Why do RPGs have rules?

[FormerlyHemlock]

There are rules that do that, but that's not why RPGs have rules. I really, really doubt that outside a small handful of times(at best), designers have sat down and said to themselves, "Let's figure out who is allowed to say what in respect of what happens next in the shared fiction and then make rules to match that."

Rules are there to provide structure to the game and avoid Calvinball, allowing the group to have more enjoyment out of the game. What kind of enjoyment you seek will determine which RPGs appeal to you the most.

Yeah, (most) rules are less about what you can say, more about what the universe says back to you.

There are some exceptions, e.g. taking turns in Monopoly or in 5E round-robin initiative are restrictions on when you're allowed to talk. (I hate round robin initiative because it's an unnecessary and unpleasant restriction--it shouldn't matter when you talk, it should only matter when the universe talks back to you.)

 

[deleuzian_kernel]

There are rules that do that, but that's not why RPGs have rules. I really, really doubt that outside a small handful of times(at best), designers have sat down and said to themselves, "Let's figure out who is allowed to say what in respect of what happens next in the shared fiction and then make rules to match that."

I don't know about this! I think a lot of modern mainstream design suffers precisely because there is not enough of this, despite it being something fundamental to anyone who has at least a mild exposure to formal user experience design.

Some of the greatest and most well regarded designers do actually design with this type of orientation. Ron Edwards in Sorcerer, Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World, Robin D. Laws in Hillfolk, Jason Morningstar, John Harper, Luke Crane, Avery Adler. I would say an entire school of design follows that tradition, clearly descendant of a specific foundational moment in RPG design.

 

[Maxperson]

I would argue that rules are there primarily to say "No" to players, and secondarily to make it somewhat more predictable to players when the universe will say "No."

If the universe never says no, then you don't need rules. "I turn into a unicorn" is valid, and so is "I cut off the giant's head" and "I bring the giant back to life." Kids play games like this all the time.

You can have a GM whose job is to arbitrarily say "No" to certain things ("No, you miss", "No, you can't cut through the giant's neck", "No, the giant doesn't come back to life") but having rules that are knowable to the players at least to some extent make the game more navigable and usually more fun. "Resurrection spells can bring things back to life, but it's a 7th level spell, and the GM reserves the right to declare that some deaths are irreversible."

Combat results in particular are no fun without rules. "No, you miss" just feels arbitrary.

I think this is close, but not exactly on point. The rule are not there primarily to say no, but are there to constrain. For example, in D&D you are only one race. This isn't a rule to say no to players who want to play more than one race, but rather a constraint that aligns with the designers vision of a game where like the real world, you are one race. It's the same with clerics getting divine spells, divine spells being a thing and so on.

That's not to say that there are no rules that exist to say no to a player, but those are not the primary or even secondary purpose of the existence of rules.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't know about this! I think a lot of modern mainstream design suffers precisely because there is not enough of this, despite it being something fundamental to anyone who has at least a mild exposure to formal user experience design. I

Some of the greatest and most well regarded designers do actually design with this type of orientation. Ron Edwards in Sorcerer, Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World, Robin D. Laws in Hillfolk, Jason Morningstar, John Harper, Luke Crane, Avery Adler. I would say an entire school of design follows that tradition, clearly descendant of a specific foundational moment in RPG design.

+1, Hillfolk is worth learning and playing a few games of just for how it will affect your GMing in general.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't know about this! I think a lot of modern mainstream design suffers precisely because there is not enough of this, despite it being something fundamental to anyone who has at least a mild exposure to formal user experience design.

Some of the greatest and most well regarded designers do actually design with this type of orientation. Ron Edwards in Sorcerer, Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World, Robin D. Laws in Hillfolk, Jason Morningstar, John Harper, Luke Crane, Avery Adler. I would say an entire school of design follows that tradition, clearly descendant of a specific foundational moment in RPG design.

I tend to think that it's more along the lines of "Let's design a player facing game with a feel of X" or "Let's design a traditional game with a feel of Y" and then rules are created to match that. The rules created will necessarily involve who is allowed to say what in respect to the fiction, but I don't think that's the goal of the design.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think this is close, but not exactly on point. The rule are not there primarily to say no, but are there to constrain. For example, in D&D you are only one race. This isn't a rule to say no to players who want to play more than one race, but rather a constraint that aligns with the designers vision of a game where like the real world, you are one race. It's the same with clerics getting divine spells, divine spells being a thing and so on.

