Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

I am always open to discussion within reason. And I know the reasons for the things I choose to do.

<snip>

But the real issue is trust

That's not the issue. Upthread, you posted (and I quoted) "I based everything on how medieval villages worked and how interpersonal relationships between humans work." The relevant issue here is not trust, it's expertise.

My opinion is that running RPG campaigns is not an academic exercise. It is an activity meant to be enjoyed as a hobby to be done in the time we have for hobby. Because of the above, a referee or a group is just going to have to make the best of the available information for anything grounded in real life.

I am simply going on what you said: that you based everything on how mediaeval villages worked. The "available information" here includes extensive scholarly research. Making "the best of" that means engaging with it in a serious fashion.

Now maybe you meant that "I based everything on my rough-and-ready sense of how mediaeval villages worked". I don't know - I'm just going on what you posted.

I avoid running or creating historical campaigns. I will use history as a reference extensively but I am too keenly aware of the gaps. As a result, running a historical setting is not fun for me.

OK. I don't really know how to make this fit with "I based everything on how mediaeval villages worked". That seems like a historical thing.

there are problems and traps the experienced can fall into. Namely that too many situations there is only one possible outcome especially ones that lie in their field of expertise. For anything with human beings, one has to consider those who are lazy, indifferent, greedy, virtuous, and so on. For a given culture they will all operate within a range but personalities, motivations, and goals mean there will a lot of variations. For RPG one trick a referee will have to learn for a given culture what would a lazy individual be like, what form greed takes, what form generosity takes, and so on. Otherwise, the campaign will suffer as the party will be interacting with a bunch of stereotypes however accurate.

I don't really follow this. I would trust MI Finley or Inga Clendinnen, above the typical FRPG GM, to be able to imagine the range of human personalities that might be encountered in a given social situation from a non-modern historical period.

My own experience of discussions on RPG forums suggests that most FRPG GMs don't have a very strong sense of those possibilities at all.

Yet there are those, including myself, who do incorporate religion as an integral part of their campaigns and settings. My basic rules as terse as they had to be, bake in some of the central conflicts and tensions of my setting. The fact that some best selling RPGs don't doesn't mean that simulationism hasn't been made to work and found to be fun by many hobbyists.

Religion plays an important role in Scourge of the Demon Wolf. In my upcoming Deceits of the Russet Lord it is one of the central tensions of the adventure. And in neither it is not included as "There is the temple go get healed" variety.

This is Scourge of the Demon Wolf, yeah? Scourge of the Demon Wolf

From that summary it's not clear how religion figures in it. It makes it seem an essentially atheistic setting, like REH's Conan.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

EDIT: The impression I am getting is that any mechanical procedure, that takes certain fictional elements of the situation (eg distance fallen) as an input, is being labelled a simulation. Is that a mistaken impression? If it is, what has to be added to what I've described to make it a simulation?

Pemerton, I'm sure you've gotten the answer to this question numerous times in this thread already, including from me. I don't have a lot of desire to add another answer to the pile. I'm trying to stick to saying things that haven't been said a thousand times before. Discussing exactly what kind of simulation AbdulAlhazred used to do in the 1980s qualifies--I don't think anyone had ever drilled down on that before. Answering your question for the 99th time though... No thanks.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton, I'm sure you've gotten the answer to this question numerous times in this thread already, including from me.

I'm having to do a lot of inference and construction of viewpoints.

Here are some posts:

I'm vehement about simulationism as play mode--it's important to me that metagame concerns not drive play, with specific exceptions such as character advancement as described above--but not vehement about the word. Like, if someone wants to call it something like "realistic task resolution to the best of the GM's ability", I'm fine with that.

the absence of metagame motives (simulationism) isn't inherently virtuous!

It's very hard to imagine a GM in a game of Hillfolk narrating a bear catching a fish because in Hillfolk, narration is mostly the job of the players

<snip>

Can you see how that's very different from a play agenda that's about attempting to faithfully model a gameworld?

I think of simulation as a GM activity, an attempt at dispassionate extrapolation, not involving the players except through their characters, who act within the world and need to see realistic effects.

These posts use "model" and "extrapolate" as if they're synonyms. I don't know which one you're leaning on. "Realism" also seems important. Some posts suggest that extrapolation from sound beliefs is key:

If you can say to your GM, "hey, it normally doesn't make sense for bears to live in the Sahara desert. They're adapted for temperate forests. Should I view the fact that I just encountered a bear as more than an oopsie?" and they say, "oops, I'll change it," then they care about the quality of the simulation.

This impression is reinforced by the apparent use of "model" as a synonym for "reasoning":

Children can answer @clearstream's questions. Because they have beliefs about, and ideas about, bears, water, wells, etc.

