hate the brother, and one would expect play to respect that. Or one could feel instead that the GM's note established a rule, and compare the rules for specificity (specific overriding general).
• As an aside, one might note that a TTRPG rule is just a formulated or prototyped norm: or at least, I do intend to imply that. It's particularly interesting to think about how we decide that a description matches a rule, requiring of course some norm or rule for deciding, with the obvious regress. Those sorts of regresses often appear in discussion on (the forming of) meaning. I've recently come to feel they are skirted by accepting circularity, but that might not be right. I'm not wholly against a dispositional account.

So what about when those things GM notes down are not only normative (or are rules) but also secret or unstated? It seems pretty clear that, that's what no-myth banishes. As I intended to imply in some of my questions, what happens if those are simply said out loud? Say the GM has a printed book of Star League protocols that players are at liberty to read any time? Is it then okay for the faked distress signal to fail if as it happens printed openly in that book is a distress-signal-ignoring protocol?

Above it is implied that norms as they are formulated or prototyped blur into rules. That's intentional. Seeing as I don't think anything can prevent that, it seems right to land where we have for no-myth. One can also have rules about GM freedom to manufacture rules, which invokes my description of RPG rules to make anything GM manufactures submit to the premanufactured or consensus game rules.

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.

As I lay out above, I was thinking of a difference between them. I wanted to know what others thought, and for my part their patient answers, questions and comments helped make things clearer. Turning a nagging doubt into a more concrete concept.

nd 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.

Agreed also. I think it is not that the moves are taken to be comprehensive (although Baker did an incredible job of casting a wide net) but that the work in conjunction with principles that bring in the exceptions. I want to take a closer look at principles next, actually. Anyway, practically speaking, it's not even necessary to cover every possible case (and on surface I would guess that to not be possible) but only those cases mainly arising.

So for avoidance of doubt, I agree there is a distinction.

 

[Aldarc]

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

No worries. Although it hasn't yet been published - basically everyone here is using the WIP backer pdfs - I have quoted from the rules of Stonetop a number of times in our discussions about Dungeon World. IMHO, the author's 8+ years of experience with Dungeon World shows in the game's excellent discussion of rules and GM advice. A small, vague paragraph of GMing instruction in Dungeon World may get expanded to a page of cogent advice with examples in Stonetop.

Regardless of whether it's your taste or not, I enjoy it because of its fantasy pseudo-Celtic Iron Age setting;* how it's written as an anti-murder hobo hearth fantasy game; how the playbooks feel like possible Iron Age precursors to the classes of D&D; and how it feels a bit like a narrativist West Marches game that revolves around the struggles of the titular village of Stonetop.

* Some backstory: I discovered the author talking about the rough drafts of their Stonetop game on Google+ in 2016, not long after I had moved to Vienna and learned about the Iron Age Hallstatt Culture. (I have also visited the Austrian town of Hallstatt several times since then.) It was basically "love at first sight" for me because I instantly vibed with the game and its setting. I was also pretty sick at that time of murder hobo fantasy adventure.

 

[loverdrive]

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 not sure what you mean by "casual", but I assume it's, uhm, not overly serious? Because that can certainly be arranged!

Horror Movie World, for example, is a game about campy slasher B-movies. It's goofy, and more or less devoid of exploration of characters' inner world -- the main appeal of the play process is the same as watching a slasher B-movie: seeing a bunch of idiots slaughtered in over the top grotesque ways.

Recently I participated in a Cortex game where GM set out to emulate Hong Kong action cinema, and 90% of the game consisted of fighting people, with enjoyment derived from trying to come up with the coolest possible description. I'm not sure if my character even had a name, to be honest.

Now I'm (lazily) preparing to run a Fate game set in Team Fortress 2. TF2 is a very goofy game with bashing people to death with a frying pan as players from both teams dance conga in the background with an equally goofy setting with one-note characters, all of the which are insane, and most of which are idiots. They have very exaggerated personalities with very little possibility of growth and development. I mean, yeah. One-shot I'm envisioning will consist of 50% of cool action-flicky fights and 50% slapstick humour.

 

[Imaro]

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.

