Why do RPGs have rules?

[hawkeyefan]

By your description above and the fact you can so clearly predict what will happen later in the day, you have a fairly well-established day-to-day routine in your life.

Sure, but it's not just about having a routine. It's about knowing what's common given my choices as a person... my job and my social connections and so on. Can something unexpected happen? Sure, of course. A car accident, for example, would be unexpected for sure.

But what if I was an EMT? Or a traffic cop? Is dealing with a car accident unexpected then? Is it weird or contrived that the responsibilities of such people give you a good idea of what they may encounter as part of their day?

Most in-game characters don't have any such routine, which immediately makes them quite different from most of us real people. I'd even suggest that part of the initial challenge of playing such characters revolves around this difference - that unlike real-world folk the in-game characters have the freedom in-game to more or less do what they want when they want to. Some players quickly come to revel in this in-character freedom, others take a while to adjust, and a few never do.

First, who says most in-game characters don't have any such routines? Their routines certainly may be different, but they may have routines. Or at the very least, they have goals and responsibilities that give us a good idea of what may happen to them. What you're describing may be true of "adventurers" in the D&D sense. But not all games work that way, as @Campbell has already pointed out.

Second, I don't know if I agree about the freedom thing. If characters are free to pursue their own agenda, why are you saying that events related to that agenda happening to them is unrealistic? It sounds like by freedom you mean free of any responsibility or social connection... but that's not a freedom everyone wants nor is it a freedom every PC has.

And their ability to do what they want when they want to (and in many cases where they want to) leads to two rather predictable outcomes:
1 - that any in-game deadline is seen as unusual rather than commonplace
2 - they're constantly encountering unexpected things due to the unpredictability of their actions and-or travels.

Why are deadlines unusual? Even nature has deadlines.

Why are their actions so unpredictable? Why are their travels so unpredictable?

Again, you seem unable to move beyond the classic adventurer paradigm. Not all PCs are adventurers.

If, in-game, the characters proactively make these things happen then yes, it's not surprising. What's surprising - and comes across as overly-contrived - is when those agenda-related things keep happening to them even if they do nothing to bring those occurrences about.

Why would they not pursue their agenda?

To the bolded I plead not guilty, y'r honour.

Realism (where practical and possible, in knowledge it isn't always) is certainly a goal of mine, yet in no way do I expect or demand they act co-operatively as a group. How well they get along, or don't, is entirely up to the players.

Yes, I know you are the exception in this case. But we all know that many folks demand that the group work together, mostly stay together, and often adhere to specific alignments or moral outlooks.

 

[pemerton]

In REH's Conan story The Scarlet Citadel, Conan is captured by his enemies, who are conquering his kingdom; imprisoned in a dungeon; a person with a reason to hate him (due to Conan's past deeds) comes into the dungeon to taunt him with the keys; Conan kills the man taunting him, and uses the keys to free himself; in the dungeon, he finds a wizard trapped and frees the wizard; the wizard is able to conjure a spirit that flies Conan back to his kingdom in record time; Conan is then able to regain control of his kingdom.

This is not a particularly wacky sequence of events to occur in an adventure story. Consider Star Wars: the Princess is captured by her enemies, who are dismantling her resistance to their empire; she is imprisoned in a dungeon, but not before sending a message in a bottle; the message is found by the hidden heir to the magical traditions that can overthrow the empire, who in turn is found by the mentor of those traditions; the heir, the mentor, and a couple of swords-for-hire rescue her, are allowed to escape in a risky gambit; the gambit turns back on the empire, as the heir and the swords-for-hire save the day.

JRRT even lampshades the contrivances necessary to make the plot in his stories work: in Appendix A of LotR, he has Gandalf remark to Frodo and Gimli "A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle Earth."

In RPGing, who gets to establish that Conan has a kingdom to defend, that the Princess has a rebellion to run, that the Dwarves have a home to retake from a dragon, etc? Who gets to establish all the chance meetings? How is it determined that enemies will take risky gambits - taunting the prisoner with the keys, allowing the prisoners to escape so as to reveal the location of their hidden base, etc?

To go back to my conversation with @chaochou about purist-for-system RPGing, which I think also connects to @AbdulAlhazred's remarks about (E) vs (A): if no one does these things, we get what Baker calls "listless, aimless, dull play with no sustained conflict and no meaning". Classic Traveller is, in my experience, vulnerable to this when approached in the purist-for-system spirit.

