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Or it could be a reaction to a totalitarian DM who sets unreasonable limitations as well. Like what happens when almost anyone casts a phantasmal force spell, lol.
When a DM is setting limits for their table, the DM is within their rights to set whatever limits they want. They'd be wise to listen to their players, but are under no obligation to do so. If the DM doesn't want to run a certain style of game, it is not a good idea to run it for a bunch of players that want the DM to go outside their comfort level.
The players then have a chance to decide whether they want to play within that game or not. If the players do not want to play in that game - that is ok. Sometimes people are just not the right match.
Of course I didn’t say rules don’t matter. Rules help make gameplay better. They help decide what an adult red dragon can do in one round and whether the PCs can defend against that. They don’t fix problems with killer DMs, or DMs that play monsters as stupid, or players that try and find loopholes in the rules. <snip>
You can’t properly fix out of game problems with in-game solutions. At best rules that try are sticking plasters that sometimes make things worse.
Again you seem to expect perfect fixes: "You can't properly fix out of game problems with in-game solutions." I'm saying (have always said) good design can (a) forestall most issues before they even happen (e.g. w/transparency and clear language), (b) give players/DMs quick, smooth tools to fix earnest errors; and (c) make ill intent (from whomever) harder to apply and easier to spot. E.g. 4e's clear, direct wording and exception-based design mean you can spot issues early (e.g. DMs bilking you of items, players "forgetting" they already used something.) Good rules make bad social actions easy to see, helping fix benign errors and call out malign ones.
1. My argument is that the question we are discussing in this thread is not resolvable purely via game design. There will always be factors that exceed the ambit of a game's formal mechanisms. What one table or person finds empowering another will find limiting. That doesn't mean there can't be better or worse attempts to address the topic; principles, advice, and discussion do a lot of work here.
Alright. That was...not at all the sense I got from your previous comments. Quite the reverse: it sounded very much like you were saying (as I believe @overgeeked has repeatedly said) that rules are absolutely pointless, don't bother. I think it's clear I disagree with that position vehemently--and believe logic, common sense, and empirical examination agree with me.
2. In linking to a "relevant article" I was not presenting it as indomitable truth, nor as evidence in favor of a particular approach. I linked to it to possibly provide nuance to our discussion.
In that case, I am aware of the article and find it is often used by folks trying to argue that "invisible" rulebooks are always, and absolutely, superior to visible rulebooks in literally all possible ways, so visible rulebooks are pointless and should be ignored or abandoned. As noted above, it seems to me that at least one person in the current conversation holds that view.
In contrast this worked great in my game. I added a ton of OSR style rules an it worked great. The big D30: once a game a player can roll the D30 instead of the D20. And the Simple Combat Maneuver: make an attack and if you hit state the maneuver to effect the target. The hit target gets to choose the damage or the maneuver. Both of the above rules work great in my game.
Though I run an extremely hard game (many players would say "impossible"). I expect the player to be engaged, figure out things and use real life skills to play the game. Players that go "by the book" often get into trouble, or get a dead character.
I don't understand what "by the book" means in this context. What do you mean by it? How does it differ from using defined rules creatively? I'm very confused. The sentences around the words sound like "bullheaded anti-creativity," but that has nothing to do with the words "by the book." I actually saw both "dogged refusal to use the book (and thus dying)" and "extremely creative by-the-book play (and thus trouncing a difficult adventure" in my brief foray into OSR gaming. Specifically, it was three or four sessions of Labyrinth Lord, wherein I saw a PC die horribly due to doggedly insisting on his "creative" solution that invoked no rules other than "DM decides," and another nearly single-handedly deal with a tough situation through intelligent use of two spells, one of which was invisibility, though I fear I have forgotten what the second was.
As noted above: you seem to be using "By The Book" to mean "bullhead and anti-creative idiocy," based on the rest of the sentence around where the phrase appears, but the words in the term appear to be intending to tie this to the act of using any written rules whatsoever. This is not correct. Bullheaded idiocy is not specific to using prewritten rules, nor is it impossible to be (extremely!) creative and cunning while relying on prewritten rules. The two axes are completely orthogonal.
