Why do RPGs have rules?

[AnotherGuy]

This has been answered multiple times. Fairness isn't at issue, and on the other hand, no one forced the characters to go up against any BBEG. There's no necessary plot that railroads them into fighting a BBEG. Should that turn out to be the way things go based on what the players chose to engage with, sure, the BBEG murders them.

I feel this is where we move to @hawkeyefan's discussion about when does simulation take a backseat? Perhaps it does so at certain times for the relevance of the story to emerge. If the BBEG unleashes a revenge squad for the PCs interfering (as it does several times in the ToD AP) the idea is that the PCs survive every time for the sake of the story, so the BBEG always measures its revenge against the PCs. Never too much, but just enough.

Like in my example the BBEG in the dream demi-plane never played the impossible card for the sake of the story.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm not sure I grant the premise here - 3E D&D isn't a sim RPG as far as I can tell.

Never fear! You don't need to grant the premise because I don't accept that 3.x is a sim RPG either! My "Sim-ifying" and the subsequent example (leading to a giant pile of discord) was meant to convey "insufficient attempt to render D&D as a robust purist-for-system Sim engine."

Why does simulationism demand that zombies can't be wrong-footed? Because of the word "mindless"?

In RM, we treated undead as immune to Type M spells. RM doesn't really have defender mechanics, but undead can be parried, and defeated in initiative (by the player allocating offensive bonus to initiative).

I think I've missed something!

Simulationism doesn't demand that zombies can't be wrong-footed. In my dysfunctional conversation (not as a conversation per se, but as "a nexus of play") that I rendered, I meant to show that both the GM and the player had some level of support (IMO, not equal as my rendered player's perspective on this seems difficult to surmount) for their positions; from either a particular viewpoint on internal causality or game engine integrity.

Where I land on things (which was the player's point-of-view I rendered), is that the GM was wrong on both game engine integrity grounds and, if you're going to point to internal causality, there is a very strong case to be made that "there is no such thing as mindless for things that must be possessed of sufficient goal-directedness and sensory receptors that allow them to move, perceive, and interact with their environment in the way that zombies do." Therefore, a GM adding the charm tag to the Defender suite of mechanics would be (a) an example of the last part of your prior post; GMs making game engine adjustments to resolve edge cases that bring about, their sense of, Sim-incompatible fictional results. And, to extend my point, we know for a fact that there is a contingent of very vocal D&D GMs who would agree with my GM above. They told us constantly during The Edition Wars everytime they called D&D Defender mechanics (and the like) "martial mind control" as an epithet and examples exactly as I created were brought up. Its the "martial mind control doesn't work on mindless (among others)" version of "you can't crit zombies/constructs/elementals because Sim-incompatible fictional results" contention.

Where I land on that is, D&D Sim-play (not referring to Rolemaster or Traveller or Runequest here) has a potentially fraught play loop where GMs can make wrong decisions that are both "game engine integrity harming (therefore player decision-space and experience harming)" like the above and are simultaneously "not sufficiently supported (or at the very least, confounders, like the above in my post, aren't interrogated and sufficiently resolved) when mapping/remapping some of their, very important due to their gamestate-perturbing nature, extrapolations onto the fiction." This isn't even touching upon the intersection of the above with GMs attempting to toggle on/off or admix (i) story imperatives and the temptation of illusionism, (ii) drama logic & genre logic and how those can confound extrapolations based on earth-system internal causality, and (iii) prep-intensiveness and the allure of using GM Force to ensure your hard work sees play.

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To touch on things we've discussed elsewhere. While working from a vast experience-deficit relative to you and @chaochou , I agree that Purist-for-System Simluationism of Traveller, Rolemaster, and Runequest doesn't fundamentally require Illusionism. Skillful, disciplined GMs can absolutely run those games and let the gameplay machinery see where they go + adjudicate edge cases. That being said, my thoughts on the subject would be this:

Because dynamism (I'm talking about play taking dynamic shape which can change aggressively and be shaped aggressively by players) isn't coming from the game engine-at-large (thinking of Torchbearer or D&D 4e or AW etc) nor various techniques for GM Consequence/Twist handling/Fail Forward, that puts a significant amount of pressure on GM situation framing and scenario design. That kind of pressure can absolutely lead to either (a) Illusionism to infuse play with dynamism or (b) falling back on using a Purist-for-System engine for Gamist scenariors and imperatives. Then you have the added pressure of resolving those idiosyncratic game engine moments where there might be disagreements over how internal causality and extrapolation should inform adjudication. That might not be Force...but it might feel like Force to a player (because they disagree or don't understand the extrapolation that governed the adjudicative process).

