Playing a Game When You Don't Know the Rules

[onedtwelve]

I'm seeing two main reasons people are against this: not trusting the GM and not knowing what your character can do within the game world.

Not knowing what your character is capable of can be a difficult task to overcome for the GM, since he'll have to describe pretty much everything in such a way that the player knows almost certainly whether something is of too high a risk.

I think it's funny to see how cautious people will get when they don't know their odds exactly. When I play with my character sheet, I always calculate everything based on percentages, no matter the system I'm playing. So I know if I have a 20% chance of success or a 27% chance or whatever. I think I'd be much more willing to risk a 20% chance of success when I know what my odds are with a number than I would be to risk a "likely chance of failure." That means that what the players do attempt will be more likely to succeed, if they're anything like me.

A point I'm trying to make is that saying "your character will have a 50% chance of success" is no different than seeing your character sheet, knowing the approximate DC for doing the thing and noticing that you need to roll an 11 or higher on your d20. Which means it takes a lot away from the idea of hiding the rules. Part of the fun, in my opinion, is the mystery and the nervousness that comes from not knowing.

I agree with some of the posters who said that your character should know what he or she can do within his or her world. When I see something that I've fixed a million times, I know that I can probably fix it. When I see something I've never seen before, I can estimate my odds of success based on previous encounters with similar things. I think this can be handled properly in two ways.

First, you could have the GM and players list up some key words to know what their chances of success are so they know that "it'll be hard" is a lot better than "almost no chance of success" which is worse than "little chance of success." The list is just to make sure that everyone's on the same page as far as interpreting things are. Then, the GM can describe what the PC is trying to do in a way that the character can understand if he is likely capable of succeeding.

The second way is to have the player decide whether he or she thinks the character should be capable of it. The player controls the character and has an idea of what the character should be like; therefore, the player should have some right to it. You take away the character sheet, but the player still maintains the control. I think that may help take away some of the fear and mistrust the player may have. So, instead of saying "there is a ten foot wide hole and you have a mild chance of jumping it." the GM can say "there is a ten foot wide hole, does your character believe he can jump it?"

Distrusting the GM is something entirely different and I think boils down to only doing this with someone you know well and can trust to be honest and reasonable. Remember, the odds don't go up when you don't know them, but they appear to because, as I said, seeing a 20% chance is still a 20% chance and not a "likely chance of failure." That means, that no matter the GM the odds are the same. Not knowing the system can be tough in that regard, but that's why having a system for being able to relatively tell how successful you'll be is necessary and has nothing to do with whether the GM is trustworthy. Either way, it doesn't matter if you can see the rules or not, if you don't trust your GM to be fair, especially if you know she isn't, then why let that person run?

And as far as running a game as a narrative, ignoring the rules, I wouldn't use a rule-set (except maybe a narrative rule-set) if I was gonna run like that. I would just run a narrative game, which would be very similar anyway.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

People would have some idea of the odds of success. As an example if I see someone who outweighs me by 20 pounds, assuming that person is not particularly strong or weak for their size, I can get an idea of my chance against them. If I am in the game world I might have a good idea of how strong a troll is, just like in our world I know not to even think about going after a bear.
People also make characters with a risk/reward ratio. Maybe the ratio that is acceptable to you is not to me.
If I am a caster maybe I don't like your spell choices.
How do I know you won't alter my choices? How do I even know you are using a game system. You might just be making things up, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I want to know what my guy is capable of, and different systems place things in entirely different realms of possibilities.
Etc.

For one, the adventurer does know how grappling works in their world; if they're a fighter, they've probably been doing it all their life. They know what effect size does--or doesn't--have on grappling, etc.

For another, dramatically speaking, in fiction adventurers are competent people. They do things right even when realistically, they shouldn't know how. If you're running horror, you may not want this effect. But it's part of the effect I signed up for in D&D; I bumble around incompetently enough in real life, I don't need that in my games.

