How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[pemerton]

The games you favor focus on creating a particular narrative or emulating genre far more than they care for simulation in a physical sense.

I don't play any RPGs that focus on creating a particular narrative. (I would like to play My Life With Master, but have not yet had the chance to do so.)

I'm not really sure what "simulation in a physical sense" means in your usage. The last time I remember my group using a scientific paper to inform our action resolution was playing Traveller, when we needed to work out how long it would take the blasts of a triple beam laser turret to melt through 4 km of ice. Admittedly, a session or two later, one of the engineers in our group complained that a particular sci-fi electric field barrier in a doorway made no sense. And the whole game is premised on the (impossible) fact of FTL travel.

As I think I already mentioned upthread, in Wuthering Heights when we wanted to know how far it was from Soho to the Thames we Googled up a map of London. In Prince Valiant we have used maps of Europe and West Asia c 800 CE to get a general sense of where the PCs are as they travel.

Burning Wheel, Torchbearer 2e and Prince Valiant - three of my favourite RPGs - all use "objective" difficulties for checks, in the sense that the difficulty is built up out of a consideration of the various elements of the fiction that "oppose" the acting character. (Eg when cooking, these might be the quality of the ingredients and the number of persons to be fed; when climbing these would include the smoothness of the surface being climbed, its incline, its height, etc; when riding down a foe on horseback these would include the relative speed and stamina of the two horses; etc, etc.)

The play procedures I've described in my previous three paragraphs - using a scientific paper to answer a question in play; using maps of the real world to coordinate the events in the fiction; establishing "objective" difficulties by reference to established elements of the fiction - are all things that might be described as "simulation in a physical sense".

Unless I've been utterly wrong about your preferences.

I've mentioned some of the games that I favour. It's not hard to find actual play reports, by me, on these boards, of the play of these games.

Wuthering Heights does require that each character have something which flutters in the breeze (a scarf, a kilt, whatever). I guess this is a type of (parodic) genre emulation. On the other hand, there is nothing in Burning Wheel that involves genre emulation that is any different from any version of D&D; and its approach to PC generation produces character far more "grounded" in a detailed sense of ordinary life than any process of creating D&D characters that I'm aware of. A knight in Prince Valiant does not emulate a genre any more than does a paladin or ranger or cavalier in AD&D, and possibly less (one of the knights in our game started as a squire, is a handy pick-pocket, and is not a particularly puissant fighter or battle captain). Classic Traveller doesn't emulate genre any more than any other typical sci-fi game that I'm aware of.

So I don't think your description of the RPGs that I favour is really very accurate.

 

[pemerton]

an untold number of people in the real world participate in one or more forms of fantasy realism on a regular basis.

Well consider how often we indulge ourselves in things that have no basis in what we call reality.

That people imagine things is a realistic event. Commonplace, even.

It doesn't follow that the things they imagine are realistic.

An imagined event may be realistic (eg I imagine myself walking to the shop to buy milk). Or it may be fantastic (eg I imagine myself fighting for my life while hanging by a rope from a blimp flying high above a city). I am positing that it cannot be both.

 

[pemerton]

Seems like a semantic quibble.

I don't agree.

If we characterise a GM describing things to the players as the GM deciding on auto-success for an action not declared by the player, we now seem to be positing that the GM can declare actions for the player's PC, perhaps without even telling the player that they have done so!

And that takes us squarely into the conversation @hawkeyefan has been having with @Maxperson, about control over the game: it is a characterisation of the flow of play, and the process of play, that assumes (or that places) everything into the GM's hands. As opposed to an alternative way of characterising play, which allocates some tasks to the GM - eg describing the scene - and then allocates some tasks to the players - declaring actions for their PCs - and then talks about how the declared action within the scene is resolved, via the game's resolution rules.

That alternative characterisation also bears directly upon the ostensible topic of the thread, as per my my second post in it:

I think the rules should be visible.

If the rules are the GM will call for a player to make a roll, and then narrate something based on that - well, that should be known to the players.

Likewise, if the rules are the GM may describe the scene, and may or may not call for a roll, and will narrate something based on an ineffable combination of what they think, what the players roll, what questions the players ask, and what the players say their PCs do - well, I think that should be known to the players.

