How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Umbran]

Who do you have in mind?

No names I'd share with you.

You’re ascribing motives to the actions of others here. Please don’t do that.

I am relating experience and some information I have gotten in conversation with some people here over the years. As in, folks who aren't interested in making the conversation open have explicitly told me so.

But, thank you for trying to publicly skewer me with the rules I enforce. Your efforts have been noted.

 

[soviet]

No names I'd share with you.



I am relating experience and some information I have gotten in conversation with some people here over the years. As in, folks who aren't interested in making the conversation open have explicitly told me so.

But, thank you for trying to publicly skewer me with the rules I enforce. Your efforts have been noted.

This reads like a threat.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Saying something exists within a setting isn't an automatic guarantee that a person is going to know about it. If my character came across a circle etched into the ground and finds themselves wondering about it, my GM will ask me to roll for an Intelligence check to see if they might know anything about it. My character at that point will either fail his Intelligence check, and either not recall or remember ever coming across such a circle in their past. If they succeed at the Intelligence check, then the character will know they came across a circle of some kind. If they further decided to study the circle, the GM will ask me for an Arcana check. Probably more than one.

But my GM isn't going to come right out and say that the circle is a circle of imprisonment. Instead they'll let the party figure it out. If they don't figure it out, then they don't figure it out.


The circle would be obvious to the GM and players out-of-character. When the players are in-character, they would need to figure it out because it might not be obvious. The GM is not suppose to do their work for them.

What work? I mean… why wouldn’t the GM explain what’s going on? Why would the nature of the circle not be obvious? Something like, “The dragon roars in anger, but is trapped within the circle of runes.”

Why make them go through multiple checks for what should be obvious?

True. But outside of 3e, 5e, Level Up, PF1 and Mutants and Masterminds 2e, my knowledge of RPGs is pretty limited. So I am working with what I know.

Okay, then maybe don’t assume that all games work like those.

To you, I might be jumping to something you consider extreme. I don't really know if what I said upthread is extreme.

Taking an example of the GM sharing one thing and then saying that the GM is going to “dictate their every move by telling them everything they need to know without earning it on their own.”

That’s an extreme no matter how you look at it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I mean, you and @pemerton have done that to me several times each in this thread. It seems a bit hypocritical to object to someone doing it to you.

I don’t think I’ve taken one instance of play you’ve described and then assumed that is the entirety of what you do as a GM.

Of where it doesn't cause an issue. At least not as a general thing. I suppose individuals here and there might be unable to understand what "hard to hit" means, but most of us understand that the creature is.......................hard to hit. Not having the exact numbers isn't a problem.

It’s not about not understanding. It’s that natural language is imprecise. So anytime precision might be needed, natural language would be an issue.

It’s really not complicated.

No. I'm saying jargon should be restricted to conversations where only those who know and use it are present. A forum where anyone is free to join the conversation isn't the place for it.

That’s nonsense. It’s an RPG forum.

That isn't telling you that you are doing it wrong. Telling you how I'd do it is far from telling you that you are wrong for doing it in your game. Thanks for finally admitting that I didn't do that to you.

If you don’t think you criticized the way I’d do it… with all the talk of people in the midwest and whatever else you were saying to explain how my reasoning wasn’t sound, then fine. As I said, I expect my opinions or ideas to be criticized when I post here.

Why make people ask when you know those people are present in these threads? That and lot of people won't ask. They'll just fail to understand what is being said and move on to something else. It's basically gating the conversation behind jargon.

So let me get this straight… you expect me to be aware of what everyone else in a thread may or may not know, and then limit what I say accordingly?

That’s ridiculous.

On a forum like this, it doesn't.

I think it absolutely does. People should be responsible for themselves.

I’ll happily explain anything I post that anyone may ask about. I try to explain details from games that may not be known by others.

To expect what you seem to expect of each participant in a discussion and then throw out a word like “gating”… that’s pretty remarkable. Only one of us is telling others how they can engage.

After the fact. You will just hand out the information and justify it later, which is the opposite of what was said above. Deciding what the character would know has to be done before the fact. If you simply let them know things and justify it later, you've given no thought to what the character would know before you let them know it.

No, it’s justified based on the situation.

That's not to say you didn't have a reason to give the information out. In this case not liking to keep situations like that mysterious. It's just that the reason wasn't about what the character would or wouldn't know. After the fact justification doesn't change that.

It’s both. I don’t want to keep situations like that mysterious, so I tailor my descriptions accordingly. I’d make it clear what was going on.

 

[Corinnguard]

Why make them go through multiple checks for what should be obvious?

Because not everything in existence is so easily perceived or clearly understood.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because not everything in existence is so easily perceived or clearly understood.

Right. But if the GM explains the scene, and according to that scene, it is obvious, then why not accept that?

