Why do RPGs have rules?

[FormerlyHemlock]

The upthread discussion about GM-as-referee, in conjunction with @loverdrive's comment about Apocalypse World, makes me think that there are two ways the GM can orchestrate conflict:

(1) In advance of play, by authoring the puzzle/gauntlet/challenge.​

​

(2) During play, by a process of framing and consequence-narration.​

In case (1), the overarching rule that governs the GM during play must be follow through on what you've authored. The GM needs to be unflinching in this respect. (Here, I depart from what I said in the OP about "the unwelcome" not seeming applicable in this sort of play. I think that was wrong.) There are also very strict rules that apply to the pre-play authorship phase: the puzzle/gauntlet/challenge has to be, in some sense, beat-able. Because parts of it are not only hidden, but operate on the basis of "logical extrapolation within the fiction", the process of extrapolation must be sufficiently knowable to and learnable by the players that they can, if they pay attention and play well, beat the challenge. I continue to believe that this puts significant limits on what the fiction can involve, as per my (and @AdbulAlhazred's) posts upthread, as well as in other past threads.

Players in case (1) have an incentive to minimize the risks to their characters, as part of the process of beating the challenge. This means that case (1) play is unlikely to produce a story in the literary/aesthetic sense, for two reasons:

(a) The characters risk being somewhat incoherent, being risk-minimisers locally (always poking with their 10' poles, etc) but ludicrous risk takers in their overarching goals (always taking on these puzzles/gauntlets/challenges with insane kill rates). We can lampshade this by imagining that all our 1st level wizards also have the personalities of extreme sports enthusiasts, but I think the characters remain a bit weird.​

​

(b) The better the players play, the less that the game will produce rising action => climax/crisis => resolution. Although, in the fiction, the situation might involve intense physical stress and drama, at the table the challenge is essentially intellectual (like most other table-top games). And intellectual puzzle solving simply doesn't produce that narrative structure. It's true that in some cases there will be the thrill of the dice roll, but skilled play tries to minimise dependence on lucky rolls.​

Two comments:

(a) is indeed an interesting source of tension, and one way to resolve it is to recognize that the player's goals are not the character's goals and get the players OOC to buy into a scenario. We had some discussion upthread about starting in medias res, but there are other ways to frame scenarios too, such as getting players to agree to a scenario where, despite their characters' intentions merely to buy cargo low and sell high elsewhere, they will find themselves shipwrecked somewhere interesting, where there's both treasure and danger to be found, as well as a way to repair or replace their ship. That way they can be risk-minimizers both locally and globally, if that's the roleplaying choice they want to make.

(b) I don't want to assume I know what you mean when you say "The better the players play, the less that the game will produce rising action => climax/crisis => resolution." The words after that indicate that you might be using some kind of Forge jargon: that it's not enough to have a climax of the sort that will naturally occur when addressing a challenge (like impressing the natives with your halfling-cooking skills enough that they'll help you fix your boat and get Lost Pete's Buried Treasure out of the Dinojungle). It sounds like there's an additional meaning there, that you have to experience certain emotions as well at moments of decision. Is that correct?

At any rate I want to say that emotions (unlike gameplay) can be generated retroactively in the retelling, even independently of the GM! That time your PC lost an arm to a marilith's lucky crit may not at the time have generated a lot of emotional commentary beyond, "oh no, Grewishka's out! what do we do now?" but as you're writing Grewishka's journal entry for the day, awkwardly and left-handed, feel free to retroactively reinterpret imaginary portents ("I saw a crow this morning, the same crow I've been seeing for the past week, always staring at me with a queer gaze that makes my arm ache") or your own reaction to the events of play. "I stared down at my own arm, lying there on the floor, and felt overcome by not grief or loss, but rage. 'I. Was. USING THAT!' I screamed at the marilith, and began hammering it with my shield, somehow heedless of the pain. Even now I still feel oddly like myself despite the loss. Perhaps I am more than just a sword."

