Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

I can only speak for myself, but I have never been very big on speed. I like systems that move quickly, but I am happy to stop and explain things or let players ask questions.

I'm not talking about resolution handling time. I'm talking about how much the fictional situation changes per "unit" of play.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not talking about resolution handling time. I'm talking about how much the fictional situation changes per "unit" of play.

I am not sure what you mean

 

[Maxperson]

I agree that different approaches to invention will produce different things.

My assertion is that this doesn't stop them being inventions and (in our current context) works of imagination.

To present a stark example: I can build my Lego spaceport based on ideas about what looks cool (having just watched Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever); or based on my ideas about what would make sense in a spaceport (say, fuel tanks, launch pads, etc). The two things I'm making up might end up looking different. But they're still both things that I made up! (Given that everything I know about space travel I learned from reading some popular histories, a bit of Wikipedia, and watching movies.)

You keep overlooking facts and reason, though. Your assertion that it's pure invention is only accurate if someone knows literally nothing about Rome other than the name. If I know a fair amount about Julius Caesar, his senate and the Rome of his day, I can make an educated guess as to what a counterfactual Rome would look like. I have facts and reason to base my version on. That Professor Roman McKnowsromewell has a very deep knowledge of that time can make a better counterfactual Rome since his guess is more educated that mine, doesn't suddenly make mine based on pure invention.

Yes mine would have invention in it, and so would the professor's. That doesn't make it pure invention.

 

[pemerton]

If I know a fair amount about Julius Caesar, his senate and the Rome of his day, I can make an educated guess as to what a counterfactual Rome would look like. I have facts and reason to base my version on.

You will incorporate facts, yes, and think about them and draw inferences from them. Invention can be reasoned: it often is.

And it will be counterfactual in the sense of "contrary to fact".

But not counterfactual in the sense of "had the match not been struck, the fire wouldn't have been lit".

 

[pemerton]

I am not sure what you mean

To give a toy example: suppose that every time the PCs speak to a NPC, the GM recalibrates the whole fictional situation (including behind the scenes) in response. So that every time the players learn something about an element in the fiction, its relationship to all the other elements is already changing. In that case, it seems to me that the players could never "catch up" with the setting.

Working out how to pace the change of the setting, in light of PC actions and the way players can gain knowledge of and leverage over the setting from those actions, seems like a pretty important issue for a "living world" GM.

 

[Maxperson]

You will incorporate facts, yes, and think about them and draw inferences from them. Invention can be reasoned: it often is.

And it will be counterfactual in the sense of "contrary to fact".

But not counterfactual in the sense of "had the match not been struck, the fire wouldn't have been lit".

When it comes to a counterfactual Rome, even the most highly educated individual regarding ancient Rome couldn't do the bolded. It will all simply incorporate fact and be counterfactual in the sense of "contrary to fact."

"If Rome didn't have gladiatorial combat, then X" or "Had Julius Caesar not been assassinated, then X" is all going to be guess work no matter how educated you are. The more educated individual simply has a greater chance of something similar to his counterfactual invention having occurred under those circumstances.

Not all counterfactual thinking has to be as clear cut as, "If I didn't drink the scalding hot coffee, my tongue wouldn't have been burnt." It can also be thinking about a possible alternate ending to an event or events.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To give a toy example: suppose that every time the PCs speak to a NPC, the GM recalibrates the whole fictional situation (including behind the scenes) in response. So that every time the players learn something about an element in the fiction, its relationship to all the other elements is already changing. In that case, it seems to me that the players could never "catch up" with the setting.

I am still not sure I follow what aspects of play you are talking about. But I would say I am not really changing anything, except stuff that is obviously in play (i.e. as the players are speaking to the Duke, his brother might be plotting to attack their camp but doesn't realize the PCs know this and is walking into a trap----and it is always possible something they say tips off the Duke and he makes a gesture to alter the plans). But I wouldn't be doing things like radically alter details about the duke. I may add elements as they come up-----for instance if the players ask the duke about his son's hobby's, I may have to extrapolate and invent there.

Working out how to pace the change of the setting, in light of PC actions and the way players can gain knowledge of and leverage over the setting from those actions, seems like a pretty important issue for a "living world" GM.

I am still not sure I am following your language. But this is why I mentioned things like tracking movement or at least binding NPCs to the same kinds of physical limits other characters would be bound by (i.e. it takes three hours for the Duke's brother to reach the players camp, it takes the Duke's messenger 2 hours to reach the duke------figuring out if the Duke's messenger reaches the duke's brother in time may come down on my end to a Survival roll). Again it isn't about the players having an absolute understanding of their chances of success or failure, or knowing exactly what procedure will be used, but presenting the world in a way, running it in a way, that they can make basic assumptions about how it works, and you in turn make a good faith effort to achieve that (and once in a while you have a conversation to make sure people are all on the same page).

 

[robertsconley]

I am still not sure I follow what aspects of play you are talking about.

