Playing a Game When You Don't Know the Rules

[mmadsen]

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

Or it's an extremely rigorous military simulation (cf. free Kriegsspiel.)

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

If any of the regular GMs for my group suggested this I would have to bow out for the duration. I enjoy the game part of an RPG too much to give it up.

There is a single GM in the area that I would trust to run this way if it was a one shot, but I wouldn't play past a single session.

 

[Ariosto]

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.

It's difficult for people determined to make it difficult. Back in the day, we came up with a name for those: ''rules lawyers". If a role-playing game were so limited that an encyclopedic rule book undebateably covered every eventuality, then the rules lawyer would make a reasonable argument for allowing something not covered, just to have another thing to argue over.

If you're playing a mage, then how a particular spell works is for the Game Operations Director to determine; how is his or her own business. If you have some actual reason to think the rule is wrong, then you can bring it up! If you don't have anything except that some other game has a different rule, then what exactly is your point? We're playing this game, not that game.

The Game Master aims for consistency, so there will be a good reason if some phenomenon behaves unusually.

 

[Mattrex]

As someone who primarily GMs games rather than plays in them, I would have to say that, as a player, I would not much like a system where the rules are hidden from me, at least not without a lot of feedback on the extent of my character's capabilities and to a lesser extent those of my allies and opponents.

One of the fundamental purposes served by a rule system is that of a game world's physical laws. Assuming you're applying the limits of the rules impartially to all actors, PC and NPC (and here I am assuming there are rules as opposed to the game just being improv), the players and the PCs both will have a good idea not only of what they can do personally, but also how the "laws of physics" work in their world. In the real world, we have a roughly intuitive understanding of concepts like speed, distance, physical strength, and mechanical concepts like work and power multipliers. We know that driving a hundred miles an hour is pretty fast and that being able to bench press five hundred pounds is a prodigious feat of strength.

What we don't know--because these concepts don't exist in our reality--is how hot a dragon's breath is, how hard its scales are, or how sharp its claws are. The only means of judging fantastical variables like mythic creatures or the limits of magic is by arbitrarily fixing some standard point of reference and comparing it to the things we do know. This is where the rules abstractions come into play. We know that a dragon's breath does, say, 10d6 damage, which is an awful lot--and I know that because my squishy wizard only gets 1d6 hp per level. But what if my wizard got 5d6 hp per level? 1d10? 2d8? The relation between the heat of the breath weapon and my personal propensity to cook like a side of beef is different with each set of numbers, but none of those relations are ones I can apprehend intuitively based on my knowledge of real-world dragons and wizards.

As the GM, you could tell your players, "The dragon's breath is incredibly hot, enough to melt stone and superheat metal," which certainly communicates the idea of "you don't want to get hit by it", but didn't you know that anyway? And besides, in a fantasy world, assuming I am a somewhat heroic character in my own right, depending on my abilities something that is hot enough to melt stone might be more or less dangerous to me personally. Is my magic shield strong enough to resist the fire? Can I repel the dragon's breath with my magic? Once you start thinking about these variables and the way you'd have to vaguely respond to them in practice--let's say, "The enchantment on your shield is powerful and can resist a great deal of heat"--then you're trending very close to simply telling the players the numbers you're rolling anyway.

Once someone figures out that "almost no chance" means 10% and "very likely" means 80%, and all the others in between, only the window dressing changes, and now you're having to keep track of everything and keep the details--which you're all but communicating to them anyway--hidden.

One other important element, at least for me, is that a significant portion of the fun of RPGs for me is derived from the sense of increasing competence and mastery--this is the sort of thing that people have been saying about video games and other hobbies for the longest time. Taking a complex system and gradually learning to understand and master it is a great pleasure, and much of that is lost if the actual nuts and bolts of the mechanics are obscured and unavailable.

 

[mmadsen]

One of the fundamental purposes served by a rule system is that of a game world's physical laws.

Would you -- and this is addressed to everyone here -- have a problem with a rules-free or hidden-rules game where the game's world followed the same physical laws as our own? Or one where the game world deviated from our real world in ways that were equally mysterious to the characters in it -- because you weren't playing wizards, or because the mouth to hell had just opened, or whatever?

 

[Mattrex]

Would you -- and this is addressed to everyone here -- have a problem with a rules-free or hidden-rules game where the game's world followed the same physical laws as our own? Or one where the game world deviated from our real world in ways that were equally mysterious to the characters in it -- because you weren't playing wizards, or because the mouth to hell had just opened, or whatever?

