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jedipotter
2014-08-16, 07:10 PM
I keep a lot of my house rules secret. Players are told some, can figure out others, but most remain unknown. Though I lot of my houserules are more setting rules, if you see a difference between the two.


How do you expect the players to PLAY THE GAME without knowing the rules, oh High Programmer?


To play D&D, one only need to know the basics like roll 1d20 vs the DC of something and to subtract hit points when damage is done. You don't ''need'' to know every rule to play the game.





....they would get a warning because putting in houserules without everyone agreeing upon it is kind of breaking the shared atmosphere between players and y'know it would be kind of jerkish of me to just suddenly reveal the rules have changed out of nowhere, when people assume that the rules are consistent, even if they are houserules and it lets everyone know what kind of game we are playing here so they can best have fun?

I don't go for the idea that all players must know and agree to all house rules before the game. And even if I did not have house rules, a DM can ''suddenly change things'' at any time.



not to mention that if you don't reveal any of your houserules beforehand.....well you got the perfect excuse to just start making it up as you go along and rule however you like while claiming its something you did beforehand, when really your just making it up in the moment. sure, you MIGHT actually be telling the truth, but if you don't show anyone, there is no real difference between the two anyways now is there? because either way to the player, they're just coming out of nowhere for no reason.

True, but meaningless. You can't tell a house rule from a setting rule from a rule that only effects to this part of the adventure. So it's not like the player will know. And most DM's make stuff up as they go along.



what else do you call letting people believe that certain rules are being followed by all....then revealing that is not the case?

Well you assume there is a revealing. This does not happen.




what else do you call changing the rules behind your players back so that their actions which assume a certain set rules are being followed, are suddenly invalidated?

Making Fun.



but as you said, a vast majority of these rules are unknown to your players, and thus you still deceive them into thinking one game is being played when its actually entirely another. I cannot trust you- that is why I'll never play a game with you. Because I will never know if your going to spring a rule on me, and neither will I ever know if its made up in the moment just to screw me over, or secretly made beforehand to screw a LOT of people over. I want to play RPG's, not Deck of Many Houserules. If you want something that ruins the spirit the game...that is it. look no further.

Well...Trust No One.

I wonder though how you handle any event in the game. Say you have a spellcaster character and go to cast a spell...and it fizzles out. Do you immediately start screaming at the DM and say how you can't trust them?

Arbane
2014-08-16, 07:19 PM
I keep a lot of my house rules secret. Players are told some, can figure out others, but most remain unknown. Though I lot of my houserules are more setting rules, if you see a difference between the two.

You've banned antimony and dolphins?


To play D&D, one only need to know the basics like roll 1d20 vs the DC of something and to subtract hit points when damage is done. You don't ''need'' to know every rule to play the game.

Poor lonely middle. Always excluded. I think most players would like to know, for example, that casting a summoning has a non-zero chance of being completely worthless or causing a TPK.



I don't go for the idea that all players must know and agree to all house rules before the game. And even if I did not have house rules, a DM can ''suddenly change things'' at any time.

Yes, but most GOOD GM's don't rearrange the laws of physics on the fly to nerf the PCs.



Well you assume there is a revealing. This does not happen.


Fear and Ignorance!




I wonder though how you handle any event in the game. Say you have a spellcaster character and go to cast a spell...and it fizzles out. Do you immediately start screaming at the DM and say how you can't trust them?

"What just happened?" seems like a perfectly reasonable question under the circumstances.
And "Is it going to happen again?" is even more important.

gartius
2014-08-16, 07:27 PM
I keep a lot of my house rules secret. Players are told some, can figure out others, but most remain unknown. Though I lot of my houserules are more setting rules, if you see a difference between the two.

Quote Originally Posted by Arbane View Post
How do you expect the players to PLAY THE GAME without knowing the rules, oh High Programmer?
To play D&D, one only need to know the basics like roll 1d20 vs the DC of something and to subtract hit points when damage is done. You don't ''need'' to know every rule to play the game.


You need to know the rules that would affect your character as those rules affect your descisions. If you go to cast a spell only to be told it doesnt work because of some houserule then it matters. End of.


I don't go for the idea that all players must know and agree to all house rules before the game. And even if I did not have house rules, a DM can ''suddenly change things'' at any time.

A dm can suddenly change things at any time. a player can also respond by throwing the DMG at them for being a bad dm.


Well you assume there is a revealing. This does not happen.


So the player is not allowed to know why they're actioned failed?



Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
what else do you call changing the rules behind your players back so that their actions which assume a certain set rules are being followed, are suddenly invalidated?
Making Fun.

Fun for you possibly, however if you were in the players shoes would you find it fun?


I wonder though how you handle any event in the game. Say you have a spellcaster character and go to cast a spell...and it fizzles out. Do you immediately start screaming at the DM and say how you can't trust them?

Dunno JP what would you do? You've said it yourself in previous threads that you wouldnt trust any gm so why should a player trust you?

Requiem_Jeer
2014-08-16, 07:32 PM
Well, in the event of the random spell fizzling, there are context issues to be concerned with. Is the reason it fizzled due to some unknown phenomena? Or is the secret house rule in question something that affects spellcasting in general? In the former case, a appropriate knowledge roll the moment it is detectable and there you go. It's like having dead magic about, sometimes magic goes weird and the wizard just has to deal with it.

In the latter case, however, that is unreasonable. A character should know the rules that is relevant to them, at the very least. A spellcaster should know about the random failure rules, much like how a person with the track feat should know the common difficulty modifiers on the tracking table (Weather, time, enviornment, number. size), just because they are an expert and such things should not be a mystery to them.

Even a first level caster has cast hundreds of spells (most cantrips) in his lifetime, if there is some odd rule inherent to spellcasting that isn't already covered by the books, it is silly for them not to already know about it at least in broad strokes. Now, it might be metagaming a little to know the specifics if the caster in question is short on spellcraft, but even then the caster should know his spells aren't 100% reliable beyond spell resistance, saving throws, and attack rolls.

Edit: This is how such rules should be extrapolated. The PCs live in the setting that has these rules. Frequently, they have knowledge skills applicable to such things. When you play Dungeons and Dragons, you assume the rules in the book are solid, and you plot your characters and actions accordingly. You must consider whether it is reasonable for the characters to know the changed rule in question. As long as you keep that in mind, and inform the users who use rules affected by the house rules of the changes, it's all solid.

Characters should not be caught off guard by their own features.

gartius
2014-08-16, 07:38 PM
Well, in the event of the random spell fizzling, there are context issues to be concerned with. Is the reason it fizzled due to some unknown phenomena? Or is the secret house rule in question something that affects spellcasting in general? In the former case, a appropriate knowledge roll the moment it is detectable and there you go. It's like having dead magic about, sometimes magic goes weird and the wizard just has to deal with it.


I'd like to point out that JP ignore the knowledge skill preferring for the players 'to find about it in game'-essentially boiling all knowledge & spellcraft checks to being useless-this being one of the houserules she has said she uses which she would spring on a player meaning the investment of skill points which could have been used elsewhere have been wasted.

