Why do RPGs have rules?

[Maxperson]

But ignoring that moment-to-moment assent is the driving force of creative collaboration, dismissing it as 'utterly worthless', will definitely cut off participants from being able to do anything else other than follow procedures inherited from tradition and assume that they will always 'magically' work and produce healthy creative collaboration. Historically, we have found that this is not true!

I'm not sure you understand what I am saying. The claim is that if the DM makes a ruling and nobody says anything, negotiation still happened and it was approval by the group. If that's true, then when you say that your PC walks through the doorway into the tavern, negotiation happens then. And again when you ask for a drink. Every single decision point is negotiation, which waters the term down and renders it worthless.

I prefer to refer only to actual negotiation as negotiation. If the player and I are in discussion over something, that's negotiation.

I'm thinking RAW Vampire The Masquerade*, one the most deprotagonizing, uncollaborative systems ever. Players are given a good number of tools to manifest their protagonism, but their impetus is promptly cut off by a sloppy authority distribution scheme inherited from the "GM-as-primary-storyteller" tradition that follows AD&D. In this dynamic, every single player creative contribution in the fiction must necessarily conform with the GM's own vision of the fiction, which in turn usually conforms with the meta-plot concerns of the setting. These creative contributions can be easily vetoed off, or bent through illusionism.

GM as "keeper of the fiction" works in old school gaming because the agenda of that tradition requires it, and having players act as moral protagonists is not it. Even then, there are other arenas in which these games employ moment-to-moment assent.

When these "given and obvious" procedures don't work to suit our goals, people are confounded and start looking at the wrong things, missing completely what the underlying problem is. Turns out they weren't paying attention to the actual social mechanisms of how fiction gets built.

*This is not an attack on VtM players! If your VtM game was fruitful, I believe you. How did YOU overcome the shortcomings I described above?

I only ever really played LARP Vampire and that was much more improvisational and so I didn't have those issues.

 

[Maxperson]

There is always negotiation in a game like D&D.

Two scenarios
(1)
GM: You travel 5 days on your way to Appleshire, and as you arrive at the front gates...
Player: Wait, we actually wanted to make a quick stop at Pebblebrook to talk to the Mayor about what we saw on the mine.
GM: Ah! Ok, so you arrive at Pebblebrook...

(2)
GM: Take 10 fire damage.
Player: Halved right? Due to my infernal resistance.
GM: Well, that's for regular fire. This is more like, primordial fire, you know.
Player: Still! It comes from my demon heritage, I should be able to resist primordial fire too, no?
GM: It's in the rules though, it only halves regular fire. Doesn't say anything about primordial fire.
...
(2A) Assent
Player: Sure, if it's in the rules I can come up with a reason that makes sense of why my resistance fails.

(2B) Refusal to assent
Player: Hang on, but we made an exception to the resistance rules when the Triton was able to half slashing damage from water, even though it only mentions bludgeoning form water. How is this any different?
Other Player: That's a good point! Primordial fire still just burns like regular fire no, its magic is more about not being able to be easily quenched, no?

I totally agree with those sorts of stops and negotiation. I'm not saying that there is no negotiation. I'm saying that every single decision point isn't a negotiation.

If I make a ruling because there's a hole in the rules, I make it and we move on. The players have agreed that there won't be negotiation outside of the extremes of "You are abusing your authority(which I never do)" and "You've blundered on a rule," which does happen from time to time. Short of that, no negotiation is happening.

Occasionally if a player or players disagree with a ruling but it isn't egregious, they will talk to me outside of the game to see what my thinking was. That way we can discuss it without disrupting the game.

 

[aramis erak]

Taking Moldvay's Basic RAW, the whole thing can wind up being a great big press-your-luck wargame... it certainly didn't get my friends and I actually doing in-character thinking... but some managed to get out of the narrative board-less wargame. I'd never have gotten there with Moldvay & Cook, nor even with Mentzer. I got there because my Traveller ref freshman year of HS was incredibly good at getting us to get into character, aided strongly by a backstory generated by the rules being applied. And we played for 30 minutes at lunch, so getting right into things was essential.

