Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[Professor Phobos]

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.

Oh, I didn't realize you were talking about that. Yes, if the GM is consistent about his portrayal of the game world (like seasons being regular in the same place, I guess) then it does create a kind of stability.

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.

Oh, definitely. I thought you were talking about something else, for some reason.

I wouldn't call consistent rulings on non-rule situations (rain, weather, economics, etc) "rules" though. But it really doesn't matter.

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

He's referring to consistent cause-effect, which is something you get in a good fictional universe and a good game world.

 

[Celebrim]

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

Do these imaginary things have in our imaginations consistant observable properties and move according to some consistant rules? Viola, physics.

Look at it this way. In any RPG, a player could pick up an object in the game universe and ask the DM to describe it. How heavy is it? How hard is it? They could run imaginary tests on it ('I put it on a scale. Does it weigh more than a duck?'). They could manipulate it and observe it. For example, they could ask the DM to describe what happens when they throw it. Does it move in an arc, or in a straight line? Does it describe a perfect parabula? Does it break on impact? And so forth. In fact, it is a standard convention of any RPG that players are able to perform this sort of interaction.

If the results are consistant, the game has physics.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh, I didn't realize you were talking about that. Yes, if the GM is consistent about his portrayal of the game world (like seasons being regular in the same place, I guess) then it does create a kind of stability...I wouldn't call consistent rulings on non-rule situations (rain, weather, economics, etc) "rules" though. But it really doesn't matter.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'non-rule situations'.

In general though, I'm talking about a much broader view than that.

Let me give an example. The core rules carry no suggestions for the likelihood of a pregnancy when a PC has 'intimate relations' with a healthy member of the opposite gender. If this occurs once, the DM (and the players) might happily accept a DM fiat ruling because a one time event isn't necessarily central to gameplay. On the other hand, if it is important to game play, either because the event is reoccuring or potentially life changing for a character, most DM's and most players will eventually become unhappy with the situation being resolved by DM fiat alone, in much the same way and for the same reasons that most DM's and most players would become unhappy with combat being resolved by DM fiat alone.

So, the DM will probably invent some ad hoc method of dealing with the situation. He may throw a d6 and if it comes up '1', decide that a pregnancy occurs (I did this the first time it happened in one of my games), or he might (more modern systematic rules) have the female make a CON check versus DC 10 and if it succeeds then pregnancy occurs (my as yet untested but current house rule). Or if the DM may be less prone to rulessmithing may flip a coin or decide (even unconsciously) that every second act leads to pregnancy. Whatever the DM decides to do though, the tendancy will be for that DM to resolve the situation using the same rule in the future. At that point, the rule is no longer ad hoc and is every bit as much a part of the rules of the game as the combat rules, even if the rule exists nowhere except in the DMs mind.

And at that point, the ad hoc rule becomes part of that universe's physics, effectively describing how easily pregnanacy occurs even if the DM never actually applies it to offstage events involving NPCs. The PC's have a reasonable expectation that the rule that applies to them is universal and will continue to apply whenever it is important to resolve something.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'non-rule situations'.

You know, the weather. Knights falling down and breaking their necks. Weather or not a tough justice system can cut out a captive wizard's tongue. Stuff like that.

Let me give an example. The core rules carry no suggestions for the likelihood of a pregnancy when a PC has 'intimate relations' with a healthy member of the opposite gender. If this occurs once, the DM (and the players) might happily accept a DM fiat ruling because a one time event isn't necessarily central to gameplay. On the other hand, if it is important to game play, either because the event is reoccuring or potentially life changing for a character, most DM's and most players will eventually become unhappy with the situation being resolved by DM fiat alone, in much the same way and for the same reasons that most DM's and most players would become unhappy with combat being resolved by DM fiat alone.

I think in this example it's better handled by the player deciding whether or not they want to do a pregnancy storyline with their character. As a GM I might suggest it but never force the issue.

I dunno. Let me give a different example- the weather. Now, if we follow the pattern established in your post, a sufficiently large number of DM-fiat weather events would lead towards the desire of a consistent, DM-neutral weather system, no?

This is not my experience. I declared it was raining, or snowing, or sunny, or cloudy every session for years and years without anyone ever saying, "Make a random weather table!"

I think even in situations applying to the PCs, there isn't always a demand or need for a system independent of fiat. Of course in my own game I tend to leave that up to the players themselves to fiat things for their characters however they want. A player of mine once declared his character had a cold, for example. I don't really see the need for rules in a lot of game situations.

I really only want rules for a pretty specific set of situations- tense, dramatic ones. Combat, negotiations, derring-do, because I want an element of chance. Everything else I don't see as requiring mechanics.

