Why do RPGs have rules?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would be open to playing in Stonetop, actually. I really like some setting to sink my teeth into, incomplete or not.

As far as that last comment goes, that can be a problem. Which is why I always incorporate into session 0 a conversation with the players focusing on the PCs goals. That way I can make sure to build into the world stuff that matters to them specifically before the campaign begins.

Yeah, the game includes a kind of a process like that where everyone asks questions on certain topics, and supplies some bits of info, like where in Stonetop their house is located, stuff like that. Our game has only had 3 sessions, so a lot of that hasn't had time to become highly relevant yet, but even without it coming up specifically in an action kind of context it does offer a bit of a framework for how we interact. Meda knows that Burkhardt thinks book study is crazy dangerous and that she should be more careful. She's trying to prove him wrong (which somehow feels like it will probably boomerang on her).

 

[pemerton]

That creates some distinction between sim and nar, as the former would ordinarily not be concerned with what anyone hopes the weather would be, while for the latter it follows.

Two things:

First, you haven't shown that in sim play, where the GM narrates the weather, that there is no hope on the GM's part.

Two, it's not an insight or a new contribution to note that narrativist/"story now" play is sensitive to what one or more players want for their PCs. That is obvious and well-known.

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them.

<snip>

• In the absense of a rule, can I say what the weather will be tomorrow in Balazar? I believe yes, it's pretty straightforward. Especially if I had in play a calendar with seasons (like the Calendar of Harptos for FR.) I can follow a norm - "hmm, well it's summer and Balazar is mostly plains so I'm going with hot and let's say cloudy... light but constant winds".
• So I've got an answer, what do I need the rule for? The rule supersedes and extends that. Superseding means I use the Balazaring Weather Table instead of what I might normally expect. Extending means introducing things I would not normally expect, and that can invite questions I couldn't have without the rule.

<snip>

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C. Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them. During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.

In the first quoted sentence, you say "participants can often agree" etc. Then in the second, you move from third person plural to first person singular, where a person consults a calendar that they accept as authoritative. Where have the other participants gone? Then, in the final quote passage, the plural returns. And so all that has happened is that we've come right back to Baker's point: rules ease and constrain social negotiation around "what happens next?" (Eg everyone accepts that the calendar is authoritative; or everyone accepts that the weather table is the appropriate process; or whatever other method is being used of establishing shared imagination about the weather in this place.)

This is a proposition that was already set out at the start of the thread, in the OP. It's fine that you've worked you own way to that same conclusion, but you present your reasoning as if it provides new insights when in fact it contains no new results and produces no new knowledge.

D&D gives it to GM to match descriptions to norms (this should usually be a gimme, but actually I believe GM is intended to prevail if there is doubt) or rules (where they exist.)

This appears to be a complicated way of saying: in D&D, the GM gets to say what procedure will be used to work out what happens next and further to say that, at least sometimes that procedure is that the GM authors it, unmediated by any other process. This seems obviously true for some approaches to D&D. I don't think anyone in this thread is confused about it.

As my concerns are generally ontological - Hart's scorer's discretion might not be especially relevant to me.

<snip>

I recently learned of Frederick Schauer's work and perhaps my description of rules is more like his. He recognises the need to link a factual predicate to a consequent (that then is what a rule is or does.) He notices as I do the problems of matching (of ensuring that the rule captures just the cases it should capture).

<snip>

AW has a brilliant scheme of forcing the description to fit pretty closely to each move, reducing as much as possible doubt (but not dissolving it entirely, MC still gets to say what matches.)[

I know Hart's work quite well. From time to time I teach it to undergraduates. I know Schauer's work - I have seen him present it. Although I am familiar with this work, I struggle to work out what you are saying in the first two of these three quoted passages.

Like, if you are trying to work out the function of rules in RPGing, why do you say your concerns are generally ontological? On what basis do you deny that (say) they are primarily social psychological? How do we know that Schauer is more relevant than Durkheim? (I mean, your use of "norm" appears to have something in common with the way Durkheim and social psychologists use it.) And what difference does it make that the status of rules and of authority, in RPGing, is wildly different from in systems of legislation and adjudication that Schauer is primarily concerned with?

The paradigm of rules that Schauer is concerned with are legal rules that establish sanctions for conduct. And the puzzle about matching that arises in respect of these rules is how to state the rule so that the right sanctions will always attend a given bit of behaviour. Games don't have this problem, because - as Suits reminds us - they are voluntary. The principle issue with games, precisely because they are voluntary, is to maintain adherence by the participants. Which is why Baker is so concerned with the social aspect of play, including his doubts about the utility of a mere focus on authority (as quoted in the OP). AW uses two main methods to ensure that concerns about "matching" will not cause the "social contract" of play to break down:

(1) The AW rulebook has extensive discussions of how "takebacks" work (both player and GM side) - there is no parallel to this in the sorts of cases Schauer is primarily concerned with, where the conduct is a given and the rule is now applied to generate a sanction;

(2) If a player in AW declares an action for their PC, and after discussion the MC is of the view that the action doesn't trigger a player-side move, then (i) the rules are clear the player can vary their action declaration if they really want to trigger the move, and (ii) if the player elects not to vary their action declaration, then what they had their PC do becomes part of the shared fiction, and all that can happen is that the MC makes a soft move and then asks the player "what do you do?" Which is to say, the issue of "matching" is extremely low stakes. This contrast with, say, the debates that can break out in traditional D&D play about whether or not a player's action declaration for their PC triggered a trap.​

Mechanics are made up of rules. They're almost always (maybe even always) compound. My description does not deal with mechanics, it deals with rules.

I don't think this is a very illuminating characterisation of mechanics. Like, if someone wanted to know how the game bridge works, telling them "it is made up of rules" would not be very informative. Telling them that those rules govern transitions from one game state to another would still not be very informative: that's just a wordy way of restating the triviality that bridge is a game.

Key to understanding bridge is that play involves the use of cards - real physical items, distributed among the participants initially via a random process, and then used by the participants to generate states of play via decision-making within certain constraints.

What is key to appreciating the function of RPG mechanics is not focusing on the rules in which they figure, but rather on the processes that the mechanics involve - processes of tallying (hit points, gold pieces, plot points etc), processes of generating numbers by rolling dice, processes of comparing things (eg dice results to table entries). The use of processes that are not fully under the control of participants (rolling dice, drawing cards from shuffled decks, blind declarations of actions, etc) is one way of introducing the unwelcome and unwanted into play.

It sheds little light on the difference between a character casting a spell in AD&D, and a character casting a spell in Torchbearer, to notice that both are governed by rules about how the fiction changes. It sheds quite a bit of light to notice that both involve a process of tallying (a spell is crossed off a list of memorised spells) but only Torchbearer also demands that a roll be made, which if it fails permits the GM rather than the player to have the principal say of what happens next. From that difference we can see straight away that, in TB, playing a wizard is less different from playing a thief than is the case in AD&D, where playing a wizard is profoundly different from playing a thief. (And that's just one example of the differences we can see.)

I feel some just cannot accept the possibility of immersionist play. For the folk doing the play it is about their experience. I can enjoy the blue sky, right? But that does not mean that the sky is blue for my sake!

This is not responding in a clear way to what I posted. I said "Once we take seriously that the rules are rules for RPGing, it is not obvious that play can be such that it does not, by its very nature, place specific people front and centre. This would need to be shown".

In RPG play in which the only bits of the fiction that are told to the players are bits that their PCs are experiencing, then the PCs are placed front-and-centre. This is not a proposition about anything being for anyone's sake, but rather about how a "field of experience" is constituted. In the real world it has the "self" at its centre. In "immersionist" RPGing it has an imagined self at its centre.

Where no-myth fits my general description of rules is this

• I allowed my description to contain an oversight, which is - what about things GM might write down that are it seems intended to override other norms but aren't really rules? Should I say they are rules? For example, if GM notes down that the sister hates the brother. Is that a rule?
• My take is that in doing so GM is establishing a particular type of norm, one that is a norm of the game world. That's because a player could invoke a rule that had the consequence that the sister not hate the brother, and one would expect play to respect that. Or one could feel instead that the GM's note established a rule, and compare the rules for specificity (specific overriding general).

So what about when those things GM notes down are not only normative (or are rules) but also secret or unstated? It seems pretty clear that, that's what no-myth banishes.

Again, you present this as if it is new knowledge, when in fact it is just a complicated restatement of things that are quite straightforward.

"No myth" means that that the GM is precluded from appealing to secret backstory to stipulate what happens next without any intermediation via mechanical processes. Whether the process of extrapolation from secret backstory to "what happens next" is described as a norm or a rule or whatever else is irrelevant to that basic point, and to me seems to shed no light and in fact to obscure that basic point.

