Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

In real life, people typically only have a few people with whom they interact on a regular basis.

By "a few" do you mean "dozens"? Or are you meaning the real life of a hermit? I can't work out what you have in mind here.

I assume that most of the other people the players encounter, even in a busy place like the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, are fleeting or unimportant interactions.

This implies that love at first sight doesn't occur in your fictions. Which seems unrealistic to me, given that strong feelings of connection between people, following relatively brief interactions, is an actual thing that happens in the real world.

 

[Fenris-77]

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.

You are making what I think is a category mistake here. If you've played those games enough that you know they aren't for you, then you probably aren't who I'm talking about. You specifically are a game player and designer of almost unparalled scope compared to most forum posters and I have found you to generally be enormously cogent and thorough in your understanding of and ability to speak to issues of game design. That would make me think that your impression of the game even in limited exposure is probably quite enough for your purposes. Not everyone has you skill set however, and divining game design and the goals of game design from slight acquaintance is no easy task for most people. That isn't a criticism but rather a fact.

Your second paragraph is not, as I think you assume, an issue of objective design +/- but rather simply your own taste, which is important, but not to my actual point. Many people find the opposite in terms of immersion, and my main point, which is that a great number of detractors of PbtA and FitD play don't have an adequate grasp of how those games actually play remains quite cogent and accurate.

 

[niklinna]

You are making what I think is a category mistake here. If you've played those games enough that you know they aren't for you, then you probably aren't who I'm talking about. You specifically are a game player and designer of almost unparalled scope compared to most forum posters and I have found you to generally be enormously cogent and thorough in your understanding of and ability to speak to issues of game design. That would make me think that your impression of the game even in limited exposure is probably quite enough for your purposes. Not everyone has you skill set however, and divining game design and the goals of game design from slight acquaintance is no easy task for most people. That isn't a criticism but rather a fact.

Your second paragraph is not, as I think you assume, an issue of objective design +/- but rather simply your own taste, which is important, but not to my actual point. Many people find the opposite in terms of immersion, and my main point, which is that a great number of detractors of PbtA and FitD play don't have an adequate grasp of how those games actually play remains quite cogent and accurate.

Hm! In the very games being discussed, I note a distinct absence of metagaming, which allows me to roleplay my character's personality and motivations much better and feel much more immersed than in the usual trad games. But, some people seem to think that "metagaming" means "mechanics that reinforce roleplaying character personality and motivations" rather than "grants a magical power x times per day, no more and no less"?

 

[Fenris-77]

Hm! In the very games being discussed, I note a distinct absence of metagaming, which allows me to roleplay my character's personality and motivations much better and feel much more immersed than in the usual trad games. But, some people seem to think that "metagaming" means "mechanics that reinforce roleplaying character personality and motivations" rather than "grants a magical power x times per day, no more and no less"?

One of the issues with discussing RPG design is an almost complete lack of stable definitions (not that those are necessarily always a good thing). One person's immersion is another person I'm outta here, so any discussion needs to take that into account. I spend rather a lot of time pushing back against the idea that any one person, or set of people, has any kind of definitive lexicon for RPGs or RPG design.

 

[pemerton]

Quite often IME there are but two truly important things to many players: surviving, and getting rich. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

In theory, perhaps. In practice, unless you've got a high degree of player buy-in, it'll end up being about gold and levels.

<snip>

How long were those campaigns? My experience is that if they stay in one place too long the players get bored of that place, which inevitably means the characters will soon enough start doing things they shouldn't, thus wearing out their welcome. They'll have to move on.

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.

100% agreed. The sort of things that @Lanefan describe have basically no bearing on my RPGing. There is a degree of unreality and contrivance in it that I find completely unappealing.

D&D is about as far from history as you can get in my opinion. That said, just because there is a setting conceit that is highly gameable, that doesn't mean you can't follow through that conceit in a 'simulationist' manner that does still look to real world history and real life for guidance in shaping how things pan out. I would argue playability is extremely important and having gameable setting concepts can mean the difference between a game that lasts a week and one you keep going back to for years (I think a lot of what has sustained D&D over its lifetime is it has many core elements that are highly gameable on a regular basis). But then moment someone like Hickman asks 'what is the vampire even doing in this dungeon', I would argue you are moving more towards something trying to model a believable world.

For me as a big fan of villains (RPGs aside I adore villains in movies and I think they are the most fascinating aspect of settings for me), I think you have to be really careful here if your goal is a living world. There is a kind of "Villains has to earn their place" value that I cleave to. I am fine making a great villain, but I don't give them plot armor because I want PC victories that are earned to be respected.

