King Lear is just English words put in order: Expertise, Knowledge, and RPGs

[Fenris-77]

I think we can probably set aside 'players who don't want to play'. If you're munchkin enough to start making the above 'optimization' decisions there's a very real chance you just won't play the game in good faith period. If a player is going to choose not to participate in good faith everything else falls apart. Its crappy, but it happens. I don't think that needs to be a category though.

 

[Celebrim]

There's also the issue of whether or not the group is willing to use social skills of the character in place of pure RP vs individuals willingness to do so.

And, of course, the old saw of dumpstatting Cha and using one's own social skills to succeed in social actions despite the character being definitionally incapable. The problem is that it really did happen.

Depending on the process of play at the table, then yes it could happen. But, just because it did happen doesn't mean it was wrong. It means that table had different priorities and a different understanding of the relationship between the player and their character.

One myth that is common to RPers is the belief that all the attributes of a character are symmetrical and interchangeable and that there is fundamentally no real difference between writing 18 strength on a character sheet and 18 intelligence on a character sheet. Many RPers believe that not only is that a contract between themselves and the game universe with a mutual responsibility by both, but also that there is no real difference between modelling a character with 18 strength and one with 18 intelligence.

And the fundamental problem with that view is that the strength of the character and the strength of the player are completely separable, because the body of the player doesn't exist in the game universe. But, by contrast, the mind of the character and the mind of the player are not completely separable, because the mind of the player does exist in the game universe. And, moreover, if the mind of the player didn't exist in the game universe it would not be an RPG. The problem of the player's mind, character, will, and personality extending into and influencing the game universe is not only unsolvable, but it is not a desirable goal. If the player's mind wasn't a part of the game universe, they'd be rendered an observer of a simulation and not a participant in it.

How tables feel about the unsolvable problem of the player's mind - something not part of the imagined game universe - influencing how things in the game universe play out, and what they purpose to do it in hot button issues like "metagaming" is a big part of the unique processes of play a table has.

 

[Umbran]

The system is the text.

So, this position can lead to somewhat counter-intuitive results - specifically, that if you have two different texts expressing the exact same mechanics in different ways, you have two different systems. This happens these days when you have games with SRDs. To say that the Fate Core rulebook and the Fate Core SRD are different systems is not clearly correct.

The community already has concepts for Rules as Written and Rules as Intended. I think those are highly relevant to the discussion. The rules as written were sometimes awkward, and I can see an argument that the text as an issue helping you find the way to resolve the social issue. The Rules as Intended - say, if you restated the same process steps with clarity - have precious little difficulty with either proposition.

In AD&D, the difficulty of the text and the freedom that DMs felt to add or subtract from it or just ignore it when it was handy to do so, led to the text playing an even smaller role than usual.

"Usual" is not a constant in time. At the time it was defined by D&D and AD&D - there was no other notable presence in the market. And I am not convinced that somehow the text for D&D played a notably larger role (or was really that much more coherent) than for AD&D. I'll agree that today, we typically pay more attention to the text than we did back in the day.

 

[Celebrim]

So, this position can lead to somewhat counter-intuitive results - specifically, that if you have two different texts expressing the exact same mechanics in different ways, you have two different systems. This happens these days when you have games with SRDs. To say that the Fate Core rulebook and the Fate Core SRD are different systems is not clearly correct.

Interesting, and I think the problem here is that I don't have a good word for the distinctions I'm wanting to make.

In another thread, the idea of how much you needed to transform the rules of a game before it was recognizably a different game or a different system (to which many different games could belong). In that thread, to simplify, I think everyone was mostly talking about a game as if it was defined by the rules, something that I elsewhere deny because what happens at the table is so much more than the written rules. But there is also a sense in which I agree there is a correspondence between (a closely related family of) the rules and a game (say 5e D&D), and a less closely but a still related family of rules and a system (say D20). Certainly when I talk about systems in that sense, I thinking more in terms of something broadly shared.

But here I was using system in a slightly different way, and I think I have an overabundence of definitions I'm not sure how to clean up.

On the one hand, for some definition of system, we'd expect to reasonably describe the Fate Core rulebook and the Fate Core SRD as belonging to the same system, and players of one to recognize the process of play and rulings from one to be rather closely related to the other. And, at the same time, I think that it is true that using the Fate Core rulebook versus the Fate Core SRD is likely to lead to slightly different collection of rulings and understandings, which are in effect going to be a different game (by a slightly different definition of game than I used when I used giving 5e D&D as an example). (I'm not really knowledgeable enough about either to say this for certain about FATE, but I do know that this is true of using the D&D Player's Handbook versus the associated 3.X SRD.) That is to say each unique collection of processes of play and rules is its own distinct game, even if they are related through the partially transmitted (from the text) experience of being the 'game' we call 5e D&D.