The reason for including the phrase without intermediation vis mechanical processes is because - in no myth play - if the player fails their roll, then the GM may very well draw upon secret backstory to decide what to say. This is the function of "fronts" in Apocalypse World: they serve as an aide memoire, or a prompt, for the GM to decide what to say.

Say the GM has a printed book of Star League protocols that players are at liberty to read any time? Is it then okay for the faked distress signal to fail if as it happens printed openly in that book is a distress-signal-ignoring protocol?

"No myth" is an approach to the resolution of declared actions, and so the question becomes What is the player's action declaration? What bit of the fiction has been put into question by that?

In the example I gave, the question was not what does the protocol book say? but what will the captain do? The fact that the contents of the protocol are established fiction does not dictate an answer to that question, and hence does not dictate a resolution of the declared action.

We could even imagine how this might unfold in Burning Wheel: the player declares a Wises check - "Don't I recall that the protocols for distress calls are such-and-such?" The check fails, and the GM responds "But in putting it that way, you're forgetting <this other bit about the risk of fake signals>" And the player responds "OK, but we'll try anyway because maybe this captain is a soft touch" and there is a +1 Ob due to the failed linked test.

No myth is not a conceptually complicated approach to RPGing. I first did it, before the label had been coined, in the second half of the 1980s. It just requires adopting a different attitude towards the relationship between GM prep and action resolution.

I just wanted to comment on this very briefly. Consider a statement in a game text such as this from Stonetop

S “The rest of the inhabitants are lay folk: families and individuals who garden, herd, cook, clean, and otherwise keep the fortress-monastery running.”

S is normative in that, should characters run into someone coming from among “the rest of the inhabitants” they will normally be gardeners, herders, cooks, cleaners, and such like.

This is already contentious.

Normative normally means something like establishing a standard of behaviour or stating a reason for action. S doesn't state a reason for action, nor establish a standard of behaviour. It states a proposition about an imaginary place.

Suppose that the PCs run into someone from among the rest of the inhabitants, then by definition that person is one of the lay-folk. But the PCs run into one of the lay folk is a piece of fiction that must have been authored by someone. And that is where norms come in: what reason did that author have for authoring that thing? Did authoring that thing conform to other relevant reasons?

Only if there is some reason to think that is a person run into by the PCs and is one of the lay folk are reasonably tightly correlated, is there a reason to think that normally when the PCs run into someone it will normally be a gardener, herder, cook, etc. I don't know about Stonetop, but Burning Wheel obviously does not accept the correlation: rather, BW begins from the premise that most people a PC runs into are from among that PCs circles. Which, for some PCs, will not include the lay folk.

Is S a rule? Suppose that for some span of time players are unaware of S. Thus S is yes-myth during that span of time.

How did "yes myth" go from describing a type of play (in contrast to "no myth") to describing an element of secret backstory?

If jargon is going to be used, I think it is helpful to use it consistently.

If at some moment players become aware of S, it transitions to no-myth and can - going forward - decide what happens next (e.g. decide that a random person met in the Barrier Pass is a gardener).

Given that "for no myth to work, there must be a way of working out what happens next other than by referring to pre-authored, secret fiction" MC is on safe ground from the moment players are aware of S onward, and on shaky ground before then.

To me, this makes no sense.

The description of the lay folk seems no different from an AW front, and its relationship to no myth or low myth play is perfectly clear, as per what I said just above.

Who consented to S while it was secret? Just one participant, right? A meaning of normal is normal for the society - in this case, players and MC together - so how can anything known to just one participant and thus lacking consensus count as a "norm"?

<snip>

This picture changes for a society that grants to some participant(s) the job of establishing norms. As I have said in different ways further above, any S can be made normal in the case that the person(s) appointed to say what is normal said it.

GM as referee is performing a job for the group, which consents in view of that service.

And this is just an overly-complex way of saying that, at some tables, everyone has agreed to let the GM decide what happens next. No one is confused about that, or unaware of it as an approach to RPGing. I think everyone posting in this thread has probably participated in such RPGing, either as GM or as player.

make any such statements known prior to their being tested in play

What is the relationship of the statement to player priorities, and in particular the dramatic needs they have established for their characters? That will tell you whether or not it should be made known in advance of play.

In AW, the GM does not need to announce their fronts in advance. But they don't write any fronts until after the first session, to ensure that fronts cohere with player priorities as those emerge in the first session.

Ron Edwards wrote about the relationship between revealing vs concealing backstory, and player protagonism, 20 years ago, under the heading "pitfalls of narrativist game design":

Metaplot. From Sorcerer & Sword (Adept Press, 2001, author is Ron Edwards):

Metaplot. The solution most offered by role-playing games is a supplement-driven metaplot: a sequence of events in the game-world which are published chronologically, revealing "the story" to all GMs and expecting everyone to apply these events in their individual sessions. These published events include the outcomes of world-shaking conflicts as well as individual relationships among the company-provided NPCs involved in these conflicts.

Metaplot of this sort, whether generated by a GM or a game publisher, is antithetical to the entire purpose of Sorcerer & Sword. Almost inevitably, it creates a series of game products that pretend to be supplements for play but are really a series of short stories and novels starring the authors' beloved and central NPCs. The role of the individual play group in those stories is much like that of karaoke singers, rather than creative musicians.​

Metaplot is central to the design of several White Wolf games, especially Mage; all AEG games; post-first-edition Traveller; AD&D2, beginning with the Forgotten Realms series; as well as others. Nearly all of them are perceived as setting-focused games, and to many role-players, they define role-playing with strong Setting.

However, neither Setting-based Premise nor a complex Setting history necessarily entails metaplot, as I'm using the term anyway. The best example is afforded by Glorantha: an extremely rich setting with history in place not only for the past, but for the future of play. The magical world of Glorantha will be destroyed and reborn into a relatively mundane new existence, because of the Hero Wars. Many key events during the process are fixed, such as the Dragonrise of 1625. Why isn't this metaplot?

Because none of the above represent decisions made by player-characters; they only provide context for them. The players know all about the upcoming events prior to play. The key issue is this: in playing in (say) a Werewolf game following the published metaplot, the players are intended to be ignorant of the changes in the setting, and to encounter them only through play. The more they participate in these changes (e.g. ferrying a crucial message from one NPC to another), the less they provide theme-based resolution to Premise, not more. Whereas in playing HeroQuest, there's no secret: the Hero Wars are here, and the more everyone enjoys and knows the canonical future events, the more they can provide theme through their characters' decisions during those events.

In designing a Setting-heavy Narrativist rules-set, I strongly suggest following the full-disclosure lead of HeroQuest and abandoning the metaplot "revelation" approach immediately.​

These are solved problems!

 

[pemerton]

Over time I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with how difficult it was to even get the thing that sim supposedly promised---deep immersion. There seemed to be so much sacrificed---character stakes, stronger dramatic tension, player investment in something beyond, "Okay, we're exploring some new cool place that's mostly like all the other cool places we've already explored, and meeting more NPCs we don't care about. When do we get to fight again?"

This was kinda my issue as well. There were some settings that sim-oriented GMs threw their entire selves into making a simulated world, only to end up like the bold and my character (and those of the rest of the party) forgotten in the shuffle. Like it didn't really matter what character I had made for the game or how I roleplayed them. It would have mostly ended up the same.

Yeah, I identified a lot with that whole feeling of "yawn, another D&D-esque fantasy world." I started to find I was just getting sleepier and sleepier at the table! Sure, each one is 'unique' in terms of there being an infinity of configurations of orc tribes or whatever, and undoubtedly every GM DOES put some little unique stamp on their thing, but exploration of entirely invented worlds for its own sake simply wears thin. This is especially true if you have been at it for a decade or two!

I would add to this: if a setting is interesting, then shouldn't it be revealed to the players? I mean, this is the normal way a GM becomes enthused about someone else's setting - they read the book!

Having setting information parcelled out via the process of action declaration - "I open the door", "I read the note", "What do I recall about <such and such>?" - seems like one of the least interesting ways to learn about a setting, unless it's a pretty cleverly constructed mystery.

 

[pemerton]

I was actually thinking about BitD which allows the GM to set position and effect level... But in general I feel like any game where the GM is using judgement to determine difficulty is open to this.

If there are benchmarked difficulties, then I don't think this is so - because the inference from framing to benchmarks is transparent.

The upshot of this is that the players can often contribute to setting the obstacle, by helping everyone at the table arrive at a shared conception of the framing.

It looks the same as the traditional game @loverdrive mentioned. She claimed that it doesn't matter that 99.9% of traditional DMs run the game as the rules and guidelines state and don't run an adversarial game where they drop 50,000 liches on the group in order to invalidate their skill. If .001% of extreme bad faith DMs run their games this way, player skill doesn't exist.