Arbane
2014-08-16, 07:44 PM
Edit: This is how such rules should be extrapolated. The PCs live in the setting that has these rules. Frequently, they have knowledge skills applicable to such things. When you play Dungeons and Dragons, you assume the rules in the book are solid, and you plot your characters and actions accordingly. You must consider whether it is reasonable for the characters to know the changed rule in question. As long as you keep that in mind, and inform the users who use rules affected by the house rules of the changes, it's all solid.

Characters should not be caught off guard by their own features.


You must be new to the whole 'jedipotter' thing. JP has made it abundantly clear that they're steadfastly opposed to characters having knowledge skills.

Arkhaic
2014-08-16, 07:47 PM
You know, since the distinction between character and player knowledge seems to be nonexistent, could one make pop culture references without breaking character?

jedipotter
2014-08-16, 07:53 PM
I think it's fine to leave the details of houserules mysterious so long as people know they're going to be in place, in general; as long as the players know going in that spells might have unforeseen consequences, I don't see anything wrong with keeping the consequences themselves a secret unless the character has a reason to know them.

I agree. I like magic to be strange, mysterious and unknowable.


Jedi - to put this in some kind of perspective can you explain the last three times you sprung a house rule on your players? I can dig a situation if no one is really sure what happens in a given situation so you make a judgement call, or something completely unexpected/unforeseen happens and you realize you need to revise something, but I don't think that's what you mean.

Also regarding the handouts, do they document the mis-summoning chance?

Houserule: If you teleport with an extra dimensional space, like a bag of holding...the effects are bad. It's 50/50 that the items in the space are obliterated or lost in the Astral. And it's 50/50 the space/item is destroyed.

Now, I don't like 'space' items, and they are rare in my game. You won't find one as treasure and you won't find them at magic mart.....but still they pop up from time to time.

Houserule: Magic resistance does not just 'wink out' the spell...a lot of other things can happen.

Houserule: Touching the mind or spirit or lifeforce of something not human is dangerous(if your human..depends a lot on race.)

The above three get used in most games, and players don't know about them, other then the vague magic warning. Though role-players will encounter them by role playing often enough.


The summoning mis-chance is mentioned in the handout, but not the details.

ORione
2014-08-16, 08:28 PM
Well...Trust No One.

But your players should trust you, despite you not even telling them the rules of the game that you are adjudicating?

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-16, 08:35 PM
{{scrubbed}}

Esprit15
2014-08-16, 08:40 PM
{{scrubbed}}

Coidzor
2014-08-16, 08:44 PM
Playing "Gotcha!" with secret houserules is very rude, especially as a habitual thing.

The majority of setting details should just be made known to the players, as well. The things that are restricted to being discovered in-game should never be in the realm of gotchas or insane adventure game logic and should have clear, intuitive ways to find them out that naturally follow from the actions and capabilities of the PCs and progression through the narrative/world.

Requiring metagaming on the part of the players because they're not allowed to know what their characters know or even that their characters aren't allowed to know things that they should know as a result of their capabilities and training and kobayashi maruing the DM is also in poor taste.


Well...Trust No One.


To draw upon an analogy: Marriage isn't for everyone, there are even some arguments for abolishing it, but if you don't even understand it, you really ought not to be telling people not to get married as a general principle on general principle.

Brookshw
2014-08-16, 09:16 PM
Sooooo, why did we need a new thread to address any of this?

Angelalex242
2014-08-16, 09:31 PM
{{scrubbed}}

Mr Beer
2014-08-16, 09:37 PM
I might find this annoying but if people are happy to play this game, then I don't really see the problem.


Sooooo, why did we need a new thread to address any of this?

Someone specifically asked jedipotter to explain the secret house rules situation.

rg9000
2014-08-16, 09:39 PM
This topic reminds me of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)).

YossarianLives
2014-08-16, 09:44 PM
{{scrubbed}}

oxybe
2014-08-16, 09:48 PM
{{scrubbed}}

DM Nate
2014-08-16, 11:32 PM
I haven't paid much attention to JP, but I do have some "secret" rules for my homebrew 3.5 campaign as well. (http://www.darkhaunt.net)

They're both setting and mechanics-based, and I aim to keep them as balanced as I can. For example, my world emphasizes the use of alternate magic systems (incarnum, pacts, etc.) so while spells and spell-like abilities aren't outlawed, they are heavily taxed. Each time a player performs magic, they lose HP equal to the level of the spell. (On the flip side, all spells and spell-like abilities are automatically empowered, so magic users aren't completely nerfed.)

This was not a rule I told them about at character creation. This was one they discovered along the way, and that I explained in detail once they had. (I use my website as a means of recording what they've done and discovered so far.)

In addition, I gave them options to retrain out of their character if they found they didn't like the setup. So while I secretly changed some rules, I maintained player agency.

Coidzor
2014-08-16, 11:36 PM
I haven't paid much attention to JP, but I do have some "secret" rules for my homebrew 3.5 campaign as well. (http://www.darkhaunt.net)

They're both setting and mechanics-based, and I aim to keep them as balanced as I can. For example, my world emphasizes the use of alternate magic systems (incarnum, pacts, etc.) so while spells and spell-like abilities aren't outlawed, they are heavily taxed. Each time a player performs magic, they lose HP equal to the level of the spell. (On the flip side, all spells and spell-like abilities are automatically empowered, so magic users aren't completely nerfed.)

This was not a rule I told them about at character creation. This was one they discovered along the way, and that I explained in detail once they had. (I use my website as a means of recording what they've done and discovered so far.)

That's sort of pointless unless you were also keeping their HP secret from them so they didn't know when they were getting damaged, as they'd find out in their first combat if not sooner. :smallconfused: Why *not* tell them?

DM Nate
2014-08-16, 11:40 PM
They found out in their first combat. I described how the magic-user felt his soul being channeled into the spell he was crafting, and that it exploded with more force on the enemy than he was expecting. Then I told him what to deduct on his character sheet.

It helped that we have only one magic-user in our group, and that he joined on our fourth session.

Coidzor
2014-08-16, 11:43 PM
They found out in their first combat. I described how the magic-user felt his soul being channeled into the spell he was crafting, and that it exploded with more force on the enemy than he was expecting. Then I told him what to deduct on his character sheet.

It helped that we have only one magic-user in our group, and that he joined on our fourth session.

Again. What was the point of keeping that as a surprise? What did you gain from that? What did they gain? Why did you decide to do this?

DM Nate
2014-08-16, 11:47 PM
It has to do with the world creation and story line on the website you didn't read.

Also, it contributes to a sense of mystery and discovery that you don't get by knowing everything up front.

Zrak
2014-08-16, 11:52 PM
Like I said, I think it's fairly reasonable for players to assume that the rules will work as they do in the book unless told otherwise, but I don't see a problem with not telling players how the rules will be different so long as they know they will be.

As an aside, I think the way people treat jedipotter is really rude and honestly uncalled for. She and I had a debate when I first started posting that we took to PMs to avoid derailing the thread, and it ended up a perfectly nice, productive conversation. If you don't feel you can have a productive conversation with her, maybe that's at least partly on you.