If the GM decides these things, we get what I call "railroading". There can be variants: the GM provides one option; the GM provides multiple options; the GM decides, here-and-now, that the PCs meet a friendly wizard; the GM rolls a d% at the start of every in-game day to see if the PCs meet a friendly wizard. These are the various techniques that live within the space of what I call railroading.

If the players simply decide these things, we get what looks to me like cooperative storytelling.

If the players get to establish their PCs' dramatic needs, and hence either expressly or implicitly what is at stake; the GM authors the conflict; and we have rules for resolving how things turn out, which (more-or-less) apportion outcomes between the PCs get what they want and the GM is obliged to step up or to bring home the conflict; then with a bit of luck we get what I call excellent RPGing!

 

[pemerton]

players author world facts based only on assumptions about the world itself

From time to time, streams in Middle Earth dry up or at least run low - there is drought, Ents dam them, whatever else happens. Sometimes, and conversely, streams run deeper than normal.

With that in mind:

The players decide to travel to Helm's Deep. Is the Deeping Stream running shallow, with the result (eg) that the fortress is short on water? Is the Deeping Stream in flood, making it hard for travellers (or enemies, or reinforcements) to approach?

"Assumptions about the world itself" will not answer these questions. (As @AbdulAlhazred has, in particular, emphasised over many threads.)

Someone can just make it up.

Maybe someone rolls on the "streams in drought or flood table". (I don't think I've ever seen such a table in a RPG rulebook, but I'd be surprised if there has never been one ever in the history of RPG publishing.)

The GM can call for a "ride to the Deep" roll, or a "call reinforcements" roll, and use the outcome of that roll as a trigger for introducing some adversity that otherwise would be absent - a shallow or flooded stream, a shortage of water, etc. This is how Burning Wheel does it, for instance.

None of these produces "world facts" that are more or less external, that are more or less "real".

They will produce different play experiences. For instance, a system of rolling on random-possibility-of-obstacles tables, like the "streams in drought or flood table", will tend to push play towards an operational focus: preparation, logistics, and the like become highly salient elements of play. (Depending on what sorts of random-possibility-of-obstacles tables are in use, the operational focus will vary: tables about streams and terrain produce a hex-crawl vibe; tables about peasant uprising and political crises will produce a different sort of play.)

I think it sheds no light at all to describe this sort of play as more "realistic" than the Burning Wheel-esque approach.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Realism in the sense being used for the past few post exchanges is about the setting being consistent with how the world works.

This debate over "realism" is irrelevant. What matters for RPG campaigns is consistency. That the mechanics reflect how the setting is described Particularly the descriptions of how things work when you try to do things as your character. The world described by Toon an RPG about Saturday morning cartoon is very different than the world described by Harnmaster. Yet both are known for being consistent in how their mechanics reflect their respective settings/genres.

Why is consistency important? Because player don't like it when told they have to roll a different way when the same situation comes up later in the campaign. Even in the zany world of Toon, you want to be consistent with how the world of cartoons works. Yes what happens in those cartoons is often random but it is a specific type of randomness which Toon handles well.

Players like they can leverage their knowledge of a setting in to plans that work.

And finally, this has nothing to do with the level of detail. You don't need all the detail that GURPS or Harnmaster has to run a campaign where things are consistent with how things work in the real world. A minimalist system that has a good way of abstracting how things work in a setting is fine. ANd it is fine to have systems like GUPRS and Harnmaster that do use detailed mechanics.

The test is whether a player new to the system can use their knowledge of the setting to make meaningful decisions as their character. And that after resolving whatever they are trying to do with the mechanics that afterward they go "Yes those rules make sense. If the answer is yes, then the author of the system has done their job well.

Right, but notice that there are at least TWO major things you are NOT claiming here that have been claimed over and over in this thread! One being that there is the possibility, and active practice, of SIMULATING the world, such that this simulation produces actual specific outcomes which are the logical consequence of how that world MUST realistically work. SECOND is the claim that we can measure the 'realism' of various options and objectively state that some things in our fantasy world would be more realistic outcomes than others.

Now, in the second case I think there are some fairly trivial examples where this is possible. "Joe stepped over an edge, he fell, it hurt", this seems to be realistic in a limited sense. I am still not of the opinion these would rise to the level of simulation, because you cannot draw any generalizable conclusions about gravity from what happens in D&D when you fall.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Calling it the DM's agenda implies that DM has decided that the campaign will be about goblins attacking the party. If the DM is trying to force what he wants to happen, then yes it's an agenda. That's not what simulation does. Simulation looks at the area and if the party is walking two miles away from a goblin village that the DM knows is there when a random encounter is rolled, it's realistic/simulation to choose goblins to encounter. It's not some agenda of the DM's. He doesn't care if it's goblins, rats or rust monsters. He's picking the encounter not because he wants goblins(he may not want goblins at all), but rather because goblins make the most sense for the region.

