Why do RPGs have rules?

aramis erak said:

If one is playing by the letter of the RAW, agreed. In practice, however...

They can and do affect the fiction state, in some games directly, in others less so.

Note that not all HP based games are as "Go... Go... Dead!" as the pre-3E D&D, nor even as much as 3.x/4.x/5.x with "Go... Go... Bleeding but Go... Dying... Dead"

Twilight 2000 4e (Year Zero Dice Step), PC's have single digit HP, and weapons typically do 2+excess successes (ExS) with 1+ExS to 3+ExS being typical for man portable firearms and melee weapons. The amount post armor (usually 1 point over base, sometimes 2 or 3 over) determines if a critical is applied. If HP are zeroed, a critical is applied. If both happen as a single attack, roll twice and take the worse crit. Further, at 0, one goes down.

One of the PCs, SSgt Morton, on the mend from a 5 HP hit that also caused a brain hemorrhage. The mechanics for crits directly placed two elements into the fiction: he's not mentally as clear as he normally is, and he needed food, water, and rest. (Prerequisites to get the HP back.)

He was jumped on watch by a couple traitorous NPCs. He had gotten all 5 HP back, but still suffers the major Int & Emp penalties. When he'd been jumped, he had taken 2 of his 5 HP again... and it majorly shaped his choices, as the player knew Morton's one good hit from dying. The HP and armor mechanics and combat procedures took my narration, "SGT Toebel charges you with a fixed bayonet" and added the following narrative elements: That he hit, but hit the arm. That it was a minor wound (no crit), and that SSgt Morton was still conscious and did not have to flee.

Took less time to resolve it than it took for me to type it up (~10 min typing, about 3.5 min to resolve).

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aramis erak said:

The original (but seldom credited) author, Lizzie Maggie, of The Landlord's Game (later published as Monopoly unlawfully by Darrow) was intended to be a teaching tool about the evils of landlords.
This is well documented and very accessible history. This portion of your post does NOT come across as a well educated guess, but to me as complete lack of rigor. (A 10 sec google search can find a half dozen matching histories noting Maggie's intent and mods.
Also, the original was set in Arden Delaware, not Atlantic City.

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Aldarc said:

This is a video from Ben Milton (Questing Beast) who is an OSR enthusiast. What I find interesting here is how he is advocating the use of rules, namely a rolled die to "put pressure on the PCs" and make sure that something always happens. This is one of the staunchest giants of OSR advocating for something that is honestly not that far removed from how some story games operate, albeit here for self-professed purposes of challenge-based simulation.

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hawkeyefan said:

So you’re not generalizing… so which posters are you talking about? I’m reasonably certain that anyone who it may be is familiar with traditional RPGs.

My take on this is that there’s a group of people who have been doing something for so long that they’re experts at that thing. However, that thing turns out to be more narrow than they thought. But it’s hard to accept that they’re experience is not as broad as they thought.

They’ve learned that they’re not experts on Science, but only Biology… and they don’t know much about Physics or Chemistry at all.

So when introduced to the broader field, their knowledge is revealed to be much more focused than previously thought. However, they don’t adjust their approach to the conversation. Instead, they try to adjust the broader field to fit into their knowledge.

Then when this is pointed out to them, they don’t like it, and try and label it in such a way as to lay blame elsewhere.

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Imaro said:

How do you reconcile this view with the optional rules given in something like the DMG? For example someone running a game of pure success vs. failure is following a totally different procedure and implementing different rules from someone who has decided to use the degrees of success rule or success at a cost from 5e. this is going to produce a different play experience deeper than just changing of fiction depending on which is chosen .

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Campbell said:

Sure. That's a different process that will have attendant impacts on play downstream. In the grand scope of RPG play it's not the sort of monumental change you are selling here though. It's fairly similar to the tweaks to how resistance rolls work in the Hacking section of the Blades book.

There are absolutely some structural tweaks we see from game to game, but when we look at the core organizing principles of play it's remarkably similar from game to game. At least as similar as we see in other play models.

I am not trying to knock the diversity of games played in a trad structure here. Only saying that they are not special in their diversity of play. That other forms of play are not specialized forms of trad play. That trad play does not contain Story Now play. Does not contain OSR play. That it has its own stuff its great at. What do you find controversial about this take?

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Campbell said:

Sure. That's a different process that will have attendant impacts on play downstream. In the grand scope of RPG play it's not the sort of monumental change you are selling here though. It's fairly similar in scope to the tweaks to how resistance rolls work in the Hacking section of the Blades book.

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Campbell said:

There are absolutely some structural tweaks we see from game to game, but when we look at the core organizing principles of play it's remarkably similar from game to game. At least as similar as we see in other play models.

I am not trying to knock the diversity of games played in a trad structure here. Only saying that they are not special in their diversity of play. That other forms of play are not specialized forms of trad play. That trad play does not contain Story Now play. That it has its own stuff it's great at. What do you find controversial about this take?

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