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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8396661" data-attributes="member: 16814">Pointless to quote Snarf at me, he's blocked me for not being the best sport for his mockery, and disagreeing.I find this largely confused and an attempt to justify a conclusion by searching for facts rather than looking at facts and coming to a conclusion.  The comparison of Free Kriegsspiel and "Storygaming" is rather poorly made.  For one, the term "Storygaming" cover more territory even than the strongest advocate for D&D being flexible imagines for D&D -- it's a huge set of games.  Some are very much Bob says games, others use various forms of conflict resolution ranging from single mechanics (which range from Jenga pulls to dice to cards to conch passing) to mechanical systems (FitD, PbtA, FATE) to a scenario and consensus (Fiasco).  Trying to compare this landscape and what it says about trust to something like Free Kriegsspiel, where trust is established by vetted knowledge of a specific subject and demonstrated experience with it strikes me as very, very badly done and fundamentally failing to grasp the conceptual space offered.  The reason I see this usually trotted out is to really justify putting all authority with the GM as a way to make the game better -- and this aligns with the bullets you've posted.  I don't think this is borne out at all with any serious thinking, except maybe it is faster for one person to just say what happens rather than roll a die to find out.Let me address the bullets:1)  a human is faster than rules -- I find this to be extremely fraught.  In some cases, yes, this is very true, if I have a system that requires rolling dice with a very low chance of failure to walk across a room then, sure, it's easier for a human to just say yes except every now and then no than to roll the dice.If, however, the task is more complicated, then the human has to stop and consider the ramifications and the outcome space and may have a hard time holding all the variables in their head to successfully adjudicate this situation, while a rule could have that thinking baked in an resolve it much more quickly.  I think the problem in thinking here is that it's very fast for a human to just dash off an answer, but then we're saying that ANY answer is better than waiting, and I don't think that's correct.  If we're looking for the same quality of resolution, then I don't see how we can say what this bullet is saying once we consider the range of complications that may need to be adjudicated.  Further, a rule may have already considered the quality of resolution needed for this action while a human might need to consider if this needs a details resolution or a loose one.2)Free Kriegsspiel doesn't promote invisible rulebooks.  The lessons taught on how to use armies were well understood, so it was a matter of application.  The Umpire's judgements were visible in that they were reasonable expected to follow understood application, and it was expected that the Umpire was merely applying these understood rules with the lens of experience, not that the rules of the game were hidden from the players and they had to discover them.But, moving to the idea that Bob Says RPG rules promote an invisible rulebook, sure, you've hidden how the world works and are expecting the players to play characters that are from the world like they are aliens to that world.  I'm not sure how this actually improves things, but it is definitely a thing that happens.  And this is in a high trust scenario.  Lower that, and you have a rulebook that can be changed at any time for any reason.  I don't have to go too far on ENW to find people aggressively advocating for this approach, so apparently high trust is much more exclusive a club than just earnest gamers.3) this is true of any game, though.   Rules are not there to police trust in GMs, although they can moderate some behaviors, it's more that such things aren't left open for the GM to have to interpret rather than the assumption they will do so for bad reasons.  Trust is important in any social hobby, and RPGs aren't different.  Predicating an approach on "high trust" seems like you're asking people for quite a lot -- "I'm going to do things I will not explain to you and you just have to trust I'm doing it for a reason you will agree with."  I mean, sure, you can do that, but is this a selling point?  There's nothing particularly special about Bob Says that engenders or allows for high trust, just as there's nothing in, say, GURPS that cuts against high trust.  This seems, to me, to be aimed at claiming that those that use Bob Says as an approach should be considered to be great GMs, very trustworthy, because they've chosen a style that requires high trust.  Yes, and I have a bridge to sell you -- you can trust me because I'm selling bridges and that requires a lot of trust!All of the points made to aggrandize Bob Says as an approach fail to actually address the conceptual space for Bob Says, what it actually means for play, and instead look for quick blurbs and sound bits that make it sound like it's a great thing and that rules that constrain the GM are only there because people don't trust the GM.  It's a shaming technique, really - "if you don't like Bob Says, then it must be because you don't trust your GM like you should and if you did they'd be great because they can make quick decisions and hide the rules from you (won't that be fun!)!"Gah.</blockquote>

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