At the most fundamental level, agreement on the story state is almost never total; human communication is always flawed - but the game state is much easier to adjudicate and agree upon. It also shields the GM from a lot of grief from players over the "hard moves"... (I'm not a fan of Vincent's terminology, TBH.)

Choosing a class has nothing to do with 'the fiction'.

Bull. It's a starting point for the character's abilities in the fiction. Every bit as important as attributes. In many styles of RPG play, the class is almost the only relevant decision in Character gen. (Mechanically, it's the single most important aspect of a character in Palladium RPGs other than Amber and Recon. It's the most important choice in T&T. It's very high up there in D&D as commonly played - only irrelevant to those who tend to consider all the rules irrelevant.

 

[Fenris-77]

Taking Moldvay's Basic RAW, the whole thing can wind up being a great big press-your-luck wargame... it certainly didn't get my friends and I actually doing in-character thinking... but some managed to get out of the narrative board-less wargame. I'd never have gotten there with Moldvay & Cook, nor even with Mentzer. I got there because my Traveller ref freshman year of HS was incredibly good at getting us to get into character, aided strongly by a backstory generated by the rules being applied. And we played for 30 minutes at lunch, so getting right into things was essential.

At the most fundamental level, agreement on the story state is almost never total; human communication is always flawed - but the game state is much easier to adjudicate and agree upon. It also shields the GM from a lot of grief from players over the "hard moves"... (I'm not a fan of Vincent's terminology, TBH.)

Bull. It's a starting point for the character's abilities in the fiction. Every bit as important as attributes. In many styles of RPG play, the class is almost the only relevant decision in Character gen. (Mechanically, it's the single most important aspect of a character in Palladium RPGs other than Amber and Recon. It's the most important choice in T&T. It's very high up there in D&D as commonly played - only irrelevant to those who tend to consider all the rules irrelevant.

Yeah yeah, lets get granular then. When most people say 'the fiction' they mean the ongoing conversation that forms the diegetic frame. At best, character choice pre-informs this. It's not 'part of the fiction' in that sense, although I won't kick you out of bed for suggesting that in other ways it very much is.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah yeah, lets get granular then. When most people say 'the fiction' they mean the ongoing conversation that forms the diegetic frame. At best, character choice pre-informs this. It's not 'part of the fiction' in that sense, although I won't kick you out of bed for suggesting that in other ways it very much is.

given the themes that most commonly are associated with classes, to wit, fantasy with a magic/muscle dichotomy, access to said magic is almost always a function of class choice, and that informs all the rest of the fiction about said character, because one of the key tropes is where the character falls on the muscles vs magic spectrum.

Palladium, class also selects 75 to 95 percent of your skill list. Given that non-interpersonal actions are all intended to be skill driven...

Tunnels and Trolls (Pre-7th), the difference is purely the level 1 acquired abilities:
Warriror: Can use any weapon, gets to double armor's protection
Wizard: Can use magic, but can only use wimpy weapons (mostly daggers), can use staff to reduce casting cost
Rogue Wizard: can use any weapon, can use magic, cannot use a staff, doesn't double armor.

Justifiers: class determines party role, rank, and about 75% of starting skills.
The Arcanum/The Atlantean System: about 90% of starting skills, and which of 5+ types of magic are available...

Rolemaster/Spacemaster/MERP/HARP/Shadow of the Demon Lord, Alternity: sets the cost of the skills.

The pseudo-class functions (clan/tradition) in all the oWoD games set your paranormal ability access for the life of the character. At least, until they start down the road to diablerizing the elders...

D&D 3.X class determines spells and costs of skills, plus allowed weapons and armor.

Even the level-less The Fantasy Trip has classes... two of them in core: Warrior and Wizard. Wizards pay double for talents; warriors pay triple for magic. A third class appeared in (IIRC) Space Gamer many years ago - Superhero.

What your character can unambiguously do is a huge factor in the fiction. In most class based fantasy, the classes set whether or not magic is available to the character, how it is worked, what it can do, how it can be suppressed... If the rules are agreed to, and the class defines that I can have the character cast X twice a day, then in the fiction, it requires some noteworthy condition in the fiction to prevent me from adding the effect into the fiction and the game state. Which leads is immaterial to the importance of the access; the use of class abilities is both a game state and a story state introduction.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

Well, the rules are telling the player which things they can say about the race of their PC. The player is then stating what is true here. I mean, D&D basically says that all fiction is in the hands of the GM, so we can imagine them saying "NO DWARVES!" or "You must be human" or whatever.

