Why do RPGs have rules?

[clearstream]

Exactly, and you could JUST as easily imagined the GC collapsing into chaos and a war erupting amongst its neighbors to divide it up into new spheres of influence. Or a dozen other equally plausible scenarios, all based on what is in that WoG gazetteer. Nor would having access to basically everything that ever emerged from Living Greyhawk and every other GH product combined have much real impact on that. These are fun imaginings, but not an organized corpus of interlocking facts that really put any constraints on things.

This along with @pemerton's Goldilocks thought experiment put in mind some additional thoughts that may evade the obstacles presented by our disparate theoretical underpinnings.

In the past, I have said something like the bolded part with respect to MC choice of hard and soft moves from prompts that at times seem to me too thin. One example was the 6- hard move from Hack and Slash. Other posters made the argument that the hard move is sufficiently well constrained. I'll assume, but I could be mistaken, that all agree that within such constraints a vast number of variations are possible so that were we to picture two groups proceeding from the identical situation, one MC might choose one hard move and a second a different hard move... distributed normally.

Deciding what comes next in the Goldilocks example is for many imaginers somewhat constrained. The fictional position isn't very detailed, but as to the details that are there it's not taxing to form intuitions. Such intuitions depend on some sort of internal model of bears, hydration, buckets, wells, etc. While there are vastly many variations possible, norms will apply i.e. those in the conversation will be able to form a consensus about outre and normal answers to "What happens next?"

In the real world, faced with that question one strategy is simply - wait and see. Dr Science with their model of the weather can make a prediction for Sunday, and when Sunday comes around they can see if their prediction is validated. This strategy is not available in imaginary worlds. What happens on Sunday is down to what we decide happens on Sunday. This revises the purpose of models in respect of imaginary worlds. The test that you and I have in our respective ways demanded, is that the game systems should prove normative.

That is why I suggested further above that rather than models or simulations, we should be thinking in terms of normative functions that map from A to B. I mean "functions" in a very open sense - any heuristic that the group can accept the results of will do... which can be made more often true if the group enter into social contracts to sustain an attitude of such acceptance.

If a participant whose turn it is to imagine what the bear does next says - "She dips the bucket in the well" - there is no waiting to see if that will be validated or not. The only test for its predictive accuracy is consent.

 

[clearstream]

Yeah, sometimes. Often, I'd say.

This was not the case here, though.

My thought in particular is that some posters will reiterate such differences. And that is distinct both from failure to acknowledge and outright denigration.

Unfortunately, reiteration of differences, particularly stated as negatives about indie that justify choices made in jazz, can seem at times feel unjustified and fatiguing.

Even so, it must be at times justified to explain or define through differences. Presenting a challenge to concerns laid out by several posters. I hoped with my question to highlight that challenge.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Sure, I didn't mean to imply that it should. It's more that anyone should be able to say whatever they want.

Like, why can't I say that once I learned more about narrative games and actually ran/played a few, my GMing overall improved? That my games, even more trad leaning games, became better? Why can't I say that?

Well, you can, but it's probably more helpful if you're a little bit more specific about what you learned and how you applied it to trad games. The same goes for anything really.

Not that narrative and trad are the only categories that matter, but they're the ones you mentioned so...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Aside III: on "fun"

"Fun" is not the goal of playing a game, it's a bare minimum requirement. A game being fun is like your meal being edible. The lowest possible bar to clear.

If the game isn't fun, then it utterly miserably spectacularly failed.

This is only true if you mean "fun" in a very broad sense such that being miserable is "fun" sometimes.

Is losing or even TPKing fun? I hope not! Players should try to avoid it! But they should avoid it by taking better actions in future games, not by failing to show up at the game table next session.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

As @aramis erak says, through a system of "oracles". These take the form of a process that either chooses between and confirms your current intuitions or indexes words from a list to prompt new intuitions.

Say I enter some location. Rather than there being any preexisting secret information about that location, I will follow the oracle's process.

Ah. I'll note that oracles fit under the category I had in mind when I said GMs can have (not-yet-generated) missing information but not factually wrong information.

