D&D General D&D's Evolution: Rulings, Rules, and "System Matters"

[Snarf Zagyg]

So the first thing a new group needs to do is conduct trust fall exercises? I'll be sure to do that!

Well, for some groups ... the trust fall might be both the first AND the last thing they do!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why?

It's all imagination and supposition.

Because one is set in the real world. I can find detailed breakdowns of how mustard gas affected people, what they did to counter it, and how effective it was.

I can't do that for how deadly poisonous dragon breath is. Would holding your breath work? That would work on some poisonous gases, but not others. Can you be exposed for 30 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes? Again, different gases in the real world clock in at different values, which is this one?

I know it is a very specific example, but it is the larger point. Imagination set in reality is set upon a much firmer foundation. For fantasy, we often rely on the rules of the world or system to lay that same foundation.

And ... this might surprise you, but someone, somewhere, had to come up with Jhenn Kaa in the Land of Dreaming Dragons. The "rules" are nothing more than that person's decisions. Why is that person in a better position to make decisions than the people at your table?

They aren't, but what they are well suited for is setting a standard that we can all agree on. For example below:

Further, the lack of rules for adjudication is not the same as a lack of knowledge; regarding your earlier post, imagine the following two TTRPGs:

Game A has detailed rules, including rules for riding dragons.
Game B is FK game, but has a detailed setting, including information about how there are dragon riders in the world.

Both games have clear indications that dragons can be ridden, right?

Sure, both have indicated that you can ride a dragon. Can you joust on dragons or must they use ranged attacks and act more like dog fights and aerial aces? Game B might not tell you. Or game A might not tell you. But if there is a rule that says "when riding a creature of X size, you can't engage in melee combat unless someone else jumps on the creature you are riding" then that has answered the question.

I'm not trying to say rules are better or story is better. But I want to advocate that rules have their place. They aren't just useless cruft that we should get rid of. It needs to be a mixture.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes, but also no.

I do think those games are different.

However, I think that a goblin empire and dragons can make sense and be understood if the underlying foundations of how the world generally works are things which people can understand.

If a fantasy world works in a way which is different than the world with which we're familiar, I think that the rules (or perhaps the DM) should indicate what those differences are. I'm inclined to believe that defining those differences is a smoother process when they can be contrasted with a point of reference which the audience (players in this case) can understand.

Ah, yes I completely agree. And I think this is something that rules can do well. Helping signpost differences and setting up points of reference to contrast them with. Which is why I feel rules tend to be more needed in a fantasy context, than in a "real setting" context, because we need more sign posts of how things different than our expectations work.

Do the goblins behave similar to bees? Mole rats? (I'm inclined to lean toward mole rats because of their breeding habits and mole rats being one of the few eusocial mammals.) Can my experience at dealing with a hive mind species in Stellaris help me out at all? Do they devour resources like locusts? There are lot of things which can serve as points of reference.

Pious humans aren't difficult to understand. History is full of those examples.

So, perhaps the eusocial goblin empire spreads across the land like a cross between the Mongol Horde and a swam of bees, but with mole rat breeding habits. So, there's one primary colony at the upper echelon of the hierarchy, but then there are various sub-empires lorded over by breading pairs at each new "hive."

At the same time, the pious humans are dealing with resources being consumed by this ever-growing menace. Perhaps some are terrified because the encroaching goblins are seen as some sort of divine omen that they have sinned in some way (much like some Europeans viewed the approaching Mongol Horde).

So, are the goblins the bad guys?

That depends upon what story you're trying to tell. There are a lot of ways you could deal with it. The goblins could be anything from a slightly more-intelligent version of zombies (or the Flood from Halo) to a thinly-veiled lesson about pollution to a misunderstood culture which is struggling with their own problems (which the PCs discover).

In any of those cases, I would be taking one or two bullet points which I can understand and then extrapolating more information from it.

From a player perspective, nothing included in what I wrote above would grossly violate anything I could understand. War and religion are both things I can understand. Packs of animals or hives of insects are also things I can understand. I may not have a perfect understanding, but that's not necessary. I simply need to understand the general ballpark of the idea.

Mentally, I just need to be able to get my foot through the door of understanding. Once I'm into the game, whatever I don't know will be filled in by the game, the story, and the DM. If something seems jarring or difficult for me to understand, I'll ask questions.

Actually, I was more talking about how the two very different forms of magic interact. I'm running into that in something I am working on (a similiar post/quest style game to the other one mentioned) in that I need to determine how these two magic systems are going to react when the character mixes them.

This is something that I don't have a good point of reference for, and so rules from a system could help. That is the value in codifying rules, instead of trying to always relate back to an IRL thing that might be similar.

Not that I disagree with the rest of your point at all, you are 100% right about that style of approach, I'm just trying to demonstrate that that approach is not always effective, and from that arises when we have rules.

 

[clearstream]

This is true! It really gets to a fundamental issue with TTRPGs (or any system that relies on humans as decision makers)- what level of trust do you have for the individual making decisions?

