Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[Celebrim]

The hardest thing for me to do is brevity.

Here is my position in brief.

If the game rules aren't the physics of the game world, then what is?

(And whatever you answer, isn't that the real game rules?)

 

[Professor Phobos]

The hardest thing for me to do is brevity.

We noticed!

Here is my position in brief.

If the game rules aren't the physics of the game world, then what is?

Do game worlds have physics at all?

(Also keeping it brief)

 

[Xyl]

If the game rules aren't the physics of the game world, then what is?

I'll explain the true physics of the D&D setting of your choice, if and only if you first explain the true physics of the world we live in. (Hint: Relativity and quantum mechanics are only approximations.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

This makes no sense. The dragon is much more likely to kill you than a random accident. People ride horses all the damn time in fantasy settings!

That's exactly why they're more dangerous! People die all the the time in the real world from household accidents that are roughly equivalent to 'falling off of a horse.' Less people die in shark attacks, but sharks scare people more than, say, ladders. A 20th level knight dying from a horsing accident is, for me, pretty much like Superman getting in a car accident and dying: violating the rules that character works under.

Sigh. Nothing anyone is saying is sinking in, is it? You continue to define your terms the way you want and expect us to abide by them.

I've been repeatedly saying why a game is more satisfying for me when the rules are adhered to by all sides at all times, why it feels wrong to me when a DM doesn't use the rules because it's not narratively expedient.

You're not going to really convince me that what I like isn't what I really like, or that I haven't been doing it for years already. You're not going to convince me that I haven't been actually having fun my own way. That doesn't make me a bad gamer, just a different style of gamer. The most you could do is say that your way works best for your group and groups like yours, and I'm totally okay with that. It should, it does, great, have fun.

But don't try to convince me that I should feel like I'm having fun when I'm really not. You're right, that won't sink in. Because, you know, people like different things and play D&D for different reasons, and my reasons are not the same as yours, so what makes you giddy with joy makes me bored and frustrated, and what makes me enjoy this little pastime would make you feel constrained and limited, and that's OKAY.

 

[Celebrim]

Do game worlds have physics at all?

If they have a consistant cause and effect, then, "Yes."

Conceivably, a game system ran by referee fiat in which the referee paid no attention to his past rulings and was not trying to simulate (consciously or unconsciously) something would have no 'physics', but such a game could hardly be called a 'system' at all and would take a very self-aware referee to do it if it were humanly possible. It would also likely be unplayable, in so much as players could never anticipate the results of any proposition that they offered.

A simulation of such a 'system' could possibly be achieved by creating a sufficiently large 'Wand of Wonder' table and then regardless of what the players announced they would do ('walk across the room') consult the table for the results. But that isn't really complete inconsistancy because the range of results is finite and hense the results of an action are somewhat constrained (if not usefully).

 

[Professor Phobos]

If they have a consistent cause and effect, then, "Yes."

Some of it is covered by the rules, some of it is controlled by the GM.

 

[Celebrim]

I'll explain the true physics of the D&D setting of your choice, if and only if you first explain the true physics of the world we live in. (Hint: Relativity and quantum mechanics are only approximations.)

Errr....

1) By necessity, you are putting the easier burden on yourself in as much as the game, being a simulation, is necessarily much simplier than the universe in which the simulation takes place. There is not enough matter in the universe to assemble a computer which ran simulation of the universe itself. So you aren't making a fair bargain on those grounds.
2) You aren't making a fair bargain on other grounds either. For example, the full details of the real universe are not only currently unknown to us, but potentially unknowable in as much as we are contained in the universe and hense cannot contain it within ourselves. Whereas, the game being a product of our own creation could be fully known.
3) Relativity is not an approximation. If you think it is an approximation, I'd like to know, "An approximation of what?"
4) Quantum mechanics is an approximation in the sense that we don't like to describe things in terms of probablities and smart minds (say Einstein) have challenged quantum mechanics for that reason on philosophical grounds. Nonetheless, it is not a factual statement to claim that QM is an approximation in that it may turn out that the universe really isn't something that can be precisely described (and the evidence sure looks that way from here) in which case QM is as precise of a description as can be managed.
5) This is all just a red herring any way, since my ability or inability to describe the rules of the real universe has no bearing on whether the rules of a game describe the rules of the game universe.

 

[Celebrim]

Some of it is covered by the rules, some of it is controlled by the GM.

Already covered that objection much earlier on. If the GM tends to resolve similar situations in similar ways, then whether these rules are formal (in the since of written down systematically) or informal really doesn't matter. The game universe still would have a predictable cause and effect.

In my experience, DM's implicitly or explicitly tend to create precedents by thier rulings so that the players have an expectation that once a situation is resolved in some fashion, it will be resolved similarly in the future. There are obvious reasons for doing that, but one of the less obvious and more important ones is that it reduces the mental burden of DMing to create rules for yourself. Invention is hard, especially when you are trying to be fair and consistant. So typically, you fall back on whatever has worked for you before in these sorts of situations.

 

[LostSoul]

If the game rules aren't the physics of the game world, then what is?

I can't wrap my head around this. How can some imaginary thing have physics of its own?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I probably am somewhere in the middle when it comes to this argument, but I find the logic here baffling. Saying that "because sometimes people die falling off of horses, my character would clearly avoid riding horses" to me is an awful lot like saying "because sometimes people die riding in automobiles, I will never ride in a car."

A 20th level fighter isn't just "people." A 20th level fighter getting killed by a horse is Superman getting killed in a car accident. Not just anyone, but someone who was invulnerable to bullets and who could turn back time and who could shoot lasers from his eyes. I mean, if cars can kill someone like that, someone who is strong enough to chuck buildings, then the car is uncannily deadly.

Now, "people" would be like first level commoners with 2 hp, would be like Jimmy and Mr. Kent, and those people do die from getting in car accidents, but they also can't shoot lasers out of their eyes, so they're obviously not quite operating under the same rules, here.

A lot of this argument to me seems to be rooted in what are bad parts of the 3E ruleset, I guess. Arguing "he can survive immersion in lava, he shouldn't die from falling off a horse!" to me is just another way of saying "the rules for immersion in lava are terrible."

Or that the world allows for such a powerful badass that lava can't burn hot enough to kill him. Which fits the mold of heroic fantasy pretty snugly, albeit to an extreme that might not always be welcome.

Should a D&D game be able to simulate or emulate the world of George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire? It has dragons coexisting with all sorts of accidental death and maiming, after all? What about the Black Company novels?

And some ignominious deaths of mythic and/or fictional figures:

Hector, dies to one spear-thrust by Achilles (although he does have a long conversation while he's dying)

Achilles, shot with a single arrow in the heel, by someone who is clearly not a trained fighter

Sigurd, killed in bed

Theseus, died by being pushed off a cliff

Isildur, badass enough to have cut the One Ring from Sauron's finger, shot to death by a random encounter

Basically, for every Boromir or Roland, there's a Jason (killed by a falling piece of ship) or even an Aesclepius (struck by a bolt of lightning by Zeus - the ultimate in DM fiat).

I feel like D&D should probably be able to accomodate both of these things.

The thing is that characters from myth and fiction only ever really die in one way: because the writer makes them die. Their deaths serve a narrative purpose.

In D&D, characters should pretty much never die just because the DM says so. They should die because the rules say so.

At least, for my enjoyment of the game, it is crucial that they do.