Why do RPGs have rules?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not generally incomplete. Always incomplete. To model something is to represent it incompletely.

No

It would be a worse simulation than one with the same predictive power that took half the time and energy. And one that did not finish processing until after the event being projected would be worthless (setting aside backcasting.)

If the models you have in mind couldn't be run at the game table, they are worthless in that context. Efficiency is at issue.

And if your twice as efficient model has insufficient power to make any reliable predictions at all, can it even be called a model? Of course the general goal is approach 100% accuracy, and a possible goal is to remain within some predefined budget while doing so. That does not make 'smallness of model' a FEATURE. Sorry, this is simply untrue.

But the key part here is "insufficient power", and that's what we're really talking about here. The notion that I could predict weather with a 1D atmosphere model is ludicrous. The notion that I could predict political happenings and such from the World of Greyhawk Gazetteer is equally ridiculous in a similar way, they're simply not equipped with a representation of the necessary structure required to calculate anything at all.

It's right to specify "relevant" as not all data has equal impact on a model's success. Failure to include the most relevant data and dynamics can scupper a model no matter the thickness of its other data and dynamics.

So if by thinness you mean the bolded part, then with regard to imagined worlds enough of the most relevant data is in place. That was the poster's point.

Perhaps generally you are supposing that models of imagined worlds should play by the same rules as military, economic or scientific models of the real world. It's better to see them as comparatively simple functions. Efficiency is crucial as you normally want quick answers without too much pondering.

They aren't 'functions' at all, they are simply labels people are attaching to decisions they made about the fiction which bear no resemblance to modeling or simulation whatsoever. This is not efficiency. You are constructing a sand castle here in which you mistake your sand for concrete, something it simply isn't. Saying you don't have any cement in it makes things 'more efficient' is utterly missing the point.

 

[Maxperson]

This seems to be a question about why I should prefer pears over peaches. I enjoy pears. That does not impinge upon your enjoyment of peaches. Sometimes I like peaches, too.

This. Those worlds WERE built for RPGing. Just not the sort @loverdrive prefers. I'm sure they'd work very well for a lot of us.

 

[Autumnal]

I’ve long thought that that a missing axis in Forge categories - and in the rec.games.frp.advocacy categories before them - is attitude toward intensity and campaign/series duration. Almost all Forge-related games are meant to be played briefly, as one-shots or fairly short series. A dozen sessions is a long run in that scene and ones spinning off from it.

This is important in discussing intensity during play. Most of us would burn out trying to keep that up for, say, a year of biweekly sessions. But then PBTA games, Sorcerer, and the like don’t expect that you’ll be doing that, nor that you’d actually like to do so. They’re assuming you want to get in, max it out, and get out. Then you’ll recharge and start fresh with something else - maybe even another run with some of the same setting and stuff using the same rules, but reset nonetheless.

Things get very different if you intend to play a long time and find that satisfying. Out there Bruce gestures vaguely at all narrative realms multi-season TV series have different pacing priorities than movies, and long fiction series have different ones than stand-alone novels, and those have different ones than short stories, and so on. Ditto with rolegaming.

People aiming for long runs expect that there will be high-octane times (and a separate note about that below), but also lower-octane ones. The recharging is incorporated into play and applied to the characters. Escalation can happen over a duration that would be the entire arc of play in a shorter series. And there is a lot of room for intermediate levels of intensity, too - it’s not just on or off. I don’t think anyone involved in this thread thinks it is, but it’s worth spelling out. The music that is games in play has more than two notes available.

Some people really thrive on play that starts with a bang (literally a Bang, in Sorcerer ) and runs hot to its blazing climax and denouement. You can feel the delight when someone like Edwards or Baker describes some actual play where everybody is in the groove and it’s all booming. I mean, they are having Fun with a capital F, no fooling.

But others hate that, or like it only occasionally, or like it but no more than they like other kinds of play experience. Aaron Allston’s Strike Force campaign ran for decades, and you can read his discussion of it and also feel the delight shining through. The same is true for Lee Gold’s campaign that was already mature and established in 1977 and is still going. She and her players )not all the same people nor characters, but still a continuity of milieu) know they have something magical and love all the varied tones available. One of the things that makes an Adventure Path popular with players is variety in activity and intensity.

And nobody who’s happy and satisfied is wrong. But it does call for different playing tools. A life of constant adversity may make for a damn fine film or short story but is less likely to hold people for multiple seasons or volumes. So advice should come framed with how long a play experience it’s intended for.

Now that promised extra note about intensity. This is another thing that I presume we all know on various levels but bears restating sometimes. So here I am restating it: intensity has flavors. Violent action is a popular way to get intense, a reliable crowd-pleaser around the world and throughout history. But so is the pursuit of answers and justice )on whatever side they may lie) in mysteries that may not have any violent action at all. The tension between criminals and their pursuers is just as widely popular, and partly because they can be grippingly intense. Indeed, in some of them, the violent action is a tension released, lowering the emotional pitch for a while. Religious drama is sometimes gory spectacle - a lot of late antique and medieval saints’ lives are the Eli Roth and Cannibal Holocaust of their times - but others are very intense with almost no action at all. They’re about the internal struggle of various parts of the self and the tension between the bond of human and divine versus all the intervening layers between them that would obfuscate and dissolve it. And on and on.

