How Does "The Rules Aren't Physics" Fix Anything?

[VannATLC]

As a DM, I expect my players to have a certain degree of "wink and nod" behavior in certain cases. If, for example, I have a hostage with a dagger to their throat, I expect the players to react as if that throat can be opened and the life's blood of the hostage spilled. I expect them to recognize that while someone going after someone with a dagger in combat couldn't ever do that in one slash, in this kind of circumstance, it can happen.

I would even go so far as to expect the same behavior from a player character. In that instance I would say: "I won't roll damage- if you do some funky maneuver, you'll make a Dexterity check. If you fail, then you have a slashed throat, if not, you break away. The other guy's success will determine whether it's just a scratch or a grievous injury. A slashed throat needs medical attention in five minutes or so or you'll be dead." The threshold of medical attention being pretty low. I wouldn't even have them subtract hit points. It's not an abstract "hit" but a tangible injury emerging from the story.

In other words, because the damage model doesn't govern this eventuality, I'm declaring it by fiat. I'd certainly make these sorts of stakes clear at the outset, but I'd have no trouble introducing this sort of situation nor would I expect revolt from my players.

I think the root of our disagreement is over the whether or not the rules are the exclusive lens of game world interaction, or just one of many. I certainly recognize that players are going to make decisions based on their expectations of the rules. But what I do not expect is that this is the only sort of information they'll base decisions on- I expect them to engage with my expectations (and vice versa), I expect them to engage with the ongoing narrative and the genre considerations of the game in question. I expect engagement with common sense and a willingness to discard the rules when they do not seem to apply. I expect them to engage with me if they don't like something or have a request and all that.

Ahh.. thank you. See, this is what should have happened in that other thread (The one regarding the sentry in the tower.) No combat resolution system was necessary, because combat never occured. Combat might have occured should the skill-based roll (Which abstracts the stealth required, the guards senses, etc) have failed.

I hate the fact that people seem to limit themselves into believing that the combat systems are designed to model all violence in the game. Its not. Its designed to model *combat*

Slashing the throat of an unprotected/unaware person is not combat.

Again, I think this arises out of the idea that HP = meatpoints.

Edit: I'm not sure what a throad was. Oh well.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Do you get it yet? Though flavor is important flavor is mutable... and honestly... have you ever had a DM destroy all the equipment something is wearing after the PC's dump fireball after fireball on it?

Yes, and it also was MY stuff the baddie was wearing.


I never played with that DM again

 

[Professor Phobos]

Ahh.. thank you. See, this is what should have happened in that other thread (The one regarding the sentry in the tower.) No combat resolution system was necessary, because combat never occured. Combat might have occured should the skill-based roll (Which abstracts the stealth required, the guards senses, etc) have failed.

Right. Now, I know I'm about to get hit with a lot of accusations of being a fiat-happy abuser of players, but let me relate a pair of anecdotes:

I'm playing. This is a long time ago in a game not D&D. I come upon a door. A wooden door you might find in a modern suburban home (the kind I'm sure we've all angrily kicked a hole in whilst in our angsty teenage years). It is locked. I say, "I bash open the door, what with this big sledgehammer I have." The GM, thankfully, didn't make me roll to hit...but he had me roll damage until the door was broken. This took three-four rolls, 'cause I was rolling 1s that night. Now, granted, there were rules for breaking things and he was using them. And if there had been some time element involved, I'd have had no problem. I've used that trick myself. But there wasn't any time element involved. The house was empty. I was just tearing it apart for clues. So why was I rolling damage? It was a waste of time.

Later, same game as it so happens, I have a vicious cultist at my mercy. Tied up to a chair. We (the group), having been rudely abused by this cult and driven to desperation, decide to torture the guy. So I say, "I cut out his eyeball with my pocket knife." The GM said I couldn't do it because there were no rules for hit locations. He said I could stab him (with a to hit roll and everything!) but not do any kind of specific injury. And that's exactly what I'm talking about here- I should have been able to do that. Just because the rules cover combat and injury doesn't mean they cover all violence and injury. If you really demand a roll to adjudicate eye-poppin' torture, I'm sure an "Intimidate" or "Interrogate' or a "Torture" or a "Knife" roll would have sufficed. Special case, adjudicated on the fly using common sense- and it would have improved the game experience tremendously.

I hate the fact that people seem to limit themselves into believing that the combat systems are designed to model all violence in the game. Its not. Its designed to model *combat*

Yes! I was trying to get at this very idea, but my clumsy fingers could not articulate it!

 

[hong]

The rules provide a mechanism for determining the outcome of events. If you think that the outcome of a particular set of rules is wonky, you can change the rules. But whatever method you use to resolve events is the physics of the world.

