Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[pemerton]

My point is, "Where is this shared understanding of the narrative coming from?" It's all well and good to postulate that it exists, but it had to come from some place. That someplace it comes from is I think provably, the rules of the game.

If by "rules" you mean "action resolution mechanics", then no.

If by "rules" you mean "gameworld, thematically interpreted", then maybe: yes for HeroQuest or The Dying Earth, no for TRoS or most vanilla narrativism. But I'll note that a thematic interpretation of a gameworld is not the physics of that world. For example: an obvious thematic interpretation of the world of the Silmarillion would make reference to Eden, the Fall and so on. But Genesis is not the physics of the Silmarillion.

If by "rules" you mean some sort of express or implied understanding at the gaming table that "Yes, this is what we're dealing with in this game", then I think yes, that is the source of the shared understanding of the narrative in most vanilla narrativist play. But such an agreement, express or implied, certainly does not establish the physics of any gameworld.

Even if you claim that the understanding of the shared narrative comes from a shared understanding of how actions tend to be resolved in the real world, then all you are really saying is that one of the underlying rules of the game is, "Whereever the rules are silent, you may assume that the narrative universe works very much like the real universe."

No. You may really be saying that, but you may just as easily be saying this: "Where the action resolution mechanics do not operate, the universe is such as the GM or relevant player having narrative control stipulates it to be, and such stipulations must broadly fall within the parameters of the real universe augmented by the magic mechanics, and must also be consistent with such prior stipulations."

If you were saying this second thing, then the rules - of which that statement would itself be a part - are manifestly not the physics of the gameworld.

Hence, the following claim is false (manifestly so, I say!):

Game rules ARE intended to model the physics of the game world (and they can't really do anything but do that),

This may be true of some rules, but not all.

 

[pemerton]

Apologies to all for the crazed sequence of postings, but this thread has kept moving while I was working!

<snip answer to kobold question>

Fair enough. I hope you can see why I find that answer pretty hard-core. I must say I found Kahuna Burger's response less surprising.

<snip explanation of rules design>

RM does it the way you say: the fall is a Crush attack, and there are generic rules for open-ended attack rolls, critical hits etc.

This has pretty important narrative effects, in that it is an in game constraint on metagame behavior. In default D&D, a high level player knows that his character can fall a certain distance without risk of death.

<snip>

But if a player knows that there is some finite risk of death no matter the size of the attack, they'll tend to play thier character more in a way that reflects this fact.

I have plenty of experience of what you say, both in D&D and RM.

A good player might pretend for the purposes of the scene that his character is in some risk if he has some reason to believe that the DM wants a narrative where this is true (in defiance of the explicit rules!), but even this strikes an unintentionally comic note because it has to be feigned.

Now what I find interesting is that you desribe this as "good play". If the rules are the physics, then it's bad play (or tangential play, anyway). If the GM is just in the habit of overriding the action resolution mechanics for his or her own mysterious purposes, then it's supplicant's play, but I personally have no time for abusive GMs and supplicant players. I think it's an unhealthy playstyle, because so rife with potential social conflict at the gaming table.

Any fear is purely affectation, quite possibly in an attempt to get the DM to accept the character's purely metagamed proposition of jumping off a 90' cliff merely because of its tactical value.

Now, if I were playing in a rules-as-physics game, this is the sort of thing (the leaping, not the affected fear) I would like to see! Play those demigods like the demigods they are! D&D can be fun played this way occasionally, but my own taste runs against playing it like this for an extended campaign.

If your desire is stories in which the characters act as if falling off a 90' cliff is quite possibly hazardous, then you are better off adapting the game universe to reflect your goals.

That's one way to play an RPG.

But the narrativist D&D player and GM don't want players to be afraid of their PCs falling over cliffs. Rather, they want gameworlds where people survive 90' falls only when something is at stake that matters to the shared narrative. (This requires divorcing the emotions of the PC from the emotions of the player - it's the opposite of playing well-GMed Call of Cthulhu, and I think that KM is right when he says it has the potential to break immersion.) But it doesn't mean that the PCs fear is irrelevant. Part of what enables heroic fantasy to be used for narrativist play is that we know that falling over a 90' cliff is a terrifying experience, and that surviving such a fall would be a remarkable emotional experience, and hence these very facts about human frailty and human emotions become part of the gameworld material available to us as a foundation for our thematic interpretation of the events taking place in the gameworld. (Wherease in a "mechanics as physics" world, in which heros have no reason to fear 90' cliffs, we do not have the same richness of material available for our thematic interpretations.)