The player has the 5.5E Ultimate Guide to Climbing and is all ready to use the rules. Then the DM sets an encounter in a field of tall grass....with nothing to climb on around.
Or, the character approaches the dark vile fortress of the drow......and notices every inch of the walls are covered with fist sized red and black spiders. Well...maybe no climb that wall....
Good rules, as noted above, make it more obvious when this has occurred. For example, in early D&D there were certain rules elements that were secretly Fighter class features but which were never discussed as such anywhere in the rules themselves (at least as far as I'm aware.) One of those things was magic item tables: these tables were specifically designed to produce a larger number of items that either only Fighters could wield, or which would be unhelpful or even detrimental in the hands of any other class.
But...because these rules are invisible to the player (despite being prewritten), "opaque" if you will, the malfeasant DM has no impediment to simply...not doing that. Likewise with things like wandering monster tables or that hilariously awful rule that people who had read the DMG or MM shouldn't be allowed to be players anymore.
This is not to say that secrecy or defiance of convention have no value, since I'm sure someone will presume that's what I'm saying. Instead, it is to show how opaque rules design (among other things) can provide greater cover and excuses for bad-faith DMing, while transparent rules design (among other tools) can mitigate these issues by driving bad-faith behavior out into the open where it can be interrogated more easily. Again, this does not "fix" the problem. It makes some common problems easier to spot, and may provide better options for resolving the problem than just an airing of grievances.
And many times I've had players come to my table, play my game for some amount of time, and then bounce off in the middle or at the end of a campaign and never ask or desire to come back. And I realize it's because my style of game doesn't work for them. But hey, no harm, no foul.
I cannot speak to the earlier parts of this, but I can say that good rules design actually helps with this, by making the differences more obvious sooner or even immediately, and (for especially good design) making it easier to implement a fix that can bridge any revealed gaps.
The corner-case of a particular Rule might seem like it should have seen the same Ruling because the corner-case seemed the same... but in my mind if the narratives were different, then the Rulings would be too.
The question becomes: what makes it different enough to warrant a different ruling? If the color of the man's dress or the meal the PC ate that morning are big enough factors to make a major difference, then yes, this will come across as capricious and inconsistent, and will be absolutely maddening to try to work with, because it will make every decision boil down to "how well can you read DEFCON 1's mind?" Such a situation would infuriate most folks, I imagine, so I doubt your method is so extreme. But the opposite extreme is, as far as I can tell, indistinguishable from actually having well-defined rules: that is, when you truly only rule differently in contexts that essentially anyone with a functional adult human brain could see have to be different, e.g. that climbing up a steep-sloped but still manageable pile of rubble is quite different from climbing up a nearly vertical wall of magically supended sand. Given you have had a rather high turnover of players, from the sounds of your descriptions, I have to at least wonder a little bit about how intuitive your "every case is a special case" method is?
So establishing a "new rule" for this corner-case would not be something I'd ever bother or even try to remember for next time, because next time the process would be the exact same thing-- what does the story tell us of what is happening in our mind's eyes... and thus what is the most logical Ruling to represent this very unique situation? And I'm pretty sure this would drive a lot of the folks here up a wall me running a game like this.
Well, the question is, how do you determine what is relevant and what is not? How do you communicate this to the players? How predictable are your choices? Do they depend on something capricious like taste or state of mind, or do they only depend on directly observable (fictional) facts, whether or not the player knows or learns of those facts? Etc.
In simpler terms: do your always-special-cases rulings, with never a hint of precedent, permit informed decision making, or do they negate it?
Here's another interesting article relevant for this discussion by Jason Tocci, author of the game 2400. It intersects with the discussion here in that he describes the social context in which a game with a lot of player-facing rules might be preferable
When I think about what rules I want to put into and emphasize in 2400, I tend to think about rules in three “layers.” I suspect somebody else has already written something like this (a…
Very interesting piece. Thank you for sharing it; this is one I had not seen before.