One very real impact I think you would see is that people will get a lot more cautious. If you have no idea what grappling the troll will do to you, you're not going to grapple it. Players are either going to have characters die a lot more, or they're going to be way-more cautious about everything.

You are both arguing that a competent grappler, like a fighter character trained in classical wrestling, can asses his chances going up against a troll based on his experience. I agree with this as far as vague assessment is concerned.

But an extensive set of rules open to the players goes far beyond this: "I have a +8 bonus on my attack, the troll has - Hey Joe, what's the bonus for the troll? His strength is 8 points higher than mine, so it doesn't look to good. Jim, I need a buff, here! Okay, 19! I've got him! I'll immobilize the critter."

This way of playing is placing the game reality on the shoulders of the rules. Apply the well known rules and describe the game world accordingly.

Each roleplayer has his own sweet spot somewhere between those extremes (description only vs. reality defining rules). I'd place myself somewhere in the middle leaning more to the descriptive side, but the world is large enough that everybody can play according to his own preferences without stepping on my toes.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I don't like this at all. I need to know rules, so I know how that universe works. So I know what my character can do, and how good he is.

I have been in games where gm had his rules or unknown system usually to everyone else but his favorite player. Who becomes star of the game, where everyone else sucks. This seemed to happen every damn time.

In theory if gm woudn't play favorites and use his rules like jerk, maybe. Seemed to happen to otherwise good people. Such situation gives too much power to gm's whims to run the universe.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6671274]onedtwelve[/MENTION]
I have an actual play experience that touches on what you're speaking of.

Years ago I ran a two-shot game for a friend and his girlfriend, and we started with a complete tabula rasa, inventing the game as we played. It was a lot of fun

He was explaining RPGs in general, when I said "Grab some color pencils and draw a picture of your characters, you've got 2 minutes." As they furiously sketched I jotted down twenty or so ideas/themes for the adventure. When we finished, we compared what we'd come up with, and we were really into each others' ideas so we decided to swap pieces of paper and do some "selective editing" like giving a character a scar or circling several words on the idea/theme sheet.

Then they described their characters with all that info, and it so happened they both were spellcasters - he was a formally trained Mage who was exiled and she was a hedge Mage with nature magic. All we had dice wise were a couple d6 so we decided to use a dice pool system where the number of dice you rolled was equal to the relevant attribute. Actually I think there were 12d6 so we arbitrarily decided each player would get 6 dice to build their character with.

Both focused heavily on magic. My friend came up with a system of "true names" by which he could alter anything that fell under a certain sphere of influence, e.g. Memory (2). His girlfriend had more specific powers like Sense Danger (1) and Animal Friendship (2), so we decided her rolls would get a +1 bonus to compensate for being more specialized.

Oh, and I decided the target number for most actions was 4, with failures counting against successes, e.g. if you had Memory (2) and you rolled a '4' and a '2' your net result would be neutral, meaning something may have changed but it was neither to your benefit nor working against you. The number of successes you netted determined the degree of success, which was really up to us as a group not just me as a DM.

My friend suggested we make natural '6's explode, which meant you got to roll again without jeopardizing the success of the '6' (yes this allowed some obscene sequences). OTOH, being the wicked DM that I am, I declared natural '1's to drain the character so that they either took a -1 penalty on all future rolls with that attribute or decreased the number of dice in that attributes pool by 1. His girlfriend called these "evil ones" and the name stuck. I also came up with a story element (a magic deer) later on which provided them with a small consumable dice pool they could use to make an extra roll with no chance of failure.

We never works out any statistics behind any of this, it was all completely ad lib. None of knew the rules - we were all inventing them. I remember one situation where they both rolled something like six or seven 6s and were able to quarantine a magical plague spreading through the city.

I can remember all the details but it was great fun! I suggest everyone try it

 

[delericho]

I wouldn't play a game like that except as a one-shot deal.

To enjoy the game, I have to able to make informed choices, and that means knowing my character's capabilities. To do that I need to know not only his various stats (or modifiers, or whatever the game uses), but I also need to know how that relates to the game world - does my +5 in jumping mean I can clear 5 feet, or 50 feet, or...? And that means knowing the rules of the game.

