Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[Professor Phobos]

D&D satisfies a gearhead kind of fun for me. Some people tinker with car engines, some people mess with computers, I play D&D.

But you still get that. With your car analogy, the rules are for driving and repairing and customizing the car- but the DM decides on the highway, rest stops, motels and drive through fast food joints.

The sense that you're allowing it, that you choose not to stop them -- rather than actually not being able to stop them via the rules -- is what reminds me constantly that we're in the DM's universe, and that the DM gets to say what goes. That blows out my suspension of disbelief, because I'm very acutely aware that this isn't a world I choose to affect, this is a world the DM chooses to allow me to affect. It robs me of agency and autonomy to have to pass through the DM filter.

But...a DM's filter is why you have the DM in the first place? To have the ability for the game world to respond to PC action in complex and nonlinear ways. A GM is there so if you kill Lord British, the kingdom descends into anarchy, or his son tries to take power, or there's civil war. It's the DM's job to adjudicate how the PC's affect the world beyond the immediate effect of rules mechanics. It's one thing to say I can't stop the PCs from, say, killing a monster they're able to kill. That's entirely correct- I can't stop them there. But I decide what killing that monster means for the game world, don't I?

What I was referring to there is that I let the PCs decide on some of that "meaning and consequence" stuff themselves, since I am lazy.

This breaks my suspension of disbelief as well, because it creates two categories of people in the world (at least), and the category is entirely dependant on a metagame consideration. Knights are only immune to falling of a horse and dying if they're being controlled by a player, but, in the game world, there's no real knowledge of who is a PC and who is an NPC.

Exactly. The PC's don't know they can't break their necks.

In the real world, if my co-worker goes home for the night, they're the same person they were when they were with me during the day. In D&D, if my adventuring buddy retires, he's suddenly vulnerable to a host of mundane threats that he was immune to when he was with me on adventures?

Yes, exactly. "Ten years later, I returned home and paid my loyal cohort Cedric a call. I found him passed out in the street, nearly drowned in mud...it seems the years had treated Cedric poorly. Infection had taken an eye, his wife had died the previous winter, and he had taken to drink...for a man who once took the heart of Gorak the Despoiler, it was a truly sad and pathetic end. I resolved to help him as a true friend should..."

Again, I'd feel robbed of agency and feeling impotent, because I am again reminded that the only reason I'm slaughtering them is because you're letting me.

Okay, so in this example:

PCs: "We attack the guards!"
DM: "They're just the town guard, you guys won't have any trouble. No need for combat, let's get on with the game..."
PCs: "Okay, we beat 'em soundly and let them live, in that case."
DM: "Sure, whatever. Okay, you've made it to the temple. How do you want to play this?
PCs: "We go straight in."
DM: "Evil McEvilDude sees you enter and charges- roll initiative!"

You'd feel impotent? Seriously? Are you suggesting it is more fun to play out a full combat (which takes time) even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion, than to go directly a combat where the outcome is not a foregone conclusion?

This comment, and others you've made...my god man, your game must be boring as hell.

I would instead ask: "I want to grab the Hobgoblin and use him as a shield. What do you want me to roll for that?"

In my view this is the same question as "Can I use the hobgoblin as a shield?" He's not asking me for permission, he's asking about what the rules allow. This is a simple case of vague wording, but you're reading waaaaay to much into it.

Honestly, all this stuff about "I don't want to ask the GM for anything" and "It makes me feel impotent!" is just...paranoia.

I believe I have made all the points I want to make. You seem persistent in your desire to treat them...uncharitably, and misread them in the worst possible light. I suspect this is unconscious on your part, since there seems to be an extreme degree of distrust on your part for the GM.

Again, I can only conclude you wouldn't be welcome, nor would you want to be, at my table.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I would point out that I believe the Fourth Edition designers and developers at WotC are firmly in the "Group A" camp.

That, at least, is clear. I would maintain that 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition D&D, as well as most RPGs, are firmly in the "A" camp as well.

GURPS is a good example of an attempt to satisfy a "B" type paradigm.

 

[Celebrim]

At heart, I'm really a 'narrator' type-player. What I want to be doing is creating a story. That's why I mostly DM, I think, even though I enjoy being a player. (That, and most of the time after I play a while, the rest of the players decide I should be the DM and I'm 'volunteered' on the basis of the fact that otherwise there won't be a game.)

