How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[soviet]

Eh, even specialists can not know or have forgotten the obscure. But that's just the issue--the obscure, which if it comes up all the time--its not all that obscure.

Sure, but note that I said 'almost always'. Occasionally it can be OK. But most times it's used it shouldn't be IMO.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but note that I said 'almost always'. Occasionally it can be OK. But most times it's used it shouldn't be IMO.

Well, I've mentioned elsewhere that knowledge type skills do not really work right when run like more active skills; like Pedantic I think you should have gatepoints based on rank and just use rolls for those cases where there's some reasonable uncertainty.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see how this Cthulhu example, as described, is either small-g or big-G gamist.

The gamist solution would be to try and invoke mechanics into this scene ASAP, wouldn't it?

From the post you quoted:

I’m one of the GNS faithful, I have a little shrine to Ron Edwards in my room and everything.

By "gamist", thefutilist means the same as what Ron Edwards does here: The Forge :: Gamism: Step On Up

The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world. . . .​

​

The in-game characters, armed with their skills, priorities, and so on, have to face a Challenge, which is to say, a specific Situation in the imaginary game-world. Challenge is about the strategizing, guts, and performance of the characters in this imaginary game-world.​

This has nothing in particular to do with rolling dice. As Edwards goes on to discuss,

Challenge is the Situation faced by the player-characters with a strong implication of risk. It can be further focused into applications, which individually tend toward one of these two things:

The Gamble occurs when the player's ability to manipulate the odds or clarify unknowns is seriously limited. "Hold your nose and jump!" is its battle-cry. Running a first-level character in all forms of D&D is a Gamble . . . More locally, imagine a crucial charge made by a fighter character toward a dragon - his goal is to distract it from the other character's coordinated attack, and he's the only one whose hit points are sufficient to survive half its flame-blast. Will he make the saving roll? If he doesn't, he dies. Go!

The Crunch occurs when system-based strategy makes a big difference, either because the Fortune methods involved are predictable (e.g. probabilities on a single-die roll), or because effects are reliably additive or cancelling (e.g. Feats, spells). Gamist-heavy Champions play with powerful characters is very much about the Crunch. The villain's move occurs early in Phase 3; if the speed-guy saves his action from Phase 2 into Phase 3 to pre-empt that action, and if the brick-guy's punch late on Phase 3 can be enhanced first by the psionic-guy's augmenting power if he Pushes the power, then we can double-team the villain before he can kill the hostage.

The distinction between Gamble and Crunch isn't quite the same as "randomness;" it has more to do with options and consequences. Fortune can be involved in both of them, and it doesn't have to be involved in either (see Diplomacy for a non-RPG example).​

The sort of CoC scenario thefutilist describes is "gamble" if the players don't know the conventions for asking and answering question that the GM is following, and hence have to ask questions essentially randomly, poking in the dark hoping to get the information they want before they declare an action that self-destructs the whole library, or brings the cultists swarming in, or whatever.

It is "crunch" if the players are able to ask questions in a systematic fashion, understanding the conventions that govern the way the GM provides answers. Thus, a bit like Edwards's example from Champions, the players can home in on the information they want - which book has the ritual in it, and what does it do? - while avoiding producing consequences that they don't want - inadvertent summonings, swarming cultists and the like.

 

[Lanefan]

I prefer a game in which the player declares actions for their PC, and then - depending on the action declared - there are shared principles that tell us whether or not a roll is to be made.

The "shared principles" piece might vary widely from system to system as to what those principles (or rules) are, but otherwise doesn't this narrow it down to pretty much every RPG out there?

For me, it's more the player declares actions for their PC and then - depending on the action declared - the GM and rules system can and will seamlessly and consistently back each other up in their joint determination (by whatever means) of what happens next.

Your post that I liked didn't say that the GM may declare an action for the player.

Assuming that a PC does what seems blindingly obvious is an easy trap to fall into. The flip side, however, is having to wait for every little action to be declared, no matter how trivial; and that can grind things to a halt in a hurry.