Also, sad to say, there are precious few DMs I'd trust in such an environment. If the rules are hidden, I have no way of knowing if they're being followed. And if the rules aren't being followed, it just becomes a matter of fiat and whim. And IME that generally means we're actually playing a game of "DM's favourites". No thanks.

 

[Ariosto]

It's not necessary for me to know precisely what my character is capable of "mechanically".

First things first: the thing being modeled comes prior to the model. If we are on the same page as to the nature of the situation in the imagined world, then the odds of this or that event need only be in a neighborhood that seems reasonable.

Classic Traveller eventually included very detailed rules for vehicles and artillery in Striker. In my games, though, those tended to be overkill. It's like the bit about swallows in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Too much information! We were not all that interested in the fine points. A Mk. I Eyeball on the speed, or the ground pressure, or the chances of a rocket bouncing off the glacis, was close enough and quicker.

If we're not on the same page about the situation, then an arbitrary mathematical abstraction is not miraculously going to satisfy everyone! Conversely, people who think it's fun to get into a prolonged and heated argument over a few percentiles either way are not likely to be dissuaded just because "the rule book says" this or that. No rule book can cover every eventuality.

 

[haakon1]

Oranges in AD&D

The first time I did this, which was the first time I played D&D

My first time playing D&D, the rules weren't hidden from me, but I wasn't sure how much the RAW versus imagined reality was the key factor.

My style of playing and DMing for the next 30 years -- lots of flavorful background and lots of economics -- can be deduced from my first action after entering the Keep on the Borderlands.

When we saw the market around the well, I asked the DM if there were oranges on sale. He said, "Sure, there's one stand with fruit, including a few oranges, but they are very expensive, imported from far away."

I said, "How much?"

He said, "1 gold piece each."

I said, "I'll buy two -- one for me and one (character of the other player)." Then I explained, "I think we'll be going underground for a long time in the dungeons, and you said our rations are only hardtack and dried meat, so I want to make sure we get enough Vitamin C and don't get scurvy."

He didn't "correct" me on that rules issue or metagaming, I assume because he liked that I was getting into the game and being imaginative.

 

[mmadsen]

It's not necessary for me to know precisely what my character is capable of "mechanically".

First things first: the thing being modeled comes prior to the model. If we are on the same page as to the nature of the situation in the imagined world, then the odds of this or that event need only be in a neighborhood that seems reasonable.

I agree that the territory is more important than the map -- but we seem to be holding a minority position.

 

[prosfilaes]

First things first: the thing being modeled comes prior to the model. If we are on the same page as to the nature of the situation in the imagined world, then the odds of this or that event need only be in a neighborhood that seems reasonable.

What's reasonable? Off the top of my head, I do not know what's the reasonable range on a long-bow. I do know that D&D 3 and D&D 4 disagree seriously on the in-game distance of a long-bow. That's even a real-life example; if I'm playing a mage, how long can I keep a light going and what's the costs? There are tons of other examples where being on the same page is difficult, unless you have an extensive written document setting out "reasonable"... like a rulebook.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Playing an RPG without game rules isn't a game. It's improvisational theater.

At that point... you're actually better off not having the DM follow any game rules at all either. Instead, like in true improvisational theater, the players make offers of what they can and want to do, and the DM accepts them and relays consequences based upon logic, reaction and most importantly dramatic tension. He doesn't need to roll any dice or calculate any formulas... he just needs to decide in his head (based upon the story that they are all building)... whether or not the offer the PC made is worth putting in consequences, or whether the story does not need a conflict from it at that time.

This kind of thing certainly is possible... I was a performer in a long-form fantasy improv show called 'Quest' in Boston for several years... but you just need a bunch of really good improv artists who know how to collectively build a story without any method of determining success or failure except their own knowledge of what is dramatically appropriate for every single moment in the show.