But if is able to use some language to describe things = is simulating, then it seems to be the notion of simulation has been deprived of meaning.

<snip>

that's not a model of anything. It's just reasoning.

Hard disagree. You're conflating "crude, low quality model" with "not a model."

All this would seem to mean that the GM deciding what happens when a character falls - which is the rule in Prince Valiant - can count as a simulation, provided it is a sincere, dispassionate extrapolation and the narrated consequence is realistic.

These posts, on the other hand, seems to prioritise mechanical procedures:

I'm a fan of RPG supplements like GURPS Low Tech Companion 3 (which has lovely, simple, and plausible rules for modeling food production for hunter-gatherer cultures vs. more technologically-advanced cultures that practice agriculture with iron plows) and GURPS Social Engineering (which has lovely, simple, and plausible rules for modeling individual interactions with other individuals and organizations across a wide range of interaction types such as requesting aid or information, interacting with law enforcement, and seeking employment)..

In systems like GURPS, Shadowrun, AD&D, etc., everything you do is "grounded in the fiction" to such an extent that you don't even wind up talking about "the fiction" and mapping the fiction to mechanics. It's just: if you go to cut his arm off, roll dice, and if he doesn't parry/block/dodge and you do enough damage, the arm comes off. The whole gameworld is "the fiction." (Yes, even Vancian magic, if you've read Mazirian the Magician.)

I can't tell if the mechanical procedures are favoured because they bring the process closer to one that involves a model in the strict sense; of if they are favoured because they increase the dispassionate character of the resolution; or if they are favoured for some other reason.

But if mechanical processes are important to some RPG procedure being a simulation, then the GM deciding it can't be a simulation. (And the bit about the bear would be a simulation only if rolled on a random encounter table, presumably.)

All of the above is quite different from what @Maxperson has said he means by "simulation", as per this post:

I quite literally told you upthread that if you had established prior to play that lightning in that game can split a house in two, then it wouldn't be unrealistic for that game. You didn't, so it wasn't realistic. Without that prior establishment, realism/simulation looks to the real world versions for understanding and the real world lightning bolt can't split a house in two.

Maxperson has said nothing about dispassionate extrapolation, nor about realism except as a default. He emphasises things being established prior to play.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm having to do a lot of inference and construction of viewpoints.

I note that you're asking "what is a simulation?" but drawing on quotes about gaming and GDS simulationism, which is odd because it implies that you think adding additional things to the basic concept of "simulation" is key to understand GDS "simulationism" despite being told repeatedly that the core concern of GDS simulationism is subtractive: not having anything besides simulation as a motive. I.e. even the question you're asking is missing the point.

In theory I could drill down and try to figure out why you are doing that, but honestly I know what would happen if I tried to help you: I'd give straightforward answers to your questions, and you would reject them in favor of your preconceptions, and my time would be wasted. That's what happened over and over in this thread previously, and my patience is exhausted. No. I don't owe you more of my time.

Reread those posts you just quoted if you want my answers--or at least ask a fresh question.

P.S. RE: "These posts, on the other hand, seems to prioritise mechanical procedures", no, Low Tech Companion 3's food rules have only modeling guidelines, no mechanical procedures. (Except for hunter-gatherer cultures I guess.) You're drawing the wrong conclusion and imagining subtext that I didn't intend.

 

[clearstream]

Tolkien explained in a letter to W.H. Auden in 1955 that he wasn’t a simulationist as discussed here:

“ you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.”

Tolkien's words quoted here echo his words in other places; that part of the great wonder of Middle Earth for him is that it had its own reality. He describes feeling at times as if he were discovering, not inventing. That reflects one of the joyful aspects of the simulationist experience: where the logic of the world forces further discoveries upon you. Tolkien applied an expertise to his development of Middle Earth, and I count expertise among means suitable for simulationist purposes (which does not deny it to other purposes.)

The last page or so of posts have reinforced that what is distinct about simulationism is not whether the results are more realistic - unending quibbles on that front will not settle the question. What makes simulationism distinct is that attempted fidelity to references and theories is given priority when establishing world facts. Posts #2083 and #2089 make this point and some of us have been emphasising it for many pages. For example my #1886 which incorporates it into my argument for metaphysical realness

I wouldn't say it was necessarily the case that a game world constructed around dramatic needs couldn't be more realistic in respects than some other game world. Still it would be less realistic to the extent that it lacks truths that are independent of the characters.

Edwards put it as "internal cause is king", and Tolkien's words remind of why it should matter to take that approach. Tolkien's world resonates because he gave the crown to its internal causes.

