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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6373087" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think you need to question the assumption that combat is any better suited to rules than non-combat. Any reason that you have as to why it non-combat doesn't work also applies to combat. What you have rules for is a choice, not a statement of suitability. RPGs don't need any rules. Make-believe doesn't have rules and it works fine and RPGs are just make-believe ultimately.So any rules you have serve a purpose.The purpose of most rules is to resolve ambiguity -- when someone says "I shoot you with my laser and kill you," the rules are there to say if that happens. The rules are also there to make play fun. If every question of if I hit you and killed you with my laser was resolved by asking the table judge if that happened, it would be less interesting than if that question was resolved by rolling some dice to find out what happened (ennabling things like situational modifiers and unexpected results). Play needs to be more interesting if it is something you do over and over again. If your game involves a lot of laser-shooting deathmatches, you want a way for shooting lasers to be fun on a visceral, sensory level, not just in your mind. Play needs to resolve ambiguity where the stakes are high. If I am killed with a laser shot and can just declare myself re-spawned instantly, there's low stakes, and we don't need a lot of rules for that. I just do it. The game wants me to comb back right away. If, instead, I'll be sitting out the rest of the session, the stakes are really high, and it's important that if I am killed, that it is fair and agreeable to everyone involved (otherwise I'll get upset because people just kill me because they don't like me or something and fun will not be had).So rules for RPGs exist where there are high stakes and where you do the action a lot. Which means if there are rules for it, it is IMPORTANT and it is something you are expected to DO A LOT OF. And if there are not rules for it, it is not as important, and you are not expected to do it as often. This was certainly true of 4e non-combat resolution IMXP. If you want to emphasize that something is important without rules, you're going to get a bit stuck. To emphasize its importance, you raise the stakes -- make sure that what one does in that situation has a BIG effect in play. For instance, if you wanted talky-style diplomacy to be important in D&D, you might determine that failing at it means you have to sit out the rest of the session and that doing it successfully means that you get XP and treasure. Of course, once the stakes are so high, it is important that failing and succeeding are not subject to a DM's whims, so that the ambiguity is resolved neutrally and mechanically rather than relying on a human process. But once you take the judgement call out of the hands of a DM, you're going to need rules to resolve it. 5e, for instance, gets away with "rulings not rules" more often because it has less "important" rules. Whether or not you succeed at stealth or at a particular spell is not of vital importance to 5e's overall gameplay. So it's fine if a DM makes those judgement calls -- the stakes are not so high. An individual DM might be able to get away with a high-stakes decision without rules, but this would not be something you could write into a game, it would be something that a group with a huge level of DM trust (maybe to the level of DMs controlling PC actions) would be able to pull off. And even then, it would not necessarily be something that group could pull off a lot of. Rules tell you what is high-stakes and/or what you'll be doing a lot of. If it's low stakes and you don't do it that often, it's hard to say it's "important." And if it's high stakes or you're doing it a lot, rules serve a good purpose.</blockquote>

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