But I would say I am not really changing anything, except stuff that is obviously in play (i.e. as the players are speaking to the Duke, his brother might be plotting to attack their camp but doesn't realize the PCs know this and is walking into a trap----and it is always possible something they say tips off the Duke and he makes a gesture to alter the plans). But I wouldn't be doing things like radically alter details about the duke. I may add elements as they come up-----for instance if the players ask the duke about his son's hobby's, I may have to extrapolate and invent there.

I find that players when dealing with complex social situations fall into pretty much into the same range as what happens in life. Some are able to readily "get it". Most get enough if they care. The remainder don't give a naughty word to begin with, and just deal with the circumstances with snap judgment when it comes up.

The thing about sandbox campaign and living worlds, is that the players don't have to do anything specific as their characters to keep the campaign moving. There is no "narrative" penalty if they choose to ignore the civil war raging around them. Which has happened in my campaign. And if something they don't like starts to intrude on their character's lives they will take active measures to avoid it. Then pursue what they are really interested in.

It happened in the campaign I just ran. The Viking Prince's player really didn't give a naughty word about his throne and the politics of his homeland. But he had a good relationship with his family who were also exiled in City-State along with him. At periodic intervals, his aunt would rebuke him occasionally for not doing more but the player as his character ignored it in pursuit of an arena career. And his relationships with his aunt, sisters and other family members was overall positive although he had to rescue his sister from a blood cult that she foolishly joined.

And that was the state of affairs up until the point the Viking Prince won some fame as a arena fighter and his Uncle and rival to the throne decided to take care of him and his aunt permanently. Then the player started to get up to speed and be proactive about reclaiming his throne which led him to the incident I relayed earlier in the thread.

 

[pemerton]

I am still not sure I follow what aspects of play you are talking about.

<snip>

I am still not sure I am following your language.

I'm thinking along these lines:

It's a "living world". That means that, from time to time, the GM "updates" or "evolves" the fiction - that's the "living" part, right?

Some of those updates are responses to things the players have their PCs do - I think that's pretty key to the approach. Some of those updates are independent of the players and the PCs - eg the GM has a default "timeline" unfolding, or periodically rolls for random events, or whatever.

Suppose that the players typically need X actions to work out the nature of some element of the fiction, and its relationship to other elements (eg they might have to talk to a person, track down a rumour, inspect a building, and cast a spell).

And suppose that the GM typically makes Y changes per X actions performed by the PCs. And suppose that there is a rate of random events that is Z per X actions. So Y+Z changes are happening per element of the fiction that the players work out.

Suppose that Y and Z each equal 0.5. Then that means that, typically, the GM is making 1 change to the world per element of the fiction the players work out. Assuming that that change has some relevant to the element the players are working out, at this rate of change the player's grasp of the ingame situation will always be imperfect, though they might be able to "see" it just out of reach, make sensible extrapolations, etc

Suppose that Y and Z are each well above 1. That suggests to me that, over time, the players are never really going to be able to grasp the setting. It is moving more quickly than they can generate knowledge about it.

Suppose that Y and Z sum to less than 1. Then, over the course of play, the players gain more and more knowledge of the setting, as things change less quickly than they are learning about those things. (In the Tomb of Horrors Y and Z are both equal to zero, or near enough to, making ToH the paradigm of the static dungeon crawl.)

As I posted upthread, the mathematical presentation is a fairly crude one. But the idea behind it seems to me pretty important for "living world" GMing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But wouldn't you say there is a difference between you attempting, even imperfectly, to model that campaign on what you know about how Rome worked, more broadly how humans have operated in history and how they operate now, versus ignoring that and just worrying about something else, like what maintains an exciting state of play, what feels right in terms of imagination, emulating as many genre tropes as you can. I am personally not a fan of the term simulationist. We can use different language here and simply use movies as a model: what type of film are you trying to game? A documentary? A historical biography? A 70s exploitation film? A noir mystery? a grounded character study or dramatic thriller? Those all will require different degrees of focus on and fidelity to believability, internal logic, etc. When the yellow car in Commando is damaged on one side then drives away and that side is perfectly undented or scratched, it doesn't bother me the way it would in a more grounded movie for example. I can let the inconsistency go. I can accept that he is firing a massive machine gun at dozens and dozens of opponents out in the open without getting gunned down or suffering real legal consequences. But if it were more grounded, I would expect more real world consequences to arise.

Yeah, those things are what I would call 'tone' and 'genre'. I'm not sure those really relate too much to the potential realism of a setting, though obviously you probably don't care much about it if you are playing 'Commando', so its not irrelevant, but more just a selector. Assuming your game is more 'grounded' than that, well, I'm not sure it matters that much what the focus is, setting or character. Certainly a character focused 'narrativist' game can do 'Rome' as well as anyone else can, or as badly as the case may be. I think overall my feeling is that factors outside of narrative vs sim agenda are going to matter a lot more in terms of that realism.