Disciplined and skillful GMs can frame compelling situations and design scenarios sans Force and players can have a nice chunk of say (sans GM Force) and they can collectively follow these systems to their action resolution conclusions (system's say). But (again, coming from an experience deficit relative to you) the pressures are immense. While my play of those three systems spans perhaps 10 sessions (40ish hours) some 30 years ago, I've known a lot of Traveller, Rolemaster, GURPS GMs and am intimately familiar with their games and the players they ran for. Illusionism or Gamism masquerading as Purist-for-System Sim or stale games lacking dynamism or burn-out or the sort of calamitous in-situ disagreements over edge case internal causality/extrapolation-based handling (like the conversation I envisioned for "3.x-ifying 4e" above) were the rule...not the exception.

Running and playing those games well while producing dynamic, exciting experiences and little to no "feels bad" moments might be the most difficult ask in all of TTRPGing. Could be wrong...but that is my sense of it!

 

[Manbearcat]

The thing that frustrates me in my simulated or not-simulated (which ever part of the aisle you're on) game is what sort of repercussions can a DM reasonably inject upon the characters when they foil a BBEG's plans?
@innerdude mentioned this exact thing upthread.

The guide we have in the DMG is CR and level-appropriate encounter challenges.
That very idea though, I feel, flies in the face of a simulated reality.
What is worse is when you inject house rules, like we have done, that messes the entire maths of the game even further.

So what are my options really?
This is a mental stumbling block for me as all I ever do feels like a self-regulated table jerk. Illusionism essentially.

The PCs kill some bad guys at location #1. What does that mean for location #2 and the bad guys head-office? How fast is the bad-guy recruitment? How many bad guys were there to begin with? The PCs gain the support of xyz - how does that affect the final scenario with BBEG + forces?

Essentially I have to create mini-games/contests/possiblities within the game i.e. if A happens then b+d = the square root of more algebra. But who says one cannot change that during play or during the actual encounter when you see things are not challenging enough or too challenging? I mean how often have we justified adding an extra 50 or 100 hit points onto the BBEG in the middle of combat to make it more exciting or thrown in a Legendary Action? I mean I got tired with the monsters in 5e as they became too easy so I started using monsters from Level Up. But even then I might still make a change here or there in combat. I do not necessarily do that all the time, but that ability to do it exists and no one would know. And it feels wishy-washy.

The other day the PCs fought in a 19-round combat, in which the environment changed at the will of the BBEG while he was shape-changing into any creature he desired that usually suited the environment. It essentially took place in his lair, a dimensional dream plane. It was a truly glorious session that ONLY consisted of those 19 combat rounds - yeah it was THAT epic. The players absolutely loved it. I put much effort into the challenges.

But what was to stop me from having the BBEG creating a 500-foot fall into a lake of lava? Nothing really. So why didn't the BBEG do it in any of those 19 rounds of combat, especially towards the end when things were getting dangerous for him?

In the last round of combat the shapechanger had turned into a marilith and in the fiction I actually narrated it attacked the PC in a co-ordinated synchronised manner and then I made the hit rolls. I had no idea of the PC's hit point at that stage. In normal circumstances, the PC would be dead, (unconscious + follow up attacks = auto death saves) but instead I allowed him to be revitalised with a healing spell. Ofc, there needed to be some kind of consequence and so I ruled the PC secretly suffers from trauma (madness affliction) which upsets his long rest. Furthermore, should the PC encounter mariliths and serpentine creatures they would suffer a dragon fear-like effect. I ruled anything less than a Wish would not permanently cure the malady, except for an extended Skill Challenge which also requires Downtime between successful checks. This is all for the PC to discover.

Now all of this is me deciding on things - but all I'm really doing, I feel, is some mass illusion exercise.
I'm curating an enjoyable immersive simulated experience for the players - they're loving it, and certainly some of their ideas and strategies reflect some player skill, but there is also a large element of DM decides where the line is - and if I'm honest, that line has a lot of bias.

Maybe I'm over thinking things. I don't know.
But I refuse to believe @innerdude and I are the only ones that have experienced this.
That is why I can understand @loverdrive's argument despite my efforts to challenge it.

@Manbearcat if you have time, I'd be interested to know your thoughts on this. I know it is quite a ramble. Sorry.

