An Odd Thought Occured to Me about RPG's.

[Hussar]

Eh...when it comes to rules following vs rules breaking, RPGs are just sports on paper without physical contact (sweat and motion are optional).

Pick a sport, any sport: odds are high that a given play will have some kind of rule broken or bent; the odds shifting higher if its a contact/collision sport (football, hockey) or free-flowing (soccer, basketball). Sports like baseball or cricket have a lower incidence of cheating on a per-play basis, but you'll still find cheating on a per game basis (corked bats, spitballs).

And that's without bringing up intentional fouls or playacting to draw penalties.

But, that's my point exactly. In baseball, a player who uses a corked bat isn't rewarded and called a good player. He's ejected from the game, and called a cheater. In RPG's, when someone, anyone, GM or player, uses the RPG equivalent of a "corked bat", he's given a pat on the back.

In any sport, a broken or bent rule, while it occurs, is not generally considered a good thing. And, even though lots of sports allow lee way for the referee in making calls, I can't think of any sports that allow the referee to completely change a rule in the middle of the game.

And, if you change the rules before the game starts, most people agree that you're playing a different game. Indoor football is not the same as regular football. Road hockey is a different game than ice hockey.

Certainly not bad. ((Well, indoor football... )) Loads and loads of fun. But, no one would mistake road hockey for NHL. Or, even closer games like Canadian football (3 downs, 110 yard field) and American football (4 downs, 100 yard field) are considered different games.

BTW, please don't think I'm criticising here. I'm not. Heck, I change rules too. It was just something I found kinda odd.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But, that's my point exactly. In baseball, a player who uses a corked bat isn't rewarded and called a good player. He's ejected from the game, and called a cheater.

Yes, he's a cheater... if he's caught; if he's not on your team. Otherwise, he's crafty.* I'd be surprised if pitchers who doctored the ball (spitballers) didn't do so with the knowledge of several people. Ditto corking a bat; injecting steroids.

Or consider recent exhibit A: Derek Jeter NOT hit by pitch.
Derek Jeter's Acting Job Amuses Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire -- MLB FanHouse

And after the game, other coaches commented about how they'd have congratulated DJ for his excellent acting if he had done so for their team.

In any sport, a broken or bent rule, while it occurs, is not generally considered a good thing. And, even though lots of sports allow lee way for the referee in making calls, I can't think of any sports that allow the referee to completely change a rule in the middle of the game.

It happens all the time.

They don't actually change the rule, but they just don't enforce it 100% the same for each player. The elite athletes get the benefit of the doubt. The playing field is tilted in their favor. Watch a pro MLB game: the strike zone is supposed to vary from hitter to hitter, but in reality, it also varies from Ump to Ump, inning to inning, and occasionally, pitch to pitch. And from pitcher to pitcher.

Avid fans of the NBA will tell you there is no such thing as traveling for the game's elite players. In the NFL, holding occurs on every play. In the NHL, what constitutes a penalty will vary depending upon regular season vs. playoffs vs. the Stanley Cup Finals...or even within a game depending upon the score and time left...and who the penalty was committed by and committed upon.

You may be able to cross-check an enforcer in the last seconds of the Stanley Cup's final game- that's cool as far as the fans & refs are concerned. But Heaven help you if your stick tugs gently on Sid Crosby's jersey in the 3rd game of the season- you and your family will end up in the sin bin.

Similarly, a few years ago, people joked about how people were being called for penalties against Dwayne Wade during the NBA draft the season after the Heat won the championship.




* FWIW, this is the same kind of critique that was leveled against Odysseus. He was worshipped by some and reviled by others for precisely the same reason- his use of trickery.

 

[LostSoul]

(1) In any creative enterprise, it is okay to break the rules, so long as you know what the rules are, and you are breaking them to good effect.

Ah, shades of pre-2009, when we never could agree on anything. I think rules are very important, though the nature of the rules I mean may not be the nature of the rules you mean.

In my 4E hack, I have a rule that says:

REMAIN IMPARTIAL

Your job as DM is to remain impartial to the success or failure of any PC or NPC. You do not pick sides. You have no preferred outcomes. You do not determine any outcomes before or during play; the actions of the characters in the game and the result of dice rolls will do this for you.​

The DM can't break this rule without cheating.

I have another rule that says when skill checks are required: Whenever there is a conflict between characters. I can't break that rule else I'd be cheating.

Another example is when I ran a skill challenge even though the PC could not fail. The rules told me that I had to call for rolls, so I did. Sticking to that rule made the game better, not worse! Very cool, unexpected event.

What I think is that all the players of the game - DM included - should stick to the rules, but that the rules should leave intentional spaces for player (including DM) input and judgement calls. That's how you get the creativity in the game while still sticking to the rules.

