Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[I'm A Banana]

I guess this particular rule straddles the line between my desire for a heroic narrative (because while it makes sense in the gameworld, it would almost NEVER apply to PCs) and your desire for consistency (since it is a logical and consistent rule)

Which is probably a big part of why it's never made it into the core books of any edition so far.

I'd make the atrophy rules a bit simpler than you would (a negative level here or there, with a cap on how low it can drop, sounds pretty easy to implement; perhaps skill checks and feats remain unaffected), and maybe tack on one of the many rules for having high-level skills without actually being high level (something that D&D, at least so far, as rather painfully lacked).

If there is a rule, I can interact with it. That interaction with rules is what amounts to 'playing a game' from my perspective.

 

[Terramotus]

Sure it does. I don't know of once in all the tales of epic heroes where someone fell off their horse and died. That's not heroic fantasy at all. That's the cold, hard, jagged stone of unnecessary realism cutting to ribbons my little fantasy world where heroes make flying leaps from falling dragons and land on the backs of their trusty steeds.

A one-in-a-million chance doesn't, effectively, from the POV of the table, ever, really, truly exist. And if the DM calls it in, it blows my suspension of disbelief right out of the water, because no longer does my character adhere to the heroic archetype I thought she was. Now, she's as vulnerable as a peasant just, out of the kindness of the DM's heart, lucky.

That's immensely unsatisfying for me.

I'm ill right now, and don't have the energy to wade through this entire thread, so I don't know if this has been addressed elsewhere, but I advise you to read up on Frederick Barbarossa. He's a German Emperor of the middle ages, and while Wikipedia doesn't explicitly state the horse's role in it, he's considered to have fallen from his horse while fording a river and drowned in waist deep water while on the way to the holy land on Crusade. There are definitely legends about him, probably in large part because of the way he died, the fact that he was on crusade, and the the chaos that followed after his death. Only a small portion of his men made it to the Levant.

Incidentally, that sounds to me like a great dramatic starting point for a campaign, or a major charlie foxtrot for the heroes to have to deal with in an ongoing campaign, rather than something that would destroy my enjoyment.

I can't say that I understand your position very well. You seem to the game rules to simulate reality, but say that this is "he cold, hard, jagged stone of unnecessary realism". Sometimes people just fall off of their horses and die. People deal with it. It's called drama. Must we really have a situation where either such things can never happen or else every horseback ride provokes a 1d1,000,000 chance of ignominious death by falling for the players?

 

[DandD]

Barbarossa however wasn't nowhere near a level 20 D&D hero who fights dragons, demons and evil gods. Nope, not even that close.
Organising a crusade is still not super-hero-stuff like the deads of Stabby McStab, now king of McStab-Land, who duelled the General of Gehenna, saved the Djinni-princess, defeated the evil god Set and his serpent minions, foiled the plans of the nefarious mind flayers and sealed the Tarrasque back to its home dimension (he did it with friends, of course).

 

[The Little Raven]

Well, if we need rules to cover dying from falling off your horse, then we need rules for choking to death on food you're allergic to (and for more realism, the player can't be informed, since there's no modern medical system to determine your allergies), or getting specks of dust in your eye while riding, or sleeping carefully while it's raining so you don't end up drowning, or accurate rules for going into a coma (since it can occur from a simple bump on the head).

And while we're at it, let's just call the game Dungeons and Dragging On... and on... and on.

Realism is way overrated.

 

[pemerton]

An excellent summary of the issue.

Thanks again.

 

[pemerton]

because 'something pointy stuck in his guts' is performed, in the game world, by (for instance) rolling an attack roll, not by narrative contrivance.

In the gameworld, I thought "something pointy stuck in his guts" is performed by stabbing him in the guts. The attack roll happens at the gaming table, surely, and not in the world (assuming the world is not OoTS). So the attack roll is a device for (if you must use that language) "contriving the narrative".

Some of us think that it need not be the only such device that the rules make room for - that the attack roll has a special role to play when a PC is involved, but has no role to play otherwise. And that in those other situations, other rules can come into play.

It harms, for me, the believability of a game, to follow inconsistent rules for when the PC's are implicated and when they are not.

Inconsistent rules like "high-level characters die when I declare it to be relevant," rather than "high-level characters die when they've taken X amount of damage."