So I'll just sing a verse... well, chorus:


Why would you use "postin' dirty" when "writin' dirty" is right there in front of you. Inexcusable. :smalltongue:

Coidzor
2014-08-17, 12:05 AM
It has to do with the world creation and story line on the website you didn't read.

Also, it contributes to a sense of mystery and discovery that you don't get by knowing everything up front.

Oh, yes, farbeit from me to expect a simple question to be answered with words instead of being expected to research an offhand link.

No, it really, really doesn't. At least, it doesn't if how you've presented it here is accurate.

Edit: Finding out *why* magic tears off part of your soul if not even learned sages and great wizards or gods know is potentially interesting as a mystery to investigate. Finding out that casting one's spells per day as a first level character half-kills them during the first session is not really necessary for that or actually, y'know, interesting.

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 12:08 AM
Oh, yes, farbeit from me to expect a simple question to be answered with words instead of being expected to research an offhand link.

No, it really, really doesn't. At least, it doesn't if how you've presented it here is accurate.

It does when it's a smaller part of a larger experience. If, however, it's not your thing, then...it's not your thing. But to say it's completely worthless is like saying strawberry ice cream is pointless because you prefer chocolate.

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 12:10 AM
Edit: Finding out *why* magic tears off part of your soul if not even learned sages and great wizards or gods know is potentially interesting as a mystery to investigate. Finding out that casting one's spells per day as a first level character half-kills them during the first session is not really necessary for that or actually, y'know, interesting.

There you go! That's actually part of the grand mystery of the campaign, and ties directly into the main plot. The character will find out WHY this happens, and specifically how it influences what the BBEG does, but for now...it's part of the bread crumb trail.

eggynack
2014-08-17, 12:16 AM
There you go! That's actually part of the grand mystery of the campaign, and ties directly into the main plot. The character will find out WHY this happens, and specifically how it influences what the BBEG does, but for now...it's part of the bread crumb trail.
But why wouldn't the character know about this? They're wizards, albeit low level wizards, and they've studied magic a whole lot. Has no one said to them, in all of their training, "Oh yeah, casting magic hurts. I can tell you that,"? The weird thing about these hidden house rules, so much of the time, is that they actually reduce verisimilitude. We know some things about our world, and especially things about our world that we're ostensibly experts in, but these rules so often assume that our reasonably aged characters are as newborn babes to this world. Maybe justified if we're talking about a victim of amnesia, but otherwise, it gives the impression of a world that doesn't live and breathe, because everything that is to be discovered must be discovered by our protagonists. It's a problematic thing, in other words.

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 12:20 AM
The "why does magic hurt me?" is one question among many that the new characters had to address, including:


Why am I a ghost?
Why don't I have any memories?
What is this weird Shadow world I can jump back and forth from?
Why does the Shadow world resemble a twisted and contorted version of the real world?
Why are those in the physical world suppressing all forms of religion and knowledge of ghosts?
(And, perhaps most importantly) How and why did I die?

In that context, the "oh, ****, magic hurts me" is just another weird aspect of this completely-new world the characters and players are discovering, but one that fits into the overarching theme and story.

Coidzor
2014-08-17, 12:23 AM
There you go! That's actually part of the grand mystery of the campaign, and ties directly into the main plot. The character will find out WHY this happens, and specifically how it influences what the BBEG does, but for now...it's part of the bread crumb trail.

No, I'm pointing out how you had an idea and then did something that didn't make sense with it still, and clarifying how what's actually interesting is not aided by your trying to make it a surprise. Nor is it sufficiently dickish to be a proper gotcha, either.

So your motives for doing so are either not yet divulged or you're operating under a mistaken belief that somehow making "magic = pain" a factor not known about your setting is somehow superior to, say, "magic = pain, why is that?" as a direct hook when pitching the setting.

If you think that surprise is a meaningful part of the breadcrumb trail, it makes it seem like you must either think your players are dumb or you don't really know how to lead them into investigating a mystery about the setting that's important enough for you to want them investigating it. :smallconfused:

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 12:31 AM
If you think that surprise is a meaningful part of the breadcrumb trail, it makes it seem like you must either think your players are dumb or you don't really know how to lead them into investigating a mystery about the setting that's important enough for you to want them investigating it. :smallconfused:

I'm honestly not even sure what you're saying with this. Of course surprise is a meaningful part of the breadcrumb trail. It's usually done with twists or revelations in the story plot. I'm positing that it can also be done with unforeseen game mechanics, as long as they aren't applied with a heavy hand.

A comparison would be "the Beholder hits you with its anti-magic ray" while in a battle. If the players have never encountered a Beholder before, this is a surprise and significantly changes how the entire game mechanics work. It's up to the DM to make sure it isn't an insurmountable challenge in that instance. And in my campaign, it's up to me to make sure the new mechanics are interesting without nerfing the sorcerers.

Arbane
2014-08-17, 12:35 AM
It has to do with the world creation and story line on the website you didn't read.

Also, it contributes to a sense of mystery and discovery that you don't get by knowing everything up front.

Unless they'd literally never cast a level 1 spell before the campaign started, I can't imagine how they wouldn't have known that already. Did they start with amnesia?

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 12:39 AM
Unless they'd literally never cast a level 1 spell before the campaign started, I can't imagine how they wouldn't have known that already. Did they start with amnesia?

Yes, please refer to this post here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17954811&postcount=29) of mysteries they began with.

eggynack
2014-08-17, 12:43 AM
The "why does magic hurt me?" is one question among many that the new characters had to address, including:


Why am I a ghost?
Why don't I have any memories?
What is this weird Shadow world I can jump back and forth from?
Why does the Shadow world resemble a twisted and contorted version of the real world?
Why are those in the physical world suppressing all forms of religion and knowledge of ghosts?
(And, perhaps most importantly) How and why did I die?

In that context, the "oh, ****, magic hurts me" is just another weird aspect of this completely-new world the characters and players are discovering, but one that fits into the overarching theme and story.
Yeah, I suppose amnesia makes it somewhat more plausible, as I noted in my post. Still, I don't think that's necessarily a quality of the games which Jedipotter uses hidden house rules in, so the argument holds reasonably well for those.

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 12:45 AM
Yeah, I haven't been keeping up with Jedipotter's posts. I was just pointing out one specific example in which a hidden house rule, revealed during play, could be useful.

Sir Chuckles
2014-08-17, 02:53 AM
Yeah, I haven't been keeping up with Jedipotter's posts. I was just pointing out one specific example in which a hidden house rule, revealed during play, could be useful.

I don't agree with the execution, but the argument still holds true.
A "lost souls" style campaign is definitely interesting, and finding out all those fiddly bits that add up is an example of good storytelling via rules.

However, here, it is not a case of having a comprehensive list of rules and plot points that players (relatively) quickly discover. It is a case of "Surprise! The universe and/or this aspect works in a fundamentally different way than expected, and I did not tell you, even though that knowledge, something that should have been prevalent or accessible with a proper Knowledge check, could have prevented a TPK."