However, the reason that despite this I'll never let 'simulation' die - even if I have to dig up its body and reanimate it - is that it doesn't really matter if the game rules are intended to be the physics of the game world. Like it or not, sooner or latter they get volunteered for the job on the basis of the fact that otherwise there won't be a game.

Sooner or later, the games rules end up defining how the world works, and once that happens glaring violations of the rules end up detracting from the game and story of the game in the same way that glaring violations of logic and cause and effect detract from a movie.

It doesn't matter how good your intentions are. It doesn't matter if you understand that the spirit of the rules or the needs of the story are more important than the rules. All that does is delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, everything will either conform to the rules or the 'audience' will rebel because they'll feel cheated. They'll feel that your violation of the rules is just lazy sloppy story telling by someone who doesn't care or isn't able to do it right. And sooner or later, you going to feel the same about yourself - and you'll realize that your probably right.

And this is why a rules set has to be well thought out. When it comes down to it, what we think of as a 'good rules set' is one that - one way or the other - doesn't much get in the way of the game and the story. And that means that it has to be both superficially good when the detail would get in the way by jolting the players out of thier in-game reverie, and have depths for when its superficiality jars the players sense of belief in the story.

There are good reasons for having good rules that you'd probably almost never use because the situation would just almost never come up. Because sooner or later you are going to find that your game 'matures' (or moves on to some different terroritory if you prefer a more neutral word) where suddenly these things are coming up, and suddenly you need detail because taking things happens 'just because' becomes as hard as accepting 'you missed' or 'I shot you' just because.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But you still get that. With your car analogy, the rules are for driving and repairing and customizing the car- but the DM decides on the highway, rest stops, motels and drive through fast food joints.

The point of working on a car isn't to drive it, though. It's to work on it.

The point of playing D&D isn't to tell a story, for me. It's to play D&D. All of those rules suspensions in the pursuit of a good story ruin, for me, the experience of playing the D&D game, because it is, essentially, cheating. And I'm not looking for a good story out of D&D. D&D is, actually, pretty fundamentally unable to deliver to me a story even half as good as anything written by Shakespeare or Cormac McCarthy or Borges or Bukowski. If I wanted a good story, I'd read a book. Now, D&D can deliver to me an entertaining story derived from the game, but I'm not going to shackle the game to some creative chains it was never really intended to obey just to get a good story out of it. Sometimes the fun comes from the game, not the plot. For me, more fun comes from the game (the excitement of rolling dice and of having my make-believe persona manipulate the world for her advantage) than from the story (which is often poorly concieved, filled with stereotypes, unable to maintain a mood, and takes too long to tell, besides).

You'd feel impotent? Seriously? Are you suggesting it is more fun to play out a full combat (which takes time) even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion, than to go directly a combat where the outcome is not a foregone conclusion?

It's more fun to play a game in which I, as a player, can use the rules to affect the world than one in which you, as a DM, just tell me what I am capable of. It's also more fun to play a game where I use the rules to affect the world than to play one in which I just declare how I affect hte world.

I do feel impotent if I don't get to affect the world through the rules. If those rules allow me to play through a combat like that faster, or to avoid it entirely (and they very nearly do), I'll gladly embrace them. If they don't, i'm going to have a lot of fun splattering these goblins on the wall. The game is the thing, after all.

In other words, Group B says (I believe) that if you want a high-level NPC to be able to die from falling off a horse, you, as DM, need to institute some mechanic (even if it's avoidable with a DC 2 REF save) for breaking your neck when you fall off a horse.

However, the above suggestion would mean 1 in 20 falls from a horse was fatal. And given the number of times PCs will fall off horses in the game, that seems a bit harsh. So if we want to set up a 1/10,000 (or 1/100,000) possibility, we have to create elaborate layers of extra rules

Actually, this is slightly disengenuous. If you want a high-level NPC to be able to die from falling off a horse, you, as a DM, need to justify that. There are pretty much unlimited justifications for it, including making a rule, but also including making them suffer a warlock's curse or have them fall off a horse, and then off a cliff, or just making them a 1st level Aristocrat since they don't really need to be a high-level fighter anyway, or having them die by being pulled off their horse on a hunting expedition by the terrasque, or just by having them disappear mysteriously into the forest for unknown reasons.

In other words, you have to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish, and use the quickest, easiest path to get there, and not be too married to your idea of falling off a horse and dying.

Or, if you want horses to be threatening, make rules for that.