That statement applies to no myth as well. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of no myth DMs run the game in accordance with the rules, bec

This makes no sense to me.

@loverdrive's claim about player skill is about control over parameters - in a certain sort of D&D play, that is all under the GM's control.

Whether or not that fact about control entails the conclusion about skilled play seems to me to have no bearing on what "no myth" play looks like.

The point about no myth play is that transparency of framing, and of consequence narration, means that by definition concealment is impossible. The GM can't hide the fact that they're not being transparent in their decision-making. The other participants will notice the lack of transparency - eg that a hard move has been made although the player succeeded at their roll.

 

[gban007]

I would add to this: if a setting is interesting, then shouldn't it be revealed to the players? I mean, this is the normal way a GM becomes enthused about someone else's setting - they read the book!

Having setting information parcelled out via the process of action declaration - "I open the door", "I read the note", "What do I recall about <such and such>?" - seems like one of the least interesting ways to learn about a setting, unless it's a pretty cleverly constructed mystery.

Thought I'd jump on here, as ties to something I've been thinking on since reading a bit of that closed thread, around immersion - one of the reasons I like playing in the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, is because I know the settings well from various material (Campaigns, novels, computer games) - so feel on somewhat on an even level with the DM (when not DMing myself) when it comes to knowing where cities / towns are, what their populations are etc - and is only adventure points themselves whether from a published adventure of DM authored where I don't know exactly what is going on - but then that feels like what it would be like for someone involved in the adventure - would know general information, but not particulars as such. Often as a group we will look at maps etc of the world to get feel of it.
Is one reason why I prefer playing in published settings like this, as feel I can make myself knowledgeable on what my character would know.
Had one memorable case with immersion destroyed when finally had chance to play a Wheel of Time game using the 3rd edition book, and the DM decided to move us to a different world with different logic, and ended up TPKing us as decided to make up some monster on the spot with abilities that were far beyond us - so not great DMing all round, but immersion was broken even before that TPK, as felt the general common point we had was lost.

 

[clearstream]

These last few posts have been long and covered a lot, so I will respond in time over several posts.

First, you haven't shown that in sim play, where the GM narrates the weather, that there is no hope on the GM's part.

If you are not familiar with the Balazaring Weather Table (and there's no reason you should be) then you might not know that it's a dice roll (d6 and d4) that shifts weather up and down columns for each season. Following the table, there's no hope on anyone's part.

However, let's say the GM has the job of impartially deciding the weather and is not using such a table. The aim is that the weather is external or objective from the perspective of the player characters: unlike nar, player hopes are not expected to be an input. I use the word "impartially" to include not applying desires one way or another. If one thinks that unavoidable then it is better to replace "anyone" with "any player's".

Two, it's not an insight or a new contribution to note that narrativist/"story now" play is sensitive to what one or more players want for their PCs. That is obvious and well-known.

That's okay. I didn't intend it to be. My chief goal was just to state what I understood.

 

[clearstream]

In the first quoted sentence, you say "participants can often agree" etc. Then in the second, you move from third person plural to first person singular, where a person consults a calendar that they accept as authoritative. Where have the other participants gone? Then, in the final quote passage, the plural returns. And so all that has happened is that we've come right back to Baker's point: rules ease and constrain social negotiation around "what happens next?" (Eg everyone accepts that the calendar is authoritative; or everyone accepts that the weather table is the appropriate process; or whatever other method is being used of establishing shared imagination about the weather in this place.)

This is a proposition that was already set out at the start of the thread, in the OP. It's fine that you've worked you own way to that same conclusion, but you present your reasoning as if it provides new insights when in fact it contains no new results and produces no new knowledge.

Rereading your OP I retain the feeling that Baker takes an... I guess it could be called teleological approach. He has purposes in mind and he punts game rules like those that model the world that don't fit those purposes. I am aiming for a definition that will include such rules.

I'm thinking about bare cause and function. I'm not concerned with the social negotiation, only with what concretely happens when a rule is followed. That is why I shift tone: the first line lays out when we have cause to follow a rule. The rest lay out what following a rule amounts to.

Baker writes

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. . . .

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction.

You summarised that

on this account, the function of RPG rules is to help mediate and constrain the process of agreeing on the shared fiction; and not just by assigning authority ("It's your turn now to say what happens next") but by shaping what is said so that it is surprising and even unwelcome to all participants.

I couldn't find anywhere in the account where it states exactly how that "shaping" takes place. The process, not the purpose. I felt that if one could state the process a bit more clearly, one might see how it could fit with a diversity of purposes.

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C.
Lapses here necessitate the rule so it's right to observe that this reflects the OP, although I call attention both to the possibility of non-agreement, and the possibility of lack of a norm. I can't see where the OP calls attention to the latter.

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. . . .

Baker possibly comes to see that agreement to a rule is never located in the rule - meaning that the social contract if functioning will work without them - and transfers attention to what following rules might achieve. I'm not sure from what you have written whether you agree? I take Baker to be saying, essentially, that rules can be forceful (so that the first and last part of your summary amount to the same thing.) The OP implies the additional necessity of pre-existing norms to rely on: I state it outright.

Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them.
Regardless of whether there are or are not lapses (whether participants do or don't agree) if they follow the rule then what the rule functionally does is supersede and extend beyond any pre-existing norm. I cannot see where this is stated in the OP, although I do see where some useful consequences of this are stated. This statement has many useful implications for games and if the OP intended it, then I think it should have spelt it out.

During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.
I call attention to the matching, which again I do not see in the OP but which I saw right away in Schauer and I understand to be a general problem in law: beyond trivial examples, how do we know that a rule fits a case? This necessitates strategies to secure it: in AW that's a design strategy, in D&D that's an organisational strategy. Once we have a rule that matches, the functional mapping itself is as implied in the OP.

So perhaps it is right that I have just reframed what you felt to be implied in the OP. As outlined, I felt that some things were not well enough implied so I went ahead and attempted to formulate a definition. I'm glad that it reflects the OP, and although you did not say it, there is really nothing in what I have written that should not reflect background discourse. It needs more work. I'd value further insights into whether my supposed additions really are additions in the meantime.

 

[clearstream]

This appears to be a complicated way of saying: in D&D, the GM gets to say what procedure will be used to work out what happens next and further to say that, at least sometimes that procedure is that the GM authors it, unmediated by any other process. This seems obviously true for some approaches to D&D. I don't think anyone in this thread is confused about it.

From my perspective putting it as "GM gets to say" has a potential to add confusion. There must be some means by which descriptions are matched to rules, and that is not just an option taken up by D&D. It's not just something someone "gets to say", it's something that someone must say. Both AW and D&D give it to MC/GM to say.

For me it's also not sufficiently clear to make it about saying "what procedure will be used". "Procedure" has a potential to be confused as a synonym for rule. I see that as confusing rules for mechanics. Rather than confusing them it seems better to me to switch to using "mechanic". Or is that your intent? (Perhaps on grounds that rules and mechanics are not clearly separable or shouldn't be separated?)

My statement is about determining which rule matches a description, where I am thinking about what might be called atomic functions. This is not about what GM says or does not say - that's only one example of what I mean - it's necessitated. Computer games achieve it by providing players with an austere language in which each expression maps precisely to some rule, which goes on with other rules to form a mechanic. Glitches occur when it turns out that some expressions map in ways that were not intended.

TTRPGs present what I would characterise as delightful challenges in this regard. AW takes a brilliant approach that builds it into each mechanic (moves are generally compounds of rules) to "look for" just the right description (to do it, do it, i.e. say the right thing), yet - finally - still needs MC's deliberation. I like the court of appeal of take backs: let players confirm that when they said it, they meant to say it. Strategies like these are in a way proof of what is necessitated: they arise because it's necessitated to make a match between description and rule.

 

[Manbearcat]

Putting it as "GM gets to say" is from my perspective adding confusion. It fails to respect that there must be some means by which descriptions are matched to rules. That is not an optional step; it's not something someone "gets to say". It's something that someone must say. And both AW and D&D give it finally to MC/GM to say for reasons that I've pointed toward above.

Nor is it clear enough to make it about saying "what procedure will be used". "Procedure" itself is confused as a synonym for rule because it implies a synecdoche. It mixes rules up with mechanics. It's up to you to say if your OP intended to focus solely on mechanics. If so, and if by "rules" you meant "mechanics", rather than continuing to confuse them just switch to saying "mechanics". Suspend any assumption that when I write "rules" I mean "mechanics".