By describing different rules as inconsistent rules, you are begging the question against those who want to play differently from you. If the rules are that (i) action resolution and character build mechanics govern PCs, and (ii) other rules for distributing narrative control determine who is able to decide non-PC elements of the gameworld, then it is not inconsistent for the rules to (i) declare that no PC is dead who still has hit points left as has not failed a saving throw, and (ii) permit the GM to decide that a powerful NPC warrior died in a riding accident.

I usually have a "Lois Lane" exemption too. Which is to say this: an important supporting character won't be killed off in an arbitrary way.

What counts as "involving the PCs" is of course a flexible matter than could vary from game to game, from ruleset to ruleset, from gaming table to gaming table.

Within the framework sketched above, there are at least two ways to approach Lois Lane: either she gets the benefit of (i) even when offscreen, and so can't die until all her hitpoints are lost; or she gets the benefit of (ii) so that when she is offscreen, the players (and not the GM) have narrative control in repsect of her.

In my own game, we do not have formal rules for how to handle this, but there is an implicit understanding that I, as GM, can control Lois Lane so as to engender PC adversity (eg she gets kidnapped) but not so as to crush the PC's plot line (so she can't be randomly killed, or suddenly fall in love with someone else).

If you ignore the rule for the sake of expedience because it's offscreen

<snip>

the rules are being glossed over for the sake of convenience

What I said above. And I hope you can see why "ignoring for the sake of expedience" and "glossing over for the sake of convenience" could be read as pejorative descriptions of a particular approach to play.

A neutral description might be "quaranting the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure".

And I believe I've made clear why that's unsatisfying to me. Sure, go for it, have fun, don't tell me I'm wrong for not liking that.

KM, as I said in my post to which this is a reply, I don't doubt your feelings. My objection is that, in voicing your feelings, you are using language like "cheating" or "breaking the rules", plus the other phrases I have quoted above, to describe those with different preferences in RPGing. These are pejorative descriptions.

You will have noticed that in my post I used phrases like "the rules may be different when the PCs are not implicated" and "hit points can be interpreted as a type of plot protection". I did not assert that there is only one way to play: I merely pointed out that the narrativist approach to play that you do not enjoy is a possibility within the framework of D&D rules, and is certainly not correctly, let alone fairly, described as "cheating" or "breaking the rules".

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.

Many narrativist players would agree - your claim may be true, but it is entirely orthogonal to the discussion. The discussion is not about consitency in the world, it is about whether or not the action resolution and character build mechanics govern the whole world, or just the PCs and their protagonism.

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."

Notice you said "could", whereas (if the action resolution and character build mechanics really are the physics of the gameworld) then you should have said "would". Because on the "rules as physics" approach it is impossible for the uninjured high level fighter not to survive the 200' fall down a cliff.

If we stick to "could" and not "would", then of course the narrativist player need not dissent from your assertion.

the record of what happened has to, for me, fall within the capacity for the rules to describe

Which is to say, that you want the character build and action resolution rules to be the "physics" of the gameworld. But not everyone does. Nothing in the D&D rules states that this is the case. There are other ways of interpreting the D&D rules. Some players so interpret them. And those players are not breaking or ignoring the rules, nor are they cheating. They are just playing in a different way from your preference.

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.

<snip>

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.

What you say is expressly true of hit points in RM or RQ. On the other hand, ever since AD&D the D&D rules have expressly said that hit points are a measure of skill, luck and physical prowess. And Chris Sims on the Healing thread has pretty much reiterated this in respect of hit points in 4e.

I gather that 4e will also change some of the flavour of healing spells to reflect this (these being the main aspect of traditional D&D that is somewhat at odds with the hit-points-as-skill-and-luck approach).

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

Via the rules for distributing narrative control.

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.

That's one way to do it (the example is a bit odd for D&D, however, because it's combat rules aren't really designed for handling massed battles - but nevermind).

Lost Soul posted another way (what the Forge calls "fortune in the middle").

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."

But precisely what is up for grabs in this discussion is whether the character build rules are rules for high-level PCs (which is broadly what the narrativists maintain) or rules that describe all heroic personalities in the gameworld. Your discussion of contracts between GMs and players is entirely tangential to that question.

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.

<snip like examples>

That's one way to do it. But that means that the gameworld can never include a scenario in which (for example) a powerful warrior is pushed off a 50' cliff and dies before getting to draw his sword (because, under the RAW, even 30 hp of damage won't trigger massive damage). Or in which a high level wizard burns to death in her tower (because, by the action resolution rules, the jump from the window wouldn't kill her and so, were they strictly applied, she would have no reason not to jump).