Working things out in-characters can definitely be a good thing. In fact, I had such a case that was great just this last Friday. I could have easily had them make a knowledge check to know that the two dragons in the remote Wizard's tower were not allies of the Wizard they were looking for, but instead they spent some time shouting at the tower windows at a mostly devoured body. It was more entertaining that way.

But it was perfectly fine for the Druid player to make a Knowledge (Arcana) check to realize that said dragons were immune to acid, saving him from wasting spell slots.

You can't not tell your players that you're playing with houserules that say crits auto-confirm and you hit yourself with fumbles, and then laugh at the TWF Pick guy when he kills himself.

DM Nate
2014-08-17, 03:22 AM
Yeah I feel you.

Another house rule of mine that I tell them from the start is "I will never kill your characters off unless you want me to. This is to allow you to grow emotionally invested in them. That being said, I can still punish you for stupid play to the point that you'll WISH I'd just kill them off and let you reroll."

Yora
2014-08-17, 04:14 AM
I tell the players when I want them to make a saving throw or an ability check. Which one (and at what target number, if applicable) is up to me to decide. Anything in the books are merely suggestions for the most common situations.

Prince Raven
2014-08-17, 06:25 AM
I do have a "secret" house rule or two in my current Pathfinder game, but more in the way that the mechanics of them are secret. I went out of my way when explaining the history of the world what they are in broad terms.

AMFV
2014-08-17, 08:01 AM
It really depends on your style of game. In most modern RPGs, transparency is seen as paramount and the DM and Players are generally expected to have a collaborative relationship. In many older RPGs, the DM and the Players are seen as having an antagonistic relationship. In the former, secret house rules are pretty rude, in the latter they're expected. Hell in AD&D, the DMG was explicitly not for player reading, since the rules there were different. Knowing all of the rules is not a system wide expectation.

Brookshw
2014-08-17, 08:31 AM
It really depends on your style of game. In most modern RPGs, transparency is seen as paramount and the DM and Players are generally expected to have a collaborative relationship. In many older RPGs, the DM and the Players are seen as having an antagonistic relationship. In the former, secret house rules are pretty rude, in the latter they're expected. Hell in AD&D, the DMG was explicitly not for player reading, since the rules there were different. Knowing all of the rules is not a system wide expectation.

To be entirely fair that's not completely disolved in 3.0/3.5 either, the BoVD does have that disclaimer saying its not for players and dms shouldn't let them read it. Diluted perhaps, but the attitude isn't completely gone. Not sure about newer editions.

The Insanity
2014-08-17, 08:37 AM
I have some secret houserules. They're secret even from me!

AMFV
2014-08-17, 08:49 AM
To be entirely fair that's not completely disolved in 3.0/3.5 either, the BoVD does have that disclaimer saying its not for players and dms shouldn't let them read it. Diluted perhaps, but the attitude isn't completely gone. Not sure about newer editions.

Well the biggest change in 3.5 was that the Monsters (and the rest of the world) all used the same exact rules as the players. Which meant that there was a lot more transparency in the system. I suspect the reason the BoVD had the same disclaimer was that it was a holdover and that it was intended as a place for DM's to find stuff to make their BBEGs even worse.


I have some secret houserules. They're secret even from me!

I'm sorry, Comrade, but as Friend Computer said, "not knowing the secret rules isn't enough, you can't even know they exist" I'm afraid you'll have to be terminated.

The Insanity
2014-08-17, 09:13 AM
I'm sorry, Comrade, but as Friend Computer said, "not knowing the secret rules isn't enough, you can't even know they exist" I'm afraid you'll have to be terminated.
But what if they don't actually exist?

AMFV
2014-08-17, 09:19 AM
But what if they don't actually exist?

Speculating about the rules is also forbidden, I'm afraid that this clone will have to be executed as well.

Paranoia is a good example of where secret house rules are best.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 09:33 AM
Paranoia is a good example of where secret house rules are best.

Paranoia is the only example where secret house rules are best.

and now look what you made done: post in this thread. how long are you going to keep defending someone who literally just said "trust no one" outside of a Paranoia game?

Engine
2014-08-17, 11:01 AM
Paranoia is the only example where secret house rules are best.

Not so sure. In Ravenloft magic works differently, and the book suggests to player with an outlander character (a character native to another plane) to avoid reading how magic works in the setting.

NichG
2014-08-17, 11:14 AM
I tend to have large amounts of 'secret mechanics' in my games. Generally these correspond to things that the players will be able to do but don't know it yet, rather than things that modify what they can already do. That said, cosmology trumps written rule, so if there's some cosmology behind 'how' a power or ability works then something which has knowledge of that cosmology and access to the right things can create situations where it works differently/unpredictably (and this is equally true for the players once they figure out the cosmology and cross the right wires).

In D&D analogy, sure, magic works the way it says in the books, but if you go and infect Mystra with energies from the Far Realms then all of that is subject to change.

LibraryOgre
2014-08-17, 11:17 AM
The Mod Wonder: Locked for review.


Annnnd... Unlocked. Remember, folks, accusing people of trolling is specifically noted as an example of flaming. If you don't like people's play style, don't deal with them. Ignore them, either on your own or use the software to do it.

AMFV
2014-08-17, 11:37 AM
Paranoia is the only example where secret house rules are best.

and now look what you made done: post in this thread. how long are you going to keep defending someone who literally just said "trust no one" outside of a Paranoia game?

It's a different style of gaming. In AD&D, a healthy dose of paranoia is expected and will keep your characters alive. The relationship between the DM and the players is more antagonistic, it's in some respects similar to Paranoia although it isn't a farce.

Look it's fine to not enjoy that style of game, but it is a style that many people enjoy just fine outside of the realm of farce. One of the most DM "gotcha" adventures of all time (the Original Tomb of Horrors) is one that is fondly remembered by many people. This is because there are many people who enjoy and prefer that particular style of gaming.

jaydubs
2014-08-17, 11:57 AM
Well the biggest change in 3.5 was that the Monsters (and the rest of the world) all used the same exact rules as the players. Which meant that there was a lot more transparency in the system.

Based on that, would you agree that players have a reasonable expectation for DM transparency when playing 3.5? And that a DM has a responsibility to at least tell players beforehand that secret rules are in effect, and the general degree to which those rules will change the game, even if they keep the details of those changes a secret?

AMFV
2014-08-17, 12:06 PM
Based on that, would you agree that players have a reasonable expectation for DM transparency when playing 3.5? And that a DM has a responsibility to at least tell players beforehand that secret rules are in effect, and the general degree to which those rules will change the game, even if they keep the details of those changes a secret?

It depends, I would state the system assumption is that is there. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be infringed on. I've played in games where 3.5 was run very much in an old school way, wiithout much notice. I would say that if the majority of the group is enjoying how the game is run, then there is no fundamental responsibility of the DM to change how the game is run in the interest of so-called fairness or anything like that.