I was actually thinking about BitD which allows the GM to set position and effect level... But in general I feel like any game where the GM is using judgement to determine difficulty is open to this.

 

[Manbearcat]

Edit:

What do you mean by this? As in the story is not a concern?

I'm going to start with this as it engages with your top statement below; "story-weaving is my strength."

So the question above is about my statement "I just never think about the overall shape of the fiction."

So there are two locations that I can cite where I have some care for the shape of the fiction:

* At the level of situation where there are conflict resolution mechanics which mediate gamestate/win & loss and attendant rising action/climax. It borders on the impossible (and would be irresponsible) to not have care for the shape of the fiction there. So D&D combat, Dogs in the Vineyard, D&D 4e, Cortex+, BW/MG/TB, Blades in the Dark etc.

* System-based breakpoints or phases like Mouse Guard's Winter, Torchbearer's Respite, D&D 4e's Heroic/Paragon/Epic, My Life With Master's Endgame Confrontation with the Master, The Between's Dawn/Day/Dusk/Night/The Unscene/Threat Confrontation, Blades Info Gathering/Score/Downtime, or Stonetop's Seasons. Again, here the game imposes a structure upon play to be observed and resolved.

But focus on situation and observance/resolution of structural phases are quite different than what I'm calling the overall shape of the fiction. Not thinking about the overall shape of the fiction means lack of overarching curation, lack of metaplot imperatives or imposition, lack of story-weaving. It means letting the throughline of play emerge from play fundamentals + focus on situation & character + observance of system inputs (which includes structural phases or whatever). Whatever story emerges from that process will be what it is.

I should also note that I'm separating overall shape of the fiction from the continuity and integrity of what has been established through play. That latter is an input that must always be observed/respected for downstream situation-framing, consequence-handling, and any/all game layer interactions.

This is tricky for me because I feel my story-weaving (including character backstories) is my strength.
Thank you for this reply! I read it quite a few times to understand where each point you made could be applied to my game.

On the issue of Transparency and Keeping the Meta channel open with the table I have 2 concerns that I'm struggling with:
(1) How does being so open factor on the Narrative Surprise Reward; and
(2) Ensuring character integrity is followed

I will give examples for (1) and (2) using my prior post as the point of reference for ease.
Player doesn't know his character is suffering from PTSD after his near-death experience with the "marilith" (polymorphed BBEG). Do I tell him and do I provide/discuss with him the mechanics? From your post, as I understand it, I should - keeping the game part of the RPG as much as possible in the foreground. I get that.
However the Narrative Surprise Reward is immediately nullified as soon as I disclose it on the Meta Level. Player will know immediately that his Long Rest could be affected and that Mariliths and serpentine creatures induce dragon-fear-like checks. By being transparent with it the table doesn't discover this naturally through the fiction, which is the Reward, but rather matter-of-factly.
Imagine GRRM's books or the TV show GoT revealing Hodor's trauma right at the outset. It wouldn't have had the same impact.

(2) I can use the same example as above. Player knowledge now could affect the moves the character makes. i.e. moves could be made to accelerate the negation of the PTSD earlier than what would normally occur.
By me keeping it secret I'm assisting character integrity until the PTSD is revealed in the fiction.

Alright (alright, alright).

So I'll just be straight-forward. The type of GM curation/story-weaving/big reveal that you're depicting above entail a form of GM content-authority that doesn't play well with both my answer to your question above and what I discussed in the prior post you responded (very well) to. A statement like "the player doesn't know his character is suffering from PTSD after <situation resolution>" isn't a statement that would ever be made. You're quite correct that there is extreme (complete?) tension between keeping the game part of the RPG foregrounded and transparent and GM inserting extra-system narrative dynamics (whether it be at the character level or situation level or setting level) that require veiling in order to facilitate Big GM Reveal TM.

A few random thoughts:

* I'm working under the assumption that this is D&D 5e, yes? I'm assuming that this "Marilith conflict-driven PTSD" wasn't an outgrowth of a post-conflict Saving Throw?

* I'm assuming the PTSD isn't a (lets call it) GM-facing or veiled mechanical widget that has an input to action resolution in which the player isn't aware of?

