Why do RPGs have rules?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I point out how it is productive. I can hardly help it that TTRPGs are necessarily incomplete.


As I wrote, all TTRPG's are incomplete and that is to their advantage. It's a distinctive quality of RPGs as games that they are incomplete. It's only if I want to use incompleteness as a negative quality does it suddenly become crucial to shade some rule sets complete and others incomplete. However, it is a positive quality.

I would frame this a little differently: it's an advantage that they are playable in an incomplete state. An incomplete CRPG would just crash. (Unless the Everett Many-World hypothesis is true! In which case I guess you could theoretically build a quantum CRPG that forks the universe and continues letting you play in both.)

 

[soviet]

What seems to happen in these rule zero discussions is that three things get conflated:

1. The GM has authority to make house rules (e.g. no Elven PCs and we're using my home brew critical hit tables).
2. The GM has authority to make on the spot rulings where the rules aren't a perfect fit for the fictional situation (e.g. 'Uh, let's say that's a Dex save or you take 3d6 falling damage 'cause of the ledge').
3. The GM has authority to fudge the dice in secret or ignore the rules entirely.

It's 3 that is controversial and poisonous to many game styles, and also by far the least supported in published D&D game texts.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I found this custom move on a Dungeon World wiki:



As I predicted; sounds like rule creation/fiat exercise to me.

I would call this exactly the equivalent of an encounter table in any D&D module. In this particular environment the GM has chosen to embody the possibility of encountering gelatinous cubes, and some sort of plot-relevant outcome, as a custom move tied to that particular environment. As the explanatory text on Dungeon World p347 explains, this is basically a way to simplify the adjudicating of what would already be a Defy Danger, and could produce exactly the same results. Its almost like adding a note to the key of your dungeon. To call that 'rule creation' seems absurd. If it is, then every time you mark a note like "This door's handle contains a poisoned needle which the PC may detect on a Hard Perception check. The poison is..." Does that sound like a rule? GM fiat? No, so neither is the DW example. Its simple environment design!

 

[Maxperson]

If your point is that it's possible for good play to generate stories, emergently, but the story isn't pre-known to the DM... I agree.

Right. It's not the DM just telling a story to the players.

Slightly off-topic, but this is why destinies and oracles are relatively hard to use in RPGs. A DM or GM can theoretically roleplay an omnipotent being but not an omniscient one! You wind up heavily to fake prescience by e.g. offering the players a rollback opportunity over the next 24 game hours on the grounds that "that's what would have happened."

Yes! This is why I 1) Use prophecy/destiny very, very, VERY rarely, and 2) prophecy/destiny is just probable, not guaranteed to happen.

 

[Maxperson]

What seems to happen in these rule zero discussions is that three things get conflated:

1. The GM has authority to make house rules (e.g. no Elven PCs and we're using my home brew critical hit tables).
2. The GM has authority to make on the spot rulings where the rules aren't a perfect fit for the fictional situation (e.g. 'Uh, let's say that's a Dex save or you take 3d6 falling damage 'cause of the ledge').
3. The GM has authority to fudge the dice in secret or ignore the rules entirely.

It's 3 that is controversial and poisonous to many game styles, and also by far the least supported in published D&D game texts.

Number 3 is the most hotly contested for sure, but 5e actually spells it out as something the DM is allowed to do. The first time I've seen that in print.

5e DMG page 235

"Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don't distort die rolls too often, though, and don't let on that you're doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don't face any real risks-or worse, that you're playing favorites."

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I would call this exactly the equivalent of an encounter table in any D&D module. In this particular environment the GM has chosen to embody the possibility of encountering gelatinous cubes, and some sort of plot-relevant outcome, as a custom move tied to that particular environment. As the explanatory text on Dungeon World p347 explains, this is basically a way to simplify the adjudicating of what would already be a Defy Danger, and could produce exactly the same results. Its almost like adding a note to the key of your dungeon. To call that 'rule creation' seems absurd. If it is, then every time you mark a note like "This door's handle contains a poisoned needle which the PC may detect on a Hard Perception check. The poison is..." Does that sound like a rule? GM fiat? No, so neither is the DW example. Its simple environment design!

Clearly you get the point of the definition I'm using, but reject it because you dislike the implications (including for 5E). There's nothing more for me to say beyond, "no really, that's what I mean when I say RPGs are not complete in the same sense chess is: there's no uniquely determined next game state until the GM steps in to provide one."

 

[soviet]

Number 3 is the most hotly contested for sure, but 5e actually spells it out as something the DM is allowed to do. The first time I've seen that in print.

5e DMG page 235

"Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don't distort die rolls too often, though, and don't let on that you're doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don't face any real risks-or worse, that you're playing favorites."