Sartharina
2014-08-17, 12:11 PM
A big problem with the "Hey, the world doesn't work as I assumed!" is that you had those assumptions in the first place. When getting into a Jedipotter game, forget what you know - it's likely to be wrong. Secret house rules are a way to re-capture the 'spark' of a new game, if everyone goes in knowing that they should check their assumptions at the door.

jaydubs
2014-08-17, 12:14 PM
It depends, I would state the system assumption is that is there. But that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be infringed on. I've played in games where 3.5 was run very much in an old school way, wiithout much notice. I would say that if the majority of the group is enjoying how the game is run, then there is no fundamental responsibility of the DM to change how the game is run in the interest of so-called fairness or anything like that.

I don't mean changing how the game is run. I mean, when someone is thinking about joining, telling them that there are houserules, and that those houserules won't always be available for perusal.

Rather than joining the game, not having heard anything about houserules, and then finding out there are lots of secrets ones.

AMFV
2014-08-17, 12:35 PM
I don't mean changing how the game is run. I mean, when someone is thinking about joining, telling them that there are houserules, and that those houserules won't always be available for perusal.

Rather than joining the game, not having heard anything about houserules, and then finding out there are lots of secrets ones.

Well, that depends, it would certainly increase the odds of finding players you enjoy. But normally going to one session pretty much reveals all of that anyways. So I don't see it as a responsibility, although I don't think that would be a bad thing either. I expect that talking to Jedipotter about her game prior to it beginning would be enough to get a very good idea about the sort of game she runs.

Brookshw
2014-08-17, 12:37 PM
Paranoia is the only example where secret house rules are best.

and now look what you made done: post in this thread. how long are you going to keep defending someone who literally just said "trust no one" outside of a Paranoia game?

Try considering it this way Raz, step outside table top and let's talk video game rpgs.

Just about any modern rpg is going to have various tutorials scattered throughout the game explaining what does what as it comes up. Saints Row 4 isn't precisely an rpg but I'll use it as an example because it gives you practice training grounds everytime you gain new abilities to explain what you can do with it. The ps3 final fantasy (13? 14?) designers specifically said they were trying to make as much as possible a casual, stress free environment and railroad you the entire game. Skyrim, every encounter is balanced to your level, you get plenty if tutorials, and it shows you pretty much every quest location with little to no thought on the players part.

Now take some older rpgs, I'll use fallout 2 as an example. Did you ever go to the sierra military base? Does the game explain how you can turn off some forcefields with repair/science? Nope, you had to figure that out. A modern game applauded for its old school feel, Divinity Origin if Sin. Combats brutal, the tutorial is brief and covers very little, if you leave the starting town in certain directions you'll be facing enemies that will one shot you in early levels. The quests have next to no clear explanation and you need to read every scrap of paper to even get hints. You wander the game with next to no information and have to figure it out. The game is applauded for that old school feel and challenge. Were the designers wrong to make it that way? I shouldn't think so. I have a grand old time playing it as i have every game I've mentioned.

No one approach is wrong or bad, they're just different styles, all of which are valid and can be lots of fun.

jaydubs
2014-08-17, 12:40 PM
Well, that depends, it would certainly increase the odds of finding players you enjoy. But normally going to one session pretty much reveals all of that anyways. So I don't see it as a responsibility, although I don't think that would be a bad thing either. I expect that talking to Jedipotter about her game prior to it beginning would be enough to get a very good idea about the sort of game she runs.

And if someone specifically asks? "Are there any houserules?"

Does the DM have a responsibility to answer that truthfully?

And follow ups such as "How many? How much does it change the game? Are they going to fundamentally change how my character plays?"

Should those be answered in good faith?

AMFV
2014-08-17, 12:46 PM
And if someone specifically asks? "Are there any houserules?"

Does the DM have a responsibility to answer that truthfully?

And follow ups such as "How many? How much does it change the game? Are they going to fundamentally change how my character plays?"

Should those be answered in good faith?

Well honesty is always good. So the first should be answered in good faith. The other ones don't necessarily need to be answered. You can say: "You'll find out", and that's entirely honest with regards to those questions. Of course that could be a dealbreaker, but full disclosure isn't necessarily a requirement to make a game enjoyable, although it's alright if it makes it not enjoyable for some people.

If somebody later adds some houserules which are secret, that's also something that would be excluded. And may or may not be necessary to bring up, unless there are specific complaints.

jaydubs
2014-08-17, 01:04 PM
Well honesty is always good. So the first should be answered in good faith. The other ones don't necessarily need to be answered. You can say: "You'll find out", and that's entirely honest with regards to those questions. Of course that could be a dealbreaker, but full disclosure isn't necessarily a requirement to make a game enjoyable, although it's alright if it makes it not enjoyable for some people.

If somebody later adds some houserules which are secret, that's also something that would be excluded. And may or may not be necessary to bring up, unless there are specific complaints.

That's fair. The direction I'm going in is as follows.

Would you agree that a DM is at least partially responsible for players who argue during games about house rules, if those DMs do not at least give enough information to self-select away from those campaigns?

For example, say hypothetical player Thomas doesn't like a lot of house rules. He knows this, respects that some DMs have a lot of them, so he asks about them before joining any games. Hypothetical DM Jerry doesn't want to give away his house rules, so he avoids answering in some manner or another. After the game starts, the secret house rules begin to appear. Thomas becomes upset, and begins arguing with Jerry, disrupting the game.

How do you evaluate this situation? How should Thomas and Jerry have behaved differently?

Knaight
2014-08-17, 01:09 PM
I have an interesting case - I generally don't have secret house rules, though sometimes I do. I do often just have secret rules, mostly because nobody else can be bothered to read the game books in the first place, which leads to the weird situation where the house rules are the rules known best as I specifically highlight them, though I'm not sure about the knowledge regarding their status as house rules.

As for rules secrecy - it works in Paranoia. It works in DM Nate's example, wherein the characters specifically don't know something for some reason (such as in the fantasy subgenre wherein people from Earth end up in some other world). Generally though, I'd say that having the rules open so that people can understand the game, and the players are better able to handle the math that applies to them without the GM having to do all of it is a better course of action.

I'd also put a very sharp, very dividing line between mechanical and setting changes. That the setting is a unique thing to be learned is basically understood by everyone, but the mechanics are part of how the players interface with it, and that generally works better if they understand it, particularly if the characters are supposed to be from the setting and have some sort of connection to it.

AMFV
2014-08-17, 01:09 PM
That's fair. The direction I'm going in is as follows.

Would you agree that a DM is at least partially responsible for players who argue during games about house rules, if those DMs do not at least give enough information to self-select away from those campaigns?

For example, say hypothetical player Thomas doesn't like a lot of house rules. He knows this, respects that some DMs have a lot of them, so he asks about them before joining any games. Hypothetical DM Jerry doesn't want to give away his house rules, so he avoids answering in some manner or another. After the game starts, the secret house rules begin to appear. Thomas becomes upset, and begins arguing with Jerry, disrupting the game.

How do you evaluate this situation? How should Thomas and Jerry have behaved differently?


There isn't enough detail to say. Furthermore I've stated that the DM should not be completely dishonest, so that would be (in my opinion) wrong. But there is no requirement for complete transparency. If Thomas doesn't ask, and there are houserules, then Thomas is at fault. If Thomas didn't read the "I have houserules, but I'll be squirrely as to what they are" as a sign of trouble then he's at fault.

