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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8316576" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I don't disagree with you that there's no point in having rules where rules are not needed, unless your agenda is to play a game of navigating a lot of rules (and that may actually be pretty fun for some people). My point about 'rules for the state of relationships' was made in terms of the post I was responding to, which posited a game of 'courtly intrigue'. Now, we haven't actually designed that game, nor specified some existing one. Surely there may be such games which lack 'state of relationships' as an area of concern, there are many approaches to any given genre. However, it would appear to be a pretty significant area of concern within that genre, so it AT LEAST merits attention from game design in terms of asking what is required. It is quite likely to be something that will come up often in play! Likewise I suggested some other sorts of rules or mechanical areas that might receive focus, like the relationships between factions at court. You might also want to deal with general reputation, specific aspects of reputation (do people fear you, respect you, what), etc. Most tellingly, the one variant of D&D which I know of that focused on such a thing was Oriental Adventures, and it has EXACTLY this kind of stuff in it! However, it definitely runs into issues in terms of the difficulty within the core D&D play process of dealing with things like narrative direction, and the ambiguity of checks within the very open context of 'court' (or similar) vs dungeon. If you play OA you will find that it really lacks some badly needed tools in this regard, certainly IMHO (having actually run it back in the day with experienced 1e players whom I would consider to be fairly adept role players).The problem with a GM's (especially a new one) 'sense of how the narrative elements may naturally progress' is that it WILL INVARIABLY differ greatly from the player's understanding of the same. It will also be highly subject to factors outside of the fiction itself (like making the inevitably canned D&D plot work). So this is not going to play well IME. You can do a kind of game, like most OA modules, where there's lots of excuses laid out to go solve everything with Martial Arts or swordplay, but that is at best akin to Three Musketeers, and more like a 'dungeon in a castle/city' sort of play and not what I would call 'courtly intrigue'. If the prime focus of the game IS the interplay of opinion, reputation, access to power, etc. of a court, then you need process which binds (or there is no game in your RP) and mechanics which support that focus and produce the desired tone, etc.</blockquote>

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