My statement is about determining which rule matches a description. It's not about what GM says or doesn't say, which I provide purely as one example of what I mean. It's necessitated. Computer games achieve it by providing players with an austere language in which each expression maps precisely to some rule, which goes on with other rules to form a mechanic. Glitches occur when it turns out that some expressions map in ways that were not intended.

TTRPGs present what I would characterise as delightful challenges in this regard. AW takes a brilliant approach that builds it into the mechanic to "look for" just the right description, yet - finally - still needs MC's deliberation to be sure.

clearstream, I'm reading this post as a response to @pemerton and as an attempt to add something to the conversation and I don't have any idea what it is happening here. Here are things that are true that I find are problems with this response to pemerton:

* In D&D 5e and in AD&D, the GM absolutely does "get to say." If the GM feels a thing should happen via extrapolating the fiction/setting/backstory/cosmology (etc), then it happens. If they feel a random encounter or a reaction roll is or some kind of table needs to be deployed, they'll devise that and roll dice (maybe observing the result, maybe ignoring it, maybe rolling again). If they feel like dice need to be rolled then they might use percentile or roll under or Save vs in AD&D or maybe use some PC action resolution mechanics. If its 5e, they might decide there is uncertainty...they might not...they might say Contest Intelligence vs Charisma...or Saving Throw vs Wisdom...or Ability Check DC x, y, z (etc)...they might give advantage or disadvantage...they might apply/reward Inspiration or they might now...they might use Success w/ Cost or Degrees of Failure...they might use Exhaustion...they might use any of the various Transformation mechanics...or they might use simple Diplomacy checks or they might use the Social Interaction procedures...or they might just have the bad guy get away because its better for the story...or they might allow Rustic Hospitality to work in this situation or they might veto it. On and on and on and on and on.

Overwhelmingly, folks like @Oofta and @Micah Sweet and @Lanefan (among many, many others) have called this a "toolkit" or "another tool in my toolbox" and described this breadth of GM say as "flexibility" or "freedom". To examine your first paragraph above in light of this, yes, in AD&D and D&D 5e (for example), "the GM gets to say." That is a feature for the above folks. Its flexibility. Its freedom. In Apocalypse World, "the GM must say." That is a bug for the above folks. Its constraint. It creates a sense of "GM disempowerment" for them.

I read what you write and it feels like you're doing one or two things. You're either looking for the great flattening which mutes the differences of all TTRPGs such that the participants are basically doing the same things and various games lead to roughly the same experience (if not exactly the same experience). Alternatively, perhaps you're looking for this unified theory of RPG everything whereby Apocalypse World and D&D 5e are actually the same because of this unified theory you're trying to resolve in your mind. Regardless, it seems to lead to the same place; heterogeneity, sameness, oneness. Do you think that they are the same? Are you trying to put forward some kind of great flattening or unified theory of RPG everything that neatly bins them together so we can basically say "people who play D&D and AW are basically doing the same thing" or is that just a rogue takeaway by this dude (me) on the internet?

* Procedure isn't a synonym for rule and, in my interactions with pemerton (public, private, live), I have never thought that he has them confused. A procedure is a formal sequence of actions undertaken in order to derive a distinct experience and output novel to that procedure. Whenever we undergo a formal "play loop" or resolve a sequence of actions to derive "what is the state of play at the end of this order of operations" we're following a procedure.

A procedure is a subset of rules as rules entail all of the architecture that governs things said and done during play. In Torchbearer, "Fun Once", "Play on Belief, Creed, Goal, Instinct" and "Fail Forward" are rules (while also being "techniques" which are a subset of rules) while Camp phase, Conflicts, Recovery from Conditions, and Advendure Design are both procedures and rules. In Apocalypse World, "Play to Find Out What Happens" and "Always Say..." are rules while making moves, whether you're a player or MC, is a distinct procedure (when a move triggers and the sequence of actions undertaken to resolve it, or when a soft move turns into a hard move, etc). In Blades in the Dark, "Act Now Plan Later" is a rule for players while "Cut to the Action" is a rule for GMs while "Setting Effect" is a procedure akin to "Factoring" in the BW family of games.

* Game mechanics are anything that resolves the transition from one distinct gamestate to another. If you're just freeform roleplaying and nothing of consequence is happening such that no gamestate transitions are occurring (like players planning their super excellent strategem or performative freeplay of tavern/bath house carousing or muffin buying at your favorite pastry shop or PC weddings or other stuff that is exclusively color without mechanical heft/conflict/or gamestate consequence)? Well, no game mechanics are happening.

---

You did write something above that is incisive though. You could say that AW (and the like) are written teleologically and that categorization has some use. The constituent parts of such systems are written with a purpose and that purpose is to give expression to a play paradigm, a premise, a particular game layer...just like D&D Hit Points. They don't start from an orientation to causal relationships. That is for the tables to resolve as they play the game, as fiction collides, as gamestates transition...just like D&D Hit Points.

Its extremely important to note that both system design and the cognitive workspaces of the participants at the table (the GM and the players) are rather different under this orientation to system and play than it is under one whereby exploration and extrapolation via process simulation and internal causality are the apex priorities that governs system and cognitive workspaces. The former invests play with purpose and a game layer to facilitate that while expecting the participants to figure out internal causality and continuity as they play. The latter is predisposed toward the primacy of internal causality and continuity as substrate for world-building and exploration while expecting the GM (perhaps with some input from other participants) to invest play with purpose and a game layer to facilitate their purpose (excluding Rolemaster, Runequest, Traveller and the like here).

Just like its important to note the differences between systems and play experiences whereby conflict-neutral free play without frequent or consequential gamestate transitions is quite different from systems and play experiences where they are is little to no conflict-neutral play and very frequent and consequential gamestate transitions.

Each of these things (and plenty of others) point the arrow away from a great flattening or a unified theory of TTRPG everything.

 

[clearstream]

clearstream, I'm reading this post as a response to @pemerton and as an attempt to add something to the conversation and I don't have any idea what it is happening here. Here are things that are true that I find are problems with this response to pemerton:

* In D&D 5e and in AD&D, the GM absolutely does "get to say." If the GM feels a thing should happen via extrapolating the fiction/setting/backstory/cosmology (etc), then it happens. If they feel a random encounter or a reaction roll is or some kind of table needs to be deployed, they'll devise that and roll dice (maybe observing the result, maybe ignoring it, maybe rolling again). If they feel like dice need to be rolled then they might use percentile or roll under or Save vs in AD&D or maybe use some PC action resolution mechanics. If its 5e, they might decide there is uncertainty...they might not...they might say Contest Intelligence vs Charisma...or Saving Throw vs Wisdom...or Ability Check DC x, y, z (etc)...they might give advantage or disadvantage...they might apply/reward Inspiration or they might now...they might use Success w/ Cost or Degrees of Failure...they might use Exhaustion...they might use any of the various Transformation mechanics...or they might use simple Diplomacy checks or they might use the Social Interaction procedures...or they might just have the bad guy get away because its better for the story...or they might allow Rustic Hospitality to work in this situation or they might veto it. On and on and on and on and on.

Overwhelmingly, folks like @Oofta and @Micah Sweet and @Lanefan (among many, many others) have called this a "toolkit" or "another tool in my toolbox" and described this breadth of GM say as "flexibility" or "freedom". To examine your first paragraph above in light of this, yes, in AD&D and D&D 5e (for example), "the GM gets to say." That is a feature for the above folks. Its flexibility. Its freedom. In Apocalypse World, "the GM must say." That is a bug for the above folks. Its constraint. It creates a sense of "GM disempowerment" for them.

I read what you write and it feels like you're doing one or two things. You're either looking for the great flattening which mutes the differences of all TTRPGs such that the participants are basically doing the same things and various games lead to roughly the same experience (if not exactly the same experience). Alternatively, perhaps you're looking for this unified theory of RPG everything whereby Apocalypse World and D&D 5e are actually the same because of this unified theory you're trying to resolve in your mind. Regardless, it seems to lead to the same place; heterogeneity, sameness, oneness. Do you think that they are the same? Are you trying to put forward some kind of great flattening or unified theory of RPG everything that neatly bins them together so we can basically say "people who play D&D and AW are basically doing the same thing" or is that just a rogue takeaway by this dude (me) on the internet?

Okay, I definitely do not mean to embrace any great flattening. However, I also want to look closely at the details. Would you agree that there is a necessary matching to be done? Someone has to say that this description matches to this rule. SFAIK that's not possible to automate in TTRPG except in artificially narrow cases (e.g. the only permitted descriptions are those exactly matching a rule), but as I called attention to it can itself can be governed by rules (and thence the great unflattening!)

I feel like your concerns are really as to the latter, not the former, right? I ought to acknowledge the unflattening done by those rules that govern the matching of description to rule; and I do! That's distinct from giving up the by my lights proper observation that the description must be matched to a rule (and that ultimately someone decides that.)

