Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[I'm A Banana]

How do you deal with the coup-de-grace rules? A peasant with a small knife is actually more threatening (they can trigger a Fortitude save in a sleeping 20th level Fighter) than is a fall from horseback at full gallop. That suggests that these elites are not that blessed. It suggests to me that the immunity from horseback fall is more a mechanical glitch (as per the sleeping example) than a nod to the physics of the assumed gameworld.

Well, there's two acceptable ways to see this, for me (note that doesn't mean period, that justmeans that these are things that I would, generally speaking, accept from a DM).

(a): If there is a glitch, fix it using the rules. That's well within the DM's purview, after all. Make a rule that allows for instant-falling death. I'd use it. I'd stay away from horses and cliffs and I'd use magic over Jump or Climb every time, but it's a rule that a lot of people have wanted in D&D for a long time. Go for it. You're the DM.

(b): The glitch is in your head. The elite are blessed, but Fate/Chance/Luck/Skill/Toughness can only really intervene if there's "room for the holy spirit!" A fall from a horse involves a lot of variables, places that luck or skill could intervene to save the heroic being, and, because they are heroic, it does. If a creature is held helpless (the only situation when a CDG is allowed), there's none of this variability, chance, skill, or possibility, there's no room for Fate/Chance/Luck/Skill/Toughness to intervene, so it can't.* This makes the heroic character nearly as weak as any other mere mortal. It doesn't follow that "elites are not that blessed," necessarily. It could follow that there are circumstances where all the blessings in the multiverse won't save your hide. By the rules, being completely helpless is one of those circumstances, but falling is not (because you're not helpless in any way).

I've never had a problem killing any character by the book before.

*It's also true that a peasant with a knife deals little enough damage that a 20th-level Fighter still has a pretty good chance to get away unscathed, through sheer toughness. And also that a peasant with a knife would have a hell of a time, by the rules, getting that 20th level fighter in a position where he'd be helpless, let alone keeping him in that state long enough. But that's not really here or there.

 

[robertliguori]

To be clear, you seem to be saying "If the game rules do not allow for an action or a particular possibility, like a 20th-level fighter falling from his horse and instantly breaking his neck, then that action is impossible within the setting, because the rules model all possibilities within the setting." Would you say that is correct?

How about this:
The rules clearly and distinctly model the consequences of falling off of a horse.

The rules clearly and distinctly model the effects of these consequences on a 20th-level hero with full HP not being CdGed by the ground.

Of the clearly and distinctly modeled scenarios for falling off of a horse, there are none that result in the death of a full-HP 20th-level hero.

As said earlier, there's different than 'there are no applicable rules for this' and 'there are applicable rules that contradict this, and in fact pages and pages of precedent for things like this not happening under these conditions, but it's happening anyway. Because.'

Finally, I'd like to point out that rules do not exist in a vacuum; if you reserve the right to alter all inflicted damage situationally and at will, then allowing the players to roll their own hit points is meaningless. If you allow for the zone of ensured-rulishness to creep out into the level of the PC's direct interactions, then the PCs will (assuming the players don't deliberately ignore it) see that they create a moving zone of unreality, for good or ill.

Well, if I was playing a game set in Middle-Earth I'd rely on LoTR as my measure. In the Oriental Adventures game that I GM, we rely on shared experiences of Jet Li films plus a few Samurai history texts as our measure - ambiguities are pretty easily resolved by discussion.

In short, as Prof Phobos put it:

Description. Fluff text. Genre assumptions.

When I'm playing D&D, I rely on the rules of D&D as my measure, because the vast, vast, vast majority of my experiences within the world of D&D are based on the rules of D&D. As such, just as you assume that a wuxia martial arts master should be able to perform feats of acrobatics normally impossible without a wire harnass, I assume that a high level fighter shouldn't die of something trivial unless he was unable to defend himself.

The source material of D&D is D&D. You want to alter the source material for your campaign world? Fine. But acknowledge that the fluff of what people expect D&D to be is derived from the crunch, and that when you import new fluff and ignore the crunch supporting the old fluff, you stand to provoke shouting matches with everyone that took you at your word when you said "a D&D campaign."

