Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[sinecure]

I agree the rules are not the physics of a game world. That's crazy thinking like NPCs talking about their level when speaking in character or characters referring to the level of their spells or their number of hit points left. I want the world to be what it is supposed to be. The rules need to back that up is all. Like using a wand in Harry Potter is hard to do. The rules should be made to make that make sense. Not the other way around. That's why I hope 4th will be more flexible in what worlds it can portray. I don't want to have to change my world because of some wonky rule my players are all hyped up about.

Maybe I am being to inflexible here? But why am I the one having to change my game to fit the rules?

 

[robertliguori]

There aren't detailed rules for either pregnancy or weather; making them up ("Brelia is to the west of the mountains, so +5% to the rain table.") or even just making spontaneous rulings ("Yes, another dramatic storm begins to fall as the black-cloaked figure approaches the party. The God of Thunder is apparently a sucker for drama.") is, indeed, one of the expected tasks of the GM.

There aren't detailed rules for how to maim people, but there are solid rules for how it can't happen; people resist maim-equivalent injuries in combat with hit points. The rules don't say that under certain circumstances, a sword blow can cripple or remove a limb, but they do say extremely clearly that if the target of the blow has enough hit points left, then the most that happens is a non-deadly flesh wound. If you want to make it possible to hold someone down and cut their arm off regardless of how tough a bastard they are, there are rules for that, too; dying from a blow while helpless requires an insanely difficult Fort save (and surviving the damage). It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that a blow that could sever a limb could also have opened a throat or rent an artery lengthwise, and therefore require any attack that could have been lethal (either in combat or CdG) to instead inflict a crippling injury. This is consistent with the game world as presented.

There are detailed rules for researching new spells, falling from horses, determining the absolute cost of magic items, or acquiring feats. Ignoring any of them in some circumstances while enforcing them in others also leads to a horribly inconsistent game world.

Some players (such as myself) flatly demand a consistent game world, or at least a game world that makes an attempt at consistency. Absent cause and effect, there is (for me) no drama, and no reason to care about the narrative.

Now, you get some interesting results when you apply this level of thinking to a set of rules that do not set out to simulate reality, or even reality plus this one magical effect. The rules of D&D do not simulate a universe in which apprentice wizards can miscast a 2nd-level spell and call an efreet, or a fall from a horse can kill a mighty warrior at full health. This means that magic isn't seen as something dangerous and forbidden, and stories about the dangers of apprentice-level magic are far more likely to involve casting Acid Arrow into a grapple than shaking the world. On the flip side, it also means that our real-world tropes about heroism, natural leaders, chosen ones, ubermenchen, and the like are going to be taken and cranked up to 11 in-world, because there are people who can (and do) walk through fire, and more. Our world has a set of challenges that we mentally label as impossible. No one can fall 500' onto his head and live. No one can defeat a tank with his bare hands. No one can sneak past the guards surrounding Fort Knox, help herself to a few bars of gold, and then sneak out carrying them. No one can, under experimental conditions, light themselves on fire for about a minute and then extinguish themselves, all without serious injury. In the world that D&D simulates, it should not be said "No one could have survived that." Instead, it should be said "Only a hero could have survived that."

In D&D, heroism is a tangible, quantifiable, measurable attribute of a person. It has nothing to do with their qualities as a protagonist; first-level anythings are not generally considered heroes. They can be heroic; indeed, anyone has the potential to be heroic. In fact, XP could well be seen as a measure of one's heroism; the farmer who faces down three orcs with nothing more than his pitchfork to give his family time to run and yet manages to triumph has just, in all likelihood, jumped into the realm of being an actual hero (that is, gained a class level). This is a natural process in the world, and (for many) the single most enjoyable conceit of the heroic fantasy genre. Ignoring that process by shuffling around what being a hero means cuts to the core of the genre for a lot of us.

 

[pemerton]

In D&D, a 20th level fighter can avoid death from the jaws of a dragon. Actually, not just as a matter of narrative convenience.

That claim entirely begs the question against the competing contention, that hit points can be interpreted as a type of plot protection (ie a metagame device introduced for narrative convenience).

That same 20th level fighter can kill the necromancer-king. Not just because the DM thinks it would be cool, but because he can actually walk up to the Necromancer King and put something pointy in his gut.

There is nothing in this paragraph that any narrativist player disputes. Asked within the gameworld, the answer to the question "Why did the NK die?" is "Something point was stuck in its guts." Asked at the playing table "Why did the NK die?" the answer is "Because it was something that the players and/or GM cared about."

At the simulationist or gamist table, the same metagame answer is given to the second question: if the players and GM didn't care about the NK, the adventure would have involved some other antagonist.

