Thomas Shey
Legend
Freeform gaming would seem to disagree with your latter part at least.
Rules as Law vs. Rules as Guidelines
Freeform gaming would seem to disagree with your latter part at least.
clearstream
(He, Him)
I think freeform gaming still has one or two kinds of rules.
Firstly, and always, it has all the exogenous rules the group brings with them into their circle of play. Such as who decides, when an outcome is in doubt. These form a basis for rulings, even if they are not written down. One could argue that this basis is one of norms or dispositions, rather than statable axioms. Whether or not that is true, it rests upon a presupposition that rules must be "statable axioms" or something of that ilk. Must they be? An additional, and difficult to sustain, presupposition about consistency may also come into play here. (See the quaddition versus addition argument.)
Secondly, much gaming called freeform uses ultra-lightweight rulesets. "Messerspiel" inspired by BitD, is one example. Players also tend to develop a character sheet over time, incorporating elements that imply rules. (Such as "Jo Freeform can set burnable stuff alight with a thought.")
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robconley
Hero
My opinion that the general case is that you can't have rulings without a reference. You can make rulings without a system as long as you have a setting for the campaign. You even make rulings without resorting to the use of dice.
The problem is in the logistics and skills required. To pull this off you have to know the setting of the campaign cold and be an excellent communicator. The only the players are going to know anything is what you describe whether it is verbal, written, or visual. That is a lot of work and skill for something that is to be enjoyed in the time one has for a hobby.
So while possible, I pulled it off as an experiment twice in 40 years, it not practical. But I feel it is important to mention because there are times when is useful to use these techniques. For ad-hoc situations where you have to resort to the theater of the mind along with the circumstance not well covered by the system.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I agree regarding the first one, but I don't think those sort of social metarules are what was at hand here. As to the second, at least the first part of this was not what I was referring to, and I kind of consider the second definitions rather than rules, since how they apply to the situation is entirely judgment based (I've played in that sort of environment years ago when I used to play on superhero MUSHes).
clearstream
(He, Him)
I like your general idea. To my reading, much thinking on rules assumes that there will be some other quality that sustains the rule. However, that does run into a regress, like this
- For each ruling R, I must have a reference F
- So I must have a rule or ruling Q that tells me F is the reference for R
- But then Q too, needs a reference (or if it does not, why require one for R?)
Probably, there are various kinds of justifications for rulings; "having a reference" might be one of them without being mandatory or exclusive.
robconley
Hero
Where I am coming is that in my view what makes a RPG an RPG is the below.
- I describe to you a setting
- You (and others participating) describe to me what characters you want to play within that setting.
- I describe any additional information your character would know about the setting.
- I start the campaign by describing the initial circumstances that the character and the group find themselves in.
- You and the other participants describe what it is they try to do as their characters in response.
- I adjudicate the result and describe the result and the changed circumstances
- We repeat #5 and #6 throughout the campaign whether it is a single session or multiple sessions.
One of the key innovations is Dave saying yes as long as it made sense to whatever his players tried to do. Making notes about how he handled it and so on. And "What made sense" according to the various accounts was based on the fact they were in a setting made up a mishmash of early 70s era Fantasy Tropes.
Resulting in things like a player pointing if that if vampires like Dracula existed in Blackmoor then wouldn't it make sense that there would a "Van Helsing" type that was able to hunt them? Mash it with a few other things and the result is a player playing a cleric.
If you can't run down to the game store and buy a rulebook or a supplement if you are using your own mishmash of a setting. What else you are going to base your rulings on?
Hence why I made my point about you don't need a system as a reference as a setting will do just fine.
My view is that everything that the RPG Industry produces is just an aid to make the above 7 steps happen. That the point of RPGs should be about characters having adventures in interesting settings not on playing particular games with particular rules.
There are two important practical considerations.
- For the vast majority, this is meant to be done as something fun in the time one has for a hobby. Using a published system is a big timesaver even if it doesn't quite line up with the setting one has in mind.
- One key element to making a campaign good is consistency. In general, things work out better when the same ruling is used for when the player attempts the same thing under similar circumstances. It is easier for folks to be consistent when using a system whether it is their own or published. Also, I submit that if one starts out without a system, if the referee is good and wants to be fair, they will end up with one anyway that is built up through actual play. This becomes especially true if you run multiple campaigns in the same setting.
My two cents.
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There are RPGs that don't fall under this description - especially (1), (3) and (4).
robconley
Hero
There are many types of RPGs. If there is a point based on that fact, one that is relevant to this thread or that I have been talking about in regard to "rules as law, rules as guidelines" then make it.
If you want to debate about what is or isn't an RPG and the different types there are out there I think that would be an excellent topic for another thread.
clearstream
(He, Him)
To comment narrowly in this regard, following my rubric one might say that if my purposes include to play in a given setting S, then I can justify my rulings by how well they serve that purpose (of facilitating play in S.)
One might ask - why bother with the circumlocution? One motive is that I can't rely on the ruling:reference binary to justify rulings that have purposes outside of facilitating the given setting. Those that might matter to play in any setting, and might be ruled in divers ways regardless of settting. I'm thinking in particular of meta-rules, such as specific beats general, and table rules, such as what to do about cocked dice.
Purposes also seem to trump setting, in that if my purpose is to present a different setting (S' rather than S) then rulings justified given S' appear to trump those that might have been justified given S. Even though both have a setting as a reference and ought to be equally well justified. Purposes says something about this play, rather than any play.
I believe that more or less restates what I have been saying: your rules and rulings are justified in view of your purpose of "characters having adventures in interesting settings".
Another reason I put purposes early in the chain of justification is that it puts due emphasis on the rule-follower over the rule. Especially in TTRPG where the rule-follower gets to both interpret the rule (grasp it) and put it in force for themselves (uphold it). Perhaps it improves the quaddition/addition arguments by suggesting that we have no stake in whether at some point adding by 2 changes, but rather that we have the purpose in mind of adding by 2. In order to do that, we need to grasp and uphold the appropriate rule and no other rule will do: certainly not quaddition. And this too leads to a regress, because we're left wondering what we meant when we said that we had in mind adding by 2 (addition?) Might we not have just as well meant quaddition without yet realising it!?
Hence I believe rules and rulings are justified according to complex rubrics, informed by their context or web - form of life as Wittgenstein famously put it - of surrounding meaning, including other rules. No one rule or ruling in isolation can be considered justified. You and I can point out members of the rubric that carry weight with us. You have made yours somewhat clear: setting has priority. Mine seems more about purposes.
I defend mine on the basis that while I can picture rules and rulings that are not obviously justified by any given setting, I find it hard to picture rules that matter to players of games that are not justified by their purposes in playing those games.
I guess one point would be that, given that there are RPGs that don't follow your 7 steps, then what you say here isn't true in general:
If there is no "setting for the campaign* because the RPG is one of those which does not follow your 7 steps, then adjudication is not just extrapolation of the setting.
Furthermore, if there is no "setting" as contemplated by your 7 steps, then there is a role for rules other than your step (6) I adjudicate the result and describe the result and the changed circumstances - for instance, rules for establishing backstory or situation or other elements of the fiction which - in a 7 step RPG - are extrapolated by the GM from the setting.