 

[LostSoul]

You may be able to cross-check an enforcer in the last seconds of the Stanley Cup's final game- that's cool as far as the fans & refs are concerned. But Heaven help you if your stick tugs gently on Sid Crosby's jersey in the 3rd game of the season- you and your family will end up in the sin bin.

Heh, not a fan of the Pens? I didn't think that Wings fans would care about him.

 

[billd91]

But, that's my point exactly. In baseball, a player who uses a corked bat isn't rewarded and called a good player. He's ejected from the game, and called a cheater. In RPG's, when someone, anyone, GM or player, uses the RPG equivalent of a "corked bat", he's given a pat on the back.

In any sport, a broken or bent rule, while it occurs, is not generally considered a good thing. And, even though lots of sports allow lee way for the referee in making calls, I can't think of any sports that allow the referee to completely change a rule in the middle of the game.

The goal of the games you're comparing are quite different. In sports like baseball or football, the goal of the game is to play to win, not just have fun or have a shared experience. The rules are, therefore, much more important to provide a fair game so that the win is determined by pitting skill vs skill, not skill vs superior ability to cheat the rules.

The goal of a role playing game isn't to win. Aside from various tournaments, there's no competition between players that will determine "a winner". There's no need for as much strict adherence to hard rules to provide fairness unblemished by a player gaining an advantage or two.

There's also the nature of the game. The nature of most sports is determined by what the rules define the sport to be. How do you tell who wins in baseball? The rules tell you exactly how you can score.

In RPGs, the players take on the roles of avatars interaction with a fictional world but real from the avatar's perspective where they can do pretty much anything they want within their defined powers and free wills. They're not constrained within a certain playing area, to particular game durations or innings, to limited forms of contact with other game participants. The rules have to be treated as incomplete and open-ended. They may not be able to completely define how an avatar's action would play out, hence, the flexibility a player or GM has to determine the downstream events that unfold from a PC action, overruling written rules as necessary to do it (and the accolades they get if they do a clever job at it).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Heh, not a fan of the Pens? I didn't think that Wings fans would care about him.

The only thing I have against Sid is he doesn't play for the Stars or the Devils.

I was just picking out high-profile athletes to make a point.

 

[Sunseeker]

In my 4E hack, I have a rule that says:

REMAIN IMPARTIAL

Your job as DM is to remain impartial to the success or failure of any PC or NPC. You do not pick sides. You have no preferred outcomes. You do not determine any outcomes before or during play; the actions of the characters in the game and the result of dice rolls will do this for you.​

The DM can't break this rule without cheating.

A "true neutral" GM will never happen due to the fact that GMs are humans, not machines. Maybe you're VERY good at it, but I'm willing to wager when there are moments when you're partial to your giant monster and smile as he bashes your PC's heads in. Likewise I'm betting there are moments where a good play by a player will make you chuckle.

Impartiality to the numbers? Very doable. But the goal of every game is to have fun, as such, your impartiality should be, at best, utilitarian. Be as impartial as possible, until you realize that just because the game says that X should happen because Y just happened, it's going to make for a very bad gameplay experience.

ie: In WoW on a pvp server, you WILL get griefed. Because they rules say that they can and there's nothing you can do about it because you're too low level. To take this to D&D, an arch-demon from the 9th circle of hell can show up and massacre your lvl2 party because they happened to kill a young succubus he was about to get it on with. This however, is dumb and not fun. Therefore, most high-powered monsters show up, do something flashy, taunt the players, laugh and then run away. Which is generally considered to be fun.

So yes, I agree you should stay impartial to the numbers, but only as long as you are not remaining impartial to goal of the game, which is to maximize fun.

The goal of the games you're comparing are quite different. In sports like baseball or football, the goal of the game is to play to win, not just have fun or have a shared experience. The rules are, therefore, much more important to provide a fair game so that the win is determined by pitting skill vs skill, not skill vs superior ability to cheat the rules.

Originally, "winning" was fun, sports were more friendly competition and less hardcore money-grabs.

The goal of a role playing game isn't to win. Aside from various tournaments, there's no competition between players that will determine "a winner". There's no need for as much strict adherence to hard rules to provide fairness unblemished by a player gaining an advantage or two.

Well, to an extent the goal is to win. The players are trying to overcome the challenges, and the DM is trying to overcome the players with the challenges. But it's a much friendlier competition, and yes, competition can, and IMO should exist between players. ie: the Gimli-Legolas orc-killing competition.

There's also the nature of the game. The nature of most sports is determined by what the rules define the sport to be. How do you tell who wins in baseball? The rules tell you exactly how you can score.

