How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Thomas Shey]

You know through trial and error, if it comes to it, so long as you're getting accurate description from the GM.

So you've had to figure this out from the situation where the GM is being coy with the information across time, and deal with all the failure states along the way?

And people wonder why I say this is a bad approach.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Like I said I speak for myself, not for "people".

Where in this context, I don't care what an individual does, I care what people as a set do.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Players should know the general rules of the game (task resolution, conditions etc), what the numeric values represent (is bravery 12 good or bad,) numeric values of their own character, as well as special rules of their character (spells, features etc.) They don't need to know special rules or numeric values of other characters or NPCs (what this enemy is vulnerable to, what sort of powers it has etc,) unless their character gains knowledge of the fiction these rules represent.

Also, as I like rules to be representation of the fictional reality, knowledge of rules can also simulate knowledge of that fictional reality. For example an experienced adventurer would be far better than anyone at the table at gauging the difficulty of climbing a wall they can freely observe, so we can simulate this by letting the player know the DC before committing to the climb.

 

[MGibster]

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?

A six foot gap doesn't seem like a lot until you realize missing it will lead you to a sixty foot plummet. And a lot of real people, me included, have a limited frame of reference when it comes to what one might be capable of in real life. I remember years ago sitting around my local game store and we were all talking about movement speed. I don't know how it happened, but a bunch of people in the store disagreed with one guy who said he could run from the game store to the nearby grocery store and back in less than a minute. The concensus among most of the people there was that it would take him at least two minutes to make the trip and this guy put his money where his mouth was and bet them he could do it in a minute. Not me, I thought he was right. It took him 40 seconds to make the trip and he ended up making $20.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is more than what the PC knows.

Suppose there is a hidden pit on the other side of the wall, which a character might fall into if they drop or fall while climbing. The PC won't know that possible consequence (assuming they fail to notice the pit).

As a player, though, I want to know whether that sort of hidden consequence is on the table. I mean, in classic dungeon-crawling D&D it generally is, and that heavily informs how the game is played: Find Traps spells, wands of trap detection, pushing sheep ahead of you through the dungeon to trigger the pit traps, etc.

In most of the RPGs that I play these days it isn't - or, at least, that sort of "hard move" is gated behind a soft move/hard move structure.

As a player, I need to know what sort of RPG I'm playing, and what sorts of methods the GM is using to determine what is at stake in situations, before I can decide how to approach the game i a sensible fashion.

Of course you should what sort of things could happen to your PC, and that's why I'm a strong advocate for a mission statement from the designers; a sort text equivalent to session 0, so everyone knows what they're getting into. Not sure where we disagree here, as that understanding doesn't require the player have a firm grounding in anything beyond what their PC is capable of, save the game design goals themselves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you've had to figure this out from the situation where the GM is being coy with the information across time, and deal with all the failure states along the way?

And people wonder why I say this is a bad approach.

I don't wonder why you believe its a bad approach (people can of course believe whatever they want), I just don't see any value in bad-mouthing someone else's preference. Are they damaging your gaming experience by playing differently from you?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Where in this context, I don't care what an individual does, I care what people as a set do.

Why? What difference does it make to you the preference of people you aren't going to be gaming with? If it's just curiosity, I can't see any benefit to playing the popularity game here.

 

[bloodtide]

A door in which it must be passed to continue the adventure is just bad GMing.

Only in vague statements.

I expect that few players find pretending to not know about fire until some arbitrary trigger is introduced to the fiction that makes it okay to be very fun. That’s really crappy encounter design, and really poor awareness on the GM’s part.

I agree. I do "reverse metagaming" : I let the players know whatever they want to read in the rulebooks and let their characters know all it too. Of course, it does not matter as I do run a "by the book" sort of game. So when a player shoots fire at a troll they get all shocked when the troll absorbs the fire and splits into three trolls. They player will whine and cry saying "but page 111" says whatever endlessly.

And a lot of real people, me included, have a limited frame of reference when it comes to what one might be capable of in real life.

This is so true. And it's on both sides....so many people think so many things are impossible or possible. It's amazing to meet someone and have them say "it's impossible to run in the woods at night as you will auto hit a tree" or "you can climb a tree in full plate mail holding a two handed sword in both hands".

I've done plenty over the years to prove things for fun. A famous one was jumping off a barn to prove to was possible to draw and arrow, aim, shoot and hit a target all while falling in mid air. And I did....I can do this. And I'm not "Hawkeye"...

For instance, I don't feel that it makes sense to say that a character has a charming personality, if few people that the character meets and interacts with are charmed by them.

I put this all on the player. It's up to the player to only make a character they can or are willing to role play. And it's up to the player to act the set way...

 

[payn]

Only in vague statements.

Nope, its always bad.

 

[Lanefan]

I would think more often than not, most characters have an AC that’s clearly observable. Will that occasionally not be the case? Yeah, sure. But I’d rather make players jump through hoops in those cases rather than all the time.

If they only have to jump through hoops some of the time, the very fact they're jumping through hoops will meta-alert them that this time something fishy's going on.

As I said above, it’s not based on info their characters don’t have. It’s based on what they can observe of their opponent and what they know of them and their world.

So the Ogre in chainmail… they know he’s wearing chainmail and they know he has a thick hide… so it’s AC 18. This reflects what they know. It’s not really about out of game knowledge.

They can see the Ogre's wearing chainmail and might assume it has a thick hide thus are free to guess at an AC of 18 if they like; and such educated guessing is perfectly realistic: the PCs are simply going by what they see.

Still doesn't mean I-as-DM have any immediate reason to say anything about that guess. The players might be bang-on right. Or, the Ogre might have a Dex modifier (for better or worse!) that doesn't become obvious for a few moments, or its armour might be in worse condition than it looks and not be giving full protection, or it might have learned how to parry with its club...there's any number of reasons why the book-standard AC might not apply to this particular Ogre. And therefore, I'm going to leave them guessing until they've figured it out through actually fighting the thing and seeing what it has going for/against it (by which time it'll almost certainly be dead anyway).