You are framing the discussion in terms which either do not capture its content, or beg the question against your interlocutors. The issue is not one about following the rules versus breaking them. Nor is it about whether or not narrativist players have believable gameworlds, or rather absurd gameworlds in which the GM is the most important personage (of course they don't, at least in the mainstream cases).

The issue is this: ought the character build mechanics and/or action resolution mechanics be regarded as the total account of how people and their endeavours unfold in the gameworld? or ought they to be regarded as purely metagame conveniences for resolving a subset of the gameworld (namely, the PCs and their adventures) that is of particular interest to those at the gaming table?

The dissonance for me comes when you say that the rules are only 'in play' when PC's are 'on-stage.' For me, if there are no rules, then there is no game

I am not saying that there are no rules. I am saying that the rules may be different when the PCs are not implicated. In particular, the rules may take the form of strictly metagame allocations of narrative control, rather than the randomised action resolution mechanics and strictly determined character build mechanics that govern the PCs and their doings.

I readily believe you that this approach to play - that is, drawing a distinction at the gaming table between those ingame elements which matters and those which don't (or at least not in the same way), and having the rules treat them differently - hurts your sense of immersion, as you explain in this paragraph (although you refer to the distinction existing in your PC's mind, whereas I believe that you mean it exists in your mind - the mind of your PC is purely imaginary, and thus it needn't entertain the distinction if you specify that it does not):

The issue is that for my character, this distinction does not exist, and thus in playing the role of my character, I cannot allow this distinction to exist in thier mind (or else I feel like I'm metagaming too much and it removes me from the game).

But in my view you do not help your explanation of your experience of RPG immersion by, in various ways, framing the discussion so as to fail to capture what is at stake, and also (inadvertently or not) so as to paint those with whom you are discussing in a pejorative light.

Yeah, but that doesn't get at the fact that my heroic adventurer is deathly affraid of these horses and their slippery saddles of heroic doom, now, because obviously being able to face a terrifying dragon's jaws doesn't mean you also can't just have a fatal 'whoopsiedaisy.'

<snip>

"Hmm...the necromancer king is giving us some trouble. Maybe we can give him a gift, perhaps some sort of horse, that can then endanger his life!"

<snip and segue>

This means that my character has to fear the mundane more than the epic, that a fall from a horse, to my character, is more deadly than the jaws of the great wyrm Galgathraxas, because an old country nag can succeed where Galgrathaxas has failed.

<snip and segue>

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.

But the dragon could also have killed you (both according to the rules, and within the ingame context). You didn't beat it because you were invulnerable (a 20th level Fighter in D&D, unlike Superman, is not invulnerable). You beat it because the Fates were on your side.

Now, your preferred playstyle may reject the way my preceding paragraph interprets the relationship between rules and gameworld. But that interpretation does not generate the implications with which you mock it. In particular, the inference from "High level NPCs may die from riding accidents" to "The best way to kill a high level NPC is to gift him or her a horse" is so absurd that I can't really believe you intend it seriously.

Breaking the rules means that my confidence in the DM, and my ability to believe his world, and my trust that the game is in my hands in a way that is meanignful to me, is also fairly well broken.

A DM who doesn't work according to the rules (which is cheating, even if it's allowed cheating, even if it's cheating that makes the game better for some groups) isn't a DM I would enjoy playing with.

<snip>

I stand by all those statements, but I fail to see how my opinion really criticises anyone

Generally, being called a "cheater" or a "rulebreaker" would be taken as criticism, in the context of a discussion of how a game should, or might legitimately, be played.

I accept that you may not intend it as such, but those words have connotations which intention cannot really negate.

I'm far too harsh a critic on storytelling for D&D to ever really satisfy me.

See, comments like this imply that narrativist gaming is about producing stories, which will be shoddy and therefore not worth producing. That could also be interpreted as critical of narrativist play (or perhaps of the literary taste of narrativist players).

Again, I don't suggest that you meant to criticise. But, with respect, I do think that you are missing the point of narrativist play. Allow me to illustrate by way of an example from a different artisitic domain: I like to play the guitar and sing songs, to myself, to my partner, to my daughter. None of us (except perhaps my daughter, who is too young to have sound judgement) believes that my playing and singing is on a par with those whose songs I like to play and sing (Dylan, Cohen, Marley, etc). For me, the pleasure consists in the fact that is is my own creative act. For my partner, the pleasure consists in it being me - someone to whom she is very close - experiencing her partner's creative act.