Some of us do not want to play in worlds in which such scenarios are impossible. We therefore have (among others) the following options: play Rolemaster, and reconcile ourselves to the prospect that PCs will die frequently from unlucky crit results; play HARP, which introduces Fate Points into otherwise RM-ish mechanics; play D&D, but adopt the interpretation of its character build and action resolution mechanics that some of us are articulating in this thread.

I understand why some people might prefer to play Rolemaster. I've done a lot of it myself, and still do. But I don't see why the third option above cannot be acknowledged as a legitimate approach to the play of D&D.

Yes the rules can be considered a meta-game construct for interaction, rather than a model but it would require so little to simply make a note of that sort of contrivance.

House 1: Phobos's Law
-Your personal power represented the extent to which Fate has invested itself within you. Thus once you have completed what Fate requires of you, it will dwindle to whatever Fate decrees.

In this case, you have an in-game force that explains this drastic imbalance and might lead to more interesting stories

That's one way to do it. It won't work if I want to run a game set in a world with no Fates. If I may speak on his/her behalf, the logic of Prof Phobos's position is that we don't need to analyse all our rules as if they model features of the gameworld. We can be upfront that some of them - maybe all of them - are devices we have adopted at the gaming table so as to have a fun time playing the game.

Of course this would not be a fun game for everyone (eg KM). But it is a fun game for some people, perhaps a lot of people.

For example, if the desired outcome is that "inactive former adventurers (such as many kings) aren't as tough or skilled as they used to be (see: Rocky III and sequels)," then I start thinking about "level-atrophy" rules.

And we can say that the falling rules, or the aging rules, or the drowning rules suck, and we can make new rules to replace them. The aging rules are a perfect candidate (and I'd bet that 4e doesn't have any height/weight/aging rules, though I bet the averages are described for each race).

I could, as a DM, decide that if you fall off a horse, a natural 1 (5% chance) on your REF save forces you to roll on a d% table. And that a result of 00 (1%) on this table means you have potentially suffered a serious injury from this inconsequential fall and must roll on a second table. And that a result of 00 (1%) on that second table means the character has suffered causing a broken neck resulting in either instant death (failed save), or long-term injury (successful save). After all this, the chance of this happening to a PC is a game-acceptable (to me) 1-in-a-million (or less). However, it is now, by the rules, possible for any character to break his neck falling off a horse, and so my NPC king can bite it that way. But I have to wonder, is this houserule (which just about everyone says I have every right to make) worth the effort?

And this sort of rules-bloat is, IMO, the greatest threat to pleasurable simulationist gaming. We could call it "the curse of Rolemaster".

I notice that some people on the thread like AllenW's idea - fair enough, though it's not really for me, because it would get in the way of stories like those of King Theoden (in LoTR) and Beowulf. By referring to rules-bloat I'm not so much intending to denigrate this rules option, but rather the more general notion that it can't happen in the gameworld unless there is a part of the action resolution or character build rules that describes it.

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.

With respect, this comment completely disregards what John Snow, Prof Phobos and I have been saying for several pages now - that we are not talking about the mechanics that govern player protagonism, but rather whether those mechanics (of which hp and save-or-die are sub-systems) should be understood as governing the entire gameworld (ie are they the "physics" of that world?).

But anyway, spelling it out:

A PC does not have to fear a horse more than a dragon, because the dragon is manifestly fiercer. A player does not have to fear his or her high level PC riding a horse at all, because s/he know that there is no way, within the rules, for his or her PC to die simply from a failed Ride check.

A high level NPC does not have to fear a horse more than a dragon, because the dragon is manifestly fiercer. And an NPC has no player (by definition).

Thus, no one either in the gameworld, or at the table, has more to fear from a riding horse than a dragon. QED.

 

[Thaniel]

A PC does not have to fear a horse more than a dragon, because the dragon is manifestly fiercer. A player does not have to fear his or her high level PC riding a horse at all, because s/he know that there is no way, within the rules, for his or her PC to die simply from a failed Ride check.

A high level NPC does not have to fear a horse more than a dragon, because the dragon is manifestly fiercer. And an NPC has no player (by definition).