So when a player decides that his PC takes the plunge, or when his PC in the course of adversity is knocked over the cliff, that PC's survival of the fall (as dictated by the D&D action resolution mechanics) will contribute in some way to the overall narrative purpose. It might illustrate something about the importance of fortune even to the greatest. Or, as in the LoTR movie, it might reiterate the importance of a personal bond, so great that the character's have no alternative but to continue until they are united (rather than star-crossed lovers, they would be fated lovers - Tolkien has a tendency towards sentimentality which Peter Jackson certainly didn't eliminate!).

Exactly what the narrative meaning of the PC's survival is up to those at the table to work out (in whatever way the rules, be they explicit or implicity, allocate that role). But it is certainly not dictated by the action resolution mechanics, and it cannot be worked out just by knowing that a PC survived a fall over a cliff.

Does that give some idea of what I'm trying to get at in distinguishing the action resolution mechanics from the physics of the gameworld, and also in distinguishing the the other rules of the game from those physics?

 

[pemerton]

I think that the narrativists claim that there aren't physics to the universe; if the DM declares "The world is such." then the world is such (hopefully in accordance with the wishes of the the players and the development of the story). There are no physics, and consistency is not needed nor required.

None of the narrativists here has claimed this, that I can recall. I think consistency in the physics of the gameworld is actually highly desirable for most mainstream narrativist play. (Absent an ingame explanation, like travelling to Limbo or The Void).

Characters do not make plans or decisions based on their in-world expectations of the universe in this model; all characters (including the PCs) base their actions entirely upon their shared understanding of the narrative.

This seems to be confused. All characters (NPCs and PCs) make decisions based on their in-world expectations. But the players and GMs make decisions based on their shared understanding of the narrative.

there are clear, explicit, unambiguous rules as to what heroes are and what they can accomplish.

It's really a tangential point, but I'll note that "can accomplish" is a verb phrase of possibility, not actuality. It is not contradicted by someone dying in a horse-riding accident.

If my character engages in battles that a human has a slim chance of survival and keeps surviving, then at some point, it's more reasonable to assume that I'm not human than that the odds just keep lining up like that.

Perhaps. But does Han Solo draw that inference in the Star Wars trilogy? Or Batman or the X-Men in their comic series? At a certain point, successful narrativist play may require turning a blind eye to fortune's favour. Or, perhaps (in a more sophisticated version) structuring the successes in such a way that they emphasise those features of the gameworld that support the thematic point of the game, rather than distract from them (so fewer but more thematically significant combats might be the order of the day).

 

[pemerton]

This is a great statement.

Thanks. Btw, am I making any progress in persuading you that maybe D&D can be used for a sort of vanilla narrativism?

 

[Professor Phobos]

Professor Phobos: I don't even know where to begin. You seem to be taking this discussion very seriously. Please don't. It's a discussion about a game. I've seen bad DMing lead to shouting matches and truncated campaigns. But that's about the worst I've seen, so I don't really know what the basis of your exagerrated portrayals are. Nor do I really know where you are getting some of your claims about my argument.

I am grumpy by nature. Pay me no mind.

But I am interested in seeing your reasoning because I cannot follow it. You have said that this interpretation of the rules (that they do not model the entire game world) leads to an unfavorable outcome over a sufficiently long game, yes?

I would like a step-by-step walkthrough of this process, because I can't follow you in the abstract.

EDIT: I'll latch on to something you said in reply to JohnSnow. You said diverging from the rules for the sake of a plot hook does more harm than good. I would like to know why- start with the plot hook-that-ignores-rules, and walk me through the chain of game events that then ensues.

You actually said breaking the rules for a plot hook is bad, but once again I reiterate that I don't consider it "breaking the rules" at all, just not applying the rules for X when I'm doing Y.

 

[robertliguori]

I am grumpy by nature. Pay me no mind.

But I am interested in seeing your reasoning because I cannot follow it. You have said that this interpretation of the rules (that they do not model the entire game world) leads to an unfavorable outcome over a sufficiently long game, yes?

