Playing a Game When You Don't Know the Rules

[Mattrex]

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

I think there are an awful lot of assumptions being made here. There's a reason I play Pathfinder, and not OD&D. If people prefer playing in games without rules, or with very few rules, then, apropos the OP's question, maybe they should follow my example by explaining exactly why they hold those preferences as I've attempted to do.

 

[the Jester]

Huh... I just realized that there is in fact an RPG in which the players don't really know the rules (or at least, they get in trouble if they show knowledge of the rules): Paranoia.

And it's a GODDAMN BRILLIANT game, regardless of which edition you're playing or whether the gm is even using any rules at all.

I am actually gonna run some this coming weekend, mostly with people who have never played it (or not in years and years). It should be hilarious.

 

[mmadsen]

If people prefer playing in games without rules, or with very few rules, then, apropos the OP's question, maybe they should follow my example by explaining exactly why they hold those preferences as I've attempted to do.

Perhaps this passage on the evolution of early wargames (Kriegsspiel) will feel oddly familiar to those debating rules-heavy modern versions of the game versus rules-light older versions, while explaining the allure of game run on human judgment rather than rulebooks written by distant designers:

Early recreational wargames were rather abstract and unrealistic affairs, usually based upon some variant of chess. During the nineteenth century, however, wargames tended to develop a more realistic format, largely as a result of the renewed military interest caused by the Napoleonic Wars themselves. Thinking officers were then starting to experiment with various ways of representing battles in miniature; and in Prussia this developed to a very advanced stage indeed. The military kriegspiel gradually became a recognized means of officer training, and later even evolved into an aid for strategic planning.

The nineteenth-century Prussian game started life with a rigid structure and copious formal rules. The two sides were each placed in a separate room with a model of the terrain or a map. The umpires moved from one room to another collecting orders from the players, and then retired to a third room to consult the rules and find the results of combat. A great deal of their time was consumed in leafing through voluminous sets of rules, consulting tables and giving rulings on fine legal points. By about 1870, however, this rigid system was starting to be thought rather clumsy and time-consuming. Quite apart from the many defects and loopholes in the rules themselves, it reduced the umpires, who were often very senior officers, to the role of mere clerks and office boys. clearly, such a state of affairs was intolerable.

It was General von verdy du Vernois who finally broke with this system, and abolished the rule book altogether. His approach to the wargame was the free kriegspiel, in which the umpire had a totally free hand to decide the result of moves and combats. He did not do this according to any set of written rules, but just on his own military knowledge and experience. He would collect the players' moves in exactly the same way as before; but he would then simply give a considered professional opinion on the outcome. This speeded up the game a very great deal, and ensured that there was always a well thought-out reason for everything that happened. This was a great help in the debrief after the game, and it allowed players to learn by their mistakes very quickly.

The free kriegspiel using maps can offer many advantages for modern wargamers provided that the umpire has a reasonable background in wargaming, and a bit of common sense. If this condition is met, the game immediately becomes faster and less pedantic than if it had been tied down to a set of rules. The umpire can always think of more factors to incorporate in his decisions than could ever be true in a formal or rigid game. He can therefore spread a greater atmosphere of realism about the game.​

Rather than simply asking the umpire/DM to declare the outcome, a modern free Kriegsspiel has him declare potential outcomes before rolling a die:

When the umpire has all relevant information at his disposal, he ought to be able to give an informed opinion on the probabilities of the result. He will not simply say something like 'The French infantry hassuccessfully stormed the hill', but will quote possibilities, such as: 'The French have a 50% chance of storming the hill successfully; a 30% chance of capturing half of it, while disputing the rest; and a 20% chance of being totally repulsed. High scores favour the French'. It is important that the umpire is as specific as possible with these figures, as this forces him to consider all the factors involved in the combat and to think through the full implications of his decision. He must also be clear whether a high dice roll will be good or bad for the attacker, i.e., whether the top 50% (a die roll of 5-9) or the bottom 50% (a roll of 0-4) will mean the hill has been carried. In this case he has stated that the high score will be good for the attacker.​

 

[karlindel]

I have twice run games in which the players did not know the rules. Everyone had a great time in both campaigns.

