Worlds of Design: Golden Rules for RPGs

There are several Golden Rules, really. These are my three for role-playing games.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Practicing the Golden Rule is not a sacrifice, it's an investment.” Byllye Avery

The topic today isn’t the one people are familiar with from religion and philosophy: treat people as well as you yourself want to be treated. That Golden Rule is present in some form in most religions and in many philosophies. These rules are the ones I use in my games.

Rule #1: The GM is the Final Arbiter​

The much-debated Golden Rule, also called Rule 0, is expressed many ways but amounts to “the GM is always right but should exercise that prerogative with much restraint.”

Especially if you favor storytelling RPGs, this is an obvious rule to follow, as the storyteller must be able to arrange things as they wish. On the other hand, if the storyteller promulgates outlandish conditions, the entire enterprise may fail as immersion is broken.

The reason this rule is sometimes controversial is because some players want the GM to only be the arbiter of the rules, not the rule-maker. This arbitration tends to happen with games that have enormous quantities of rules, many hundreds of pages; it’s not practical in games with short rules.

In team sports terms, some want the GM to strictly apply the rules, as many sports referees do, but others prefer that there is a large number of judgment calls for the referee.

Rule #2: Whatever PCs Can Do, NPCs Can Do​

The second RPG Golden Rule is, “whatever the player characters can do, the NPCs should be able to do, and vice versa.” Or to put it another way, “what's practical for the good guys is practical for the bad guys, and vice versa.”

If the good guys can kill an unconscious opponent with one blow, then the bad guys should be able to do the same thing. And since most players don't want that to happen to their character, then they will be reconciled to making it harder for them to kill an unconscious opponent. Saving throws may be required in certain situations as well.

When an RPG is played as a storytelling device, rolls can be as lopsided as you like. In stories the protagonists or heroes are often incredibly lucky. In games this luckiness happens much less often. This most common application (or lack thereof, depending on the game) involves critical successes and fumbles. Because players roll less frequently than monsters, critical hits or fumbles happen more often when monsters are using this rule because there are generally more of them.

This is something a GM should explain to the group before the campaign starts. Most players will see the logic of this when you explain it. It depends on the idea that they're playing a game and not telling a story, because it relies on the idea of applying the rules equally to everyone in the game, PCs and NPCs alike.

This is why I always say to GMs beware of players who try to find new rules that give them advantages even if the bad guys can do the same thing. The difference is that the player will always be involved in the action, whereas only certain bad guys will have that advantage.

Rule #3: RPGs Are Played to Have Fun​

I’d add a third rule, about which there’s likely to be less agreement: “RPGs are played for the benefit of the players too, not just the GM.”

As a player I hate to be manipulated by a GM who is doing whatever they like, rather than consider what’s best for the group in the long-term (even if the players think they don’t like it in the short-term, like having their characters potentially die). If your GM plays only for their own benefit, it may be time to find another GM.

Your Turn: What are your Golden Rules?

 

[Yora]

What's the point of learning how to deal with a no-win scenario, though? If it really is no-win, you and your crew are almost certain to be space dust by the end anyway; and there seems little future in learning how to become space dust.

The KM scenario is more than just a loss, though - it's the spaceborne equivalent of a TPK.

Irrelevant to the topic, but the point is to realize that the people in distress can't be saved and you have to retreat from the situation and cut your losses before you lose even more people than necessary. To return to your boss and explain why you made the decision to not complete the mission you were ordered to do.

 

[overgeeked]

Irrelevant to the topic, but the point is to realize that the people in distress can't be saved and you have to retreat from the situation and cut your losses before you lose even more people than necessary. To return to your boss and explain why you made the decision to not complete the mission you were ordered to do.

I wonder how many TPKs have been caused by referees trying to force what they thought would be a neat no win scenario “lesson” on their players.

 

[Yora]

That's a whole big topic in itself.

The fact that players can, through their choices and actions, get into fights that will almost certainly be impossible to win, is something that they first have to be taught by the GM for most campaigns.
40 years of precedent have very well established that the GM will always only give players encounters they will win. Unless the GM deliberately wants to screw with them out of malice.

Making the players understand and internalize that they can create impossible situations for themselves and that the GM won't change things to give them a free victory regardless of their bad choices is another important part of agency.

 

[Hussar]

What's the point of learning how to deal with a no-win scenario, though? If it really is no-win, you and your crew are almost certain to be space dust by the end anyway; and there seems little future in learning how to become space dust.

The better lesson is how to turn no-win situations into something better. Which means, Kirk is the only one who really got the point.

The KM scenario is more than just a loss, though - it's the spaceborne equivalent of a TPK.

Yes, I too like it when protagonists lose...but not when that loss is forced upon them no matter what they do. (same goes for auto-win scenarios)

That's missing the point. Just because the captain "loses" doesn't mean the captain dies. The point of Kobayashi Maru is to teach commanders that sometimes you have to deliberately kill people you like in order to save the larger whole. They recently banged this really home in the Star Trek Discovery Episode1 Season 4 - Kobayashi Maru. You cannot be a commander and expect everyone to come home safe every time. That's the point of the exercise. That no matter what you do, you will always lose sometimes and you have to live with that loss afterward.

