Why do RPGs have rules?

[Fenris-77]

You can't imagine what I'm talking about, so I'm just going to leave it there.

Is that because your appreciation of RPG nuance is so far beyond anyone else in this thread? Just curious if that's the angle you're working.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are plenty of play style differences from game to game. They're just not the ones you are used to. It's like looking at gin rummy and complaining it does not have the same sort of variances as poker when you are not familiar enough with rummy to even tell what the differences could be from table to table.

A game has to get your attention and make you want to play it. This is particularly difficult if the entire goal of play (and the rules designed to support/enforce that goal) is entirely different from what you're used to AND are happy with. I'm not sure this perspective is understandable if you are either coming from a storygame background or are unhappy with classic/trad play and are going out of your way to find a different path. You do not always have a moment of clarity and suddenly "get" storygames.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is that because your appreciation of RPG nuance is so far beyond anyone else in this thread? Just curious if that's the angle you're working.

Laugh all you want. I do my best to explain my position in the post above.

 

[Fenris-77]

Laugh all you want. I do my best to explain my position in the post above.

Well sure, but then you go on to say that he can't imagine what you're saying, which is tough to take as anything other than enormously arrogant. Perhaps that's not how you meant it though. I'm open to interpretation here....

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well sure, but then you go on to say that he can't imagine what you're saying, which is tough to take as anything other than enormously arrogant. Perhaps that's not how you meant it though. I'm open to interpretation here....

I think I'm just not capable of explaining what I mean without a common frame of reference. Most folks here are so positive on storygames that I feel my perspective is being dismissed because I'm not in the club. Perhaps if I were better spoken I could get my side across, but it clearly isn't working.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think I'm just not capable of explaining what I mean without a common frame of reference. Most folks here are so positive on storygames that I feel my perspective is being dismissed because I'm not in the club. Perhaps if I were better spoken I could get my side across, but it clearly isn't working.

So don't take offense here, but part of the problem may be that you're interpretation of story games seems, to me, quite narrow and not really illustrative of how they actually work in play. That probably isn't helping matters. That's not really a critique of you, as I'll assume that your experience playing story games, especially AW given you comments above, isn't particularly broad. If it makes you feel better I bounced off AW pretty hard when I read it the first couple of times (many moons ago) and only really started to get it when I played it with other people who were all pulling the cart in the same direction, if you get what I mean.

 

[Autumnal]

Could people do more to indicate which posts they’re responding to? In a very fast moving thread, posts like the ones directly above this one are unnecessarily cryptic. Thank you.

 

[Fenris-77]

Could people do more to indicate which posts they’re responding to? In a very fast moving thread, posts like the ones directly above this one are unnecessarily cryptic. Thank you.

The quote in question is on the previous page, it's not buried in the dead sea scrolls or anything.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No one in either group I played with had that "moment of revelation" you describe; we were just confused and felt forced to follow a plan whenever we needed to engage with the game mechanically. The assumption that eventually you'll just get it and won't that be the best gaming ever is dismissive.

If you don't want people to treat PC actions as a series of buttons to push, having the character sheet mostly consist of a list of buttons to push is going to be counterintuitive to some (I daresay a lot) of folks.

Well... hey, is there ANY RPG where that isn't effectively what a character sheet does? I mean, come on, unless you are playing OSR beatstick, who has basically no options at all! Honestly, the odd thing about PbtA games, at least, is you don't WANT to trigger your moves! It might feel like you do, but if you simply describe some activity that isn't matching up with a move, the GM says "yes" and describes what happens next, which is a soft move, so it won't get you in actual trouble. Presumably whatever action you took was something you wanted to do, so you should always be ahead. Frankly, I don't even think about moves when I'm playing, except secondarily, or if I am having trouble understanding what they do or something.

 

[Maxperson]

Well sure, but then you go on to say that he can't imagine what you're saying, which is tough to take as anything other than enormously arrogant. Perhaps that's not how you meant it though. I'm open to interpretation here....

There are a number of posters on the No Myth side of things that get traditional play wrong, as well as the explanations we give wrong. Their portrayals of traditional play and our arguments are wrong over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... At some point we either have to accept that they simply can't understand it or that they are deliberately misportraying it. I prefer to go with the former since the latter speaks very poorly of their character.

It's not arrogance. It's our very often repeated experiences with those posters and their responses to our explanations of traditional play, and how they are constantly getting it wrong.

On the other side, though, we are constantly seeing those posters say things like, "If you only understood the way we play, you would see how much better it is" and tons of other similar passages. The amount of One True Wayism on that side is simply astounding.