What are the rules for?

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think I'm assuming everyone has the same design goals. I'm just assuming its usually a virtue to have something in terms of what effect decisions make in mechanical expression, and that most of the time that's beyond purely narrative ease.

As an example, there are absolutely some genres where pretty much all combat techniques are, if not the same, of approximately equal value; some wuxia settings are like that. So deciding to do that sort of thing there makes sense.

But I think that's a different situation than going in with an ethos that says any technique a player can imagine should work equally well in any setting/genre, and thus the game system core. I find the latter a pretty hard sell.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You said in the other thread you don't think play is a priority and that RPGs are designed just to be read.

No, I don't think play is necessarily the highest priority. I still like to play when I can, and when I do, simulation and verisimilitude are my priorities.

 

[Fenris-77]

There's no reason at all that a character who invests the same amount of resources in wrestling as I do in swordfighting shouldn't be as effective in a fight as I am.

Reach comes to mind. Actual killing ability too. There a reason history isn't full of armies marching forth to wrestle their foes to death.

 

[A_Carrington]

I'd prefer it to work a little closer to reality than that.

And you're free to make your dull games repeat garbage that already exists, far away from me.

Reach comes to mind. Actual killing ability too. There a reason history isn't full of armies marching forth to wrestle their foes to death.

Good thing I don't have to simulate real life, and can do something that doesn't blow major ass instead!

At which point you don't really have separate attack methods; you have a singleton with a bunch of different coats of paint.

Fortunately, there are many more interesting options available to players than attacking. And more importantly, there are several hundred different boons and drawbacks you can apply to attacks to differentiate them, which enable players to simulate any sort of attack they can imagine, while retaining balance.

That is wholly untrue in my opinion. Some options are, by the logic of the setting and the reality it simulates, more or less effective than others. That is life, which games often try to simulate to one degree or another. To have options of realistically unequal quality be equal anyway is not fun for me.

Simulationism is trash.

Because they would logically exist, for a multitude of reasons.

So what?

Because I prioritize setting logic over game balance and PC specialness.

Embarrassing.

So everyone clearly has incompatible design goals in mind here. This is all just churn where arguing about effective implementation of design goals is avoiding arguing about the design goals themselves.

A single attack stat is fine if you don't care about player decision making around attacks. It's bad if you want players to make decisions about different approaches strategically. It could go either way tactically, depending on how the rest of your action system works. A single stat is great if you don't want the player to have to decide between weapons, and very bad if you want them to make decisions upfront that constrain/inform their later combat tactics.

The only thing less useful than Micah reminding us of his incredible well understood perspective is pretending we all have the same commonplaces about what the games are designed for. We don't, and it's more practical to just jump to the goal the mechanic is supposed to achieve, instead of arguing it fails to achieve some goal it was never proposed to answer for.

A single attack stat does not prevent player decision making. You can make different decisions about approaches. You can have different weapons that give the players reasons to choose between them without making some weapons just suck for no reason.

Once again, if you disagree, provide a SPECIFIC EXAMPLE of a decision you think you can't make, and I'll show you why you're wrong.

 

[Umbran]

And you're free to make your dull games repeat garbage that already exists, far away from me.

Mod note:

Easy-peasy. You need have no fear of exposure to it, since your post here was so incredibly rude, you've earned a ban from the thread.

Be better to people.

 

[Umbran]

Yep, you couldn't produce an example. You concede the argument. I have six hundred accounts on this site btw. Some are over a decade old. You'll never find them all.

Mod Note:
You have six hundred accounts, but you made this one just today for this post?

So, clearly, you know what's coming. Maybe you'll find someplace more fitting to your posting desires...

 

[Andvari]

If we're talking open rule sets common to TTRPGs, I tend to think of player-facing rules as informing and setting expectations for players, while GM-facing rules are a set of tools intended to assist the GM in running the game. Some GM-facing rules are of a more general nature, while others provide guidelines for more specific situations likely to frequently come up that cannot be solved in a satisfactory manner through the broader rules, role-play, or GM judgement alone.

 

[Maxperson]

I was answering the question: What are the rules for? Fun. The rules are for fun. Why are they fun? How do the rules provide fun? What is fun? These are all different questions. It's not clear what you aim to discuss.

Rule are for providing structure and fairness to an activity. Fun is a byproduct of that fairness and structure, which is what keeps us coming back to that activity. Without the fairness and structure of rules, you generally end up with...

Cops and Robbers
Kid 1: "I got the handcuffs on you! You're out."
Kid 2: "No, you didn't."
Kid 1: "I got right up to where you were, so I got you."
Kid 2: "I dodged faster than light, so you missed."
Kid 1: "Nuh uh!"
Kid 2: "Yeah, huh!"
And so on.

Kid 3: "Let's Add in a rule that you roll a d20 to hit and if you get a 15 or higher and you get.

Kid 1: "I got right up to you, but dang, I rolled a 14."
Kid 2: "Hah! You missed!"
Kid 1: "Yeah, but it was close. I'll get you next time."

Less aggravation, more structure, more fairness, and a lot more fun because of those things.

 

[Maxperson]

I imagine an arbiter might just decide, "Nah, those jerks didn't win. Let's see how Herr Klink adapts to an unexpected loss."

Usually by blaming Col. Hogan. Schultz of course saw nothing.

 

[pemerton]

The rules, as their core concern, determine how the characters interact with the setting and how the setting functions.

I think this is pretty controversial. Unless I've wildly misunderstood, I can think of plenty of RPGs where this is not true.

Pretty much every RPG has at least some rules that help the GM 'play' the setting - that's what I mean by 'how the setting works'. Sometimes is a lot of sim-type physics stuff, sometimes it randomizers like encounter rolls, sometimes its adventure fronts, sometimes it's even just a GM agenda. That stuff is all there to frame how the setting functions at the table mechanically, by which I mean both in terms of game mechanics and/or in terms of how the GM manages the conversation and adjudication of player actions.

So yes, different games do the second part very differently, but they all do it.

Describing the GM's role in a RPG like Burning Wheel or Prince Valiant or even (as I experienced it) 4e D&D as playing the setting seems misleading to me. Framing scenes and presenting antagonism is a thing - but only in some RPGs does it seem accurate, to me at least, to describe that in terms of "playing the setting".