Missing Rules

[Dessert Nomad]

Fundamentally, "what happens if I'm not proficient but want to try a skill row" is exactly the same as "what happens if I want to run a chase scene where round by round motion and initiative don't make sense" or "what happens if I want to run a mass combat scene with thousands of characters on each side". The sense that a rule is missing here comes from pretty much exactly the same place. Technically, the rules are complete in the sense that you could say someone not proficient just always fails, that chases really are simulated by someone stopping and letting another move for a whole round before taking their turn, and that you could always run a mass combat with 80,000 participants by just rolling several thousand d20's and handling each character by the rules.

Those are radically different. In the first case, there's a simple and obvious case that comes up frequently in all games, and the system doesn't say how to handle it. If the rules said "Someone not proficient always fails" then there it would not be a missing rule, but the fact that the rules don't tell you that is exactly what means there's a missing rule. Also I'll note that for Palladium it's actually worse than that, as another poster reminded me - you have skills and they have a percentage associated with them, but the rules don't actually tell you what prompts a skill roll, how to make a skill roll, or how to resolve what the result of a skill roll means.

In the second case, how characters move is explained in the rules. You don't like the rules and how they work, but it's clear that you can resolve the situation under the rules using round by round movement and initiative. So it's a case of "I don't like how the game handles this" or "I don't like that the designers didn't include a particular type of play", but it's clear that the game has rules for how to handle the situation.

In the third case, how to handle the combat is clearly explained by the rules. You've decided to make a combat that would be cumbersome under those rules, but there isn't any rule missing, you can handle an 80,000 person mass combat it would just take a Campaign for North Africa timescale. It's not a case of the game missing a rule, it's a case where you'd like the game to cover something that it doesn't.

"The game tells me to put a bunch of words and numbers on my character sheet that, but doesn't tell me when or how to use them" is vastly different from "I'd like this game to have mass combat but it doesn't" or "This medieval farming simulator game doesn't have rules for hacking domestic robots".

 

[Thomas Shey]

The whole of Classic D&D is missing some pretty vital rules for pacing and pressure: campaign timekeeping, expenses and upkeep, and training to level up. Had to import them from Advanced D&D, albeit drastically streamlined.

What struck us as far more important back then was how much common stuff was thrown entirely in the GM's lap, but I know some people consider that a virtue. I just was never one of them on either side of the table.

 

[Thomas Shey]

"The game tells me to put a bunch of words and numbers on my character sheet that, but doesn't tell me when or how to use them" is vastly different from "I'd like this game to have mass combat but it doesn't" or "This medieval farming simulator game doesn't have rules for hacking domestic robots".

As an example of this, Chill 3e is missing a large number of logical skills. That's because they, for the most part, involve doing things the game is not about, and if you find yourself needing them, the game has most likely wandered out of its intended play-space.

 

[Retros_x]

if we leave out obviously errors and misprints, there are no missing rules from any system in my opinion. Its like saying "the red color is missing green" well than it is not a red car anymore. If a game for example has no travel rules besides some cinematic handwaving - than the designers never intented it to have travel rules. There is nothing missing, you just want a different game. The moment you add homebrew rules you change the paint job. The sum of it parts changes, the system changes, it becomes a different game, even if the difference is small. Feel free to do so of course, I do it all the time. But I never had the mindset "they missed to add that", but "they did not exactly what I want/need".

Missing implies an objective error, but besides actual errors like misprints or references that lead to nowhere - these are no objective "bad qualities" but subjective criticisms.

 

[Reynard]

if we leave out obviously errors and misprints, there are no missing rules from any system in my opinion. Its like saying "the red color is missing green" well than it is not a red car anymore. If a game for example has no travel rules besides some cinematic handwaving - than the designers never intented it to have travel rules. There is nothing missing, you just want a different game. The moment you add homebrew rules you change the paint job. The sum of it parts changes, the system changes, it becomes a different game, even if the difference is small. Feel free to do so of course, I do it all the time. But I never had the mindset "they missed to add that", but "they did not exactly what I want/need".

Missing implies an objective error, but besides actual errors like misprints or references that lead to nowhere - these are no objective "bad qualities" but subjective criticisms.

I honestly don't buy this, given many of these missing elements are added in supplements shortly after the main book comes out. I think sometimes it was oversight, and sometimes it was content cut for space, but in many games those system were obviously needed so they were patched in.

 

[pemerton]

if we leave out obviously errors and misprints, there are no missing rules from any system in my opinion. Its like saying "the red color is missing green" well than it is not a red car anymore. If a game for example has no travel rules besides some cinematic handwaving - than the designers never intented it to have travel rules.

