What are the rules for?

[pemerton]

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

Agreed. I've GMed a lot of RPGs that include warhorses. I can't recall when, if ever, the question arose of how much a warhorse weighs!

 

[Andvari]

Agreed. I've GMed a lot of RPGs that include warhorses. I can't recall when, if ever, the question arose of how much a warhorse weighs!

An African or European warhorse?

 

[aramis erak]

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.

That's far more to GM style than actual rules writing, save for the most non-simulationist of games.

Even in strongly narrativist games, I usually rely upon rules to define how the setting functions... even when the setting is contradictory twixt rules and fluff.

In Sentinel Comics and Marvel Heroic RP - both fairly narrativist with an unreal genre that they both emulate mechanically... The world responds to the nature of the players luck... If the GM has a large doom pool, the world just gets harder on the heroes, period.
Meanwhile, Sentinel Comics, the difference between minions and lieutenants is obvious pretty quickly... and difficulty ramps only with opposition. It's a flat difficulty world - and that's my biggest complaint about it. But I run it as a flat difficulty world... so only active opposition makes it harder, and only preparation or help can make it easier (by using the boost move)...
The mechanics do tell me how hard things are, what kinds of characters exist (Heroes, Villains, Allies/Lieutenants, Minions, bystanders) and how fragile those are... normal people (aka bystanders) die or are KO'd by any hit. Minions are either up or gone; Lieutenants either are damaged or not by a hit dying only when reduced below D4... PCs and Villains are superbly tough, but steadily degraded, while big (d10/d12) Lieutenants can, if lucky, survive more... And all those in that world know the score... tho not all know which they are.

Even Burning Wheel informs a lot - if you understand the lifepaths. (I confirmed with Luke Crane back in about 2008 that indeed the setting info is intentionally encoded into the lifepaths - it's not accident. It's setting as rules.) So even BW in its character generation defines setting... in a game that otherwise seems to avoid setting tropes. (Key word: Seems. Luke has noted in the past that there's setting encoded in other elements, too - the weapons list. The damage system. The Circles rules.)

The few that don't encode setting into mechanics are rare - Risus, TWERPS... those very specifically are so light that there's little to encode. But even TWERPS does mechanical encoding in some worldbooks... eg TWERPS TWEK.

I am prone to simulationism, and I find setting in mechanics easily. Sometimes they're intended; sometimes they're encoded without intent to do so, and some times, they just pop up out of synergies from carelessness.

If one looks, one can find a lot of setting in most midweight or heavier rulesets.

 

[aramis erak]

I'

Agreed. I've GMed a lot of RPGs that include warhorses. I can't recall when, if ever, the question arose of how much a warhorse weighs!

I've had that occur often enough... My first Pendragon campaign was set on the Isle of Wight... so ship travel was a constant issue. Was also an issue in a few other games where they were loading animals.

 

[pemerton]

I've had that occur often enough... My first Pendragon campaign was set on the Isle of Wight... so ship travel was a constant issue. Was also an issue in a few other games where they were loading animals.

I've GMed plenty of ship travel. That hasn't generally required knowing the weight of things.

 

[soviet]

That's far more to GM style than actual rules writing, save for the most non-simulationist of games.

Even in strongly narrativist games, I usually rely upon rules to define how the setting functions... even when the setting is contradictory twixt rules and fluff.

In Sentinel Comics and Marvel Heroic RP - both fairly narrativist with an unreal genre that they both emulate mechanically... The world responds to the nature of the players luck... If the GM has a large doom pool, the world just gets harder on the heroes, period.
Meanwhile, Sentinel Comics, the difference between minions and lieutenants is obvious pretty quickly... and difficulty ramps only with opposition. It's a flat difficulty world - and that's my biggest complaint about it. But I run it as a flat difficulty world... so only active opposition makes it harder, and only preparation or help can make it easier (by using the boost move)...
The mechanics do tell me how hard things are, what kinds of characters exist (Heroes, Villains, Allies/Lieutenants, Minions, bystanders) and how fragile those are... normal people (aka bystanders) die or are KO'd by any hit. Minions are either up or gone; Lieutenants either are damaged or not by a hit dying only when reduced below D4... PCs and Villains are superbly tough, but steadily degraded, while big (d10/d12) Lieutenants can, if lucky, survive more... And all those in that world know the score... tho not all know which they are.

Even Burning Wheel informs a lot - if you understand the lifepaths. (I confirmed with Luke Crane back in about 2008 that indeed the setting info is intentionally encoded into the lifepaths - it's not accident. It's setting as rules.) So even BW in its character generation defines setting... in a game that otherwise seems to avoid setting tropes. (Key word: Seems. Luke has noted in the past that there's setting encoded in other elements, too - the weapons list. The damage system. The Circles rules.)

The few that don't encode setting into mechanics are rare - Risus, TWERPS... those very specifically are so light that there's little to encode. But even TWERPS does mechanical encoding in some worldbooks... eg TWERPS TWEK.

I am prone to simulationism, and I find setting in mechanics easily. Sometimes they're intended; sometimes they're encoded without intent to do so, and some times, they just pop up out of synergies from carelessness.

If one looks, one can find a lot of setting in most midweight or heavier rulesets.

I think you may be conflating rules that evoke a setting with rules that simulate a setting.

The NPCs in Burning Wheel do not actually follow the lifepaths in their own lives and know how they work. The non-powered NPCs in superhero comics do not find that karma, doom pools, minions etc are real things that affect them.

 

[pemerton]

In Sentinel Comics and Marvel Heroic RP - both fairly narrativist with an unreal genre that they both emulate mechanically... The world responds to the nature of the players luck... If the GM has a large doom pool, the world just gets harder on the heroes, period.

I've GMed a fair bit of Marvel Heroic RP. It is one of the RPGs that I have in mind in which the rules do not primarily (or even really at all) determine how the setting functions, nor it is one where the GM plays the setting.

In MHRP, the GM present scenes - either Action or Transition scenes - and the rules emphasise setting elements (Scene Distinctions) which may just as easily be a mood or a goal as a setting element. And even when a Scene Distinction is a setting element, the reason for including it as a component of the scene is not to present the setting but to convey what is significant in the scene.

And the Doom Pool is not a component of the setting. It is a marker of, and a method for shaping, pacing and threat.

Even Burning Wheel informs a lot - if you understand the lifepaths. (I confirmed with Luke Crane back in about 2008 that indeed the setting info is intentionally encoded into the lifepaths - it's not accident. It's setting as rules.) So even BW in its character generation defines setting... in a game that otherwise seems to avoid setting tropes. (Key word: Seems. Luke has noted in the past that there's setting encoded in other elements, too - the weapons list. The damage system. The Circles rules.)

I've played and GMed quite a bit of Burning Wheel too. I know how the Lifepaths work, and their role in conveying setting. I don't need Luke to tell me: I can see it in the rulebook.

But the GM doesn't play the setting in Burning Wheel. And the rules don't primarily determine how the setting functions. The overwhelming purpose of the rules in BW is to govern the presentation of situations that speak to player-authored priorities, and to help determine what happens when the players have their PCs react to, and within, those scenes. The rules for framing, for how players declare actions, for when to roll the dice, for how to narrate success and failure, for how artha is earned, etc - these are they central rules of BW and they are not about setting at all.

If one looks, one can find a lot of setting in most midweight or heavier rulesets.

This doesn't really connect to my post that you replied to, which was about what RPG rules are for.