I would like a step-by-step walkthrough of this process, because I can't follow you in the abstract.

Let's assume that there is dissonance in the players' interpretation of the world. (See my previous elf dex mod example for one such). If assumptions are not shared, you'll run into conflict when players attempt to act in ways that make sense according to their understanding of the world, but don't according to others. You, for instance, find it irritating when 12th-level fighters in full plate cheerfully swandive off cliffs, secure in the knowledge that rock from a great height is insufficient to kill them. This violates your own expected reality; namely, that the world works in a way such that high falls can kill anyone and shouldn't be taken lightly. However, many people interpret the world differently; heroes past a certain level stop having the expectations of reality applied to them. A focused 20th-level barbarian, for instance, can engage in feats of strength that not only exceed what any human has done, but violate our understanding of what human flesh and bone can withstand.

The default understanding of the D&D world is that the heroes aren't just well-trained ordinary people who keep getting really lucky; they actually can do things and withstand hazards in a way flatly contrary to what ordinary people can do. If you understand that people are people, they get lucky, but sometimes they don't, then it makes sense for hit points not to be applied in certain cases; luck (in the aspect of the narrator of the story) decided they didn't. If you understand that regardless of specifics, certain hazards just don't have enough oomph to singlehandedly slay heroes of a certain caliber, and that a fall from a horse is defined as not having enough oomph to do so, then treating a high-level like a lucky ordinary by killing him with a fall from a horse violates narrative expectations. This isn't a problem that can be resolved with flipping a coin or taking turns; it's a question of what kind of story we want told.

The rules, if nothing else, make this perfectly and explicitly clear. The rules define a game in which magic (or at least arcane spellcasting) is a known and understood force. They define a world in which a dozen armed and armored men are no more than a brisk morning sparring match with a legendary hero; not because tales of the hero's prowess are inflated, but because he actually can withstand a dozen men slashing at him and come out without major injury. It's a world in which every creature has a quantifiable amount of life energy; you can increase your amount through experience and great deeds, or decrease it through ripping it out of yourself. It is a world where luck itself is a measurable, quantifiable force; bonuses and penalties based on it can be directly applied and directly sensed; beyond that, there is no narrative expectation, only naked chance.

You can, of course, modify any of these expectations and still be playing D&D. However, doing so without modifying the rules in advance means that, if any of your players hold any of the above expectations and are counting on them to present enjoyable game elements, you will create conflict. At best, you'll send mixed signals, creating confusion ("Spellcasters with total mastery of the ten levels of magic can't summon an efreeti with a second-order spell. If I can replicate how my apprentice performed this feat, I will revolutionize arcane magic in the lands! I must drop everything to research this new and exciting development!"). At worst, you'll send the players into learned helplessness, in which they feel the need to confirm with the GM every nuance they try to read into the world, lest they mistake a dramatic flourish for a meaningful in-world event.

There are a certain percentage of players who will up and hit you with the PHB before they get to the worst-case scenario. If you get a player who requires a consistent world to have fun playing, who demands that the story take place within the boundaries established by the world and not the other way around, who will balk at having his character surrender with a knife to his throat, because he's been in three dozen fights by this point where someone tried to stab him in the neck in combat and failed and fully expects to be able to dodge out of the way or suffer at worst superficial damage. (Side note: if said hero is being threatened by a rogue or martial adept, he will be for a painful surprise.)

Having the rules laid out clearly in advance prevents this kind of misunderstanding. It gives you a common language to describe narrative expectations, so a characters who expects falls to be insta-death or crippling injury 95% of the time but is fine with the idea of walking through a dozen grazes and near-misses in a high-caliber firefight doesn't bog down an exciting scene renegotiating expectations.

Finally, there is my own personal experiences; GMs who tend to "Random stuff happens because it's realistic." tend, in my experience, to not be modelling anything particularly realistic. (As mentioned up-thread, it's actually a bit difficult to slit someone's throat.) If the GM really wanted to model realism, he'd come up with a rule that could be generally applied, and apply the rule. If the GM wanted a specific, non-repeatable event to occur, he should use a specific event (say, the knight happened to ride over an irate elder earth elemental passing through the Prime on his way to Sigil.) Doing otherwise strikes me as unwillingness to tell a story within the world presented.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Let's assume that there is dissonance in the players' interpretation of the world. (See my previous elf dex mod example for one such). If assumptions are not shared, you'll run into conflict when players attempt to act in ways that make sense according to their understanding of the world, but don't according to others.