But don't tell me that my character can stand tall against a dragon's most powerful flame, but dies the moment it's convenient and he's not exciting anymore. That blows my believability away.

 

[JohnSnow]

This much metagame thinking removes me from the imaginary world we have set up.

I knew someone was gonna throw out the "metagaming" accusation eventually. Quite honestly, I think it's one that can be leveled equally at both sides.

If you make decisions on the basis that you're playing a game, it's metagaming. To me, thinking you know the relative "hit points" of a particular character is metagaming. Why? Because the PC has no way to truly know what level Sir Hacksalot is. He killed a dragon? Maybe he was lucky. There's nothing, by the rules, that prevents a 1st-level warrior from killing a dragon, especially if he has a bunch of magic gear. It's just really unlikely that A) he'd have that gear, and B) that he would survive the fight if you played it out. But, by the rules, it could happen. A 1st-level warrior could get very lucky (roll all 20s), the dragon could always miss, and so on. So when the PCs decide they know someone's level based on things like this, they're metagaming.

D&D is not about people in a realistic world. Superman doesn't get paralyzed falling off a horse. The actor who portrays him does. Superman exists in a realm of heroic fantasy. Christopher Reeve is an actor, he doesn't.

But that's the PCs. What you're telling me is that nobody in Superman's world gets to die the way normal people die. Jimmy Olsen can't fall down the stairs and break his neck. Clark Kent's dad can't die of a heart attack.

Oh wait, maybe you'll say they're low-level NPCs, so that's possible. On the other hand, is Bruce Wayne (aka "the Batman" - a not low-level NPC) incapable of dying from a broken neck? What if he lives to be 60? 80? 90? When is he no longer protected by the plot protection of being "the Batman?"

That's how I see hit points. They're plot protection for the main character. They're a useful abstraction to deal with the fact that any normal person facing the situations the PCs do should, by all rights, be dead a hundred times over. The PCs aren't, because they have plot protection in the form of hit points. They don't have plot immunity like so many fictional characters do because if they can't "lose," then there's no "game."

I'm about to give up. If people don't understand this point by now, discussing it further seems like an utter waste of time.

 

[Imban]

That, at least, is clear. I would maintain that 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition D&D, as well as most RPGs, are firmly in the "A" camp as well.

GURPS is a good example of an attempt to satisfy a "B" type paradigm.

It's actually rather open for debate; you'll notice that we're posting on a D&D message board, and if it was as clear-cut and firm as that, you'd think that we wouldn't be having this debate at all. (I mean, I'll maintain to the death that any given Old World of Darkness game plus Exalted (I haven't read New World of Darkness, so maybe those too, maybe not) is at least highly friendly to the "B" paradigm.)

Certainly, there are statements in 1e D&D that say that hit points are an abstraction and that D&D makes no attempt to rigorously simulate reality. (And the latter of those statements should be taken in the context of the times - compare D&D to certain wargame rulesets from 30 years ago.) However, D&D has never truly been incompatible with either playstyle. This may change with the change to 4e, but will likely not. Historically, people had similar worries during the change to 3e, and here I am talking to you today.

Unless the mechanics of 4e, by the book, include heavy use of metagame abilities (see: Adventure!'s Dramatic Editing) with no possible in-character rationalization or take very drastic steps to separate NPCs from PCs (see: no mainstream traditional designs I can think of, but consider a hypothetical design where creating opponents using the PC rules would result in wildly unbalanced and unfun combats because the stats were completely different), or inexplicable metagame constraints were everywhere (see: "this power is only usable while in combat" on things like jumping really high), it is unlikely to be incompatible with my play style. As noted, the 4e designers seem to favor your preferences and you're likely to see some steps towards the rules as abstractions.

 

[Professor Phobos]

It doesn't matter how good your intentions are. It doesn't matter if you understand that the spirit of the rules or the needs of the story are more important than the rules. All that does is delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, everything will either conform to the rules or the 'audience' will rebel because they'll feel cheated. They'll feel that your violation of the rules is just lazy sloppy story telling by someone who doesn't care or isn't able to do it right. And sooner or later, you going to feel the same about yourself - and you'll realize that they're probably right.

No. That is by no means inevitable.

As a player, I expect the exact opposite- that things will only conform to the rules interacting with me. This is what I want.