The first was an anime inspired campaign that ran for about 8 sessions. The PCs rolled the dice and knew it was a percentile based system, but that was basically it. I kept the character sheets, and spent xp for them based on the way they roleplayed the characters and how they talked about their characters growing out of character.

The second was a halloween one shot game that I ran on the fly using the Warhammer system based on my memory (I had been working on the one shot, but it wasn't ready in time, but everyone was interested in playing a Halloween game, so I figured I'd do my best). I rolled the dice, people described what they wanted to do, I would ask for clarification when needed, and everyone had a blast.

I've considered doing it again sometime. It is extra work for the GM unless the system is relatively simple. It would not work for a game like 4e that relies on a lot of powers and tactical positioning and abstracts so much. It also would not work for narrative games that rely on the players have a lot of mechanical power over the narration. In addition, the players need to trust the GM, and the GM needs to give enough description that the players can make informed choices and decisions about what their characters do.

Although a lot has been said about needing to know what your characters are capable of, in the games I ran, this was not a problem. In the anime campaign, the players built the characters via fluff, so they knew what their interests were and what skills would likely go with that, so they knew about how good they were at different things. If they needed more specific information, they just asked, and I gave them an idea of whether they thought they could do it. In the Halloween game, they knew their characters were mercenaries and so could fight reasonably well, and if they needed to know if they had any other skills, they just asked when it came up, or I would describe it such that they knew whether or not they had a chance (e.g. you come to a locked door, too bad you left Finn guarding the entrance, as he could probably break in quietly; then they could decide if they wanted to take the time to replace Finn with a different guard or just break down the door and risk alerting those on the other side).

 

[Mark CMG]

This isn't about someone who didn't read the rules and frustrates the other players by asking simple questions or anything like that.

This is something that's piqued my interest for about a week now, and I'm wondering what others think of the idea, since I know it's a pretty old-school topic and has been addressed in other threads.

What do you think of the idea of playing a game where only the GM knows the rules or even what system is being played. The players describe their characters and the GM creates the character sheets based off the descriptions, he also makes all the rolls for them and anything they do is sort of blind play. They never know what their characters are capable of mechanically, so they have to try different things. They know how their characters would act, so they act in that way to see how things turn out. Basically, take the crunch away from the players and leave only the fluff.

I play a lot of play-by-post games, and using that interface, this is a much easier thing to pull off. I've been wanting to run a dungeon crawl, and I think this would be a very interesting way to do that, making the players focus on the room and environment around them to solve the traps/puzzles and make their way through.

Any opinions on this?

I feel this can be done (and have done it over the years with non-RPGers at times) but it requires a high level of narrative from the GM to ensure the players fully grasp the environment into which their characters are immersed.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I think it's a fantastic idea.
I would like to start doing this incrementally, beginning with the concepts that, in my mind, should not be understandable to the PCs. I was in a long debate over on giantitp a while ago where the RAW-as-physics literalists were arguing that characters could figure out not only their actual level, but even their specific number of HP, and the damage range of various weapons, and that really nothing was "metagaming" since it could all be figured out in-world. Not my preference.

But HP can be fuzzier if they are partly luck and plot protection. I think going to a WP/VP system and not telling the PCs their VP total or VP damage would better put the player in the character's mindset. They would know very approximate VP damage in terms their character would perceive (e.g. "a bit battered, but not slowed down too much"). Berserkers would even be unaware of their WP damage (as in 2E), with a bystander able to tell with a Heal check "That is almost certainly a mortal wound."

