Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[Imban]

No, they're just highly simulationist game systems. But plenty of stuff that happens in Glorantha was not possible in the Runequest 2e ruleset. In the Dragon Pass game, Harek the Berserk can destroy whole legions of Lunar troops. It's impossible to create a human in the Runequest rules who can do that, AFAIK, no matter how experienced/heroic.

...yes, different game systems produce different worlds and feelings in play, even when they're supposedly based around the exact same thing. For instance, people can throw fireballs in MERP, but it's easy to conceive of a Lord of the Rings RPG based off of the exact same material where this is not the case. Likewise, the War for the Throne board game for Exalted obeys different rules than Exalted itself, despite being based on Exalted. Since they're different games, what's the problem?

More seriously, I know what I like and don't like in games. I run games where the game rules are the physics of the game world, and it seems to work pretty darn well for me. I stay away from Order of the Stick-esque silliness where metagame terms are explicitly called out in play, and the chief visible manifestations of this to my players are that I do not choose to use plots which are contradicted by the game rules - so level-20 fighters will never die from simple misadventure - and that organizations and governments are influenced by the game rules. In D&D practice, this means that actually holding the reins of power practically requires being high-level or otherwise having the backing to not get killed offhand by the first high-level jerk you tick off. As a player, I'm bothered by plots that are directly contradicted by the game rules, especially when there are countless ways to revise any such plot so that it's not rules-impossible - Overking Tarkane the Usurper could easily die of old age or meet with fatal misfortune on a dire tiger hunt or what have you, the foolish level-3 apprentice could have successfully used a Scroll of Planar Binding (on a roll of 9 or higher on a d20, no less) that belonged to his master rather than contravening the rules and casting it as a normal spell, et cetera.

I understand that there are reasons why other players might prefer a "fluff trumps crunch" stance, and that's fine. To say that it always does, however, is just plain wrong.

 

[Hussar]

Imban - a question then. In the classic hostage situation, as a DM, do you care if the PC's flat out ignore the situation because they know that the captor cannot kill the captive in a single blow? In the Savage Tide AP, there is a situation exactly like this:

The PC's patron is held hostage by a orc fighter. There is no possible way that he could do enough damage in a single round to kill her other than possibly on a crit. Can the players act with that knowledge in the foreground? In other words, can they simply attack knowing that she will survive?

I would still be careful to not posit rules-impossible events in such a narrative.

But, Rule 0 allows for all events to be rules possible. Is the DM now entirely captive to the mechanics? I'm all for playing by the rules, but even I balk at this idea.

I'm really weirded out that I'm taking the same side of this discussion as some of the others. Stop making me do that. But, really, the idea that the DM is to be held hostage to the mechanics when designing his world is very strange to me. Heck, every campaign setting in existence changes RAW.

 

[Imban]

Imban - a question then. In the classic hostage situation, as a DM, do you care if the PC's flat out ignore the situation because they know that the captor cannot kill the captive in a single blow? In the Savage Tide AP, there is a situation exactly like this:

The PC's patron is held hostage by a orc fighter. There is no possible way that he could do enough damage in a single round to kill her other than possibly on a crit. Can the players act with that knowledge in the foreground? In other words, can they simply attack knowing that she will survive?

This is actually an interesting question. I'd say yes, in my games I would allow the PCs to attack with the knowledge that their patron will survive, but that if I wanted this situation to come up in my games I'd have the orc holding the unconscious body of their patron after she was knocked unconscious with Oil of Taggit or something. If they don't drop the orc before it takes initiative, the hostage gets CdG'd and that's bad mojo.

And well, if the PCs seriously think they can shoot the orc in the face before it takes initiative, they can go ahead.

But, Rule 0 allows for all events to be rules possible. Is the DM now entirely captive to the mechanics? I'm all for playing by the rules, but even I balk at this idea.

Well, hm. Rule 0 allows for all events to be rules-possible in some ruleset, but I personally enjoy consistency in rules. If we're playing by houserules that you've implemented as a DM - and believe me, I'd cry as much as anyone should anyone suggest taking the powers of houseruling and making judgment calls when rules are unclear or incomplete away from DMs - then those are the actual rules of the game, and sometimes the rules of the game are unclear or incomplete or otherwise bad and need to have judgment calls made on the fly. I do not believe "authorial decisions" are necessary to good DMing - "the hit point rules are being ignored, the overlord falls from his horse and dies" - and choose to avoid them when possible. (I also don't think they're a flaw, though stupid authorial decisions are well-known manifestations of a terrible DM.)

