Why do RPGs have rules?

[Bedrockgames]

JRRT has a lot of resonance with me too.

I don't doubt that. Like I said, this isn't something where any one group can claim he soley speaks to them.

I am not particularly hung up on having things like the details of the math of a fantasy culture be part of the thought experiment. I totally can see how this would appeal to you and have resonance. I never said it was only resonant with guys like Rob and me. My point was simply that we do find it resonates, and it resonates for some of the reasons we talked about. It is something people from many schools of thought in RPGs will find helpful, for different reasons and for the same reasons. I also don't think he was purely building something based only on the logic of the world and its laws. With Tolkien what I always found interesting about his worldbulding was how he probed things like etymology to uncover ideas. I also agree there are anachronism. But I don't think that is a world building problem.

Also one thing I would say is I probably agree more with you on aspects of Tolkien that you may realize. It has been a long time since I read him, so I really don't feel like am in a position to respond to the question. But clearly he had literary concerns that mattered too and this wasn't just a pure world building exercise. I think people go back to Tolkien to get ideas about world building because Middle Earth feels so real. One reason it always felt real to me was that doesn't have that artificial feel that many overly engineered fantasy worlds can get (where there is nothing in them that is relatable because all the components are either soley a product of the thought experiment, or a slave to the laws of the setting). Sometimes you need to just have things in there that are interesting, relatable, connect to themes, etc. Also one pet peeve of mine in discussions in OSR groups and old school sandbox groups talking about world building, is there often is this idea that there are broad principles we can extract from anthropology or history and anything outside that isn't believable. I often push back on that because history itself is filled with exceptions and I think adhering strictly to history is just as boring as vanilla fantasy (I remember seeing an argument about a particular city not being believable but it wasn't any stranger than the city of Petra).

Again, the thing that intrigued me about Tolkien when I was younger and reading his ideas about world building in the introductions to books like LoTR and the Hobbit (probably encountered stuff in magazines and other books too), was his interest in language and etymology. When I made a fantasy setting for my own system, I ended up doing that with arabic. I would come up with the names for places or people, then look up the closest three word root and try to sculpt something from that meaning. Also I clearly subscribe to ideas similar to some of the ones Rob has expressed. You can find that in Tolkien too, but you can also find other things as well that would fit different schools of thought. Tolkien definitely isn't a zero sum game in this respect.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think when it comes to Tolkien and worldbuilding, there are two things to keep in mind.

First, worldbuilding for a novel is different than it is for an RPG. And RPGs didn’t even really exist until he was gone, so it’s hard to apply his ideas to RPGs.

Second, even he had the sense to say “this $#!+ needs to go in an appendix” from time to time!

 

[Bedrockgames]

These questions are all easily answered, but the answers bring us back to the thematic core of JRRT's work, not any notion of "world laws" and trying to extrapolate their consequences.

You can do both. It has been a long time since i have read Tolkien so I am sure there is probably a lot of other stuff at work here. But I think you have a much more rigid sense of what world laws mean to me than I do. For me thinking of a world and its laws (and the laws of a setting or story, or just he thought experiment) doesn't mean it can' the literary, can't have themes, etc (those issues are issues that come up in RPGs and are debated not because this kind of world building demands no themes, not literary structure, etc but because RPGs are a different medium and people have different ideas about what works best inside that medium). To me this is stuff like CS Lewis and how he tried to apply Christian ideas to Narnia (and I would say that is both thematic and a thought experiment----i.e. he is clearly working inside parameters shaped by the Christian concepts he wishes to explore). It is also present in something like Ringworld (where there is literally a whole world physically shaped by the dyson sphere concept as well as the thought experiment of a world with no germs). When running a game, I think thinking through the thought experiment of that world and taking it seriously can be helpful. I think taking your NPCs personalities seriously and playing them sincerely (rather than say deciding X is going to happen for plot reasons) is also interesting and fun. I like shaping cultures in the game as a logical think through all the base elements. That is just what I find exciting. But I don't expect everyone to share this view. And importantly this isn't how I only approach things.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think when it comes to Tolkien and worldbuilding, there are two things to keep in mind.