As well, magic can (and, IMO, should) be much more mysterious. Next game I run I will explicitly warn the players that magic is not just like science or technology, it is not safe and reliable and predictable, and its effects cannot be effectively tested by casting spells over and over under controlled conditions. I'd run with much more variable tables for spell results and some real chance of danger to the caster. Something like the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, maybe. The players would judge if Bless was a useful spell to cast the same way their characters would, based on how much easier fights seemed to get when they used it. That would work well if, to keep the effect hidden, I applied a now-variable bonus as a penalty to the enemy AC rather than telling them what to add to their hit rolls.

I have gotten tired of the mathematical optimization and system mastery mini-games within D&D. 3E just made the game too much about figuring the right bonuses to stack... not my cup of tea anymore. Too much time spent on the giantitp forums only exacerbated my frustration with that aspect of 3E, I think.

 

[kitsune9]

This is something that's piqued my interest for about a week now, and I'm wondering what others think of the idea, since I know it's a pretty old-school topic and has been addressed in other threads.

What do you think of the idea of playing a game where only the GM knows the rules or even what system is being played. The players describe their characters and the GM creates the character sheets based off the descriptions, he also makes all the rolls for them and anything they do is sort of blind play. They never know what their characters are capable of mechanically, so they have to try different things. They know how their characters would act, so they act in that way to see how things turn out. Basically, take the crunch away from the players and leave only the fluff.

To me, this is just a lot of con games I used to go. I would show up for a game, get a pre-made character, and learn the rules of the game as we played. If I enjoyed the game, I'll pick up a copy of the book. If not, skipped.

 

[kitsune9]

In Paranoia if you knows the rules your a commie mutant traitor! That's the only game where not knowing the rules is an asset.

Awesome game +1 definitely.

 

[MichaelSomething]

As well, magic can (and, IMO, should) be much more mysterious. Next game I run I will explicitly warn the players that magic is not just like science or technology, it is not safe and reliable and predictable, and its effects cannot be effectively tested by casting spells over and over under controlled conditions. I'd run with much more variable tables for spell results and some real chance of danger to the caster. Something like the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, maybe. The players would judge if Bless was a useful spell to cast the same way their characters would, based on how much easier fights seemed to get when they used it. That would work well if, to keep the effect hidden, I applied a now-variable bonus as a penalty to the enemy AC rather than telling them what to add to their hit rolls.

I have gotten tired of the mathematical optimization and system mastery mini-games within D&D. 3E just made the game too much about figuring the right bonuses to stack... not my cup of tea anymore. Too much time spent on the giantitp forums only exacerbated my frustration with that aspect of 3E, I think.

Dungeon Crawl Classics may be something you should check out. The BETA rules are posted on the Goodman Games Website. Every single spell has a random table!

 

[Rogue Agent]

What do you think of the idea of playing a game where only the GM knows the rules or even what system is being played.

Speaking from experience, the success of this method depends heavily on the mechanics of the game.

If the mechanics of the game are directly associated with the game world, then players can make decisions in the context of the game world and the GM can translate those decisions directly to their associated mechanical representations.

If the mechanics of the game are dissociated from the game world -- in other words, if the game requires you to make frequent mechanical decisions which have no meaning in the context of the game world -- then this becomes much more difficult to achieve, if not impossible.

Another thing to watch out for are abilities like Power Attack in 3E D&D. The conceptual trade-off of "less accuracy while making a more powerful attack" is associated, but the mechanic is based on making a specific mechanical decision about the size of that trade-off that can create a stumbling block.

Similar problems can also be seen in character creation: You're going to run into fewer problems if you can make broad decisions ("your character is good at swimming and basketweaving") instead of trying to communicate the nuances of a point-buy in non-mechanical terms.

With all that being said: In practice, I've found that this isn't actually all that beneficial. I get the theoretical appeal, but I've found it's better (when I'm in the mood for this sort of thing) to just play heavily associated games so that the mechanical decisions are as closely related to character decisions as possible. Even if everything goes smoothly, I've generally found that all the extra bookkeeping for the GM (who is now managing the character sheets of 4-6 different PCs and possibly rolling dice for them as well) tends to degrade their focus.