Should Players Engage With The Rules?

[Harmon]

Players should learn what they can of the game rules, pay attention enough to know what they are going to do next round (before its their turn) and stay in character.

 

[Odhanan]

I think players should know the rules, but I do not enforce any reading on them. In any case, they will learn what rules govern their abilities simply through the game. If they want to discover more, this is always a good thing and I'll possibly lend some rulebooks.

 

[D+1]

ALL players should at the very least learn the rules that govern how their character functions within the game system. Anyone who effectively refuses simply won't get a seat at my game, and if I have anything to say about it they won't sit in a game that I'm in as a player either. The rules are not the be-all end-all of the game by the remotest stretch of imagination - but they ARE there for a reason. Unless the DM has openly stated that the rules DON'T MATTER then players must learn the rules.

And simply learning the basic rules and those that most closely apply to their particular character is a MINIMUM. You can do that just to get people started in the game, to BEGIN to play without having to know the rules back to front. After they get started though they'd better be reading the PH, and paying attention to the rules being applied by and to other players and their characters. If nothing else it's going to be to their advantage to know how the ENTIRE game functions, not just their personal little corner of it. You don't have to know the rules for Power Attack, attacking with two weapons, damage resistance and spell resistance to play a 1st level wizard. But knowing those rules, how you can eventually apply them and how they can and will eventually be applied to you and the other PC's will keep your fellow players and DM from wanting to lynch you.

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

I was torn between the first two choices.

On the one hand, I think players absolutely should know all of the basic system rules, even those which don't always apply to their character (but may apply to other PCs in the party), I also realize that is a lot for one person to have memorized at any given time.

I'd say as long as someone understands the basic rules, and makes an effort to stick to them, that's fine.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

The heart of your problem is that you are assuming that the players don't engage with the options that the detail affords them. I'd say that quite the opposite occurs. A roll player never fully engages the options available in the rules. Either he doesn't know the rules, or his theory about how to win prevents him from doing things he things don't enhance that ability to win.

I don't understand why you're assuming that "knowing the system" necessarily equates to "gaming the system", i.e., playing for advantage. I don't believe I ever stated that I believe players should adopt any measure of "game efficiency" in their choices on behalf of their characters.

Imagine you are a player in my campaign, and I've managed to hide what the rule system is from you. We created a character together, but I've hid the character sheet from you and all you have is some notes about the character. How are you going to play the game? You seem to think that it's impossible to engage with the environment without knowing the rules.

No, I believe it's perfectly possible to play a descriptive roleplaying game where the player's input is mediated into system terms by the GM or even simply adjudicated on the basis of intuition, story logic, or any other resolution system.

What I don't quite appreciate is a GM style preference for a heavily-detailed system which is "kept from" the players, one way or another. If the GM is in control to that extent and players must simply react in descriptive fashion, I question the utility of a rules-heavy system like D&D.

If you believe that, I doubt you've ever really role played. You've played a tactical wargame, and you are probably pretty good at it, but you probably don't do alot of role playing. You are engaged with a rules set and not with cognitive a theory about the universe (real or fantastic).

I wonder why you feel it's necessary to obfuscate the game system's description of the world and present it to players in your own terms.

I mean, let's use a crude example. As a player, I know that the Dodge feat makes my PC more difficult for a particular opponent to hit in combat when she concentrates on avoiding his attacks. My character knows the trick of keeping an eye on one particular opponent to better avoid being hurt by him without compromising her defence from other attacks.

How would you describe the difference between a player's choices on behalf of his character when he knows the feat and its function as opposed to when he has only received a descriptive explanation of it, devoid of game system terminology? What is the functional difference you see between "I'm using Dodge versus the ogre, not the orc" and "I'm going to concentrate on avoiding the ogre's attacks rather than the orc's"?

The reason I ask is because a) You appear to be asserting a functional, rather than aesthetic, difference and b) I find it difficult to conceive of a way in which you could descriptively educate the player as to his character's capabilities in a way which fully enables him to take advantage of the PC's (invisible) mechanical features which at the same time avoids becoming simply a circituitous description of the mechanics in question.

Deprived of a rules set, you engage the environment in precisely the way that you would mentally engage the real world. You maintain a theory about what the world looks like - and it is my job as a DM to make that theory accurately reflect my theory about the world to a sufficient degree that we understand each other - and based on that theory of the world, you then take an action with hopefully some foresight about what the consequences of success or failure might be based on your own experiences with the real world and your assumptions about the consequences of real world actions. And this is where having a good detailed system comes in. The better that the system models the real world (or at least models peoples theories about the real world), the more likely that the player can use his theories about the real world to predict the behavior of the world in the game.