 

[clearstream]

I'm tired of hearing that story games can't work. I'm tired of seeing story games repeatedly misrepresented year after year by the same people who can't be bothered to read the rules or have had the rules explained to them. I'm tired of hearing that these games aren't equally valid ways of roleplaying or are BadWrongFun. I'm tired of people chiming in to discussions just to complain about and hate on story games. I'm tired of some people here distilling my identity down to being a story gamer or belonging to some imaginary camp of story gamers despite story games only being a fraction of the games that I enjoy playing. I'm tired of feeling like I have to walk on eggshells when talking about story games because people perceive any talk of story games as imagined threats or slights against D&D and associated playstyles. I'm tired of people expecting that for everything I say that story games do well or what their strengths are, that I'm obligated to name a flaw, a weakness, or say something positive about D&D or other traditional games to somehow balance things out. Finally, I'm tired of feeling like people can't say anything positive about story games without being accused of having an air of superiority. It's all quite exhausting.

Goodness yes! Include with "story games" whatever mode you enjoy, such as FKR, trad, etc., and you'll find someone raining on it. It's right to describe that as tiring: that's exactly how it feels. Fatiguing.

Recently I have been thinking about our common project of RPG. I picture a collegiality - that RPG's empire might be "defined by attitude, not territory or power or process." It must be a playful attitude, while at the same time serious and curious. It should - I think - be founded upon skepticism as to any set of qualities proving true for all of RPG, and in that light possess tolerance for each colleague's enjoyment of any given set of qualities.

To rephrase: The play agenda of desiring simulation out of your roleplaying games is more important than whether perfect simulation is possible.

Nicely stated!

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't have time for a considerable amount of virtual ink, but I agree with @loverdrive 's "hardship is the point" when it comes to Apocalypse World and the new Warring States Japan PBtA game Thousand Arrows specifically, but not across all PBtA games generally. I think I can sum it up with a few thoughts:

* "Be a fan of the player characters" means subtly different things depending upon the PBtA game in question.

* Not all PBtA games have a substantial G (Gamism, per The Forge) element that governs the throughline of play or perhaps even any G at all; eg AW and 1KA are Big N (Narrativism) and very little G (and certainly no G of consequence in terms of the throughline of play). This has significant consequence on the above bullet point, the below bullet point, and design generally.

* For AW and 1KA specifically, the GM relentlessly aggressing the PCs is the point. That is "being a fan of the player characters." If you don't relentlessly aggress the player characters, if you don't relentlessly provoke them ruthlessly by demanding big moments of self-confrontation (and inevitable hold 'em or fold 'em or change), then you aren't "being a fan of the player characters." Therefore, you aren't doing your job (as GM).

* Games like Dungeon World and Stonetop are kindred, but (a) the have a substantial G element to their play (and creating meaty decision-spaces that demand of players along those lines is a corresponding substantial part of GMing) so therefore, while you are absolutely provoking the PCs and testing their dramatic/thematic/relationship portfolios, (b) the "relentlessly aggress" component of GMing is throttled back to a degree (not in proportion....but to a degree).

* To tie a bow on it, "(relentless) hardship is the point" in GMing AW and 1KA while "hardship is a component" of GMing a game like DW or ST.

TLDR: PBtA games have enough novelty amongst them that I don't think we can talk about them as a coalition of games (except in a general sense like "play to find out what happens" binds most of them together with a few exceptions perhaps). And that novelty appears to be increasing with time and iteration.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I generally think the player's role should be to mitigate failure, and try to succeed at all times. At a certain point, of the game is determined not to let me do that, or to ensure that any effort to do so is inherently futile (not futile because of an outside, evolving circumstance), then engaging with the mechanics at all starts to feel like a violation of the Czege principle. I cannot press a case, because any action I take is more likely than not to make the situation worse.

Fundamentally, my action declarations become my own primary source of opposition. So why am I doing things? Laying down and dying is more efficient. Trying to succeed and getting ahead of the obstacles is the primary appeal of PvE games. Consider Slay the Spire.

Though this feels like perhaps an overstatement to me (you're still progressing toward a goal, even if everything you do also throws other problems at you) you're not the first person I've seen who says they find they want to avoid rolls in PbtA for this kind of reason.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not at all. Only the conception that some people have that the core play model being different than what they are used to / might prefer is some sort of fundamental flaw that fans/designers need to account for instead of the result of design choices meant to shape a particular sort of play structure regardless of how some people may feel about it.

