Gaming in a high-trust environment

[shilsen]

All of which doesn't mitigate my enthusiasm for rules, which is based largely on a single precept:

Rules are good because they enable meaningful choices.

That's my approach to it too, and I should have noted that I run quite rules-heavy games. The HTE just means that they're easier to run for me and allows me to more easily modify or even drop them as needed to make the game work for the group.

I think that's sort of a bad-fun type argument. A lot of people do take their games seriously, and a lot of people just don't like change. I don't find it strange at all that when you've got your character a cool defining ability that you may be a little unhappy about having it changed; that in fact you might rather create a new character rather than having what you thought cool about this character being taken away.

I get what you're saying and agree with what you said, but the bit you quoted from me was referring to a slightly different situation/context. I was referring to Mallus' comment about finding it strange that people can have house/ad-hoc rulings which can break a game, since obviously one can just change them later if one finds they don't work. That's where I said that in such situations I think it may be a case of taking the game too seriously, where a prior ruling is treated like legal precedent and must be adhered to.

To tie it back to your post, if this is a case where the change in a prior ruling means someone creates a new character, clearly the game is not being broken. And I think it could very easily be a HTE where a DM says to a player, "Listen. I know I thought ability X should work this way, but that's going to be a problem for the game, and this is why. So I'm going to rule that it works in this way from now on. Is that okay with you? If not, I'm happy to work with you to find some sort of intermediate form, let you change out the ability for another one, or even bring in a new PC if that'll make you happier."

 

[prosfilaes]

I think he's saying (and I agree with this) that concerns over rules are significantly less severe in a high-trust environment.

"Taking the game seriously," like it or not, *does* lead to a situation in which people are going to have a greater personal investment in rules interpretations, etc., and therefore (by definition) a less easygoing environment regarding gameplay.

Okay, but I don't see the connection there. You can take the game seriously in a high-trust enviroment and not take the game seriously in a low-trust environment. (I've seen a lot of the latter.) You can take the game seriously in a high-trust environment by assuming when the DM seems to be changing the rules, there's an in-game reason for it, by giving people a break when they misunderstand the rules, and by accepting rules decisions, be they right or wrong.

My favorite moment in roleplaying was a battle of wills between an NPC (me) and a PC, and it wasn't easygoing at all. RPGs are frequently most fun when they're intense, when everything comes down to an hour of planning and a hour of furious dice-rolls in life and death combat. Stability makes that more intense, so you don't have to deal with sudden rules changes and nerfed characters. I don't think that's about trust at all.

 

[Melan]

Trust is the cornerstone of any campaign I would like to participate in. I don't want to spend my free time (nor working time!) in the company of people I don't like and cannot trust. Fortunately, most roleplayers I have encountered were well-adjusted, likeable individuals. I am rather perplexed by the horror stories cropping up on game forums - maybe they are regional? Who knows?

In a high trust environment why do you need rules at all? Or would that be a perfect trust environment?

Rules are not just an authority to turn to in the case of conflicts, they also play a role in organising/ordering our thoughts in specific ways. We also like a level of rule-playing, just not as much as a 3.x campaign would imply. Although, in agreement with a previous poster, I can attest to the fact that if people aren't dicks about it, 3.x is a lot more fast and loose than in a paranoid or bitter/legalist environment.

 

[Mallus]

Stability makes that more intense, so you don't have to deal with sudden rules changes and nerfed characters. I don't think that's about trust at all.

Stability is desirable when the system is working. I was talking about cases where it isn't, where mechanics were introduced that were making the game less/unplayable.

Having cool PC abilities is neat, but do you really want them if your fellow players all agree they're a detriment to the campaign?

And here's where trust comes in. I don't vet the game materials my players use. I don't have the time to comb through every official rule book out there and decide what's appropriate for our game. More importantly, I don't have to. If something proves to be problematic, my players and I work together to fix things. I've had player voluntarily offer to give up class abilities when I expressed concerns over them (and, for the record, I haven't needed to take them up on it).

There's an understanding at our table that we all share in the responsibility to make the game run smoothly. That's my definition of a high-trust environment (it's not really so much about rules-heavy vs. rules lite).

 

[prospero63]

Hmmm... Maybe my groups are exceptions to what I am reading here.

We game as a social activity. In one of the games, the game itself is frequently second to getting together and hanging out.

One group, the DM and I have been gaming together for going on 12 years. Most of the rest of the players have been together for 7+ years. Two of the players have been gaming together going on 20 years. We also have players that have been gaming with the group for less than a year. If folks aren't working out, they get asked to leave, pretty simple. We are all adults, we all have reasonably decent social skills and if something needs to be said, someone does it.

The other group has been gaming together for 6 years with pretty much the same players. Same rules apply though. We have had folks come and go.

I guess my point is that, at least in the games I've been in over the last 15-20 years, if there needs to be contracts, etc. with the group on how to play, etc. well, that's pretty much not the group of folks I want to hang out with. When gaming becomes a chore, it ceases to be fun.

