How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Pedantic]

Out of curiosity, do you demand to know the DC of skill checks before you make them in play? Do you need to know the AC and hit points and saving throw values of the monsters and enemies? Do dice rolls "in the tower" bother you?

The DCs of skill checks should be determined knowably and mechanically from the situation. A player should be well within bounds to say "but you said a rough stone wall, which puts it at a DC 15, unless it's wet or there's an extenuating circumstance." That player is perhaps a pedant, but not a problem. The values of stats for monsters and NPCs should be determined in a similar manner, assuming the GM is properly isolating their jobs as animator of NPCs and setting builder.

I've always found the guessing game of gathering an enemy's exact AC after a few hits pretty silly, and weirdly uneven, in that the information problem is reversed for saving throws. I encourage a robust set of analysis/monster/NPC knowledge skills to know the information upfront, and I hand it out clearly as it comes up in combat if those rolls fail.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Especially when you are dealing with a setting where magic, planes of existence and the divine is very real. As for the trio of questions, the answers for each one is most certainly going to be a no. What the character does know is that they are willing to take a risk at making that running jump. As for succeeding, well that's where the skill check comes into play.

But they point is likely they should--well, perhaps not "know" but at least have an idea. They're probably physically active people who run around the wilderness and deal with obstacles in the outfit they're in all the time. It shouldn't be a blind guess.

 

[Pedantic]

I've argued before that "immersion" is best understood as limiting the space between player and character decision making. I want to play the game in front of me well, and expect the rules to thereby mirror my character acting competently and trying to achieve their goals. Immersion suffers when I have to split myself to make decisions in two different modes.

This is best achieved with full rules transparency. It's all but inevitable that some decision I tried to make as my character was clearly incorrect otherwise, and my character is retroactively rendered incompetent.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've argued before that "immersion" is best understood as limiting the space between player and character decision making. I want to play the game in front of me well, and expect the rules to thereby mirror my character acting competently and trying to achieve their goals. Immersion suffers when I have to split myself to make decisions in two different modes.

This is best achieved with full rules transparency. It's all but inevitable that some decision I tried to make as my character was clearly incorrect otherwise, and my character is retroactively rendered incompetent.

I'll still defend that there are cases where some information is simply not available on a character level, and thus there's some opaqueness to the decision that's entirely appropriate, but otherwise I agree with you, and thing the former is not-infrequently argued for situations it should not apply to.

 

[Campbell]

Speaking personally the right sorts of character sheets enhance my immersion because they point me back to the things that matter to my character.

In Blades this includes Vice, Trauma, Relationships, Heritage and Belief.
In L5R (5e) this includes Duty/Desire, Honor, Glory, Passions, Anxieties, Relationships.
In Vampire it features Nature, Demeanor, Concept, Virtue and Vice.
In Masks it includes labels that reflect how my character sees themselves, what emotional state they are in and who has influence over them.

I would not expect this to be universally true, but cues that remind me of who my character is as a person absolutely help get me back into the right mindset.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I've noted, "the real world" doesn't mean much in many cases, either. You've got a 6' wide gap you're trying to jump across. Do you have any idea how hard that is with a running jump? How about a running jump for someone with the physical traits of your character? How about all of that with those physical traits and the equipment the character has? I'm going to suggest in many cases neither the GM nor the player actually knows that; it might be something certain kinds of outdoorsmen or current or ex-infantry might have a better clue about, but in most circumstances neither of them may be those.

So just describing something like that is often pretty much useless, since you have two different people making estimates from fundamentally uneducated positions, and thus are likely either completely arbitrary or colored by their readings and watching of things, many of which may be fiction.

The situations where many things that adventuring characters do relates enough to enough real world experience for players is vanishingly small in many cases.

You work it out between you until there's a compromise, with the goal of approximating the real world to the best of both of your knowledge. Maybe do some research?

If that sort of thing is valuable to you. It of course doesn't have to be, but not caring about that doesn't make people who do wrong.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In some respects, you're probably better off there than using the "real world" as a basis in many cases.

Sure, if there's a difference. If instead you're talking about rules for genre emulation, then I do not agree, at least not in a classic or trad D&D-like game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"Valid" is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Let's just say I never found it particularly good even back then. People can play as they wish of course, but as a general policy its an approach then when applied broadly I consider to be counterproductive and in some senses, harmful.

You are welcome to feel that way, but I would expect pushback, especially if you yuck other people's yum with words like "counterproductive" and "harmful".

 

[Micah Sweet]

But they point is likely they should--well, perhaps not "know" but at least have an idea. They're probably physically active people who run around the wilderness and deal with obstacles in the outfit they're in all the time. It shouldn't be a blind guess.

Who said it was? The players should IMO act on information their PCs have access to. That can easily include a solid idea of how easy or difficult common tasks undertaken by an adventurer are.

 

[Corinnguard]

I would not expect this to be universally true, but cues that remind me of who my character is as a person absolutely help get me back into the right mindset.

5e has Personality, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws.
Level Up has it's Origins section- Heritage, Culture, Background and Destiny.

So both the 5e and the A5e character sheets do have something to help you immerse into the role-playing aspect of the game, and point to who your character is. The rest comes from how you as a player performs as your character during a gaming session.