Likewise in narrativist play. It is the fact that it is the creative act of me, and my friends, that produces pleasure. I wouldn't pay to watch us do it, just as I wouldn't pay to watch myself play and sing. But I don't play and sing just because it's cheaper than paying for a concert ticket. And I don't enjoy narrativist RPGing just because it's cheaper than paying for a theatre ticket.

I'd also like to assert that this isn't about simulation for me. Indeed, it is about as purely a gamist argument as you can get: all the players obey the rules of the game at all times.

<snip>

For me, there is never any off-stage.

I must confess I can't interpret your position as gamist, because the question of how NPCs resolve their interactions when PC protagonism is not implicated is not something that I can relate to gamist play priorities. How would this affect your capacity to use your PC as a vehicle for "stepping on up" and overcoming challenges?

Your motivation - namely, preservation of immersion in the gameworld - seems to be precisely the sort of motivation that epitomises simulationist play (in the Forge sense of that term).

 

[pemerton]

Are you claiming that there is no situation that a non-simulationist ruleset could produce in which you wouldn't feel cheated by the outcome?

No. But you said that " 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." I rejected your generalisation. I don't quite get the relevance, to that, of my view that some cases might fit your description.

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?)

But now, I see that by "rules" you don't mean what KM clearly does mean, namely the character build and action resolution mechanics.

But in that case I'm still puzzled. When you said "everything will conform to the rules" I took you to mean "every event in the gameworld". But maybe you really meant "every event at the gaming table". If this is so, then so far from being ridiculous you were correct! But it makes no sense at all to talk of the rules that tell us how to play at the gaming table are the physics of the gameworld. For example, consider "Saying yes" rules - what does it mean to say that the gameworld does or doesn't conform to those rules, or that those rules are the physics of the gameworld?

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.

This makes no sense to me, as the PCs (presumably) have no beliefs about the rules, but only about the gameworld. And whether or not the players believe that the mechanics that govern the PCs also govern the NPCs depends entirely on what the rules of the game say.

To give my own answers that lie somewhere in the neighbourhood of the questions you have posed (both expressly and implicitly):

*There is a physics (sociology) of the gaming table that pertains to the play of the game (thus, I put to one side rules about who is to bring the chips, who the drink and so on). If the game doesn't conform to that, players will feel cheated and leave the group.

*There is a physics of the imaginary world (the gameworld) which may or may not bear some resemblance to the physics of our own world.

*Sometime these two things correlate quite closesly: that is, the game rules are also a model of the gameworld (the Forge calls that simulationist play).

*Sometimes they do not (as is the case, for example, with "Saying yes" rules).​

And to avoid posturing, and make it practical: suppose that every time the issue of pregnancy comes up, the players and GM all "Say yes" to ignoring it. Or, as is probably even more common, the players and GM all "Say yes" to ignoring the PCs urination and defecation while in the dungeon. It does not therefore follow that noone in the gameworld ever gets pregnant, nor that they never go to the toilet.

So this would be an example (drawn from my own gaming experience) which I believe shows that there can be consistent rules which are not the physics of the gameworld. And I think it also shows that there is a practical difference between John Snows type A and type B players.

 

[S'mon]

For the record, I've learned something from this thread. Clearly, it's very important that Group A people and Group B people never game together. Fortunately, all the people I know and am likely to game with are Group A, like me.

Yep, me too - and until recently I had no idea "Rules are Physics" people even existed.

 

[Derren]

But the dragon could also have killed you (both according to the rules, and within the ingame context). You didn't beat it because you were invulnerable (a 20th level Fighter in D&D, unlike Superman, is not invulnerable). You beat it because the Fates were on your side.

The difference is that the dragon has to whittle away the fighters HP, while the fall from the horse is a save or die at best, a automatic death at worst.
So indeed the horse poses the much greater threat to the fighter than the dragon.

 

[Campbell]

The difference is that the dragon has to whittle away the fighters HP, while the fall from the horse is a save or die at best, a automatic death at worst.
So indeed the horse poses the much greater threat to the fighter than the dragon.

The question is what those hit points represent. Do you believe that a high level fighter can survive a brutal stabbing to his heart ? Is his skin as hard as stone ? Or is he still a creature of flesh and bones ?

The argument that I would make is that he is still very much a human being who is able to through a combination of heroic luck and combat skill avoid getting stabbed in the heart. I would also assert that the rules are a generalized set of abstractions that occasionally leak. When abstractions leak you use your personal judgement (by which I mean the collective judgement of the group) to apply the proper solution instead of becoming overly reliant on the abstraction.

 

[robertliguori]

A question for the narrativists in the crowd: How do you communicate and manage expectations of what could happen in-world?

