Why do RPGs have rules?

[AbdulAlhazred]

"Play to find out" falls into this same category - it neither specifically allows nor disallows anything and thus is not a rule: it's a guideline.

I agree, but its "all of a piece" so to speak. Any one bit is fairly insignificant, or looks like nothing but guidance, until you put the entire thing together and then we see that "Play to find out" as an agenda has a huge impact on, and colors, all the things it is packaged along with. My character, Meda, has a motivating personal history, her father is missing. Will she find him? Play to find out! Will she abandon the search when it starts to bear fruit in order to satisfy her curiosity, or maybe to save Stonetop, or her friends? Play to find out! The GM doesn't know, the players don't know, the PCs sure don't know. But I know that, in keeping with that agenda item, the GM will say things that are unwelcome to Meda and put pressure of the sorts I just speculated about, or others, on that point. We will find out, is Meda a faithful devoted daughter? Is she going to put the village ahead of finding him?

And note, I GUARANTEE you, he's not just going to randomly show back up on his own, nor is he going to be revealed to be dead, etc. I mean, those things are technically possible IF they comport with the filling of the character's lives with adventure, etc. in some way, but there will be no easy victories, any such reappearance is sure to come with serious strings attached. I may well be asked to help decide what those are, but you can be sure the GM will have a big say too.

 

[innerdude]

Can you say how assigning authority is not who gets to say what?

"Who gets to say what" is slightly different from "who or what decides if what was just said is now true in the fictional game state."

Consider a game where other players were authorized to make action declarations for your character. (Not saying it's a game you or I would play, but that it's entirely possible. I've seen games like this, where you declare the action taken by other participants. The FFG card game Citadel being a partial example.)

Authority to make declarations doesn't change the fact that someone still has to determine if the declarations themselves are valid---i.e., have meaningfully changed the fictional state, with or without processing the declaration through a rules paradigm.

 

[clearstream]

Under most game texts players are active here, describing what their characters do in a situation that they grasp. Under some texts they will say what rule their act falls within the scope of. In many cases game texts will set the target for success.

None of that is at odds with failure without setback. Here a GM need say nothing at all, but as referee encourage the upholding and carrying through of the lusory attitude. Perhaps explaining the lusory means - pointing to the rule.

The concern of yours that I have quoted does not turn on inclusion or otherwise of failure without setback.

This said, flat failure can act to derail story much as called out in @andreszarta's third paragraph in #1646. Not because it imposes GM's version of events, but because no one's version is made to prevail.

In that sense, @pemerton's concerns about the player experience are right. Even though I would separate it out from whether the play is that in which GM's decides the fiction. Acknowledged that historically it has very often accompanied that sort of play... it's actually deprioritising of stories players have in mind that it drives. Making it unsuitable for play prioritising player character stories.

How is failure-with-setback any different? In many cases it's exactly where GM does add twists to the fiction. If that is not to also derail player stories there must be a principle relating the setbacks to such stories. Flat failure obviously lacks the resources to relate to anything. In the face of flat failure, stories crumble. GM stories are not typically subject to die rolls so wind up prevailing just by default... which is suitable for modes in which that's intended.

In this case I change my mind on

I think it is obvious why this sort of RPGing is experienced by many participants as centring the GM's conception of the fictional situation.

and am in agreement that it could be experienced exactly that way by many participants. One route away from that is to let the chips fall as they may on all sides, i.e. ensure that any stories on GM's side are equally subject to flat failure. The BBEG rolls to see if they draw the army of darkness to their side.... nope, that fails. That kind of roll can play a part in play prioritising gamism and simulationism.

 

[clearstream]

"Who gets to say what" is slightly different from "who or what decides if what was just said is now true in the fictional game state."

Baker

if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention. Live negotiation and honest collaboration are almost certainly better. . .

My take away from what was quoted in the OP is that "who or what decides if what was just said is now true in the fictional game state" isn't a nothing, but it's also not the focus. The focus is securing that "what was just said" should include "the unwelcome and the unwanted".

I believe our quibble here arises from a parsing of my "who gets to say what" as deconstructible. So yes, Baker focuses on "who", and he focuses on "what" (that being the unwelcome and the unwanted.) Even deconstructed, if there were a sole focus it should be on the latter, not the former, unless it is also read that the focus is on the who-and-the-what. I didn't anticipate that construal. As I said, of the who and the what, I took away from the OP a focus on the what.

 

[pemerton]

It is possible to design rules so that they generate a certain sort of phenomenon, although no one is obliged, in applying the rule, to have regard to the phenomenon in question. A classic discussion of this possibility is Rawls's Two Concepts of Rules.

Here is a rule that addresses who has to say what in a RPG (it is not, on its own, a complete statement of rules for a RPG):

If a player declares an action for their PC, and then makes a roll to determine the outcome of that action declaration, and the roll fails, the GM must say something about what happens next, and the thing that the GM says must clearly defeat or set back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC.​

(Some readers may recognise that this is a rule from the RPG Burning Wheel.)

This rule does not speak about "the unwelcome and unwanted". It talks about some particular player hopes, and the relationship to them of fiction that a different participant is obliged to narrate. Nevertheless, following this rule, in conjunction with some other appropriate rules, will make the unwanted and unexpected a part of play.

 

[pemerton]

Can you say how assigning authority is not who gets to say what?

Assigning authority is necessary to establish who gets to say what. It is not sufficient. This is why Apocalypse World spends only a few sentences on assigning authority to the MC (over everything that is not assigned to the players - ie everything except (i) what PCs say, undertake to do, think and feel, and (ii) answers to the questions the MC poses to the players), but spends many many pages on what the MC is obliged to say when they exercise the authority that they have been given (this is elaborated in detail in discussions of player-side moves, the agenda, the principles, the GM-side moves, the discussion of fronts, and probably other places too that I'm not remembering at the moment).

