Why do RPGs have rules?

[Lanefan]

But that kind of thing can happen. I can certainly understand how if it happens all the time, it can put some folks off, but I would make two comments on that.

One, I don't think that the story now type games I play have a very high instance of this. It's not about things somehow in some unexpected way connecting back to the characters... it's about the characters actively seeking out the things they seek out. No one watches Kill Bill and wonders why the Bride is always running into the people who betrayed her, do they? Shes actively seeking them out!

Second, I think that whatever happens instead of the perceived contrived thing is just as likely to be contrived. So instead of arriving in town with a specific goal in mind, the party arrives with nothing in mind... but then things come up! Because of course they do. Hooks spring up all about... this NPC has a favor to request, and that NPC has lore about a nearby site, and another wants his brother rescued from the Brotherhood of the Ebon Hand. If we don't go to the nearby caves, eventually the goblins will attack the town!

No one's worried about the fact that strange things always happen when the PCs are around! That's all considered happenstance and isn't contrived at all!

My view is that the PCs are gonna do interesting things. There are going to be events happening no matter what.... that's the point of play.

If the players have their characters take steps to seek those interesting things out e.g. listen for rumours, check with contacts or temples or guilds etc., then yes - ideally they'll find some.

But if they don't take such steps - particularly fairly early in the campaign - it's entirely possible they're just gonna sit around in the pub until we all get bored. If nothing else, eventually the characters will realize they need more beer money and that'll get them back out in the field.

Later in a campaign it's much easier to draw on their own played history if I need to bootstrap things: "Remember that Baroness Caratina who got you lot out of a jam when you were here last summer after the Ogre Caves run? Well, her messenger is here asking for you, seems she'd like a favour from you in return..."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I share that intuition, but can think of a couple of catches

• Maybe there really are possibilities that can't be expressed in rules. I don't think so, but E contains all possibilities, not just those I can think of.
• Suppose there is a natural possibility N. By natural I mean it's something we're naturally capable of doing in RPG with no system rule needed. In some game there is a rule for N, but in other games N is still possible even though there is no rule for it. How should N be counted in E? Should there be ruled versions of N as well as natural-N?

I don't understand what questions you're trying to ask in 2.

1 is not possible. You can always construct a system which yields a specific outcome as a possibility--it could even be a system which ONLY allows that outcome. The union of all such systems produces every outcome in E. Ergo, the union of all S is a superset of E. I assert without proof that it is also a subset of E. If it's both a subset and a superset of E, it can only be equal to E. S[all] and E are the same set.

I won't say more about infinite sets because it really has very little to do with why rules are needed for RPGs.

 

[clearstream]

I don't understand what questions you're trying to ask in 2.

I'm reiterating that the set of "natural" possibilities - things we can do in RPG without rules - can have the same contents as the set of ruled possibilities. Whether we decide to count those as possible due to rules, or simply possible, it makes the contents of E not dependent on rules. That's a basic element of @loverdrive's argument.

1 is not possible. You can always construct a system which yields a specific outcome as a possibility--it could even be a system which ONLY allows that outcome. The union of all such systems produces every outcome in E. Ergo, the union of all S is a superset of E. I assert without proof that it is also a subset of E. If it's both a subset and a superset of E, it can only be equal to E. S[all] and E are the same set.

I have the same intuition and follow the same logical path, but I'm not sure how one would prove the first premise (bolded) to be true. I see no reason to settle the question. I'm not even sure how it could be settled. But what I think we can readily agree is that for some TTRPG thing to be possible for us to do, we must know to do that TTRPG thing.

I'm "grasping the nettle" and saying - okay then, so we can do whatever in TTRPG so long as we have some disposition, norm, or rule securing that we know to do it. It is still quite easy to answer why rules are needed. (And it's not just to avoid doing things we don't want to do!)

I won't say more about infinite sets because it really has very little to do with why rules are needed for RPGs.

Rules are needed to supersede pre-existing norms, and extend beyond them

@loverdrive's all-possibilities thought-experiment neatly shows that my statement must be understood locally and temporally. Or to put it another way, rules ensure that the right sort of possibilities are available and prevail at my table in this game session.

But you are talking about the various (and varying) motives we'd have for doing that! Which many posts ago I vowed to keep the focus on. I summarised some of them in my #1769. In that post, I pictured your "emergent possibilities" falling in 2. but based on your recent I feel it should be called out as it's own "why" of rules.

 

[loverdrive]

Overnight I figured out what the issue is (and you are right that so far as I can see it turns out not to turn on the type of infinity.)

