How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Maxperson]

Would you have interest at all in learning a game that requires you to learn how to run roleplaying games in a different way than you are used to or that are structured differently than you are used to? Do you actually want to learn a new game or just play basically the same game with minor variations?

Sure. I tried to learn that Dragonlance RPG that used cards instead of dice to make characters and play the game. It was structured very differently than D&D. I just couldn't find anyone to play it with.

Learning jargon is a lot like work, and I play RPGs to relax. I just don't want to do it.

Practically speaking, using jargon here on a forum is just asking for trouble. Sure the folks who have played that game will understand you, but the rest of us aren't unless you explain it in natural language anyway, so you might as well just post it originally in natural language.

 

[Maxperson]

But how can you be sure? There's no way to make any decisions without that knowledge. What if you actually pretend not to know longer than you would have not known had you not known? What if you're more capable of figuring something out than you think you would be? What then?!?!?

This kind of concern about "metagaming" is just silly. No matter what you do at that point, the out of character knowledge is influencing you. In fact, it's become the focus of the situation.

What's silly is calling someone's preferred way to play it silly.

Here's the thing, while you can't get rid of the influence 100%, you can do a lot to minimize it. That sort of influence is also not a dichotomy but falls on a scale. Just because I can't get rid of every smidge of influence doesn't make it okay for me to embrace it heart and soul.

 

[Campbell]

Sure. I tried to learn that Dragonlance RPG that used cards instead of dice to make characters and play the game. It was structured very differently than D&D. I just couldn't find anyone to play it with.

Learning jargon is a lot like work, and I play RPGs to relax. I just don't want to do it.

Practically speaking, using jargon here on a forum is just asking for trouble. Sure the folks who have played that game will understand you, but the rest of us aren't unless you explain it in natural language anyway, so you might as well just post it originally in natural language.

How would you propose we go about talking about these conceptually complex and novel approaches then? Don't talk about them is not really a suitable answer.

 

[Lanefan]

Is it?

In Gygaxian D&D, the purpose of prep includes - establishing statistics for monsters and traps, in anticipation of the need for action resolution mechanics to be applied; making decisions about what sorts of action declarations can succeed or fail (eg by deciding that a door is locked, or one way - so that the declaration "We open the door" will fail); making decisions about what actions must be declared in order to encounter certain content (eg the only way into this part of the dungeon is via this secret door).

A lot of this (perhaps not all of it) would be summed up by saying that the purpose of preparation, in that form of D&D, is to establish a location for the PCs (and, thereby, their players) to explore: this is the whole "hidden board" aspect of classic D&D play.

Which still boils down to "the purpose of prep being to give the GM something to say"; even more so when you include the GM's descriptions of those areas the PCs are exploring.

 

[Maxperson]

Does this mean that your fantasy character knows everything you do in RL?

Oddly enough, as much as I avoid metagaming as a general rule, I actually have one character that does know everything I know.

Many years ago one of the DM's I play with wanted us all to experience his father's DMing. He talked his dad up and told us how hard his dad's game was to survive in without a lot of skill and how good of a DM he was.

One day his father who had long since retired from DMing decided to run a game for my friend's birthday. We all showed up and made characters. I made a thief and decided on true neutral for alignment. I was given an NPC henchman who coincidentally was also a true neutral thief. My friend, though, had a special character. His father's story involved my friend himself being pulled into his dad's world at the same time as some anti-version of him was also drawn into the world. The prize for the player who did the best in the game was to have that character transported across the planes into my friend's game to be played there.

With the two of them in the same universe, what held his dad's universe together started to unravel. It was our quest to find the anti version of him and get both of them to leave our universe. We had to get them to a ziggurat and have them walk to the top where they would be moved back to where they came from.

During the trek we had to walk over a narrow beam that was above a magical pool. Some of us fell in and both I and my henchmen missed our saving throws and turned into a frog. Also turned into a frog was my buddy. Long story short, we made it to the ziggurat as frogs and people. At the top was a floating ring of mithril with a bowl underneath it. The cavern was caving in because the universe was ending soon. We learned that you had to be in perfect balance to ascend to the top or all was lost. My friend and the anti-version of him began walking up and I suddenly had the thought that since there were 4 ways up, we would need four people to ascend at the same time, so I had my henchman hop up one side and I hopped up the other.