That is a really excellent post. Here is what I'll say about my running of any game with a Gamism element that is supposed to be front-and-center, compelling on its own, and meaningfully give shape to play.

* Always think of the game layer first. Always. Frame situation, frame decision-points, generate consequences that are compelling as moments of gameplay. But do so with integrity. If you you eff around with the game layer, you've defeated the entire point of Step On Up, Challenge-based play. The player's decision-space that they're navigating becomes subordinate to GM decision if you eff around with the game layer.

So game layer primacy, game layer integrity, game layer transparency as much as possible. Foreground threats, telegraph consequences, give agonizing (eg compelling) tactical/strategic choices between charting course A vs B vs C.

* Keep the meta channel open. Solicit player input and offload onto them/involve them as much as you can. I'm talking framing. I'm talking consequences. I'm talking any required conversation about game layer adjudication or internal causality/extrapolation examination. What is most important is that they understand what the hell is happening. If they don't understand what is happening then its basically Ouija Board play where you're moving the planchette while their hands are vaguely on it. They need to understand the game layer and the fiction first and foremost.

And here is the thing. The Czege Principle is easily avoided. In martial arts and in ball sports (etc), you do technical drills and scrimmages all the time where the parameters of play are either (a) devised by one of the participants or (b) one of the participants is intentionally handicapped by the drill/scrimmage dynamics. Doesn't matter. That isn't a violation of The Czege Principle. So long as the participants understand the Rules of Engagement (RoE) up front and there isn't an "auto-win" scenario so Win Con is still up for grabs...you're good. Its when the RoEs or Win Cons are corrupted/obfuscated such that the participants can't go as hard as possible and still potentially get "the W" when a problem arises.

In D&D terms, you can have players say "hey use Encounter Budget x" or "hey you know what would be really cool here...use enemy unit type y, and z, with hazard/terrain n" and that isn't a violation. So long as the GM can still run their bad guys to the hilt and go all-out for "the W?" You're good.

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If you have an awesome game layer in D&D and you're using 3-4 participants to infuse that gamestate trajectory with an attendant vital, vibrant, thematically rich fiction? Congrats. You're winning all the D&D. D&D is a game. That gets lost way, way, way, way too much and too easily. Maximize what its good at and lean on/involve your players. Whenever I run a new game, I'm always looking at the game layer first and foremost. What is this engine trying to do? What sort of tough decisions (regarding loadout, regarding action economy and positional relationships and Win Con dynamics, regarding action and conflict resolution dynamics, regarding resource marshalling, regarding advancement/reward cycles, regarding the premise/dramatic needs of a character intersecting with situation framing and thematic consequences/moves I can make against them to provoke them.

I just never think about the overall shape of the fiction. Never give it a thought. I try my best to get as good as I can on the fundamentals of this game (which requires deeply understanding the game engine, the levers, the widgets, what all of this does to create compelling decision-points for players) and execute play right now.

Game Layer, Integrity, Transparency, Fundamentals, and Right Now.

 

[Imaro]

It does not violate the no-myth style. No-myth doesn't mean that GM is not allowed to think about things in advance (I'm not sure if that is even possible, to be honest), it means that when there's a conflict between what is established in the game and what the GM has in their notebook, the former always wins.

Okay, you and @AbdulAlhazred seem to have (slightly??) different takes on what No Myth entails and I've seen plenty of proponents on these very boards, some liking your post, claim that you are not supposed to have things pre-made. But given that your premise above is correct, how is this enforced by the game and how can the players be sure it is not being subverted by the GM without their knowledge.

I am asking this because these are the same questions being presented for a simulation agenda and when people say... because I extrapolate from cause, experience, what I know about the subject, etc. they are accused of not actually being able to do that but instead gaslighting themselves into thinking they are while serving another agenda. So I'm curious, what actually keeps someone who is playing NO-Myth style from setting up their pre-conceived ideas, plot, etc above what is established and how would the players know?

Here's an example... A manor is established in play that is owned by a benevolent mayor who really has his town's best interests at heart. The players are invited to the manor as acting diplomats for the town to discuss the rising tensions in the political state with a group of representatives from a secondary village to the north. There is a feast, introductions and the true negotiations are declared to start tomorrow. The players are all ready for a game of political intrigue, negotiation and closed door deals... I however as GM want to run a dungeon crawl I wrote up last night full of ghouls, undead and body horror. So I have decided that under the manor is a dungeon secretly built by his son (a secret cultist) who, when the players sleep at the house for the night, drugs them and dumps them into the ghoul-infested, haunted catacombs full of body-mutatring fungi. Now going strictly by what you said this doesn't violate No-Myth. But if this drastic of a change can be introduced from pre-planned notes through fictional maneuvering... I don't know it feels like this agenda doesn't really stop or enforce anything.