Thus, no one either in the gameworld, or at the table, has more to fear from a riding horse than a dragon. QED.

In the game world, I (as my character) learn that a man who has actually taken on DRAGONs single-handedly, traveled to other planes of existence, brokered deals between other-worldly ambassadors, all without breaking a sweat, breaks his neck falling off his horse on a casual afternoon ride... I'm never riding a horse again. They are far too dangerous. There is a reason to fear them. To say "ho hum. sh%% happens" in character breaks all semblance of verisimilitude. This is the point. "sh%%" like this does NOT happen to people who kill dragons for a living. At least not in any game that I would ever want to be a part of.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, if we need rules to cover dying from falling off your horse, then we need rules for choking to death on food you're allergic to (and for more realism, the player can't be informed, since there's no modern medical system to determine your allergies), or getting specks of dust in your eye while riding, or sleeping carefully while it's raining so you don't end up drowning, or accurate rules for going into a coma (since it can occur from a simple bump on the head).

And while we're at it, let's just call the game Dungeons and Dragging On... and on... and on.

Realism is way overrated.

This is immensely off-base from every position presented in this thread so far.

#1: We have rules for falling off of horses. They are more than able to kill 90% of the world.

#2: You really don't understand what I actually want out of a ruleset, and your hyperbole does nothing to bring me any closer to understanding what you want.

#3: "Realism" is exactly what I'm AVOIDING with these rules.

Some of us think that it need not be the only such device that the rules make room for - that the attack roll has a special role to play when a PC is involved, but has no role to play otherwise. And that in those other situations, other rules can come into play.

And some of us think that if stabbing someone in the gut is resolved in one case by an attack roll, and in another case with another mechanic that can lead to completely different results, that this is inconsistent enough to destroy the enjoyment of the game.

Like if someone who I played Scrabble with could spell words without using vowels, but everyone else had to use vowels.

If the rules are that (i) action resolution and character build mechanics govern PCs, and (ii) other rules for distributing narrative control determine who is able to decide non-PC elements of the gameworld, then it is not inconsistent for the rules to (i) declare that no PC is dead who still has hit points left as has not failed a saving throw, and (ii) permit the GM to decide that a powerful NPC warrior died in a riding accident.

The rules declare that 20th level fighters have X hit points. This is true for PC's and NPC's. The rules never mention a time when this isn't true, so it's reasonable and in accordance with existing rules to assume that it *is* true, that this is a consistent feature of the game world. The rules also tell you how much damage you take falling from a horse. The rules never mention a time when this isn't true, so this, too, is a consistent feature of the game world. Thus, if a 20th level fighter died falling off a horse, either the picture is incomplete (there is some other rule which suspends hp for this instance), or the DM is just making stuff up.

Heck, I'll even cite chapter and verse:

"Normally, NPC's should obey all the same rules as PC's" (DMG pg. 16)

"NPCs should live and die -- and fail and succeed -- by the dice, just as PC's do" (DMG pg 16)

"You might not think it's right or even fun unless you obey the same rules the players do...if there's a default method of DMing, that's it" (DMG pg. 18)

"NPCs gain experience points the same way PCs do" (DMG pg. 107)

"The NPC classes showcase the difference between PCs and the rest of the world" (DMG pg. 131)

Furthermore, bits on NPC traits, on building an immersive setting, and the entire section on generating towns, suggest, no, the rules don't go away when the PC's aren't on the scene.

Now I don't really object to anyone who doesn't share that particular playstyle, but you're not really going to be able to convince me that I'm not running the game in at least one of the ways it was meant to be run, or that it would be somehow better for me to run it in a different way.

A neutral description might be "quaranting the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure".

But that is a godawful mouthful.

You will have noticed that in my post I used phrases like "the rules may be different when the PCs are not implicated" and "hit points can be interpreted as a type of plot protection". I did not assert that there is only one way to play: I merely pointed out that the narrativist approach to play that you do not enjoy is a possibility within the framework of D&D rules, and is certainly not correctly, let alone fairly, described as "cheating" or "breaking the rules".

I was describing my subjective feelings on the matter. I have tried to make it clear that the perjorative terms are exactly what I feel, and not a condemnation of the gamestyle from any sort of objective point, but from my, personal, relative, POV. It's perfectly fair of me to say that, for me, "quaranting the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure" feels exactly like "cheating."

I've also tried to use more neutral language, but I don't quite have the linguistic agility required to come up with "quaranting the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure".