I welcome clearer taxonomy terms for these distinctions.

The community already has concepts for Rules as Written and Rules as Intended. I think those are highly relevant to the discussion.

Maybe, but "Rules as Intended" is going to prove to be a really awkward concept in this discussion. For example, going back to the PC showing a bit of ankle to the guard in 1e AD&D, you might think that the rules as intended relating to Encounter Reaction Rolls and Parley are pretty clear, but there is an oddity that earlier in the rules, Gygax as an aside tells the reader that he doesn't actually use the rules that are in the book regarding Encounter Reaction Rolls. Instead, he gives a very brief summary of a system he's using at that time where the reaction is determined by a draw from a deck of cards, and how that system would work with Charisma or other subsystems like the NPC personality tables isn't made clear (since you can't easily apply percentage modifiers to the draw of cards). So what does it say about how the writer intends you to use the rules when he himself doesn't really use them, but has a largely undocumented homebrew system?

I think that rather than worrying about Gygax's intentions and mental state, it's better to talk about the participants intentions and mental state, which would lead us to the idea of 'Rules as Understood' or even 'Rules as Applied'. Whether or not the table actually correctly divines what game the writer wanted them to play is less interesting than what game the participants decided that they should play and why. This also might lead into a discussion as to whether it's an allowable process of play for a player to cite the rules in protest to a ruling. That is, what do you appeal to when you as a player think that the GM has got it wrong, and does the game actually validate protesting as something you are allowed to do. (Paranoia the RPG would be a case in point.) When 'rules layering' happens in my experience, it's frequently not at all clear from the text what was intended by the writer.

 

[Umbran]

But here I was using system in a slightly different way, and I think I have an overabundence of definitions I'm not sure how to clean up.

Yeah. I think that's probably true all over the place in this thread. Not just you.

I welcome clearer taxonomy terms for these distinctions.

Hr. Spitballing because it may turn up something useful..

Rules As Written - the actual literal text.
Rules As Implemented - the same process as given in the Rules as Written, unrolled and restated.
Rules As Intended - what the author actually wanted, as separate from what got into the rulebook.
Rules as Played - how the thing gets used at the table.
Table Rules - the Rules As Played, along with house rules and metarules & table-processes.

 

[Celebrim]

@Umbran : Well, that works fine but its not the distinctions I had in mind. They are nicely related though.

Let's try this:

Jest(?): For an RPG, a unique combination of processes of play and rules used by participants that create an event of play. (Or, the event or series of events created by what you call the Table Rules.)

Game: The text or collective texts that proposes to communicate to the recipient(s) how to create a Jest thereby creating a related family of Jests inspired by a shared text, but often differing in the Table Rules.

System: The core mechanics of a Game used to resolve propositions of play, and which may be shared by a closely related family of Games that are built off the System, but differing in genre, setting, or concept of play, and some amount of rules specific to the genre, setting and concepts.

Table: The participants in a Jest.

Social Contract: The usually unstated expectations of the table regarding how the Jest is to be conducted.

Fiction: The imagined setting of the Jest which the Table tries to share.

Proposition: A proposal by one participant of the Jest to change the Fiction via an in universe action.

Rules: The portion of the game that is about how resolve propositions of play (aka 'Crunch'), as opposed to descriptions of setting, guidelines for suggested processes of play, and how the game talks about itself in an effort to get the recipient to think about the game in a particular way (aka 'Flavor'). In casual conversation, often used interchangeably with 'System'.

Rulings: How the text is interpreted at the table, together with any rules - written or unwritten - that are added to the text in play (aka 'House Rules'). Seems to be the same as 'Rules as Played'.

Processes of Play: The rituals that participants use during the jest to interface with the rules. What the play actually is, as opposed to how it is described by the text, and specifically all the parts of play which must happen for the Jest to transpire, but which are left open ended or unstated by the text and often even by rulings.

I'm not a huge fan of 'Jest', but most synonyms of game emphasize the competitive nature of the event, which seems inappropriate to a cooperative form of play. I welcome clearer suggestions. I'm also not a huge fan of 'Table Rules' though, since someone that didn't have your definition would tend to think that 'table rules' were simply 'house rules'. Also, it is a process of play in D&D to map a dungeon and stock it with monsters and treasure and then keep it secret from the other participants until they explore it through play: but, critically, it is not a rule of any sort that you do that. So I'm not a big fan of confusing what is meant by a 'process of play' by lumping everything together as 'table rules'.