For example: in my upthread description of the seedy room with the drunk man I-as-GM assumed the PCs would, having just opened the door, look into the room; because it's the obvious thing to do. Does that assumption play too much hell with player agency? One could argue it does, and that I should have waited for a player to say "I [or we] look into the room". But one could also argue the other way; that concedng that bit of agency in favour of skipping that trivial step is acceptable.

 

[Lanefan]

If the GM, in framing the scene, wants the player to recognise the statue, then tell them.

If the GM doesn't tell them, then if the player nevertheless wants to know what the statue is, they can declare an action - which may represent cudgelling their wits, or may represent instantaneous recollection (the difference between the two may be mere colour, or it may be worked out - and have its consequences worked out - by reference to other parts of the system).

But the idea that the GM would narrate the statue, and then tell the players to make rolls before they have declared any actions, is extremely unappealing to me. It seems to cut the player out of the play of the game!

If however the GM wants to have it be (or previous events in play have somehow made it) an open question whether anyone in the party will recognize the statue when they see it, then calling for a roll in mid-narration seems like a good way to do it.

 

[Lanefan]

Possibly a side note but I think that 'roll to see if you know what this is' is almost always bad play. IRL people either have knowledge of a subject or they don't. The idea that any random person has a 5% chance of knowing something, or that people who operate in the relevant field and have the relevant expertise still have an X% chance of not knowing something, is preposterous. Even more preposterous is that my character's experience and knowledge is therefore in a quantum state of uncertainty, and I as a player don't know what my character knows or doesn't know. In actual play of 5e I quite often refuse to make these 'recognise statue' rolls when I don't think my fighter/barbarian would have any chance of knowing something.

In reality, I could walk into the British Museum and look at a statue of someone. It's an open question whether I'll recognize who it's a statue of, as I might never have otherwise seen the subject or might have forgotten who it is.

All your non-Dwarven PCs rolling into a tomb containing a statue of Clanggedon would likely be in a similar state, unless someone had Dwarven religion knowledge...except unlike the British Museum, there wouldn't be a handy plaque on or near the statue giving the name and relevance of the person thus depicted.

 

[pemerton]

Without rigorous system definition, you end up in the same place all generic skill systems get you, with a GM deciding how high you need to roll, and designing the results of success or failure on the fly.

This seems unrelated to my point, which is not about how difficulties are set nor about how consequences are established but rather who decides that the player-side action resolution processes (including the mechanics, if any) are now applicable.

How do you handle perception? Do the players constantly need to declare “alertness actions” in case of there is something to perceive?

Well, I follow the rules of the game that I'm GMing, to the extent that they are clear.

Where they are not entirely clear - eg Prince Valiant - I apply what I think are principles appropriate to the play experience I want. So when running Prince Valiant, I tend to apply Burning Wheel principles, given that I see the two games as fairly similar in their core.

In Prince Valiant, BW and Torchbearer 2e, if a character declares a Perception/Assess/Observation-type action, then that is resolved applying the general principles: we need to know what is at stake, and if the roll succeeds then the PC succeeds as per the players' intention, while if the roll fails than the GM is licensed to bring in something adverse.

If the situation is such that the GM is licensed to bring home some consequence to a player's character, then - sometimes, where it fits - I might call for a check (in effect, a saving throw in the classic D&D sense) to blunt it: a roll to dodge a falling block, or a roll to spot the assassin just as they strike, or whatever.

But ignorance of what a statue is a statue of isn't (normally, at least as I see it) a consequence being brought home, so doesn't trigger a saving throw.

 

[soviet]

In reality, I could walk into the British Museum and look at a statue of someone. It's an open question whether I'll recognize who it's a statue of, as I might never have otherwise seen the subject or might have forgotten who it is.

I dunno, if I went into the Museum with a bunch of friends lacking any specific knowledge skills but sharing a similar cultural background, it seems unlikely that every statue will randomly get recognised by half the group and not the other. Most likely some statues will be recognisable enough that we all get it, and some will be obscure enough that none of us do.

The other issue is that there are absolutely no interesting stakes to this roll.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The other issue is that there are absolutely no interesting stakes to this roll.

Bingo!

That's the big thing for me. There needs to be some kind of stakes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What is the actual point?

That the trope " Reality until proven otherwise" is a viable gaming/worldbuilding principle.