Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8204404" data-attributes="member: 42582">Seeing as this thread has been necro'ed and I seemed to miss it first time around:<a href="http://www.lumpley.com/hardcore.html" target="_blank">Here is Vincent Baker on the purpose of RPG rules</a>:Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . . So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.That suggests that mechanics need to be precise enough that we can tell when they are to be used - ie when does free roleplaying stop and the rules come into play? - and we can rely upon them to resolve the matter that led to them being invoked. What counts as resolving the matter will vary depending on what bit of the real-world social negotiation we were hoping to ease or constrain. The most common, I think, and speaking in general terms, is determining who gets to say what happens next. Because that in itself might trigger a new need for rules, I think there will be some overlap between precision of rules activation and precision of rules outcome.<a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/14" target="_blank">Here's another post by Vincent Baker</a>, on different sorts of rules and how they relate to character creation:I say, "my character, this guy in Thatcher's london, who has everything to lose, he goes to his lover's flat and convinces him to keep their affair private." You say, "y'know, I don't think that his lover is inclined to keep their affair private, do you?" And I say, "no, I suppose not, but my character is desperate to convince him anyway. In fact, he brings an antique revolver with him in his jacket pocket, in case he can't." . . . How do we decide what comes true? We can simply agree. That works great, as long as we really do just simply agree. We could flip a coin for it. Let's do that: heads my character convinces yours to keep their secret, tails he murders him instead. Or y'know, that's a lot to deal with. Let's have a rule: whenever a character's life is at stake, that character's player gets to call for one re-flip of the coin. On the other hand, isn't my character's life at stake too? His wife, his kids, his position, his money, his everything? Which should have more weight between us, your character's life or my character's "life"? Shall we go best two of three, or is that setting life and "life" too equal? How about this: we'll roll a die. If it comes up 1 or 2, your character will refuse and mine will kill him; if it comes up 3-6, your character will agree to keep the secret and (unknowingly) thereby save his life. It's unequal because my character killing yours is less to your liking than your character ruining mine's life is to mine. It's unequal to be fair to us, the players. Notice that we haven't considered which is more likely at all. We probably agree that it's more likely, in fact, that your character will refuse, so my character will shoot him. But that doesn't matter - either could happen, so we roll according to what's at stake. Also, notice that we aren't rolling to see whether your character values his life in the face of my character's gun in any way. We're rolling to see if your character agrees to keep the secret without ever knowing about the gun, or if he refuses without knowing about the gun and my character shoots and kills him. . . . Let's add another wrinkle. Let's say that at the beginning of the game, we each choose a sure thing, a limited circumstance where we don't roll, but instead one or the other of us just chooses what happens. I choose "my character's children are in the scene." You choose "once per session, at my whim." Here, this late, I've finally made a mechanical reference to the fiction of the game. I still haven't considered probabilities at all, and do you see how "my character's children are in the scene" and "once per session" are the same? They're resources for us to use, us the players, to have more control over what becomes true. . . . But so okay, that's pretty good, but how do we come to agreement about the two possible outcomes in the first place? Here's a rule: neither outcome can overreach the present capabilities of the characters involved. That makes sense; if my character didn't bring the revolver, I shouldn't be insisting upon "shoot and kill" as a possible outcome, right? Same with my character's skills and foibles as with his belongings. Like, if I establish that my character has a weak heart, that opens up some possible outcomes for us to propose; if I establish that my character is an excellent driver, that opens and closes some others. Come to think of it, when do I get to decide if my character has access to an antique revolver, has a weak heart, is an excellent driver? Do I get to decide on the fly or do I have to declare it up front? Either way, I should write all this stuff down on my player sheet, as I establish it. That way I know what I'm allowed to propose as possible outcomes. See how this goes? The "character sheet" isn't about the character. Maybe - maybe - it refers to details of the character, if that's what our resolution rules care about. But either way, even if so, the "character sheet" is really a record of the player's resources. "Character creation" similarly isn't how you create a character, but rather how you the player establish your resources to start.Is when my character's children in the scene precise enough? What about a modern game, where the children might be physically distant but on the phone? Is I get to decide what happens next - the rules outcome, in Baker's imagined game, of my character's children being in the scene - sufficiently precise? In a mechanically light, fiction-first game the answer will probably be yes. In a game with a complex action-economy structure, probably not. In a game which has tight constraints (be they implicit or explicit) around who can be in a scene, maybe yes. In a game which permits scenes with many characters in them, maybe no - if my character is leading a warband in an attack, and my children are with me Lone Wolf and Cub-style, do I just get to decide that my warband wins the skirmish?So without knowing how you want the play of a game to unfold, in terms of the nature and scope of the fiction and the nature and scope of the participants' roles, it's hard to say anything very precise about how precise the rules should be!</blockquote>

Verification