First, worldbuilding for a novel is different than it is for an RPG. And RPGs didn’t even really exist until he was gone, so it’s hard to apply his ideas to RPGs.

Second, even he had the sense to say “this $#!+ needs to go in an appendix” from time to time!

I think you can apply his ideas, just like you can apply anything if you want. But it has to be done with the understanding of what you are saying, which is he wasn't making an RPG, he was writing novels.

 

[clearstream]

His statement doesn't address your point there where you say there is that moment of discovery - as an author he would have met that moment of discovery many times, and had to "discover" the world-laws as he went, and he doesn't describe the technique for how he addressed that.

In numerous places Tolkien's process is described as being one of multiple passes. Drafts and revisions. In RPG play, a novel situation must be resolved at that time (not setting aside that a common technique is to return to it after play to work out its implications.) The lightning example is of the latter type - RPG in play - and not the former - drafts and revisions.

I just fundamentally disagree that Tolkien is describing a technique, what he is describing it appears is what all authors describing new worlds are striving for - to make a world as such that a reader is swept into, feels immersed in, rather than feeling that just reading something. It isn't a technique, but a goal, and the goal isn't simulationism but striving for immersion.

That's okay, we don't need to agree!

"“What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful ‘sub-creator’. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. "

Where is the technique there? As an author he has to create the laws of that world, where is the technique to make people believe in them?

The technique isn't focused on making folk believe the world laws! It is focused on the use and effect of having the world-laws. The truth-value of imagined facts requires a foundation: why those facts should be believed. In this context, truth-values are not binary (true or false) but probablistic or forceful (I am more or less likely to accept a proposed fact as true). Tolkien says that inside the imagined world, what the author says is true in virtue of its accordance with the laws of that world. The effect is that you more readily believe the author's proposed facts.

So to concretely address your concern: it is the truth-value of what authors relate, not the truth-value of the world-laws, that is the target of the technique. In practice, suppose you and I agree on a world-law that elves can fly. If I then say that Jo-elf flies past you, you will more readily accept that as true.

The only piece that seems to be a technique at all is 'inside it, what he relates is true' - which reinforces to my mind my prior point, that the author of the lightning destroying the house related it, so it must be true.

Pursuing my point at top, Tolkien was in position to notice the world laws (whether he intentionally architected them or not) and bring his narrative into conformance with them (or let it fall into conformance, if one regards his role as passive on theological grounds). What I'm saying is that we wouldn't have seen the dissent we did over the lightning example, if the relevant laws of the world had been in place first. That clearly offers a technique: doing X foreseeably yields Y. That doesn't depend on Tolkien using it as a technique (consciously or otherwise).

Getting back to drafting and revising, another line from On Fairy Stories "The road to fairyland is not the road to Heaven; nor even to Hell" written for a lecture in 1938. So this was around the time of the Hobbit and a few decades before Lord of the Rings was published. Tolkien was thinking on these matters for a great length of time (IIRC he describes thinking about them in one form or another from the time of becoming an orphan... about 12 years old.) That statement from the lecture has obvious applicability to ME elves and is felt in Smith of Wootton Major.

It may be that the world-laws Tolkien worked in accord with were not his own, which is also the case for the simulationist who takes up other works as their canonical texts. "For the trouble with the real folk of Faerie is that they do not always look like what they are; and they put on the pride and beauty that we would fain wear ourselves." Tolkien wrote down definite statements about what he thought faeries were like, and worked in accord with those statements. As you say, perhaps he didn't think of that as a technique: nevertheless, it can easily be grasped as a technique!

 

[clearstream]

I think you can apply his ideas, just like you can apply anything if you want. But it has to be done with the understanding of what you are saying, which is he wasn't making an RPG, he was writing novels.

Every narrativist who addresses a problematic feature of human existence in their role-playing, may well find that the bow that launched the arrow of the text they're using was Lajos Egri via Ron Edwards. As I noted up-thread, Egri died just before RPG was born. And this is not even to consider theories on all manner of things, such as probability, that are abundantly useful to TTRPG.

