Why do RPGs have rules?

[Campbell]

@clearstream

If you wanted to honestly ponder and engage in a conversation about these things, I would hope that you would engage with Vincent's accounts of his Ars Magica game or ask questions about my own freeform experience. I would also hope you would offer up some relevant principles, way of organizing play, etc. Not just make assertions based on accounts you are not sharing from people you might know. Like how am I supposed to engage with your ponderings when you give me nothing to actually engage with?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A game designer is capable of conceiving it as a choice, therefore it is possible for us to choose it. Unless we suppose that only choices made for us by others are choices none of us would choose... which is something I discussed up-thread in relation to GM as lusory-means.

Right, but as (I think) @Campbell , @Manbearcat , @pemerton (I hope they won't mind me borrowing their voice a tiny bit) and myself seem to all be saying, this is not the best way to go about writing and playing an RPG if your goal is to pull it off reliably, especially as a set of instructions to a heterogeneous population of groups who might approach playing that game. FF play is great, and I have engaged in it too at times (usually with some mild light rules as a starting point, like PACE). However, the people engaged in that were a select group! As I suspect were VB and Co. in their play. Not to say always super experienced RPGers, I know people who have barely played at all who can cut it. In fact I think MOST people, with the correct group, can probably do it if they want, though some might not care to.

(Emphasis mine.) Isn't this a reiteration of @AbdulAlhazred's point above?

Remarkable how great minds think alike!

For my part, I'm speaking from practice, about what I witness and what has been described to me. I'm interested in understanding what I observe with a view to incorporating it with greater intentionality into future play.

Well, if you observe a high readiness amongst people to inject, even readily envisage, what is unwelcome and conflict driving vs comforting and conflict defusing/avoiding, you hang with a crowd that is, IME very unusual. Of course, VB and Co. may well describe such a group of people, though I suspect what they found, and the text seems to support this, is that they needed to develop cues and principals in order to really make it work well. Lest we forget: The ultimate result of this play is the authoring of Apocalypse World, not a treatise on FF play!

One can have rules that depend on a single person, and principles that don't. Why suppose one more than the other?

I think @Campbell may have phrased that in a way which invited your interpretation. I think that what is meant is 'one single person in the moment'. That is, someone will take charge of the antagonism in any given exchange. It may be a singular person all the time, or it may be someone picked or simply stepping up in each instance. It really doesn't change the point AFAICT. OTOH I find it telling that AW settles on a single GM.

 

[clearstream]

Well, what the heck does "that's what would happen" mean? These are fundamentally fantasy games, even the more 'grounded in reality' ones generally are NOT literally realistic in many respects. So, 'would' clearly is doing some other work in this phrase than it does if we apply the same test to the real world (IE if you run a climate simulation the outcomes are indicative of what WILL actually happen, or perhaps what WOULD happen given a specific scenario). In an RPG 'would' can only be something much different, like "something which satisfies us in some way." NOTE the difference between this and 'welcome' or 'unwelcome'!

The game in question was longrunning freeform in a unique world. From what the participants have said about it, they developed a shared sense of "what would happen" in their world. To my observation that's common in freeform play.

But yes, the conclusion we agree on, you COULD, in theory, play a pure FF game (can it be called a game if it is entirely FF in a true sense, and not just the product of unwritten rules?)

(Emphasis mine.) Freeform has to be played to unwritten rules. Generally, I embrace a view "that linguistic meaning and/or intentional content are essentially normative."

where the participants are disciplined in their contributions such that 'substantive' and thus in my experience really satisfying, play happens.

I agree with you that it takes discipline. As I've said elsewhere, conviction and commitment, too.

I just don't think that's an observation that is at all useful in a discussion of how to write games. They clearly have rules in order to reliably achieve satisfactory play and tell us what 'would happen'.

(Emphasis mine.) Contemporary TTRPG designers make use of both rules and principles. Rules alone do not reliably achieve satisfactory play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The game in question was longrunning freeform in a unique world. From what the participants have said about it, they developed a shared sense of "what would happen" in their world. To my observation that's common in freeform play.

Identify where the 'unwelcome' and 'unexpected' came from, that would be the key.

(Emphasis mine.) Contemporary TTRPG designers make use of both rules and principles. Rules alone do not reliably achieve satisfactory play.

Whoever said otherwise?

 

[clearstream]

@clearstream

If you wanted to honestly ponder and engage in a conversation about these things,

Why on Earth would I spend time here dishonestly pondering and engaging in conversation about these things?! It sometimes feels like the first thing I have to do is defend my right to interrogate and discuss things that interest me. That's exhausting. What I'm interested in here is the work done by principles. TTRPG designers no longer assume that rules alone will reliably achieve the play they intend.