(emphasis mine) Surely the issue is then one of communication?

The default understanding of the D&D world is that the heroes aren't just well-trained ordinary people who keep getting really lucky; they actually can do things and withstand hazards in a way flatly contrary to what ordinary people can do.

I don't think that is the case. Look at the coup de grace rules- if a character is helpless, they can be killed outright. If high-level characters truly were more resilient physically to damage, as opposed to just protected by narrative convention, then how does that work? Why can I cut a sleeping high-level throat? Shouldn't I have to saw through their thickened flesh first?

The rules, if nothing else, make this perfectly and explicitly clear.

No they don't. In fact, I would say they clearly establish themselves as abstractions and not the exclusive measure of game world reality.

You can, of course, modify any of these expectations and still be playing D&D.

I'm not modifying any expectations. This expectation should not exist in the first place. It is unreasonable. I'm still not even sure how it came to be for the contrarian side- it should be obvious that the rules are not comprehensive.

However, doing so without modifying the rules in advance means that, if any of your players hold any of the above expectations and are counting on them to present enjoyable game elements, you will create conflict.

I could run into the same problem if players went in expecting a particular house rule to be in effect. Which is the case here- if you go in expecting the rules to be the physics of the game world, you're demanding an unreasonable interpretation of gameplay to supersede the default assumption. This isn't just true of D&D, this is true of every game I've ever played or owned. I would never, ever give a moment's worry to the thought that if my Investigators stumble upon a man shot dead by a gun that technically couldn't have killed him in Call of Cthulhu, they'd reject it. Because that would be crazy.

At worst, you'll send the players into learned helplessness, in which they feel the need to confirm with the GM every nuance they try to read into the world, lest they mistake a dramatic flourish for a meaningful in-world event.

You have got to be kidding.

There are a certain percentage of players who will up and hit you with the PHB before they get to the worst-case scenario.

If they have a problem, they can discuss it with me, work something out, compromise. If they cannot enjoy the game without their narrow and irrational tastes catered to, they can walk.

If you get a player who requires a consistent world to have fun playing, who demands that the story take place within the boundaries established by the world

Again, the boundaries of the world are not established by the rules. The rules serve another master- gameplay!

Let me say this again. The boundaries of the world are not established by the rules. The boundaries of the world are not established by the rules.

Having the rules laid out clearly in advance prevents this kind of misunderstanding. It gives you a common language to describe narrative expectations,

I prefer another common language. That of language.

 

[Celebrim]

JohnSnow: Ok, I see the problem. You believe that the game world is more real than the game, and I deny that this is true.

"The DM really can't cheat." - Dungeon Master's Guide, v3.5, p. 18.

Yes, as should be apparant from my discussion of authority, I agree with the general sentiment. But all that means is that we need some really precise definition of what it means to 'cheat'. The DM certainly can break the rules, and while he has the authority to do so its often a very bad idea.

Additionally, I think there is a pretty important difference between fudging results for some purpose (though on the whole my experience with this is bad and I don't recommend it), and outright doing things that are impossible. For one thing, you can fudge results a little while maintaining a certain illusion, but you really can't break the rules in an obvious manner and do that.

Moreover, you're laboring under a false impression. You believe the rules operate when the players aren't playing. How can there be rules to a game that isn't happening?

That's a very interesting question, especially in the way you put it. Are the players really not playing at the time that the backstory is being related? Does backstory exist in the game world until it enters that shared space between the players and the referee? Before that, isn't it just a potential backstory which existing solely in the referees mind? If the rules of game don't exist while the game isn't being played, surely the game world doesn't exist while the game isn't being played either? Certainly the rules can exist in at least as tangible of a form as the game world when the game isn't actively being played.

Game consistency is fine and desirable. But we are talking about "suspension of disbelief" related to events that happen in the gameworld as BACKSTORY.

I'm not sure why you consider the distinction important. The players "suspension of disbelief" doesn't just apply to thier ability to believe in the rules. They must also be able to believe in the game world. The rules really don't need to believed in except to the extent that they are percieved as a fair means of moderating conflict in the narrative. What really has to be believed in is the game world. And I think there is a good reason for that. The game world is less real than the rules.

