What are the rules for?

[Micah Sweet]

Why are these the only two options?



This all assumes a very narrow, specific type of RPG. I don't care even slightly how much a warhorse weighs.

I really don't think it's all that narrow. Maybe just not the kind of RPG you prefer.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Obviously people can be wrong, but so can complex game mechanics.

Yes, but at least the game mechanics will be presenting the same assumptions to everybody. Once its personal perception, you're living inside someone's mind, probably the GM's, and not everyone is going to think to ask the GM all the time (and that by itself is an opportunity cost).

When would you prefer a gamemaster’s judgment call, and when would you prefer a canonical ruling tucked away in a rules supplement somewhere with a mechanic that may or may not yield more accurate results?

I'm less concerned about accuracy than consistently, and you're cooking the books by assuming its only a suppiment and not easily accessible. If that's your overland speed, that's just another indication of bad rules design. It should be a core rules things and fairly visible.

Basically, the only time I think a GM judgement should be entirely necessary in something like this is what I mentioned earlier--situations outside the normal scope of the game. They're going to have to decide how the extent rules are engaged (how steep is that cliff you're climbing) but they shouldn't be needing to make them up out of whole cloth.

For something that exists in the real world that we expect to come up regularly in the game, we’d want someone to do the research and summarize the results with, for example, a list of typical marching rates over various kinds of terrain. That’s the kind of real-world information you’d expect a wargame umpire to use in a map-based simulation.

Actually, its what I'd expect their rules set to have already done for them.

In a hex-based wargame, you’d simply move your allowable number of spaces, with rough terrain costing double, etc., and there’d be zero room for improvising, because nothing outside the explicit rules is even an option.

And?

Almost everything that happens in an RPG is outside the scope of the rules, and that works fine. Other things don’t need rules per se, but they have a right answer you;d like to be able to look up easily. How much does a warhorse weigh? How thick is a guard tower wall? Some things benefit greatly from rules, but not everything.

i disagree. Most things are well within the scope of properly designed rules. They may vary from the common case, but they won't be entirely new situations that have no rules precedent. If they do, you're working with overly lightweight or sloppy rules as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This all assumes a very narrow, specific type of RPG. I don't care even slightly how much a warhorse weighs.

And if the situation where it matters is liable to come up in a given game, I'd expect the game to address it.

 

[soviet]

And if the situation where it matters is liable to come up in a given game, I'd expect the game to address it.

You'd expect it to have a listed weight for warhorses and a bespoke lifting things subsystem?

 

[soviet]

I really don't think it's all that narrow. Maybe just not the kind of RPG you prefer.

Caring about the weight of warhorses is a very niche type of RPG

 

[Fenris-77]

Since many games explicitly say the GM-equivalent has every right to change and/or ignore the rules, I don't think that's true except in certain types of games.

That caveat is almost never as complete as you make it sound. It's far more about ignoring edge cases that make for bad play than it is about wholesale ignoring of the rules on a regular basis (which no game really advocates for).

 

[Thomas Shey]

You'd expect it to have a listed weight for warhorses and a bespoke lifting things subsystem?

You did see the phrase "if its liable to come up" did you not? Because if that's the case, then my answer would be yes. In most games i would not expect it to be laible to come up.

 

[Fenris-77]

You'd expect it to have a listed weight for warhorses and a bespoke lifting things subsystem?

You're a warhorse lifting subsytem!

 

[soviet]

You did see the phrase "if its liable to come up" did you not? Because if that's the case, then my answer would be yes. In most games i would not expect it to be laible to come up.

I don't know what 'if it (specific weights for warhorses) is liable to come up' means. In which type of game is this likely to come up? And to require specific rules?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't know what 'if it (specific weights for warhorses) is liable to come up' means. In which type of game is this likely to come up? And to require specific rules?

You haven't seen some of the things that seem to matter to some people in the OS space, have you?

And if again, if its liable to come up, then yes, I think its liable to require specific rules, otherwise the weight of the warhouse would not be liable to come up, would it?