Why do RPGs have rules?

[Warpiglet-7]

If you want the answer ask why checkers has rules.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The problem is what the magical cataclysm is... what its specific effects were, even what is and what isn't due to its influence isn't explained. None of it.

Edit: To explain further... I would think part of simulating a magical catastrophe would be the juxtaposition between what was and what is now... but Duskhvol, imo, doesn't do this well if at all.

Actually Doskvol was created through the process of running a simulation of a magical catastrophe using some other system (I'm not sure which one). So the entire process of this cataclysm was exactly mapped out in detail and the resulting features of the Doskvol BitD milieu are exactly the consequences, the end product of this simulation! You don't have to take my word for it either, it is a well-known fact. So this proves conclusively that what is or is not simulative is entirely non-obvious and what to you is made up fiction is in fact very advanced and sophisticated simulation!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Actually Doskvol was created through the process of running a simulation of a magical catastrophe using some other system (I'm not sure which one). So the entire process of this cataclysm was exactly mapped out in detail and the resulting features of the Doskvol BitD milieu are exactly the consequences, the end product of this simulation! You don't have to take my word for it either, it is a well-known fact. So this proves conclusively that what is or is not simulative is entirely non-obvious and what to you is made up fiction is in fact very advanced and sophisticated simulation!

A little snarky if you're trying for honest discourse.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A little snarky if you're trying for honest discourse.

I'm not being snarky. Look it up. Doskvol was originally the result of another fantasy game campaign where there was a magical apocalypse. No snark. Honestly how is this not meeting you all's definitions of simulation?

 

[Imaro]

I'm not being snarky. Look it up. Doskvol was originally the result of another fantasy game campaign where there was a magical apocalypse. No snark. Honestly how is this not meeting you all's definitions of simulation?

Regardless of what I think of the rest of your post...I'd be interested in reading how Doskvol was actually created... link??

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not being snarky. Look it up. Doskvol was originally the result of another fantasy game campaign where there was a magical apocalypse. No snark. Honestly how is this not meeting you all's definitions of simulation?

Why would they use the same magical apocalypse as another game, but provide no explanation of it?

That being said, I am also interested in hearing about it.

 

[loverdrive]

Why would they use the same magical apocalypse as another game, but provide no explanation of it?

It happened a thousand years ago, pretty much all the culture of Doskvol and the rest of Shattered Isles developed in a post-cataclysm world.

Like, idk, a game about criminals in real world Saint Petersburg probably should consider the consequences of the fall of Soviet Union, but, say, Siege of Leningrad would be more or less irrelevant.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Why would they use the same magical apocalypse as another game, but provide no explanation of it?

That being said, I am also interested in hearing about it.

Its all basically rumors. There are two games which were PbtA games that 'spawned' BitD. I haven't read them, but there is really supposed to be some information around. John Harper has run a lot of stuff and created quite a few games/hacks. Ghost Lines apparently talks more about the whole world, BitD itself mentions the apocalypse but obviously doesn't say anything about prior games.

"Blades creator John Harper said the setting was inspired by events in a fantasy campaign he was running several years ago. A wizard destroyed the Gates of Death, unleashing all the dead upon the living. Harper asked his players “if they wanted to continue playing during the spirit apocalypse, or jump ahead 1000 years into the post-apocalyptic world that survived the cataclysm. They said they wanted to jump ahead.”

BitD stuff


So there you go. I mean, its fantasy "a wizard did it" and the players wanted to see what the world was like in 1000 years. Its that simple.

 

[Maxperson]

So why can't this apply to lightning bolts that strike houses because of the drastic failure of rituals for binding evil spirits?

How has that been previously established by the setting lore and not just made up by you on the spot?

 

[clearstream]

I don't think that this principle is applicable to all RPGing. For instance, if the goal of play is to solve a puzzle the GM has established - eg to identify a breach in security as pre-authored by the GM - then the use of extrapolation from fiction in lieu of resolution mechanics will not be applicable.

Could GM author moves to establish the puzzle, perhaps fabricating clocks of some kind? That is, is the distinction found in the structuring of the breach in security puzzle?

By positing a rule whereby the mechanics are (or can be obliged to be) "silent", you are positing action resolution mechanics that can't be applied except by reference to stuff that has been thought of in advance. Those would not be good mechanics for no myth RPGing.

So here I am not positing a rule whereby mechanics are or can be made silent. I'm envisioning the possibility of lacunae, i.e. cases not covered by mechanics. Where rules do not extend, what happens?

And this is a constraint on the design of the mechanics, because if they are always in effect, and yet are capable of covering the full range of feasible action declarations, then they can't be any old thing!

One way to address the possibility of lacunae is to say that there are none. A question still on my mind relates to the focus on action declarations. Simulationist rules often extend beyond action declarations to world processes. World processes could fall outside of feasible action declarations... so can I count on their being covered?

A possible example might be where in DW players want to know what the weather is like, and no one yet has access to Control Weather (7th level Cleric spell) or Weather Weaver (Druid advanced move) so they use Discern Realities or possibly Spout Lore? Discern Realities seems straightforward as they can go with "What is about to happen?" The situation taken to be where we are now (say, in these foothills). To give Weather Weaver meaning I would likely want to read "about" as implying "in the very near future" in parsing the rule text. If it's Spout Lore then it's accumulated knowledge amounting to something interesting and possibly useful (10+). Either way, it seems like GM has to decide what the weather is.

In a simulationist game there'd often be rules for deciding the weather (I'm thinking of the Balazaring Weather Table in Griffin Mountain), but DW lacks that. If they've succeeded on their checks (7+) it doesn't seem quite called for to treat it as an opportunity to introduce badness. How does GM decide what to say? (Or supposing they turn it back on the players, how does player decide what to say?)