 

[loverdrive]

Is losing or even TPKing fun? I hope not!

As I said, I don't think it makes much sense to classify things at this level as "fun" or "not fun". Before TPK happened, there was, well, the rest of the game.

A game that started with TPK was probably not fun, thus, failed, yeah, I don't think it's crazy to suggest so.

 

[clearstream]

As I said, I don't think it makes much sense to classify things at this level as "fun" or "not fun". Before TPK happened, there was, well, the rest of the game.

A game that started with TPK was probably not fun, thus, failed, yeah, I don't think it's crazy to suggest so.

Contrast, right?! The possibility of a negative outcome can amplify the enjoyment of a positive outcome.

 

[loverdrive]

Aside V: on skill

To be frank, I don't believe in "player skill" in RPGs, at least those which pride itself on it (like OSR), as there's no real way to measure even an approximation of it.

Even outside of all the high-level competitions with prizes and stuff, when someone says, "I've beaten Dark Souls" (or Sekiro, or Battle Toads, or Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom), there's a shared understanding of what it took. I get what they say.

If someone says "I've beaten Tomb of Horrors" I have no damn clue what it means, because their Tomb of Horrors was unquestionably from the one I've played.

And, like, anecdotally, I've never met any good players in RPGs. I've met hot people with mesmerizing voices, awesome storytellers, people who can come up with cool evocative descriptions, people I enjoy playing with, but not once I've thought "damn, she is a top tier".

Conversely, I've never met any bad players in RPGs. I've met jerks, people who don't know the rules, people who don't understand the concept of a shower, and, worst of all, boring people, but not once I've thought "damn, this guy is a filthy, filthy n00b".

If there's a skill gap between a n00b and a god-tier capital G gamer in, say, dnd, I'm not convinced it's wider than the thickness of a PHB.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

As I said, I don't think it makes much sense to classify things at this level as "fun" or "not fun". Before TPK happened, there was, well, the rest of the game.

A game that started with TPK was probably not fun, thus, failed, yeah, I don't think it's crazy to suggest so.

I notice that you couldn't help trying to classify as fun or not fun anyway.

As clearstream already said, contrast amplifies.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Conversely, I've never met any bad players in RPGs. I've met jerks, people who don't know the rules, people who don't understand the concept of a shower, and, worst of all, boring people, but not once I've thought "damn, this guy is a filthy, filthy n00b".

If there's a skill gap between a n00b and a god-tier capital G gamer in, say, dnd, I'm not convinced it's wider than the thickness of a PHB.

A player who can take his 20th level character (loaded with magic items) into a game alongside a bunch of 8th level characters and not only be less effective than they are (e.g. wasting his 9th level spell slot on upcasting Fireball in the first encounter of the day) but also be arrogant and needlessly secretive (asking "are you willing?" repeatedly of the other players, refusing to explain why, before casting a Teleport spell to take everyone somewhere else) and needing DM intervention in the form of artificial monster stupidity to stay alive (he wandered off alone and got in a fight with a lich, one of the two BBEGs of the locale; used his 9th level slot that day on globe of invulnerability; instead of the lich casting Meteor Swarm or True Polymorph or merely waiting out the globe of invulnerability, the DM apparently took pity on him and had the lich engage him in melee combat, and they just hit each other until the BBEG lich died! Talk about anticlimax)--that's someone who is genuinely bad at playing D&D.

He also stole from NPCs and almost definitely cheated on stat rolls--too many 18s too many times.

In some sense, it might be fair to define "skilled play" as "not requiring special consideration from the DM." If A expects a 5E DM to stick to level-appropriate Medium or Hard encounters with short rests every two encounters, and B doesn't care about any of that and says, "point me at a dungeon and I'll make my own short rests or die trying," B is asking the DM to demand more highly-skilled play. B will still have to adapt to the DM's style w/rt encounter starting distance and lethality, CAS vs. CAW, frequency of spellcasters, etc. but if B is comfortable adapting to whatever the GM's style is and still manages to usually survive, not only is that easier to GM but I am comfortable calling that "skilled play."