Different philosophies concerning Rules Heavy and Rule Light RPGs.

[Thomas Shey]

My thoughts on that are simply that as a GM, if you use prep, you should constrain yourself by it at the table. To do otherwise is IMO frankly unfair to the players.

Well, arguably, doing most of your stuff on-the-fly can be unfair too if its handled badly. If you're at all frequently doing prep and then ignoring it, it does suggest something is wrong however, since that's a little perverse.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In practice, this isn't usually a problem. Players IME are excited to learn the settings lore and to have clear guidance on how to make playing the race richer and more distinctive. I have never had to say, "An elf wouldn't think like that." post character creation once I've had a chance to work on a player's backstory with them.

I suspect you've preselected for people for whom its not a problem. Just the fact you used the phrase "excited to learn the settings lore" tells me that, as its abundantly clear in discussion that there are plenty of people who really aren't interested in that (you'll sometimes hear the term "homework" used derisively in regard to it).

 

[Umbran]

My thoughts on that are simply that as a GM, if you use prep, you should constrain yourself by it at the table. To do otherwise is IMO frankly unfair to the players.

Eh. D&D was not initially/traditionally built around being fair to the players - it had a whole lot of tricking players or putting hazards where no rational person would expect them to be.

For typical home play, I fail to see the difference in "fairness" between something created days in advance, and things created moments in advance. Fairness is not extant in the time difference, but in the details of the choices in creation.

 

[Celebrim]

On the subject of rules lawyering, I don't object to a player raising a rules issue at the table. For one thing, sometimes I'm misremembering or misapplying the rules, and a clarification is welcome. If I have a player at the table with a head for the rules, even though to a large extent at my tables "the rules" are "my house rules", then I find that a good thing and am happy to have someone assisting me at the table.

The problem with rules lawyering isn't "caring about the rules" per se. The problem is with a player that only raises rules objections when he feels the ruling isn't favorable. You can tell the good ones because they are like, "I hate to bring this up, but by the rules shouldn't I be drawing an attack of opportunity here?" or something of that sort where they bring up rules that negatively impact their situation as much as ones that help them.

The problem with rules lawyering is that it's attempting to "win" the game in the meta of the game. The problem with it is it's a variation of GM wheedling where you attempt to alter or influence the referees decisions in your favor through some sort of social coercion browbeating, bullying, flirting, whatever. The problem is that the player makes the game about themselves and what they want and then uses a totally dysfunctional method to try to achieve that.

Or to put it very briefly, the problem isn't that they care about the rules; the problem is that they argue about the rules. Like, fine, help me out as a referee by bringing up the rules. I am happy to admit when I got it wrong and try to address it if you bring it up at that moment during play and then don't argue about it much if I don't agree. What you don't do is waste 30 minutes everyone's time arguing emotionally about a point of play 10 minutes after it happened whether or not I got it right then, demanding a retcon, and a replay purely because you aren't getting "your way" as you perceive it.

 

[Celebrim]

For typical home play, I fail to see the difference in "fairness" between something created days in advance, and things created moments in advance. Fairness is not extant in the time difference, but in the details of the choices in creation.

Agreed, but in my experience, things are a lot more likely to be fair if the GM spent some time thinking through the details of their choices in advance than they are making things up on the spur of the moment. Time for reflection and theory crafting is a good thing. Experience can substitute for that to a large extent, but not perfectly.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I require players to submit a backstory in D&D explaining who their character is and by extension how they expect to play that character.

I do the opposite. In most of my games (as player or GM) we 'discover' who the characters are during play. Sometimes a player will have a particular backstory in mind which they share, but sometimes it just starts with "I feel like playing an orc cleric/priest type character..." and 10 or 20 sessions later that character has developed a whole persona.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Eh. D&D was not initially/traditionally built around being fair to the players - it had a whole lot of tricking players or putting hazards where no rational person would expect them to be.