 

[pemerton]

I note that you're asking "what is a simulation?" but drawing on quotes about gaming and GDS simulationism, which is odd because it implies that you think adding additional things to the basic concept of "simulation" is key to understand GDS "simulationism" despite being told repeatedly that the core concern of GDS simulationism is subtractive: not having anything besides simulation as a motive. I.e. even the question you're asking is missing the point.

I am trying to work out what makes RPGing simulationist, on your account. Given that you say that it is not having anything besides simulation as a motive, that seems to make the notion of "simulation" relevant to making sense of it.

As far as I can tell, you treat reasoning and modelling as synonymous, or at least largely coextensive. That strikes me as strained usage, in the sense that even without what I would consider modelling, it is possible to engage in dispassionate reasoning about <things>. (Eg reasoning that polar bears won't be found in the Sahara doesn't require a model, just some basic knowledge about polar bears and about the Sahara. To call those beliefs a "model" seems to me a misdescription of them.)

In any event, I don't really get what clarity is added to the notion of dispassionate reasoning by labelling it simulation, but no matter.

"These posts, on the other hand, seems to prioritise mechanical procedures", no, Low Tech Companion 3's food rules have only modeling guidelines, no mechanical procedures. (Except for hunter-gatherer cultures I guess.) You're drawing the wrong conclusion and imagining subtext that I didn't intend.

I'm trying to make sense of what contribution to simulationist RPGing these sorts of rules are taken to make.

For instance, suppose that someone was an experienced CEO, or spy, or trial advocate, and hence rather than rely on GURPS Social Engineering they use their own knowledge to decide what happens when persons try and interact with organisations, or seek employment, or deal with law enforcement, would that still count as simulationism?

The discussion of bears in the Sahara suggests yes. The emphasis on GURPS falling rules suggests no. Hence why I'm asking.

 

[pemerton]

Tolkien's words quoted here echo his words in other places; that part of the great wonder of Middle Earth for him is that it had its own reality. He describes feeling at times as if he were discovering, not inventing. That reflects one of the joyful aspects of the simulationist experience: where the logic of the world forces further discoveries upon you.

<snip>

Edwards put it as "internal cause is king", and Tolkien's words remind of why it should matter to take that approach. Tolkien's world resonates because he gave the crown to its internal causes.

There is no internal cause that obliges Strider to be sitting in the corner. It's a plot contrivance of the most basic sort!

 

[clearstream]

And yet this model of structural damage produces no account whatsoever which we can use to determine that the building was affected in any particular way. It might have collapsed, burned, 'split in two', or a dozen other things. Likewise even if it took 4 points of its 8 points of structure, we have no idea what that means. In a mechanical sense it simply indicates that the buildings structure points are less, nothing more. Fictionally it is unconstrained. I'd point out that this is the same sort of issue which makes D&D combat such a poor simulation, it isn't even telling us what happened! Surely any simulation that has any substantive worth at all will at least tell us what the effects were on the relevant features of the model when the thing is run.

Well, we know what it should mean by the internal logic of the game world. Fictionally while it has hit points left it's constrained to the building is still standing.

So, frankly, the whole 'split in half' thing is a bogus side argument, as the model being employed (at least if you are playing AD&D) lacks the necessary fidelity to output this sort of information. Again, it is no simulation at all!

As I explained many posts ago, I think all of these quibbles over whether this or that serves to simulate better are secondary arguments. What makes simulationism distinct is component 1. from my post #2029, i.e.

1. Imagined world facts are established independently of player-character intentions
2. The features of imagined world facts map to the features of real world examples, making them realistic
3. The features of imagined world facts and how they change over time conform to shared theories about the world, making them plausible

Or to put 1. positively, imagined facts are established only in the light of 2. and 3. and not for other reasons such as to tell a story, construct a balanced encounter, or perform dramatism.

 

[clearstream]

There is no internal cause that obliges Strider to be sitting in the corner. It's a plot contrivance of the most basic sort!

That Strider be who he is, situated within the overarching history, is what's resonant. That he is part of a great web, a child of internal causes.

 

[pemerton]

Well, we know what it should mean by the internal logic of the game world. Fictionally while it has hit points left it's constrained to the building is still standing.

Where do the AD&D rules say that? To me, they seem to imply the opposite - and more realistic - possibility that partial damage to buildings is possible: page 110 of the DMG tells us that a curtain wall has a defensive point value of 20, with a footnote stating that "This indicates the strength of a curtain wall 10' thick in an area 10' wide by 10' high; if a breach, rather than a hole, is desired, the wall must be destroyed from top to bottom."

Hence, it seems to me that a wooden building with a defensive point value of 8, which has taken 4 points from a lightning bolt, may well be half-destroyed.