That's not to say that there are no rules that exist to say no to a player, but those are not the primary or even secondary purpose of the existence of rules.

Hmmm. I don't see the distinction you're drawing. For one thing, AFAIR there is no rule in 5E that says "you can only be one race." People just naturally conclude that being 80% ogre, 50% dwarf, and 100% elven is nonsensical, so they don't try to do it and no one ever has to say no.

It's kind of similar to how there is no rule in Tic Tac Toe that you can't bore your opponent into quitting by taking hours to make your X or O. If you do it, people won't want to play with you, but they also won't say you're "breaking the rules." They'll just say you're unsportsmanlike and/or a jerk. No rules needed.

 

[Maxperson]

Hmmm. I don't see the distinction you're drawing. For one thing, AFAIR there is no rule in 5E that says "you can only be one race." People just naturally conclude that being 80% ogre, 50% dwarf, and 100% elven is nonsensical, so they don't try to do it and no one ever has to say no.

The rules is that you pick A race.

"Every character belongs to a race, one of the many intelligent humanoid species in the D&D world." - PHB page 11.

The distinction is that a constraint isn't there for the purpose of saying no. A constraint is an aid to game play and RPG game constraints are there to provide fun. Saying no is more combative and carries with it a more negative connotation. Even games with a "Say yes whenever you can." philosophy still provide tons and tons of constraints.

It's kind of similar to how there is no rule in Tic Tac Toe that you can't bore your opponent into quitting by taking hours to make your X or O. If you do it, people won't want to play with you, but they also won't say you're "breaking the rules." They'll just say you're unsportsmanlike and/or a jerk. No rules needed.

That's still a rule violation. It's just a violation of the Social Contract rules. There's an expectation provided in the social contract that conduct will be sportsmanlike and don't be a jerk.

 

[deleuzian_kernel]

I tend to think that it's more along the lines of "Let's design a player facing game with a feel of X" or "Let's design a traditional game with a feel of Y" and then rules are created to match that. The rules created will necessarily involve who is allowed to say what in respect to the fiction, but I don't think that's the goal of the design.

I think that when you unpack "player facing game" or "traditional game" you reveal the very explicit design choices that are necessary to produce the specific kind of gameplay these two types produce. Who is allowed to say what in respect to the fiction is not a goal, but a necessary foundation. Without this foundation we run into Murk.

 

[Clint_L]

I keep thinking about why having tons of rules can be fun even when it seems like bad design, and particularly in the context of character building. I used to play World of Warcraft pretty heavily, and when Cataclysm, the 4th expansion, came out, they heavily revised character progression, so that instead of a ton of options, many of which you built up incrementally level after level (options like "add +1% to crit chance), they switched to far fewer but more meaningful options (supposedly), so around every 10 levels you would add something that was a real choice.

This was far more logical and elegant, from a design perspective. It was also a disaster. Characters became more homogenous than ever, and levelling became way less fun. Having all those options and making choices more often, even though most of them were barely real options or choices, was much more satisfying for most players. We like tinkering with our characters and getting intermittent, incremental rewards. D&D-style games (super rule-heavy games) are not very well designed for creating a great role-playing experience in terms of at-table story - it happens, but mostly because of great DMs. However, I think all the rules do an amazing job of providing an intense role-playing experience outside of the gaming table, in the heads of the players. They get players obsessing about their characters in a way that is very difficult to quantify, yet most of us have probably experienced.

I've speculated elsewhere that there are some deep psychological/brain process things that Arneson, Gygax and co. sort of accidentally discovered how to poke at. I think the rules are their stick.

TLDR: I think that D&D rules are not just rules to facilitate a game, I think to a significant degree they are the game.

Edit: Thinking about McLuhan now, and his classic argument that content was often secondary to the medium. If the rules of D&D are the medium and the games are the message, then it might be the nature of the rules themselves that is significantly impacting our behaviours.

 

[Clint_L]

Following up: and I think this can be very frustrating to folks who are looking at this from a design perspective, because the behaviour seems illogical. If the point of the game is to produce a great shared storytelling experience, then the design of D&D could be (and has been) improved in so many ways. But I don't think that's really what the game is about. Or not all of it - not even close.

Or, you know, I'm totally wrong and just spinning in circles. One of my problems is that I tend to think like a scientist (e.g. observe a phenomenon and try to hypothesize) but I'm trained in the humanities (with a bit of biology) and my math kind of sucks. Maybe I married a scientist to try to make up for my shortcomings.