What are the rules for?

[Thomas Shey]

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?

I don't think your first line here is, in fact, true, at least the same way rules are. Most of that tends to tell you about output result in broad strokes, not likelihood or process, at least in any way that will reliably mean the same thing to everyone involved.

 

[Pedantic]

Humorously, you are again conflating two things. I didn't say reading the rules was fun. I was answering the question: What are the rules for? Fun. The rules are for fun. Why are they fun? How do the rules provide fun? What is fun? These are all different questions. It's not clear what you aim to discuss.

I agree broadly with your perspective, but I think "fun" is a little reductive here, or maybe should be better understood as shorthand for something more complex like "having a specific ludic experience." The rules produce something in players who use them, and that thing is experientially interesting (and/or possibly unique) and aesthetically valuable; ideally, it's some experiential state that can only exist because of the game's constituents.

 

[mmadsen]

Most of that tends to tell you about output result in broad strokes, not likelihood or process, at least in any way that will reliably mean the same thing to everyone involved.

Yes, this is getting at what separates many of the rules with mechanics from not-quite-rules about how the world works, the kind of knowledge characters in the game world could discuss.

 

[mmadsen]

When people have differing understandings of the situation.

We actually don’t rely on rules for a lot of that. The canonical example would be a map.

 

[soviet]

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?

But isn't the impact of non-rule lore significantly gated by the GM?

 

[Deset Gled]

But isn't the impact of non-rule lore significantly gated by the GM?

In D&D? Yes. In FKR? No. In everything in between?

I agree broadly with your perspective, but I think "fun" is a little reductive here, or maybe should be better understood as shorthand for something more complex like "having a specific ludic experience." The rules produce something in players who use them, and that thing is experientially interesting (and/or possibly unique) and aesthetically valuable; ideally, it's some experiential state that can only exist because of the game's constituents.

Oh, I'd say boiling the whole thing down to "fun" is a lot reductive.

But IMNSHO, it's also a factor that can easily get forgotten in game theory discussions. There are a lot of cromulent answers, like communication, agency, process, and <insert jargon here>. But going too far down the rabbit holes of those elements can quickly make people lose sight of the bigger picture. Which is that we play RPGs for fun. So I view it as a critical point that needs to be referred back to fairly often.

 

[A_Carrington]

We actually don’t rely on rules for a lot of that. The canonical example would be a map.

A map is part of the rules. It is a set of rules that determines where objects, people, and terrain features are in relation to each other. Rules need not be written in a book. They can be communicated in an infinite number of ways. Anything that assists the participants in imagining the same situation in the same way is a rule. Even a description of what a character is wearing is a rule. Most rules are social or descriptive, not mathematical.

 

[aramis erak]

But isn't the impact of non-rule lore significantly gated by the GM?

In FKR, it depends upon the agreed conventions. And the GM's honesty.
In most RPGs, largely, tho' I've had players using lore I didn't know a whit about to shape their decisions in D&DAL...

 

[mmadsen]

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.

I hadn’t shared the excerpt about randomized combat results when you shared your story, but this is a good example of how randomization is definitely important — the most likely outcome does not always happen — but intricate rules are not the only way to introduce random outcomes.

 

[500 Toads]

I don't think your first line here is, in fact, true, at least the same way rules are. Most of that tends to tell you about output result in broad strokes, not likelihood or process, at least in any way that will reliably mean the same thing to everyone involved.

nods For instance, a narrative example (rather than an action-by-action play) of a dragon soaring through the sky and occasionally unleashing a gout of flame is unlikely to allow one to deduce how quickly it flies, how often it can breathe fire, or the area of effect or the precise lethality of its flame breath. Arrows and spears may bounce off its scales, but is it merely unlikely or literally impossible for a mundane projectile to have a meaningful impact on it? And so forth.

If one is running a system that abhors the very notion of combat as a subsystem and prefers to reduce the entire scene to a single die roll or two based on preferred drama, estimated task difficulty, and some narrative metacurrency -- such details may not be important.

But if not, and if players are expected to make more granular, tactical decisions; well, it's best if both the players and the GM have consistent visions of how such things work. It's unlikely to be a good time if there are frequent arguments as to how likely it is that an AoE spell would be able to catch certain targets while being positioned as to spare others, or whether it should be harder to cast a spell while struggling to avoid being grabbed by some tentacled horror, or whether wounds should have lasting effects, or who should have the right to act first in a situation where turn order matters -- never mind more extreme situations, such as if a player seems to want this character to have movie-protagonist plot armor and competencies while a GM wants to run a more grounded game.