An offstage NPC doesn't have hit points, levels, ability scores, or anything. He's a person in a living world, not a gamepiece operating under some kind of cosmic chess rules.

No, he isn't either one. An offstage NPC is a figment of someone's imagination. The game world lives only because people have a shared experience of it created by the illusion that it is consistant and reasonable given its declared assumptions. The game world isn't real.

The rules are just an abstraction intended to create a playable resolution system when the players are involved.

It's this statement that has been really confusing me in this discussion. I finally realize what you mean by it. I kept thinking that when you said an 'abstraction' that you were referring to an abstraction of something more real than the rules - like for example, reality. But you are claiming that the rules are an abstraction of the game world. For that to be true, the game world has to have a more concrete substance than the rules do. I can't see how an imaginary world can be said to be more solid and tangible than the rules, especially since the rules are the primary means by which the imaginary world is made solid and tangible. Rules you can read and touch. The game world exists only to the extent that you can communicate to the players which is precisely why you need to practice consistancy. One of the most common sources of table conflict is a failure to communicate the abstract game world to the player to the extent that the picture the player sees in his head is quite different than the one you see in your head. We rely on rules to make the abstract world more tangible, so that actions have some sort of concrete consequence that everyone can relate to.

For the rules to be an abstraction of the game world, you and everyone else at the table would have to have absolute knowledge of the physics of an imaginary world and would have to have come to possess this knowledge through some other mechanism than the rules. That's impossible.

They're not the campaign world's "physics." That's the distinction you refuse to admit exists.

I refuse to admit the distinction exists because it requires me to believe that an imaginary world is real and has real tangible properties apart from those described in the game by even most broad definition of the rules. That is to say that the game world has some quality that isn't described by the formal written rules (including descriptive text), house rules including informal ones that presently exist only in the referees head, precedents set within the game, or by a shared understanding of how things happen in the real world. The faith you have in the reality of your artistic vision is charming, but I think in practice if you don't make your rules match your artistic vision you are asking for a world of hurt because that imaginary world you are thinking about isn't actually real, and certainly isn't actually real for anyone but you.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I'm sorry, Celebrim, but I didn't understand anything in that post. Could you re-state your argument as if you were speaking to a child?

As simply as possible, define your terms and state your assumptions.

 

[Celebrim]

(emphasis mine) Surely the issue is then one of communication?

Well, yeah, I'm sure it is.

I don't think that is the case. Look at the coup de grace rules- if a character is helpless, they can be killed outright.

Well, yes, but they are flat out more likely to survive a coup de grace attack as well.

No they don't. In fact, I would say they clearly establish themselves as abstractions and not the exclusive measure of game world reality.

I think we need to keep firmly in mind that we pretending that the game world is real, and isn't actually real. What are we going to measure game world reality by if not the rules? Aren't the rules pretty much all in existance so that we can measure the reality of an unreal place? Isn't that really what RPG's have rules for? Isn't that why role playing gamers tend to be fiends for measuring and quantifying everything? If we didn't have any rules, what actual measurements of a fictional universe would we have?

I would never, ever give a moment's worry to the thought that if my Investigators stumble upon a man shot dead by a gun that technically couldn't have killed him in Call of Cthulhu, they'd reject it. Because that would be crazy.

In Call of Cthulhu??? You have got to be kidding. Let's say that the players really do know the hit points of the individual in question, and its greater than the maximum possible damage from the gun. If I'm playing an investigator, you can better believe that I'm going to say something like, "Mr. Manly weighed about 20 stone, and we've all seen him heft his own weight in the gym. I have a hard time believing that he was killed instantly by a single shot from a small caliber handgun." Because well, playing an investigator in Call of Cthullu, I'm going to have a hard time believing any one died merely because they were shot and I'm automatically going to be looking for things that seem odd and not quite right. Really big healthy guy killed by itty bitty gun is going to be one of the things that bother me.

Let me say this again. The boundaries of the world are not established by the rules. The boundaries of the world are not established by the rules.

I don't know about 'the boundaries'. That is a pretty abstract term and I don't know what you mean by it. But I do know that the measurements are established by the rules.

I prefer another common language. That of language.

Which is unfortunately very impercise and not very useful for conveying the sort of information you need to gain an understanding of something which isn't real - which is why games have alot of technical jargon.