Though I would not use the category labels he uses, the underlying concepts of his "social," "fictional," and "abstract" layers are useful. Personally, I would agree with some of the other folks he mentions toward the end, and place these on a spectrum from "suggestions" (which have no force whatsoever), "guidelines" (which have the tiniest bit of force, but not much), "norms" (which may have only a little force or a lot of force), and "rules" (which should generally have a lot of force, but should also be written with exceptions in mind.) Most of the things he calls "social rules" I would call "social norms." The "fictional" layer varies wildly, which is where a lot of the issues come from: even a single person is often inconsistent about what they ask of the fiction and what they'll allow to happen. Simply asking the request in a slightly different way, or at a slightly different time, can affect whether something is permitted or forbidden.
Like, I'm going to give you two examples. Obviously this is an honor system thing, but I want you to read only the first one, write your response to it, and then read the second one, and write your response to that separately. Just to see how things differ. Assume this is for a game that starts at character level 5 (if that's not usually your speed, assume you were struck by an idea that really only works for characters with some experience under their belts.)
Ariel is a half-elf whose elvish father used to be an important artist in the local noble's court, but fell on hard times shortly after her birth. As a result of their sudden sharp downturn in fortunes, Ariel had an unusually aristocratic air for a guttersnipe, and just enough leftover bits and pieces from her father's former life to tart herself up like the nobility for Extra Special Occasions. You'd be surprised what a little makeup can do for persuading folk to willingly drop a few more coins to a beggar-girl...or what you (or your accomplices) can get away with while someone's distracted by a pretty face. Unfortunately, one day, she got in over her head, and had to accept a job from Jennie Nine-Fingers to rob a certain shop that hadn't been paying its protection money...and she got caught.
However, the shopkeeper saw in Ariel something special. Perhaps it was that aristocratic bearing. Perhaps it was the sharp intelligence gleaming behind her youthful eyes. Whatever the reason, the shopkeeper chose not to press charges, and instead helped Ariel and her family turn their lives around. Ariel got a steady job and a sterling education at the local Bard college (where her voracious appetite for theoretical and practical knowledge blossomed), and she only had to work for a couple of additional years after graduation to pay off her educational debts. Once free and assured that her parents would live comfortably for several years to come--long enough for her father to begin selling his paintings again--she set out on a journey of self-discovery.
Early in that journey, she stumbled upon a temple to Ioun, god of knowledge, skill, and the study of magic, and she knew she had found what she held to be sacred. She studied there for a time, becoming a novitiate. But quickly, she learned that while the temple talked a good game about the pursuit of knowledge and keeping nothing hidden, in truth they were just as prudish about knowledge as others--they just refused to recognize some kinds of skill or knowledge, claiming it was "beneath" them. So she continued on her journey, resuming her quest for ultimate knowledge, ultimate magic, and ultimate skill, wherever the winds might take her.
Would you rule favorably toward this? Now consider the following...
I have this AWESOME build idea, it's maybe not super powerful but man it can do almost everything (except extra attack, I guess). Half-elf Rogue 1/Lore Bard 3/Cleric 1. Get Prodigy ASAP and then max out Cha. That's like 95% of all skills, and more than a third of them with Expertise by level 5. And then Lore Bard the rest of the way for great spell selection--plus all those juicy 1st-level Cleric spells, medium armor, and shields. What's not to love, right?
I imagine, so I doubt your method is so extreme. But the opposite extreme is, as far as I can tell, indistinguishable from actually having well-defined rules: that is, when you truly only rule differently in contexts that essentially anyone with a functional adult human brain could see have to be different, e.g. that climbing up a steep-sloped but still manageable pile of rubble is quite different from climbing up a nearly vertical wall of magically suspended sand. Given you have had a rather high turnover of players, from the sounds of your descriptions, I have to at least wonder a little bit about how intuitive your "every case is a special case" method is?
Well, the question is, how do you determine what is relevant and what is not? How do you communicate this to the players? How predictable are your choices? Do they depend on something capricious like taste or state of mind, or do they only depend on directly observable (fictional) facts, whether or not the player knows or learns of those facts? Etc.
In simpler terms: do your always-special-cases rulings, with never a hint of precedent, permit informed decision making, or do they negate it?