* Procedure isn't a synonym for rule and, in my interactions with pemerton (public, private, live), I have never thought that he has them confused. A procedure is a formal sequence of actions undertaken in order to derive a distinct experience and output novel to that procedure. Whenever we undergo a formal "play loop" or resolve a sequence of actions to derive "what is the state of play at the end of this order of operations" we're following a procedure.

Well, that seems to restate my concern, because I'm aiming to look at what rules do, not what procedures do. A procedure or play loop will typically involve multiple rules, right? It could be that it's wrong to try to look at what individual rules do, but that would be quite a different criticism. It would be to say that we should only look at procedures, rather than that rules are procedures.

Maybe I am influenced by software terms. When I say procedural, I don't mean a single rule: I mean a series of rules. Perhaps in a different domain the meaning of procedure really is the same as rule.

* Game mechanics are anything that resolves the transition from one distinct gamestate to another. If you're just freeform roleplaying and nothing of consequence is happening such that no gamestate transitions are occurring (like players planning their super excellent strategem or performative freeplay of tavern/bath house carousing or muffin buying at your favorite pastry shop or PC weddings or other stuff that is exclusively color without mechanical heft/conflict/or gamestate consequence)? Well, no game mechanics are happening.

From wider reading of game studies I would say that mechanics are usually taken to be actions players can take to change the game state. That's similar to your definition, but not identical. As an example, Miguel Sicart defines game mechanics as "methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world." In esports commentary, if a player has "good mechanics", it means they grasp exactly how those methods work and are adept at employing them. The first line of your definition in isolation is close to how I am thinking of rules.

Its extremely important to note that both system design and the cognitive workspaces of the participants at the table (the GM and the players) are rather different under this orientation to system and play than it is under one whereby exploration and extrapolation via process simulation and internal causality are the apex priorities that governs system and cognitive workspaces. The former invests play with purpose and a game layer to facilitate that while expecting the participants to figure out internal causality and continuity as they play. The latter is predisposed toward the primacy of internal causality and continuity as substrate for world-building and exploration while expecting the GM (perhaps with some input from other participants) to invest play with purpose and a game layer to facilitate their purpose (excluding Rolemaster, Runequest, Traveller and the like here).

If I understand what you are saying here correctly, it gets at some of what I had in mind. Investing play with purposes can have the consequences you call attention to. That's one reason why I prefer "immersionism" over "simulationism". Immersionism is about purposes. Simulation is a means toward the purpose. (I suppose some could have the simulating itself as their purpose... I'm not sure about that.)

Each of these things (and plenty of others) point the arrow away from a great flattening or a unified theory of TTRPG everything.

I think I would not be saying that all cars are identical just because I want to take a close look at how spark plugs work even if all cars have spark plugs. However, if all cars have spark plugs, it seems to me a good idea to get clear on how they work. Just to squash my own analogy, I think rules are more fundamental to games than spark plugs are to cars.

 

[Manbearcat]

Okay, I definitely do not mean to embrace any great flattening. However, I also want to look closely at the details. Would you agree that there is a necessary matching to be done? Someone has to say that this description matches to this rule. SFAIK that's not possible to automate in TTRPG except in artificially narrow cases (e.g. the only permitted descriptions are those exactly matching a rule), but as I called attention to it can itself can be governed by rules (and thence the great unflattening!)

I feel like your concerns are really as to the latter, not the former, right? I ought to acknowledge the unflattening done by those rules that govern the matching of description to rule; and I do! That's distinct from giving up the by my lights proper observation that the description must be matched to a rule (and that ultimately someone decides that.)

“The description.” Of what? Its not clear to me.

And I’m assuming “the description” isn’t idiosyncratic to a particular game, here? You’re applying “the description” (whatever that might be…I’m assuming this a stable phenomenon you’re envisioning…some routine thing that occurs in all games?) across all games I hope?

Well, that seems to restate my concern, because I'm aiming to look at what rules do, not what procedures do. A procedure or play loop will typically involve multiple rules, right? It could be that it's wrong to try to look at what individual rules do, but that would be quite a different criticism. It would be to say that we should only look at procedures, rather than that rules are procedures.

Maybe I am influenced by software terms. When I say procedural, I don't mean a single rule: I mean a series of rules. Perhaps in a different domain the meaning of procedure really is the same as rule.

To be clear, I’m not restating your concern (which isn’t clear to me what this concern is…is it the “matching a description to a rule” idea above?). I’m (a) differentiating procedures and rules (procedures are a particular subset of rules), (b) confirming pemerton’s historical usage of procedures vs rules, (c) and agreeing with that usage.

From wider reading of game studies I would say that mechanics are usually taken to be actions players can take to change the game state. That's similar to your definition, but not identical. As an example, Miguel Sicart defines game mechanics as "methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world." In esports commentary, if a player has "good mechanics", it means they grasp exactly how those methods work and are adept at employing them. The first line of your definition in isolation is close to how I am thinking of rules.

All of the above that you’ve expressed looks to me to be mapping computer game design philosophy onto TTRPGs. I don’t think a wider reading of game mechanics (whether it be in physical sport, computer games broadly, or esports specifically) is helpful to TTRPG discussion or design.

Take your “mechanics are actions players can take to change the gamestate above.” Ok, that omits Wandering Monster rolls, Camp/Town Event rolls, Monster Reaction rolls, Blades in the Dark Fortune rolls, NPC/Threat/Obstacle rolls during Contests or Conflicts, etc. That is a glaring omission of content generating dice rolls, which players don’t roll, that significantly change the gamestate. Binning them outside of “mechanics” seems like something computer game derived philosophy would do because these things are automated or fixed in that medium; therefore not a part of the user’s experience and not a fundamental, dynamism-infusing part of play as they are in TTRPGs.

So, in the same way that I wouldn’t map a conversation about a pitcher’s delivery mechanics, or a BJJ player’s arm drag and top game mechanics, or a basketball player’s shooting mechanics, I don’t think its correct or helpful to use computer game design philosophy of esports jargon to attempt to capture either the fullness or novelty of TTRPG mechanics.

 

[clearstream]

“The description.” Of what? Its not clear to me.

And I’m assuming “the description” isn’t idiosyncratic to a particular game, here? You’re applying “the description” (whatever that might be…I’m assuming this a stable phenomenon you’re envisioning…some routine thing that occurs in all games?) across all games I hope?

Yes. Other ways I have seen it put is as propositions and factual predicates. I was thinking of language such as "player describes what their character does." I'm not wedded to the particular word.

To be clear, I’m not restating your concern (which isn’t clear to me what this concern is…is it the “matching a description to a rule” idea above?). I’m (a) differentiating procedures and rules (procedures are a particular subset of rules), (b) confirming pemerton’s historical usage of procedures vs rules, (c) and agreeing with that usage.

So by your lights, there can be a procedure containing just one rule. Why call that a procedure exactly? Isn't rule clearer?

All of the above that you’ve expressed looks to me to be mapping computer game design philosophy onto TTRPGs. I don’t think a wider reading of game mechanics (whether it be in physical sport, computer games broadly, or esports specifically) is helpful to TTRPG discussion or design.

I'm cautious of mapping computer game design philosophies onto TTRPGs. However, TTRPG mechanics are normally easily deconstructed into multiple rules. Can you say what problem you see with understanding a mechanic as a compound rule? Or supposing we take mechanic and rule to be synonyms, what do you propose for compound rules that collectively fabricate methods?

Take your “mechanics are actions players can take to change the gamestate above.” Ok, that omits Wandering Monster rolls, Camp/Town Event rolls, Monster Reaction rolls, Blades in the Dark Fortune rolls, NPC/Threat/Obstacle rolls during Contests or Conflicts, etc. That is a glaring omission of content generating dice rolls, which players don’t roll, that significantly change the gamestate. Binning them outside of “mechanics” seems like something computer game derived philosophy would do because these things are automated or fixed in that medium; therefore not a part of the user’s experience and not a fundamental, dynamism-infusing part of play as they are in TTRPGs.

Well, as I have repeatedly said that I don't think we should say mechanics when we mean rules, this would be a problem for those saying mechanics Which is to say, in defining mechanics as compound rules, I am reserving for myself the resources needed to cover all those other things.

So, in the same way that I wouldn’t map a conversation about a pitcher’s delivery mechanics, or a BJJ player’s arm drag and top game mechanics, or a basketball player’s shooting mechanics, I don’t think its correct or helpful to use computer game design philosophy of esports jargon to attempt to capture either the fullness or novelty of TTRPG mechanics.

It's kind of an open question whether there can be any sort of general game studies or whether classes of games such as TTRPGs can really only be studied as separate domains. But anyway, almost all of the literature identifies rules as basic to games, so I feel on safe ground to want to examine them in detail.

