Why do RPGs have rules?

[Maxperson]

Right. This is why, quite a way upthread, I asked @Maxperson on what basis he could say that the lightning bolt in my Torchbearer game wasn't a simulation.

Because he was wrong about his statement. It does not include any and all play.

And I quite literally told you upthread that if you had established prior to play that lightning in that game can split a house in two, then it wouldn't be unrealistic for that game. You didn't, so it wasn't realistic. Without that prior establishment, realism/simulation looks to the real world versions for understanding and the real world lightning bolt can't split a house in two.

 

[chaochou]

So 'simulation' is whatever has been established about how 'the world' works prior to play. And the only person empowered to establish facts about how the world works prior to play is the GM.

In other words - as I've said previously many times - Sim is a fake cover for 'GM says' where they appeal to their own authority. It's just the GM trying to hide their authorship of the fiction behind 'this is what would happen' while leaving the 'because that's what I arbitrarily decided' unstated.

 

[clearstream]

And I quite literally told you upthread that if you had established prior to play that lightning in that game can split a house in two, then it wouldn't be unrealistic for that game.

That would fit into having a shared theory about the world, in this case about the strength of lightning. What I called a "plausibility" component of the simulationist principle.

You didn't, so it wasn't realistic. Without that prior establishment, realism/simulation looks to the real world versions for understanding and the real world lightning bolt can't split a house in two.

In the absence of the shared theory, it would fall back onto mapping its features to real world examples of lightning. The second of the three components. Seeing as real world lightning doesn't split houses in twain, it ought not to here. In the absence of a game-world specific theory, any shared theory about real world lightning should also apply (and I'm assuming also rule it out.)

I outline the above as an exercise in the application of the simulationist principle as I constructed it. It would chime with your intuitions in this case.

 

[pemerton]

According to Gygax's DMG (p 110) a wooden building has 8 to 16 defensive points. Page 109 tells us that, against wood, a lightning bolt does 0.5 points of damage per caster level. Page 133 further mentions that magical staves "function at the 8th level of magic-use, i.e. their spell discharge is that of an 8th level of experience magic-user with respect to range, duration, area of effect" and "Damage is nominally 8d6 with respect to fireballs, lightning bolts, etc."

So a lightning bolt from a magical staff (eg a Staff of the Magi or Staff of Power) does 4 points of damage, which is half the defensive points of a small and dilapidated wooding building.

Torchbearer is deliberately intended to emulate classic D&D.

So how, by playing Torchbearer, is it not established, in advance of play, that a magically-induced lightning bolt might destroy part of a house?

 

[clearstream]

in my last session of Torchbearer, my final bit of narration for the session was to describe a bolt of lightning blasting the house the PCs were in, blasting it in two.

That's not a simulation either. I just made it up!

So how, by playing Torchbearer, is it not established, in advance of play, that a magically-induced lightning bolt might destroy part of a house?

To me "blasting it in two" implies that 8 of 8 hit points were dealt. Whether that's right, this does reveal that simulationism applies to world facts collectively, and on an ongoing basis. The test isn't will one nominated world fact stand up in isolation? It's will they consistently stand up?

If the nominated world fact turns out to have come from an internalisation of simulationist rules, and that goes on to apply consistently, then I think you can certainly argue that simulationism is being done. The debate at hand becomes a process of sharing and ironing out references and theories.

I understood you to be ruling that out though, in your earlier post.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Because he was wrong about his statement. It does not include any and all play.

And I quite literally told you upthread that if you had established prior to play that lightning in that game can split a house in two, then it wouldn't be unrealistic for that game. You didn't, so it wasn't realistic. Without that prior establishment, realism/simulation looks to the real world versions for understanding and the real world lightning bolt can't split a house in two.

You said that Tolkien was simulating geology because he decided that archangels sang the world into existence.

In RPG terms, this would mean anything the GM decides is true has been simulated, no? Which, said another way, is that sim is whatever the GM decides. Which is pretty much what those who disagree with you have been saying.

So what are you even trying to say at this point?

And now you’re adding that it all has to be established ahead of time? If that’s true, then how is anything a simulation? Do you and your players sit down and review the properties of lightning and fire and wind and the many, many other things that may need some form of mechanical expression in an RPG?

 

[Autumnal]

Tolkien explained in a letter to W.H. Auden in 1955 that he wasn’t a simulationist as discussed here:

“ you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.”