This flaw you guys keep touting isn't a flaw at all. It doesn't matter if the DM established the foundation for what he later uses for his reasoning. So long as the DM has a reason(prior foundation in this case), it cannot possibly be arbitrary(chosen on a whim).

Here's the monumental problem with this sort of concept of what this play is about. If such a technique was actually pursued in a completely objective way, there are two possibilities:

1) the PCs lives are pretty much boring and mostly average. This is logically necessitated by the fact that they are simply relatively typical inhabitants in the world in question. Most people's lives are mostly boring and average! Life is actually arranged this way, partly on purpose. We humans like it that way and produce laws, governments, and myriad other forms of social control, not to mention altering our environment heavily in favor of this sort of life. Most of life would be impossible otherwise.

2) the PCs live in 'wacky world' where everyone has endless fantastic adventures. Given that Wacky World would be highly at variance from our ordinary experience it is pretty difficult to talk about what is or is not realistic in Wacky World. You could spin Toon this way, if you wish, and a few games like Paranoia are essentially a form of Wacky World.

Thus we are inevitably drawn to the conclusion that PCs are in fact HIGHLY UNUSUAL, at which point all the song and dance about how 'unrealistic' it is to simply play about what is interesting or engaging to the players of those characters is no longer about realism at all. So which is it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What brings the game to the wild west? Did it start there? Did the players decide to go there? Did the GM decide to bring them there? When they get there, do they have an agenda? Do they just wander around and experience random events?



That's my fault, I had mixed up my A and B. I've edited my last post.

I view it as A. I think it's A because the things happening are unrelated to the characters goals or themes.



Again, my fault for mixing up my own points! I view this as B.



If you're making the interesting things happen, then I think it would be a case of my B. The weirdness magnet angle is more A, where remarkable events keep happening around the characters that are unrelated to them.

But here's the thing. Even a "random encounter" can be made dramatically relevant to the players' characters. So you roll brigands on your random encounter table, and we know that the Knight character has a Drive of "Justice". The PCs are on their way to the kingdom to prevent a major threat, but this random encounter occurs. They can avoid it and be on their way for their important goal... but does the Knight's sense of Justice supersede that goal? What does his decision say about him as a character?

That's dramatically relevant.

I think this idea that everything needs to be specifically connected to the PCs at all times is misleading. There's no reason even random encounters can't be made to be dramatically meaningful to one or more PCs.



I think your C, D, and E can all be categorized under A or B, so I don't think I'm excluding anything. My point is that A and B are equally realistic (or equally unrealistic, depending on how you want to look at it), so any distinction between the two is simply a matter of preference. So using it as a measure of play doesn't really seem too meaningful.

You could point at my game and say "wow, everything seems to revolve around the players' characters, that seems a bit too coincidental, no?" and I could point at your game and say "wow, nothing that happens to the players' characters has anything to do with them, that doesn't seem believable". Neither is right or wrong. And I also expect neither of our games would totally exclude A or B.

So instead, let's look at what's happening outside of the fiction. What's happening in the game, at the table. Drop all appeals to realism, and tell me from a process standpoint, what's the difference between A and B?

This is very true, its quite possible for situations to simply engage with a character regardless of any explicit connection they have. In fact I think this is pretty much 100% of what happens in games like DitV or Agon from what I can see (I guess maybe the GM in those games COULD engage with specific backstory etc. of a PC, but its not at all necessary).

I'd also like to point out that, beyond this, a lot of games are 'small towns' in essence. In BitD you are an inhabitant of Doskvol, and not a low profile one either (well, you may lurk, but you do consequential stuff) overall. In fact its quite likely that where you go you will run into friends, enemies, rivals, allies, your own crew, etc. It's not startling that you get roughed by the Blue Coats all the time, nor that other scum bags want to break your face, etc. You're not ordinary exactly, but the life you are leading is simply filled with stuff that is related to you. If it isn't yet it will be after you steal it, kill it, smoke it, spend it, or blow it up!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll assume by this you're not trying to suggest that trad play is irrational (and I don't think you are) but note that as written your phrasing here can be parsed that way.

So alright, if trad play can't do realistic, what can?

