How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[pemerton]

Yeah, it's like shutting down a seriously-minded gaming discussion by playing the "pretending to be an elf" card. It feels rude to me.

As I said to Maxperson, please produce the posts.

 

[pemerton]

You want what to be visible?

If the rule of the game is the GM may describe the scene, and may or may not call for a roll, and will narrate something based on an ineffable combination of what they think, what the players roll, what questions the players ask, and what the players say their PCs do - well, I would like that to be visible to me, so that I know to avoid that game.

 

[pemerton]

I'm talking about the idea that all information must flow from the DM, and should be doled out only when "appropriate". This is a pretty common take on more trad minded games, and is a sentiment that has been expressed often in this very thread, and countless others.

So if a player came to you at the beginning of your current adventure and asked you to hand over all information on the BBEG, you would give it to them without any strings?

To answer on @hawkeyefan's behalf - no.

You, @Corinnguard, seem to have committed a logical fallacy. Hawkeyefan has criticised the notion that all information must flow from the GM, to be handed out when appropriate. This does not entail that no information should flow from the GM.

 

[pemerton]

Hopefully someone can make sense of this and I haven’t gone off the deep end.

I think I did. Brilliant post! And - to my mind - fits exactly with what I was posting, upthread, in response to @Lanefan's undescribed-but-present flies and undescribed-and-absent cigarette butts. There is nothing in that that pertains to realism per se; it all pertains to a particular approach to game play, based around the players asking salient questions of the GM.

In some sense all Gamist characters are hyper rational and all Narrativist characters are emotional wrecks.

This too!

I mean exciting to them, I find it unbearably tedious. I want to do theatre kid stuff.

And this!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If the rule of the game is the GM may describe the scene, and may or may not call for a roll, and will narrate something based on an ineffable combination of what they think, what the players roll, what questions the players ask, and what the players say their PCs do - well, I would like that to be visible to me, so that I know to avoid that game.

I see. I think in many games that is merely logical outcome of how the rules are structured. Perhaps apart the ineffable part, I don't think thought processes of most people are particularly ineffable.

Could you elaborate on what you find unappealing about this?

 

[pemerton]

Could you elaborate on what you find unappealing about this?

Well, I've posted about it a lot and you've read and replied to many of those posts.

It puts the whole game under the control of the GM. The players' principle contribution is to provide colour.

It is possible (though I think, in practice, not easy - as the history of the hobby bears out) to put more discipline around the GM process - so that what the GM says, and when they call for a roll, is regulated in a fashion that also is knowable to the players. Then we get either (B) or (C) from @thefutilist's recent post - "escape room" play or mechanics-light/free investigative play.

I prefer either of those to GM-controlled play, but neither is especially appealing to me either.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, I've posted about it a lot and you've read and replied to many of those posts.

It puts the whole game under the control of the GM. The players' principle contribution is to provide colour.

Yes, you have said things like this before. And I have disagreed.

It is possible (though I think, in practice, not easy - as the history of the hobby bears out) to put more discipline around the GM process - so that what the GM says, and when they call for a roll, is regulated in a fashion that also is knowable to the players. Then we get either (B) or (C) from @thefutilist's recent post - "escape room" play or mechanics-light/free investigative play.

I prefer either of those to GM-controlled play, but neither is especially appealing to me either.

It is regulated in a fashion that also is knowable to the players: the fiction has arrived to such a situation that there is uncertainty about the outcome.

And in case of knowledge or perception, this uncertainty of outcome might be triggered without an obvious action declaration from the player, beyond merely declaring that they move into an area where the observation might take place.

I’m taking about simple facts that you usually either know or don’t, no much pondering involved, but what’s in doubt whether you know it in the first place.

I discussed this earlier, you liked the post above. A PC sees a thing. There is uncertainty of whether PC knows what the thing is. A roll is made.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't play any RPGs that focus on creating a particular narrative. (I would like to play My Life With Master, but have not yet had the chance to do so.)

I'm not really sure what "simulation in a physical sense" means in your usage. The last time I remember my group using a scientific paper to inform our action resolution was playing Traveller, when we needed to work out how long it would take the blasts of a triple beam laser turret to melt through 4 km of ice. Admittedly, a session or two later, one of the engineers in our group complained that a particular sci-fi electric field barrier in a doorway made no sense. And the whole game is premised on the (impossible) fact of FTL travel.

As I think I already mentioned upthread, in Wuthering Heights when we wanted to know how far it was from Soho to the Thames we Googled up a map of London. In Prince Valiant we have used maps of Europe and West Asia c 800 CE to get a general sense of where the PCs are as they travel.

Burning Wheel, Torchbearer 2e and Prince Valiant - three of my favourite RPGs - all use "objective" difficulties for checks, in the sense that the difficulty is built up out of a consideration of the various elements of the fiction that "oppose" the acting character. (Eg when cooking, these might be the quality of the ingredients and the number of persons to be fed; when climbing these would include the smoothness of the surface being climbed, its incline, its height, etc; when riding down a foe on horseback these would include the relative speed and stamina of the two horses; etc, etc.)

The play procedures I've described in my previous three paragraphs - using a scientific paper to answer a question in play; using maps of the real world to coordinate the events in the fiction; establishing "objective" difficulties by reference to established elements of the fiction - are all things that might be described as "simulation in a physical sense".

I've mentioned some of the games that I favour. It's not hard to find actual play reports, by me, on these boards, of the play of these games.

Wuthering Heights does require that each character have something which flutters in the breeze (a scarf, a kilt, whatever). I guess this is a type of (parodic) genre emulation. On the other hand, there is nothing in Burning Wheel that involves genre emulation that is any different from any version of D&D; and its approach to PC generation produces character far more "grounded" in a detailed sense of ordinary life than any process of creating D&D characters that I'm aware of. A knight in Prince Valiant does not emulate a genre any more than does a paladin or ranger or cavalier in AD&D, and possibly less (one of the knights in our game started as a squire, is a handy pick-pocket, and is not a particularly puissant fighter or battle captain). Classic Traveller doesn't emulate genre any more than any other typical sci-fi game that I'm aware of.

So I don't think your description of the RPGs that I favour is really very accurate.

Then how would you describe the character of the games you favor then? In general; no need for a play report.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Assuming it is a mediaeval-type setting, I would assume that the door is latched rather than having a modern handle. That seems more realistic to me!

I'm with you on that, but how would you address the actual point they're making here?

 

[Micah Sweet]

As I said to Maxperson, please produce the posts.

I never said it was you.