I would say you are correct that my rulings when necessary come out of what seems most obvious choice from the narrative situation. So I rarely (at least not that I can remember off-hand) ever receive blowback on a ruling I make for a corner case situation because there usually is a 1-to-1 correlation between the rule we are adapting from, and the obviousness of what is happening in the fiction. The Ruling just "makes sense" given the situation. But as you say, that could mean an actual rule could be made for it in the game itself, and I don't disagree with that. I personally wouldn't really mind or have any problems with more rules in the game if they were fairly intuitive and easy to remember, so if that helped for more obvious "corner-cases" then I'm fine with it. But then again... since our Rulings tend to be fairly self-explanatory for myself and the players as well given the situations they come from, they aren't "necessary" per se. Whether it's a Ruling or a Rule, the question gets answered quickly, everyone accepts the result as being completely logical, and the game moves on.
As far as the decision-making is concerned... that's I think perhaps a big difference between your table and my table? At my table, "informed decision-making" as you put it comes directly out of the interaction of the fiction and not the ruleset. When players decide to do things it's because the imaginary world they are envisioning in their heads is telling them to do or try X, with little to no thought about the game process required to do it. Figuring out the game process is after the fact, once they've made their decision to do something. Which I personally think is more interesting and more fun and that's why our gameplay loop spins in that direction. I usually find it disheartening when someone decides not to do something that makes complete sense for their character in the story at that moment in time because they look at their character sheet and think "Well, if I did this it would probably mean making a Y check, but I'm not good at Y, so I'm not going to do it and maybe I'll do Z instead." I find that kind of concern for only going what is "optimal" to be a shackle to their creativity-- they don't try things that may not work. That's the kind of thing I usually facetiously call out here on EN World as trying to "win the game of D&D"-- players not caring about engaging with the fiction and instead being more concerned with "succeeding" in every check and die roll they make by making sure they find the right rule and the right check to give them the best chance to do the action.
And in that regard... perhaps your way of playing (as discussed above) might fall into this same category that I'm usually rather cold on? Wherein "informed decision-making" is about having concrete rules to reference and base all character choices on, rather than just acting and reacting naturally to what is happening in the fiction? To me, that's a focus of "looking down at the character sheet" (or in this case, down at the Rulebook) to make decisions. Now I have no problems at all with people who prefer to play in that way... but that's just not me. (And I freely admit I've made this a black and white / either/or situation for the simplicity sake of discussion, while I'm fairly sure that if we looked at our games from the top down both of us are probably much closer together in the grey area.)
So while my turnover of players isn't "high" (as you mistook from my comments), it has happened that a new player has tried playing with us but realized at a point that they are perhaps a player more of your style then mine. But no biggie! Oftentimes players have never really given much thought about how they prefer to play D&D or RPGs in general so I find it great if they can learn these things about me and about themselves as they go along, as it will only help them find the right game for what they enjoy in the end.
And to answer your two what-if questions at the bottom... for me it's the former style over the latter all day because the player at least is giving us something we at the table can all hang our hats on for their character. We have a better sense going in about this character's wants, needs, desires, preferences, and attitudes. When the player makes decisions for this character in-game... Iit feels like there's a better chance of the player using these things they've established to do things that make the most sense based upon the personality and background they've set up.
That being said... as I was reading the first spoiler tag it got to a point about halfway through that I definite thought "Okay, this is nice, but getting to be a little much." And thus when I then saw the second spoiler and realized the first was just a narrative description created to justify the character build of the second... that's when both sides left me cold. Yes, I'm glad the player was trying to put a bit of creativity with the first spoiler tag to overlay on top of the second... but the fact the second was what apparently they were more actually interested in just made me roll my eyes. Especially because I personally do not think doing what they are doing with this build actually accomplishes what they want. They want to have more chances to succeed in actions they take-- to "win" as many checks as possible. But that doesn't change the fact that no matter how many proficiencies you have or expertise or spells or abilities or whatnot-- the addition of the d20 roll says you're still going to blow it so many times over the course of your character's career. The game is not built to allow you to win every roll, so why jump through all these character build hoops just to create a character that you think will do so? It won't matter. You still won't be able to do what you're hoping for. So just keep it simple! Think of the personality you wish to play and not worry about the "rules" you want to be able to always beat. And then let the dice help indicate whether your character turns out to be someone that comes up big in big situations.