I do prefer DMs - and my personal DMing style lines up with this - who are "captive to the mechanics" such that they don't suspend the rules for specific situations simply to make a plot more convenient. I also tend to avoid games in which PCs and NPCs are treated differently - a simplified treatment of NPCs (for the most part, I don't count negative HP/bleeding for NPCs - -1 = no actions ever again = dead) is one thing but completely different rules don't jive with me.

I'm really weirded out that I'm taking the same side of this discussion as some of the others. Stop making me do that. But, really, the idea that the DM is to be held hostage to the mechanics when designing his world is very strange to me. Heck, every campaign setting in existence changes RAW.

Well, if you're changing the rules, you're changing the rules. If you're writing a campaign setting that has different rules, you're changing the rules. I prefer it when the mechanics that you want to run differently when designing your world are actually changed, not just suspended during the design phase only - a game and world based on A Game of Thrones should have different rules, not the default rules that posit heroes with the durability of demigods attached to a setting positing gritty normal-human-level fantasy.

 

[KarinsDad]

Fun is the primary objective of any recreational activity. If it is fun, it is good. If it is not fun, it is bad.

However, if your definition of "fun" is so constrictive as to impede the fun of others, as I believe to be the case here, then there is a problem.

I don't think you get it.

As DM, if you break the rules, then it impedes the fun of KM.

Any extremist point of view (yours of often breaking the rules in the name of fun, or KM's never breaking the rules) has the potential of impeding the fun of others.

This is why the DM should rarely break the rules. He should do so only when he KNOWS that a lot of fun will result, not just because it might. By doing so, he could make it less fun for players like KM.


I used to have a DM who fudged dice rolls behind his screen. It was very annoying. Play the game, but play it by the rules. Break them once in a blue moon for important things, but do not do it often. That's the best course for a DM. IMO. Breaking them for the sake of fun often is just a copout for not doing the DM's homework of balancing encounters and knowing the rules.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In the hostage situation Hussar describes, it wouldn't be unreasonable for the DM to allow the orc to CdG the captive even if she isn't technically helpless. But, and this is very important, the DM has to tell the players beforehand he's going to allow this. Otherwise there's a strong risk of assumption clash - players, naturally, assume the game rules will apply in this situation.

 

[Mallus]

I run games where the game rules are the physics of the game world, and it seems to work pretty darn well for me.

Out of curiosity, what do you do with something like 'a grizzled veteran soldier who lost his arm in battle', or a poor sod like Captain Ahab?

While it possbible to describe the effects of limb loss under the D&D rules, there aren't any procedural rules to get a character into that state. Would you rule that losing limb is, in fact, impossible? What about scarring? No procedural rules exist for that, either. In both cases, it's easy to see why the designers choose not to model this sort of thing within the game rules, but I think that makes a strong case for the belief that the rules where never intended to be used as the "physics" that the "simulation" was built on.

Put another way, where do you draw the line?

 

[Jack7]

The rules say people should have fun, dangit!
Like it or not.

It's been playtested so that's pretty much settled.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

With exception of magic, the game world operates under similar mechanics that our real world does. Meaning, someone can take a terrible spill off the back of a horse and become paralyzed (modified falling rules), a Bishop can be killed by a whore (coupe de grace), a man can die from falling off of a cliff (modified falling rules), a person can accidently trip and fall onto his sword (critical fumble), a soldier can lose a leg or arm (maimed at 0 HP or massive damage), a blacksmith can lose his hearing (old age rules for ability scores) and a wound can fester and kill a man if left untreated (modified healing rules). All men are accountable, including player characters; lack of oversight is no excuse for being run over by a wild horse in the streets if the player elects not to react to his surroundings.

It took just a slight bit of tweaking for wounds and death to work in my D&D game. The Skill mechanics and DCs I use suppliment realism (as far as realism can be brough to the table). I plan to carry these things over to my 4th edition game as well. The players like the crunch, and I feel that it firmly supports the fluff. Minutia, such as inventory management, foodstuffs and water, all of which give specific mechanical boons in-game (such as nourishment to delay exhaustion and water used during combat to quickly "refresh" a moderate amount of HP), encourage my players to do it - if not to have their characters live, but because these small things define what the character's capabilities are. I've never found a moment where my players have felt "weighed down" by this sort of micromanagement of equipment or accountability of themselves as they live and breath in a low fantasy world.

