How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Maxperson]

It sounds like they're talking about my posting history. Not sure why that needed to be emphasized if so.

Not yours.

 

[thefutilist]

To be honest, it's gotten to the point where I see the phrases "scene-framing"

You should use it, it’s a really cool concept for thinking about some rpg stuff.

A scene is a location, with people and things in it, and a relationship between the people and things.

Scene framing is: How do you decide what location you are at, and what people and things are there, and what’s the relationship between them.

Resolution is how you change the relationships between the stuff in the scene.

Or like Pemberton said, how do you decide what’s on the other side of a door.

 

[Lanefan]

When I see a banana I don't try and recognise it; I just do recognise it.

Which by default also means you succeed (without even trying) in recognizing it; a fine example of how in-game auto-success mechanics can translate to real life.

In the context of a game, a player succeeds when they make a move and it works out for them; and fail when they try to make a particular move but it doesn't work for them.

Both success and failure can also occur without the overt "make a move" step, as some moves (such as recognizing a banana) become inherent over time, and thus automatic. For the able-bodied and healthy, walking is a similar thing: you succeed at it without even trying, as you've had so many years of practice at it.

An approach to GM side narration that puts the GM in charge of not just resolving but establishing player action declarations is one that, from my point of view, undermines game play.

And yet we have to assume success at those automatic things (like recognizing a banana or a book or a bird for what it appears to be) without asking/waiting for action declarations, otherwise we couldn't narrate anything about a scene.

The only point of contention is at what point auto-success drifts into there being a chance of failure (or vice-versa). For example, it's automatic that I'll recognize a bird when I see one, but there's no guarantee I'll know what type of bird it is or anything else about it; meanwhile there's some people to whom knowledge of bird species is so ingrained it's become automatic.

 

[Lanefan]

That's seeing something. Even spotting something. It's not succeeding at something you tried to do.

Sure. This doesn't mean that the player succeeds at anything.

The player doesn't succeed or fail. The character, however, does.

So now you're justifying the GM declaring an action for the PC, because it can be "safely assumed" that the PC is doing that thing? As I posted upthread, this makes me want to know what the player's job is in this game!

Coming from someone who has in the past strongly supported the idea of jumping from one in-game scene to the next while skipping the intervening time and-or travel (and thus denying the players any agency over those between-scenes times in the fiction), this seems a bit rich.

I mean, sure, I want the players to declare their PCs' actions as much as you do; but I think for all of us there's a level of detail in those declarations beyond which the returns cease to be worth it. The point of preference then becomes at what degree of detail that tipping point is reached.

 

[Lanefan]

Really?

All "in-setting physics" means here is we make it up and toss a figleaf/lampshade over it. My setting has dragons. Your setting has dragons plus a page of notes trying to explain how a dragon generates the lift of a 747 despite not having jet engines. This doesn't make your setting more realistic!

It makes the setting more consistent with itself, which in itself makes it more realistic in that reality is also consistent with itself.

And here we see it's not "reality plus" at all.

People fall to earth, but dragons don't. Kings live in castles, but don't extract labour from their peasantry to build and maintain them. Castles are treated by all and sundry as seats of power, although they are not capable of serving the military function that real-world castles did. Etc, etc.

People fall to earth, but airplanes (if working properly) don't.

Who says kings don't extract labour (and-or taxes!) from their peasantry to build/maintain their castles?

Houses of Parliament are treated by all and sundry as seats of power too, in the real world. It's the symbology; never mind that castles can still serve some of their real-life military purposes in a game setting.

 

[Lanefan]

This...

I’m trying to avoid the “my game’s more realistic than yours” wank [...]

...and this, from the same post...

I thought less loaded language might help.

...would seem to be at odds.

 

[pemerton]

One thing I like to do in session 0 is talk to my players about what their PCs want to do in the campaign. Now, my games are set in a largely pre-made homebrew setting, but I will add and make minor and moderate adjustments to that setting if the players have a request for their PCs. For example, my current campaign is based on the Isle of Dread, with the PCs hexcrawl-exploring uncharted territory (which been mapped out by me during my prep). If one of the players tells me their PC is searching for their long-lost twin sister and joined the expedition in part because they heard they might be here, then the answer to the sister's fate, whatever that is, will be in the campaign area somewhere, and the PC has the opportunity to figure it out. And the same is true for any other personal quest the players want to include.

I don't quite get how this fits with your earlier comment that, if the PC can't set the stakes, then the player shouldn't. Because the PC can't make it the case that there are clues on the Isle of Dread. Have I missed something?

 

[pemerton]

perhaps a little focus rather than taking shots at absolutely everyone who thinks realism is part of the factor they're interested in could be warranted. As it is, you seem to have decided a bomb is the appropriate weapon rather than a handgun.

I've GMed hundreds, probably multiple thousand, hours of Rolemaster. I think I'm pretty familiar with the aspiration to "realism" in RPG mechanics.