But again, that's just my particular picadillo and style of playing.
I don’t know if there’s a difference between the play-style and the specific occurrences but the core of MMI is not having any concrete rules or abilities to leverage doing something with your character and thus being entirely at the mercy of your GMs whims,
This may have been covered in the intervening pages, and if so my apologies...
We can also add that MMI is often involved in a play loop where a GM has a specific idea as to what will work, but the players have no clear way to discern what it is except by trial and error.
Gygaxian searches are an example here - the characters know/expect that there is something hidden in a room, and must tell the GM, sometimes in excruciating detail, where and how they are looking - in order to find the hidden scroll, the players have to say they search the room, the bed, the bedframe, the leg of the frame at the left foot of the bed, and they have to state they try to twist the bottom of the leg to find the compartment.
This can be contrasted with, "Yes, and..." approaches, in which the GM accepts and embellishes on most player propositions.
That being said... as I was reading the first spoiler tag it got to a point about halfway through that I definite thought "Okay, this is nice, but getting to be a little much." And thus when I then saw the second spoiler and realized the first was just a narrative description created to justify the character build of the second... that's when both sides left me cold. Yes, I'm glad the player was trying to put a bit of creativity with the first spoiler tag to overlay on top of the second... but the fact the second was what apparently they were more actually interested in just made me roll my eyes.
Agreed, what’s under the first spoiler could just as much apply to someone who built a noble background 5th level lore bard, expertise in religion and stealth or sleight of hand and used the skilled feat to pick up disguise kit, thieves tools and painter’s supplies then plans to use their 6th level magical secrets to nab a few extra priest spells and is happy that their character encompasses enough of their backstory not even considering what’s ‘optimal build’
I would say you are correct that my rulings when necessary come out of what seems most obvious choice from the narrative situation. So I rarely (at least not that I can remember off-hand) ever receive blowback on a ruling I make for a corner case situation because there usually is a 1-to-1 correlation between the rule we are adapting from, and the obviousness of what is happening in the fiction. The Ruling just "makes sense" given the situation. But as you say, that could mean an actual rule could be made for it in the game itself, and I don't disagree with that. I personally wouldn't really mind or have any problems with more rules in the game if they were fairly intuitive and easy to remember, so if that helped for more obvious "corner-cases" then I'm fine with it. But then again... since our Rulings tend to be fairly self-explanatory for myself and the players as well given the situations they come from, they aren't "necessary" per se. Whether it's a Ruling or a Rule, the question gets answered quickly, everyone accepts the result as being completely logical, and the game moves on.
So, genuine question: What benefit do you get from actually using rules at all, rather than just going ("ultra pure," I guess) freeform? Systemless? Because it really sounds like you're playing something that just...doesn't need mechanics. If the fictional state is literally all you care about, such that you can and will override literally all mechanics 100% of the time that they conflict with any component of said fictional state...why keep the mechanics? They seem to just be impeding you.
I usually find it disheartening when someone decides not to do something that makes complete sense for their character in the story at that moment in time because they look at their character sheet and think "Well, if I did this it would probably mean making a Y check, but I'm not good at Y, so I'm not going to do it and maybe I'll do Z instead." I find that kind of concern for only going what is "optimal" to be a shackle to their creativity-- they don't try things that may not work. That's the kind of thing I usually facetiously call out here on EN World as trying to "win the game of D&D"-- players not caring about engaging with the fiction and instead being more concerned with "succeeding" in every check and die roll they make by making sure they find the right rule and the right check to give them the best chance to do the action.
Of course it's a shackle on creativity--if the mechanics punish taking creative actions. That's why I push so damn hard for mechanics that are flexible and open, that reward creativity, that provide a solid baseline of competence to everyone so even when they are trying something they "suck" at, there's still a reasonable chance of success and a worthwhile reward for trying. And why I get so deeply, deeply frustrated when people treat that effort as trying to turn things into "rollplaying and not roleplaying." The whole point is to make it so mechanics stop being a concern. Because there's literally no way to make everyone just instantaneously stop caring about mechanical success rate--and in general I don't think we would want that.
