What are the rules for?

[soviet]

Rulebook makes it clear
Strict time records must be kept
Gygax says no more

 

[pemerton]

I've GMed plenty of ship travel. That hasn't generally required knowing the weight of things.

It does when figuring how many coracles you need to hire. Especially since they only have a ton or two of cargo capacity once crewed. Or if you really need to hire 2 or 3 longships for the passage.

<snip>

Can your knights afford to hire enough shipping for ALL their usual horses and squires?

There are many ways of working out whether or not there are vessels available to knights to carry them and their entourage. Calculating weights of horses, calculating the capacity and costs of shipping, etc is only on of those ways. And as I posted, it's not one I recall ever having used.

It's not a method that Prince Valiant canvasses. And it's not the method that Burning Wheel canvasses either.

 

[aramis erak]

There are many ways of working out whether or not there are vessels available to knights to carry them and their entourage. Calculating weights of horses, calculating the capacity and costs of shipping, etc is only on of those ways. And as I posted, it's not one I recall ever having used.

It's not a method that Prince Valiant canvasses. And it's not the method that Burning Wheel canvasses either.

I don't do PV. I do Pendragon 4th. Totally different economic approach.


I doubt you'd ever bother with shipping weight limits in anything but a trade sim game... and that's fine... but the important thing isn't that you do or don't — the important bit is that it's as much a matter of GMing style, if nor more so, than of rules intent. Folk like me are going to sim as much based upon rules as we do even if it seems out of place to folk like you.


The thing is I embrace what the rules give me.
And in a family of games with the same system (BRP - and Pendragon is BRP converted from 1d100 to 1d20), there's a mechanic for the uses I need re mass of horses, it's portable to Pendragon, and the Pendragon Size scores work just fine for realistic values for horses mass. You might never need it, but my GM style and Pendragon 4e combined to me needing it often.

Yours is NOT the only GM style, and isn't even the only right style. (If players are having fun, it's the right style for that group.)

 

[Fenris-77]

I agree that there is a significant element of GM style involved. A GM who 'thinks in sim' will solve the number of boats problem using that method, and a GM who 'thinks in narrative' will solve the same problem with that method. Both methods solve the problem. As noted above this can be completely independent of any of the mechanics and systems from the rule set in question.

This is an excellent example of why conversations about RPGs miss the point to some extent when they only consider what's in the rule book. What I'm gesturing at here is the idea that actually running an RPG as the GM is far more an act of interpretation that it is an act of faithful reproduction of the rules. Of course, the rules can and should form the central structures of play, that's what they are for, but that's not the whole picture. GMs interpret situations in play in light of both the rules and their previous experience. In those instances where the rules do not suggest a solution then that previous experience becomes paramount. The weight of things for shipping is exactly that sort of situation.

 

[pemerton]

Yours is NOT the only GM style, and isn't even the only right style. (If players are having fun, it's the right style for that group.)

I've never said otherwise. I'm not the one who is insisting that doing one thing in a RPG (say, ferrying warhorses on boats) must require, or tends to require, another thing (having information about the weight of warhorses, and rules that use that information).

What I was doing was agreeing with @soviet:

Caring about the weight of warhorses is a very niche type of RPG

And my reason for agreeing is because I've played and GMed a lot of warhorse stuff, including the ferrying of them; but have as best I recall have never needed to know how much they weight.

I was also disagreeing with the suggestion that the core concerns of RPG rules are presenting the setting and mediating players having their PCs interact with the setting.

 

[Fenris-77]

I was also disagreeing with the suggestion that the core concerns of RPG rules are presenting the setting and mediating players having their PCs interact with the setting.

I would be very interested to know what you think RPGs are doing if not those two specific things. Those are precisely the things I am quite convinced that RPGs are doing. What an interesting difference of opinion.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Agreed. I've GMed a lot of RPGs that include warhorses. I can't recall when, if ever, the question arose of how much a warhorse weighs!

I saw it come up a couple of times. Usually regarding whether things like a bridge would support them.

But again, its either a situation where the rules already handle it indirectly (most BRP derivatives), or where its off the beaten path enough its a legitimate, if annoying thing for the GM to adjucate normally. I had to come up with a somewhat odd case where you'd want to have common use of rules for this purpose (again, ignoring superhero games where the equivalent question can come up semi-regularly--in the case of a few character types, potentially every session._

 

[Fenris-77]

I saw it come up a couple of times. Usually regarding whether things like a bridge would support them.

I'm absolutely not picking on this example, but it made me think. How much engineering do I need to know in order for a more specific horse weight to better answer the question? I mean I know how I personally would answer it, but I'm not sure how much more specific weight would help. Comparison maybe? IDK. Just noodling. Carry on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm absolutely not picking on this example, but it made me think. How much engineering do I need to know in order for a more specific horse weight to better answer the question? I mean I know how I personally would answer it, but I'm not sure how much more specific weight would help. Comparison maybe? IDK. Just noodling. Carry on.

Usually it would come up when a bridge has already been described as lightweight, old, or rickety in the fiction anyway (possibly for no reason other than color or because it seems likely given other elements of the situation or scene), so you could just define the capacity based on what that would likely mean given context (say, saying it safely could support X number of people walking across it). That point you've got a rough number to work with, and even having an equivelency in your head for the warhorse will do. It doesn't necessarily require detailed engineering, but its still going to need a bit of thought.

This can be a not-entirely trivial question in some cases when you're trying to approach a place you plan to attack, where the inability to bring the warhorse may either change tactics, or require you to try and see if an alternate approach exists.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, that makes sense.