I fail, then, to see the advantage of a game system like D&D, which models a world in fair detail which does not reflect the real world.

For the record though, I'd never want to run a game where the player's didn't even see their character sheet (especially after the first session or so). That's just too much work. Over time, I expect characters to learn enough of the rules that they can make choices about how they want thier characters to develop and understand basically what options that development open up. A spell caster doesn't need to know exactly what thier spells do, but they do need to have a general enough of an idea that they can elect to cast the spells.

I'm confused, to be perfectly honest. Either the rules of the game determine the "rules" of the world, or they don't. If they don't, then it's the DM's thoughts which determine the rules of the world and thus the advantage of a detailed system is entirely lost. If they do, then players who don't know the details of their characters' abilities have an incomplete and incorrect picture of the world in their minds, and thus are actually participating less in the world of the game than their better-informed compatriots.

Unless they're meant to be playing someone who has no idea of what they can do, like Rincewind.

I think you have exactly the wrong theory about the game. In my experience, players that don't know the rules and aren't relying on a theory about the rules, but rather on a theory about the game universe are far more creative in the application of thier abilities and far more interactive with the universe than the players that are relying on thier knowledge of the rules. Players that base thier actions on thier knowledge of the rules are predictable, undramatic, and uncreative. They don't turn over tables to provide themselves cover, they don't have alot of couriousity about information that isn't provided as the result of a die roll, they don't talk to goblins that they meet in dungeons, they don't wander the world with a sense of caution and wonder because they know, "Heck, that thing has only 6HD and we can take it." I don't know any roll player that starts there first round action with attempts to parley.

I think you're assigning "mastery of the rules" exclusively to tactical players and "ignorance of the rules" exclusively to immersive roleplayers, naming the former a vice and the latter a virtue, and I think you're utterly wrong to make those assignments. I don't think there's anything about knowing exactly how the system works which prevents me - or any other player first and foremost concerned with the story arising from our characters' actions and motivations - from making the decisions the character would make.

I think the dichotomy you propose is false - I've seen many players with a firm grasp of the rules who would explore the possibilities of the system by asking if they could flip a table up for cover, and many players ignorant of the rules who wouldn't consider such a thing because they don't even know what the rules let them do. I've heard more cries of "How am I supposed to know that would help?" from players who never bothered to learn the rules than I've ever heard "You can't do that, there's no rules for it".

More to the point, you're not responding to the substance of my question. The only virtue of a detailed game system of which the players are largely ignorant appears to be satisfaction on the part of the GM that it's being run "fairly". I think that's an illusory advantage - because the detail is entirely lost in the gap between a player's rules-free description of their character's actions and reactions and the GM's attempt to interpret that description into the terms of the system.

Maybe I have a manifesto: If you don't know the rules, you might as well play Fudge.

 

[Timeboxer]

Deprived of a rules set, you engage the environment in precisely the way that you would mentally engage the real world.

You mean without any notion of physics or the laws of nature?

 

[Timeboxer]

I think the dichotomy you propose is false - I've seen many players with a firm grasp of the rules who would explore the possibilities of the system by asking if they could flip a table up for cover, and many players ignorant of the rules who wouldn't consider such a thing because they don't even know what the rules let them do.

Going even farther than that, I agree with that one Magic article -- the essence of which amounted to, "Having defined rules allows you more creativity." Writers write more productively on weeks when they're given a topic, as opposed to weeks in which they have to come up with their own. It is easier to work within rules given, because they nudge you in directions that you would be unable to think of on your own.

Speaking as someone who knows the rules probably too well and fancies herself a decent roleplayer, it's knowing the magic rules that allows me to do things like make a silent image of an obscuring mist that the opponents can't see through, but my allies can (because I've told them ahead of time and thus boosted their Will saves by +4). Or using stone shape to create a wall to block the line of effect of enemy casters without worrying about them dispelling it (because the spell is of instantaneous duration). All stuff I would never have come up with if I'd gone into it blind -- and I have to say that I'm a much more creative and interesting spellcaster now than I was several years ago, when I played D&D 3.0 without knowing any of the rules.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Man, I could have said that all much more simply.

"I think it's false that rules impose restrictions on imagination."

 

[vortex]

ALL players should at the very least learn the rules that govern how their character functions within the game system. Anyone who effectively refuses simply won't get a seat at my game, and if I have anything to say about it they won't sit in a game that I'm in as a player either. The rules are not the be-all end-all of the game by the remotest stretch of imagination - but they ARE there for a reason. Unless the DM has openly stated that the rules DON'T MATTER then players must learn the rules.

