The Trouble With Rules Discussions

[tetrasodium]

I have the player’s version of events. I don’t have to argue for someone who isn’t in this thread. If you want to, go ahead.



Then by all means, do so. You can do it without challenging my opinion. You haven’t actually presented a different POV, you’ve simply disagreed with mine and supposed the DM must have had a good reason. So go ahead. What’s that good reason?



Do you know the rules of AD&D 2nd Edition? I believe you are misinterpreting this statement entirely.



I don’t think you understand what the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is if you believe those statements are indicative of it.



Increasingly, I don’t think you understand the rules of the edition they were playing.



I believe my opinion is well-founded because I have experience with the game as both a DM and a player, have encountered DMs who have treated magic items as something to give out but then restrict usage of, and I have also encountered DMs who were much less restrictive in this regard, so I’ve seen the difference in game play. All this with 2nd edition AD&D.

If you have a different opinion, once again, instead of simply attacking mine, feel free to present your opinion of how the DM could’ve been justified. It will be equally valid as my opinion. I’ve yet to actually see that from you.

The trend of automatically assuming that any gm call is in the wrong without extending the benefit of the doubt to consider reasons why it might have been reasonable is an incredibly toxic behavior that stems from and reinforces the sort of rules disagreements noted in the OP. Beyond that it gives players bad expectations for their gm by causing them to also feel their GM is less likely to deserve the benefit of the doubt when they see it regularly.

Our disagreement has nothing to do with arguing for the uninvolved gm and it's bizarre that you would make such a strange assumption. When you decided to take your private personal opinion public and post about it condemning the gm call that was made you opened up that opinion itself to be critiqued and criticized. In this case your opinion is being criticized because it it incapable of being "well-founded" as long as it is built atop the faulty assumptions that no reasonable GM might feel the need to make the call that was made & make it for reasonable reasons.

 

[TiQuinn]

The trend of automatically assuming that any gm call is in the wrong without extending the benefit of the doubt to consider reasons why it might have been reasonable is an incredibly toxic behavior that stems from and reinforces the sort of rules disagreements noted in the OP. Beyond that it gives players bad expectations for their gm by causing them to also feel their GM is less likely to deserve the benefit of the doubt when they see it regularly.

Our disagreement has nothing to do with arguing for the uninvolved gm and it's bizarre that you would make such a strange assumption. When you decided to take your private personal opinion public and post about it condemning the gm call that was made you opened up that opinion itself to be critiqued and criticized. In this case your opinion is being criticized because it it incapable of being "well-founded" as long as it is built atop the faulty assumptions that no reasonable GM might feel the need to make the call that was made & make it for reasonable reasons.

This is just a harangue at this point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My personal experience is that this sort of thing has generally been much more common over at the D&D-adjacent end of things, probably because there are so many special cases. That doesn't mean it never occurs elsewhere, but in most of the cases I've seen that happen its either areas of notorious ambiguity in the rules set involved, things people knew themselves were houserules and as such weren't going to present as particularly significant if they joined into a rules discussion, or in a few case would turn into "Huh, guess we did that wrong".

 

[Bill Zebub]

Thinking about the ring of free action example, I'm envisioning two things:

1) A fantasy novel in which a magical ring is found, and is discovered to have marvelous effect such as free movement underwater, immunity to spider webs, etc. When fighting some undead creatures that paralyze his friends, the character wearing the ring quite reasonably assumes that he will be immune to their touch, but discovers he isn't. This leads to a tense moment in the story, and some exciting plot development.

2) My AD&D friends in junior high, ca. 1980, interrupting and wasting a full hour of game time arguing about this exact thing, instead of leaning into the story.

I find that contrast illuminating.

 

[TiQuinn]

Thinking about the ring of free action example, I'm envisioning two things:

1) A fantasy novel in which a magical ring is found, and is discovered to have marvelous effect such as free movement underwater, immunity to spider webs, etc. When fighting some undead creatures that paralyze his friends, the character wearing the ring quite reasonably assumes that he will be immune to their touch, but discovers he isn't. This leads to a tense moment in the story, and some exciting plot development.

2) My AD&D friends in junior high, ca. 1980, interrupting and wasting a full hour of game time arguing about this exact thing, instead of leaning into the story.

I find that contrast illuminating.

I like the idea of lesser and greater versions of items that delineate these differences and done with care; not as an attempt to gotcha the player and actually give them an item that makes them second guess ever using it due to arbitrariness.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I like the idea of lesser and greater versions of items that delineate these differences and done with care; not as an attempt to gotcha the player and actually give them an item that makes them second guess ever using it due to arbitrariness.

Maybe. I can see and agree with that conclusion.

And...I don't know...part of what makes RPGs exciting and different is worrying about the unknown. I mean, I am firmly against requiring veteran players to pretend to not know about burning trolls, but man do I miss the days when I genuinely didn't know about burning trolls.

 

[pemerton]

Thinking about the ring of free action example, I'm envisioning two things:

1) A fantasy novel in which a magical ring is found, and is discovered to have marvelous effect such as free movement underwater, immunity to spider webs, etc. When fighting some undead creatures that paralyze his friends, the character wearing the ring quite reasonably assumes that he will be immune to their touch, but discovers he isn't. This leads to a tense moment in the story, and some exciting plot development.

2) My AD&D friends in junior high, ca. 1980, interrupting and wasting a full hour of game time arguing about this exact thing, instead of leaning into the story.

I find that contrast illuminating.

In RPG play, I tend to find that an interesting question is what triggers the adversity? Is it a failed roll by the player, or GM decision? If the latter, was the decision made early on in a way that makes it knowable to the player, even if the player doesn't actually know it? Or is it made at the time such that the player couldn't have anticipated it?

More generally, the play of a RPG depends as much or more on the process for generating the fiction, rather than the content/quality of the fiction itself. That's what makes it a game rather than just round-robin storytelling.

 

[TiQuinn]

Maybe. I can see and agree with that conclusion.

And...I don't know...part of what makes RPGs exciting and different is worrying about the unknown. I mean, I am firmly against requiring veteran players to pretend to not know about burning trolls, but man do I miss the days when I genuinely didn't know about burning trolls.

Same, but I think to that end there’s still plenty of monsters particularly if one’s using third party products to still create that feeling of danger and the unknown.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Same, but I think to that end there’s still plenty of monsters particularly if one’s using third party products to still create that feeling of danger and the unknown.

I was thinking about exactly that as I hit "Post reply". Since then I've been thinking about why, or why not, monsters are different from magic items, or any other plot device, in that regard. Not sure what the answer is.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In RPG play, I tend to find that an interesting question is what triggers the adversity? Is it a failed roll by the player, or GM decision? If the latter, was the decision made early on in a way that makes it knowable to the player, even if the player doesn't actually know it? Or is it made at the time such that the player couldn't have anticipated it?

More generally, the play of a RPG depends as much or more on the process for generating the fiction, rather than the content/quality of the fiction itself. That's what makes it a game rather than just round-robin storytelling.

I'm pondering that. I think RPGs are a mixture of both 'game' and 'round-robin storytelling' and whether a referee is simply the adjudicator of the rules, or also a generator of story. I think there's room for both, and I can see preferences going either way, but I don't think the distinction between resolving a question by rolling on a table and letting the referee arbitrarily choose is enough to call one a game, and one not.