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

[Hussar]

Or not. I think our personal styles (both as players and DMs) vary probably a lot -- at least "in practise" (at the table). What I think is both funny and weird that a lot of the "pro-4E" people used to openly criticize a lot of the design decisions some months ago, until, apparently, they gave up and entrenched themselves firmly in the pro-4E camp. It's almost as if they said to themselves: "My opinions do not matter -- the change is coming, and I have to adapt. In fact, I *have* to *LOVE* the game, no matter what. It just has to be the GREATEST, BESTEST edition ever, and I have to defend it, because I have no alternative. I cannot play 3E anymore, because it won't be supported by WoTC, and that would kill my game!". I'm not trying to be snarky or insult anyone -- that's my honest observation based on how so many people who used to criticize 4E seem now to *love* those same things they clamored against. Why the sudden change in attitude? And the worst part is that some posters now go to any lengths in defending those changes even without any reasonable arguments backing their claims. It's the same phrases I keep hearing: "You're just afraid of change and fail to see this new mechanic's superiority!" or "It seems that you lack the imagination to play 4E, so stick with 3E".

I think you've drastically misinterpreted the points in two ways.

First off, it could very easily be that people have been convinced that the new rules are better than the old, despite earlier objections. That happens all the time. Heck, I was a pretty staunch 2e supporter for a brief period of time, at least until I actually got to play 3e. Just looking at the rules without actually playing them can lead to some really weird trains of thought.

Secondly, and this is something I tried to argue with Andor above, is that games should not be judged solely based on personal preferences. The quality of a given rule, as to whether or not it can get the job done, is independent of whether or not you LIKE the rule. Just as I can say that Go is a well designed game with plenty of tactical depth of play AND I hate it. I find it mind bogglingly boring.

But, that's my problem, not a problem with the game.

The question before us is whether or not decoupling rules from physics leads to inconsistencies within the game world. The answer is no. The existence of numerous games where the mechanics have next to nothing to do with the game world - 1e D&D with its lack of skill mechanics, Villains and Vigilantes with its complete lack of non-supers rules, or rules light games like Amber or The Dying Earth - prove that you can have rules sets where the world is largely left unmodeled and still have consistent, enjoyable games.

 

[pemerton]

IThe question before us is whether or not decoupling rules from physics leads to inconsistencies within the game world. The answer is no. The existence of numerous games where the mechanics have next to nothing to do with the game world - 1e D&D with its lack of skill mechanics, Villains and Vigilantes with its complete lack of non-supers rules, or rules light games like Amber or The Dying Earth - prove that you can have rules sets where the world is largely left unmodeled and still have consistent, enjoyable games.

QFT, although I'm not sure that "The Dying Earth" is really all that rules-light.

Looking over Ron Edwards' essay "Gamism: Step On Up" I found this passage describing one of the similarities between Gamism and Narrativist play:

Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.

It is this "casual negotiation", under constraints delivered by the action resolution (and other relevant) mechanics, which ensures the coherence of the gameworld without it being the case that the rules are phyiscs.

For example, the design we've seen so far in 4.0 suggests that setting up a dungeon with individual, discrete encounters is a horrible strategy to defend against adventurers, and that a much better strategy would be to provide a warning system, so that when adventurers were discovered, every minion in the dungeon could rush in, denying the all-important five-minute recovery period.

I find this comment a little odd, for a few reasons.

1) It's almost always been the case that it is optimal (from the NPCs' point of view) to swarm the PCs. D&D has always been about the GM (with a nod and a wink from the players) contriving in various ways that this not come about.

2) The 5-minute rest is mainly a metagame contrivance, to allow the players to reset a certain list of options. If for some reason or other it is not going to work in your game (because, consistently with verisimilitude) it is impossible to introduce 5-minute rests, then the rule needs to be changed. (Just as one way to avoid the 15-minute adventuring day would be to reduce spell-recovery time, although this of course would introduce further intra-party balance complications.)

3) The point of a number of features of the 4e mechanics appears to be to increase player (not PC, but player) control over the resolution of action in the game. Per-encounter powers are just one example of this. They are essentially metagame devices. It defeats their purpose if one assumes that they are part of the physics of the gameworld, and thus that the NPCs who populate the gameworld can plan and calculate taking them into account.