I'm not really that hung up on terms, and it might even be too reductionist to go to atomic rules (assuming too, that it's even possible.) I've made the possible (but I think pretty much unavoidable) mistake of embedding my definition of what a rule is into what looks like a procedure for using the rule. Making quite reasonable the sort of resistance you raise.

Strictly, an RPG rule as I define it is a supersession or extension of a norm, that is a rule fills in for a norm wherever one would serve. A para-norm, if you will.* One can agree or disagree with that (I see plenty of issues myself) but all this other criticism feels to me a bit off-track. I'm most interested in the question of whether that definition of a rule does enough work? And on the work such a definition seems to presuppose norms are doing for TTRPG. Perhaps what a norm does is something quite functional... as I think I've implied.


[*Rules are paranormal. You read it here first!]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Rereading your OP I retain the feeling that Baker takes an... I guess it could be called teleological approach. He has purposes in mind and he punts game rules like those that model the world that don't fit those purposes. I am aiming for a definition that will include such rules.

I'm thinking about bare cause and function. I'm not concerned with the social negotiation, only with what concretely happens when a rule is followed. That is why I shift tone: the first line lays out when we have cause to follow a rule. The rest lay out what following a rule amounts to.

No offense, but IMHO this technique is ineffective. A lot of what you post, its harder to relate to anything in the actual practice or professional criticism of RPG design than simply reading the rules of actual games, playing them, etc. My advice would be, drop all the philosophical posturing and simply go back to basics, observe what the actual roles are at the table during play in various sorts of games, and what the real concrete processes and outcomes actually are. THEN try to construct a hypothesis based on that, and maybe eventually build up to a more generalized theory. Use plain English, avoid all these academics, etc. I'm not saying they're a total waste of time, just that jumping around picking this and that from philosophy texts to fit some existing notions and then trying to explain your subject from there is a less than likely to bear fruit exercise.

I couldn't find anywhere in the account where it states exactly how that "shaping" takes place. The process, not the purpose. I felt that if one could state the process a bit more clearly, one might see how it could fit with a diversity of purposes.

Baker is one of the clearest of all writers IN EXISTENCE on ANY SUBJECT in my experience! The Process in Apocalypse World is one of the clearest and best documented (especially 2e) sets of procedures relating to the organizing and executing of a team activity I have ever seen. All of this is VERY VERY clear and explicit in his text. I'm happy to go over it with you and answer specific questions, but I'd suggest simply purchasing a copy of AW 2e, its not expensive, and simply reading it cover to cover, maybe a few times.

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C.
Lapses here necessitate the rule so it's right to observe that this reflects the OP, although I call attention both to the possibility of non-agreement, and the possibility of lack of a norm. I can't see where the OP calls attention to the latter.

Why are you incredibly fixated on this dichotomy between rules and norms? The only functional difference between something written in the book and something that is simply agreed between the participants is perhaps the degree of clarity that may exist in terms of the quality of agreement, but you don't seem to be really drawing on that for any useful insights that I can see. Its also not that useful to dwell on disagreements of this sort, as they simply represent an inability to execute the process of play of a game, and so have very limited value in terms of analyzing that process/structure/system. Certainly an examination of how games fail is potentially valuable on its own, but the most cogent discussions I've ever seen on that subject originated with Ron Edwards!

Baker possibly comes to see that agreement to a rule is never located in the rule - meaning that the social contract if functioning will work without them - and transfers attention to what following rules might achieve. I'm not sure from what you have written whether you agree? I take Baker to be saying, essentially, that rules can be forceful (so that the first and last part of your summary amount to the same thing.) The OP implies the additional necessity of pre-existing norms to rely on: I state it outright.

Uh, this all seems obvious to me, that is "Rules don't enforce themselves, its up to people to decide what they will actually do in practice. Sometimes this is different from what is written down." Yes indeed! All Baker seems to be saying is that the best approach to writing a game system would be to leverage the actual core set of processes of social interactions between people and build your rules around that. Again, I invite you to really thoroughly read the Apocalypse World rules and then perhaps Vince's essays on hacking AW and the 'Onion Structure', etc. where you will learn exactly how he approached this in a very transparent and obvious manner. I'm not saying his approach is the ONLY good one, but I will observe that the majority of RPGs being developed today are based on his work!

Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them.
Regardless of whether there are or are not lapses (whether participants do or don't agree) if they follow the rule then what the rule functionally does is supersede and extend beyond any pre-existing norm. I cannot see where this is stated in the OP, although I do see where some useful consequences of this are stated. This statement has many useful implications for games and if the OP intended it, then I think it should have spelt it out.

During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.
I call attention to the matching, which again I do not see in the OP but which I saw right away in Schauer and I understand to be a general problem in law: beyond trivial examples, how do we know that a rule fits a case? This necessitates strategies to secure it: in AW that's a design strategy, in D&D that's an organisational strategy. Once we have a rule that matches, the functional mapping itself is as implied in the OP.

Pardon me, but I find this whole point to be rather uninteresting and a side issue, at best. Yes, you could try to analyze Baker's statements and game designs in these terms, but IMHO it is an unfruitful approach. I can see two possible types of norms, ones which govern overall process of play, and those which address more specific issues like what are the criteria for evaluating a specific fiction. Baker takes what underlies all of this, the social dynamics and process existing in a typical RPG activity involving several people sitting around a table having a conversation about something. Now, there are certainly norms of behavior associated with that, but they have little to do with the specifics of RPGs! Instead what Baker focuses on is the conversational structure, and he builds a game and its process OUT of that analysis.

In terms of the whole 'activation of rules' thing, this is a SECONDARY consideration! I mean, sure, its a very useful technique and it's obviously employed with great frequency in a very transparent and direct fashion in AW. I don't dispute that one can, and should, evaluate the effectiveness of a given game on how well it manages to utilize this mechanism. That is, a GM who is careless and unprincipled in its application is probably going to run into issues while running a PbtA. I think this is, again, a fairly unremarkable observation. At most it tells us that this 'mapping' as you insist on calling it, needs to be done pretty consistently or else play may degenerate.

So perhaps it is right that I have just reframed what you felt to be implied in the OP. As outlined, I felt that some things were not well enough implied so I went ahead and attempted to formulate a definition. I'm glad that it reflects the OP, and although you did not say it, there is really nothing in what I have written that should not reflect background discourse. It needs more work. I'd value further insights into whether my supposed additions really are additions in the meantime.

Yeah, I think you (and I admit this is a failing of mine also) probably need to write all our posts out in a text editor someplace on the side, wait a couple hours, and then remove 50% of the words! Vince Baker is a genius at being extremely clear, and generally what is unsaid by him is either extremely apparent or relatively unimportant. Like this mapping thing, yeah, its kind of important, but it only exists in the SECOND of the 4 onion layers, so even if there's an issue there, its not going to crash your game, or certainly not as much as a misunderstanding of the layer one stuff, the conversation itself and the MC principles and agenda. So I would posit that the 'triggering' issues you focus on won't be an actual problem unless the GM (or players I guess) is abusing that process to undermine layer one! In other words, if I misapply Read a Sitch but in a way that still honors my principles and agenda, I'm probably OK. It might not be the best practice, but chances are the game will still work. So I would focus my primary attention on that layer one!

Lumpley PbtA design part 1

 

[pemerton]

However, let's say the GM has the job of impartially deciding the weather and is not using such a table. The aim is that the weather is external or objective from the perspective of the player characters: unlike nar, player hopes are not expected to be an input. I use the word "impartially" to include not applying desires one way or another. If one thinks that unavoidable then it is better to replace "anyone" with "any player's".

Stipulating that someone's job is to decide something impartially doesn't make their decision-making impartial.

What makes a decision about weather impartial? Is the only impartial decision on that specifies that the weather is typical? But that wouldn't be very realistic, given that realistic weather (quite notoriously) departs from the typical!

This isn't a strange thing to ask, either. The impact of this sort of question on RPG play and design is evident, especially in the late 70s and early 80s. Classic Traveller doesn't ask the GM to impartially stipulate a cargo: it has a cargo table. Rolemaster doesn't ask the GM to impartially stipulate an injury: it has crit tables. Etc.

The move to purist-for-system design can be seen as driven, at least in part, by doubts about the meaningfulness of "impartial decision-making" in these sorts of contexts. (In contrast to, say, decisions about whether poking a certain curtain with a spear will reveal the empty space behind the curtain: it's clearer what it means to impartially adjudicate these sorts of exploratory action declarations, although the history of concerns over "gotcha" GMing of traps shows that these aren't foolproof either.)