In the context of a discussion about contrivance, this all reads like special pleading for a particular sort of RPGing.

D&D takes REH's model of Conan - the rootless wanderer, who comes from a land ("Cimmeria") that is purely mythical in the context of the stories themselves (we meet no other Cimmerians, we never see Conan living in Cimmeria) - and generalises it across the whole player character population.

It also takes B-movie conventions, including "the villain", and generalise these across much of - it seems often the whole field of - gameplay.

These are contrivances, whose origins in literature and film are obvious to anyone who looks for them. To note that they are contrivances is not to criticise them. It is, though, to express incredulity that RPGers who are committed to those contrivances would then try and argue that their RPGing is in some distinctive fashion relatively free of contrivance.

And yes, it is possible to adopt a "simulationist" orientation to these contrivances. There is a whole genre of fandom premised on doing this: it's the genre that produces histories of the Time Lords, gazetteers of Galifrey, debates about the precise command structure of Star Fleet that will explain why James T Kirk is able to get away with doing the things he does, a demand to know the xeno-biology of all the musicians in the cantina in Mos Eisely, etc. That doesn't stop them being contrivances. And often, the result is a host of post hoc rationalisations that do little but blunt the thematic force of the original fictional elements. (Sometimes this happens in the production of further works themselves - see eg the Star Wars prequels.)

As @hawkeyefan has been posting for pages now, it is possible to have RPGing that does not use these devices: in which the PCs are not rootless wanderers whose only concerns are wealth, power, and a barely defined code of honour; in which antagonism does not predominantly take the form of "villains" in a B-movie sense. This sort of RPGing uses different techniques to generate dynamic play, and different techniques to establish setting.

That does not make it more, or distinctively, contrived.

 

[Fenris-77]

Interestingly, I've worked rather hard in the recent past to add a decent soupcon of setting rootedness to OSR play, as I have increasingly found the rootless wanderer trope to unfulfilling. Even if the PCs are new to the local (often the case) I tend to design settings that will as a matter of course tend to heavily involve the PCs in local affairs with the specific intent of giving the players a skin in the local game, as it were.

 

[pemerton]

Interestingly, I've worked rather hard in the recent past to add a decent soupcon of setting rootedness to OSR play, as I have increasingly found the rootless wanderer trope to unfulfilling. Even if the PCs are new to the local (often the case) I tend to design settings that will as a matter of course tend to heavily involve the PCs in local affairs with the specific intent of giving the players a skin in the local game, as it were.

Be careful, or you'll end up with DitV or Agon 2e!

 

[Bedrockgames]

\

100% agreed. The sort of things that @Lanefan describe have basically no bearing on my RPGing. There is a degree of unreality and contrivance in it that I find completely unappealing.


In the context of a discussion about contrivance, this all reads like special pleading for a particular sort of RPGing.

D&D takes REH's model of Conan - the rootless wanderer, who comes from a land ("Cimmeria") that is purely mythical in the context of the stories themselves (we meet no other Cimmerians, we never see Conan living in Cimmeria) - and generalises it across the whole player character population.

It also takes B-movie conventions, including "the villain", and generalise these across much of - it seems often the whole field of - gameplay.

These are contrivances, whose origins in literature and film are obvious to anyone who looks for them. To note that they are contrivances is not to criticise them. It is, though, to express incredulity that RPGers who are committed to those contrivances would then try and argue that their RPGing is in some distinctive fashion relatively free of contrivance.

I don't think it was special pleading at all. Part of my post was agreeing with Hawkeye that D&D is not at all a historical game. But that doesn't mean you can't also inject some historical realism into fantasy setting. In particular this notion of the villain. Yes, it is perfectly valid to run it as a contrivance. Like I said I have no issue with contrivances, which is why I mentioned Chang Cheh mode. But sometimes I want to run things more historically realistic, and in those kinds of campaigns, I am not going to have a villain exist as a contrivance. Villains have to emerge and survive, over time, letting the dice fall where they may. Yes there is an element of contrivance (the character is still designed to be a bad guy and uses villain tropes). But you can clearly see a difference between a campaign with characters who WILL be the villain regardless of what the PCs do or where the dice fall, and where there are clear set pieces designed and dropped into play, versus more naturalistic approaches where things can emerge but don't have to. I don't think this is particularly controversial either. It is a style of play that some people like but may don't because a lot of people want those set pieces (finding them thrilling).