I don't want to play in a "D&D Rules are Laws of Physics" universe. That would be an incredibly dumb world of completely ridiculous events and facts of life. As a player, I want to play in a world that's more complicated than a simple, abstracted rules system allows- because I want good stories, a good world, as much as I want a good game. I don't want to play in a world with no maimed veterans or accidental deaths. That kind of world is extremely dull and unbelievable. It lacks complexity, depth, nuance, verisimilitude.

As a player, I can't stand pixelbitching. If it doesn't matter, just say yes! Let's get on with it!

In the game I'm currently playing, there were some skeletons. These skeletons could never possibly defeat us or cost us any meaningful resources. But we still had to smash them, because the DM couldn't bring himself to just say, "Okay, you smash them." I advocated for it- I said, "This has no bearing on the story and we can't possibly lose. Let's just skip it. I have to leave early tonight and I want to kill something that gets me XP before I leave." But alas...

He felt more obligated to the rules than to my time.

I sympathize, since this kind of...helplessness, seems culturally indoctrinated in gamers these days, but it was mildly frustrating. (Decent game, though)

My statements on this thread don't just conform to my experiences as a GM, but to my experiences as a player.

 

[Roman]

Celebrim, just out of interest, are you the same Celebrim who used to post on Strategy Page fora?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I knew someone was gonna throw out the "metagaming" accusation eventually. Quite honestly, I think it's one that can be leveled equally at both sides.

Uhm...it was used in what I quoted from pemerton. He argues, quite cogently, that a fun game can be had if we all just agree that some things are going to be metagame, and pretty much push that off to the side and enjoy the core of the game itself.

I agree, I just draw the line in a different place. 'That much' metagame thinking ruins the experience for me.

What you're telling me is that nobody in Superman's world gets to die the way normal people die. Jimmy Olsen can't fall down the stairs and break his neck. Clark Kent's dad can't die of a heart attack.

The dissonance here is that Superman runs by different rules than Jimmy and Mr. Kent. Superman is a hero, he's a classed individual of high level in this analogy. Jimmy and Mr. Kent aren't heroic; they use mook rules, they're 1st-level commoners with 2 hp. Superman can't die from the way normal people die because he isn't a normal person. 20th level heroes can't die the way normal people die because 20th level heroes aren't normal people. Jimmy and Mr. Kent can, they are normal people. 1st level commoners with 2 hp can fall off a horse and die, too. 20th level heroes, Superman, heroic people, cannot.

If you don't make every king a 20th level fighter (and instead make them, perhaps, a 2nd level Aristocrat), it's not so hard to kill them. 20th level heroes are, by definition, difficult to kill.

On the other hand, is Bruce Wayne (aka "the Batman" - a not low-level NPC) incapable of dying from a broken neck? What if he lives to be 60? 80? 90? When is he no longer protected by the plot protection of being "the Batman?"

Though Batman isn't really heroic fantasy the way that Superman is (Batman is still a normal person in a realistic world, -ish, especially in his darker conceptions), I still don't know of any instance where Batman dies by slipping on a wet floor after getting out of the shower (the 20th century equivalent to falling off a horse?), or by getting intestinal cancer.

They're a useful attraction to deal with the fact that any normal person facing the situations the PCs do should, by all rights, be dead a hundred times over. The PCs aren't, because they have plot protection in the form of hit points. They don't have plot immunity like so many fictional characters do because if they can't "lose," then there's no "game."

They aren't plot protection, they are descriptive of the fact that experienced heroes are, very truly, head and shoulders above everyone else.

In D&D, as a game, even a 1st level Fighter is better, stronger, faster, more powerful, and more heroic than any farmer in Podunk. That's the heroic fantasy genre. That's the mold that D&D is cast in. That's what breaks when you tell me that in 20 years and 19 levels, he dies falling off a horse, after he's slain dragons and giants and necromancer-kings.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

I offer this up for debate: Game rules are not intended to model the physics of the game world. Rather, game rules are intended to offer up a rough simulation of the game world that will yield useful narrative results. There are and should be occasions in the game universe where things happen that appear to break the rules, because the story has gone to a place the simulation fails to adequately cover. . . . .

. . . . And that is why I think it is a mistake to equate the rules to the physics of the game world. In the game world, 1 out of 20 swings do not miss and 1 out of 20 swings do not always hit (for given value of "swing, which could be several attacks). It's simply a convenient assumption for the simulation.

This was an excellent and well thought out post. I agree 100%.