An Odd Thought Occured to Me about RPG's.

[Dannyalcatraz]

How do you think Canadian rules or 7-on-7 football came about? And why don't all baseball diamonds have identical dimensions?

Answer: people like mucking with rules.

Actually, here's another arena in which it happens: the Courts.

 

[Umbran]

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 the baseball umpire is a referee in a competitive game in which he or she is not a participant except in the rules judgments. Much of our concept of how this should be done is based upon the professional game, in which a great deal of money is at stake, and the umpire is paid a great deal of money to behave in a very specific manner.

But, DM's do this all the time.

The GM is not just a rules adjudicator. The GM is also an active participant in the activity*. The activity is cooperative rather than competitive**, there's no professional players with which to compare, and the only payment the GM is apt to be getting is his or her own enjoyment.

Apples and oranges.




*The GM knows everything there is to know about one team, and gets to create the other with any and all desired abilities, while revealing minimal information, makes all tactical decision for his or her side, and gets to adjudicate the rules to boot!

**See above. If this were a competition, the player's side would be toast.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I suppose that's an excellent point. RPG's are about the only activity where the referee is also an active participant, thus the differences stem from that.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Well my odd thought is gamers are like women. They can never be satisfied with one pair of shoes and have to accessorize their shoes forever and ever....

 

[Hussar]

Well my odd thought is gamers are like women. They can never be satisfied with one pair of shoes and have to accessorize their shoes forever and ever....

That is an odd thought.

 

[Raven Crowking]

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.

Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you on this.

It is quite possible to have a rule or rules that you believe simply cannot be broken to good effect, or is so unlikely to result in a good effect as to be not worth the risk. I am sure that you are fully aware that I feel that way about fudging.

I think that there is nothing contradictory in the belief that you make break rules to good effect, and that some rules should not be broken because the ultimate effect is never (or very, very rarely) actually good, esp. if you believe that in those cases it is virtually impossible to predict a good outcome at the time the rule is broken.

But, of course, "good effect" is a pretty subjective criteria. If I don't care for cubism, it doesn't mean that cubism cannot be used to good effect, but rather that the effect for me is very unlikely to be good.


RC

 

[MortonStromgal]

Take the Robot Chicken podcasts. Chris Perkins ruled during the session that powers do not work on objects and the character couldn't use a power on a magically held door. Now, this is in keeping with 4e rules. The 4e rules do allow for DM's to possibly change that rule, but, the base standard is that powers do not affect objects.

People were all over him for this.

I think thats more of a specific case. In the commentary he liked to say how he was a "Say Yes" DM but yet his actions in the podcast were not that of a "Say Yes" DM as he repeatedly said no.

Today, however, the term "houserule" is almost a dirty word. Maybe its the technology, maybe its the game system

For myself houserule is a dirty word because of a history of DM/GM/Storytellers I had who didn't follow the rules at all and had their own whim. They didn't say that upfront either. It wasnt a case of come play my home brew game it was a case of come play D&D Forgotton Realms. So I go out and buy a AD&D 2e PHB and the FR Campaign box only to find out we don't use d20s we use percentiles, there is no magic, there are only two gods Thor and Sauron and Waterdeep is ruled by king Beowulf, etc etc. Why did he say FR? Because he liked using the maps, everything else was his own creation.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Yea, a few small house rules is fine, but if you're going to ignore the rules and change them a lot, then you might as well try to create your own games.

 

[radferth]

To address the OP, RPGs are different because they are much more RP than G. When I play D&D, I am pretending to be a wizard or fighter or whatever. This is not much different from my daughter pretending to be a kangaroo who runs a restaurant, and not at all like playing baseball or monopoly or even Descent. The "game" part is a framework for playing pretend, so several of us can do together.

In a regular game, each player or team is trying to win, and there are rules so we know who wins. In that case, you wouldn't want to change rules on the fly (exception based on how informal the game is). In RPGs, the players aren't trying to beat each other, or even trying as a team to beat the DM, they're just all there having fun pretending to be knights or wizards or superheroes. The rules aren't there to make it a fair contest between the DM and players, they are there so we can all be on the same page about what we are pretending. The "game" is designed for the DM to make judgment calls over when to rigidly apply the rules and when to just decide based on coolness or verisimilitude or not wanting to kill someone with a freak series of rolls. At heart, its a role-playing activity with some rules, not a game with large number options.