That's really what almost all the rest of it boils down to. Once you clear away the cruft of other issues, the core issue that we keep returning to is this-
To what extent do we look to the rules to bind the decision-maker?

To make a brief analogy- in the US world of criminal law, there has been a push and a pull regarding judges and their authority to sentence criminal defendants. At the core are two competing impulses-
First, that we want there to be rules that the judges have to follow. That two people who are convicted of the same crime serve the same sentence.
Second, we understand that different cases can be different, and we want someone with experience to be able to make proper decisions that accurately reflect the specific circumstances of a crime and the individual being sentenced.

And this is a constant battle! Sometimes going overboard in one way with rules that constrain judges that provoke outrage (such as mandatory minimums regardless of individual facts) and sometimes the other way (some judge gives out a sentence that is too heavy or too light and the public is outraged). Obviously, this is more serious than mere TTRPGs, but it's the same general concept.

Do you trust the decision make to use their experience to make proper decisions? Or are you more concerned that decision-makers will abuse their authority?

I don't think that there is a right answer on this- I do think that it is an interesting question to ask in relation to preferences.

It goes beyond that, to designers uncovering effective means to deal with common situations, and recording those for future use. So it's like a judge confronted with a puzzling situation, that other expert judges have encountered before. Luckily, some of those earlier judges recorded an effective way to deal with it. Before they did, various judges were trying all kinds of ad-hoc rulings- some succeeding, some horrible.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is true! It really gets to a fundamental issue with TTRPGs (or any system that relies on humans as decision makers)- what level of trust do you have for the individual making decisions?

That's really what almost all the rest of it boils down to. Once you clear away the cruft of other issues, the core issue that we keep returning to is this-
To what extent do we look to the rules to bind the decision-maker?

I question the fact that we always talk about the rules "binding", "chaining" or "limiting" the decision maker. It is this constant refrain that the rules are getting in the way of your all-powerful, supremely brilliant imagination... but I wouldn't have thought of psychic mushroom people. An entire scene I am working on right now via a play-by-post between a PC and a Myconid trying to fool them would never have happened if there were no rules for myconids and their spores.

Rules aren't just "binding" or "limiting" people. They are also a scaffolding that supports people. The rules can give us insights and lead us in directions we would not have considered. I just don't understand the attitude that all rules are bad, and it is a question of how much of this necessary evil you can stomach.

To make a brief analogy- in the US world of criminal law, there has been a push and a pull regarding judges and their authority to sentence criminal defendants. At the core are two competing impulses-
First, that we want there to be rules that the judges have to follow. That two people who are convicted of the same crime serve the same sentence.
Second, we understand that different cases can be different, and we want someone with experience to be able to make proper decisions that accurately reflect the specific circumstances of a crime and the individual being sentenced.

And this is a constant battle! Sometimes going overboard in one way with rules that constrain judges that provoke outrage (such as mandatory minimums regardless of individual facts) and sometimes the other way (some judge gives out a sentence that is too heavy or too light and the public is outraged). Obviously, this is more serious than mere TTRPGs, but it's the same general concept.

Do you trust the decision make to use their experience to make proper decisions? Or are you more concerned that decision-makers will abuse their authority?

I don't think that there is a right answer on this- I do think that it is an interesting question to ask in relation to preferences.

I think though that viewing it as a "battle" is the wrong take. Because that assumes one side is likely to find victory. And actually, the legal world is based upon precedent. That is the deciding factor 90% or more of the time, what is the precedent of the law. The question of "is it legal to do X" is not something that is decided in the moment by a decision maker, be it judge or cop. It is decided by the previous decisions, and the rules that we call laws.

Even sentencing is more complex than you are presenting here, as I'm sure you know. A Judge recieves a brief from the lawyers recommending a certain sentencing, which the judge takes under advisement. And even if the judge sentences, there are multiple appeal courts where other judges may review that sentence and change it. And many prosecutors and other officers of the law can reduce that sentence for a variety of reasons. And even without that, there is the presidential pardon.

So, the sentencing of a person is far from an decision made solely by the single judge in the courtroom. There is a vastly complex web involved to provide checks and balances. And yes, sometimes something happens that tilts one way or the other way and we don't like how it turns out, but that doesn't mean there is not a system in place.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I question the fact that we always talk about the rules "binding", "chaining" or "limiting" the decision maker. It is this constant refrain that the rules are getting in the way of your all-powerful, supremely brilliant imagination... but I wouldn't have thought of psychic mushroom people. An entire scene I am working on right now via a play-by-post between a PC and a Myconid trying to fool them would never have happened if there were no rules for myconids and their spores.

Rules aren't just "binding" or "limiting" people. They are also a scaffolding that supports people. The rules can give us insights and lead us in directions we would not have considered. I just don't understand the attitude that all rules are bad, and it is a question of how much of this necessary evil you can stomach.



I think though that viewing it as a "battle" is the wrong take. Because that assumes one side is likely to find victory. And actually, the legal world is based upon precedent. That is the deciding factor 90% or more of the time, what is the precedent of the law. The question of "is it legal to do X" is not something that is decided in the moment by a decision maker, be it judge or cop. It is decided by the previous decisions, and the rules that we call laws.