A more clever person would some kind of conclusion after all that. Alas, all I got is “be aware of the context of the advice you give and get”.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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 generaly feels it's better to broaden your horizons.

And for those who just want to experience a range of playstyles and respect the preferences of others, that's fine. However, perhaps because most proponents of narrative/storygames came from a more traditional gaming background, it really can come off as the person feeling that they have evolved into a superior form of gaming, like there's a hierarchy that they are ascending and classic/trad gamers are on a lower rung. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with my personal feelings as well.

For my part, I'm sorry if my comments have made anyone feel bad.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.



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 do feel sometimes that I'm talking to missionaries looking to convert. Proselytizing is what it can feel like.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No

And if your twice as efficient model has insufficient power to make any reliable predictions at all, can it even be called a model? Of course the general goal is approach 100% accuracy, and a possible goal is to remain within some predefined budget while doing so. That does not make 'smallness of model' a FEATURE. Sorry, this is simply untrue.

But the key part here is "insufficient power", and that's what we're really talking about here. The notion that I could predict weather with a 1D atmosphere model is ludicrous. The notion that I could predict political happenings and such from the World of Greyhawk Gazetteer is equally ridiculous in a similar way, they're simply not equipped with a representation of the necessary structure required to calculate anything at all.

They aren't 'functions' at all, they are simply labels people are attaching to decisions they made about the fiction which bear no resemblance to modeling or simulation whatsoever. This is not efficiency. You are constructing a sand castle here in which you mistake your sand for concrete, something it simply isn't. Saying you don't have any cement in it makes things 'more efficient' is utterly missing the point.

Again, what is the point of this screed? Are you trying to belittle proponents of simulation on purpose? What purpose does that serve?

 

[Aldarc]

I do feel sometimes that I'm talking to missionaries looking to convert. Proselytizing is what it can feel like.

Don't worry. No one wants you to join the cause, Micah!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I do feel sometimes that I'm talking to missionaries looking to convert. Proselytizing is what it can feel like.

There are certainly occasions when you can hit that in some times and places; a notorious (but now largely historical) case was when White Wolf was first hitting its stride back in the day, when you'd see proponents of Vampire (and later others) treat D&D players (and even people like RQ fans) like they were deliberately staying in the kiddie pool.

But as Aldarac references, you can also get really hostile reactions to someone even suggesting that the world doesn't begin and end with trad games in general and D&D in particular, and because of the lean of this board, there's enough people over in the D&D camp that you're bound to get some people who are persistently and aggressively in that group. That can make people who just want their tastes to be accepted as legitimate come across as more strident in response, sometimes simply as a perception because they're not just rolling over, sometimes because they've gotten sick and tired of being dismissed.

(I sit in an odd spot; I'm not a story gamer by any means and am pretty trad in my overall tastes, but I also am not a big D&D fan (5e in particular does not interest me) and even though my overall tastes are trad, I find some techniques from story games and other more modern designs useful, and even when not useful I'm too much a long time game hack to not think its interesting to see where they're going. This particular position can end up making me come across as either fence straddling or attacking either side in these conversations if I'm not careful).

 

[loverdrive]

Aside II: on things not mattering

I play Team Fortress 2. For those who don't know, it's a hat simulator. There are tons and tons of cosmetic options that can be mixed and matched together. They don't matter. They do not influence the gameplay in any way, shape or form.

And precisely that allows them to matter. To work as a tool of expression. If they had stats (like they used to, which is, thankfully, a thing of the past), the choice of an outfit would be a simple optimization problem.

They don't, so you are free to dress in a way that you think looks cool.

The same applies to fiction in RPGs, and maintaining verisimilitude (who the hell came up with this word, it feels like playing twister on a keyboard?) often stands in the way of expression. Yeah, it makes sense that shooting someone with a gun should be more effective than throwing a plate at them, sure.

The problem is that you very quickly end up with a whole stable of characters that shoot guns. And check corners. And throw flashbangs into a room before barging in.

Because there's a very limited pool of actually effective and good options.

 

[Aldarc]

There are certainly occasions when you can hit that in some times and places; a notorious (but now largely historical) case was when White Wolf was first hitting its stride back in the day, when you'd see proponents of Vampire (and later others) treat D&D players (and even people like RQ fans) like they were deliberately staying in the kiddie pool.

Let's see here:

• Dealing with 5e fans who believe that all games should just be 5e D&D and all gamers should play only 5e D&D as 5e can do everything well
• Dealing with OSR fans who treat 5e D&D (and its players) as casual carebear mode and inferior to OSR "hardcore" mode
• Dealing with FKR fans believing that FKR represents a purer form of ur-RP and people who enjoy crunch as unenlightened
• Dealing with Cypher System fans who likewise believe that it's a story game that does everything well
• Being algorithimically bombarded with D&D memes on Twitter about how aggressive PF2 fans are about proselytizing their game

It's definitely all out there.