The solution is suggested by hotel infinities. (How do you check new guests into an infinite hotel? Ask the current guests to all move along one room.) One perspective on E is to define it from an atemporal perspective: over all time, E is infinitely large and contains all S. Hotel infinities suggest another perspective.

At any time T on Earth, the size of E is equal to the size of all the S's currently checked-in to E. Some S can be infinite in size, but that shouldn't matter here. Over the whole Universe E might be infinitely large at T, but from an Earth-person's perspective, with access only to the S's of Earth, at time T' I can always check a new S into E.

At T' I can check a new S into E, which seeing as S can have constitutive rules introducing new possibilities, expands it! Thus, from a temporal perspective, there is always worth in adding S's. From my time-bound perspective, the added constitutive rules can open up new possibilities.

I'm not entirely sure I understand your point here.

Yes, a particular person can learn about something included in E from a particular role-playing system that includes it in its S, but this something exists irrespective of the system and could be learned from another source (including, for example, someone's transcript of play or excited summary of the system)

 

[darkbard]

That the Emperor should conveniently show up shortly after the players decide on a whim to overthrow him?

Yes, I get the sense that some here are suggesting exactly this; that because the players have decided their goal is to take out the Emperor, it's now my duty as GM to - by way of focusing on their stated goals - somehow put the Emperor in their path.

I can't be precisely sure who these "some here" you reference might be, but if you're referencing the usual cast of characters in these discussions, such as @pemerton, @hawkeyefan, @AbdulAlhazred, and @Manbearcat, et al, I can provide a current example that demonstrates how patently false is your sense of how these games operate in practice.

In the second "encounter" of my ongoing 4E D&D PbP with the latter (a campaign that we, as players, set to focus around political intrigue, class strife, and dueling mercantile factions as the initial focus of play), it was suggested by a newly-encountered NPC (who has since become an integral part of the story and a Companion Character (think: Henchman)) that the Empress, who has initiated a fresh Inquisition that curtails some of the freedoms of my PC (and his mercantile family's goals) may be (1) possessed or otherwise bereft of her wits (possibly through nefarious advisors), or (2) a fool who needs to be set back on the "correct" path of rulership.

The game is now at L7, and much of it has revolved around dealing with the fallout of our group's early challenges to this situation (outsmarting one of the Empress's Dragonborn Inquisitors, deposing corrupt and duplicitous family members, investigating a revolutionary group and its aims, facing and making enemies with the Empress's Secretary of Security). There have been other goals in play too, of course: my wife's PC led us on a mountainous Quest to commune with a spirit of her ancestors when the political situation in the capital became particularly hot and we needed to "get out of Dodge." And there's an increasingly-compelling parallel development where agents of the Far Realm entity Caiphon lurk in the background (this too was signalled as a point of fictional interest by us as players, as the steward of my PC's traitorous uncle was a Warlock, and I introduced into the fiction that his patron was Caiphon, at which point @Manbearcat and I discussed our mutual love for that particular trope and how we wanted to explore it more in play). And yet, we still haven't even met the Empress, let alone faced her as a direct challenge.

We have felt compelled by other, more immediate (though certainly related) practical and fictional concerns that nevertheless have as an end-goal setting right what befouls the Empire (from my PC's concerns, the Empress's new edicts that curtail his family's enterprise and power). We've also discussed as a group how dealing with whatever besets the Empress seems perfect for a kind of capstone challenge to the Heroic tier (ie, 9th/10th level), taking the cues from 4E's guidelines regarding a tier progression of the focus of play to be local > regional > planar > cosmic. None of this has felt contrived or predestined. Rather, in the fashion of good film or writing, we see the PCs form goals, some of which change over time (as we "play to find out"), and work to meet those goals. If you're interested in seeing how this actually plays out, there is a meticulous record in our play-by-post.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know why people keep getting so emotionally defensive on this thread, interjecting remarks like "I don't think that the story now type games I play have a very high instance of this" into discussions on what contrivance is as well as the larger discussion on what rules are for. You think your game is pretty simulationist, fairly free from contrived coincidences? Fine. I'm not there so I'm willing to take your word for it. But if you tell me that you arrange coincidences like (A), (B), and (C), then I expect you to respond to the observation that "those seem like pretty unlikely coincidences" with one of two things:

1.) "No, the game world is really chaotic and those kinds of things happen all the time to everyone in every town, regardless of the PCs' presence or absence"; or

2.) "Yeah, it's a bit contrived. It makes for a fun game though."

Why not just admit the truth and say, "yeah, verisimilitude took a back seat to other concerns here"? Why the defensiveness and denial?

