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

[Campbell]

Fundamentally I do not see much of a connection between a game like Apocalypse World and Free Kriegspiel. Not because AW is afraid of judgement calls. It certainly is not. On a fundamental level a lot of what the indie space has been about are creating roleplaying games that are not descended from the war gaming tradition.

Apocalypse World adamantly rejects the neutral dispassionate referee and bespoke scenario design. Instead it promotes an active, passionate GM who is there to keep things interesting for the characters, make things personal. make things feel real and sustain conflicts. They do so with pretty broad authority, but it's a pretty firm rejection of the process of play that undergirds wargame style scenario design and neutral refereeing.

 

[clearstream]

Fundamentally I do not see much of a connection between a game like Apocalypse World and Free Kriegspiel. Not because AW is afraid of judgement calls. It certainly is not. On a fundamental level a lot of what the indie space has been about are creating roleplaying games that are not descended from the war gaming tradition.

Apocalypse World adamantly rejects the neutral dispassionate referee and bespoke scenario design. Instead it promotes an active, passionate GM who is there to keep things interesting for the characters, make things personal. make things feel real and sustain conflicts. They do so with pretty broad authority, but it's a pretty firm rejection of the process of play that undergirds wargame style scenario design and neutral refereeing.

Within FK, different officers could have had differing views on effective training. Some might have felt coming in with strong opinions - making things personal - was the right way to go. FK didn't so far as I know call for neutrality by the overseeing officers, but experience.

That said, a common wargaming situation is multiplayer PvP. That puts the referee in a different position, because a ruling that is made personal to one player, might favour or disfavour the other player. What you are identifying as a rejection of a wargaming process of play is perhaps just not commensurate. RPG typically (but not always) puts all players on the same side. Where players can be on different sides... well, you can easily see how that informs the refereeing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There's a large disconnect between applying Free Kriegsspiel to fantasy D&D -- the nature of the authority the umpire/GM claims. In FK, the umpire's calls were respected because they had the experience. So, when they were adjudicating the play, they were bringing a direct experience with the matter to hand -- the evaluation matrix was their experience. When this concept shifts to the idea of fantasy wargaming, however, this authority is completely lost. There's little to say about how a person reacts to a threat, so you're not perpetrating the FK concepts when you say that a GM should just issue rulings as to how they think things should go. Rather, you're actually engaging in a different concept which is consensus storytelling with a non-neutral judge. Which is fine, but it has little actually in common with Free Kriegsspiel except that one person gets the say in what happens.

I'm generally non-plussed by the attempts to claim FK as top cover for justifying GM-says play. You don't need it -- if it's fun for your table, that's enough. There's no need to take a very tightly focused wargame, who's rules were what the veteran umpire said and trusted because they'd been there and seen it, and then claim that the same idea of one person having the say what happens when set in a fantastical and far more complex fictional space is the same. They have one thing in common -- one person has the say as to what happens. The differences, though, are legion. Foremost is that the players are against a scenario proposed by the one person deciding what happens vice competitors in a wargame overseen by an umpire who has no stake in who wins (or shouldn't).

 

[Argyle King]

Something you mention is that the FK players could play roles using their own understanding of the situation and experience.

What's missing from highlighting that is the realization that the players were all people in a world they could all see, hear, feel, experience, and understand.

A fantasy rpg assumes a world different than our own, so I believe there to be merit in building a shared foundation of understanding through rules. What does my character see, hear, and experience; are there aspects of the game world which work differently from that which is familiar to me as the player?

In that regard, I believe system matters because the system is telling a player how the world works, especially when it works differently than our own world.

To use a crude example, what happens when I stab the orc with my sword? Is it something different than I'd expect when compared to real-world violence? ?
Does it mean just marking down some HP loss?
Does it mean causing wounds?
Some narrative effect?
Damage and force movement activated by an encounter power?

I'm in the minority of people who believes that touches of reality can enhance (rather than inhibit) fantasy because it helps to build a shared understanding of a world.

Which isn't to say that things need to mimic reality. I simply believe that starting from a foundation of shared understanding facilitates the ability to make rulings because there's a shared mental space from which those rulings can be derived - even after the fantasy elements are layered on.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Fundamentally I do not see much of a connection between a game like Apocalypse World and Free Kriegspiel. Not because AW is afraid of judgement calls. It certainly is not. On a fundamental level a lot of what the indie space has been about are creating roleplaying games that are not descended from the war gaming tradition.

Apocalypse World adamantly rejects the neutral dispassionate referee and bespoke scenario design. Instead it promotes an active, passionate GM who is there to keep things interesting for the characters, make things personal. make things feel real and sustain conflicts. They do so with pretty broad authority, but it's a pretty firm rejection of the process of play that undergirds wargame style scenario design and neutral refereeing.

I'm reasonably certain that was what I wrote in the conclusion. Yay, agreement!

That said, I will disagree with you on the bolded part, only to the extent that the many people involved aren't fully familiar with the wargaming tradition (as opposed to what they believe it to be); those that are more familiar in the indie game community wouldn't be so keen to express it in those terms given that there are indie games that are very much in keeping with certain wargaming traditions.

Maybe ... maybe I should write a long essay about this! Oh, wait ...

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I feel that this video is relevant to the thread:

 

[Malmuria]

I feel that this video is relevant to the thread:

Would be cool of Matt to cite his sources: https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old School Primer.pdf

Also, not sure if this is true but FWIW:

 

[Voadam]

Something you mention is that the FK players could play roles using their own understanding of the situation and experience.

What's missing from highlighting that is the realization that the players were all people in a world they could all see, hear, feel, experience, and understand.

From the given example I did not think Arneson was actually in a helicopter over a burning banana republic throwing out physical leaflets.

I can see imagining a Conan or Tolkien scenario similar to imagining a banana republic one and in both cases using my own understanding of the situation and my own experiences to play a role in the scenario or to be a judge/DM.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Would be cool of Matt to cite his sources: https://friendorfoe.com/d/Old School Primer.pdf

Also, not sure if this is true but FWIW:

It was my impression that he was just using the 4e session as an example of a way that ignoring the Rules as Written in the moment can enhance the fun at the table (by preventing the game from stopping to look up some obscure rule), not using it as an example of "this game was designed for 'Rulings, not Rules' in mind from the start". IMO, that tweet misses the point of the video.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Perhaps it depends on what you view as the purpose of RPG rules. Bernard Suits put it that we accept game rules just so that we can have an experience that could not exist in their absence. How far that goes is a matter for debate.

I think we accept RPG rules because they regulate and validate leverage over the emergent narrative - to say what the narrative will include and influence where it might go. FK had a teaching agenda. I'm not sure that I share that agenda. Mine is more to experience an emergent narrative, and to empower each player to tell us what happens.

I think this gets at something important. Rules also tell us what we can do.

I've noticed this in a story/solo-quest-post game I've been running for about a year now, but the main character that my readers control has magic... and so she can basically do anything. The system is very light and encourages this, and you can use magic to justify powerful leaping (enchanted boots), blasts of energy, shields, summoning allies, there has been quite literally very few things that "more magic" hasn't been a good answer to.

Conversely, one of the side-characters power is that he is a perfect martial artist. He can pull off insane stunts, but it is also limited by being something that a martial artist with no other powers than martial arts (no ki or magic dragons) can do.

So, I think quite often in RPGs the rules exist to tell us what incredible, sense-breaking thing we can do. The types of things that would get a referee to question it if it wasn't supported by the rules. Absolutely the opposite can be true, and rules can get in the way, but I think there also is an inherit value in seeing a rule that tells you you can do something you would never have considered.