Why do RPGs have rules?

[aramis erak]

Ick. I've had players I didn't love, like "OK, this guy is here, I don't want to disinvite him." But not toxic. Generally the ones that weren't having fun self-deleted, generally. Now, the venue and how you get players is probably a variable here, IMHO.

Most were encountered at conventions or organized play. 6 of those 8.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't know about this! I think a lot of modern mainstream design suffers precisely because there is not enough of this, despite it being something fundamental to anyone who has at least a mild exposure to formal user experience design.

Some of the greatest and most well regarded designers do actually design with this type of orientation. Ron Edwards in Sorcerer, Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World, Robin D. Laws in Hillfolk, Jason Morningstar, John Harper, Luke Crane, Avery Adler. I would say an entire school of design follows that tradition, clearly descendant of a specific foundational moment in RPG design.

You left out John Wick... Houses of the Blooded and Blood & Honor have mechanics entirely focused upon "who decides"...
If something is in doubt, and suitable for rolling for it, either by other rules, or because the GM thinks it would be a good thing to decide, the GM calls for the risk test. Everyone with stake in the fundamental question (limit one GM character or one scenic feature) generates a dice pool, secretly sets aside some, then rolls the remainder. Highest roller answers the fundamental risk question. Everyone with a 10 or more and dice set aside gets to "yes, and"/"yes, but" in descending roll order; high roller gets one time per die set aside, others per two dice. Anyone in stakes is also subject to being affected in the secondary commentary.
There are specific rules for combat; the lethal katana trope is used as setting enforcement in B&H - but can be overridden with those yes, but/and statements. (If not modified, a Katana defaults to killing outright; killing an unnamed character with a katana is automatic; an action, not a risk.)

B&H is a very fun game with the right people. My first run of it was with good people. My last one had a toxic player, and turned very dark very quick, to the point of discontinuing gaming with him, violating the agreed upon lines/veils.

 

[aramis erak]

Following up: and I think this can be very frustrating to folks who are looking at this from a design perspective, because the behaviour seems illogical. If the point of the game is to produce a great shared storytelling experience, then the design of D&D could be (and has been) improved in so many ways. But I don't think that's really what the game is about. Or not all of it - not even close.

Or, you know, I'm totally wrong and just spinning in circles. One of my problems is that I tend to think like a scientist (e.g. observe a phenomenon and try to hypothesize) but I'm trained in the humanities (with a bit of biology) and my math kind of sucks. Maybe I married a scientist to try to make up for my shortcomings.

You're running up against a phenomenon that is conflating several different goals of play... some incompatible with each other.

For some, it's a seeking of some fantasy desire to be fulfilled, a "What would I do if...."
For some, it's a game to be won or lost.
For some, it's a game of pushing your luck.
For some it's a way of resolving items not agreed to.§
For some, it's merely inspiration for freeform collective storytelling.
For some, it's still miniatures wargaming in campaign mode - fights and just enough narrative to get from one to the next.

§: this is actually several things, as it can be mechanicalizing ...

• Narrative control (who gets to decide the thing)
• Success
• quality of success/failure
• cost of success
• effect of failure
• Who gets "screen time"...

Now, I love me boxes to put things in... but some storygames go well away from the core tropes of RPGs, such as exclusive character control and character scale, and the lack of individual winner.

Once Upon A Time is a game that generates a story when played. But it has no personal ownership of any characters in story. It has no success/failure determination. It does have pure narrative control, basically by hijacking the narration when an item for which you have a card is mentioned. First one out wins.

Aye, Dark Overlord is a game of telling why you failed as a minion. It lacks the continuity of most RPGs, but you're going to hear several stories in a single play. Each with a narration (ideally in character), and hazards thrown in by others.

Hobbit Tales from the Green Dragon Inn is another storygame that isn't an RPG; the play is similar to ADO... but it's tolkien themed. Too bad it's out of print.

There are others, too... they take the game element.... and the story element, but are they Roleplaying? ADO and HT are in character... and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen... they're close, but one doesn't hear of TEAoBM as a campaign game much... and one seldom hears of D&D as a Push Your Luck dungeon crawler with new characters every session... but both have been used for those oddities by unusual people.

There's no single taxonomy that makes the RPG market into a "There is as clear single winner" situation; different games are aiming at different play-goals. Not-D&D is successful by being Not D&D, by doing other things.

And some, by doing some D&D things better than D&D while not doing other things that D&D does okay at.

 

[pemerton]

There are rules that do that, but that's not why RPGs have rules. I really, really doubt that outside a small handful of times(at best), designers have sat down and said to themselves, "Let's figure out who is allowed to say what in respect of what happens next in the shared fiction and then make rules to match that."

Rules are there to provide structure to the game and avoid Calvinball, allowing the group to have more enjoyment out of the game. What kind of enjoyment you seek will determine which RPGs appeal to you the most.

The bit that I've bolded is all about determining who is allowed to say what happens next in the shared fiction, and what they're allowed to say.