In RPGs, the players take on the roles of avatars interaction with a fictional world but real from the avatar's perspective where they can do pretty much anything they want within their defined powers and free wills. They're not constrained within a certain playing area, to particular game durations or innings, to limited forms of contact with other game participants. The rules have to be treated as incomplete and open-ended. They may not be able to completely define how an avatar's action would play out, hence, the flexibility a player or GM has to determine the downstream events that unfold from a PC action, overruling written rules as necessary to do it (and the accolades they get if they do a clever job at it).

I agree, I think generally the group(DM included) is victorious in the game provided that everyone had a good time.

 

[clip]

Actually, I think this is a much bigger deal in 4e. One of the things I have noticed about 4e is that it is played much much closer to the RAW than any previous edition - possibly due to the technical "wargame" like nature of the combat rules.

Due to this, what was fair game - nay, encouraged - in previous editions is now a "bad" thing in 4e. Editions 1-3 were for a variety of different reasons very messy, and essentially the DMs picked up the pieces. I daresay no-one played 1e or 2e RAW, and only the advent of 3.5e got players used to the idea of the rules being close to the stone tablets.

Today, however, the term "houserule" is almost a dirty word. Maybe its the technology, maybe its the game system - but in days of yore, there was no concept of houserules as such, they were assumed to be in place - your game was simply your game and it bore the same name as what was written on the cover, and had a passing resemblance to all other games of D&D. Now, players and referees feel compelled to play the RAW (and again, because of the technology and errata-ing) get concerned with the tiniest imbalances in game mechanics. It's a very big deal now if an encounter changes because a referee rules against RAW, or a player misinterprets a power card. Back in the day, the rules were drafted so badly, that it was a given that these things would occur constantly.

Back to Chris Perkins and Robot Chicken - this is more a sign of the times. Official forums are all about the RAW - character optimisation, certainly is all about being 100% solid on the rules. Look at retro-forums, though - like DF - there is a genuine pride about bending, breaking and rewriting all the rules at-will or on the fly. So to see a (very official) referee taking a snap decision gives fuel to the fire of the malcontents who on the one hand want WotC to be the great Satan, but on the other hand want to see their gameset rules followed to the letter.

 

[Argyle King]

Well, I don't really agree to #1. There are certain times when it's okay to break the rules, but it's not okay to break the rules just for the sake of breaking the rules or breaking the rules to use against the players or the DM.

For me those times would be if the rule is unclear or vague or if there are conflicting rules.

Are you objecting to "breaking them to good effect"?

(2) and (3) are really subsets of the idea expressed in (1).


RC

Not being sarcastic, but it all depends on what you mean by good effect.

I think there are some important points to be found here. Yes, a good GM will -at times- make judgement calls. Sometimes those calls won't even be because of a problem with the rules, but because he feels it is best for the game. However, I can see why somebody would be upset about the magic door thing. If I have a power which states it works a certain way and then the GM suddenly says my power doesn't work that way via GM fiat, I might be a little upset about that. I wouldn't argue during the game, and I would go along with it, but I'd still also be a little bit annoyed by it if there were no other explanation other than 'the GM says so.'

For me, I would somewhat disagree that that particular example was necessarily for good effect. On the other hand, I was not there, and I did not listen to the podcast, so, in all honesty, I don't know the full context of the situation. I'm starting to veer off topic though.

In response to the OP, I don't believe rpgs are the only place where referee interpretations and judgement calls happen. I'm a pretty big hockey fan, and there are plenty of times when I've watched a game where someone wasn't called for a penalty because the referees wanted to allow a good game to continue to flow. I've also seen situations in which a particularly problematic player was penalized seemingly at-will just to get him off of the ice. Likewise, I've seen fights be allowed to go on for a while before they were broken up.

From a more personal point of view, I've had times when I wasn't given a speeding ticket due to the situation. A particular example which comes to mind is when I was trying to get a friend home to get their inhaler because they were having an asthma attack. I got about a block from her house and was pulled over for speeding. The officer let me go without giving me a ticket due to how he interpreted the situation.

 

[Hussar]

But, we're not talking about "referee interpretations and judgement calls", we're talking about outright CHANGING the rules. Of course judgement calls are going to happen in any activity that is ...errr... judged by people. no pun intended.

But, if a baseball umpire suddenly decided that all left handed batters will always strike out, he wouldn't be given a pat on the back.

But, DM's do this all the time. Working within reasonable interpretations of a rule is fine. I got zero problems with that. That happens all the time.

What I find rather strange is that GM's are proud of the idea of "your game was simply your game and it bore the same name as what was written on the cover, and had a passing resemblance to all other games of D&D" whereas in pretty much any other group activity, this is condemned.