A commander who always thinks they will win is far, far more dangerous because eventually they will lose and everyone dies.

I love scenarios where you have to make the hard choice and no matter what, every outcome is bad. It's Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations.

 

[Hussar]

When I use it, I mean it as a limit on the referee forcing a story on the players. Play to find out. Do your prep as a referee, but be willing to throw it out and follow the players.

I think it is the only valid mode. A group of "players" sitting around listening as the referee tells them a story they have effectively zero input into isn't what I'd call a game much less an RPG.

I imagine that we are largely talking past each other.

"The party is hired to deal with the bandits who are raiding caravans" is a story. You have character, you have plot, you have location. That's a story. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that you mean story to be something very different which is why we are not communicating effectively.

 

[Lanefan]

So, we (or our characters) are always going to win? Remember, none of the cadets knew it was a no-win scenario. Originally, Spock was supposed to stay dead, and Kirk had to learn the meaning of the Kobayashi Maru test the hard way. It was Spock who truly understood that his sacrifice was necessary and was the only way out (and recall, there are many stories online corroborating that Spock was supposed to stay dead and Nimoy wanted it that way).

There are moments in life where we don't have a choice, or all our choices are crappy. How do we deal with that? Does the character die a coward, a knife in his back trying to flee, or heroically, buying time for their compatriots to escape?

How do you model loss or sacrifice, if there is always a way out? It cheapens sacrifice, if in that kind of story there is any sacrifice at all.

Oh, I agree with you here, don't get me wrong. And I've seen players by their own choice do just this with their characters on occasion.

This is my disagreement over the idea that player agency is sacrosanct.

Yet even in situations where all the choices are crappy there's still choices, and the associated agency to make them. The character could flee and hope the knives all miss, or stand in as a sacrificial hero and hope to pull out that against-all-odds win, or could surrender to the enemy as a means of buying some time for the rest of the crew to get out, or whatever.

The point is that a) the player still gets to make that choice and that b) the dice are honoured even if they provide that long-shot upset.

Also, keep in mind here we're only looking at an end state to a process; one would like to think that said end state was arrived at through the process of players making free choices, even if the choices were (or turned out to be) unlucky and-or unwise. That is to say, there had to have been a whole series of choices - both large and small - made upstream that put that character in a situation where it's highly likely to die no matter what it does next.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, we (or our characters) are always going to win? Remember, none of the cadets knew it was a no-win scenario. Originally, Spock was supposed to stay dead, and Kirk had to learn the meaning of the Kobayashi Maru test the hard way. It was Spock who truly understood that his sacrifice was necessary and was the only way out (and recall, there are many stories online corroborating that Spock was supposed to stay dead and Nimoy wanted it that way).

Though you can argue that he still learns that lesson anyway. He gets Spock back, but in the same film the Klingons kill his son, something that haunts him for quite a while thereafter.

There are moments in life where we don't have a choice, or all our choices are crappy. How do we deal with that? Does the character die a coward, a knife in his back trying to flee, or heroically, buying time for their compatriots to escape?

How do you model loss or sacrifice, if there is always a way out? It cheapens sacrifice, if in that kind of story there is any sacrifice at all. This is my disagreement over the idea that player agency is sacrosanct.

I think Justice League shows us an excellent example of how you do that. Namely, you make other sacrifices, ones that you can live with, even if you dislike them. Specifically, when taking down the turbo-fascist Justice Lords, they have to resolve an antinomy: they need to be able to defeat their opponents, but those opponents are fully willing to kill, and the League can't cross that line (it is, after all, one of the things that ensures they aren't the Lords and never will be.) They do so by taking a third option that is also a sacrifice, but a very different one; they recruit Lex Luthor, offering him a full pardon if he will turn his prodigious abilities to taking down the Justice Lords. Given the position he's in (some comics even feature him finally being sentenced to death for his many crimes, after a long legal wild goose chase), accepting that pardon is a good deal for him. And it's a good deal for the League, as they get to keep their morals intact and still overcome the Lords. But it required cooperating with Lex Luthor, and not only that, setting him free to whatever new mischief he might get up to.

But as the gods of the copybook headings spake, "Better the devil you know."

Also, keep in mind here we're only looking at an end state to a process; one would like to think that said end state was arrived at through the process of players making free choices, even if the choices were (or turned out to be) unlucky and-or unwise. That is to say, there had to have been a whole series of choices - both large and small - made upstream that put that character in a situation where it's highly likely to die no matter what it does next.