I feel it should be beyond self-evident that we can apply the ideas of authors from today and throughout history to our hobby even if they weren't thinking of TTRPG when they wrote them!

 

[clearstream]

I entirely agree with @gban007 that JRRT is describing a goal, not a technique. And as @gban007 has posted, and as Shippey talks about, JRRT's own methods of authorship did not consist in first imagining laws, than deriving their consequences. He used a whole variety of techniques, including reflecting on the etymology of words (real or imagined) and constructing worlds and their laws to explain those etymological musings. In some cases, as the musings changed, so did the imagined world and its laws.

I feel you make some excellent points (not quoted, but borne in mind), however I don't find it justified to limit what Tolkien says to just forming a goal. He lays out a theory for why he thinks what he is doing has the effect it has. That theory provides a solid foundation for an applicable technique.

I don't know why you would.

I had that concern because you seemed to be saying that X couldn't be a technique for achieving simualtionism because the agenda or purpose of simulationism is Y. That would only be true if system didn't matter, i.e. it was impossible to say that any given technique could matter more or less to a mode of play.

What distinguishes simulaionism from (say) narrativism/"story now" is not that it produces, or aims to produce, consistent fiction whereas narrativism does not. It's that it treats internal cause as king - that is to say, it relies on no other principle to determine what happens next in the shared fiction.

You keep returning to what I feel forced to call out as a strawman. I am not arguing that narrativism doesn't value consistency, and my argument that consistency with world-laws can be of special value to simulationism is not refuted by saying that narrativism also aims to produce consistent fiction. What I am arguing is that the terms of that consistency differ.

I have said that where internal causes consistently override dramatic concerns, that is more suitable for simulationism than for narrativism. That should be uncontentious as it is a restatement of your second sentence quoted above, unless "relies on no other principle" is not intended to imply consistently doing so. As for what the "internal causes" might be, grasping some as world-laws can be predicted to be effective if Tolkien is right. Ideally discerning what they are and writing them out to give them normative effect.


EDIT I just realised that I'm assuming we both would include world-laws among internal causes, or say that the former are a manner of articulating the latter. If that isn't right, then you might have something to say about that!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I feel it should be beyond self-evident that we can apply the ideas of authors from today and throughout history to our hobby even if they weren't thinking of TTRPG when they wrote them!

I would agree. I find ideas from all sorts of places outside RPGs (especially in science fiction, fantasy, history, etc).

 

[pemerton]

I have said that where internal causes consistently override dramatic concerns, that is more suitable for simulationism than for narrativism.

I find this a difficult sentence.

X is suitable for simulationism or X is suitable for narrativism seems like a sentence-schema in which X ranges over processes of play, including (but probably not limited to) particular techniques taken on by the various participant roles.

Whereas internal causes consistently override dramatic concerns looks like a description of - outcomes of decisions? outcomes of play? anyway, some sort of outcome or result. Hence it doesn't seem to be a suitable value of X.

Narrativist play relies upon procedures of play, and techniques deployed by participants, that permit and even oblige thematic concerns to come to the fore and to bear upon outcomes.

Simulationist play relies upon procedures of play, and techniques deployed by participants, that generate outcomes by reference to internal cause. Those internal causes might be understood to be the movement of physical objects through small regions of space - these are the "kinetic" causes that are represented in the combat systems of RPGs like RM or RQ; or might be understood to be thematically-laden considerations like Dragonlance's "three laws" or D&D's alignment framework; or might be understood to be some set of social and political process the GM has worked out ahead of time, which perhaps would reveal theme when all laid out, as is common in many "event"-based modules.

However the internal causes are understood, the procedures and techniques of play that are adopted will ensure that outcomes are generated by reference to them.

We can see from this that "internal causes consistently override dramatic concerns" is not a generally true description of simulationinst play - eg its not true of the DL modules, or of "big reveal"-oriented "event"-based play. It may be true of some simulationist play - broadly speaking, what Edwards calls "purist for system".