An analogy would be this: in a game of Conan OGL, the NPCs won't take into account that a player might spend a Fate Point to save her PC from death. The point of spending the Fate Point is that the PC does not die, despite the situation appearing to the contrary to everyone in the gameworld, including the NPCs. It is a metagame, "plot immunity" mechanic, not a representation of the causal laws of the gameworld.

Likewise with per-encounter powers: the "per-encounter" aspect is best interpreted as a metagame, director's stance mechanic (ie the player dictates that circumstances are now propitious, and the rules allow the player to do this once per 5-to10-minutes of ingame time). NPCs are already assumed to be doing their best to avoid exposing themselves to powerful attacks, and the use of the per-encounter power shows that they failed to do so.

Why would one want to deliberately negate the gameplay point of these mechanics, by treating them as part of the mechanics of the gameworld (and thus have NPCs engage in such reasoning as "despite appearing dead, she might really be alive - I better decapitate her" or "once per 5 minutes certain people can twist luck and fortune in their favour, but only if they get a rest, so I better swarm them before they can take a quick break")?

If you don't want to play a game with metagame mechanics, fine (RQ and RM2/RM classic are, IMO, great games). But why criticise a game that contains metagame mechanics for not delivering a metagame-free play experience? Or interpret those mechanics in some strange non-metagame fashion and then complain that the resultant simulation is wonky?

 

[AZRogue]

The simulationists can have every odd numbered edition and the rest of us can have every even numbered edition. Sounds fair to me.

 

[Andor]

Secondly, and this is something I tried to argue with Andor above, is that games should not be judged solely based on personal preferences. The quality of a given rule, as to whether or not it can get the job done, is independent of whether or not you LIKE the rule. Just as I can say that Go is a well designed game with plenty of tactical depth of play AND I hate it. I find it mind bogglingly boring.

But, that's my problem, not a problem with the game.

The question before us is whether or not decoupling rules from physics leads to inconsistencies within the game world. The answer is no. The existence of numerous games where the mechanics have next to nothing to do with the game world - 1e D&D with its lack of skill mechanics, Villains and Vigilantes with its complete lack of non-supers rules, or rules light games like Amber or The Dying Earth - prove that you can have rules sets where the world is largely left unmodeled and still have consistent, enjoyable games.

Ahhh. I think I see at least one area where we are using the phrase "Rules as physics" to mean different things. I tried but apparently failed to be clear that when I say "rules as physics" I do not mean, in the least, that the rules must cover every eventuality. As we agree, it's both impractical and impossible to try to cover everything from how dragons digest pearls to how the thermal conductivity of adamatine make it perfect for frying eggs. Any aspect of the world not covered by the rules is of course up to the GM possibly with input from the players and it's his job to portray them in a way that reflects the world accurately.

Instead what I mean is that I find it impossible to reconcile the effect of rules that have in game consequences with an insistance that they have no in game existence. EG: Hitpoints. You can argue that they are merely luck, and that poison, gravity, fire, ants, etc are corner cases, but frankly there are so many corners they frame the topic perfectly. There are of course rules which are not visible in game, EG: No evil PCs. Since there are evil people with PC classes within the game world that rules effects only the 4 to 6 pcs and is too small to be visible in the world at large.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

The simulationists can have every odd numbered edition and the rest of us can have every even numbered edition. Sounds fair to me.

Good. So how long do I need to wait for 5E?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Good. So how long do I need to wait for 5E?

I suppose 8 years?

 

[Hussar]

Re: Hit Points and Luck

This has been done to death, but, I'll take another stab at it. Hit points can represent physical toughness. They also can represent luck, karma or whatever. The point of HP's though is that what they represent can easily vary with whatever fits the scene at the time.

Hit points don't have to ONLY be luck. They don't ONLY have to be physical toughness. They're an abstract concept. Thus, they can be pretty much whatever you need them to be at the time. Thus, people within a game world need not have any concept of hit points. From their point of view, (if they actually had one) hit points don't exist because hit points only reflect the results of the scene.

If I have 50 hit points and get hit with an axe for 5 points of damage, the narrative would read something like, "Korgan is shaken by the scratch." OTOH, if I had 10 hit points, the narrative would read differently.

This is why I have no problem whatsoever with the idea that rules =/= physics. Given that many of the game concepts are abstractions at best, why would they need to be coupled with any sort of physics?