 

[Campbell]

I'm not going to dig into the details of 5e (it's a game I'm willing to play but not run) but in the trad games I have played and ran the assumption that our groups have taken it's in the GM's prerogative to make rulings about what a character does and does not know about the setting and that even when using established settings the GM is still the lead setting designer of the setting as played at our particular table. IE when I run L5R we are playing in our version of Rokugan - not the publisher's. That make it your own sentiment is almost always front and center in most game books for more traditional games.

Some players might have a desire for a game where their characters know very little about what is happening within the setting, but I do not view it as any particular GM's responsibility to cater to that aesthetic desire to add in mysteries for players to solve. There are plenty of tables where the point is for players to try to figure out what's going on that they can join. At the tables I run and choose to join players mostly play characters who are in the know (for the most part) because spending large amounts of time at the table just getting a basic sense of the situation is not something I personally enjoy so I will not run those sorts of games.

I would note that I don't really have any experience playing/running adventure paths or preset modules and will not speak to them.

 

[pemerton]

Are there any reasons in general to say something doubled vs. something increased by x, when you can just say "went from 1/million to 2/million", or "5% to 10%".

I don't know.

But in my posts I set out the maths - the various chances in 20 of a successful hit, or in 400 of hits over two rounds, with the maths completely transparent. The suggestion that I'm being deceptive is ridiculous.

 

[pemerton]

when you say a bunch of games I really enjoy are basically the same with minor variations, it feels like an insult.

Whereas the following is just dispassionate commentary? -

narrative mechanics, storygames, and player-driven process only really took a prominent place in the hobby in the last decade or so to my perception (though IME they are being pushed like a freight train nowadays).

I mean, seriously, why do you expect people to read you posts that express your opinion, but you expect others to withhold their opinions for fear of falling foul of your preferences?

I mean, the play you refer to taking a "prominent place" in the last decade is something I've been doing (with greater or lesser success, depending on a host of variables that I've posted about many times on these boards) since the second half of the 1980s. So that's close to 40 years. I played in convention scenarios that were based around player-centred play in the mid-90s. The systems were generally BRP variants, although one was RM; the designers probably had something in mind that was between trad and neo-trad; my group tackled them in a more story now vein, and from time to time won group or individual (character-based) prizes; and so the thing we were doing was hardly aberrant or not understood by at least some parts of the hobby at that time.

I mean, your experiences are what they are, but likewise mine are what they are. And the sort of play I like is not some weird thing that flew in on a UFO just because Vincent Baker published Apocalypse World.

(Prince Valiant is 1989. Maelstrom Storytelling is 1998, from memory. HeroWars is 2000. Burning Wheel revised I think is 2004. And these games didn't come from nowhere - except perhaps the first, because Greg Stafford was undoubtedly a genius.)

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t think I’ve taken one instance of play you’ve described and then assumed that is the entirety of what you do as a GM.

You two have done that to me repeatedly. You do it every time you assume something about my game based on my playstyle, even to the point of sometimes being dubious about my response saying that it's not that way in my game.

It’s not about not understanding. It’s that natural language is imprecise. So anytime precision might be needed, natural language would be an issue.

It’s really not complicated.

You're right, it's not complicated. You simply do not need the sort of precision numbers give. Natural language is more than precise enough for players to be able to make informed decisions. That means that natural language isn't the issue you make it out to be.

If you don’t think you criticized the way I’d do it… with all the talk of people in the midwest and whatever else you were saying to explain how my reasoning wasn’t sound, then fine. As I said, I expect my opinions or ideas to be criticized when I post here.

There's a very big difference between not agreeing with you about your reasoning and telling you that you are doing it wrong in your game. We can have differences of opinion about things. That doesn't mean that I think you are bad for doing it in your game or that you shouldn't be doing it in your game.

I'll say this for the umpteenth time on these boards. As long as your players are enjoying the game, you are doing it right.

So let me get this straight… you expect me to be aware of what everyone else in a thread may or may not know, and then limit what I say accordingly?

No. There ARE going to be folks that don't understand the jargon. Full stop. No need to worry about who knows what. You don't need to figure out what I know, or Pemerton, or Azzy or anyone else. It's just considerate to avoid the jargon for the folks who read the posts.

I think it absolutely does. People should be responsible for themselves.

I agree. I'm responsible for being considerate to others with my posts. That includes not using terms and definitions that I know will cause confusion.

To expect what you seem to expect of each participant in a discussion and then throw out a word like “gating”… that’s pretty remarkable. Only one of us is telling others how they can engage.

Should =/= can. You can engage any way you like. I'm not at all telling you that you can't be inconsiderate of others or use terms and definitions that you know will cause confusion.

Edit: I don't even think you shouldn't do those things. It's your game. I just wouldn't do it like that.