And we can also see that there is nothing about simulationist compared to narrativist play that makes it more likely that "world laws" will manifest themselves or be identified or be relied upon. Think about the role of Dwarven Greed, or Elven Grief, or Dark Elven Spite, in Burning Wheel - these are mechanical elements of PC build that manifest "world laws" very close to those found in JRRT's work (and not by coincidence - they are the most Tolkienesque presentations of Dwarves and Elves that I know of in any RPG). But they are fundamental to the narrativist play of BW.

 

[clearstream]

I find this a difficult sentence.

X is suitable for simulationism or X is suitable for narrativism seems like a sentence-schema in which X ranges over processes of play, including (but probably not limited to) particular techniques taken on by the various participant roles.

Whereas internal causes consistently override dramatic concerns looks like a description of - outcomes of decisions? outcomes of play? anyway, some sort of outcome or result. Hence it doesn't seem to be a suitable value of X.

Narrativist play relies upon procedures of play, and techniques deployed by participants, that permit and even oblige thematic concerns to come to the fore and to bear upon outcomes.

Simulationist play relies upon procedures of play, and techniques deployed by participants, that generate outcomes by reference to internal cause. Those internal causes might be understood to be the movement of physical objects through small regions of space - these are the "kinetic" causes that are represented in the combat systems of RPGs like RM or RQ; or might be understood to be thematically-laden considerations like Dragonlance's "three laws" or D&D's alignment framework; or might be understood to be some set of social and political process the GM has worked out ahead of time, which perhaps would reveal theme when all laid out, as is common in many "event"-based modules.

However the internal causes are understood, the procedures and techniques of play that are adopted will ensure that outcomes are generated by reference to them.

We can see from this that "internal causes consistently override dramatic concerns" is not a generally true description of simulationinst play - eg its not true of the DL modules, or of "big reveal"-oriented "event"-based play. It may be true of some simulationist play - broadly speaking, what Edwards calls "purist for system".

I would summarize your above as "not necessarily" which of course I agree with. I also agree that this plays out in the two ways you describe.

As to the first way, "not necessarily" leaves open "sometimes", which shifts the question to - of those occasions that are in conflict, how often are participants happy to see simulationism override narrativism, or vice versa? Is even once too often? Is it okay when it happens to Addy, but not Taylor? Or in circumstances like Q but not Z? It seems probable that sensitivities will fall along a spectrum (even without getting all the way to purists.) The main concern could be whether one wants to play this form of Russian Roulette.

And we can also see that there is nothing about simulationist compared to narrativist play that makes it more likely that "world laws" will manifest themselves or be identified or be relied upon. Think about the role of Dwarven Greed, or Elven Grief, or Dark Elven Spite, in Burning Wheel - these are mechanical elements of PC build that manifest "world laws" very close to those found in JRRT's work (and not by coincidence - they are the most Tolkienesque presentations of Dwarves and Elves that I know of in any RPG). But they are fundamental to the narrativist play of BW.

I think that you're exactly right. I assayed this second way in an EDIT to my previous, and then turned back (deleted it); daunted by the new horizons. So what happens when the internal-causes, let's say framed as world-laws, are narrativist (meaning something like, are formed around dramatic themes)? As you point out, we're hardly short on examples. Can't I then be as purist as I like in giving the crown, and still hit no conflict between the modes?

Could an obstacle lie in the author=audience duality expected (by nar) for the player? Simulationism doesn't care about that: it's not against it, but it doesn't demand it. If that's true, then surely I can still find part of the Venn diagram that has things set up just as they need to be: player=authorship + dramatic internal causes.

My hot take then, is that so long as there aren't any non-dramatic internal causes that could come into conflict, or so long as the frequency or character of conflicts is such that the group are satisfied with how they play out, then why not? It seems like there really must be a this vista of narrativist simulationism. Perhaps the true El-Dorado (says a feverish explorer, waving a recently discovered map.)

Is there anything like that in the domain? You've called attention to BW. I wonder about Stonetop? I haven't yet played it, but I am reading it with great interest. Perhaps wrongly (given the caveat I just made) elements trigger a RuneQuest-y feeling in me. @Manbearcat might be able to say something about this.