Say, for instance, you have one player who is an elf-fanboy. Say you have another player who is a tactics-fan. Say that you have a battle situation that you want to resolve in a dramatically interesting mechanism. The elf-fan has his legion of trained blademasters charge the pike-orcs, trusting in their superior elvish reflexes to get them into stabby-slashy range. The tactics-fan replies by pointing out that superior elvish reflexes aren't enough to keep elves from getting impaled, especially when they are bunched together in formation, and orders his forces to prepare for the inevitable rout.

One player is emotionally invested in the world working one way; the other is emotionally invested in the world working a contrary way. What happens then? The optimal case is that play stops for a time while the players work out a compromise; Heaven help you if there have been any lingering questions about what elven reflexes really mean compared to how elves have been shown to fight previously in the world. At worst, neither player is willing to budge, and you as GM are forced to choose arbitrarily; moreover, the player whose reality you chose against will know that the choice was fundamentally arbitrary.

If you have a rules framework detailing both the effects of reach weapons and elven reflexes compared to orcish reflexes, then you just roll the dice. There exists a pre-generated, detailed agreement between the elf-player and the tactical-player establishing each of their feelings establishing exactly how much priority elven superiority is to be given versus pikes.

The rules can be viewed as a contract and declaration of preference between not just the players, but the players and the DM. Having a set of rules for high-level fighters means more than declaring "My character can do this!"; it's declaring "Because my character is a high-level fighter, he can do this; if he ceases to be a high-level fighter, he cannot do this, and should another character come about that is a similarly-leveled fighter, he will be able to do the same, and I find all of this awesome."

And this leads us to the best way to, as a narrativist player, please the simulationists in the crowd; make things in' metal. You want a high-level knight to die of a fall from horseback? Fine; only he killed a dozen ogres on top of a cliff, than was struck by lightning on account of being the tallest thing left on the hill, and being blood-soaked from horseshoe-to-sword first. You want an apprentice wizard to flub a ritual? His experimentation was with the creation of a cursed spell-completion magic item based on his Summon Monster II spell; the energy expended in creating it left him horribly drained, and there are signs that the efreet might have been influencing him even before the ritual was completed. That apprentice? He's the first apprentice in decades to pass the master's accelerated training regimen; he actually is a 4th-level fighter. (And sometimes cries in his sleep about "The knuckles! The horrible knuckles!". It's probably best not to ask why.) If the rules say "This event should be big, dramatic, and momentous." and the players like the rules, then if you want the event to happen, give it flair.

 

[robertliguori]

The question is what those hit points represent. Do you believe that a high level fighter can survive a brutal stabbing to his heart ? Is his skin as hard as stone ? Or is he still a creature of flesh and bones ?

The argument that I would make is that he is still very much a human being who is able to through a combination of heroic luck and combat skill avoid getting stabbed in the heart. I would also assert that the rules are a generalized set of abstractions that occasionally leak. When abstractions leak you use your personal judgement (by which I mean the collective judgement of the group) to apply the proper solution instead of becoming overly reliant on the abstraction.

That's the point under discussion, really. What the game world represents is that while a high-level fighter will die if you brutally stab him in the heart, this event is not possible while she has hit points remaining.

If you start from the assumption that HP represent the inconstant nature of luck and skill combined with fatigue and possibly a helping of being slowed from minor injuries, than you have a problem. This is easily fixed by using the damage save from Mutants and Masterminds, and if you have people who expect the world to make sense, should be so fixed.

Because what the rules actually represent is warriors who merely bend slightly under blows that should break them. It's not simply a measure of skill and luck, unless luck can soften stone and cool magma, can be regenerated with positive energy (or by creatures that physically regenerate their luck), are partially represented by a creature's structural stability or physical health, and can be damaged by spells such as Inflict Light Wounds.

You don't like the rules? Change them. As mentioned, if you want high-level warriors to merely be lucky and skilled, there are systems that represent this. HP in D&D is not one of them. For some of us, this is a feature.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You don't like the rules? Change them. As mentioned, if you want high-level warriors to merely be lucky and skilled, there are systems that represent this. HP in D&D is not one of them. For some of us, this is a feature.

You don't need to change the rules for describing "off-table" events. And you certainly don't have to switch to a different game system for that, either.

I certainly don't want my 10th level Fighter to die from falling from a horse.
But I don't mind if the DM tells me that what happens to Knight Jaros of the Lightbringers and explains why the local village is without a strong leader that can lead them against the Orc tribe harassing them.

As a DM, I will always use the rules as a starting point for describing off-table events, but if that is not sufficient, I will ignore them.