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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8421677" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's interesting how this language of government vs individuality keeps finding its way into our discussions of RPGing: authoritarianism, autocracy, democracy, agency, entitlement, etc.(And not just in your post: just upthread in [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER]'s; and many many other posts and threads over the years.) One the one hand, I think there is a big difference between the two contexts; on the other hand, in RPGing we are talking about a (small) group of people trying to create and achieve something collectively, and so I guess this convergence of words and ideas is no surprise. And it marks a difference from, eg, boardgames, which involve collective activity but not that element of collectively agreeing on something to be created (ie the shared fiction). Once we decide which boardgame to play, we're back in a realm of individual decision-making in accordance with the agreed framework - or if some move in the game requires a vote or a consensus, then we would expect the game rules to specify a procedure. Whereas in RPGing the need to establish and maintain and develop the shared conception of the fiction is there at every moment. (Cue pointing to Vincent Baker on <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">RPGing as negotiated imagination</a>.)Having got that of my chest: that language of rules as "servant, not master" has been around for a long time, and my impression of it is as a reaction to 3E D&D. (I don't ever recall seeing it said about RQ or RM, for instance.) It seems in particular to be a reaction to the fact that, in 3E D&D, fictional positioning frequently plays little or even no role in action resolution, at least once the most basic of framing has taken place, be that overt framing - You meet an angry Orc; cue Diplomancy - or covert framing - The GM's secret notes record the presence of a trap in the place they've just described; the players declare they check for a trap; cue find trap check followed by a check to disable it.The unexpressed premise of much of the FKR advocacy I've read appears to be that the only way to recover fictional positioning is to hand most or all resolution authority to the GM. If that premise was revised to one way rather than the only way, then I think the rest of it might make a bit more sense.I find the "worlds not rules" a bit frustrating in the way that it seems to toggle between "genre" and "realism" depending on the current focus of discussion. I think both create easily identifiable risks to "trust": with genre, it's often not clear what the apt outcome is - eg Greg Stafford tells us that character death is typically not important in Prince Valiant play, but he also says that a fall from the highest towers of Camelot will kill anyone. He further treats that outcome as a matter of GM fiat - in Prince Valiant all injury, recovery and death is a matter of GM decision-making, which I guess makes me an ur-FKR!. But his rulebook is full of advice (some better than others) on how to manage conflicts of expectation between players and GM. It does not have the same stridency as the FKR material seems to.As far as realism is concerned, I reiterate what I said upthread; the relevant principle, then, should not be player-directed - trust that your GM is knowledgeable and fair - but rather GM-directed - be knowledgeable and fair! I like [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER]'s suggestions about how to frame advice for the pooling of table expertise. And I think it may have been earlier in this thread that I talked about pulling out an old copy of the Flash, if that would be necessary to adjudicate super-speed in a DC Heroes game.Yes on both points. As I said above, I think the FKR critique of rules appears to be directed at one particular ruleset, namely, 3E D&D. There are criticism to be made of (eg) Rolemaster's rules, but a lack of tactical infinity is not one of them. And my question upthread about how to adjudicate a prayer for divine intervention was intended to illustrate that realism (as mediated through the GM's sense of it) does not necessarily provide easy answers to all adjudication questions.</blockquote>

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