However if this is not a violation can you explain how and why?

 

[Burt Baccara]

Because RPGs are not simply "let's pretend." Describing RPGs as "let's pretend" is a way to ease in someone new to RPGs. With a 50 years history, there are now multiple branches of what is an RPG depending on design goals and what players/GMs enjoy.

While "let's pretend" is too reductive, it might be safe to say, RPGs reside on a spectrum that is someplace between "let's pretend" and a board game (think Euro or wargame, not Monopoly).

 

[Bedrockgames]

What does this mean? How would one accomplish having lightning bolts strike where the players aren’t involved?

This kind of thing comes up all the time in campaigns. If you are trying to make a model of a campaign world that tracks all lightning strikes, that is obviously an extreme. But people have random weather tables, random global and regional event tables or simply decide what’s going on where (including seemingly minor details like a location the players aren’t at being struck by some kind of natural disaster). You can put as much or as little effort into it you want. The idea is generally to keep the world from feeling like things only happen when the players arrive. We have debated the terms s lot here so not really interested in arguing over the terminology itself but this is the sort of thing living world or world in motion refers to

That said like anything it can be taken to a ridiculous level. Most games have kind of balance, where stuff happens around the PCs do the hand stays interesting but acknowledges things are going on elsewhere too. But I do know GMs who are on the far end of world emulation.

 

[clearstream]

I feel this is where we move to @hawkeyefan's discussion about when does simulation take a backseat? Perhaps it does so at certain times for the relevance of the story to emerge. If the BBEG unleashes a revenge squad for the PCs interfering (as it does several times in the ToD AP) the idea is that the PCs survive every time for the sake of the story, so the BBEG always measures its revenge against the PCs. Never too much, but just enough.

Like in my example the BBEG in the dream demi-plane never played the impossible card for the sake of the story.

Agreed. I feel there is a conversation worth having about how each thread can be woven together. When might I pivot into narrativism to drive a rising tension focused on the inner world of characters? Where could gamist challenges elevate that for the group? How might it feel plausible on account of how things are and must fall out? Along every dimension, I can be intentional and I can play to find out.

In your example, you made a decision to prioritise story for one facet of play. I wouldn't make that particular compromise, but I don't feel doing so forces you to prioritise story for every facet of your play. You could, but then you wouldn't have any questions to ask of simulation.

 

[pemerton]

If lightning bolts in heavy rain always strike houses I'd get a little bit suspicious that something is at work besides dispassionate extrapolation.

I'd get even more suspicious if lightning bolts in heavy rain strike houses only when the players are watching.

But how would this even come up? How would anyone know what's happening to all the other lightning bolts and all the other houses?

I thought of another thing I like about simulationist GMing: it makes players' genuine emotional reactions to what happens more enjoyable for me to witness. "Holy moly, I can't believe it!" feels really good to hear when I didn't pull any strings to make "it" happen, aside from initial scenario construction.

the proximate cause to my post was thinking about a player's reaction during an intro scenario I ran yesterday to teach him the basics of DFRPG combat. He had knocked down a zombie and broken its arm, and managed to just barely hit it in the head (needed 8 or less on 3d6 and rolled an 8).

Me: 8 just barely succeeds at 15-7, and he can't defend, so roll damage.

Him: 12

Me: His skull (DR 2) absorbs 2 points of damage, and Mr. Whoosit takes 40 points of injury.

Him: Holy Moly.

I was thinking about how good that reaction made me feel for some reason, and how if he'd rolled slightly different things would have gone differently, and that post came out of that thinking.

What I don't get about these examples is what they have to do with simulationism. Maybe I've missed something- but it seems to me that what you describe could (and, in my experience, does) happen in 4e D&D, or Burning Wheel.

It feels like an implicit contrast is being drawn with <something>, but I can't tell what that something is.

 

[pemerton]

I feel some things at least as clear. There should be shared referents. There should be internal causality. The world is imagined to persist beyond the characters. If something is true in one place, all things being equal it is true in another place.

This seems to describe Apocalypse World. And Burning Wheel. Are those simulationist RPGs?