And in that regard... perhaps your way of playing (as discussed above) might fall into this same category that I'm usually rather cold on? Wherein "informed decision-making" is about having concrete rules to reference and base all character choices on, rather than just acting and reacting naturally to what is happening in the fiction? To me, that's a focus of "looking down at the character sheet" (or in this case, down at the Rulebook) to make decisions. Now I have no problems at all with people who prefer to play in that way... but that's just not me. (And I freely admit I've made this a black and white / either/or situation for the simplicity sake of discussion, while I'm fairly sure that if we looked at our games from the top down both of us are probably much closer together in the grey area.)
Well, I guess what I'm saying is, even treating it as a spectrum between two extremes isn't entirely accurate either. Rather, my goal is to make it so mechanical efforts are so natural, obvious, and effective, they become intuitive. That way, you don't really worry about the mechanics, because you can trust that the mechanics will produce interesting results.
This is, for example, one of the reasons why I run a "no permanent, irrevocable, random deaths" DW game. Because when my players are preoccupied with keeping their character alive, they're too worried about that to spare thought for doing Cool Things. By setting that precedent--that their character might die, but it will always be fixable-with-consequences--I can encourage them to be willing to take risks. A rule that frees, rather than fetters.
And to answer your two what-if questions at the bottom... for me it's the former style over the latter all day because the player at least is giving us something we at the table can all hang our hats on for their character. We have a better sense going in about this character's wants, needs, desires, preferences, and attitudes. When the player makes decisions for this character in-game... Iit feels like there's a better chance of the player using these things they've established to do things that make the most sense based upon the personality and background they've set up.
That being said... as I was reading the first spoiler tag it got to a point about halfway through that I definite thought "Okay, this is nice, but getting to be a little much." And thus when I then saw the second spoiler and realized the first was just a narrative description created to justify the character build of the second... that's when both sides left me cold. Yes, I'm glad the player was trying to put a bit of creativity with the first spoiler tag to overlay on top of the second... but the fact the second was what apparently they were more actually interested in just made me roll my eyes. Especially because I personally do not think doing what they are doing with this build actually accomplishes what they want. They want to have more chances to succeed in actions they take-- to "win" as many checks as possible. But that doesn't change the fact that no matter how many proficiencies you have or expertise or spells or abilities or whatnot-- the addition of the d20 roll says you're still going to blow it so many times over the course of your character's career. The game is not built to allow you to win every roll, so why jump through all these character build hoops just to create a character that you think will do so? It won't matter. You still won't be able to do what you're hoping for. So just keep it simple! Think of the personality you wish to play and not worry about the "rules" you want to be able to always beat. And then let the dice help indicate whether your character turns out to be someone that comes up big in big situations.
But again, that's just my particular picadillo and style of playing.
Well, the reason I asked is because that's a specific thing I, myself, have done. That's a 5e character build that actually excited me enough to make me consider playing 5e, rather than continuing to look for a game in some other system. I did intentionally play up the background stuff in the first example, but yes, I came upon that character concept as a mechanical exercise first and then said, "What kind of story would this be?" And I was actually pretty pleased with the story that came out of the mechanics. I felt that it took what could just be a bare, dull mechanical thing and give it life and meaning. I often conceive of character concepts mechanics-first, mostly because I do that sort of thing for fun while I'm not playing...and I'm usually not playing. I can't presume I know what any given DM's world will be, but I can know what the mechanics of the game are. Once I have some mechanics that interest me in their own right, I can weave a story around them (because it is always possible to weave a story around the mechanics...it just might be a bit threadbare in places!) And if I had done things slightly differently, it might have been difficult for you to tell which came first--the mechanics, or the story.
For me, that state of unity between the two things is where games are at their sweetest. Where mechanics ARE story, and story IS mechanics--where the two reach a level of refinement where you get the one automatically by pursuing the other, whichever you start from. Which is, for example, why Lay on Hands leaves me cold in every edition except 4e, because every other version is literally just "alright, you have a pool of HP to hand out...do whatever you like." Purely mechanistic, no fluff. In 4e? It is, in both mechanics and fiction, "I give of myself to replenish you." Or the Marking mechanic, which some people balked about as being unrealistic...even though it's literally lifted straight out of IRL association football (aka soccer, though obviously there's no weapons or death involved in most soccer games!) Or Avengers having crazy high AC despite wearing cloth armor, because they are literally able to say, "I need no armor. My god will protect me."