 

[clearstream]

Baker is one of the clearest of all writers IN EXISTENCE on ANY SUBJECT in my experience! The Process in Apocalypse World is one of the clearest and best documented (especially 2e) sets of procedures relating to the organizing and executing of a team activity I have ever seen. All of this is VERY VERY clear and explicit in his text. I'm happy to go over it with you and answer specific questions, but I'd suggest simply purchasing a copy of AW 2e, its not expensive, and simply reading it cover to cover, maybe a few times.

I own it and have read it. I agree that Baker writes clearly. I meant my comment very narrowly in respect of just what was quoted and summarised in the OP.

Why are you incredibly fixated on this dichotomy between rules and norms? The only functional difference between something written in the book and something that is simply agreed between the participants is perhaps the degree of clarity that may exist in terms of the quality of agreement, but you don't seem to be really drawing on that for any useful insights that I can see. Its also not that useful to dwell on disagreements of this sort, as they simply represent an inability to execute the process of play of a game, and so have very limited value in terms of analyzing that process/structure/system. Certainly an examination of how games fail is potentially valuable on its own, but the most cogent discussions I've ever seen on that subject originated with Ron Edwards!

I'm interested it for a few reasons. One is to have an explanation that includes FKR and one-player RPG. Another is because the rules/norms dichotomy is itself extremely interesting to me. The point of suggesting a definition is really to give a foundation to work from. To which end folk might say - oh yes - rules really are para-norms, sounds good, what's next?

Uh, this all seems obvious to me, that is "Rules don't enforce themselves, its up to people to decide what they will actually do in practice. Sometimes this is different from what is written down." Yes indeed! All Baker seems to be saying is that the best approach to writing a game system would be to leverage the actual core set of processes of social interactions between people and build your rules around that. Again, I invite you to really thoroughly read the Apocalypse World rules and then perhaps Vince's essays on hacking AW and the 'Onion Structure', etc. where you will learn exactly how he approached this in a very transparent and obvious manner. I'm not saying his approach is the ONLY good one, but I will observe that the majority of RPGs being developed today are based on his work!

Yes, I have also read all of the articles in his blog where he discusses the Onion Structure. They're great.

Pardon me, but I find this whole point to be rather uninteresting and a side issue, at best. Yes, you could try to analyze Baker's statements and game designs in these terms, but IMHO it is an unfruitful approach. I can see two possible types of norms, ones which govern overall process of play, and those which address more specific issues like what are the criteria for evaluating a specific fiction. Baker takes what underlies all of this, the social dynamics and process existing in a typical RPG activity involving several people sitting around a table having a conversation about something. Now, there are certainly norms of behavior associated with that, but they have little to do with the specifics of RPGs! Instead what Baker focuses on is the conversational structure, and he builds a game and its process OUT of that analysis.

I appreciate that you're endeavouring here to offer helpful advice. I find the point interesting and consequential. That you don't is of course absolutely okay.

In terms of the whole 'activation of rules' thing, this is a SECONDARY consideration! I mean, sure, its a very useful technique and it's obviously employed with great frequency in a very transparent and direct fashion in AW. I don't dispute that one can, and should, evaluate the effectiveness of a given game on how well it manages to utilize this mechanism. That is, a GM who is careless and unprincipled in its application is probably going to run into issues while running a PbtA. I think this is, again, a fairly unremarkable observation. At most it tells us that this 'mapping' as you insist on calling it, needs to be done pretty consistently or else play may degenerate.

It's a crucial consideration and one that I'm coming to understand a reasonable amount of theory has already been developed on. How do we know which rule to apply in cases where a description does not exactly match any text in the rule itself? Baker has employed a number of strategies to deal with that, in their way formalisations of strategies often already employed by groups. For example, AW take backs. Would you say it was unknown in your groups for folk to see that they had divergent understandings of a situation or what was intended, and be allowed to revise their descriptions? Predating AW, I mean.

Yeah, I think you (and I admit this is a failing of mine also) probably need to write all our posts out in a text editor someplace on the side, wait a couple hours, and then remove 50% of the words! Vince Baker is a genius at being extremely clear, and generally what is unsaid by him is either extremely apparent or relatively unimportant. Like this mapping thing, yeah, its kind of important, but it only exists in the SECOND of the 4 onion layers, so even if there's an issue there, its not going to crash your game, or certainly not as much as a misunderstanding of the layer one stuff, the conversation itself and the MC principles and agenda. So I would posit that the 'triggering' issues you focus on won't be an actual problem unless the GM (or players I guess) is abusing that process to undermine layer one! In other words, if I misapply Read a Sitch but in a way that still honors my principles and agenda, I'm probably OK. It might not be the best practice, but chances are the game will still work. So I would focus my primary attention on that layer one!

Good advice, honestly. For my definition, I copied it out of this thread and put it into a document, allowed time for reflection, and then slightly revised it. To me, it contains some conccrete ideas that I believe have useful consequences. That's all I need, I suppose. I feel like we should encourage one another's investigations into TTRPG, and I appreciate what you have written as good advice.

 

[pemerton]

My statement is about determining which rule matches a description, where I am thinking about what might be called atomic functions.

What is an "atomic function" in this context? What does a rule look like? What is a description?

You use these words and phrases as if they have precise, technical meanings. But to me they are serving more to obscure than to make clear.

From my perspective putting it as "GM gets to say" has a potential to add confusion. There must be some means by which descriptions are matched to rules, and that is not just an option taken up by D&D. It's not just something someone "gets to say", it's something that someone must say. Both AW and D&D give it to MC/GM to say.

I didn't say anything about "matching descriptions to rules". To repeat, I attributed to you the view that in D&D, the GM gets to say what procedure will be used to work out what happens next. @Manbearcat has elaborated on the point in his post not far upthread.

For instance, when D&D is played in this fashion, the GM gets to decide whether to call for a dice roll or check; whether to narrate what happens next by reference to their notes; whether to narrate what happens next by extrapolating from their notes; even whether to narrate what happens next by giving voice to their sense of what would best fit, regardless of notes!

None of that is about "matching descriptions to rules". It's about actual processes whereby the shared fiction is established.

For me it's also not sufficiently clear to make it about saying "what procedure will be used". "Procedure" has a potential to be confused as a synonym for rule.

A procedure is a way of doing something, of brining something about.

A rule is a normative standard for conduct. A rule can mandate a procedure (eg "When combat starts, roll initiative"). A rule can forbid a procedure (eg "When we're playing a module, you're forbidden from peeking at the maps").

Nothing meaningful can be said about how RPGing works without discussing the procedures of play - that is to say, the actual methods that actual people use to creates, sustain and develop a shared fiction. The question asked in the OP is What do rules contribute to this endeavour? One contribution they make is to mandate some procedures, and forbid others.

I see that as confusing rules for mechanics.

Mechanics, as per my post upthread, is generally used to refer to a particular sort of procedure, that involves reference to what Baker calls a "cue" - ie rolling dice, making a list, adjusting a tally, writing down a blind declaration, etc.

All game mechanics are, or figure in, procedures of play. But not all procedures of play involve mechanics.

For instance, when the AW rulebook tells the GM to make a soft move if everyone looks to them to see what happens, that is a rule mandating a procedure - ie the GM is to say a particular sort of thing - but the procedure does not involve a mechanic.

AW takes a brilliant approach that builds it into each mechanic (moves are generally compounds of rules) to "look for" just the right description (to do it, do it, i.e. say the right thing), yet - finally - still needs MC's deliberation. I like the court of appeal of take backs: let players confirm that when they said it, they meant to say it. Strategies like these are in a way proof of what is necessitated: they arise because it's necessitated to make a match between description and rule.

This is not the most interesting feature of AW. Working out whether or not a player-side move has been triggered; or working out whether or not everyone is looking at the GM to see what happens next, hence requiring the GM to make a soft move, are not major problems in play.

They are certainly not illustrations of a game in which the GM is permitted to say what procedure will be used to work out what happens next.

 

[Manbearcat]

So by your lights, there can be a procedure containing just one rule. Why call that a procedure exactly? Isn't rule clearer?


I'm cautious of mapping computer game design philosophies onto TTRPGs. However, TTRPG mechanics are normally easily deconstructed into multiple rules. Can you say what problem you see with understanding a mechanic as a compound rule? Or supposing we take mechanic and rule to be synonyms, what do you propose for compound rules that collectively fabricate methods?


Well, as I have repeatedly said that I don't think we should say mechanics when we mean rules, this would be a problem for those saying mechanics Which is to say, in defining mechanics as compound rules, I am reserving for myself the resources needed to cover all those other things.