It's hardly a full-throttled endorsement of fudging as a lynchpin of the game, but still. Do you accept then that there is no textual support for clause 3 in previous editions? This is not a trick question, I don't think it's there but I haven't re-read the older texts in a long time.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It's hardly a full-throttled endorsement of fudging as a lynchpin of the game, but still. Do you accept then that there is no textual support for clause 3 in previous editions? This is not a trick question, I don't think it's there but I haven't re-read the older texts in a long time.

It seems like the kind of thing Gygax said all the time: feel free to ignore the dice when you feel like it. I'm sure he wouldn't bother about lying about the number though; he probably didn't even say what dice rolls were involved in the first place.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think that's a pretty good working definition. I would hope that G and G' are both consistent enough that the transform from State to State' via Unwritten Rule will be consistent from today to tomorrow, but for proving incompleteness it's enough to show that there's no existing unique mapping from State to State'.

I disagree. ANY such game would not be just 'complete' it would be NECESSARILY CLOSED, only being able to describe a finite number of situations, just like a board game!

When a player says "I tie the magic sword to a long wooden shaft to produce a magic polearm", does it work?

Here's the Dungeon World answer to that:
Is it outright impossible in a fictional position sense (IE are the materials required simply unavailable and not plausibly acquired within the scope of the move). If fictional plausibility exists (decided by the whole table, not just the GM) then we go on to whether or not saying 'yes' or 'no' to the PRACTICALITY of it (IE can you make a sturdy enough polearm from the supplied materials). This MIGHT still be a fictional position thing, or it might be a question of asking whether or not the given characters are acting within their competency, or even whether or not ANYONE could perform such a regardless of ability and materials. We know naginatas were made in EXACTLY this way, from swords, so that dispenses with that last question. Given that we are presumably not weapon smiths, the decidability is not present at the table, so we cannot say 'no' based on any of these factors.

Now, this is not a GM move, so it is NOT GOVERNED by the GM's principles and agenda. There is, on p12, however, an answer to the question "Why play Dungeon World?" and there are 3 answers:
1. To see the characters do amazing things.
2. To see them struggle together.
3. Because the world still has so many places to explore.

So, at the root of it, you must simply ask if 'yes' addresses 'why?'. I would say making a magic polearm probably falls under 1 and 2. Thus the table (and this is a TABLE decision, NOT A GM DECISION) should decide, and IMHO they are supposed to say 'yes' here.

When a player says "I use my knowledge of bagpipes and a bunch of lamp oil to make a flamethrower," does he get a flamethrower, and if so how does it work? Some RPGs might be complete w/rt these specific examples but no RPG I know of is; I doubt any RPG is complete (in the sense clearstream has defined) w/rt all examples.

Again, I think we do exactly as we did above, but in this case I'm guessing most tables are going to come down on the side of this not being a practical plan. I mean, maybe, but I really doubt it would work in anything like reality, so its more of a question of 'rule of cool', which is largely asking the same questions as above. I think if the PC has some cache as a creator of gizmos and contraptions and such, or he's working with insane gnome clockworkers or something, then SURE! If its a last second "I pour oil in my bagpipe!" then my thinking is DD to avoid actually bursting into flames yourself, and if you want to throw the now flaming bagpipes at your enemy, VOLLEY AWAY! lol. While you might think of this as incompleteness, I still think of it as "I applied the agenda and principles in a reasonable way." Its funny, it shows the PC struggling and still doing something cool or at least amusing.

Tone may also apply here, but AGAIN, the table has absolute authority in terms of deciding if this works or not! The rules cover the process of making these situations happen, whatever that means, entirely. Nothing is left hanging. It just isn't decided on some sort of mechanical or 'simulationist' basis. Even the 'it must make fictional sense' restriction isn't about REALISM, its about being able to have a narrative structure and a fiction to work from at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is where these conversations go off the rails. If you don't like GM authority, that is totally fair. There are plenty of reasons to dislike GM authority and while I like games where the GM is granted more control, I get why a lot of people wouldn't want that, or want it spread more evenly (or through another method). But I think when we start comparing it to real life dictatorship, that's where I find it becomes too histrionic

Its more than that, its a LOGICAL argument. If the GM has absolute Maxpersonian Rule 0 authority, then no other authority exists within the structure of the game, period! Anything that a player might do/say is completely subject to the untrammeled power of the GM in this situation. Max is trying to have his cake and eat it too! It just won't work!

And yes, the players, in the context of Real Life, will exert some check on SOME GMs to SOME degree, but lest any of us have the illusion that this is a reliable and entirely adequate state of affairs, I invite you to read @bloodtide's 'Bloodbath Thread' and witness the death of your naivety! lol.