I would hope that you would engage with Vincent's accounts of his Ars Magica game or ask questions about my own freeform experience. I would also hope you would offer up some relevant principles, way of organizing play, etc. Not just make assertions based on accounts you are not sharing from people you might know. Like how am I supposed to engage with your ponderings when you give me nothing to actually engage with?

This is somewhat surprising to read, given that it was me who introduced the relevant blogpost with its linked references to this thread. Having read them I felt they were salient. You can see where some of VB's observations cited in the OP came from, in comments by Emily Care. Consider

Having such a small group helped keep us going for that long I think. Especially since there were so many characters and so many plot threads. But we did play with another group that had 8-11 players long term. I think they hit different issues than we did. Our main issues, in the end, were around providing long-term adversity.

The blogpost I linked in my #2603 draws a distinction between FKR and other forms of principled freeform. I accept Pemerton's view "that FKR is a special case of principled and/or procedural freeform: one in which the principles and procedures centre one participant - the GM/referee - in a distinctive fashion." I know of three examples of extended (years or decades long) GM-d freeform where intense play incorporated the unwelcome and unwanted to all players. In that sort of play, a notable risk is that some occasion of the unwelcome could feel imposed rather than emergent. By contrast, the AM play described appears to be that of GMing for one another (I recall VB saying as much, somewhere). I don't know if that should be seen as GM-less or not: what do you think?

VB remarks in one comment

The purpose of system isn't to prolong in-character conflicts of interest against their own resolution. It's to preserve them so that they escalate and resolve, instead of letting them evaporate in a cloud of player-level good will.

I think here that he is still referring to his experiences with AM. Procedure (appoint a GM) can sustain the unwelcome and unwanted for all players (no written rules required.) Recollect that I have suggested counting GM among lusory-means, i.e. consider them in the same light as mechanics. I don't know why, but folk haven't really engaged with this... i.e. that promotion of the unwelcome and unwanted has to be located in the lusory-means, and can only be meaningfully unwelcome/unwanted to players. This is all consistent with remarks I've made elsewhere about game-as-artifact being a tool for fabricating play. In two of the examples I am thinking of, an important GM job was procuring that players escalate their conflicts rather than resolving them in clouds of good will. (PvP has always been on the table for us in freeform... have your experiences been similar?)

Looking over the above, I would be delighted to read your contrasting experiences. To start with, what sort of FF have you been engaged in - using the distinctions explained in the blogpost?

 

[clearstream]

VB wrote

What I want to talk about is why good rpg design is better than fully functional undesigned play.

You have a small group of friends. You're all skilled collaborators. You know how to negotiate with one another in matters of creativity; you have productive collaborative relationships with one another outside of gaming. Further, you're all committed to the game, you're dedicated to making it fun for one another, and each of you is very interested in what the others have to say.

You've been roleplaying without formal rules, relying on open collaboration, for some years. You use dice occasionally, as a collaborative tool, but improvisationally - you don't even have character sheets with numbers on 'em. It's been the best roleplaying you've ever had.

What does game design have to offer you?

What a bunch of other games do is stop short. They establish our agreement about what's happening right this second, they contribute to our shared interest in the characters and setting - and that's it. They don't provoke us. I can, by the rules, back off your character's issues, let the conflicts fizzle, compromise and go easy, and we sit there going "I dunno, what do you wanna do?" all night. Or just as bad, the dull "things work out for the best this time too" characteristic of Star Trek: the Next Generation and games where we all like each other's characters and nobody's provoked by the rules to inflict pain.

Simon wrote

For example, escaping the Dragon. I don't really see how the fictional conflicts are being maintained.

In the thread you say: "Once we'd gotten the whole dice mechanism in place, it was obvious that our characters couldn't lose in the long run, not with Emily's d20. Which was just fine, which was ideal in fact: none of us wanted our characters to lose. We wanted to see how they survived, and what it showed us about them. Knowing that the dragon wouldn't kill them didn't hurt the suspense at all."

So the conflict with the Dragon isn't really being maintained, yeah? Because it's not what matters? The dice are stacked in your favour, and even if you lose there are no stakes attached, so it's just pacing.

Emily wrote

Using improvised system, our group engages in a lot of exploration of system. Hitting walls like that one give us the clue that we need to use a different technique. And if the next one we try doesn't work, we modify it or use another, until we are satisfied that the ball is nicely pumped. We don't have a pre-constructed structure for our drama, but instead develop system elements as we find we need them.

It's common in freeform to articulate rules on the fly for i. prompting what to say, and ii. choosing between the welcome and unwelcome. You can achieve i. without achieving ii. Designing rules doesn't guarantee ii. It is only when rules are used in accord with principles that one reliably sees ii. Principles say how players ought to make use of the rules.

GM is one means of procuring the unwelcome and unwanted for players. They can be effective in that role, and they can do it without rules to the extent that they are made to embody them. Consistent with the above, they cannot do it without solid principles in place, but they can also benefit from rules (the lack of either can lead to what some characterise as "weak sauce" play".)

