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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8166103" data-attributes="member: 82106">I have an interesting question: What is 'fairness'? I mean, how do we define fairness in an RPG? Is it even really a meaningful kind of thing to define? Not that I dispute that people have some sort of notion, just how can we possibly define it? Let me elaborate a bit (sorry, I know I'm a tedious guy, lol).We can clearly measure fairness in competitive refereed games, the measure is simple. The referee uniformly applies the same rules and rulings to each competitor and team (if relevant). A football referee consistently calls out of bounds in a repeatable way on every player, calls goals, etc. all in accordance with the rules. If judgment is required, IE was that a foul; then they generally apply their judgment in a consistent way, such that every participant is consistently called when other objective observers would agree (mostly) with the ruling.Now, in an RPG, there is (generally speaking) no opposition. There aren't two teams to consistently favor evenly and objectively. So that is one observation. Maybe we can then fall back here on judging the participants consistently, even though they are not opponents. That seems like a reasonable measure to me. I think we can put this part to bed, at least provisionally. Some people might observe that the GM runs the 'bad guys', and insist that fairness include judging their actions consistently. This part gets a bit odd, and I think I will touch on it again later.The real stumbling point, IMHO, comes when we analyze fairness in more detail. It requires a thing who's fairness is to be judged, AND a criteria upon which that judgment will be made. In some cases RPGs certainly can provide these things. The 'thing to be judged' must logically consist of some fictional and/or mechanical 'circumstance' within the game. That is 'something happens', and we judge it. It also requires a criteria for that judgement. In the sports game analogy that is the rules of the game (and possibly things like what is 'sportsmanlike behavior' which aren't fully spelled out). In the case of an RPG, what is this criteria? There are a few cases:1. It is a matter of rules - clearly if there are mechanics then they should be applied consistently, or at least applied consistent with the principles of play (which might supersede rules in the narrow sense, as in how D&D allows a DM to throw out 'nonsense results' in classic D&D). 2. It is a matter of fiction - this is the other branch in my taxonomy of circumstances to be judged. It is here that classic notions start to run into problems. We have only principles, but are they enough? In fact this begins to illustrate the main reason why classic Gygaxian D&D had any rules at all, because fictional parameters have no objective reality, and even their subjective reality is only as clearly articulated as the DM has bothered to write up, and as clearly understood as the players conception of it. So what basis do we have here for fairness? I'll go even further, even category 1 isn't really objective, because the whole objectivity of the rules is based on fiction and subjective factors in the first place! So I don't even think we can form this ontology to begin with. For example, In Dungeon World it is stated that a 'surprise attack' against an unprepared opponent isn't even something that the rules adjudicate, it is simply fiction and in the basic case said opponent is simply slain. This is highly subjective, even though it is a 'rule'. Clearly it might be considered fair in some cases, and not in others, at least by some players. So rules really depend on fiction. I'd note that games like 3.x and 4e tried to mitigate this in combat to a degree with VERY complete rules, battle maps, etc., but the problem still exists to an extent.Can we simply rely on 'principles of play' to always tell us what is fair and unfair? That might work, but many games don't articulate these, and they are rarely made explicit at the table. So, in a lot of cases we might go back and 'forensically' analyze some circumstance and decide if it was adjudged fair or not, but given the dependence on fiction and judgment of fiction, it is doubtful this will end very many cases of dispute (maybe where someone was confused about something). So, I come back to the question, what would you all consider fairness to be, and how can one adjudge styles of play on its basis when it is such a slippery concept?</blockquote>

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