And yes, it is possible to adopt a "simulationist" orientation to these contrivances. There is a whole genre of fandom premised on doing this: it's the genre that produces histories of the Time Lords, gazetteers of Galifrey, debates about the precise command structure of Star Fleet that will explain why James T Kirk is able to get away with doing the things he does, a demand to know the xeno-biology of all the musicians in the cantina in Mos Eisely, etc. That doesn't stop them being contrivances. And often, the result is a host of post hoc rationalisations that do little but blunt the thematic force of the original fictional elements. (Sometimes this happens in the production of further works themselves - see eg the Star Wars prequels.)

I don't know this seems like we are just reframing things then. If you are taking a simulationist approach to play then that is what matters, even if you using genre tropes. I don't think the presence of genre elements mean the game can't follow a certain realism logic. Game of Thrones kind of does this, where it flows a bit more like history than a standard fantasy novel. I think these kinds of campaigns strive for that.

Also I think the key here is they aren't post hoc explanations. One of the overriding principles of play here is you don't introduce something and then explain how and why after. It has to happen for a reason that makes sense. There are exceptions (for example random encounters). But if I have Bronze Master attack the party in an ambush, I don't post hoc explain how he got there and why, it all flows from a series of actions.

I would also say even in genre fiction, you have those that are more plausible and realistic and those that are more over the top and riddled with obvious contrivances. If a plot makes logical sense, flowing from the actions the characters have taken and doesn't feel forced, we don't usually describe it as contrived. That is a label we use for plots designed to make the movie happen. And in some cases, like Commando, which I think is a marvelous film, we are fine with those contrivances because we are there to watch action and don't want a big long explanation for why everything is happening and why characters are making the choices they are making.

As @hawkeyefan has been posting for pages now, it is possible to have RPGing that does not use these devices: in which the PCs are not rootless wanderers whose only concerns are wealth, power, and a barely defined code of honour; in which antagonism does not predominantly take the form of "villains" in a B-movie sense. This sort of RPGing uses different techniques to generate dynamic play, and different techniques to establish setting.

That does not make it more, or distinctively, contrived.

How is this not special pleading but my post is? I am not saying you can't do these things in other approaches. I clarified for Hawkeye my position on that in a previous post, and I mentioned games like Hillfolk where I found you could still have a game grounded in the kind of realisms we are talking about, even though the priority was drama (because a lot of dramas are very realistic: in the miniseries I Claudius, the characters are all largely grounded int he same reality we are with the exception of some light conceits to roman religion). My point was just there is a difference between campaigns with heavy handed set pieces (again nothing wrong with those) and campaigns that deliberately avoid that stuff so it can feel more naturalistic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Interestingly, I've worked rather hard in the recent past to add a decent soupcon of setting rootedness to OSR play, as I have increasingly found the rootless wanderer trope to unfulfilling. Even if the PCs are new to the local (often the case) I tend to design settings that will as a matter of course tend to heavily involve the PCs in local affairs with the specific intent of giving the players a skin in the local game, as it were.

I think this is very valuable and to an extent we have overplayed the importance of the rootless wanderer in these campaigns. I always like having things like local sects, the players affiliated with organizations, family relationships, etc. Rob might not have highlighted this but it was also a feature of his Majestic Wilderlands sessions we participated in. I find when characters do explore in these kinds of games, it is often motivated by these types of connections.

 

[Bedrockgames]

D&D takes REH's model of Conan - the rootless wanderer, who comes from a land ("Cimmeria") that is purely mythical in the context of the stories themselves (we meet no other Cimmerians, we never see Conan living in Cimmeria) - and generalises it across the whole player character population.

One thing I would add about this though is Conan is very episodic which lends itself well to the rootless wanderer (though in some stories he clearly has roots and responsibilities). But D&D is week to week, and each session builds on the previous one, so while I think it is true most characters in a standard D&D campaign start out as rootless wanderers, over time they tend to establish roots. And lots of people tire of the rootless wanderer trope and try to establish more connections at character creation.

Also wanderers don't have to be rootless. Wuxia is filled with characters who wander around fighting protecting the weak and contending with corrupt officials and people who use power to exploit. But they are often characters with very strong roots in a martial organization (i.e. Wudang, Shaolin, Plum Blossom Island, etc), roots under master or group of masters, and powerful family connections (the character in return of Condor heroes is the son of the villain of the first book and is adopted by his father's sworn brother, the first books hero, then placed into the care of a Daoist sect). That can absolutely work in a D&D context. I suppose one could call it a contrivance, but it also a lot more like the kinds of real connections people have in life.