EDIT:

As per the OP, Baker says

Some very good designers consider the assignment of authority to be the point of rpg design. I do not.

As a designer, it's my job to make as sure as possible that the game won't break down into moment-to-moment negotiations about raw assent despite the game's rules and the players' upfront commitment to them. But the brute assignment of authority is NOT how to accomplish that.

When my games assign authority they do so in strict service to what I consider the real point: setting expectations and granting permission.​

Why are games prone to breaking down into moment-to-moment negotiations, despite upfront commitment to rules? Because the rules are adopted purely voluntarily, and hence can be set aside at any time!

And "brute" assignments of authority - you get to say what your PC tries to do, while you other get to say what happens in the setting - won't avoid that risk. If anything, as I noted upthread, they are prone to exacerbate it: there's a reason why conflicts over GM authority are a recurrent feature of RPGs like many approaches to D&D that deal with authority primarily in this fashion.

By setting expectations about how authority will be used, where those expectations are acceptable, rules help ensure that they will be followed. And one way to set expectations is to grant permissions - ie permissions to say things that might not be said in a purely negotiated environment. We can see this in BW: If I succeed on my roll, intent and task become part of the fiction; but if I fail, you - the GM - get to narrate something about how my goals for my PC are defeated or set back.

The GM is conferred a clear permission to narrate horrible things about what befalls the player's PC, but that permission is gated behind a mechanism which also generates an expectation about when the player gets to establish truths about the fiction that are good for their PC. This in turn makes the player accept that when the GM gets their turn, what they say is OK.

This is extremely different from (eg) how @Micah Sweet, @Maxperson and you have characterised "trad" or "immersionist" play in this thread.

 

[clearstream]

If a player declares an action for their PC, and then makes a roll to determine the outcome of that action declaration, and the roll fails, the GM must say something about what happens next, and the thing that the GM says must clearly defeat or set back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC.

Just to check, do you mean "must clearly not defeat or set back"?

I ask because "defeat" could be taken to imply a flat negative, which I think BW rules out.

 

[clearstream]

Assigning authority is necessary to establish who gets to say what. It is not sufficient. This is why Apocalypse World spends only a few sentences on assigning authority to the MC (over everything that is not assigned to the players - ie everything except (i) what PCs say, undertake to do, think and feel, and (ii) answers to the questions the MC poses to the players), but spends many many pages on what the MC is obliged to say when they exercise the authority that they have been given (this is elaborated in detail in discussions of player-side moves, the agenda, the principles, the GM-side moves, the discussion of fronts, and probably other places too that I'm not remembering at the moment).

Right, so my meaning then was that in the text you quoted in your OP, it seemed to me Baker is directing focus more toward the what than the who. Does that track for you?

 

[pemerton]

Just to check, do you mean "must clearly not defeat or set back"?

I ask because "defeat" could be taken to imply a flat negative, which I think BW rules out.

It must defeat the players' goal. For instance, if their goal is to get safely through the door, that must be defeated. Failure of task may or may not be part of this.

Nothing happens probably doesn't count as saying something about what happens next ("nothing" is something of a degenerate case) and it also doesn't defeat a goal. Hence it is not an acceptable narration.

 

[clearstream]

It is possible to design rules so that they generate a certain sort of phenomenon, although no one is obliged, in applying the rule, to have regard to the phenomenon in question. A classic discussion of this possibility is Rawls's Two Concepts of Rules.

Here is a rule that addresses who has to say what in a RPG (it is not, on its own, a complete statement of rules for a RPG):

If a player declares an action for their PC, and then makes a roll to determine the outcome of that action declaration, and the roll fails, the GM must say something about what happens next, and the thing that the GM says must clearly defeat or set back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC.​

(Some readers may recognise that this is a rule from the RPG Burning Wheel.)

This rule does not speak about "the unwelcome and unwanted". It talks about some particular player hopes, and the relationship to them of fiction that a different participant is obliged to narrate. Nevertheless, following this rule, in conjunction with some other appropriate rules, will make the unwanted and unexpected a part of play.

I see this rule as deconstructible, like this

If a player declares an action for their PC, and then makes a roll to determine the outcome of that action declaration, and the roll fails,
So this fits what I have loosely called "description" (I acknowledge a burden to find a better term.) What did we hear and see? It should be called attention to that at least one other rule is implied here. I don't think that is of importance to the discussion at hand. If it is, we can pick it up later.

the GM must say something about what happens next,
Where the description matches the rule it invokes it: functionally, GM must now say something about what happens next

and the thing that the GM says must clearly defeat or set back the goal the player was hoping the action would achieve for their PC.
The rule will fail if the description does not include the goal the player is hoping to achieve. Therefore it applies that criterion retroactively to secure that the description contains a goal. You can see how that could go in play. With that in place, the rule supplies an explicit statement relating to fitting consequences: if whatever GM says does not defeat or setback the goal, then they have failed to choose a consequence that fits.

I can make the assumption that defeat or setback is unwanted, given that the rule solicited player goal and one assumes goals are things that players want, while defeat of goals is something they don't want. If that assumption is a good one, then this rule alone is an appropriate lusory means that can secure the unwelcome and the unwanted. Suppose that defeat did not debar further attempts? In that case the unwanted will come down to inefficient means (I have to spend an hour when I wanted to spend a minute, or perhaps must pay the costs all over again.)

There's more that can be said, but this seems like a good place to pause and take stock.