 

[The Little Raven]

As said earlier, there's different than 'there are no applicable rules for this' and 'there are applicable rules that contradict this, and in fact pages and pages of precedent for things like this not happening under these conditions, but it's happening anyway. Because.'

And this is solely based on the interpretation that rules are the physics of the setting, rather than an abstract system for adjudicating the adventures of the player characters, which is how I (and everyone else I've ever played with) always viewed them. There are no rules in the game for falling off your horse and dying instantly, because that kind of thing doesn't happen to player characters (except with a crappy DM, honestly). That doesn't preclude it from happening to a king or general in the game, because, again, the rules are adjudication of the player character's adventures, not the laws of reality for story characters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Quick and dirty heuristic question: Who here thinks that Final Fantasy and similar games make good models for tabletop RPG play?

*cough* You have sigs turned on, right?

Of course, even in FFZ, I make it clear that running out of hp doesn't mean you die, but dying does, so people can wrap their heads around combat resurrection, but not out-of-combat resurrection (and can even use it in their favor).

More seriously, I don't think Prof. Phobos's players like being told what happens to them any more than any other players do. I do think his players are very interested in having a good time and telling a rip-roarin' tale, and can ignore brazen inconsistencies in order to achieve that.

That's cool, but I don't think everyone who can't achieve that level of suspension of disbelief is therefore a bad player whose campaigns must be boring slaves to mathematics and pointless simulation.

 

[I'm A Banana]

this is solely based on the interpretation that rules are the physics of the setting, rather than an abstract system for adjudicating the adventures of the player characters, which is how I (and everyone else I've ever played with) always viewed them.

That's nifty.

Not everyone likes to do that.

Carry on, have fun, don't tread on me.

 

[The Little Raven]

That's nifty.

Not everyone likes to do that.

Carry on, have fun, don't tread on me.

My confusion comes from the fact that no edition of D&D has ever been able to reasonably be identified as the "physics of the game world," since it lacks the vast majority of systems that would be required to fit that bill (rules governing coherent weather patterns, tectonic plates, ecosystem adaptation, conception and bearing of children, development of political and social bodies, etc.), and has always lacked them. The idea that you'd have to develop rules to cover every conceivable situation is kinda silly... I mean, how many people feature farms in their games? A lot. How many of those people have complex rules for the development of domesticated cereal grains and agricultural practices (basically, the rules necessary to explain how the agricultural revolution was supposed to have happened), which would be necessary rules for you to have farms and farmers under this line of reasoning?

 

[pemerton]

this is mere affectation. The player actually knows that his character isn't really cold. Nothing is at stake.

Well, something might be thematically at stake. The cold and rain might frame an event, or foreshadow something.

I think the longest we went without touching dice once was like 6 hours

<snip play description>

I didn't get the sense that nothing mattered about that play. And if it didn't, why do it for 6 hours? (Things can matter, be at stake, even when there are no "stakes" in the indie RPG sense. In your example of play, it seems to matter that the players work some things out.)

But can you at least credit that its existance is of a very different character than if it had a mechanical effect. That is to say, its still not a part of the physics of the game world?

The first sentence is true. The second is false. Were the opinions, the appearances, the mannerisms of the NPCs in your example of play - which I assume were constant and enduring, unless changing for reasons that themselves were part of the inner logic of the gameworld - not part of the "physics" of the gameworld? That seems a pretty odd claim.

 

[I'm A Banana]

My confusion comes from the fact that no edition of D&D has ever been able to reasonably be identified as the "physics of the game world," since it lacks the vast majority of systems that would be required to fit that bill (rules governing coherent weather patterns, tectonic plates, ecosystem adaptation, conception and bearing of children, development of political and social bodies, etc.), and has always lacked them. The idea that you'd have to develop rules to cover every conceivable situation is kinda silly

Everyone posting in this thread agrees with you, I imagine. You're missing everything Celebrim posted about "physics." I'm more comfortable steering away from that whole definition and just saying, yes, no game needs rules to cover every conceivable situation, and no one has said that D&D needs that.

