L&L: The 2nd one this week (DM Packet)

[DMKastmaria]

It's more that, even using "rulings, not rules" the person (or persons) making the rulings are operating to a set of rules (call them "principles", "models" or "processes" if you like) in making those rulings. So, what it boils down to is that the other (non-ruling) players are invited to engage in a game that has rules that they are not informed of. That makes the game, pretty much necessarily, not a game of "shared imagination". It becomes a game of one person's imagination that the others present play a game of "twenty questions" over.

On the other hand, if the DM actually communicates with the players, discusses rulings, rule changes, etc., welcomes and heeds player feedback, what then?

Every DM I know, nowadays, is very, very transparent with their houserules.

As in "print them up on Lulu, bound with a campaign intro and order several copies for the table" transparent.

I always tell my players what I'm up to, rulings wise. Why I do things, certain ways.

And I won't change any established methods, without consulting the players first. If something were so horridly broken that I just couldn't let it stand, I'd certainly invoke my DMing powers, but that wouldn't be necessary. I play with reasonable people.

Honestly, reading some of these threads on En World, it's as if the posters have never played a Rulings not Rules kinda game, or haven't since they were 12. And then they assume everyone plays it that way. Like they did, when they were 12!

Which is kinda insulting to 12 year olds, because I've known plenty of pre-teens who were capable of comporting themselves with dignity and respect.

If the people at the table are reasonable and possess a decent set of social skills, it's just not a problem.

Let me repeat that:

If the people at the table are reasonable and possess a decent set of social skills, it's just not a problem!

I'm not in the least concerned with anyone who doesn't fall into the group mentioned above. I wouldn't DM their PC anyway, nor would I play in a game they were running.

 

[Balesir]

On the other hand, if the DM actually communicates with the players, discusses rulings, rule changes, etc., welcomes and heeds player feedback, what then?

Every DM I know, nowadays, is very, very transparent with their houserules.

As in "print them up on Lulu, bound with a campaign intro and order several copies for the table" transparent.

All of which describes rules, not rulings (the distinction as I make it being that rules are written down and/or communicated to the players in advance of them being used).

I'm not arguing against houserules - though if it reaches a point where I need files full of them I wonder why I'm using any published system at all - but against leaving rules intentionally missing or ambiguous such as to require ad hoc GM adjudication during the course of actual play.

To refer to the playtest materials specifically, if a skill is listed on your character sheet as "Commerce", "Survival" or "Forbidden Lore" with no further explanation at all, what will it apply to? What are the "boundaries" of these skills? No guidance is given - the DM will just have to rule case-by-case using (presumably) some set of criteria privy only to his or her mind. One response would be to write "houserule" definitions of these skills. That would work - but doesn't it point to a lack in the published rules as written?

 

[DMKastmaria]

All of which describes rules, not rulings (the distinction as I make it being that rules are written down and/or communicated to the players in advance of them being used).

I'm not arguing against houserules - though if it reaches a point where I need files full of them I wonder why I'm using any published system at all - but against leaving rules intentionally missing or ambiguous such as to require ad hoc GM adjudication during the course of actual play.

To refer to the playtest materials specifically, if a skill is listed on your character sheet as "Commerce", "Survival" or "Forbidden Lore" with no further explanation at all, what will it apply to? What are the "boundaries" of these skills? No guidance is given - the DM will just have to rule case-by-case using (presumably) some set of criteria privy only to his or her mind. One response would be to write "houserule" definitions of these skills. That would work - but doesn't it point to a lack in the published rules as written?

My fourth & fifth paragraphs went into rulings territory.

And some groups like mashing, amending, changing, warping, kit-bashing, etc., the rules.

The DM can decide what constitutes "Forbidden Lore" and how its applied. If the players disagree, then they can make their opinions known and the group can discuss (or, discuss the issue first.)

If someone is just intent on "rules-lawyering" and isn't willing to be reasonable and put the needs of the campaign before their own desire to nit-pick and argue every little thing, then goodbye and good riddance.

If the DM and players are incapable of reaching an agreement that's satisfactory, then they need to go back to kindergarten and relearn the kind of basic social skills, most of us picked up when we were children.

 

[Libramarian]

To refer to the playtest materials specifically, if a skill is listed on your character sheet as "Commerce", "Survival" or "Forbidden Lore" with no further explanation at all, what will it apply to? What are the "boundaries" of these skills? No guidance is given - the DM will just have to rule case-by-case using (presumably) some set of criteria privy only to his or her mind. One response would be to write "houserule" definitions of these skills. That would work - but doesn't it point to a lack in the published rules as written?

I like a little bit of ambiguity in the rules like that. Makes the game feel more open-ended and less gamey. I especially liked that "Forbidden Lore" has no definition. At the same time it did stand out like a sore thumb, because the rest of the playtest packet doesn't share that same aesthetic, with definitions for buckets and ladders and what-not. Some of the basic equipment items even have pre-set DCs for mechanical uses, which really feels incoherent with this rulings not rules philosophy.

 

[Libramarian]

nnms has an interesting point though.