That is not the point. The point is, depending on who you talk to:

1. Whether you need that method of resolution to be written up in a 500-page book composed of 2-column, 9-point serif text. Many rulesets do not have 500 pages. They don't even have 50 pages. This does not mean they are useless.

2. Whether that method of resolution depends on whether someone is a PC or an NPC. A perfectly clear, unambiguous rule is "a PC can do X, an NPC can do Y". There is never (presumably) any vagueness about whether a character is a PC or not, but this distinction is a metagame one.

 

[Hussar]

Certainly! For example earlier we had this exchange:



And you apparently did not comprehend my words becuase you have certainly failed to cite any place where I said any of those things.

Sorry, actually missed that post. So, you didn't say this:

If I want to wander around in a world where everybody but my character is a souless, nameless cipher I will play a computer game. If I walk into the closest 7-11 and start talking to the clerk they will have a name, a family, hobbies, and opinions. In a RPG I expect my character to experience that same degree of verisimilitude. Yes, my character (past a few levels) can take a crossbow bolt to the chest and the clerk probably can't. So what? At the start of his career the character couldn't either. IRL there are a lot of things I can do that some other people can't, and vice versa. Some of these are simply a matter of training. I can't run a marathon right now, but if I were to spend a year training, I could.

or this:

Unless of course what you call playability makes the game less fun for me. Then it has utterly failed in it's stated objective. Because in seeking to make the game less complex, less 'simulationist', less 'tactical' in the name of playability you may have stripped out the elements that bring me joy and therefore cause the game to become unplayably annoying or boring.

Again, can you please quote me as saying any of those things? Because if you cannot I am forced to conclude you are not in fact understanding any of my posts. You instead seem to be attacking a series of statments that are at best a distortion of my position, and at worst have nothing to do with me at all.

Certainly:

The rules effect how character interact with their world, and to pretend that they don't have some level of understanding of how those rules work is to make a disconnect that seems to completely preclude any immersion in the characters.

This:

Unless of course, you're someone like me who, not being dog ignorant of physics, cringes every time he sees 'airplanes in space' and wonders what the hell is so hard about making an accurate space flight sim.

Similarly, if the rules are not actually how things work in the game world, but merely how my character perceives things to work, then I'm not really playing that character as far as I'm concerned. I'm playing what that character hallucinates as he sits in the corner of his padded cell. This is not good playability.

The 4e discussion is making it quite clear that some players want to do cool stuff, and don't care about what the world they do it in is like any more than Roy cares about listening to NPCs.

So, I got your quotes. What part didn't I understand. You've stated that 4e is a bad game because it breaks your sense of verisimilitude. I replied that the quality of the game is irrelavent to your sensibilities. You claimed that 4e is akin to being insane and poor role playing (ignoring the NPCs).

So, how exactly have I mischaracterized your points in such a way that everyone else in this thread has mischaracterized them in pretty much the same way?

 

[Andor]

Okay I'm definitely not making myself understood here. I am not talking about things within the game world the rules do not cover, like Economics. I am talking about the rules modeling a particular set of interactions of a class that do not exclusively represent even those interactions within the game world. In an Economics game, the rules do not represent all of Economics, just Cinematic Economics. I am talking about genre.

I truly do not know what you are trying to say here. Could you clarify?

The lens, or a lens? I am going to return to this later.

There are only two ways for a player to perceive the world his character exists in. One is the rules, the other is the people he plays with, especially the GM.

Is this the only criteria for good/poor rules?

Of course not. This isn't a discussion of good vs bad rules. It's a discussion of the meaning of the rules in the context of the game world.

As a DM, I expect my players to have a certain degree of "wink and nod" behavior in certain cases. If, for example, I have a hostage with a dagger to their throat, I expect the players to react as if that throat can be opened and the life's blood of the hostage spilled. I expect them to recognize that while someone going after someone with a dagger in combat couldn't ever do that in one slash, in this kind of circumstance, it can happen.

I would even go so far as to expect the same behavior from a player character. In that instance I would say: "I won't roll damage- if you do some funky maneuver, you'll make a Dexterity check. If you fail, then you have a slashed throat, if not, you break away. The other guy's success will determine whether it's just a scratch or a grievous injury. A slashed throat needs medical attention in five minutes or so or you'll be dead." The threshold of medical attention being pretty low. I wouldn't even have them subtract hit points. It's not an abstract "hit" but a tangible injury emerging from the story.

