Why do RPGs have rules?

FormerlyHemlock said:

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I meant to ask whether events that LOOK prima facie arbitrary and nonsensical, like Palpatine returning to life out of the blue, are always bad even if (hypothetically) they have a hidden explanation that makes sense,
like a pre-established cloning technology, which Palpatine wants to keep secret and is therefore not advertised to the galaxy before or after his return?

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That does clarify things, and it just so happens I have a relevant example that happened last Tuesday. @aramis erak should be interested in this story as well, as the NPCs involved are part of my Majestic Wilderlands take on Arthurian myth. At this point, that region of my setting is entering what Pendragon called the "End of the Enchantment." Among the different regions of my Majestic Wilderlands, this region is in the top five in terms of campaigns.

Rob's Note: I am not going into all the details, but if you have specific questions, feel free to ask in a reply.

So, last Tuesday was the last session before everybody had to take a summer break. The campaign focused on the party having urban fantasy adventures in my version of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. It used the full version of my Majestic Fantasy RPG rules, which is based on OD&D in the form of Swords & Wizardry. One of the players was a fighter who was also a Viking prince.

In my take on Arthur, the realm is not fighting Saxon culture but a Viking culture. Because of a campaign I ran in the region a few years back, Arthur won a complete victory with the help of PCs and united the realm. The prince's father was the king that Arthur deposed. When the group was generating characters, I asked each player what kind of background they wanted for their characters, and he picked Viking. Then, after kicking around a few Viking-related ideas, he asked if he could be an exiled prince. And I said, "Well, funny you should say that."

The campaign has been running for a year and a half, and Tuesday was the 37th session. Sessions 1 to 30 or so were spent doing stuff in the City-State. The party ventured outside once during that whole time. However, during that time, the Viking Prince made a name for himself, and his uncle, who was a claimant to the throne, decided to have him assassinated. It failed, but some members of the Prince's family were killed, and revenge was vowed.

The party ventured outside of the City-State and was successful in dealing with the uncle. Along the way, the player decided that his Viking Prince wanted the throne as well as vengeance and started to be more proactive. Before, he was more about living large and having a good time adventuring around with his pals. Glossing over the details, he crossed paths unexpectedly with Arthur's previously unknown heir, Constans, Arthur's son by his youngest half-sister, Morgaine.

I am glossing over a lot of details, but at the time of meeting, the party had found enough clues to figure out who Constans really was. It wasn't an easy puzzle, but they figured it out.

The circumstances were such that Constans trusted the Viking Prince, as the party had rescued his younger half-brother. Constans threw a feast in the party's honor, and during it, he revealed that he had to go to Nomar because Arthur died. The party also learned that Constans had Excalibur and its scabbard in his possession. The Viking Prince offered to transport Constans and his party to Nomar, as he had a ship, and it was the quickest way there. The group roleplayed the feast well, so Constans accepted.

Once they were most of the first day into the voyage, out of sight of land, that is when the Viking Prince revealed his true colors. Behind the scenes, his player and the rest of the group cooked up an ambush to kill Constans and every member of his group, knowing that it would make civil war in Arthur's realm all but certain, and allowing the Viking Prince to raise a rebellion

And yes the party knew that from the PoV of the legend, they were villains in the story and that idea just put a smile on their faces.

So now that you have the context on to the relevant part.



The Magic-User in the party had a wish spell that he could use. When the ambush was sprung, he wished for Excalibur to appear in his hand.

How I handle wishes in my campaign is that you can use them to wish for something that is normally not possible, but there is a cost. However, you are also allowed to wish for any spell in the book to cast, including being able to create a spell up to 9th level effects. There is no cost to do this, and it has a 100% chance of success. So, the magic-user wished for the sword to be teleported into his hand. While not an OD&D spell, it could be, and it is definitely a 9th level effect or lower, thus it worked.

But what the magic-user didn't know was the below, which I wrote in my Majestic Wilderlands supplement in 2009 and published.


From the viewpoint of the gods Veritas and Dannu, the party was evil and acting towards selfish ends. As a result, Caliburn (Excalibur) shattered in the magic-user's hand the next round, leaving the players disappointed.

