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

[JohnSnow]

Some people, even in the real world, are also just that lucky.

I've never been shot. Most of us haven't. But most of us don't lead dangerous lives.

There's this guy who was born in the old west. He was as much a model of the cowboy hero as you're likely to find. He rode shotgun on a stagecoach. He worked as a lawman in Dodge City. He was involved in a very famous gunfight. He served as a sheriff and a U.S. Marshall. He got shot at - a lot, including one rather infamous scene where he stormed armed men in wide open territory. And in his entire, danger-filled life, he NEVER, ever, took one single bullet.

His name was Wyatt Earp and he died in 1929 at the age of 80.

And I won't even go into men like Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Henry Morgan, George Washington, Davy Crockett, T.E. Lawrence, or hundreds of other famous (and very real!) people who led adventurous lives and remained fairly hail and heart until their death at reasonably advanced ages. Francis Drake died at sea while raiding Spanish galleons at nearly 60 years of age. After a life of adventure, Walter Raleigh had his head cut off when he was 66 years old to appease the King of Spain. He spends an hour leading the crowd in prayer, tests the axe for sharpness, smokes a pipe, then lays his head on the block and practically ORDERS the headsman to strike. Now THAT is hardcore.

That's the kind of character most players want to play. They don't want to play Joe-Bob Smith who takes one bullet and has a lame arm for the next 30 years because of it. Joe-Bob retires to become a farmer.

Some people are just born special or they survive circumstances that make them that way. The PCs are lucky enough to BE those people.

 

[Surgoshan]

How many hit points do you lose when you get shot in the face?

Not all of them. Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face with a shotgun and the old guy is apparently fine and dandy.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Here is a big trouble spot. This is not a universal game convention. If I am GMing and the party of 1st level PCs insist on going into the troll swamp I am not going to pull punches and they are most likely going to get eaten by trolls.

Appropriate decision. They knew the risks, they must suffer the consequences.

If I was playing in your game and the adventure called for me to go into the troll swamp you are asking me to metagame, using my player knowledge of plot immunity, to make my character do something which he should logically feel to be certain suicide.

Well, hopefully the GM provides some indication of how the normal risk of the Troll Swamp is being mitigated in this instance. That or by making it some kind of necessity that requires the near-suicidal risk to be taken (say a kidnapped villager or somesuch). Ultimately, adventurers are supposed to take risks. If your characters are realistically concerned for their health and safety, they wouldn't be adventurers.

And yes, players should have a degree of faith that however deadly the Troll Swamp is supposed to be, it's not so deadly as to be guaranteed suicide. Again, unless it isn't the GM prodding the players into the Troll Swamp with a plot hook but the players going in themselves. At which point it can be as instantly deadly as necessary, so long as they were aware.

I mean, it is kind of the point. No sane person would go in to the Haunted Tomb of the Dread Evil Guy. Sane people raise their children and hope the next harvest is good. We're talking about adventurers.

Do you see? By enforcing genre conventions you compel players to metagame which ,by definition, forces you to come out of character.

Players should metagame their character decisions. It can't just be "This is what my character would do" to the exclusion of all the other considerations. There are other elements to gameplay that require consideration. I'm not saying they shouldn't do things based on what their characters would do- on the contrary, I encourage and endeavor to support such decisions as a GM. But they should also be thinking about what is good for the game, the other players, me (the GM) and, hell, what would make for a good scene.

Most of them can be controlled by making characters who are willing to adventure in the first place, but if I have to pick between Angsty McLoner or Cowardly WontAdventure and the momentary disruption of a player being "in character", I'll take the latter, thanks. You're not in character every time you reach for the snacks, either.

 

[HeinorNY]

How many hit points do you lose when you get shot in the face?

The amount of Hit Points lost determines the gravity/type/location of the wound, not the contrary.

 

[Wormwood]

The amount of Hit Points lost determines the gravity/type/location of the wound, not the contrary.

This.

 

[Andor]

What about fluff? Setting information? Common sense?

Fluff and setting information are deseminated by either print (almost always in a rulebook) or the GMs voice. If you have some other way of passing along this information I'm curious to know it. In any event this is information the player is given to let him come closer to understanding the world his character inhabits, it will inform his decisions in the same way that his understanding of the rules of the world do. If the fluff states that the Knights of the Greasy Hampster are the most puissant fighters on the plane then he will treat them as such until he learns otherwise.

Coup De Grace specifically applies only to "helpless" opponents.

If someone is tied up and has their throat cut is uses the coup de grace rules. If someone is paralyzed and has their throat cut the coup de grace rules are used. But if someone is held hostage it really seems more reasonable to you to invent an entire other system, that circumvents the normal mechanics of the game entirely, than to make a minor change to an existing mechanic?

