Why do RPGs have rules?

[Micah Sweet]

I posited this idea because when Rule Zero + hidden backstory are both in effect, ultimately it is the GM's job to eliminate standstill. The players can only guess for so long at the hidden backstory elements that are preventing them from achieving their goals.

A Rule Zero GM must at some point break the barrier by either providing new vectors of information, or reframing scenes in a way that make new player action declarations possible.

This is interestingly no different than the stated GM agenda for PbtA play --- "adhere to your GM principles and make your moves".

The difference is that PbtA provides additional player side authority to largely eliminate stalemate play from appearing in the first place.

But in Rule Zero play, it's all on the GM. (S)he is fully responsible for developing valid game states that grant the ability for players to make action declarations.

If the goal is to avoid stalemate / "rowboat world" play, a Rule Zero game must rely on the GM.

I think one of the reasons sandbox play has largely never taken over as the primary mode of play (vs. trad) is that GMs regularly fail to recognize this responsibility. If you take away player inputs to change the fiction, then some other inputs must fill in. Yet IME "rowboat world" GM-ing is largely the result of sandbox play, because it appears to offer "You can go anywhere!" freedom while slyly subverting control of the available actions to nearly exclusively the GM.

I really think you're overstating your case. Player input being limited to the perspective of their characters doesn't prevent them from changing the fiction, it channels it into an avenue designed for a verisimilitudinous world. As long as a mechanism exists, either in prepared GM notes or game rules (tables and the like) to portray the setting independently of the PCs, the various degrees of authority granted to the GM and the players can proceed smoothly. It does take some work, and mostly on the part of the GM, but this can be lessened by the use of published setting details to supplement homebrew design. That's what I, and I presume other sandbox GMs, do to ease the effort required to run the kind of game we want.

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly? In terms of flexibility and applicability to more situations, lighter systems which eschew the 'bolt on a subsystem for every need' kind of model generally are superior.

And they come with a cost.

And that cost?

Detail and granularity.

If a system is to support detailed granular resolution (e.g. combat) and play (e.g. exploration) it pretty much by default has to include more rules and-or guidelines both to handle those details and to deal with unusual or specific-but-predictable situations not otherwise covered. Further, discrete subsystems are often better for this than is one overarching mechanic.

Now if your preferred style of play tends to eschew details and granularity, you might not notice or even count this as a cost. Doesn't mean the cost isn't there.

And sure, it's obviously possible to go too far the other way, to the point where the cost in play efficiency outweighs the benefit of detail. One could say early Hackmaster at the height of its cumbersome-ness approaches if not exceeds this threshold.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And they come with a cost.

And that cost?

Detail and granularity.

If a system is to support detailed granular resolution (e.g. combat) and play (e.g. exploration) it pretty much by default has to include more rules and-or guidelines both to handle those details and to deal with unusual or specific-but-predictable situations not otherwise covered. Further, discrete subsystems are often better for this than is one overarching mechanic.

Now if your preferred style of play tends to eschew details and granularity, you might not notice or even count this as a cost. Doesn't mean the cost isn't there.

And sure, it's obviously possible to go too far the other way, to the point where the cost in play efficiency outweighs the benefit of detail. One could say early Hackmaster at the height of its cumbersome-ness approaches if not exceeds this threshold.

Even so, I still kinda love Hackmaster. A very fun take on 1e. I still have most of the old books, including the whole monster series and that insane Gamemaster's Shield.

 

[pemerton]

As I said, I think you feel that you're not paying any cost because the game aligns with your preferences. If it didn't, the cost might very well be higher.

What does that have to do with light vs heavy? I mean, T&T doesn't really align with my preferences. But it's a pretty light system (certainly compared to, say, AD&D or 3E D&D).

 

[Micah Sweet]

What does that have to do with light vs heavy? I mean, T&T doesn't really align with my preferences. But it's a pretty light system (certainly compared to, say, AD&D or 3E D&D).

Are you referring to Tunnels & Trolls, or something else? That acronym hasn't been used in this thread yet, do I'm not sure what you mean.

And my point is that few see problems with things they like, including game rules, at least to the degree of severity that other, less sanguine individuals see.

 

[pemerton]

I posited this idea because when Rule Zero + hidden backstory are both in effect, ultimately it is the GM's job to eliminate standstill. The players can only guess for so long at the hidden backstory elements that are preventing them from achieving their goals.

A Rule Zero GM must at some point break the barrier by either providing new vectors of information, or reframing scenes in a way that make new player action declarations possible.

This is interestingly no different than the stated GM agenda for PbtA play --- "adhere to your GM principles and make your moves".

The difference is that PbtA provides additional player side authority to largely eliminate stalemate play from appearing in the first place.

I would say a principal difference from AW is that, in AW, (i) "nothing happens" is not a GM move, and (ii) the GM moves are all framed by reference to player aspirations for their PCs ("put someone in a spot", "announce badness", "offer an opportunity, perhaps with a cost", "separate them" (when they want to be together), etc).

So it's not just that the GM eliminates standstill; at every point, the GM is inciting the players to declare actions for their PCs by putting the players' aspirations for their PCs under pressure.

In the sort of "rule zero" play you're describing, either the GM does the same thing, and play drifts to (what The Forge calls) "vanilla narrativism" - that's what happened with me in the second half of the 1980s - or else the GM puts out "hooks" which the players are expected to pick up on, and then play drifts towards something fairly trad.

A table that doesn't want either of the two options described above therefore needs to abandon "it's the GM's job to eliminate standstill". This is the approach taken by classic dungeon-crawling.

But in Rule Zero play, it's all on the GM. (S)he is fully responsible for developing valid game states that grant the ability for players to make action declarations.