Did they have to buy my supplement to learn that detail about Caliburn? No. While there are many false rumors about the swords of power in my setting, they are also well known to historians. If the party took the time, they could have gained most of the information mentioned above. However, because the ambush was an unexpected opportunity, the party elected to pursue it right away. They didn't have the time. Moreover, the players were allowed to use their real-world knowledge of Arthurian legends. I deliberately crafted the MW version so that they didn't have to metagame and "forget" what they knew from books and RPGs like Pendragon. As it turned out, two of the players mentioned during the planning of the ambush that Excalibur was a sword of power used by champions of good, but they didn't delve further into it.

So, was I wrong?

By the standards used by certain RPGs, I have arbitrarily robbed the Magic-User of an important narrative moment. However, the Magic-User's player was disappointed but also elated because their use of the Wish spell and later a well-placed lightning bolt were two of the three decisive moments of the battle. The third was when Zakhar, the Viking Prince, critically hit Constans, inflicting four times the maximum damage. (Note the above Roll20 graphics screen captured that moment.

By my standards, the whole thing played out as if my Majestic Wilderlands existed, with the characters making the most of the circumstances. The players felt that the campaign went into hiatus on a high note, considering it a victory well earned. They knew that if they didn't plan well, a TPK (total party kill) could happen or some other similar fate that would complicate the rest of the campaign.

Now, this post is quite long, so once again, I am happy to answer any questions, especially while all of this is still fresh in my mind.

FormerlyHemlock said:

If Sauron shows up after the explosion of Mount Doom (because it was really Melkor all along, pretending to be his little buddy Sauron so that the Valar wouldn't realize he'd broken out of jail), is that bad for gameplay, or interesting?

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All I can say creative decisions are never certain and the only way I found to make better is through trial and error and above listening to the feedback.

FormerlyHemlock said:

I suppose it could be either based how much trust you've earned and how you handle players' inevitable questions. "Yes, you did drop the ring in Mount Doom. I'll tell you in out-of-character that yes, no one was lying to you about what would happen if the Ring were destroyed: Sauron would die, or the equivalent from a Maiar perspective. But here's this guy making waves, claiming to be Sauron, and it looks like he's got plenty of wisdom and power. All of this is really happening. Interesting, huh?"

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In general, I don't like to run specific settings unless I can do them well. I rather make my own where I can do things without worrying about any canon except for what occurred in previous campaigns. The specific settings I do well are Star Trek, and Middle Earth. The Third Imperium as well but that's pretty loose in its canon so I don't count that. When I do play Star Trek and Middle Earth, I pretty stick with canon. What I look for are the things that canon don't address. Which always are because worlds and galaxies are always much vaster than what even 40 years of lore can come up with.

I wish I had better advice but the key will be experience gained by trying things and listening to the feedback. Learn to try something different when something doesn't work even if you pour your heart and soul into it.

pemerton said:

By "a few" do you mean "dozens"? Or are you meaning the real life of a hermit? I can't work out what you have in mind here.

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I mean a few which is a subjective term where you should use your best judgment based on the circumstances of the characters in the setting, and what you can manage as a referee. In my campaigns, the Overlord of City-State has a longer list while the laborer on Cross Street that the party employs as a porter has a shorter list.

pemerton said:

This implies that love at first sight doesn't occur in your fictions.

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That is an incorrect reading of my post. The odds of "love at first sight" have nothing to do with the fact that most of a character's social interactions for a day are fleeting or unimportant. It is a random occurrence that may or may not happen to a specific character.

When I run a campaign there are two possibilities for love at first sight.

The first time an NPC interacts with the party for whatever reason and "love at first sight" is a possible outcome of that meeting based on the NPC's description and how one or more of the PCs are roleplayed. This is a considered judgment call on my part.

Or it is a result of a random roll I make in order to create the natural variety that the life of my setting would have. Reaction rolls, and random events are two examples but not the only ones.


As for the player characters, I run a sandbox. If a players decides their character experiences "love at first sight" then they can start roleplaying accordingly and I will figure out what the NPC does in response. The odds of what happens will reflect the circumstances. The object of the character's affection is a PC, it is up to that player to decide how to roleplay it.

robertsconley said:

As for the player characters, I run a sandbox. If a players decides their character experiences "love at first sight" then they can start roleplaying accordingly and I will figure out what the NPC does in response. The odds of what happens will reflect the circumstances. The object of the character's affection is a PC, it is up to that player to decide how to roleplay it.

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I assign a chance of 0.0065% about the same of being struck by lightning....kidding

Stuff like this I find is done somewhat intuitively. If the players feel like their characters would experience love at first sight, then that is what happens. By the same token if I feel like an NPC would experience love at first sight, I can go with that too. I would say it is pretty rare. But if something about the PC strikes me as a feature the NPC would respond to in that way, that can happen.