Because you’re wrong.

I play games of all kinds, and there really isn’t anything more plausible about the more trad type games than the more narrative focused games.

You’re still operating under this idea that everything that happens to the PCs is coincidence. Not that they’re actively trying to make things happen, but that seemingly random things happen, but then turn out to be connected to them in some way.

And at the same time you accept the kind of “weirdness magnet” trope that would define D&D type play of the traditional sort… wandering adventurers with no connections to anything other than the quest for gold and xp… which is a contrivance so utter and complete that I cannot understand how you can express concern about contrivances.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Many times and places historically had lawless periods...

Those places tend not to stay that way. But they often cyclically get back to that state.
The Balkans, the Middle East, North-western Africa. Cyclic. Periods of structure, then chaos and ethno-religious violence.
The US West was a mess for about 20 years total.. tho' from settlement to relatively civilize, Seattle was 10 years.
Alaska outside Fairbanks, Juneau, Seward, Kenai, and Homer from 1800 to about 1880... Anchorage between 1916 and 1925... (It was empty swamps in 1910...)

Sure, there have historically been hotspots of lawlessness and strife.

They tend to be somewhat contained though, rather than present throughout the world. There also can be a lot of cultural factors at play. That many of the people involved have cultural reasons for doing so. Many of the participants are intrinsically connected to the struggles that are happening, with strong bonds with other people in the area.

This idea if rootless wanderers who find adventures everywhere they go, and who have no concerns or connections beyond the drive for adventure… it exists purely to support play of D&D.

I’m sure there are examples we can find from history, but I don’t think they support this idea of an adventurer economy of the sort that’s present in the typical game setting.

 

[robertsconley]

So not to step on anyone else's toes, but this really brings us back to a regular issue which is that people without at least somewhat broad experience playing PbtA games don't have a great handle on how those games actually function at the table. That's not by way of critique, but just to index that PbtA is, to my mind, harder to just read and grok that is something like D&D. Once you've gotten some PbtA play under your belt, or even better dug into PbtA design a little to find out what the teleos there is, it's easier to see that the two sets of rules are far less separated than a lot of shouty internet folks would have us believe.

Sorry but that is pure baloney. I don't have broad experience with PbTA but I played them enough to realize that I do not like playing them as a players and why. The same with Dogs in the Vineyard, Blades in the Dark and so on.

When I play, I roleplay. I make characters with distinct personalities and motivations and act accordingly in-game. I am not interested in being part of a narrative. I am interested as a player in experiencing the life of a setting. Interacting with those who inhabit the world. Getting involved in their complications and perhaps introducing a few of my own to further my character's goals. The metgaming that PbtA, FitD, Fate and other similar style games have you doing doesn't help me and gets in the way when I play.

The only metagame consideration I use is that I am part of a small group of folks trying to have fun as a hobby. So some compromise is possible to make the campaign happen.

The problem with all these games for me and some of my friends. Is that they break immersion when I am roleplaying my character. I am continually forced to metagame to do important things in these types of games. My friends who like these games like the structure that the metagaming provides so for them it works out. Others and I find those structures an annoyance and just get in the way of our roleplaying.

And note I am equally critical of overly complex badly designed traditional RPGs as well as the type of games you are talking about. The bad design means you continually have to go look up stuff that intervenes with play and breaks immersion.

 

[Campbell]

@robertsconley @Lanefan

It's one thing to not like the process of how "world facts" get established under one mode of play or another. It's quite different to based purely on conjecture make claims about the consistency, depth and how real the resultant fiction produced is. There have been plenty of actual play threads linked to this thread. Where is the inconsistency within them? Where is the incoherence in the setting material described? If you did not know the details of how the setting material was brought into existence could you tell?

 

[robertsconley]

@robertsconley @Lanefan

It's one thing to not like the process of how "world facts" get established under one mode of play or another. It's quite different to based purely on conjecture make claims about the consistency, depth and how real the resultant fiction produced is. There have been plenty of actual play threads linked to this thread. Where is the inconsistency within them? Where is the incoherence in the setting material described? If you did not know the details of how the setting material was brought into existence could you tell?

You will need to find the post where I criticized consistency.

As for depth and how real things are.

In post #2,138 I addressed this issue.

This post and the chain that it was part was about rebutting criticism of simulationism. And had nothing to do with analyzing different types of roleplaying games.

As for the previous post I just made today. This was to rebut the idea one had to have extensive play experience with PbtA, FitD, and other similar RPGs in order to know that they don't work for you as a player or a referee.

Or it is that you don't like me using metagaming as one of the reasons I dislike these games.