With regards to the rules and such, in both games a minimalist core rule set was adopted out of necessity. None of us has the desire or time to read the dozens and dozens of supplements out there. DM's track XP and we use cards for managing magic items (it's convenient, plus it's fun to tear up the players card when you sunder their stuff.... heh) but beyond that, dice rolls, money, etc. are trusted to the players. If you cheat, etc. you will eventually get caught and kicked out of the game - not because we don't want folks nerfing the game, but rather because none of us want to hang out with someone like that. Again, pretty simple IMO.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Hmmm... Maybe my groups are exceptions to what I am reading here.

We game as a social activity. In one of the games, the game itself is frequently second to getting together and hanging out.

That's part of the problem in talking about this kind of thing. Different people are playing the game for different reasons. Some people really like the "game" aspect, some people (like myself) are more into the social aspect, some people are into wish-fulfillment, some are into "immersion" in a different world, some are into carefully crafting an alternate persona... the list goes on. Most people have a varying degree of interest in several different things when they sit down to play.

So you wind up having people basically start arguing about how this or that aspect (rules, high/low trust, etc) affects what they consider "fun". Of course, since everyone has a slightly different idea of what's the "most fun", it then spirals out of control of any kind of meaningful discussion possibility.

Like this whole rules thing.

Some people like rules. I couldn't care two hoots _why_ they like rules. Their reasons/justifications work for them. As long as it works for them and their group, it's all good. I personally tend to prefer less rules. I don't see any point in explaining why because I'm not interested in trying to change anyone's mind, and I certainly know I'm not interested in changing my mind.

High/low trust environments is a bit of a tricky discussion to have. Once the issue of rules (light/crunchy) gets introduced, it's usually a case of people having just slipped on on the slope, and started sliding.

My opinion of course.

 

[DocS]

Trust

Every party needs a level of 'trust'. A zero trust game (one where the GM has to defend his calls with rules every time) is simply unplayable.

Enough trust *needs* to be there for the players to feel that 'even if I'm not 100% sure what happened, I am 100% sure that the GM is either working within the rules or within the bonds of fun for the party.'

However, the more trust that exists, the more the GM and the players can be creative, push the boundaries, and make more more memorable games.

Games are like friendships, some trust is required for them to happen at all, but the more trust that's present, the better they have the capacity to be.

 

[shilsen]

High/low trust environments is a bit of a tricky discussion to have. Once the issue of rules (light/crunchy) gets introduced, it's usually a case of people having just slipped on on the slope, and started sliding.

My opinion of course.

Fair enough, and I agree about the various perspectives and reasons for playing the game that people bring to the thread, but I'm not really seeing any evidence of anyone trying to tell others how they should play the game. It's just a discussion of how people play the game, what sort of group dynamic they have, and why it works for them. Doesn't seem that problematical to me.

 

[prosfilaes]

Stability is desirable when the system is working. I was talking about cases where it isn't, where mechanics were introduced that were making the game less/unplayable.

We live in a world where perfection always eludes us, and nothing really completely works. Stability is always about not changing something that could make things work better.

Having cool PC abilities is neat, but do you really want them if your fellow players all agree they're a detriment to the campaign?

And here's where trust comes in. I don't vet the game materials my players use. I don't have the time to comb through every official rule book out there and decide what's appropriate for our game.

But there's no need to comb through every official rule book. A lot of groups will just use a small set of books they know well, minus the things they know don't work; say, PHB + the first four Complete books. Permitting everything, including stuff like BoED and B9S that are known to be overpowered, is making a choice for options and flexibilty over stability.

Yes, I will change my character if it's necessary. But I regard that like insurance: it's "in case everything we've done to prevent it fails, we can fall back on that option", not "having this option means that we can avoid doing other things". It's not about trust; it's about whether we should introduce options at the front at the cost of possibly fixing things in the middle of things.

 

[Hussar]

On the Luck Issue.

For the past five years, I've been playing over OpenRPG. I have not had a face to face game in that time. I've played in three different campaigns, and DM'd three as well. Over those six game's I've played with about 50 or 60 different people, some for long stretches, many for as few as a single session.

It constantly amazes me how many knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, social troglodytes there are out there. It's astounding. I'd say about 1/3 of the people I've gamed with fit into GrumpyCelt's definition. Maybe as high as 1/2. Here's a perfect example from the current campaign I'm playing in - an Eberron campaign.

New player comes in and makes a healer cleric. No problems. Plays for three, four sessions, contributes well, appears to have fun. Then, one session, he discovers that his ring of sustenance doesn't actually let him regain spells in two hours because he doesn't need to sleep.

We politely show him where he's wrong and point to the proper FAQ's and rulings, including the bits on warforged casters.

We never hear from him again. No goodbye, no, "Hey, thanks for the game but it's not for me." nothing. Just disappears into the ether.

This is hardly a rare occurance. At least IME.

So, I can truly understand the problems of trust in gaming. Having seen far too many wingnuts out there to really trust any player off the mark, it does take quite a while to develop a HTE. I was really lucky in my last campaign. I had four of the same players for almost two years. That allowed me to relax a great deal and not have to constantly monitor the players.

I honestly think that some of the differences in opinion on En World stem from people who, like me, have never had a group that gamed together more than a couple of years, and those who've played with roughly the same people for many years. If you're lucky enough to have a stable group that's stayed together for years, I envy you.