I think that could be an interesting creative exercise, but I don't think it would rise to the level of what I expect out of a tabletop RPG. One of the difficulties of this hobby is that there is a huge variation of what people mean by "roleplaying game", not to mention "roleplaying" and, indeed, "game".

A game with physical laws exactly like our own--essentially taking place in a fictional version of the real world--would be much easier to manage as a rules-free or hidden-rules game, certainly, and as a player I'd probably have a better grasp of what's possible and what's not. But I think a game where even the PCs have no idea what's going on wouldn't be particularly fun in the long run: in that situation, you're asking people to perform actions and make decisions when the outcome is random, at least from their perspective. When people start to get the idea that their choices do not have a meaningful impact on the results of their actions, they lose investment and stop caring.

And that leads me to my next point: player choice. As a player I like to decide what kind of character I want to play, and I like having the freedom to customize and craft them (within the limits of whatever system I'm playing in). If my character advances, I want to be able to make some choices to advance them, and those choices are more meaningful to me if I actually know what it is I'm advancing and how much, and how that changes the overall configuration of my character. I'd frankly rather have a +1 Intelligence than "a little bit smarter", because the former has a quantifiable effect (on skills, knowledge, magic, whatever) and the latter still leaves me a bit in the dark as to how much "a little bit" means.

While some players may enjoy, for dramatic reasons, the sense of uncertainty and vagueness that would accompany such ignorance, I find precisely-defined characters more interesting and tangible and immanent. Is it strange that the presence of the numbers actually aids my immersion?

 

[mmadsen]

A game with physical laws exactly like our own--essentially taking place in a fictional version of the real world--would be much easier to manage as a rules-free or hidden-rules game, certainly, and as a player I'd probably have a better grasp of what's possible and what's not.

I'd like to emphasize that "a fictional version of the real world" would include cops & robbers, cowboys & Indians, pirates & Imperial Navy men, any real war, Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, etc. That's a lot of action and adventure.

But I think a game where even the PCs have no idea what's going on wouldn't be particularly fun in the long run: in that situation, you're asking people to perform actions and make decisions when the outcome is random, at least from their perspective. When people start to get the idea that their choices do not have a meaningful impact on the results of their actions, they lose investment and stop caring.

No idea what's going on? Random?

We all started playing D&D without knowing the stats, or even the flavor descriptions, of the monsters, and that did not lessen the fun in the least -- and certainly the whole thing didn't devolve into learned helplessness. "It's impossible for me to divine what will stop these goblins, so why even try?"

And that leads me to my next point: player choice. As a player I like to decide what kind of character I want to play, and I like having the freedom to customize and craft them (within the limits of whatever system I'm playing in). If my character advances, I want to be able to make some choices to advance them, and those choices are more meaningful to me if I actually know what it is I'm advancing and how much, and how that changes the overall configuration of my character. I'd frankly rather have a +1 Intelligence than "a little bit smarter", because the former has a quantifiable effect (on skills, knowledge, magic, whatever) and the latter still leaves me a bit in the dark as to how much "a little bit" means.

You enjoy the gamist elements elements of a roleplaying game as much as the simulation. There's nothing wrong with that. But you can certainly explore the Caves of Chaos without detailed character metrics.

 

[Mattrex]

But you can certainly explore the Caves of Chaos without detailed character metrics.

You can, yes. And with a sufficiently competent group, it might be interesting. But that sort of thing--which I do participate in--is what I use MU*-based freeform roleplaying for, and it's not what I expect or want when I sit down at the gaming table, for the reasons outlined above.

 

[mmadsen]

But you can certainly explore the Caves of Chaos without detailed character metrics.

You can, yes. And with a sufficiently competent group, it might be interesting. But that sort of thing--which I do participate in--is what I use MU*-based freeform roleplaying for, and it's not what I expect or want when I sit down at the gaming table, for the reasons outlined above.

The old-school game was 90-percent rules-free: you described what you did, and the DM told you what happened -- sometimes after rolling a die to get a feel for whether things went well or not.

 

[MichaelSomething]

The old-school game was 90-percent rules-free: you described what you did, and the DM told you what happened -- sometimes after rolling a die to get a feel for whether things went well or not.

Indeed. Isn't the Old School thing all about being free from the restricting rules and making whatever ruling seemed right? Don't you trust your DM? When people gripe about how overbearing the rules are, I'm gonna point them over to this topic