The (extremely) unwise choice which almost every candidate makes at the start of the Kobayashi Maru scenario is responding to a distress call inside the Romulan Neutral Zone. AKA, the place established by treaty which defines ANY entry into it by a military ship as an act of war. Hence why I mentioned that I like the responses from Sulu and Calhoun--they both actually do do something that would plausibly break the no-win scenario. IIRC the system didn't know how to handle Calhoun's "blow up the ship" tactic, which resulted in an unorthox "not exactly winning...but not exactly losing either" end-state, but for Sulu, a mutiny occurs--which is not an unreasonable response to a captain choosing to ignore an apparently sincere distress call, even one from the Neutral Zone. The simulation itself is designed to play on the expected virtues of anyone who makes it far enough to actually be considered for command. In other words, it is already pre-tailored, expecting prospective captains to make an unwise choice that will lead to their downfall.

 

[clearstream]

I quibble with this a little bit. I don't think there's much connection between having the agency to choose an action meaning the PCs therefore must have agency to choose an outcome. If agency depends on picking both action and outcome then the possibility of failure (rolling dice) destroys player agency...further, lack of complete and perfect knowledge would destroy player agency. I don't agree with that.

I try to pick this lock. Agency.

I try to pick the lock but fail the roll. Still agency.

I try to open the chest. Agency.

I try to open this chest but discover it's a mimic. Still agency.

Neither the possibility of failure nor the possibility of incomplete knowledge destroys player agency.

In the game Bushido, characters (PC and NPC alike) can use their status to oblige one another to do or withhold from doing things. In Apocalypse World a skinner can oblige another character (PC and NPC alike) to do or withhold from doing things. In both cases, the specifics are governed by written rules.

If a PC or NPC uses such powers strictly within the rules to make a PC not want to try to open the chest, how does that fit into the picture for agency? In D&D mind control spells that can have a similar affect. It's all been discussed before, but what I hope to uncover here is whether it's specifically a breach of player agency as you've laid it out?

 

[dragoner]

Agency or no, ultimately it has to be interesting, or otherwise I bail on the game. People I think sometimes forget this is all about entertainment, and I'm not there to merely entertain the players, not do I expect that as a player myself ...

 

[overgeeked]

The fact that players can, through their choices and actions, get into fights that will almost certainly be impossible to win, is something that they first have to be taught by the GM for most campaigns.

It was taught in older editions quite regularly. It's only with 4E and 5E that has shifted to a more balance-centered approach. It might have been part of 3E, but I never played it so I don't know. In TSR D&D you fight whatever the world says would be there, regardless of your comparative hit points and levels or hit dice.

40 years of precedent have very well established that the GM will always only give players encounters they will win. Unless the GM deliberately wants to screw with them out of malice.

That's patently false. It's such a wide sweeping generalization as to be useless. The game design of TSR editions of D&D did not do this. The game design of at least 4E and 5E do this. Some referees might have done this with older editions, but it's trivial to show that not all referees did this. Ours never did. I never do.

Making the players understand and internalize that they can create impossible situations for themselves and that the GM won't change things to give them a free victory regardless of their bad choices is another important part of agency.

Yes, if referees refuse to enforce logical consequences to player choices, the players won't understand that consequences logically follow terrible choices. To me, that's partially why I refuse to signpost most traps. First, the maker of the trap built the trap to surprise intruders...otherwise they don't prevent intruders. Second, knowingly going into a dangerous situation (a dungeon) then expecting every single trap to have a glowing neon sign pointing to it is feeding into the problem you're talking about. It's setting the players up to expect things that are unreasonable. Like expecting every encounter to be a fight and every fight to be one they can easily win. Nope. That's not how a reasonable world works.

In the game Bushido, characters (PC and NPC alike) can use their status to oblige one another to do or withhold from doing things. In Apocalypse World a skinner can oblige another character (PC and NPC alike) to do or withhold from doing things. In both cases, the specifics are governed by written rules.

If a PC or NPC uses such powers strictly within the rules to make a PC not want to try to open the chest, how does that fit into the picture for agency? In D&D mind control spells that can have a similar affect. It's all been discussed before, but what I hope to uncover here is whether it's specifically a breach of player agency as you've laid it out?

I personally hate social skills as mind control and mind control in general pointed at the PCs. Both as a player and a referee. Though I'm not sure it's a violation of player agency. It's focused on the character, not the player. But there is bleed between them and you cannot limit the options of one without also limiting the options of the other. If it is a violation, it's a lesser violation than railroading and quantum ogres.

Agency or no, ultimately it has to be interesting, or otherwise I bail on the game. People I think sometimes forget this is all about entertainment, and I'm not there to merely entertain the players, not do I expect that as a player myself ...

Yes, which is why robust session zeros are a good idea. Lay out what the game is, what it's going to be about, and the kinds of things to expect during the game. If people's preferences and expectations don't line up, no harm no foul. Maybe we'll play together next time. This is also why I prefer open-world sandbox games. I set up the world and the players are free to explore it. If they are bored with something they chose to do in the game, they can stop and go do something else in the world. I won't railroad them into whatever storyline or prep I want them to experience.