A lot of whether love at first sight is going to be a thing will also depend on how sentimental people are about that. I think few players truly believe in love at first sight these days and you are more likely to see something like 'struck at first sight'.

Lanefan said:

Quite often IME there are but two truly important things to many players: surviving, and getting rich. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

In theory, perhaps. In practice, unless you've got a high degree of player buy-in, it'll end up being about gold and levels.

Completely depends on the players, and I probably run for a more casual lot than you do.

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I feel like its an expectation sort of thing. Honestly, I think our games are pretty casual too, overall. I think players generally are pretty good about various types of play. D&D is definitely about gold and XP, but its not totally necessary. They can get into various goals.

Lanefan said:

Given as it's a world I made up, and that in its physics, geology, cultures, etc. it has to account for magic (both mortal and not) and divine interference, I find no problem with having it be a place of conflicting goals, cultures, morals, and species.

In other words, I'm going to unapologetically make it playable.

What I'm not going to do is tailor it to any specific characters. Quite the opposite, in fact: I'm going to try and make it such that any character or group of characters can find something to do there if they look, without regard to who those characters might be at any given time.

Then the game would have a different focus. If the characters were diplomats, for example, then it'd tend toward the non-violent intrigue/diplomacy game I mentioned earlier. If they were rulers and monarchs it'd be a game about ruling realms a la Birthright. If they were knights it'd be about knightly stuff (and would draw heavily from A Knight's Tale for its flavour if I had any say in it!). And so on.

How long were those campaigns? My experience is that if they stay in one place too long the players get bored of that place, which inevitably means the characters will soon enough start doing things they shouldn't, thus wearing out their welcome. They'll have to move on.

Also, in a long campaign it's fun to change up the background or atmosphere for variety's sake. The world has jungles and deserts and oceans and arctic and forests and cities and dungeons - might as well use all of them as adventure backdrops at some point, hm?

Those GMs who see the PCs as the world's only adventurers would have it this way by default.

Because we both thought it'd be fun to run something chosen randomly. Hell, all the characters were random-rolled as well, even down to class and species. Odd thing happened, though: that party somehow ended up working out really well and are still going three real-world years later.

That the Emperor should conveniently show up shortly after the players decide on a whim to overthrow him?

Yes, I get the sense that some here are suggesting exactly this; that because the players have decided their goal is to take out the Emperor, it's now my duty as GM to - by way of focusing on their stated goals - somehow put the Emperor in their path.

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It doesn't feel tailored in that sense, in my experience. I mean, sure, you want to overthrow the Emperor, that sounds like a pretty large long range goal! Probably a LOT of scenes will happen before that happens.

robertsconley said:

You will need to find the post where I criticized consistency.

As for depth and how real things are.

In post #2,138 I addressed this issue.
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This post and the chain that it was part was about rebutting criticism of simulationism. And had nothing to do with analyzing different types of roleplaying games.

As for the previous post I just made today. This was to rebut the idea one had to have extensive play experience with PbtA, FitD, and other similar RPGs in order to know that they don't work for you as a player or a referee.

Or it is that you don't like me using metagaming as one of the reasons I dislike these games.

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What metagaming is there in Dungeon World? We're playing Stonetop right now, and when my Seeker (sort of a wizard) saw a big crystal of aetherium, of course I was like "WOW, I WANT THAT!" Why was it there? Mostly as an environmental hazard, but it also happens that Meda has an arcanum which can do some stuff with aetherium. So, getting some would have been cool, and it played on Meda's Instinct, to be curious. Some moves got triggered, but I was simply RPing my character, the actions I took trying to get the aetherium wasn't meta-anything. Honestly, I don't know of any 'meta' in this game, I just act in character, that's ALL I do. I mean, sure, we talk OOC sometimes, but not because we have to. We roll dice and talk about dice this, dice that, no different from D&D.

FormerlyHemlock said:

I call shenanighans. You defined the hooks as things that happened near the PCs:

"Hooks spring up all about... (A) this NPC has a favor to request, (B) and that NPC has lore about a nearby site, and (C) another wants his brother rescued from the Brotherhood of the Ebon Hand."

You cannot now claim that these are things the PCs made happen unless for example the PCs are the ones who kidnapped the brother and gave him to the Brotherhood.