To be honest nobody is really at fault here though, Thomas can leave the game, realizing that it isn't his style of game. And Jerry can bash his teeth in with a large mallet or cause him injury in some overly complicated scheme.

The point is that, there are games you're going to like and games you aren't, and there isn't always a magic question to ask to figure out which are which. There are indicators, for example if you don't like houserules and somebody has them, and even more if somebody has them but doesn't want to go into them. It is equally a player's responsibility to communicate the sort of game they want as it is a DM's responsibility to communicate the sort of game they're offering.

jaydubs
2014-08-17, 01:31 PM
There isn't enough detail to say. Furthermore I've stated that the DM should not be completely dishonest, so that would be (in my opinion) wrong. But there is no requirement for complete transparency. If Thomas doesn't ask, and there are houserules, then Thomas is at fault. If Thomas didn't read the "I have houserules, but I'll be squirrely as to what they are" as a sign of trouble then he's at fault.

To be honest nobody is really at fault here though, Thomas can leave the game, realizing that it isn't his style of game. And Jerry can bash his teeth in with a large mallet or cause him injury in some overly complicated scheme.

I can agree with that.


The point is that, there are games you're going to like and games you aren't, and there isn't always a magic question to ask to figure out which are which. There are indicators, for example if you don't like houserules and somebody has them, and even more if somebody has them but doesn't want to go into them. It is equally a player's responsibility to communicate the sort of game they want as it is a DM's responsibility to communicate the sort of game they're offering.

True. Though I'm tempted to either look up or come up with a list of questions to ensure everyone is trying to play the same kind of game. But that's beyond the scope of this thread.

AMFV
2014-08-17, 01:34 PM
I can agree with that.



True. Though I'm tempted to either look up or come up with a list of questions to ensure everyone is trying to play the same kind of game. But that's beyond the scope of this thread.

There is the Same Page list which I'm too lazy to find. But the fundamental problem with it is that different things matter differently to different people. Secret houserules may be something I don't like but I'll tolerate, or it may be something I'll leave a game over. It depends.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 03:21 PM
No one approach is wrong or bad, they're just different styles, all of which are valid and can be lots of fun.

Please stop defending the unreasonable control freak DM. I'm honestly baffled as to why you think this. Apparently one be's unreasonable and stubborn enough, long enough on these forums and one starts getting defended for it despite all the offensive and insulting things she has said. How long are we going to continue this "oh poor DM JP" narrative where we ignore everything she has said, and construct an alternate version in our minds that is "just arguing for a different playstyle" or something. I am still not buying this bull.

VoxRationis
2014-08-17, 03:35 PM
Certain aspects of the game world would make sense for players to know. Certain aspects do not. This extends to both mechanical and non-mechanical things. I myself consider the idea of having secret house rules somewhat unsavory—I'd hate to learn after taking Improved Disarm that the disarm mechanics were dramatically different in this campaign—but I could see certain niche cases in which it would make sense that a rule the DM institutes wouldn't be known from the start.

Sartharina
2014-08-17, 03:40 PM
Please stop defending the unreasonable control freak DM. I'm honestly baffled as to why you think this. Apparently one be's unreasonable and stubborn enough, long enough on these forums and one starts getting defended for it despite all the offensive and insulting things she has said. How long are we going to continue this "oh poor DM JP" narrative where we ignore everything she has said, and construct an alternate version in our minds that is "just arguing for a different playstyle" or something. I am still not buying this bull.
Because JP has made it clear that she has no lack of players, and a lot of them genuinely enjoy his(Her?) campaigns. There's something amusing about control - it's sometimes very fun to give it up.

Brookshw
2014-08-17, 03:45 PM
Please stop defending the unreasonable control freak DM. Frankly, no. That's a completely dismissive response.
I'm honestly baffled as to why you think this. Apparently one be's unreasonable and stubborn enough, long enough on these forums and one starts getting defended for it despite all the offensive and insulting things she has said. How long are we going to continue this "oh poor DM JP" narrative where we ignore everything she has said, and construct an alternate version in our minds that is "just arguing for a different playstyle" or something. I am still not buying this bull.
Why I think what? That I look past what I expect are poor communication skills and ask myself what such a game might look like then find myself thinking, that's not bad, I played such games for years in older editions? The first actual complaint we heard from one of his players was they wanted to know the mis-summon chance and they weren't told. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, not something to be up in arms about. Would you get upset if a dm introduced some mysterious metal in a game that didn't have any rules you were aware of?

Arbane
2014-08-17, 03:53 PM
Not so sure. In Ravenloft magic works differently, and the book suggests to player with an outlander character (a character native to another plane) to avoid reading how magic works in the setting.

Yeah, but that only lasts for their first character.


I tell the players when I want them to make a saving throw or an ability check. Which one (and at what target number, if applicable) is up to me to decide. Anything in the books are merely suggestions for the most common situations.

I hope you're playing something rules-light , and not making them go through the painstaking process of making, say, a D&D3.5 character.


Because JP has made it clear that she has no lack of players, and a lot of them genuinely enjoy his(Her?) campaigns. There's something amusing about control - it's sometimes very fun to give it up.

The phrase 'BSDMing' comes to mind for some reason.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 03:55 PM
Because JP has made it clear that she has no lack of players, and a lot of them genuinely enjoy his(Her?) campaigns. There's something amusing about control - it's sometimes very fun to give it up.

and she withholds information from her players. even if what she says is true, how much of it presented without bias? we have no idea as to what all these supposed players think they are getting into, no idea what is expected of them vs. what is expected for not to expect. I cannot trust her, nor can I trust what she says. all this information is from JP only and is inherently biased and suspect. since we cannot figure out if any of her claims is really true...I'm just going to take what she says with a grain of salt. an even if its true, I don't put any stock in the fallacy concerning popularity or the majority.

jaydubs
2014-08-17, 03:58 PM
Please stop defending the unreasonable control freak DM. I'm honestly baffled as to why you think this. Apparently one be's unreasonable and stubborn enough, long enough on these forums and one starts getting defended for it despite all the offensive and insulting things she has said. How long are we going to continue this "oh poor DM JP" narrative where we ignore everything she has said, and construct an alternate version in our minds that is "just arguing for a different playstyle" or something. I am still not buying this bull.

I think the argument is that the style of GMing (extremely controlling, with lots of fiat and loose rules on the side of the GM, and lots of player nerfs) is not necessarily bad in and of itself, since it used to be common back in the day (apparently, I didn't play tabletops back in the day).

While I would personally never want to play in such a game (barring treating it as something like Paranoia), I would never play in a super-optimized cheese game either. But there are people who enjoy both, and I shouldn't try to label either as badwrongfun.

What's disturbing about jedipotter is her reasons for GMing (and perhaps interacting with the world in general) in this way, and her treatment of players who don't enjoy that style of DMing. Things like never trusting anyone, asserting that compromise is wrong in all relationships, that logic doesn't work in the real world, general intractability, and how she attempts to "teach players a lesson" rather than just removing players who are a bad fit, etc. The list goes on, I won't go into it.