* If all true, my concern with this dynamic is two-fold. The first is that (a) its just relegated to background color (no mechanical engagement that interestingly impacts the player's experience of their decision-space) and (b) , following from and relating to (a), only the GM may be in on the secret because the nature of the color is obfuscated to such a degree that both the experience of the PTSD and the impact of the reveal on the player is muted or isn't as potent as hoped for.

Now (b) following from and relating to (a) above is an outgrowth of a few things; (i) the autobiographical cognitive space of the participants (how does various forms of technique and overall play impact the idiosyncratic immersion of the individual participants) and (ii) the GM's ability to do the thing (which includes a lot of little things that need to add up to the overall experience and finality of the thing).

* Here is how I might consider easing the tension of the bolded/italicized above if I was running 5e. Are you familiar with the Abyssal Corruption, Beast Transformation, and Vile Transformation mechanics in the 5e DMG? You might consider an iteration of them coupled with the Paint the Scene process of The Between. As follows:

1) Player rolls Charisma Saving Throw after conflict. On failure, the GM gives the player a new Flaw or Trait which clearly depicts the state of the character (the thematics, the mental duress, et al) and invites the player to describe the PC's cognitive orientation to the event based on that new Flaw or Trait.

2) GM can either veil the mental duress/illness Transformation mechanics or share them with the player (my guess is you would be veiling them).

3) At the next Long Rest (or whatever appropriate time), the player makes another Charisma Saving Throw (perhaps this is progressive or perhaps its the same DC as the initial). On a failure, the PC gains 1 level of Exhaustion. The GM briefly describes an object or an event in the imagined space (a flower that seems to reach to bees but never gets attention while other flowers do, an inkeep looking forlorn as they absent-mindedly mop the same area of floor to no affect for minutes) and invites the player of the character to vignette their character's thoughts on this object/event and relate it back to the events of (1).

4) Same deal as (3) except a final failed Saving Throw cements the thematic and mechanical situation which can only be resolved via Remove Curse or some mechanical + fictional process (I'm thinking Paladin's Quest move or Wizard's Ritual move in DW or Make a Plan in Stonetop where the player and GM "ask questions and use the answers" to come up with requirements/conflict resolution Win Cons and related fiction to resolve the dramatic need).


So here, if you (a) veil the overall situation/journey of the condition but (b) involve the player thematically while (c) introducing decision-space & gamestate altering consequences, you might get a result that both lets everyone experience the reveal (you included as the player is letting you in on their character's cognitive state and attendant interpretation of thematic touchstones) and it might be impactful to the player of the character (either the same but in a different way or perhaps even more impactful).

---

So those are some thoughts on your conundrum (as it pertains to what I wrote upthread) that lands nicely in the "why do RPGs have rules" area! Do with them as you will (including drop them in the dustbin asap!)!

 

[Micah Sweet]

No worries. Although it hasn't yet been published - basically everyone here is using the WIP backer pdfs - I have quoted from the rules of Stonetop a number of times in our discussions about Dungeon World. IMHO, the author's 8+ years of experience with Dungeon World shows in the game's excellent discussion of rules and GM advice. A small, vague paragraph of GMing instruction in Dungeon World may get expanded to a page of cogent advice with examples in Stonetop.

Regardless of whether it's your taste or not, I enjoy it because of its fantasy pseudo-Celtic Iron Age setting;* how it's written as an anti-murder hobo hearth fantasy game; how the playbooks feel like possible Iron Age precursors to the classes of D&D; and how it feels a bit like a narrativist West Marches game that revolves around the struggles of the titular village of Stonetop.

* Some backstory: I discovered the author talking about the rough drafts of their Stonetop game on Google+ in 2016, not long after I had moved to Vienna and learned about the Iron Age Hallstatt Culture. (I have also visited the Austrian town of Hallstatt several times since then.) It was basically "love at first sight" for me because I instantly vibed with the game and its setting. I was also pretty sick at that time of murder hobo fantasy adventure.

It does sound like a very cool setting, and ancient history is an interest of mine anyway (its basically what I went to school for). I may have to pick it up when there's an actual release, even though I would definitely be doing so only for the setting material.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not sure what you mean by "casual", but I assume it's, uhm, not overly serious? Because that can certainly be arranged!