Ok, this is feeling like a regression. I don't know how your first sentence above is responsive to how I've defined procedures. I'm feeling like clarity and understanding is actively decaying with the deconstruction and struggling communication we're undertaking here. I'm going to take this moment to do something I really don't have any interest in doing, but maybe it will help...something. I'm going to define rules, procedures (again), mechanics (again) and give screenshots of examples.

RULES: The entire corpus of language and ephemera that substantively informs and directs play. These include agenda, principles, best practices (or "meta"), authority distribution, all procedures, all mechanics, and possibly some ephemera (like maps, handouts, possibly some illustrations, etc). Taken together, you have "system" or "game engine."

PROCEDURES: A formal sequence of actions undertaken in order to derive a distinct play experience and output novel to that procedure. Any given component part of the sequence typically (though sometimes a step may just be color, whether structured or freeform) entails referencing features/relationships of the play space/gamestate and/or invoking and resolving a mechanic.

MECHANICS: A function of system that resolves or facilitates the transition from one distinct gamestate to another. This might be one part of a full combat procedure; a single roll of a dice + modifier to signal combat and dictate turn order like D&D initiative. This might be a discrete mechanic that interacts (could be amplifies...could be mitigates...could be triggers...could be resolves...etc) with another discrete mechanic like Acting Outside of Your Nature (mechanic) in Tochbearer to gain a large dice pool at the risk of taxing your Nature if you fail the Test (another mechanic; the Test). This might be a nested mechanic within a larger mechanical framework (typically conflict resolution) like the pulling of a block of a Jenga Tower in Dread to coincide with action taken in the fiction, the act of which either increases tension or triggers calamity.

---

Whether anyone agrees or not, hopefully that makes my position on these matters clear. I'm probably done with this part of the conversation as I feel like this is already well-trodden ground that doesn't need to be examined or deconstructed. This is the basic substrate of all TTRPGs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, that seems to restate my concern, because I'm aiming to look at what rules do, not what procedures do. A procedure or play loop will typically involve multiple rules, right? It could be that it's wrong to try to look at what individual rules do, but that would be quite a different criticism. It would be to say that we should only look at procedures, rather than that rules are procedures.

This is what I was saying in my last post though, PROCESS is more fundamental than specific rules. Without the process context in which the rules are embedded, these rules are fairly unimportant.

For example: PbtA and FitD engines use rather different rules to resolve actions, but this is not where their fundamental differences lie. Those differences are really at the level of principles and agenda, the core organizing concepts/rules related to WHAT you want to do, not HOW you want to do it. WHAT is always more primary than HOW, both in gaming and software engineering!

 

[pemerton]

Rereading your OP I retain the feeling that Baker takes an... I guess it could be called teleological approach. He has purposes in mind and he punts game rules like those that model the world that don't fit those purposes. I am aiming for a definition that will include such rules.

This is simply not correct.

Baker is not asking what RPG rules can be used for. He is aware, for instance, that rules can have some sort of representational relationship to elements in the game world:

Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table.​

His assertion is that this is not something that rules have to do. And, in saying that the sole reason to have rules is to introduce the unwanted and unexpected, he is making an aesthetic judgement. As he says, using rules for other things is a waste of time.

This is also connected to the imperative to purist-for-system RPGs: the reason for using tables isn't just to model, but to model "impartially", which is to say - to get results that no one would choose, or can be relied upon to choose.

Conversely, his assertion is that if the things your rule tell you to say are things you'd say anyway, then you're better off doing away with the rules and just saying those things!

These claims about what is useful, what sensible and so on are conclusions of arguments about what is valuable in RPGing. Rebutting them requires setting out some account of why other things might be valuable. I make a couple of suggestions in the OP.

I'm thinking about bare cause and function. I'm not concerned with the social negotiation, only with what concretely happens when a rule is followed.

You've not said anything concrete about what happens when a rule is followed, either in general or in RPGing. Your various schemas do not ever refer abstractly to actual humans actually performing the task of creating, sustaining and developing a shared fiction

I couldn't find anywhere in the account where it states exactly how that "shaping" takes place.

Innumerable accounts have been given in this thread. My word "shaping" lives in the same functional and explanatory space as Baker's "constrain": I chose "shaping" rather than "constrain" because there is a reading of "constrain" that is negative and so doesn't sufficiently capture the "enabling" or "permissive" character that a rule can have.

Here's an example of how a rule can shape what is said about what happens next: If the players look to you to see what happens next, make a soft move. This is not a point about the abstract nature of rules in general: rules shape what is said about the fiction in virtue of their content, the actual permissions they confer and prohibitions that they impose. All the content that constitutes participant roles, and governs what participants do, which is missing from your purely abstract and formal schemas.

I felt that if one could state the process a bit more clearly, one might see how it could fit with a diversity of purposes.

I don't even know what this means. What statement of the process in AW could be more clear than what I've said, or what Baker has said in the rulebook?

If you want to serve a different purpose with your rules, then you will need rules with different content from the AW ones. For instance, if the purpose is "Make the players feel immersed in a setting narrated to them by the GM, but not compelled to action", you would probably suggest different rules from the AW ones. Because one obvious purpose of making a soft move in AW is to compel the players to action! You would probably have rules that tell the GM to narrate colour, to make extremely soft moves that barely hint at conflict, to make certain sorts of hard moves even if an opportunity has not been offered on a platter, etc.

So far as pre-existing norms extend, participants can often agree that a description D will have the consequences C.
Lapses here necessitate the rule so it's right to observe that this reflects the OP, although I call attention both to the possibility of non-agreement, and the possibility of lack of a norm. I can't see where the OP calls attention to the latter.

I don't know what this means. What is a "pre-existing norm"? I think you mean a belief (but whose?) about what is likely to (or what must?) happen next in the fiction - but I'm not sure of that. What sort of lapses are you referring to? On whose part?

When you say the OP does not call attention to the possibility of a lack of a norm, do you mean the OP doesn't mention that someone (the GM? some or other player? all of the participants?) don't have a predisposition as to what happens next? I think the OP focuses precisely on that: because it talks about the introduction of the unwelcome and the unwanted!

If you mean something else, I do not know what that is.

Baker possibly comes to see that agreement to a rule is never located in the rule

In the context of RPGing, this is the Lumpley principle - that is to say, it bears Vincent Baker's name. So I think it's fair to say that he noticed it, 20-odd years ago.

I take Baker to be saying, essentially, that rules can be forceful (so that the first and last part of your summary amount to the same thing.) The OP implies the additional necessity of pre-existing norms to rely on: I state it outright.

Rules supersede pre-existing norms and extend beyond them.
Regardless of whether there are or are not lapses (whether participants do or don't agree) if they follow the rule then what the rule functionally does is supersede and extend beyond any pre-existing norm. I cannot see where this is stated in the OP, although I do see where some useful consequences of this are stated. This statement has many useful implications for games and if the OP intended it, then I think it should have spelt it out.

During play it can be decided if any D has the consequences C by matching that D to a norm or rule that explicitly states or implies that C.
I call attention to the matching, which again I do not see in the OP but which I saw right away in Schauer and I understand to be a general problem in law: beyond trivial examples, how do we know that a rule fits a case? This necessitates strategies to secure it: in AW that's a design strategy, in D&D that's an organisational strategy. Once we have a rule that matches, the functional mapping itself is as implied in the OP.

I don't know what any of this means. For instance, what is the difference between a "design strategy" and an "organisational strategy" - organisations are often designed! The AW rulebook contains rules for organising the conversation, and the resulting process of creating, sustaining and developing a shared fiction.

I already explained why Schauer's problem is basically irrelevant to a voluntary activity. Suits sees this. So does Baker - hence why he notes that distributions of authority ought not to be the main focus of RPG design.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

From wider reading of game studies I would say that mechanics are usually taken to be actions players can take to change the game state. That's similar to your definition, but not identical. As an example, Miguel Sicart defines game mechanics as "methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world." In esports commentary, if a player has "good mechanics", it means they grasp exactly how those methods work and are adept at employing them. The first line of your definition in isolation is close to how I am thinking of rules.

This doesn't strike me as correct. Hit points are a mechanic, but they are not 'invoked' by anyone. They simply serve as a mechanical part of the game, an objectively recorded concrete fact asserted in the real world about the state of the game, separate from the fiction. Rules can be triggered by changes in hit points (IE character death) and rules can specify as part of their execution a manipulation of hit points (IE you are hit by an attack, you take damage). Baker locates these elements at layer 2 in his onion, along with core rules which presumably depend on them, like harm, basic moves like Hack & Slash, etc.

I would agree with the notion that mechanics are 'means', they serve the purpose of assisting in achieving the agenda of play, but they are generally intermediaries. I mean, maybe your description and mine are partly at variance for semantic reasons too, some people would call moves a 'mechanism', but here I don't use the term in that way.