For typical home play, I fail to see the difference in "fairness" between something created days in advance, and things created moments in advance. Fairness is not extant in the time difference, but in the details of the choices in creation.

Tricking the players is I think different than moving the goalposts in play. A player being deceived can in theory see through the deception, provided the DM is sticking to their prep and treating it as established fact in the setting, whether the players are aware of it or not.

 

[Micah Sweet]

On the subject of rules lawyering, I don't object to a player raising a rules issue at the table. For one thing, sometimes I'm misremembering or misapplying the rules, and a clarification is welcome. If I have a player at the table with a head for the rules, even though to a large extent at my tables "the rules" are "my house rules", then I find that a good thing and am happy to have someone assisting me at the table.

The problem with rules lawyering isn't "caring about the rules" per se. The problem is with a player that only raises rules objections when he feels the ruling isn't favorable. You can tell the good ones because they are like, "I hate to bring this up, but by the rules shouldn't I be drawing an attack of opportunity here?" or something of that sort where they bring up rules that negatively impact their situation as much as ones that help them.

The problem with rules lawyering is that it's attempting to "win" the game in the meta of the game. The problem with it is it's a variation of GM wheedling where you attempt to alter or influence the referees decisions in your favor through some sort of social coercion browbeating, bullying, flirting, whatever. The problem is that the player makes the game about themselves and what they want and then uses a totally dysfunctional method to try to achieve that.

Or to put it very briefly, the problem isn't that they care about the rules; the problem is that they argue about the rules. Like, fine, help me out as a referee by bringing up the rules. I am happy to admit when I got it wrong and try to address it if you bring it up at that moment during play and then don't argue about it much if I don't agree. What you don't do is waste 30 minutes everyone's time arguing emotionally about a point of play 10 minutes after it happened whether or not I got it right then, demanding a retcon, and a replay purely because you aren't getting "your way" as you perceive it.

I've had many a group in which I was a player get annoyed with me for bringing up a rules issue that works against the PCs.

 

[Faolyn]

I would like it if stats meant more to fictional positioning in classic/traditional games too, and in my games they usually do (because my players and I agree on this), but some folks really seem to have a problem with the idea, almost to the point of offense.

Many systems (such as D&D) do not have an inherent setting. (They may have a default setting but that's different). Thus, when they say that Whoozits have +2 or -2 to a stat, they're telling me that I have to make my Whoozits be a particular way, no matter what my own setting may be.

Stat mods are boring and not particularly realistic. In D&D, at least, a +/-2 to a stat equates to a +/-5%. Your orc is 5% stronger than my human and 10% stronger than another player's halfling. Ooh, scary. I'd much rather have flavorful traits, even negative traits. Give me orcs that startle if exposed to bright light, or elves that become sick if they touch iron. Even a condition that lasts for a single round is more flavorful than a penalty and creates more opportunities for RP.

Because stats control a lot of skills, people may think "Whoozits are rude and therefore people think they're jerks, so they get a -2 to Charisma," without realizing that means that Whoozits are also racially bad at intimidation, acting, and lying. (I recall a letter or forum piece from an old Dragon mag about how, in 3e, a sickly gnome armed with a carrot was more intimidating than an orc barbarian.) A penalty may have made sense back in the AD&D days before skills existed, but not now. It would make a lot more sense for Whoozits to get a penalty on rolls to persuade people.

And then, of course, racism, fantasy biology, yadda yadda.

 

[Faolyn]

There are several move related issues where the PbtA GM can be fudging...

1. in a PC's narration, the GM calling something a move that really doesn't match the move as defined.
2. selecting a GM move that is not appropriate to the existing fiction. EG: NPC is established as a pacifist, player fails on a seduction move, GM goes straight to physical harm.
3. forcing the timing of PC narrations to be faster than certain players can handle
4. ending a scene because the GM wants story control of scene framing.
5. not calling people on crossing lines/veils

I'm not sure number five counts as fudging, really. Actually, I think most of these fall under "doesn't understand/disregards the rules" or "being a jerk."