... I mean, how many people feature farms in their games? A lot. How many of those people have complex rules for the development of domesticated cereal grains and agricultural practices (basically, the rules necessary to explain how the agricultural revolution was supposed to have happened), which would be necessary rules for you to have farms and farmers under this line of reasoning?

Just because I don't like viewing the rules as a purely abstract PC-only metaconcept doesn't mean that I want rules for everything.

Again, no one is saying that.

Yet it keeps cropping up, and I keep having to wonder why, oh why, since it's clearly absurd.

 

[Celebrim]

Okay. Do you have any rules for the agricultural revolution (the domestication of cereal grains in order to produce heartier strains that don't release their spore as easily, to allow humans to gather them), or any other rules-based explanation for why farming exists in your world that you'd like to share?

Actually, I did have detailed models in 1st edition, but I haven't had an in game reason to need argicultural rules in 3rd edition, so I've never ported them over.

After all, I'd hate for my players to point out that I need rules for that to have a consistent world, and be lacking them.

Me too. Although, generally speaking, most players don't express an interest in agricultural details unless they have a really good reason (like, "I need to feed my army, and there doesn't seem to be alot of friendly clerics around here.").

I get it. You're saying "If you want it to happen in your setting, you have to make a rule for it."

Not quite, but close enough for the purposes of the discussion. I'm actually saying what I said, which had some nuances being 'surprisingly' left out of your restatement.

Other people are saying "No, I don't. I interpret the rules as being there to adjudicate the adventures of my players, not to describe the 'physics' of the universe." And you seem to be arguing that they're wrong, and that anything that happens in their setting has to have a rules explanation if they want it to have occurred. That kinda strikes me as you telling people that your way is right and their way is wrong.

Yes. Or rather, there way is right, but my way is more right. Cthulhu won't rise if you don't follow my advice.

So, basically, you're advocating rule bloat, since you imply the need for all this minutiae for systems that have never had rules in any previous edition?

No. I'm not advocating rule bloat. Earlier, when the subject of special critical hit tables came up, I advocated against it on the grounds of rules bloat. There are lots of ways a system can be comprehensive and still avoid rules bloat. The trick is to be abstract and have an adaptable core resolution mechanic.

But yeah, the less abstract your system, the more certainly you'll experience what you call 'rules bloat' the longer your game goes. And the more you depart from the core assumptions of basic play in the system (D&D's 'kill the monsters and take thier stuff') the more gaps you'll need to fill the in rules. Since I've taken D&D waaaaaay away from 'kill the monsters and take thier stuff' on occassion, I've ended up needing some really esoteric rules to measure and resolve quantities that D&D doesn't normally deal with.

I take it you aren't familiar with Dragon magazine, if you think that we've never had rules in a previous edition for "all this minutiea".

 

[The Little Raven]

You're missing everything Celebrim posted about "physics."

When Celebrim and pemerton get into it, I tend to tune out, since I spend plenty of time overworking my brain on the job that I don't enjoy getting into highly technical debates like how this one shaped up to be.

Just because I don't like viewing the rules as a purely abstract PC-only metaconcept doesn't mean that I want rules for everything.

I'm just curious as to what point the rules serve if there are no people (aka PCs) playing the game.

Yet it keeps cropping up, and I keep having to wonder why, oh why, since it's clearly absurd.

What I'm saying, among other things is, "If the game rules do not allow for an action or a particular possibility, like a 20th-level fighter falling from his horse and instantly 'breaking his neck', then that action is impossible with in the setting, because the rules of the setting clearly preclude it from occurring."

Celebrim is stating that if the rules do not allow a heroic person to fall off a horse and break his neck, therefore such is impossible in the game. That means that I, as the DM, can't say that the 20th-level warlord king fell from his horse and broke his neck, off-camera, because the rules don't support it.

That's why the "rules for all situations" argument keeps cropping up, because that statement implies that if you wanted to do that, then you'd have to create rules for it (thus, creating rules for "every" situation). That's saying that I can't have my story present certain things unless there are rules explicitly supporting such a thing.

And yes, you're right, it's completely absurd.