That kind of stuff gives me the happy tingly feels. It makes game play and role play a single transcendent act, rather than two things at war with each other where one gets prioritized and the other ghettoized.
So, genuine question: What benefit do you get from actually using rules at all, rather than just going ("ultra pure," I guess) freeform? Systemless? Because it really sounds like you're playing something that just...doesn't need mechanics. If the fictional state is literally all you care about, such that you can and will override literally all mechanics 100% of the time that they conflict with any component of said fictional state...why keep the mechanics? They seem to just be impeding you.
This is a valid question, and one that probably involves a little more communication and nuance than just a quick rundown, which is why I'm breaking this one question out into its own response. I've mentioned my answer to this in threads past, but don't mind talking about it again.
Going into it... the first question I would ask was how familiar you were with performance improvisation? Knowing us EN Worlders as we are... my guess is that you and probably most of us have at a minimum seen a few episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and thus will recognize what I'm going to talk about (as they involve relatively standard improv jargon).
So with that being said... you are correct that I myself would not "need" game mechanics per se. I could (and have) completely improvised games and scenes and such-- usually on stage, but even at the game table (as something like Fiasco has the barest hint of game mechanics once the premise, characters, and relationships have been established, with the rest is primarily just freeform improv.) Obviously D&D is not that... as dice and rolling dice are a huge part of the game, as are concrete rules for adjudicating action. Now why would I play a game like D&D that indeed has and uses a lot of game mechanics when I don't really "need" them (or indeed find being beholden to them rather irritating at times?)
- Part of it is that it's the universal game system that everyone knows and thus is easier to get players for (just like everyone else finds to be true.)
- Part of it is that the "combat board game" part of D&D can be fun in its own right and I enjoy playing it. But I don't find the combat board game to be so great of a game that I need it to be the best board game there is-- and thus I don't get bent out of shape when any warts in the game show up. If some rules don't work and I need to make Rulings for them on occasion, whatever, that's fine, doesn't bother to me.
- And finally... part of using the "board game" of D&D is that the dice rolls take the place of an important and necessary part of scenework improvisation. When two actors are improvising a scene, in order to push a scene's story forward the actors have to build upon what has been established. The 'And' part of 'Yes, And'. The first actor makes a statement of fact within a scene, the second actor accepts this statement of fact as an agreed-upon truth of what is happening in this made-up scene... and then adds details to enlarge it, make the scene fuller, and push the story forward. The first actor then responds honestly to these additional details as being factual to this scene and then they too add more details. And that's how the scene will progress-- each actor accepting the truth of the other's statements and adding more truths on top of it, back and forth and back and forth until the scene reaches a conclusion (as determined by whatever format the improv is taking place in.)
But now in D&D... we have something extra. We no longer have to rely on just the two scene partners to add additional details to the facts of what is happening... we have a Dungeon Master and even more importantly, dice rolls to add additional truths to this scene. If the first actor makes the improv offer of "I'm attacking the orc with my sword!"... the second actor (in this case, the DM) could just state as their "And"... "You stab the orc in the chest and it falls down dead!" Perfectly logical and reasonable "Yes, And" response. Maybe not that interesting or compelling... but it's quick, it's easy, and the scene can now move forward with what happens with the first actor standing now over a dead orc.
However... doing it in this way doesn't make it much of a game. So rather than the second actor DM making an ad hoc "Yes And" response of saying "Orc's dead! You killed him!"... we use the dice to give us the response instead. It takes the burden of "Yes And"ing the scene offer off of the DM and puts it on the dice roll. The dice roll gives us our "And". Yes, the attack roll hits... And... the attack does 5 points of damage... And... the orc now takes their turn and moves over here... And... the orc swings its axe at the ranger and hits... And... the swing does 10 point of damage... And... it turns out the axe was poisoned, so there's a chance the ranger might slow down their movement because of the poison... And... the ranger failed their saving throw so the ranger is now slowed... And... the ranger on his turn decides to take out a dose of antitoxin and drink it... And... And... And... and so forth.