In my playtesting it definitely didn't feel like the game provided a set of tools to the DM, and we the players just say what we're doing in the gameworld and the DM decides how to handle it. As a player I was thinking about the rules quite a bit, because they're all very simple and accessible to me. So it felt like I had a bit too much power to push the game around where I liked. For ex. the DM wasn't using any morale rules, but I totally could have pushed play in that direction by doing something intimidating and implying that it was worth a Cha vs. Cha contest or similar.

The DM also didn't feel like they had the power to just rule that performing castling maneuvers in combat and slipping through the front lines with impunity didn't make any sense and couldn't be done. We were certain from our reading of the rules that nothing prevented it.

It felt more old school than actual old school, in the "calvinball" sense. The tone was even getting pretty gonzo by the end of our last playtest session. We started joking about bringing in some of our old Call of Cthulhu characters with their shotguns and handguns. It was partly because our DM didn't choose any sort of character background so we decided that we were sent from the far future to kill humanoids like Terminators. But I think something else about the rules was creating this tone as well.

It definitely didn't feel like AD&D, which is why I had to vote that it smells fishy in that other thread.

 

[pemerton]

This is a list of quibbling around the edges.

D&D assumes Gravity, assumes the laws of physics, assumes that if you push a button with a 10 foot pole said button will be pushed. It assumes you eat and drink and suffer from starvation if you do not. It assumes Disease and Poison, it assumes social levels and interplay as on earth, it assumes language, it assumes emotions, it assumes (in the majority of cases) geometry. Fire burns, Ice is cold, water is wet, the sky is sky coloured. Boats float, wheels turn, and dragon fly

But none of that is in the mechanics.

Gravity comes into the mechanics only in respect of falling damage, which is notoriously contested and in any even measured in hit points; and falling rates, which generally are underestimated relative to terminal velocity on our planet.

Starvation rules in RPGs are notoriously wonky; encumbrance rules moreso (for example, an average STR human cannot carry 100 lb without any effect on athletic performance - a person who can run at a typical speed carrying that much stuff, for example, will be able to go faster or, more likey, longer when the load is dropped). Disease and poison rules are also wonky, and notoriously so - someone who judges the poisonous of a snake or spider in AD&D based on the real world, for example, will get a big shock when his/her PC is bitten and dies within the space of a minute!

The flight speeds of birds in D&D and similar fantasy games are unrealistically low (I assume this is an artefact of making them suitable (i) for combat resolution, and (ii) for polymorph spells).

The sociology of the D&D world is also completely unreaslistic, but it is typically not defined in mechanical terms either.

But in the vast majority of cases, if you want to know how things work in D&D land, they work how they do here.

For the vast majority of cases salient to action resolution - injury and other physical harm, movement, influence and leadership, etc - I look to the rules, not reality.

 

[jadrax]

For the vast majority of cases salient to action resolution - injury and other physical harm, movement, influence and leadership, etc - I look to the rules, not reality.

And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, and indeed its the basis that 3.5 and 4th implicitly encourage.

But it is also precisely to methodology that returning to 'rulings not rules' is meant to change and move you away from in 5th.

 

[Balesir]

And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, and indeed its the basis that 3.5 and 4th implicitly encourage.

But it is also precisely to methodology that returning to 'rulings not rules' is meant to change and move you away from in 5th.

But part of my point - and, I think, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s, too, is that every one of those areas has been covered by rules - and rules that in no way simulate "reality", at that - in every edition of D&D. A game that simulates the "real world" in these respects would, in most senses, not "be D&D".

 

[pemerton]

And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, and indeed its the basis that 3.5 and 4th implicitly encourage.

But it is also precisely to methodology that returning to 'rulings not rules' is meant to change and move you away from in 5th.

But part of my point - and, I think, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s, too, is that every one of those areas has been covered by rules - and rules that in no way simulate "reality", at that - in every edition of D&D. A game that simulates the "real world" in these respects would, in most senses, not "be D&D".

Balesir is spot on here. I'm not talking about anything special to 3E or 4e here. I'm talking about D&D as it has been since at least the late 1970s.

1st ed AD&D has hit point rule for physical injury, near-instant death from spider and snake venom, notoriously contested rules for falling damage, and later (in the Wilderness Survival Guide) suggests terminal velocity of (from memory) 1000' per round, which is something like a tenth of the minimal terminal velocity for a falling person.

1st ed AD&D also has highly defined leadership and influence modifiers which have been derived not from any systematic study of human affairs or of organisational psychology, but are posited based on the author's imagined conception of how human relationships and military discipline work.

It also has rules about the likelihood of pursuers giving up the chase in response to dropped treasure and food which are based not on any conception of reality, but upon their contribution to a certain sort of game play.

 

[Campbell]

I just got back from playing in a hybrid 1e/2e game and I can honestly say even at 6th level it felt nothing like a simulation of reality. Our dwarven fighter/thief displayed near superhuman levels of competence managing to disarm a particularly convoluted gnome treasure chest that contained no less than 12 traps and succeeded on 5 open locks rolls by wide margins - it was a box inside a box inside a box. He did fail on a couple traps later but made his saves by a wide margin. It was unreal and it was awesome.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] The interesting thing about those rules for followers is that the highly inspirational paladin class does not attract followers when even brooding fatalistic warriors do. It's almost as if game balance trumps believable simulation.