In other words, because the damage model doesn't govern this eventuality, I'm declaring it by fiat. I'd certainly make these sorts of stakes clear at the outset, but I'd have no trouble introducing this sort of situation nor would I expect revolt from my players. I guess you could characterize my style as a hybrid of the much derided "mutual rules-free narrative" and "we're playing a board game ironclad rules.' I am comfortable switching between the two as necessary. As a player, I have found GMs unwilling to do this to be extremely tedious.

I think you are conflating two things here. One is house rules, which I think are a great thing. The other is a GM ruling for a situation which the rules cover poorly or not at all. While I think house rules are a great thing I think they should be presented at the start of a campaign, which shows that the GM has a clear idea of how and why he wants to alter the game. When house rules keep appearing midsession it is rarely a good sign in my experience.

As far as cutting a throat goes the rules do in fact address that exact circumstance. It's call a coup de grace. As a player in your game I would be very puzzled why you would feel the need to make a new mechanic to cover an existing rule on the fly rather than in your pre-game house rules packet.

I have no desire at all to turn this into a 'are hp real or abstract' argument, but I will note that if the D&D hp mechanics are prone to leading to that kind of confusion between you and your players then they are a very poor mechanic for the type of game you like to play. Because of this you are forced to say "In spite of the fact that these are the rules, there will be times when I feel they do not apply and I will use some other rules which I might make up on the fly." This will lead to uncertainty and confusion on the part of your players and possibly the characters. Confusion that would not be there if you played as if the rules were the physical rules of the game world. I dislike that confusion and thus prefer to play in games with clearly spelled out rules.

I think the root of our disagreement is over the whether or not the rules are the exclusive lens of game world interaction, or just one of many. I certainly recognize that players are going to make decisions based on their expectations of the rules. But what I do not expect is that this is the only sort of information they'll base decisions on- I expect them to engage with my expectations (and vice versa), I expect them to engage with the ongoing narrative and the genre considerations of the game in question. I expect engagement with common sense and a willingness to discard the rules when they do not seem to apply. I expect them to engage with me if they don't like something or have a request and all that.

Of course the players should engage the GM about the playstyle and rules of the game. I thought I had made that very clear. What you don't seem to understand is that I see no difference between a house rule and a published rule. They both tell me how things work. If instead of clear rules or guidelines the GM make a lot of 'look and feel' comments then I am left with a much vaguer notion of how things work in that world. It may be more accurate than the clear but wrong impresson I had from the written rules, but it is still vague and leaves both me and my character less sure.

 

[billd91]

See, the problem is, Rules=Physics =/= realistic.

You can have rules that are not physics that are perfectly consistent, but, are not meant to model physics. The split between PC and NPC, for example, is perfectly consistent. Diplomacy works on NPC's but doesn't work on PC's is a consistent rule.

The way I look at the issue, it doesn't have to only model physics per se. But if I have a power that I can use during the course of an encounter that recharges after a 5 minute rest, then I should be able to use it pretty much any time as long as I get about a 5 minute rest in between. That doesn't necessarily deal with physics either but it defines a certain game world behavioral model that should be observable and repeatable... just as if I were testing certain observations in physics.

 

[billd91]

You've stated that 4e is a bad game because it breaks your sense of verisimilitude. I replied that the quality of the game is irrelavent to your sensibilities. You claimed that 4e is akin to being insane and poor role playing (ignoring the NPCs).

Since the quality of the game is an entirely subjective assessment, his sensibilities are not irrelevant at all.

 

[hong]

The way I look at the issue, it doesn't have to model physics per se. But if I have a power that I can use during the course of an encounter that recharges after a 5 minute rest, then I should be able to use it pretty much any time as long as I get about a 5 minute rest in between. That doesn't necessarily deal with physics either but it defines a certain game world behavioral model that should be observable and repeatable... just as if I were testing certain observations in physics.

The way I do it, if you have a power that can be used once per encounter, then it can be used once per encounter, even if those encounters are less than 5 minutes apart. This is perfectly observable and repeatable. The player simply has to ask me "is this a new encounter?" and if I say yes then it can be used. 99% of the time if I have stopped counting initiative, then it's a new encounter, and so they don't even have to ask.

 

[billd91]

The way I do it, if you have a power that can be used once per encounter, then it can be used once per encounter, even if those encounters are less than 5 minutes apart. This is perfectly observable and repeatable. The player simply has to ask me "is this a new encounter?" and if I say yes then it can be used. 99% of the time if I have stopped counting initiative, then it's a new encounter, and so they don't even have to ask.

Which leads right into my point. Without a rule to the contrary, for some people, once you stop counting initiatives, you're now in that space between encounters. Can a per encounter power be used then? (I would hope so in the final 4e rules but the admonition that the "rules are not physics" gives me pause because it says those rules don't inform or aren't informed by how the world works outside of the specific playable aspects of "the encounter".)