And simply learning the basic rules and those that most closely apply to their particular character is a MINIMUM. You can do that just to get people started in the game, to BEGIN to play without having to know the rules back to front. After they get started though they'd better be reading the PH, and paying attention to the rules being applied by and to other players and their characters. If nothing else it's going to be to their advantage to know how the ENTIRE game functions, not just their personal little corner of it. You don't have to know the rules for Power Attack, attacking with two weapons, damage resistance and spell resistance to play a 1st level wizard. But knowing those rules, how you can eventually apply them and how they can and will eventually be applied to you and the other PC's will keep your fellow players and DM from wanting to lynch you.

No soup for you!

 

[Celebrim]

Going even farther than that, I agree with that one Magic article -- the essence of which amounted to, "Having defined rules allows you more creativity." Writers write more productively on weeks when they're given a topic, as opposed to weeks in which they have to come up with their own. It is easier to work within rules given, because they nudge you in directions that you would be unable to think of on your own.

I think that that is what I said. I said that having a detailed set of rules made me more efficient as a DM.

mhacdebhandia: Let's be very clear about what I'm arguing. There are essentially two sides in this debate. There are those that say that it is more true that it is necessary for the players to know the rules to some degree, and those that say that it is more true that it is not necessary for players to know the rules. On the extreme have those who say, "The players absolutely must know the rules", and on the other extreme those who say, "It is absolutely not neccessary for the players to know the rules."

I'm in the second camp. But, I voted for #3 "I don't make the player's learn the rules, but its nice when they do." as the closest to my beliefs.

I could fisk your responce line by line, but all your objections come into two categories. First, you make the objection that you can't see how having a detailed rules system is helpful, and then go on to contridict yourself by agreeing with Amy on the virtue of having a detailed rules system. Great, I agree with Amy too. Second, you make the objection that its possible to play well and know the rules, which objects to something I never said. What I am NOT saying - and what you keep putting into my mouth - is that it is absolutely neccessary for the players to not know the rules. I can see why you might be confused, but one doesn't imply the other. Just because I strongly believe that its not absolutely necessary for the players to know the rules, does not mean that I believe that its absolutely necessary for them not to know them. As I said in my responce, I would never choose to hide the rules from the player's in the long term, and would never go out of my way to prevent the player's from learning the rules. It's _nice_ when the players both know the rules and can roleplay, but of the two being able to roleplay is far more important than knowing the rules, and not knowing the rules is no hinderance to a player's ability to role play. But knowing the rules is not necesssarily a hinderance either; I myself know the rules to a dozen or more game systems, but that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily a bad player. I did not mean to imply that everyone that knew the rules was a bad role player, only that again knowing the rules wasn't important.

My experience with players is that those that learn the rules first before they have learned to role play tend to become poor role players, and once they have practiced extensively in gamism it then becomes very very difficult to break them of thier bad habits. The example provided to me that provoked criticism in the first place is an example of what I think is very bad habits on the part of both the players and the referee. I don't think that there is anyone who would read the two examples, and not think that I had better control over my table and over the flow of the game - and I did it without appeals to the rules. For a player, IMO neither ignorance of the rules nor mastery of the rules is in and of itself a virtue. A person who is ignorant of the rules, and who is so concerned that he's going to do something 'wrong', and who is therefore too timid to actually stretch thier imagination and actually participate is a problem. But the problem is NOT in my opinion his ignorance of the rules, but his concern about his ignorance of the rules which basically boils down to not only a lack of trust in himself but a lack of trust in his referee. Fixing the problem is not primarily solved by teaching the player the rules, but by increasing his confidence. I was fortunate to learn that from a very good DM back when I was in Jr. High. Likewise, a player who has mastered the rules is in no way better than a player who has no knowledge of the rules, if the player's interaction in the game is with the rule book and not with the shared imaginative construct that the people at the table are helping to create. We could probably name several types of gamers who are rules masters but which represent a type of social disfunctionality.

Again, I have several times been a PC in a game in which I didn't know the rules at all (even after many sessions) and it did nothing to hinder my enjoyment of the game or my ability to play the game. And again, I have taught alot of players how to game, and over the years I've found that the ones that don't know the rules initially are more entertaining players and mature much more rapidly than those that learn the rules and then try to learn how to play.

And as far as technical proficiency goes, my former long time RP group was a two time consecutive 2nd place finisher in the annual DragonCon D&D tournament. I dare say that when we have to, we can min/max with the best of them.