More to the point, let me paint you the same scene done twice:

For PCs we'll use our Iconic 4 and like most career criminals Lidda will be a bit of a rules lawyer.

The nefarious Simon-bar-Sinister has kidnapped Princess Vapid and is being pursued by our heros who have tracked him to his lair. They burst into the room and see the villain in the corner holding the Princess tightly with his knife at her throat. "Hold it right there do gooders." He sneers. "Take one more step and I'll cut her throat."

Lidda: "Wait, how can he do that?"
GM: "I won't roll damage. if you do some funky maneuver, you'll make a Dexterity check. If you fail, then she has a slashed throat, if not, you break her 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 she'll be dead."
Redgar: "5 minutes? Bleeding out normally takes one minute tops."
Jozan: "Okay.. so if there is no damage will I be able to heal her?"
GM: "The threshold of medical attention being pretty low. I won't have them subtract hit points. It's not an abstract "hit" but a tangible injury emerging from the story."
Jozan: "So is that a yes?"
GM: "Yes, it's a deadly wound but a cure minor will fix it I guess."
Redgar: "If it's a deadly wound why is it more easily cureable and take 5 times as long to kill as a normal wound?"
Lidda: "Never mind that. How can I do this to NPCs? Or Miallee?"
Miallee: "What?"
Simon-bar-Sinister: "Hello? Heroes? Still over here."
Redgar: "Yeah whatever villain. We can patch her up in a heart beat so go ahead and cut her and we'll get to kicking your ass."
Princess Vapid: "What?"

Scene Redux:

The nefarious Simon-bar-Sinister has kidnapped Princess Vapid and is being oursued by our heros who have tracked him to his lair. They burst into the room and see the villain in the corner holding the Princess tightly with his knife at her throat. "Hold it right there do gooders." He sneers. "Take one more step and I'll cut her throat."

Lidda: "Wait, how can he do that?"
GM: "Sure. As a terrified non-combatant the princess counts as helpless so he'll coup-de-grace her."
Lidda: "Crap. That could kill her instantly. Jozan?"
Jozan: "I can raise her, but we don't have the diamonds and his evil lair is too far from the castle for us to make it back in time."
Lidda: "Hey GM, can I do that?"
GM: "Sure, when you find a noncombatant NPC you want to murder."
Mialee: "Lidda you worry me sometimes."
Redgar: "Shush"
Redgar: "Okay foul villain just don't hurt the Princess. What are your demands?"

End scene

Which of those flowed better to you? Which required less out of game discussion and character breaking? Which suited the genre better?

For my money, the less you disrupt the flow of the game with on the spot rulings the more enjoyable the game is.

If, for instance, in Call of Cthulhu I vary the consequences for failure on a skill roll depending on all manner of circumstances, this is not a "house rule." The skill descriptions present only guidelines for that sort of thing. If I say a character rolling a Surgery skill for a comparatively minor injury under good conditions with adequate tools can't kill the patient even if he fails, but later I say a surgery done under terrible conditions with improvised tools with only a terrified Boy Scout Troop Leader's shaking flashlight for light will kill the patient with a failed roll, I have not established a house rule, I have just applied the rules in a manner appropriate to the situation.

Yes, exactly. Situational modifiers are already a part of the existing rules scheme and require no breaking of immersion or stopping the flow of the game. A character in the game would easily be able to anticipate them with a fair degree of accuracy.

Why can't you ask? This topic keeps coming up- "uncertainty! I don't know what I can do!" and I can only shudder to think at how bad your DMs have been to have taught this kind of learned helplessness. If you're not sure if a given thing will work, just say, "Hey I'm going to try this, is it going to work?" and the DM can say "Yes, No, Maybe- Roll!" This is how it is supposed to work.

I think it's pretty clear that I have seen many more bad GMs than you have. However what you don't seem to appreciate is that every single time I have to stop the action of the game to ask you how things are going to work in this situation I am forced to break the flow of the narrative. The action stops. The other players look bored. The dice stop rolling. All of this lessens immersion in the character. If you don't see that then you must experience roleplaying very differently than I do.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Oh, nevermind. I can't keep this up. You win.

 

[LostSoul]

Forcing metagame decisions on the players is disruptive. As an example from the very last session I played in...

That's a nice example of why it's disruptive to not metagame.

 

[HeinorNY]

Oh, nevermind. I can't keep this up. You win.

Don't worry professor, in subjecitve discussions, nobody wins, everybody loses.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Don't worry professor, in subjecitve discussions, nobody wins, everybody loses.

The funny thing is, the whole thing was definitional. I'm fairly certain if we were all gaming together, our styles would appear remarkably similar, or the things that annoyed us would be mitigated by all the things that went well. Only on the internet are these minor preferences elevated to the level of immutable schism.