For instance:

Swig of Water (Swift/At-Will *combat only) restores 2d4HP

 

[apoptosis]

I think this is far too harsh a judgement. Sometimes the gameworld is more satisfying if we all know that the constraints on PCs are purely metagame. For example, I quite like the idea that, in the gameworld, falls from horses can be fatal even for powerful warriors, but we also know that no combat the PCs engage in will be ones where single blows kill powerful warriors (because, as a matter of combat mechanics, those warriors have the "plot protection" that hit points provide), and we know that this state of affairs has a purely metagame rationale (we want the fights to be interesting and even nail-biters, rather than non-events).


No - the point of the OP (unless I'm very mistaken) is that we want hit points (and the protective role they play) to be important in a certain range of situations, but at the same time we expressly deny that they are part of the gameworld physics, and thus in situations in which hit points don't matter (eg background details about the deaths of NPC warriors) we don't feel obliged to fit the world to the hit point mechanics.


Assuming that only the GM has the relevant narrative control. But even then, the rules tell us (for example) that the GM cannot ignore the hit point rules whenever the PCs engage a physically dangerous situation. So it is GM Fiat only within certain parameters - and D&D already has this.

That really hits the crux of the matter. The rules are there to resolve conflicts (challenges) with the PCs (actually the players and the DM) and allow the GM and players to share control of the scene/environment on different levels. If the PCs are not in conflict (this means all forms of social, mental and physical conflict) then the rules are not needed to resolve anything.

Possibly the rules could state something like this in D&D; in many systems they do.

Burning Wheel has a rule that states if there is nothing at stake in a conflict just say "Yes" to the players, which could also be reversed. If there is nothing at stake to the players the DM can say "yes" to himself.

I think many problems begin in games when the rules are treated like the physics of th world, this is true even in high sim games like RM.

 

[robertliguori]

Out of curiosity, what do you do with something like 'a grizzled veteran soldier who lost his arm in battle', or a poor sod like Captain Ahab?

While it possbible to describe the effects of limb loss under the D&D rules, there aren't any procedural rules to get a character into that state. Would you rule that losing limb is, in fact, impossible? What about scarring? No procedural rules exist for that, either. In both cases, it's easy to see why the designers choose not to model this sort of thing within the game rules, but I think that makes a strong case for the belief that the rules where never intended to be used as the "physics" that the "simulation" was built on.

Put another way, where do you draw the line?

You refine the rules, you don't ignore them. You look for precedent.

For instance, you note that, under good conditions, the orc has a chance of critting with the dagger and causing 2d4+2xStr damage. Call it 5+6, or 11 damage. Under the 3.5 rules, that is plenty to kill the average person in the game world (or at least render them rapidly bleeding to death).

How many of you have actually tried to cut someone's throat in the middle of combat? It's difficult; imagine cutting meat, but with a tough layer of skin over it, and the meat trying to get away and poke you in the eyes instead of being neatly sawn through. You can do it, of course, especially if you have the muscle mass to tear through flesh easily, or you are trained, but the fact that you can't automatically kill someone with a knife to their throat is a feature, not a bug, if you are looking for realism.

Besides, remember again that heroes with class levels start out exceptional, move rapidly to world-class and quickly end up in legendary. The rules say that character's ability to (when aware) avoid death through general injury are not up to GM fiat, but a strict measure of how deadly the injury was and how many hit points the character had. A high-level knight that is thrown from his horse will suffer injury, but if he is at full hit points, he won't break his neck. The hit point systems do not allow for the GM to declare arbitrary death from such things.

You don't like this, fine. But annouce that you're gutting the HP rules and replacing them with the "Whatever I feel like, which resembles the HP rules in combat, except when I think otherwise."

And a lot of players will be fine with that, and will appreciate the fact that there is explicit narrative control. A lot of other players will, at that point, pack up and leave while making snide comments about writing a novel, instead. The important thing, however, is to remember that the default assumption present in D&D is that the world does actually look a hell of a lot more like OotS than reality, and that regardless of what you find believable, this is what people mean when they talk about D&D.