But not everyone does. Nothing in the D&D rules states that this is the case. There are other ways of interpreting the D&D rules. Some players so interpret them. And those players are not breaking or ignoring the rules, nor are they cheating. They are just playing in a different way from your preference.

And I've said that's fine, but not for me. The aggressive language was meant to specifically respond to accusations, from more than one angle, that I was somehow wrong for saying that I wouldn't enjoy it because it feels lazy and creatively lacking and like cheating to me. I am allowed to feel that way. I defended why I feel that way. I still feel that way, all the while recognizing that the way I feel isn't going to be universal for everyone.

I never told anyone they have to accept that "quaranting the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure" IS lazy or creatively dull, just to accept that it feels like it to me.

And this sort of rules-bloat is, IMO, the greatest threat to pleasurable simulationist gaming. We could call it "the curse of Rolemaster".

It's not 'rules bloat' if the rules serve a purpose.

I notice that some people on the thread like AllenW's idea - fair enough, though it's not really for me, because it would get in the way of stories like those of King Theoden (in LoTR) and Beowulf. By referring to rules-bloat I'm not so much intending to denigrate this rules option, but rather the more general notion that it can't happen in the gameworld unless there is a part of the action resolution or character build rules that describes it.

I'd go for a game with it, I'd go for a game without it. Different styles of game, different types of games, different SETTINGS for different games, are going to need different rules. As long as everyone consistently abides by whatever those rules happen to be, I'm a pretty happy camper. If people tell me to make up most of the rules, or if one player can "quarantine the action resolution and character build mechanics to situations that involve the PC, for the sake of gaming pleasure," I'm not.

 

[Terramotus]

Having caught up with the thread because it's interesting...

Barbarossa however wasn't nowhere near a level 20 D&D hero who fights dragons, demons and evil gods. Nope, not even that close.
Organising a crusade is still not super-hero-stuff like the deads of Stabby McStab, now king of McStab-Land, who duelled the General of Gehenna, saved the Djinni-princess, defeated the evil god Set and his serpent minions, foiled the plans of the nefarious mind flayers and sealed the Tarrasque back to its home dimension (he did it with friends, of course).

It's not that simple. In myth, the "bar" of what sets gods and men apart is much lower than it is in D&D. Anyone remotely close to the power of a 20th level character's abilities (much less accomplishments) would already be a demigod, by virtue of birth or deed. And if we're talking about divine beings, then I would agree that it would seem bizarre if Odin fell off Sleipnir and broke his neck without some sort of chicanery going on.

But to us, raised with our mortal superheroes and legacy of a monotheistic culture, it's ok for D&D characters to have far more power and still be mortal. So, I don't think there are any epic heroes with comparable power to a 20th level D&D character, which is what Kamigaze Midget asked for. I'd love to see a counter example.

Although, Barbarossa sitting in a cave somewhere waiting for the final crisis to come so he can save Germany sounds likea an epic destiny to me, so I think someone like him or King Arthur with a similar myth is as close as we're going to get.

Yeah, I'd embrace such a rule.

But is such a thing truly necessary to devote space in the DMG to when common sense should tell me that people get old and out of shape if they don't practice? Maybe I'm a lazy DM, but to use John Snow's example, if I'm running a game in Westeros with Robert Baratheon and I have to stat him out, I'm not going to build him in his prime and then use the rules to downgrade him according to the rules (unless there's later time travel wackiness to be had). I'm just going to build him as he is now.

I mean, the RAW don't support dying early of a heart attack, cancer, or even bleeding to death, IIRC, either. Would you cry foul if NPCs were described as dying in those methods as well?

 

[AZRogue]

Hell, you guys have had it too good for too long. I remember when players were FORBIDDEN to read the DMG or the MM and the DM let you go to the bathroom only after you properly calculated how much the chalk and string in your belt pouch weighed.

There has always been DM fiat in DnD. With careful and clear guidelines in the DMG on how to adjudicate situations as they come up (most likely by using a core mechanic that can be used or manipulated to fit various circumstances as they come up) everything will be all right.

I won't go into the "suspension of disbelief" factor. If a person who willingly came to my table to play a hero with magic in a world with dragons can't wrap his head around something that comes up because it's not "believable" I will calmly wrap his head around my boot and make him take his Mountain Dew and Doritos and go home.