It's crystal clear that Classic Traveller expects play to encompass on-world travel, pursuit, etc - there are on-world vehicles on the equipment list, vehicle skills as part of the PC build rules, rules for vehicular maintenance and malfunction, etc.

The absence of rules for actually determining outcomes of on-world travel is a gap.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

if we leave out obviously errors and misprints, there are no missing rules from any system in my opinion. Its like saying "the red color is missing green" well than it is not a red car anymore.

So if a game tells you 'your character has medicine 43%+3%/level, forensic investigation 64%+4%/level, and first aid 25%+5%/level' but no information about how to use the skills, when to make a roll (or what to do instead of rolling), (presuming a roll) what dice to roll or what particular number on the roll means, and what happens on a success or failure (presuming), you'd not consider it to be missing any skill rules?

 

[Willie the Duck]

The biggest case for me is Symbaroum. The whole fantasy is this dark fantasy adventure through a massive forest to find ruins and ancient treasures. And it had no rules for wilderness travelling, or travelling, or hunger, or anything of the sort at all. No matter what the approach is. In the third book of their campaign, they added some, but it was quite underwhelming.

I love Symbaroum. The art is top tier and it's exactly the vibes I'm seeking. But in all honesty, most of the design decisions baffle me.

They were added in supplements, along with social rules. However, to your point about design decisions -- a game that seems to differentiate itself from other fantasy RPGs by being 'about' being afraid of the dark, scary forest and the sociopolitical machinations of three major society groups seems like it ought to have more survival/travel and social rules, not less.

This makes me think of the classic example in the original Call of Cthulhu where there were no rules for healing after you’ve been injured. Many people assumed this was intentional

The BECMI strain of basic/classic D&D also did not have natural healing rules, and it has likewise been debated whether that was intentional (and if so, for what specific logic?).

 

[Celebrim]

As an example of this, Chill 3e is missing a large number of logical skills. That's because they, for the most part, involve doing things the game is not about, and if you find yourself needing them, the game has most likely wandered out of its intended play-space.

Without actually seeing Chill 3e, I feel like too tightly defining what a game is about so that you have this big swath of things that game is definitely not about and doesn't support, is always a big turn off for me in a rules system.

I'm not so interested about what you think your core game loop as you see it requires as what your setting as you present it requires. If these things happen in your setting, then they can happen in ways that involve the PCs.

 

[Celebrim]

Those are radically different. In the first case, there's a simple and obvious case that comes up frequently in all games, and the system doesn't say how to handle it.

I feel like what is simple and obvious to come up in a game is a very subjective claim. I don't feel for example that there has ever been a system I've ran where if I ran it long enough, I didn't have to make some sort of decision about how to handle (or not handle) a mass combat - whether to run it cinematically in the background, or set up some sort of minigame, or handle it as a skirmish with a large number of participants, or try to build one where it was missing because what happened in the battle mattered and the PCs were either nominally or functionally in command.

Invariably, the PCs find themselves in a combat situation where very large numbers of other people are fighting, and sometimes it matter how the PCs can influence those events.

Likewise, invariably the PCs want to craft something whether to MacGyver a solution or to have something custom they feel meets need even though this isn't supposed to be a game focused on crafting. And it's about as rare for a system to take that seriously as it is to find one that takes mass combat seriously.

If the rules said "Someone not proficient always fails" then there it would not be a missing rule, but the fact that the rules don't tell you that is exactly what means there's a missing rule.

I feel like this is implied. 1e AD&D does not say what happens when someone who isn't a thief attempts to climb a sheer surface or pick a pocket or what not. This is a missing rule in exactly the same sense of a missing mass combat system, and AD&D actually addressed the later before the former. While it might not feel right to say, "Well since it doesn't say, they can't" that is a perfectly valid thing to say. If you aren't proficient in something you can't do it doesn't need to be said explicitly in the context of a positive declaration. If the only examples provided for the skill is someone with a character generation resource, then the rule "someone not proficient always fails" is already implied, without having to be written down.

Maybe you don't like that the game handles things that way, but it doesn't mean the rule (even in its silence) isn't there.

Now, a more interesting question here is, "How would the designer handled that himself if it had come up". And my guess it is something like, "Only thieves can climb sheer surfaces, but the thief would automatically succeed climbing a less sheer surface and ad hoc some sort of test for everyone else depending on whether its harder to climb than a ladder."