 

[robertsconley]

In other words - as I've said previously many times - Sim is a fake cover for 'GM says' where they appeal to their own authority. It's just the GM trying to hide their authorship of the fiction behind 'this is what would happen' while leaving the 'because that's what I arbitrarily decided' unstated.

I am responsible for making up the details of the village of Kensla a medieval village in my Scourge of the Demon Wolf. Or the Woodford Abbey in Deceits of the Russet Lord. So that part is arbitrary.

But I based everything on how medieval villages worked and how interpersonal relationships between humans work. A player who has never experienced my campaigns played my rules, or read the adventure can use their knowledge of both to get further ahead in the adventure than they otherwise would.

Coupled with how my rules work, I am not in the business of making arbitrary decisions in my rulings. I make consistent rulings. Also I will

This is the essence of what good simulationism means. Because things work in the campaign as they do in life, players can use their knowledge to make meaningful accurate choices at the expected odds (when the outcome is uncertain).

This also allows you to playtest. By gauging the reaction of the players to the rules, characters, and situations that suppose to be simulate some aspect of life.

Finally, you don't need to account for everything to the nth level of detail to make simulationism work. In my experience, there is a sweet place between details and playability that is more than good enough.

I made this work this way dozens of time using GURPS, and OD&D and system whose complexity sit in between the two. Under the worst conditions, strangers showing up at my convention games who don't know me, the setting I use, or how I run campaigns.

Last fall at Shire Con 2022, I had two players show up who didn't know my rules but liked to play Harnmaster, and other medieval RPGs. With their help, the party was able to resolve the adventure in record time mostly through roleplaying.

Some images from that game.

We can talk theory and design philosophies all we want but at the end of the day what matters is what happens at the table and what happens at the end.

 

[pemerton]

I based everything on how medieval villages worked and how interpersonal relationships between humans work.

So suppose, as a player, I am more expert in these things than you - who I think upthread identified your profession as software engineer rather than historian, social psychologist, anthropologist or some other sort of expert in village life and human relationships and interactions - do I get to have a say?

To elaborate: in this essay the historian Inga Clendinnen criticises historical novelists for projection, and discusses the difference between imaginative projection of the sort that novelists use and the attempt to come to grips with the realities of other times and places that underpins historical inquiry. She points to elements of her own research - on the attitude of Aztec women to the likely fate of their children; and on the attitude towards death of late eighteenth century sailors - as demonstrations of the differences of outlook and understanding and interpretations of human life that have existed over the course of human history and human society.

Inga Clendinnen is now dead. But I would expect a "story now" RPG GMed by someone with her historical knowledge and scope of historical and anthropological imagination would outstrip, in its "realism", anything invented by the typical GM of a FRPG.

It's hard to know where to start with the unrealities of FPRG depictions of mediaeval villages and interpersonal relationships. One of the more striking is the way they utterly fail to grapple with the role of religion in ordinary life.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Many here have said that among them would be rules that serve as a good enough model or means of approximation. Supposing you reject such rules, what do you have to replace them?

Is it right to say that actually you accept them and it is characterising them as simulation that you resist? I don't know that we even need to settle the matter of how we characterise them if they turn out to be what we would mutually be using.

Honestly? I don't have a ton of problem with the sort of rules that I would call 'simulationist', but that's because they are simply basic handling of consistency and predictability. So 4e has a falling damage rule, which is fine, its a narrativist game (at least as I play it) but it also pays pretty close attention to mechanical integrity as a mechanism of stakes setting. So, the idea that paragon cliffs are going to be, say 50'+ drops and that will do 5d6 damage is fine. We all know what it means to be messing around with taking a fall at 15th level, the damage will certainly not kill you, but it won't be completely trivial either (15th level PCs probably have in the ballpark of 100 hit points).

Now, in Dungeon World such a rule probably wouldn't really be needed. It might actually work, but the GM is likely already going to assess a reasonable amount of damage based on the degree of hazard, which is again probably tied loosely to character level. DW hit points don't go up a lot, but they do increase somewhat. So DW rules definitely don't mention things like physical rules that relate to fiction such as D&D-esque falling damage. OTOH if you fall 100' the GM is going to basically say "hard move, you crash to the rocks 100' below and your body is broken, you are now at Death's Door..." That seems realistic ENOUGH, but has no 'sim' character to it.

So, I would say DW replaced rules related to handling physical reality with a concept of dramatic events which includes a sense of realism as a component, but not one that is particularly tied to specific mechanical subsystems like 'falling damage'.