As it turns out, the only thing that saved the universe from destruction was that both my henchman and I had true neutral alignments, so the balance was kept. Otherwise what I did would have doomed the world. Once we all got to the top my buddy and his anti version disappeared back to their universes and I was sitting there at the top at a loss for what to do. When my friend's dad asked me what I wanted to do, I told him that I hop into the bowl under the ring.

What none of us players knew was that the ring above the bowl powered all magic in his dad's universe, including the gods, and when I jumped into the bowl I got sucked inside of it, becoming the controlling consciousness behind everything. In short I turned into something like Ao of the Forgotten Realms. The first thing I did was looking into our real universe and see if my friend was still a frog. He was, so I turned him back human again. I also asked to learn more about my friend. The second thing I did was turn all of the rest of the frogs back. The third thing I did was look at the anti version, which was a mistake because of how the two universes clash. I missed a critical roll and got ejected from the ring and was dying. The group managed to save my life after my henchman dragged me back down the ziggurat and the game ended.

The group voted me as the one who did the best, because became a god seemed to be better than what the rest of them did. My character was duly transported into my friend's game, but he had knowledge of my friend and further, knew his history including about the game of D&D itself and players. It was decided that since he was aware of that and of both the DM and myself, that he would share knowledge through that connection. His alignment remained true neutral, because when you are aware that the entire multiverse you roam around doesn't really exist outside of the DM and players, law/chaos/good/evil become meaningless to you, because nothing you do truly matters. All outcomes are also pretend. Nobody really dies. Nobody really comes back to life. It's also very depressing for the PC, because you know you aren't real and don't really matter.

Outside of that one very unusual circumstance, I maintain a no metagaming stance as both a player and as a DM.

 

[Maxperson]

At the same time, a 1st level character has historically been set head and shoulders above most NPC's, who have been treated as 0-level or even have special NPC classes.

I realize that D&D today is a game where a humble town guard has 2d8 Hit Dice, but it wasn't always like this.

Not really. Back in 1e the only real difference between a level 0 guard and a 1st level fighter was hit points. Everyone needed a 20 to hit AC 0. And the guard could possibly put the fighter down with a single hit much of the time since 1st level hit points were rolled. If you weren't a fighter, that chance rose considerably.

PCs were slightly better than level 0 NPCs at 1st level, not head and shoulders above. Not until 3e anyway.

 

[Lanefan]

Could a 1st-level character be considered to be something a rube in D&D?

In early D&D, they can to a point. The casting classes have all had a long run of specialized training leading up to 1st level, but Fighters and Thieves can be rubes right off the farm or street and fit right in. 1e even introduced 0th-level rules (and put out a module or two to support them) to sort-of cover this transition period from commoner to 1st-level; and then baked those rules in for the Cavalier.

In later D&D they cannot. 4e is the poster child: if you look at the mechanical differences between a commoner and a 1st-level character in 4e there's design space to fit three or four more levels in there; the PCs are assumed to already be heroes or veterans right out the gate, and have the abilities of such.

 

[Lanefan]

I realize that D&D today is a game where a humble town guard has 2d8 Hit Dice, but it wasn't always like this.

I have to assume you mean 2d8 hit points here; as 2d8 hit dice would put those guards far beyond humble.

 

[Maxperson]

How would you propose we go about talking about these conceptually complex and novel approaches then? Don't talk about them is not really a suitable answer.

I would read them. All the jargon in these games has to be explained somewhere in natural language. I'd just read that and learn it.

When discussing it here, natural language kinda has to be used or you lose a lot of people in the conversation like you all do when you post and just use the jargon.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not sure how "level drain" is applied. Do we go one level down in the dungeon, or do I go down one level of spells?

I think it means you go down one drain level. Do this twice and you end up in the sewer...