If the goal is to avoid stalemate / "rowboat world" play, a Rule Zero game must rely on the GM.

I don't think this last-quoted sentence covers the field: see my previous sentence just above. I think classic dungeon-crawling puts it on the players to eliminate standstill. But this requires some fairly tight conventions on how scenes are framed, and how certain canonical actions (involving doors, ropes, 10' poles, etc) are resolved: we can see those conventions presupposed and occasionally stated in Gygax's AD&D rulebooks and in Moldvay Basic. I do think that one problem that can affect "sandbox"-type play is a lack of conventions, analogous to those which apply in the dungeon-crawling context, that govern scene-framing and some fairly canonical action declarations.

I think one of the reasons sandbox play has largely never taken over as the primary mode of play (vs. trad) is that GMs regularly fail to recognize this responsibility. If you take away player inputs to change the fiction, then some other inputs must fill in.

My diagnosis is a bit different. I think that there is significant degree of reluctance to acknowledge that classic dungeon-crawling depends upon conventions to make it viable: and hence there is a failure to develop comparable conventions to govern play that wants to use the same sort of GM prep + player resolution of stalemate as dungeon-crawling does, but in a more expansive fictional setting than an austere and artificial Gygaxian dungeon.

An interesting feature of Torchbearer is that it does set out conventions that govern the full gamut of play. It doesn't just say "make it verisimilitudinous" and then punt everything to the GM.

 

[pemerton]

Are you referring to Tunnels & Trolls, or something else? That acronym hasn't been used in this thread yet, do I'm not sure what you mean.

And my point is that few see problems with things they like, including game rules, at least to the degree of severity that other, less sanguine individuals see.

Yes, I'm referring to Tunnels & Trolls.

I don't understand what your point is. A claim was made that "light" RPGs are in fact "costly" in play. I disagreed, and pointed to some examples. All you seem to be saying is that different people like different things. No doubt that's true, but how does it bear upon the claim made about light RPGs?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

How is that not an opinion dressed up as a fact? Claiming one system is just "superior" to another without any qualifier is just bad rhetoric, and I wouldn't expect anyone who doesn't already agree with you to accept it. This is worse than your claim that there's no such thing as simulation-based play.

'dressed up'??? Its a comment in a forum on RPGs, not a PhD thesis or even a blog post. With long experience, I've found it to be true. You are free to disagree, as always.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I posited this idea because when Rule Zero + hidden backstory are both in effect, ultimately it is the GM's job to eliminate standstill. The players can only guess for so long at the hidden backstory elements that are preventing them from achieving their goals.

A Rule Zero GM must at some point break the barrier by either providing new vectors of information, or reframing scenes in a way that make new player action declarations possible.

This is interestingly no different than the stated GM agenda for PbtA play --- "adhere to your GM principles and make your moves".

The difference is that PbtA provides additional player side authority to largely eliminate stalemate play from appearing in the first place.

But in Rule Zero play, it's all on the GM. (S)he is fully responsible for developing valid game states that grant the ability for players to make action declarations.

If the goal is to avoid stalemate / "rowboat world" play, a Rule Zero game must rely on the GM.

I don't think I disagree with any of the basic ideas presented, but I guess I'm not sure I like the whole label "Rule 0 GM/Game" as I don't think its really related directly to rule 0. A game could be trad/classic and flat out state that the ultimate rules authority is a vote of the table, and it wouldn't change that the source of the fiction is the GM, with the mapping of fiction to agenda being entirely in the GM's hands.

I think one of the reasons sandbox play has largely never taken over as the primary mode of play (vs. trad) is that GMs regularly fail to recognize this responsibility. If you take away player inputs to change the fiction, then some other inputs must fill in. Yet IME "rowboat world" GM-ing is largely the result of sandbox play, because it appears to offer "You can go anywhere!" freedom while slyly subverting control of the available actions to nearly exclusively the GM.

Yeah, the problem with such play IMHO is that dumping responsibility for driving play onto the players, but then not giving them anything to build that on, and keeping all the fiction as a secret GM resource, is simply "The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast." You cannot be a protagonist in a story where you have no control over the fiction! Even if you can set out in any map direction (or equivalents) that doesn't help as whatever you find is simply random to the player, it isn't associated with any agenda or character-originating need/want. You want revenge on the orcs for the murder of your family, but all you run into are goblins...

Now, one partial solution is for the GM to rewrite everyone's backstories and take charge of the elements which form these motives in the first place, and essentially make the characters her own. That would align the PCs to what they will discover, and make it relevant to them, but needless to say it probably won't leave a lot of the PLAYERS very satisfied! I mean, only if the GM is really good at creating stories which they want to play. It might work for a few superstar GMs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And they come with a cost.

And that cost?

Detail and granularity.

If a system is to support detailed granular resolution (e.g. combat) and play (e.g. exploration) it pretty much by default has to include more rules and-or guidelines both to handle those details and to deal with unusual or specific-but-predictable situations not otherwise covered. Further, discrete subsystems are often better for this than is one overarching mechanic.

Now if your preferred style of play tends to eschew details and granularity, you might not notice or even count this as a cost. Doesn't mean the cost isn't there.

And sure, it's obviously possible to go too far the other way, to the point where the cost in play efficiency outweighs the benefit of detail. One could say early Hackmaster at the height of its cumbersome-ness approaches if not exceeds this threshold.

Does it? Where is the lack of detail in combat in something like Dungeon World? I don't find the combats to be any less detailed or granular than the ones which happen in 5e, for example. Neither game employs a formal 'battle map' and rely on 'ToTM' style combat. Yet DW lacks any formal combat rules whatsoever!