 

[pemerton]

They are one and the same. Whether or not a PC knows if it's a circle of imprison and a dragon inside is due to PC knowledge. The DM either says or narrates auto success, auto failure, or asks for a roll.

In the case of the narration you provided with the dragon in the circle of imprisonment, the DM by narration has engaged in auto success for the PC knowing that information. The DM could just as easily have narrated auto failure, "There is a large winged lizard sitting inside a runed circle. You do not know what either the lizard or circle are." Or asked for rolls to determine knowledge of one or the other, or both of those things.

As per my reply not far upthread to @Crimson Longinus, this is one approach to RPGing. It is far from the only one. Even within the D&D-verse.

See my above post. If you get to invent new terms and definitions, and you do all the time, then so do I.

Realism are things that contribute towards the setting feeling some level of realistic. I wouldn't have to separate out fantasy realism if people here wouldn't respond with the following, "Realism shouldn't be a thing because dragons and magic aren't at all realistic. Hur! Hur!"

When making a fantasy setting you have realism. Trees, rocks, air, humans, water, metal armor, bladed swords, etc. But you also have things that you establish as realistic for a fantasy setting. Magic, dragons, gods that interfere, other planes of existence, etc. Those things become realistic for that setting, but are not part of realism dealing with the real world. They need a separate category which I call fantasy realism, because those things are consistent in the fantasy setting and the DM can establish attributes for them that make them more or less realistic for the fantasy setting, much the same way that attributes can be added or removed to make the came more or less real world realistic.

Fantasy realism and realism do not oppose each other, rather they complement each other within the setting. They are not oxymoronic.

In this case, all the RPGs that I GM are very realistic, because they all include the things you call "realism" - trees, rocks, air, humans, water, armour, swords, etc - and also the things that you call "fantasy realism".

My Burning Wheel play is actually more realistic than D&D play, because it includes all the realistic elements of D&D plus wounds, damaged armour and learning by practice and training.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't agree.

If we characterise a GM describing things to the players as the GM deciding on auto-success for an action not declared by the player, we now seem to be positing that the GM can declare actions for the player's PC, perhaps without even telling the player that they have done so!

In many games it effectively is so, and definitely is when I run D&D. We covered this earlier, and it applies particularly to perception and knowledge type rolls. Often the character merely arriving a place where they can observe a thing they can know stuff about (like the runic circle) is sufficient to trigger a check, or indeed an autosuccess in it.

That alternative characterisation also bears directly upon the ostensible topic of the thread, as per my my second post in it:
Likewise, if the rules are the GM may describe the scene, and may or may not call for a roll, and will narrate something based on an ineffable combination of what they think, what the players roll, what questions the players ask, and what the players say their PCs do - well, I think that should be known to the players.

I don't think people generally are unaware of how this works.

 

[pemerton]

People claiming you can't have realism when fantastical elements exist are not arguing in good faith, IMO.

Who are these people?

 

[pemerton]

The Like Reality Unless Noted trope. If a GM mentions a door while they are narrating, the players are going to assume that the door before them is like the ones in reality. It has a handle that must be turned in a certain direction in order for them to open it.

Assuming it is a mediaeval-type setting, I would assume that the door is latched rather than having a modern handle. That seems more realistic to me!

When we are role-playing characters in a RPG setting, we have to treat everything the character experiences as something normal. Even when we don't think of it as normal in our reality.

Including runic circles?

 

[pemerton]

In many games it effectively is so, and definitely is when I run D&D. We covered this earlier, and it applies particularly to perception and knowledge type rolls. Often the character merely arriving a place where they can observe a thing they can know stuff about (like the runic circle) is sufficient to trigger a check, or indeed an autosuccess in it.



I don't think people generally are unaware of how this works.

Well, I want that to be visible to me, so that I know not to join in that game!

 

[pemerton]

In other threads I've had @pemerton respond to my arguments that there is a lot of realism in D&D with, "But there are dragons and magic!" as a counter to my claim.

No you haven't.

Produce the posts, please.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, I want that to be visible to me, so that I know not to join in that game!

You want what to be visible?