 

[DandD]

I'm pretty sure that D&D 3rd edition does have a random weather table.

 

[Xyl]

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.

You can run a simulation of the real world! People do it all the time - weather prediction, wargames, and even games like SimCity are all simulations of the real world. They aren't perfectly accurate simulations, but they are simulations, and all of them are simpler than the thing they simulate.

In the same way, it is perfectly consistent to think of the rules of the D&D game as a simplified version of the "rules" of the game world. They are a simulation of a fantasy universe with elves, wizards, and dragons, not a complete description. The more detailed world still exists as a concept in the minds of the DM and the players, even if most of the time they use the simplified version to describe events.

So no, I'm not putting an easier burden on myself. Asking someone to explain the full rules of the game universe with no simplifications is just as hard as asking someone to explain the full rules of our universe with no simplifications. Possibly harder, since a game world might not have consistent rules.

3) Relativity is not an approximation. If you think it is an approximation, I'd like to know, "An approximation of what?"

It is an approximation of reality, much like Newtonian mechanics. It gives answers that are more accurate than Newtonian mechanics does, in more cases, but it doesn't give the exact correct answer in all cases.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I'm pretty sure that D&D 3rd edition does have a random weather table.

My example stands even if that's the case. Even if my preferred game had one, my players would never demand I use it.

I guess we're all just a lot more relaxed about this stuff. They don't see fiat as being some slap in their face, and if they think it's a poor decision on my part, they'll say so, and I'll change it.

It's a lot easier to just communicate and get by in a spirit of amicable cooperation and mutual fun than it is to define what you want and then rigidly adhere to it.

 

[LostSoul]

Do these imaginary things have in our imaginations consistant observable properties and move according to some consistant rules? Viola, physics.

Look at it this way. In any RPG, a player could pick up an object in the game universe and ask the DM to describe it. How heavy is it? How hard is it? They could run imaginary tests on it ('I put it on a scale. Does it weigh more than a duck?'). They could manipulate it and observe it. For example, they could ask the DM to describe what happens when they throw it. Does it move in an arc, or in a straight line? Does it describe a perfect parabula? Does it break on impact? And so forth. In fact, it is a standard convention of any RPG that players are able to perform this sort of interaction.

If the results are consistant, the game has physics.

Huh.

What if the rules don't address that stuff in any way?

 

[Professor Phobos]

Huh.

What if the rules don't address that stuff in any way?

Celebrim is arguing that consistent DM fiats on stuff not covered in the rules, but still come up often enough, develops a body of precedence and established guidelines that eventually evolve into a new rule to cover the situation.

This is the exact opposite of my experience, in which over time in gameplay more and more rules are discarded as unnecessary as the group becomes more comfortable.

 

[Lanefan]

A few things to note that in my view *should* be obvious but, it seems, aren't:

1. NPCs do *not* walk around in the game world with little "NPC" stickers on their foreheads. They interact with each other, and with the world, just the same as PCs do...even when the PCs are not around to see it or join in. Having it any other way shatters believability (and consistency) beyond repair.

2. The game rules (any edition) do not give enough information for a DM to run everything the game will ever throw at her; to do so would require a DMG about the size of the full Oxford Dictionary - though this might not be a bad thing. So, any DM has to make rulings...be it on weather, pregnancies, wierd spell interactions, or whatever...and every time she does, the physics of that game world become a) a bit tighter, and b) probably different from any other game world. But the DM has to be consistent! If spell A interacts with spell B in manner Z once, it then *has* to do so for the rest of that campaign if the campaign is to retain any believability at all. It seems this is where some people are having problems - DMs being inconsistent within their own games - and that is something that cannot be solved here.

3. Limb loss, scarring, decaying skills of retired adventurers - all are things that are sometimes required by the story. Putting in rules (or devices, or spells) that cause limb loss is relatively easy, with few if any knock-on effects; on-the-fly situational rulings can sometimes help too (example: once I DMed a game where a PC had almost total cover except for the hand she was using to hold the Wand of Lightning she was firing...some spectacularly bad rolling later she had hit herself with her own rebounding bolt and failed her save (nat. 1); I ruled that all the damage was to the exposed hand, rendering it a useless stump. Amazingly, the Wand survived (nat. 20 on save).) Putting in rules for scarring is even easier provided you're willing to take the time and build the tables that show how severe the scarring is, and where. So just do it! Decaying skills is a bigger headache that I've been trying to solve for ages...pretty much the only answer there *is* to make it up as you go along, and hope for the best.

Lanefan