I THINK(not entirely sure myself) that he's talking about rules contained in certain RPGs that allow players to establish part of the in-universe reality.

Nearly every RPG I'm aware of has such rules - eg players can create characters, can often stipulate how those characters are equipped, etc.

 

[pemerton]

I keep thinking about why having tons of rules can be fun even when it seems like bad design, and particularly in the context of character building.

I don't know anything about WoW and so have skipped that part of your post.

But just on this: why would having tons of rules for PC building be bad design? Classic Traveller, for instance, has plenty of rules for PC building and I think it's brilliant design, especially when you consider it was published in 1977.

Burning Wheel, too, has very intricate PC building rules and it's a well-designed RPG.

 

[pemerton]

If the point of the game is to produce a great shared storytelling experience, then the design of D&D could be (and has been) improved in so many ways.

This thread is not solely, or even primarily, about D&D.

But anyway, I don't think that the goal of D&D - at least taken at fact value - has typically be to produce a great shared storytelling experience.

I would say that one goal of 4e D&D is to produce a thematically compelling shared fiction. But not shared storytelling. Classic D&D doesn't seem to me to have either of these goals (as per the OP). Post-DL AD&D, 3E and 5e I make no comment on in this post.

 

[Maxperson]

The bit that I've bolded is all about determining who is allowed to say what happens next in the shared fiction, and what they're allowed to say.

It's not "all about" determining who can say what happens next, though. That's only a very minor part of the rules. How many races you can play has nothing to do with who can say what about the fiction. How many classes you have says nothing about it, either. Much of the combat rules, the vast majority of the spells, and more also say nothing about that. They don't tell you that the DM can say it or that the player can say it.

They do avoid Calvinball, though, by informing both the DM and the player that you can only pick one class, race, etc.

Rule 0 is about who can say what. The rules that say that the DM calls for ability checks are about who can say what.

Nearly every RPG I'm aware of has such rules - eg players can create characters, can often stipulate how those characters are equipped, etc.

Players and DMs can create characters, can stipulate how they are equipped, etc. Character creation and initial equipment selection, though, are not about what happens next in the fiction. Those are decisions that typically happen prior to in-fiction play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There are rules that do that, but that's not why RPGs have rules. I really, really doubt that outside a small handful of times(at best), designers have sat down and said to themselves, "Let's figure out who is allowed to say what in respect of what happens next in the shared fiction and then make rules to match that."

Rules are there to provide structure to the game and avoid Calvinball, allowing the group to have more enjoyment out of the game. What kind of enjoyment you seek will determine which RPGs appeal to you the most.

Yup, and what you call 'structure' consists ENTIRELY of "who can say what is true about the game state and fiction at this time and what they can say." Period, end of report. Name me ANY rules of any RPG and we can see that this is the case, either directly, or by way of setting up some kind of process, or expounding some general principles that are followed to do so.

This LOGICALLY MUST BE SO because the playing of an RPG consists entirely of deciding what happens next! There's no other activity going on (at least not one that is strictly part of the game, pizza eating is not a literal part of our RPG).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would argue that rules are there primarily to say "No" to players, and secondarily to make it somewhat more predictable to players when the universe will say "No."

If the universe never says no, then you don't need rules. "I turn into a unicorn" is valid, and so is "I cut off the giant's head" and "I bring the giant back to life." Kids play games like this all the time.

And yet, Dungeon World contains no such rules, yet it is undoubtedly an RPG. Actually some of the rules MAY say something like "the GM will now tell you how that didn't happen the way you think/wanted it to." but in DW ONLY the fiction, with the consent of the table, can ever actually say "no, this is not possible." So I think you are not wrong that rules can and do say "no", but I think that saying is actually more accurately "give them bad news."

You can have a GM whose job is to arbitrarily say "No" to certain things ("No, you miss", "No, you can't cut through the giant's neck", "No, the giant doesn't come back to life") but having rules that are knowable to the players at least to some extent make the game more navigable and usually more fun. "Resurrection spells can bring things back to life, but it's a 7th level spell, and the GM reserves the right to declare that some deaths are irreversible."

Combat results in particular are no fun without rules. "No, you miss" just feels arbitrary.

Right, Baker is simply saying that these are instances of "unwelcome facts", things that the participants are unlikely to declare true on their own initiative.

 

[Maxperson]

Yup, and what you call 'structure' consists ENTIRELY of "who can say what is true about the game state and fiction at this time and what they can say." Period, end of report. Name me ANY rules of any RPG and we can see that this is the case, either directly, or by way of setting up some kind of process, or expounding some general principles that are followed to do so.

This LOGICALLY MUST BE SO because the playing of an RPG consists entirely of deciding what happens next! There's no other activity going on (at least not one that is strictly part of the game, pizza eating is not a literal part of our RPG).

When it say to pick a race in the PHB, who is saying what is true about game state/fiction? The player, the DM or both?