 

[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.

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.

And all those nos are, I would argue, 'unwelcome things', and you can cast anything else in the same form, such as "no, you cannot continue to walk around and be alive after being reduced below 0 hit points." Every restriction of this sort, these active denials, are all of this form. And the reason they are often gated through specific rules or subsystems is that it allows the GM to avoid direct responsibility for saying 'no'. It produces what is seen as an even-handed outcome, and thus facilitates the dialog of play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No. First, that sort of world building(if any) is done prior so at the point of selection the DM isn't deciding that the player will be a cleric. Or a human or other race. Nor is it for only for the player or DM to decide since the DM can make characters, too. Second, the DM who does that is using.......................................Rule 0! That makes any such determination about what races are available the result of rule 0 and not the rule that the only one race and class be selected at 1st level. The rule itself makes no selection about who is saying what about the fiction or game.

This is basically a travesty of logic. Your point is "Rule 0, therefor none of the rest of the rules has anything meaningful to say about... well, anything!" LOL. OK. I mean, you really want to die on that hill? I mean, its especially dubious since nobody has been able to clearly point to an outright rule 0 in, say, 5e. I think this argument is "skating away on the thin ice of a new day"

 

[innerdude]

The claim is that if the DM makes a ruling and nobody says anything, negotiation still happened and it was approval by the group. If that's true, then when you say that your PC walks through the doorway into the tavern, negotiation happens then. And again when you ask for a drink. Every single decision point is negotiation, which waters the term down and renders it worthless.

I mean, it probably sounds more . . . mentally intensive than it actually is at the table, but yes. Anything that modifies anything about anything in the fiction is, ultimately, a negotiation. It's just that 95-99% of the time, there's no particular emphasis needed for the negotiation, because the changes to the fiction are common-sense follow on from a previously established bit of fiction.

Player A's declaration, 1) "My character walks from one side of the tavern to the other," can and likely will be instantly analyzed, reviewed, and accepted as fictionally canonical in all participants' heads. The negotiation is instant and unspoken. The GM previously described the characters as being in the tavern, gave no sense of threat or description of an obstacle that would stop such a declaration, and all participants can immediately re-frame the fiction in their minds to fit the change. Player A's character is now on the north end of the tavern rather than the south.

Until . . . 2) Player B says, "I grab Player A's character by the arm to stop her." Or the GM says, 3) "A hulking figure rises from a table in the middle of the tavern as you approach." Or the GM says, 4) "A barmaid drops a tray of mugs, covering the floor in beer. Make a DEX check to see if you slip." Or Player C says, 5) "Just as Character A walks away, I draw my sword and shout, 'In the name of the Legendary Highway Robbers of Mulgast, give me all your coin and jewelry if you want to live!"

Were there any "rules" that allocated authority as to who was allowed to say any of these things? Possibly. I've had scenes where players who were not the GM have suggested things very much like all 5 riffing off another player's action declaration, but that's probably not the norm for many RPGs and groups. 3 & 4 would generally be assumed to be the GM's call, but not always.

But all 5 numbered cases ultimately require assent from all participants. So yeah, there's constant negotiation around each re-framing of scene/situation on every action declaration. It's just that the negotiation doesn't mean that the required assent is contentious or lengthy. It just has to happen. 99% of the time it's instantaneous and silent.

And I think the easiest way to understand this is to understand what happens when a "ret-con" becomes necessary. It's the act of the participants calling to re-visit or re-frame something that was negotiated as one outcome in the fiction that now needs a different, negotiated outcome for things to continue properly.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Rules-light has nothing to do with adjudication, but rather with the actual volume of mechanical heft possessed by system X. It isn't something that not believing in makes disappear, nor does a rules-light RPG author die every time you clap your hands.

Weird response. I'm saying that ruling at the table become new rules, so "rules light" systems are simply those which have fewer rules to start with, thus requiring more rulings as the chance of encountering a situation outside the book rules goes up.