Game design is capable of offering principles. Apocalypse World (AW) does. Will the unwelcome and unwanted reliably come into play using AW rules, when its principles are not followed? The introduction of GM moves also significantly (maybe crucially*) helps drive ii.

*If - as often happens - we're relying on GM as our means of procuring the unwelcome and unwanted for players, consistent with their positioning (to some extent) among lusory-means (freeing them to act cavalierly) or at least with alternative prelusory-goals, then it becomes crucial that they're compelled to deliver the unwelcome.

The GM had yay-or-nay authority, but the social dynamic was such that a "nay" would've been outrageous.

I don't want to hurt your character and then point to the rules and say "they, they made me hurt your character!" That's not what I'm getting at.

To your earlier point, @AbdulAlhazred. Rules provide a social prophylactic, but VB at least wants to go further

I want, if I don't hurt your character, I want you to point to the rules and say, "hey, why didn't you follow the rules? Why did you cheat and let my guy off the hook? That sucked." I want the rules to create a powerful expectation between us - part of our unity of interest - that I will hurt your character. Often and hard.

The idea as VB put it is that you as player are calling out your GM for not saying "nay" to you. In a sense, the rule shepherds a principle into play (unity of interest), or reifies it.

NOTE EDITS As I figured out how to best put what I wanted to say.

@Campbell the above hopefully supplies the sort of material you wanted to get into. For me it's important to be sensitive to the principles folk usually don't even notice.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

VB wrote




Simon wrote


Emily wrote


It's common in freeform to articulate rules on the fly for i. prompting what to say, and ii. choosing between the welcome and unwelcome. You can achieve i. without achieving ii. Designing rules doesn't guarantee ii. It is only when rules are used in accord with principles that one reliably sees ii. Principles say how players ought to make use of the rules.

GM is one means of procuring the unwelcome and unwanted for players. They can be effective in that role, and they can do it without rules to the extent that they are made to embody them. Consistent with the above, they cannot do it without solid principles in place, but they can also benefit from rules (the lack of either can lead to what some characterise as "weak sauce" play".)

Game design is capable of offering principles. Apocalypse World (AW) does. Will the unwelcome and unwanted reliably come into play using AW rules, when its principles are not followed? The introduction of GM moves also significantly (maybe crucially*) helps drive ii.

*If - as often happens - we're relying on GM as our means of procuring the unwelcome and unwanted for players, consistent with their positioning (to some extent) among lusory-means (freeing them to act cavalierly) or at least with alternative prelusory-goals, then it becomes crucial that they're compelled to deliver the unwelcome.



To your earlier point, @AbdulAlhazred. Rules provide a social prophylactic, but VB at least wants to go further

The idea as VB put it is that you as player are calling out your GM for not saying "nay" to you. In a sense, the rule shepherds a principle into play (unity of interest), or reifies it.

NOTE EDITS As I figured out how to best put what I wanted to say.

@Campbell the above hopefully supplies the sort of material you wanted to get into. For me it's important to be sensitive to the principles folk usually don't even notice.

Can't speak for others, but I don't find anything especially new or controversial here, to be honest. As I said earlier, VB clearly saw the value in systematizing both process type rules, cues, and principles and practices in a fairly concrete form to produce a complete game which could be relatively reliably utilized to achieve something similar to the sort of play that seems to have happened in the FF gaming he and others refer to.

I find this to be quite effective. A couple weeks ago @Gilladian and I were playing Stonetop with @Manbearcat GMing. It was great, we were trying to find and rescue some people in the Great Forest. With mostly OK or good rolls we faced a series of obstacles which the GM came up with. The whole scenario was drawn from A) One PC is a ranger, so things related to the Great Forest are her speciality, and B) These hunters were tied into a figure whom Yorath, the Fox, is said to know out of his backstory (as a bit of a shady guy who's traveled). If we fail, Stonetop will have to deal with an angry, powerful NPC. Yorath also has a direct link to the lead hunter, who has a grudge against him!

This is all just spit out according to principles and moves that are pretty much straight out of DW or AW. We overcome the first set of obstacles, we think we're doing pretty good, but then the Pale Hunter appears! Our dice run cold, Yorath tries to bargain with him (using a playbook move that gives him advantage on these sorts of checks) but fails miserably (6- on best 2 of three dice, even with +2 CHA). The Hunter simply spirits away all four of the hunters, including Rennon (the one Yorath knows) and Rennon's son. Although we track them we continue a long string of bad rolls, it is all to no avail.

Later, during homefront, Bronwyn the ranger meets the Pale Hunter near the forest edge, and again tries to bargain for Rennon's Son, but to little avail, the Hunter merely agrees to keep him alive, but states that "This will be no mercy!"