I don't think playing D&D is rational, period. I don't expect it to be nor would I consider it insulting personally to be told that the game I just ran was crazy and made no sense (but it was hopefully fun). No play really does realistic better than any other. I think there's potential to role play realistic scenarios, yes. I think that's what military training exercises and such things ARE. I think its possible to do similar things at a table top, yes. I agree that 'rules and processes related to the drama of the situation' wouldn't sensibly be part of that. OTOH these situations generally involve RPing essentially OURSELVES, not other imaginary people. They don't involve FICTION in the sense of any kind of plot at all! They would involve realistic decision making and modeling of the effects of decisions made.

For example: I was in an advanced first aid/triage training course once (basically the most introductory version of what combat medics get, I assume similar to other EMT/FR training). We did exercises like come to a location where a number of simulated casualties were located and we were expected to triage and provide appropriate treatment with a goal of maximizing survival. Its an RPG, in a sense, though maybe the 'G' isn't exactly a 'fun and games' thing (but still, there were win/loss cons and decisions we made determined which happened). I would certainly call it 'role play' in that the victims were not really injured and we only carried out 'treatment' to the degree needed to demonstrate proper mastery of the techniques. I would call this realistic!

 

[Autumnal]

I reiterate: I am not a character in a work of fiction. I have no dramatic needs.

That is exactly what a metafictional escapee would say. Is your accent more Argentinian, Italian, or Scottish?

Can we call the drama "emergent" if it is consciously engineered?

if we can’t, we’re hosed, because intentionality isn’t something you can pry off people like sweat or dried spaghetti sauce. Also, crucially, having an intention doesn’t guarantee its fulfillment even in solo work, and even less so in group work. The process of play gives each participant new ideas, distracts them from old ones, and so on, and thus the work evolves.

Are they not?

Two of my college housemates, both Tolkien fans, went on to become geologists, and both say no. I believe this is the prevailing opinion among Tolkien scholars even about the mountains that don’t border Mordor. Tolkien’s descriptions are wonderfully vivid and detailed of each scene, but as I understand it, great bits and up to a less realistic geological and geographic whole.

One being that there is the possibility, and active practice, of SIMULATING the world, such that this simulation produces actual specific outcomes which are the logical consequence of how that world MUST realistically work.

But simulations do not and cannot produce uniquely correct outcomes unless you can fully account for the initial conditions on which developments are sensitively dependent! (Plus some other criteria that we don’t have to get into now, like modeling only at scales where quantum effects can be averaged away and like that.) I’ve seen this myself with economic and social models where I provided the data, and have watched it with my friends’ geological models and Dad’s astronomical ones. Nonlinearity is always, always lurking waiting to use its thief skills against you, and even the best bell curve doesn’t give you unique correctness. Standard deviations are in fact standard, so to speak.

So the final choices among outcomes necessarily include non-rational - but not necessarily at all irrational - concerns. Aesthetics. Sticking with a previous choice even when it wouldn’t be optimal for this situation considered isolation. Desire to stick it to a critical rival. Level of energy, rest, blood sugar, etc. Weather and how the lighting of the moment illuminates a screen or page of data. Stress about unrelated things from family or pet illness to upcoming elections. And so on. (For me in recent years, unrecognized hearing loss and then its dramatic restoration via good hearing aids. Seriously significant impact on some gaming choices.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, almost all TTRPG contains some world facts that are external to characters. Hence I emphasise the following dichotomy

1. players author world facts in light of their dramatic intentions for their characters
2. players author world facts based only on assumptions about the world itself

Well... First I would point out that "the world itself" is not a thing, it has no facts, only fiction! So, while I think it is possible to author fiction that has regards to other fiction its still all turtles, all the way down. So in lieu of 2 I would posit "players author world facts based on other criteria and regardless of any dramatic needs of the PCs."

The former has frequently been described as desirable for dramatic or narrativist approaches, the latter prioritises externally or independently "real" world facts that provide a context for the activities of characters. I'm trying to stress here that I don't see this as about who authors those facts.

Right, and the essence of the discussion of preferences here is that some prefer one set of priorities, and the other prefer another. Again, refer to my version of 2, with the proviso that I agree facts generated without regard to the PCs are equally potent in play, certainly we would assume that at least for the sake of argument. (I think an interesting debate could be had on that point however).

Some posters argue that simulationism is about prioritising referee authorship of world, and from there identify the significant problem that player goals can run into world facts that thwart them. That misses the lusory attitude expected in this mode. The external or independent world facts form part of the lusory means: they're accepted just like the net on a tennis court - an inconvenience that thwarts some otherwise possible actions.

