robertliguori said:
If your players accept that things just happen in the world and approach each case finding out how they are supposed to respond before doing so, then your method will not have any problems.
"Supposed to respond?" They respond however they damn well please. What you're talking about is their assumptions; assuming that in, say, Call of Cthulhu, a given scenario puzzle has a Mythos origin is all fine and dandy...but getting angry when it turns out to be a red herring, or a mundane horror? Likewise, assuming that the death of the High King has something to do with the Demon Lords is fine, but when one discovers it was just an accident...then it's just an accident. They can respond to that however they wish.
while most useful when constructing a narrative and certainly applicable for your player base, does not generally result in hugs and kisses for the GM when attempted.
Well, I only GM because it provides an outlet for my hatred of all that lives and walks the Earth, yes.
Well, I don't think you will with your group, because your group does not expect the rules to be constant.
Oh no they totally expect the rules to be constant. For them. Unless they say otherwise. Unless I say otherwise and promise to pay for the pizza that night. And so forth.
People like to understand the rules of the game they're playing; deciding that your world has properties X but is mechanically described as extremely-not-X to the players will result in any player that values consistency having their character engage in speculation as to why people assume X when not-X keeps happening, or why X keeps happening.
Sigh. Because in D&D at least, there are explanations- luck, strength of will, destiny, etc- that
only apply to the player characters and some others. I don't think any adventuring group has ever sat down and scientifically studied the metagame properties of their universe.
You keep making this statement. If you tell the players "You can die from a single lucky stab wound." and then run them through combats with standard D&D rules, the players will notice that no matter how many times they're stabbed (sometimes by magically lucky people with actual control over local fate and such) they don't die.
Well, actually they could if they wanted to. I'd be fine saying a PC died from a single lucky stab wound if that's how the player wanted it. We'd put the rules aside for that purpose. I'd do it only with consent, but even with that proviso, conceivably, "in the world", any PC could die from anything. Rat bite. Spontaneous human combustion. But they just never seem to!
Which is not the "omg this makes no sense!" sort of inconsistency you think so problematic, because the same is true of the real world. I could get hit by a meteor
right now, I could just up and die. And I might, in the real world, because unfortunately there are no narrative conventions or metagame necessities operating on my behalf. But I don't go around on the assumption that I will, or that I'm special because it doesn't happen to me.
But in an RPG there are narrative conventions and metagame considerations. In character, these things do not exist. For magic spells, sure. Hit points and levels- I think outside of rough estimates of will-to-live, luck, and experience, these have no representation in the world. A character has no idea how many hit points he has. He only knows there's a sword stuck in his belly and his intestines are everywhere.
Or, he only knows that he managed to turn just as the sword sliced at him- leaving a long, thin cut along his stomach but not going any deeper.
It's all a matter of translating game results into description.
They may also notice that the first wounds of any battle tend to be the least severe, and so on, and so forth. If what happens to the players is what's in the rules, and what happens not to the players is whatever you decide which goes outside the boundaries of the rules, then lots of players will seriously wonder why things that happen to other people never happen to them.
They don't have to wonder. They can ask. Most of them already know the answer, and it is the same one I have given! Do you ever wonder why Batman never gets indigestion?
It's not impossible to dress up the mechanics in applicable fluff- the first wound of a fight is a light wound, describe injuries based on percentage of total hit points, etc.
players assume that the fluff of the world flows from the crunch.
Not as a rule, no. Not in my experience. And if they do, they shouldn't.
They assume this because they interact with the crunch,
No, they interact with the world using the rules as a tool to adjudicate that interaction.
Likewise, when you declare that nothing in the world has fixed mechanics but the PCs, what you are saying is that there are no fixed mechanics for anything but PvP.
Well, I have been fairly careful in saying "PC interactions", so NPCs on their side, enemy NPCs, etc, would also use the mechanics, for the most part. Unless of course I feel like the rules aren't producing the result I desire, at which point anything goes. Unisystem Lite doesn't have rules for bleeding to death, but I once had a beloved NPC shot in the stomach, bleeding to death. The desperate struggle to get her to a hospital in time proved a fun scenario. (For me, at least, but I never got any complaints) Much later a PC got stabbed in the stomach and RPed like he was bleeding to death for his own sake, but I'd have never killed him, while I would have let the NPC die.
they should conform to the general shape of reality.
I don't see why this should be the case at all. Let me explain why.
Rule systems have to balance several needs. There is the need for simplicity- people have tolerances as to how much they will learn, how much complexity they can handle, how much space are in the books, how many books they are willing to buy, etc.
There is a need for what I'll call "fun crunch." Tactical options, flavorful abilities, stuff like that.
There is a need to emulate a particular genre or otherwise achieve specific narrative goals. If you want a cinematic game, you need cinematic rules.
There is a need to simulate
certain elements of the game world, often magic.
Then there is the need for classical "stuff people like" sorts of things- kicking down doors, taking treasure, gaining XP. The "defeat challenges" sort of paradigm.
If one builds a rules set specifically to simulate a world to the exclusion of other considerations, you'll either end up with
extremely narrowly defined "worlds" or a total mess. One couldn't succeed at this task for any world resembling our own- human beings, sleeping, eating, fighting, etc. D&D worlds resemble our own in this manner to a large degree. You could probably succeed with something like Nobilis. More importantly, you can make no concessions to ease of use or gameplay unless the world is built from the ground up to sustain those concepts- which restricts the kind of world you can develop to one that is clearly artificial.
So how best to solve this problem? It is simple; you design a rules set to take into account and compromise with varying goals, expecting that the human users of the game are capable of handling the decisions necessary to do so. But this leads to the rule set being designed to sustain particular gameplay, narrative and simulation goals...
particular ones, not all the ones that could possibly come up. D&D magic simulates actual, in-world magic. D&D hit points and levels are narrative conventions to ensure the PCs get the "heroic fantasy" stuff they want. D&D character design gives them crunch.
See? In the
same rules, differing goals are served. All at the same time! Amazing! But this is actually normal. Forge arguments may look like it is "one way only", but in reality every gaming group and gaming system is a mixture of the three.
You know those RPGS (mostly console, and mostly J-) that have battle mechanics that bear totally nothing to do with the actual world? Those game where you can literally kill and ressurect someone dozens of times, but if they happen to be fatally injured in a cut scene, they die for real?
Aeris dying made the story better. It is one of the reasons people remember FF7 (not me, I hate Final Fantasy games, personally) but it is one of the most famous story events in CRPG history. If the guy with the big sword had tossed her a Phoenix Up right after the infamous cutscene,
the story would have sucked.
I'm not advocating rail-roading and I resent that you brought it up in the first place, but let's face it: Aside from a few jokes about "hah why not just rez her Lol?" FF7 fans
didn't care. This example doesn't serve your point. They were able to make the distinction between the "we-designed-this-for-gameplay" rules and the "we-did-this-for-the-story" cutscenes.
This example serves my point. If millions of gamers could grok this basic separation of jurisdictions in FF7, why can't people do it with D&D?