Now we need to go appease Mave, the Marshedge heavy who was behind the whole thing, triggering a whole new series of adventures. In all this our playbooks get leaned on pretty heavily. Yorath knows people, he can make connections. Bronwyn is highly adept at fieldcraft, and now we have a Marshal character, Donal, who has his own interesting past and various drivers (plus a rather unruly crew of men). Yorath has now managed to recruit a close childhood friend as a follower, etc.

You can see how these techniques and guidance work. When we encounter some pilgrims at a pilgrimage site the GM describes them as 'Lygosians' (people from some far southern place that is half mythical to us). Yorath decides to use his magical tricks and 'Irresistable' move to get in with the lady pilgrims (we want to travel with them, it's safer). @Manbearcat describes the leader, a Lygosian Noble, who has 4 strong litter bearers. The danger here is obvious! We've been presented with an opportunity, coupled with a risk, those litter bearers look fairly tough, and the noble is young, but no idiot. However, Yorath's instinct is Trickery - To decieve, misdirect, outthink: He's absolutely going for it! We will Play to Find Out what happens next!

Honestly, none of this is shocking or atypical play for a PbtA of this sort. Note how every situation is rich with potential, things can go right, they can go wrong, either way the story will move forward. Maybe we smoothly travel without incident with the Lygosians to Marshedge, quite possible! Either we're heading into danger in Marshedge, or we'll get into it with the Lygosians, or some situation on the road. It doesn't matter, the world of Stonetop is filled with dangers!

 

[clearstream]

Can't speak for others, but I don't find anything especially new or controversial here, to be honest. As I said earlier, VB clearly saw the value in systematizing both process type rules, cues, and principles and practices in a fairly concrete form to produce a complete game which could be relatively reliably utilized to achieve something similar to the sort of play that seems to have happened in the FF gaming he and others refer to.

That doesn't seem right. The design moves emerge from critique of the FF play. They're not aiming for that sort of play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That doesn't seem right. The design moves emerge from critique of the FF play. They're not aiming for that sort of play.

You are referring to PbtA moves? OK, it is hard to say, actually. I mean we don't know exactly what form the outermost layers took. That is, I accept that FF ala Baker being a wholly unwritten practice with fairly ad hoc use of cues (IE dice seem to have been at least a part of that) we cannot say how close to PbtA's move structure that was in practice. I think it is safe to say that there was no list of moves, and thus there could not have been a rule of the form 'if you do it, you do it'. That is there wasn't a set of move trigger conditions to evaluate.

The uncertainty surrounding what would be evoked according to what fiction seems to me, however, to be a major contributor to the genesis of the idea of moves in a more formal way, and thus playbooks as a concept. In the FF play there MUST have been 'shticks' fictionally which PCs had. That is 'stuff that they could do that was special'. That might have arisen out of play, backstory, etc. but I would be pretty surprised, based on my own experience, if PCs didn't end up with some sort of repertoire, and probably some sort of archetype into which this roughly fit.

So, I think they ARE aiming for the type of play which arose out of the FF in some sense. That is, I don't think playing AW is exactly like the FF 'AM' campaign that VB describes. OTOH I think they are both producing pretty similar dramatic character trajectories, and where AW differs it is probably more in terms of 'getting there' more reliably than the FF did. It is basically saying "you have a 'thing' and in terms of the core typical tone of this game, here's how things usually go." This is not something you MUST have to play, but consider that most of the difference between AW and DW rests in the playbooks and moves, the rest is basically flavor.

 

[thefutilist]

My take on the Vincent thing is,

Really he’s talking about conflict resolution.

Whenever there is a conflict of interest between two characters, use a randomiser to decide which interest prevails.

The unwanted really only consists of the wrong characters interests being triumphant, in fact I think Vincent’s reasoning is probably post-hoc and happened upon examination of Ron Edwards designs (basically he was playing Sorcerer). Why does conflict resolution work so well? Because it brings about the unwanted but still compelling.

I think AW is a really terrible teaching text though and the wide spread interpretation of the text and many of the subsequent games turn it into: Intuitive continuity, aka no myth.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-do-you-create-story.140779/post-2430652


https://inky.org/rpg/no-myth.html


With the result that conflict resolution loses it’s bite. Why? Because in a closed and fixed situation any resolution has a knock on effect on the fictional positioning of the entirety of the situation. In a non fixed situation resolution will always be subject to what the GM decides to introduce next.

Ron Edwards general critique (He talks about AW from the 8:00 but it’s worthwhile watching the whole video to get context)




I slightly disagree with Ron about ‘why’ it’s bad, his main contentions are that it produces predictable plots that tend toward genre emulation and relies on GM force.

Anyway, this is all to say that if you use the AW resolution system as a conflict resolution system (not the improv content generator it often gets used as) and if you fix the situation, then it produces a very different type of game to FF games (as do all the good narrative games).