Well, people who are only interested in the kind of playstyles they want are always going to see it that way; that's true all over the spectrum of desires in RPG systems. Fundamentally they don't care about other people's needs here; if it doesn't fit theirs, its a failure of design.

(You can run into some complex cases where they accept that other needs exist but consider them uncommon enough its still a failure of design. Its similar to the people who think there's no point in games other than D&D, just a little more cosmopolitan).

Not everything needs to be made for you. Apocalypse World may not be for you. HERO System isn't for me. Not going to cry into my cheerios about it.

Yeah, but I've seen others who really don't seem to understand the objections at all. I suspect, in practice, they're just the inverse of people who don't understand why someone would want the PbtA style experience; inability to engage with the fact there are genuinely different desires here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I know this is just repeating myself from the first page of the thread, but I feel it is worth repeating. You are doing things for fun. You play TTRPGs because they're fun. The #1 reason people play games like D&D (and other RPGs or tabletop games), learn the rules of games, spend money on games, is because they want to have fun.

If a theory or framework of game design doesn't have the design space or terminology to address the concept of fun, I propose that the theory is prima facie falsified.

I think this misses the point that in Pedantic's case, the sense of constantly ramping threat isn't fun. Yes, you can argue that that goes in conjunction with a sense of progress, but if the first is offputting, nothing else much matters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Have you visited the FKR thread recently?

There's a reason I haven't.

 

[TwoSix]

If I thought that story games were inherently better, then I would have no reason to play non-story games; however, I, in fact, do mostly play non-story games. One reason I enjoy story games is because they offer me a different gaming experience that I don't easily get from a pretty big chunk of D&D/OSR style games, which is the prevalent form of gaming. For me, game variety is the spice of roleplay gaming.

Agreed. First, there's the general idea of it being fun to try new things (assuming you're the type to enjoy novelty). As for the "find a better gaming mode" idea, I feel like the idea that's trying to be pushed is that trying new game styles will make you a better gamer in general, and the techniques you learn from different games will be applicable to all the games you play.

I mean, if I met someone who had only played story games so far, I would definitely recommend them to try a dungeon crawl in an OSR game and an adventure path game in a modern D&D or PF system (either the games themselves or one of their descendants). I generally feels it's better to broaden your horizons.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Agreed. First, there's the general idea of it being fun to try new things (assuming you're the type to enjoy novelty). As for the "find a better gaming mode" idea, I feel like the idea that's trying to be pushed is that trying new game styles will make you a better gamer in general, and the techniques you learn from different games will be applicable to all the games you play.

I think this being overly generous in some cases. The flip side of the sort of "burn the heretic" attitude that Aldarac is referencing is often the proselytizer of the Right Way that you can see in some people. And from a distance or with casual contact, both of these two can poison the well of interpreting more nuanced reactions such as you reference.

I mean, if I met someone who had only played story games so far, I would definitely recommend them to try a dungeon crawl in an OSR game and an adventure path game in a modern D&D or PF system (either the games themselves or one of their descendants). I generaly feels it's better to broaden your horizons.

Would you do so without understanding what they want out of gaming? Because honestly, doing so without doing that can add up encouraging them toward a bad experience. I'd at least want them to say what part of their experience-to-date they have enjoyed most.

 

[TwoSix]

I think this being overly generous in some cases. The flip side of the sort of "burn the heretic" attitude that Aldarac is referencing is often the proselytizer of the Right Way that you can see in some people. And from a distance or with casual contact, both of these two can poison the well of interpreting more nuanced reactions such as you reference.

Fair. I agree that there are definitely some posters who are interested in asserting the superiority of their particular style. For me, I just like to advocate for trying new things.

Would you do so without understanding what they want out of gaming? Because honestly, doing so without doing that can add up encouraging them toward a bad experience. I'd at least want them to say what part of their experience-to-date they have enjoyed most.

I wouldn't chloroform them and drag them to a game in a cabin in the woods, no.

But I would recommend they try sitting down at a game at a con, or try a one-shot in their group, and see what happens? For sure. If it turns out they don't like it, well, they don't like it. No harm, no foul.