But the point is we can attribute those issues to something other than playstyle. To give a similar example, if a player (or DM) shows up with a seriously overpowered character (DMPC), and starts derailing the campaign and picking on other characters, we don't condemn optimization for it. We blame the immaturity of the player, and kick him/her.

Zrak
2014-08-17, 04:01 PM
Please stop defending the unreasonable control freak DM. I'm honestly baffled as to why you think this. Apparently one be's unreasonable and stubborn enough, long enough on these forums and one starts getting defended for it despite all the offensive and insulting things she has said. How long are we going to continue this "oh poor DM JP" narrative where we ignore everything she has said, and construct an alternate version in our minds that is "just arguing for a different playstyle" or something. I am still not buying this bull.

Just because you don't like something doesn't mean nobody else can like it. In asking others to dismiss someone else's opinion because you do not share it, you are being at the very least as unreasonable and stubborn as she is, if not more so. Like I said earlier, I had a perfectly reasonable, productive discussion with jedipotter in the past. If you can't, perhaps the fault is as much or more yours than hers.

Elderand
2014-08-17, 04:16 PM
Because JP has made it clear that she has no lack of players, and a lot of them genuinely enjoy his(Her?) campaigns. There's something amusing about control - it's sometimes very fun to give it up.

Allegedly has players.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 04:18 PM
Frankly, no. That's a completely dismissive response.
Why I think what? That I look past what I expect are poor communication skills and ask myself what such a game might look like then find myself thinking, that's not bad, I played such games for years in older editions? The first actual complaint we heard from one of his players was they wanted to know the mis-summon chance and they weren't told. That's fine as far as I'm concerned, not something to be up in arms about. Would you get upset if a dm introduced some mysterious metal in a game that didn't have any rules you were aware of?

frankly, get used to it.

why I think what? that I look past a veneer of "oh I'm just an old school DM" that is only spouted by supporters of JP and not by JP herself, and seeing a control freak I wouldn't play with even if you paid me a billion dollars? and see a game, where no actual roleplaying takes place, but a thin card-board cut out character whom no one put any energy into making an actual character, only to die soon because.......no reason apparently, because that is all that I see: no actual roleplaying, just numbers made from random tables, trying to survive and dying because you made one mistake. nintendo hard isn't fun its stressful and repetitive. what roleplaying can take place between your characters dying? nothing substantial that I see, nothing worth it. none of my actions actually mattering. my character concept, the character I want to play out- that is what is important regardless of the mechanics. it is why I hold both old-schoolers and optimizers in contempt- the old schooler would not allow my character to live. the optimizer would destroy it in concept by trying to maximize it beyond the concept I intend. both would destroy the character I wish to play. a character should have no more ability than what I think it should, even if its possible to be more "optimal" than that, while the rolls would not allow me to choose. secret house rules? I cannot trust that. Ever. Any potential houserule could apply and therefore alter my character concept and therefore ruin it.

It depends on whether that metal is introduced to screw me over or as a part of the plot.

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-17, 04:46 PM
Allegedly has players.

With the number of "HELP! MY GM IS AWFUL" threads I've seen on here, it doesn't surprise me that people would play in what I personally think have to be objectively terrible conditions. JP might just be the only DM that some of these people know, and from other JP posts it seems like quite a few bail. Between not telling people what rules are in play, actively creating rules to nerf characters without even letting them know what they are, constant talk about punishing "trouble players", admitting to never compromise on anything (to the point where JP's stance on relationships is they should be built on a foundation of never compromising), outright dismissal of logic as ever valid... Seriously, not telling your players what monster X/Y/Z can do is one thing, homebrewed settings are another, but they are not these things. Not knowing an enemies AC isn't the same as not knowing that if you roll two fives in a row on any check a xenomorph bursts out of your chest (hyperbole -I hope- , but JP has refused to post any of these secret rules on even the forums in case players want some semblance of agency).

That said, I'm the type of player who spends a lot of time thinking about character options. Not knowing how my character will actually play negates a lot of the value in choices I might make. I don't tend too far on the min/max side of things, but I do like to be able to validly weigh my options. If every other build has a non-trivial chance of imploding, but I'm not allowed to know those chances or that they even exist then I can't do that. Just slap some crap onto a character sheet and hope it doesn't self-implode, because player agency even regarding your character creation is lost at that point. Better also hope you didn't pick up any "trouble player" options, like being a caster, because then the rules will change to punish you.

Tomb of Horrors is fun because it encourages thinking outside the box, JP has stated in the past that outside-the-box combos and solutions are cheating. Try it and you'll be punished for being a bad player.

LimSindull
2014-08-17, 05:08 PM
I wouldn't play with even if you paid me a billion dollars?
COME ON!! You could be spending a million dollars a day for a thousand days, and you wouldn't play? I would do a lot more for a lot less.

Although there is certainly room for abuse when using hidden rules, if the DM can make it fun for everyone then there is a good session. It doesn't matter what rules are used at all, or no rules, if everyone is having a good time. As for player death, it can be cool, or it can suck. Once again, this is according how the DM allows it to happen.

Zrak
2014-08-17, 05:11 PM
Really, a billion dollars? That's a lot of money. It's pretty unreasonable to be so unwilling to try something you don't like that you aren't willing to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars an hour to do it. Even if you don't want the money for yourself, there are any number of worthy causes to which you could donate it. If someone offered you a chance to make a huge difference in the world, the ability to save thousands or even millions of lives, you're basically saying you wouldn't take it if it meant having to play D&D with a DM you didn't like. Yet, you are accusing the other party of being unreasonable.

Also, it's sort of ridiculous to lambaste jedipotter for being closed-minded and insulting in one breath and describe your "contempt" for the way other people like to play the game in the next. Actually, re-reading the post, your wording isn't even that you hold the way they play the game in contempt, but you hold them in contempt for playing that way.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 05:25 PM
COME ON!! You could be spending a million dollars a day for a thousand days, and you wouldn't play? I would do a lot more for a lot less.

Although there is certainly room for abuse when using hidden rules, if the DM can make it fun for everyone then there is a good session. It doesn't matter what rules are used at all, or no rules, if everyone is having a good time. As for player death, it can be cool, or it can suck. Once again, this is according how the DM allows it to happen.

Well yeah. happiness and playing a character I want to play, the way I want to play it, are far more important than money.


Really, a billion dollars? That's a lot of money. It's pretty unreasonable to be so unwilling to try something you don't like that you aren't willing to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars an hour to do it. Even if you don't want the money for yourself, there are any number of worthy causes to which you could donate it. If someone offered you a chance to make a huge difference in the world, the ability to save thousands or even millions of lives, you're basically saying you wouldn't take it if it meant having to play D&D with a DM you didn't like. Yet, you are accusing the other party of being unreasonable.

Also, it's sort of ridiculous to lambaste jedipotter for being closed-minded and insulting in one breath and describe your "contempt" for the way other people like to play the game in the next.

well that is a different framing of it. money is neutral. it does not have moral value. it depends on how you use it. on the other hand, if your framing it as a purely selfless thing, I'd probably do it, but I would not be happy with it, I would make sure of that.

what? I do not like either style, for reasons I just stated. they can play it however they like as much they like, doesn't mean I like those styles or that I have to. I accept that they each have their own unique styles and what not and so forth, and I respect them for enjoying what they enjoy, which they have a right to. doesn't mean I like them.