Even sentencing is more complex than you are presenting here, as I'm sure you know. A Judge recieves a brief from the lawyers recommending a certain sentencing, which the judge takes under advisement. And even if the judge sentences, there are multiple appeal courts where other judges may review that sentence and change it. And many prosecutors and other officers of the law can reduce that sentence for a variety of reasons. And even without that, there is the presidential pardon.

So, the sentencing of a person is far from an decision made solely by the single judge in the courtroom. There is a vastly complex web involved to provide checks and balances. And yes, sometimes something happens that tilts one way or the other way and we don't like how it turns out, but that doesn't mean there is not a system in place.

This. Constraints are required for a game, and the nature of the constraints determines the nature of the game. Of course, there seems to be quite a lot of not noting things as actual constraints -- this comes from never stepping outside the familiar to realize that you do have constraints you're just so used to them they don't register.

 

[Voadam]

This is something that I don't have a good point of reference for, and so rules from a system could help. That is the value in codifying rules, instead of trying to always relate back to an IRL thing that might be similar.

Not that I disagree with the rest of your point at all, you are 100% right about that style of approach, I'm just trying to demonstrate that that approach is not always effective, and from that arises when we have rules.

I don't think it follows that rules arise from things we don't have a good reference for.

Rules are often used to model things we do understand and have a reference for.

Chainmail has magic and unreal monsters. But that is all an optional supplementary part of it, the majority of the game's rules are for skirmish wargaming with fairly understood real world historical military style conflicts. The rules are there to model the situation and throw in reasonable probabilities, so that the players can engage each other in a game of skill and chance with consistent defined parameters at a certain level of abstraction. Not to define things we do not have a reference for.

 

[clearstream]

Chainmail has magic and unreal monsters. But that is all an optional supplementary part of it, the majority of the game's rules are for skirmish wargaming with fairly understood real world historical military style conflicts. The rules are there to model the situation and throw in reasonable probabilities, so that the players can engage each other in a game of skill and chance with consistent defined parameters at a certain level of abstraction. Not to define things we do not have a reference for.

Rules arise from both, right? The rules of D&D define a world different from our own, and in some cases they

can give us insights and lead us in directions we would not have considered.

While as you say, rules can also model facets of our real world. There aren't myconids in our world, so rules for them direct our emergent narrative toward a difference. There is chainmail armour in our world, so rules for that help us consistently represent it in our narrative.

Even if a DM resolves to never open a rule book, the moment she decides that Bob's character can't run at the speed of light, she has made a rule. And if she decides in her Friday-night session that Bob's character can lift 200 pounds, and then in her Sunday session reapplies that same decision, then she has made and is following a rule.

As a DM I might have the hubris to believe that my rules crafting is superior than that by experienced game designers, superior to rules that over the arc of D&D have gone through a dozen iterations and thousands of hours of playtesting, or I might just not have a high bar for rules. An interesting thing about @Chaosmancer's comment is that it points to a reason to have rules even if we don't care about the technical benefits of well-designed rules. That they might also inspire us!

 

[TheSword]

In 18 years, the only time I ever had a rules debate with someone was when a new (and short lived) player in the group tried to use the rules to do something they weren’t supposed to do. (He wanted his weapon to do disproportionate damage and attack multiple people outside the normal action economy.)

I’m a big fan of WFRP 4es approach to rules… ‘these rules are our suggestion but if you can think of a better way then do that.’

Now this phrase (or something like it), usually triggers cries of ‘I didn’t pay $50 for an incomplete RPG’ or ‘why should I do the designers work for them.’ Which goes to show, you can’t please all people all the time.

The reality is that making up rules for a group of people whose likes, dislikes and general preferences you know, is pretty easy. Amending an existing rule set for those people is even easier. Particularly if they’re fun, easy going people. You don’t need to be a game designer for that, you just need some imagination, logic, and maybe a bit of basic maths knowledge.

It does help to be a professional game designer to make games for complete strangers, or total ass-hats who will take more pleasure ripping your creation apart and writing about it on forums* than actually playing it themselves. In this situation you have to project yourself into the minds of complete strangers and make all sorts of assumptions. Quite often, rules debates take the form of posters taking concepts far beyond what the designers imagined.

The difference between rules for us, and rules for other people is rulings not rules works for some and not for everyone. I’ve lost track of the number of times on the Paizo forums that someone thought they’d won an argument by saying ‘it has to be this way so it’s consistent for Pathfinder Society play’. As if organized play made up more than a fraction of the game base.

Rulings not rules for those lucky enough to have good gaming groups.

*That isn’t to say everyone who comments on game systems without playing them, is a total ass-hat. Just some of them

 

[clearstream]

Rulings not rules for those lucky enough to have good gaming groups.

I am certain you wrote that conscious of the irony!

One feels heartened to be in possession of a rule for identifying good gaming groups (And fun, easy going people, too!)