More recently, I have played a lot of Burning Wheel. This produces far more realistic - gritty, grounded - fiction that is typical for D&D. As I already mentioned upthread, armour gets damaged and time spent training improves skills.

This has little to do with the notion of "reality unless stated otherwise", which I think is nonsense: what is real is what is fantastic is not about a default rule, but about the tropes that are understood to obtain within a fiction.

And it has nothing to do with the idea that having flies on a wall makes it more realistic, which frankly I find bizarre.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

These are related.

I prefer a method of action resolution in which the player either succeeds, or is set back to some extent. There are different technical ways of doing this - eg the AW soft/hard move approach; the BW "intent + task" + "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach; the 4e skill challenge approach - but they are all similar in their core: if the players declare an action, and the dice are rolled, then either the player gets what they want for their PC, or else their situation is set back in some fashion (or perhaps both).

Connected to this approach is the notion that revealing the hitherto unknown, where that is a setback for the character (eg they are being ambushed), is a possible consequence of a failed check. If the GM is framing but is not bringing home a consequence as per the procedures of play, then the GM makes a "soft" move - they suggest or point to a possible consequence as being at stake, but don't bring it home. This provokes/instigates some sort of response from the player.

Yes, that is a tangible difference. But you know full well that not every game operates based on such principle and I am pretty sure you have played several games that don't.

Whilst I obviously have no issue with failed rolls often having negative consequences I am not fan of extending it as universal principle so that it must apply to any roll, as that has consequences and implications I find detrimental. But I am sure we have discussed details of that previously at length already without finding much common ground.

This goes to what I said upthread: you can assert all day and all night that there is no difference between - on the one hand - what the 2nd ed DMG set out, with its Orc-seeming Ogres, its doppelganger "prisoners", and its mysterious dust cloud that the players have their PCs observe until the GM reveals what it is, or what the 3E DMG advises with its GM-authored fetch quests, and - on the other hand - the sort of play that is set out in Apocalypse World, or Sorcerer, or Burning Wheel, or HeroWars/Quest.

But @Micah Sweet can tell the difference. And I can tell the difference. I have played with GMs who used the approaches set out in those DMGs. These are GM-controlled games: the GM establishes what is at stake, establishes what matters in any given scene and in any moment of resolution, establishes the consequences of success as well as of failure, and uses off-screen fiction to which only they have access in doing all of the preceding.

I don't really care about AD&D or other such ancient manuscripts. I resented your notion that to avoid such railroading you must play these specific games you mentioned, or their ilk. In trad games it is possible to play such way that the players have plenty of opportunity to set their own goals and affect the direction of the game, and of course in narrative games the GM is still in control of framing and such and has plenty of opportunity to "force-feed" their ideas to the players (if we wanted to describe such contributions derisively, but why would we?)

The GM has already decided that knowledge of this thing is not common knowledge, as they have decided not to tell the table about it. So why, then, am I not allowed to decide that my PC doesn't recognise or recall this thing? What happened to me being in charge of what my PC thinks and believes?

But surely that also applies to the information freely given? "No, my character doesn't know what runic circle is, stop telling me what to think!" And sure, perhaps that is even valid. Player certainly could say, "Nah, I don't want to roll on this, my character really isn't familiar with religions of this area."

Well this brings us full circle. The GM can describe things. The players can declare actions. But neither the idea of "save vs ignorance", nor of the GM declaring an action (an attempt to remember) for my PC, is something that I want in a game. To me, it smacks of the sort of GM control over parcelling out information that @hawkeyefan first mentioned many pages upthread.

So a GM willing to randomise access to information with the odds based on the build choices the players made, offering "free rolls" without requiring pixel hunty action declarations and not forcing the player to risk bad stuff happening in order to get the information is the one who is obsessed with controlling the information? Huh, that certainly is an interesting conclusion!

And just to be clear: I can conceive of the notion that some sentences in the GM's notes have a number next to then, with that number telling us the % chance (either universally, or character-relativised via a knowledge-check system) that any given player gets to be told that sentence. I can even conceive of this being generalised to every sentence (perhaps with a convention that no notation means a uniform 100% chance, or "common knowledge"). What I'm saying is that this has ZERO appeal to me. And this is for the reason that @hawkeyefan was the first to set out in this thread.

I don't really get such obsession of technical minutiae. I got your distinction regarding failure having consequences; that is a meaningful difference. But in a situation where you are already playing a game where such is not required (and I think you sometimes do) then this really is just about speeding up the flow of the game.

 

[Reynard]

You should use it, it’s a really cool concept for thinking about some rpg stuff.

A scene is a location, with people and things in it, and a relationship between the people and things.

Scene framing is: How do you decide what location you are at, and what people and things are there, and what’s the relationship between them.

Resolution is how you change the relationships between the stuff in the scene.

Or like Pemberton said, how do you decide what’s on the other side of a door.

Isn't that just jargon for what GMs do anyway?