And what RPGs don't have these things - shared referents, a world imagined to persist beyond the PCs, internal causality and consistency?

As I posted in reply to @FormerlyHemlock, there appears to be an implicit contrast, but I don't know what the contrast is that is being drawn.

I cannot park the enquiry at "authorship" and leave that as an inscrutable manufacturer of things to say about Magnetos etc that go on, and continue going on, to be plausible, coherent, apparently causally connected. So extrapolation is made to reference a set of things, and I have rules, references and concepts about how those things are related.

I ask the same question - which RPGs are different from this?

How does extrapolation narrow the infinite list of possible next sentences containing "Magneto" down to exactly "sinking the submarine caused the Soviet leadership to bring Magneto to trial". What is it about Magentos, submarines, Soviet leadership, and trials, that motivates connecting them causally? That makes doing so not only plausible, but will go on to a next imaginary event, and a next and a next, continuing to be plausible?

Looking at just one element - submarines - it seems they are sinkable. And we are to accept - in fact we are to know - that such sinking is plausible in this case. How and why? Supposedly submarines are made of metal, which as it turns out can be moved and distorted by magenetic powers. Magneto, apparently, has such powers. Can magnetic powers always sink submarines, or only this time?

<snip>

Magentic powers can move and distort metal things thus plausibly causing metal submarines to sink. That's a simple example with a couple of referents and a couple of relationships. The persistence of that model is basic to simulation. If we're made of metal, we better look out!

How is this different from the sort of reasoning that would apply in Marvel Heroic RP? Which is surely not a simulationist RPG!

How do we know what hard move to use with Hack and Slash 6-? Simulationism relies on persisted referents and relationships that are external to characters (objective, from their point of view.) Each practitioner - knowingly or not - internalised or externalised - draws from such models what to say next, and can judge against them whether what is said is plausible. Simulationism is the prioritisation of including that in legitimation so that it is legitimate when it is caused and goes on to be caused in like circumstances; what is represented will go on to be represented in like circumstances.

Is this intended to imply that Dungeon World can count as a simulationist RPG?

If you go in with the premise that GM decisions cannot be counted as simulation, then you will (as I have said to others above) be left with no explanation. You've implicitly ruled out from first principles the possibility that "GM decides" can equate with simulation through the way in which they decide.

You assert that this particular GM technique is possible. Others who doubt it are not doing so arbitrarily. They've articulated their reasons. In particular, they doubt that the factors you point do uniquely determine what happens next.

This sits on top of the doubt that what you are describing - extrapolation in virtue of imagining in-fiction causation - is distinctive of a particular mode of RPGing. To me (and @hawkeyefan at least) it appears to be ubiquitous in RPGing.

If you asked yourself - would it be exciting to have a dragon here - then that's not it. If you asked - would it be challenging to have a dragon here - that's also not it. If you asked - why in the world would there be a dragon here - that's it.

<snip>

Notice that in all cases there can indeed be a dragon there. It's motivated differently

The questions you pose don't appear to be mutually exclusive.

Also, by focusing on the GM's motivation, it seems to suggest that simulationism is not a mode of play, but something that only the GM has access to. Is that what you're intending?

 

[pemerton]

Not just "what if..." but "what would really happen if..."?

<snip>

If the dragon lands on the ground and engages the party in melee so that the barbarian and the knight can participate in the battle, PRO: the knight's player and the barbarian's player have a fun evening. CON: anyone who is primarily interested in how a dragon "would really fight" come away dissatisfied.

If the dragon dive bombs attacking humans every so often with 200 lb. boulders from 500' up, uses human spies to gather intel on threats in advance, and possibly hires assassins to steal or sabotage their gear, PRO: anyone who's primarily interested in how a dragon "would really fight" gets some good answers, and has an interesting challenge if they want one (or maybe they choose to apply to the dragon for employment as spies, etc.). CON: knight and barbarian players may have a bad time, especially if it comes to a fight.

Why is the second thing how a dragon would "really" fight? It seems to assume that a dragon has the same personality and inclinations as a rational human military commander. But what is the basis for that premise?

I mean, not every human ever has fought in the rational sort of style you are positing!

There could and should be reasons why a dragon wouldn't attack optimally, yes. But as the DM, if you're not thinking of those reasons when you're running the dragon, but are instead thinking it would be nice if the PCs without ranged attacks could contribute, then imo you've stopped simulating.

This also seems to make "simulation" a property of the GM's decision-making process, not something to do with gameplay or player experience. Is that what you intend?