These are all things that the two actors could just completely make up and offer up to each other back and forth in the scene if they wanted to. They could completely improvise the whole battle, giving and taking highs and lows, building off each other's actions to create really thrilling drama. But... that can be difficult. And tiring. And sometimes even less creative. Which is why pushing off some of these things onto the dice to dictate what happens can be very helpful, very original, and sometimes even more exciting (because now neither actor knows what is coming up.)
But this is also why I'm not so beholden to the dice... because they are only just an addition to the work we at the table are already doing, they aren't the work itself. The dice add color to the scene, they add results to a scene we might not have thought of ourselves had we just been doing straight improv, and they allow us to win-- and more importantly, lose-- as a surprise to us all. If it was straight improv, an actor would have to make the choice to lose by offering up the losing scenario (and the other actors agreeing to it). But that can be exceedingly hard... arbitrarily deciding in the middle of a combat scene "You know what? I'm going to fall unconscious now"... knowing you are taking yourself out of the fun of the scene. No one wants to leave the scene if it's fun! They want to keep playing! And so... we let the dice push us in that way. Let the dice make the offer of "You're unconscious now". And that makes it easier for the actors to accept and go along with it.
To make a long story short-- (Too late!)-- the game rules of D&D acts as our additional scene partner in our improvisations... making offers of how our scenes could go, usually in directions we may not have thought of ourselves. We don't NEED them to be our additional scene partner... but it can be awfully fun to have them.
I think the "informed decision making" argument is a bit of a smokescreen, honestly. A lot of the detail that players insist on having to make "informed decisions" is so far into the realm of pure game mechanics that their character couldn't possibly know that information. And much of that knowledge barely, if ever, corresponds to something in the fiction that the character could easily discern in the moment.
Take theater of the mind vs maps and minis. Theater of the mind, because it's vague in places, far more accurately represents the characters' view of the situation than the maps and minis ever could. Because there's a gap between what the characters can possibly know in the moment vs what the players can easily discern with a glance. The characters cannot possibly know precise measurements and distances before making a decision to move, run, charge, shoot, etc. But the player can simply look at the map, count the 5ft squares, measure the distance, etc and know for certain what the distances are. Thus completely eliminating the very real possibility that the character misjudged the distance, guessed wrong at how far someone was, or how long it would take to get there, or wasted a shot because of range or cover. Instead, the player will metagame to produce the optimal game effect, regardless of the character having no possible way to access that information in "real" time. Yet players will insist that without that precise out-of-character knowledge they cannot possibly make an informed in-character decision.
Another example is hit points and death saves. Information the character does not and cannot have, yet player decisions are frequently made based solely on those factors. On and on and on.
I think the "informed decision making" argument is a bit of a smokescreen, honestly. A lot of the detail that players insist on having to make "informed decisions" is so far into the realm of pure game mechanics that their character couldn't possibly know that information. And much of that knowledge barely, if ever, corresponds to something in the fiction that the character could easily discern in the moment.
Take theater of the mind vs maps and minis. Theater of the mind, because it's vague in places, far more accurately represents the characters' view of the situation than the maps and minis ever could. Because there's a gap between what the characters can possibly know in the moment vs what the players can easily discern with a glance. The characters cannot possibly know precise measurements and distances before making a decision to move, run, charge, shoot, etc. But the player can simply look at the map, count the 5ft squares, measure the distance, etc and know for certain what the distances are. Thus completely eliminating the very real possibility that the character misjudged the distance, guessed wrong at how far someone was, or how long it would take to get there, or wasted a shot because of range or cover. Instead, the player will metagame to produce the optimal game effect, regardless of the character having no possible way to access that information in "real" time. Yet players will insist that without that precise out-of-character knowledge they cannot possibly make an informed in-character decision.
Another example is hit points and death saves. Information the character does not and cannot have, yet player decisions are frequently made based solely on those factors. On and on and on.