Horror Movie World, for example, is a game about campy slasher B-movies. It's goofy, and more or less devoid of exploration of characters' inner world -- the main appeal of the play process is the same as watching a slasher B-movie: seeing a bunch of idiots slaughtered in over the top grotesque ways.

Recently I participated in a Cortex game where GM set out to emulate Hong Kong action cinema, and 90% of the game consisted of fighting people, with enjoyment derived from trying to come up with the coolest possible description. I'm not sure if my character even had a name, to be honest.

Now I'm (lazily) preparing to run a Fate game set in Team Fortress 2. TF2 is a very goofy game with bashing people to death with a frying pan as players from both teams dance conga in the background with an equally goofy setting with one-note characters, all of the which are insane, and most of which are idiots. They have very exaggerated personalities with very little possibility of growth and development. I mean, yeah. One-shot I'm envisioning will consist of 50% of cool action-flicky fights and 50% slapstick humour.

What I mean is, an experience that doesn't rely so heavily on following the principles and restrictions these games require to have the experience they want. I want advice to be advice, not demands on how you have to play the game or you're doing it wrong. I also have no interest in prioritizing narrative beats and drama in my game anyway, so being forced to do so would be uncomfortable to me. In short, narrative/storygame mechanics make me prioritize aspects of the game I don't want to prioritize, and downplay, ignore, or restrict the parts I enjoy.

 

[clearstream]

How could that be workable? Either the GM authored a 'security breach' story, in which case the parameters of that narrative are going to be all of a piece and hang together, or else the players and GM together establish, via action declarations and outcomes etc., the concept and parameters of a security breach. A mix of the two isn't going to be viable because the GM's conception is going to 'go off the rails' as soon as a player declares something that breaks one of its hidden-from-the-players assumptions.

So, yes, you can do a BitD type of thing where someone, maybe the GM, introduces the bare IDEA of a 'security breach' (probably part of an info gathering move in BitD). Once the players think of an approach and some appropriate starting position is determined, then they make a move which establishes the success of "trick the sister into giving us the password" can happen, and a clock being established would certainly be a likely way for the GM to handle putting some pressure on the PCs "once this clock ticks down the sister is going to get suspicious and figure out something is up." It might simply be established as a basic aspect of the situation, as a response to a 'success with complication (4-5)' result, or as a devil's bargain condition. But this is more how BitD employs its tools to produce 'forward drive' in the story, creating tension, etc. In a PbtA type version of this there would be some sort of soft move announcing badness to come, which is pretty similar. You could certainly also use a clock (or a Skill Challenge) and that could be established even in a classic style of play.

I just wanted to comment on this very briefly. Consider a statement in a game text such as this from Stonetop

S “The rest of the inhabitants are lay folk: families and individuals who garden, herd, cook, clean, and otherwise keep the fortress-monastery running.”

S is normative in that, should characters run into someone coming from among “the rest of the inhabitants” they will normally be gardeners, herders, cooks, cleaners, and such like. Is S a rule? Suppose that for some span of time players are unaware of S. Thus S is yes-myth during that span of time. If at some moment players become aware of S, it transitions to no-myth and can - going forward - decide what happens next (e.g. decide that a random person met in the Barrier Pass is a gardener).

Given that "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" MC is on safe ground from the moment players are aware of S onward, and on shaky ground before then. An exception is made for rules - "this is what the rules are for" - so if S is a rule then we're back on safe ground. Maybe. As my question was intended to imply, secret rules are ideally not an exception, on grounds that it might not always be certain whether something hidden that is normative is fiction or rule. So let's not make an exception for secret rules.

Anyway, if I exclude S being a rule, I now have two strategies: 1) make any such statements known prior to their being tested in play, 2) have rules that supersede them... potentially running up against your "mix of the two isn't going to be viable" stipulation. In obedience to the terms of no-myth play, the statement gives way to the rule. Right? The Stonetop game text on Barrier Folk, despite being normative is going to give way to some such rule.

Hey wait, isn't that exactly what I said rules do in #709?

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms, and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm/rule that explicitly states or implies that C.

Well, only if I say that S is a "pre-existing norm", and not a rule. Which is why I asked, what happens if S is a rule?!