That is certainly a strong element in CLASSIC play. In fact it is essentially the whole of true classic play. The external 'dungeon maze' simply exists and the job of the PCs is to wander its hallways and rooms gathering achievements. I'd note that characterization plays no real part in this sort of play, aside from 'color'. Gygax clearly saw this, as plainly alignment is an attempt to make the character's beliefs and goals relevant at some level.

Could be the group collectively switching between authorship and player modes, could be game designers, could be the canon created by some other authors, could be historical, could be procedural.


I do take this as a misgiving worth addressing. I ask myself in what ways this isn't all about GM aesthetics? One answer is that in some modes it's perfectly acceptable for it to be about GM aesthetics. That's the preferred setup. However, if that is conflated with simulationism then it would deny simulationism to more collaborative play, and I think that's incorrect.

I think there is basically a range of degrees of plausibility WRT any given fiction in RPG play. I don't think there's one set of criteria for this, and I don't think its possible to rank situations as to their 'realism' aside from in very limited ways (IE we can assess the realism of the injuries depicted by the people RPing being victims in my EMT training). For the most part it falls into the realm of taste. I personally don't find that 'narrativist' games in general offend my personal sense of what is realistic any more than most trad type games do. I don't think that we can likely even say that everyone at any given table feels that particular fictions are more or less realistic than others, there's probably a diversity of opinion, and my experience shows that often different stuff is more or less appreciated by each player.

I have aimed to avoid making the kinds of claims you're resisting, except under the specific definition I have provided.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Are they not?

If you're talking about Gondor, this didn't happen. It lasted 2000 years until the line of Anarion failed, and was led by people who lived 3x-4x as long as normal humans, so that 2000 years would be the equivalent of a real world human dynasty that lasted 500-700 years. Then the stewards took over rulership until the heir(Aragorn) returned.

The Imperial House of Japan has ruled since 660 BC. That's close to 2700 years. Is 3000 really implausible? Especially with long lived races? I don't think so. Even if there had been no broken line of rulership, it would still have been realistic and plausible for the Dunedain rulers to rule for 3000 straight years.

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Sure it did, I read Appendix IV just like everyone else! The 3 cities of Gondor (and its possible Arnor had a city or two as well at some point, and the holdings of the Sea Kings of Numenor presumably included other towns, forts, and cities during the 2nd age) existed at least since the foundation of the kingdom at the end of the 2nd Age. Even the Stewards of Gondor were simply a cadet branch of the same family and were effectively kings, it was at best a minor sub-dynastic change. Then after another 1000 years of rule, they handed the thrown back to the senior branch (who somehow they were oblivious of for an entire 1000 years, why). Nor do they live 4x as long as normal humans, nor are their subjects particularly long-lived (perhaps, but its never stated one way or another). In any case, its very contrived.

The Japanese Tenno (more of a religious office than a political one in most of history) certainly didn't exist as such before about the 6th Century AD, maybe they were some sort of 'ruler' as early as the 4th Century, the 1000 years before that is wholly fictitious. Nor was the title 'Tenno' or its equivalent even invented until many centuries later. Often these early rulers were known by titles such as 'Wa' (A Chinese word roughly similar to 'king' in English). These people, who were really almost a CASTE from which a 'ruler' was drawn, were all certainly related (the Imperial Clan often numbered into the 1000s of people). Through most of history they had no material power and were simply whomever the actual rulers of Japan felt was most advantageous to appoint. Their powers were simply ceremonial, and from the 10th Century until the late 19th Century nothing else, with a brief break in the 1870s until a Constitutional system was established (there were also a couple of equally small breaks in the 13th Century and the 11th Century if I recall my Japanese history well).

This is equivalent to claiming continuity of the office of Imperator Romanum up to the end of the 18th Century when the HRE was finally disestablished by Napoleon. Surely the persons who held titles equated to 'Roman Emperor' were probably all fairly closely related and interrelated persons tracing all the way from Augustus onwards, though they didn't always emphasize the continuity of these ties (many later Medieval rulers actually DID claim descent from classical Roman dignitaries, usually emperors, and certainly the Byzantine Emperors were members of the same small group of elite rulers and came originally from Rome themselves).

The Japanese like their story, and it is true that their insular system emphasized family heritage more, but every family on Earth is equally ancient! So I'm not sure it proves much. I'd agree, Japan as a state has had a pretty long history as nations go, assuming something like its current geographical reach around the 11th Century.

As for the mountains of Middle Earth, no, they make no sense at all geographically. I remember as a youngster finding this a bit disappointing, but they are excellently explained as constructs of mythic stories!