What are the rules for?

[mmadsen]

Oh yeah @Snarf Zagyg wrote a lot about FKR.

I’ve mentioned it quite a few times myself, but not as recently.

 

[mmadsen]

To me tabletop roleplaying is a mash-up of two very different hobbies:

• A hacked tabletop wargame where you get to try anything and subvert the rules
• A form of improv storytelling where you have better continuity and minor characters

The point of the rules for the hacked tabletop wargame is to be the wargame rules you are subverting and to provide something to push against to create the world.

Can you explain what you mean by subverting the rules here? I assume you simply mean that players can try anything, including all the unconventional tactics outside the purview of a narrowly defined wargame.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Can you explain what you mean by subverting the rules here? I assume you simply mean that players can try anything, including all the unconventional tactics outside the purview of a narrowly defined wargame.

Pretty much, yes.

 

[MGibster]

A little over 30 years ago, a friend and I played one of those old time hex & chit war games of the Battle of Stalingrad. (It was not Avalon Hill's Stalingrad.) German victory was achieved by taking the city and Soviet victory was denying the Germans their prize. At the beginning of the game, the Germans were in a stronger position with better units, more units, and more reinforcements coming. The Soviet units were weaker, fewer, and it would take a few turns before reinforcement in numbers would start to arrive.

Standard Soviet strategy was to go defensive, trying to slow the German advance until old man winter and reinforcements would arrive. As the Soviet player, I decided to go on the offensive on my very first turn. This was a surprise to my opponent because every time my unit engaged a German unit the odds were in their favor. I was extremely fortunate with my dice rolls, destorying most of the German units I attacked and seeing their offense collapse because I punched a big hole in its center. Life was about to get difficult for the Germans, so my friend decided maybe we should play a different game.

If there was an arbiter intead of rules, I would have lost the game right then and there. Conventional wisdom would have said my poorly trained, equipped, and led units were inferior to the Germans. And while that isn't incorrect, sometimes in war, as in all aspects of life, the unexpected happen. You can do everything wrong and still end up winning. You can do everything right and still lose. Rules provide you the opportunity to react to the unexpected in a way an arbiter does not.

 

[Koloth]

A little over 30 years ago, a friend and I played one of those old time hex & chit war games of the Battle of Stalingrad. (It was not Avalon Hill's Stalingrad.) German victory was achieved by taking the city and Soviet victory was denying the Germans their prize. At the beginning of the game, the Germans were in a stronger position with better units, more units, and more reinforcements coming. The Soviet units were weaker, fewer, and it would take a few turns before reinforcement in numbers would start to arrive.

Standard Soviet strategy was to go defensive, trying to slow the German advance until old man winter and reinforcements would arrive. As the Soviet player, I decided to go on the offensive on my very first turn. This was a surprise to my opponent because every time my unit engaged a German unit the odds were in their favor. I was extremely fortunate with my dice rolls, destorying most of the German units I attacked and seeing their offense collapse because I punched a big hole in its center. Life was about to get difficult for the Germans, so my friend decided maybe we should play a different game.

If there was an arbiter intead of rules, I would have lost the game right then and there. Conventional wisdom would have said my poorly trained, equipped, and led units were inferior to the Germans. And while that isn't incorrect, sometimes in war, as in all aspects of life, the unexpected happen. You can do everything wrong and still end up winning. You can do everything right and still lose. Rules provide you the opportunity to react to the unexpected in a way an arbiter does not.

A similar situation was the Battle of Midway. Japan had more ships, better ships, better planes, experienced pilots, torpedoes that worked, and cooperative weather. The US had better intelligence and had managed to save the Yorktown at the Coral Sea and get her hastily repaired for Midway(Japan thought her sunk). Hard to imagine that a group of arbiters would have ruled in such a way to allow the US to win. Not sure how you would get from the early Japanese win over Midway proper to the later carrier planes vs carrier planes fight where the US managed to pull off a bizarre victory despite almost no communication between the various air groups.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My own feeling is it is a combination of a resolution system, and a communication tool to allow the players to understand what that resoultion process will be like, at least in common cases.

 

[mmadsen]

Meanwhile having rules lets you roll the dice to decide which way to go and move on with everyone having been listened to. It also helps pin down your continuity and what you consider important.

And in both cases rules add random elements and are an aid to the shared visualisation.

Adding randomization is one of the big innovations RPGs brought to make-believe, and they brought it from wargaming, of course.

Randomization doesn’t have to be tied to a complex, written rule set though, as the original cited piece explains:

When the umpire has all relevant information at his disposal, he ought to be able to give an informed opinion on the probabilities of the result. He will not simply say something like ‘The French infantry hassuccessfully stormed the hill’, but will quote possibilities, such as: ‘The French have a 50% chance of storming the hill successfully; a 30% chance of capturing half of it, while disputing the rest; and a 20% chance of being totally repulsed. High scores favour the French’.​

 

[mmadsen]

I find a well-written, detailed set of rules important for ensuring a solid baseline of shared, internally consistent expectations regarding how the in-game world works.

Agreed, but a lot of non-rule lore fills this same role. All the maps, monster descriptions, etc.

When do we want actual rules, rather than a simple understanding of the situation?

 

[MichaelSomething]

Agreed, but a lot of non-rule lore fills this same role. All the maps, monster descriptions, etc.

When do we want actual rules, rather than a simple understanding of the situation?

When people have differing understandings of the situation.

 

[Deset Gled]

Agreed, but a lot of non-rule lore fills this same role. All the maps, monster descriptions, etc.

When do we want actual rules, rather than a simple understanding of the situation?

Lots of different things going on here. Lore is background of the game world; history, knowledge. The situation is the state the players are in; maps, hit points, enemies. The rules of the game are separate from both. The game rules determine what the characters can do to interact with the situation; what options they have, how they do things.

The lore, the situation, and the game all operate on their own rules. Many times, it is ideal for all of these things to match up. You want the situation to make sense with the game world, and you want the actions the players take to be consistent with known stories and how the world works. But there's no inherent need for them to be consistent. "Ludonarrative dissonance" is the jargon typically used to describe where playing within the rules of the game results in a state that doesn't matching up well with other parts of the stories.

Do you have lore about a legendary battle where two fighters simultaneously killed each other, but a turn based rule set that prevents attacks from being simultaneous? Do you ever encounter monsters in a dungeon, and have no idea how those monsters live/eat/defecate while being locked in a 30'x30' room for years? When the lore, the situation, and the game rules disagree, which one do you change? How much detail can you handwave away before you care?