YOU are the one who picked these examples. You're the one who made the assumptions that led to A, B, and C being NPC-driven hooks. If you'll recall, I was the one who mentioned earlier that you can have PC-driven scenarios like the PCs trying to run a con game on a wealthy businessman or seduce an emperor, and you just kept saying that was the same as NPC-driven narrative contrivance in your eyes. You're wrong.



This is exactly the emotional defensiveness I was talking about. You're incapable apparently of just having a normal conversation: "Doesn't a world that's been set up so that danger and chaos is logical everywhere require some degree of contrivance to create?" "Sure, but it's self-sustaining once created, and I've already said that I'm more simulationist at gametime than I am as a worldbuilder. Having a contrived setting doesn't bother me the way unexplained coincidences during play would."

Other people don't universally have the same hangups you do about needing to be seen as running a virtuously "realistic" game. Some of us are just pragmatically interested in realism, where appropriate, for what it does to gameplay (makes it easier to get in character) and willing suspension of disbelief.

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So, then, I take it you're not in the camp of people objecting to the focus on character as opposed to setting/situation on the basis of it being unrealistic then? I mean, we all seem to agree that these settings are not built in a realistic fashion. Here you discuss running the game in a manner that is immersive and lacking contrivance. I don't see there being a ton of difference here on that score. We're just authoring fiction at different times, and applying it slightly differently, though probably less differently than most people think.

AbdulAlhazred said:

So, then, I take it you're not in the camp of people objecting to the focus on character as opposed to setting/situation on the basis of it being unrealistic then?

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I've played DramaSystem and it was educational, but I don't love it. Some of Ron Edwards's ideas around scene framing are interesting, but I'm basically 95% simulationist at heart. I'm okay with fast-forwarding until something interesting happens, but not really okay with contrived events occurring. As a player I would personally rather TPK than be saved by rescuers who appear at a suspiciously convenient time--I'd rather "die" as a character than have my willing suspension of disbelief and ability to roleplay be undermined as a player. I find it unpleasant.

It's not clear what you mean by "focus on character" but it's possible I'm the camp of those who object to it, if it makes the world feel contrived. Others would not object.

Finally, as a GM I am willing to do some things for the players' sake that I would not want done if I were a player, if I'm confident the players won't hate it the way I would. I might (or might not) ask players in advance if they want the chance to avoid TPK at the cost of verisimilitude, and if they say yes I might give them an unlikely miracle on a roll of 4-6 on d6.

That's the clearest answer I can give to an unclear question. TL;DR "I probably am."

AbdulAlhazred said:

I mean, we all seem to agree that these settings are not built in a realistic fashion. Here you discuss running the game in a manner that is immersive and lacking contrivance. I don't see there being a ton of difference here on that score. We're just authoring fiction at different times, and applying it slightly differently, though probably less differently than most people think.

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I don't see a moral difference but the practical difference is quite important to me. Other people obviously can feel differently and it's fine if you have different preferences.

robertsconley said:

When I play, I roleplay. I make characters with distinct personalities and motivations and act accordingly in-game. I am not interested in being part of a narrative. I am interested as a player in experiencing the life of a setting. Interacting with those who inhabit the world. Getting involved in their complications and perhaps introducing a few of my own to further my character's goals. The metgaming that PbtA, FitD, Fate and other similar style games have you doing doesn't help me and gets in the way when I play.

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Eh? PbtA and FitD aren't even remotely similar to Fate?

Maybe I'm lost at what you mean by "metagaming" here, but neither Blades in the Dark, nor Apocalypse World don't require any. That's the reason I like them: I can just play the damn game and it works, while in D&D and its ilk I basically have to assume the director stance in order to have something even remotely resembling a coherent story.

pemerton said:

E is the set of everything that can be imagined.

S is a system for generating elements of E.

The constraint on being an element of E is human imagination. Perhaps human language is an equivalent constraint.

The constraint on being a candidate S is the human capacity to establish systems for generating shared imaginings.

How are those two constraints related? I don't think it's self-evident. But - just as one example - the social psychological features of each constraint seem to be different.

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Your two constraints look very reasonable.

"If you can think of it, it's included in E." So the possibilities included in "super-everything" set E are as you say just those humans can imagine.

It's then reasonable to say that the rules to be considered are just those feasible for humans to design.

A narrowing constraint on being an element of E is that it's just those things characters can be imagined doing in game - "from defeating princesses to rescuing dragons to finding love to getting shot in the face to randomly dying from complications of teeth cavities." Although I assume it's intended to go beyond characters to include what's imagined about the game world.