JP on the other hand, has been insulting to a wide group of people for no reason, and hasn't bee listening to change her viewpoint on any of this at all. and that cannot stand.

Mr Beer
2014-08-17, 05:31 PM
frankly, get used to it.

why I think what? that I look past a veneer of "oh I'm just an old school DM" that is only spouted by supporters of JP and not by JP herself, and seeing a control freak I wouldn't play with even if you paid me a billion dollars? and see a game, where no actual roleplaying takes place, but a thin card-board cut out character whom no one put any energy into making an actual character, only to die soon because.......no reason apparently, because that is all that I see: no actual roleplaying, just numbers made from random tables, trying to survive and dying because you made one mistake. nintendo hard isn't fun its stressful and repetitive. what roleplaying can take place between your characters dying? nothing substantial that I see, nothing worth it. none of my actions actually mattering. my character concept, the character I want to play out- that is what is important regardless of the mechanics. it is why I hold both old-schoolers and optimizers in contempt- the old schooler would not allow my character to live. the optimizer would destroy it in concept by trying to maximize it beyond the concept I intend. both would destroy the character I wish to play. a character should have no more ability than what I think it should, even if its possible to be more "optimal" than that, while the rolls would not allow me to choose. secret house rules? I cannot trust that. Ever. Any potential houserule could apply and therefore alter my character concept and therefore ruin it.

It depends on whether that metal is introduced to screw me over or as a part of the plot.

I'm baffled as to why this is annoying you so much. I really don't see the problem with people running RPGs in a way that I personally don't go for, as long as I am not expected to participate against my will.

BTW it's impressive that you can't be bought at any price but there's a lot of things I would do for a billion dollars and playing a game with a GM who has secret house rules is a long way from the worst I'd do.

Jormengand
2014-08-17, 05:31 PM
Allegedly has players.

If by "Allegedly" you mean "In at least two games on this very forum" I suppose you'd be right.

Engine
2014-08-17, 05:38 PM
Yeah, but that only lasts for their first character.

The same is true with every secret rule: when it comes out, it's not a secret anymore. Not the point, anyway: I'm saying that even in a serious game secret rules could have a part.

Zrak
2014-08-17, 06:09 PM
well that is a different framing of it. money is neutral. it does not have moral value. it depends on how you use it. on the other hand, if your framing it as a purely selfless thing, I'd probably do it, but I would not be happy with it, I would make sure of that.
It's the exact same framing. Your framing made no stipulations on how that billion dollars could be spent, so it could be spent on others exactly as you framed it. Even assuming the money could not be spent on others, which is not how you framed the scenario, it's still quite hypocritical to accost someone else for their stubbornness when you are unwilling to even try to play a game you don't think you will enjoy. I mean, you say you would play if the money went to charitable causes, but even then you would "make sure" you didn't enjoy it. You're not only unwilling to even try things her way for a billion dollars, but proudly state your unwillingness to enjoy the game if you were to try. You are, meanwhile, accusing someone else of being "unreasonable" and "stubborn."


what? I do not like either style, for reasons I just stated. they can play it however they like as much they like, doesn't mean I like those styles or that I have to. I accept that they each have their own unique styles and what not and so forth, and I respect them for enjoying what they enjoy, which they have a right to. doesn't mean I like them.
One wouldn't really get that impression from the post to which I responded, in which you said, you said "I hold both old-schoolers and optimizers in contempt." Indeed, one would get nearly the opposite impression, since that makes it sound less like you respect them for enjoying what they enjoy and more like you, well, hold them in contempt.


JP on the other hand, has been insulting to a wide group of people for no reason, and hasn't bee listening to change her viewpoint on any of this at all. and that cannot stand.
So what you're saying is that you are unwilling to change any of your viewpoints or listen to differing viewpoints about the person you called unreasonable (who belongs to the group of people you hold in contempt) because she has been insulting and unwilling to change her viewpoint, which "cannot stand."
Oh. I see.

Kaun
2014-08-17, 06:31 PM
What i don't understand is... If the GM is the only one that knows the details of the rule and i some cases the only one that knows the rule even exists, why bother having the rule at all.

Your basically just doing what you want anyway, why bother creating a house rule for it?

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 06:34 PM
It's the exact same framing. Your framing made no stipulations on how that billion dollars could be spent, so it could be spent on others exactly as you framed it. Even assuming the money could not be spent on others, which is not how you framed the scenario, it's still quite hypocritical to accost someone else for their stubbornness when you are unwilling to even try to play a game you don't think you will enjoy. I mean, you say you would play if the money went to charitable causes, but even then you would "make sure" you didn't enjoy it. You're not only unwilling to even try things her way for a billion dollars, but proudly state your unwillingness to enjoy the game if you were to try. You are, meanwhile, accusing someone else of being "unreasonable" and "stubborn."


One wouldn't really get that impression from the post to which I responded, in which you said, you said "I hold both old-schoolers and optimizers in contempt." Indeed, one would get nearly the opposite impression, since that makes it sound less like you respect them for enjoying what they enjoy and more like you, well, hold them in contempt.


So what you're saying is that you are unwilling to change any of your viewpoints or listen to differing viewpoints about the person you called unreasonable (who belongs to the group of people you hold in contempt) because she has been insulting and unwilling to change her viewpoint, which "cannot stand."
Oh. I see.

Well of course, its not what I like, therefore why try it? Its not what I desire, therefore it won't get me what I want, therefore its not something that should be pursued.

and I clarified my position, what is the problem?

she has exhibited no sign of retracting or correcting her ridiculous statements over how many threads? even bad communicators can learn to correct their statements if that is not what they meant. she has not done so, instead repeating the same things over and over again. and I should know: I've had more than my fair share of incidents of being a bad communicator and none were this bad. I think that if she meant differently, she would've corrected herself by now. but oh wait. remember? JP doesn't believe that she makes mistakes.

y'know what that means? none of the statements she has made are mistakes in her eyes. not only are they ridiculous things offensive to optimizers because they don't specify "at my table" or anything like that, she won't correct them, because she believes those statements are not mistakes of bad communication, because she thinks mistakes happen to other people. your assuming that none of these statements are what she means. but since she, by own her admission doesn't think she makes mistakes,, she thinks all the statements she has made are completely and honestly what she is communicating, and therefore she does mean it, since not only she hasn't corrected them, she never will.

if your thinking that she will eventually come around and retract her statements- no. won't happen. because that would require to admit she can make mistakes at all. so no. I'm not going be trustful of her, because I can admit I can make mistakes and correct myself- not stating my respect for styles even though I dislike them, that was a mistake, and now it is corrected. and therefore I am different.

Your defending someone who will never correct her insulting views. I find that illogical.

Edit: that and at least I'm not one of those "R" people-you know who I'm talking about- who would join her game just to wreck it, I'm better than that.

jedipotter
2014-08-17, 07:39 PM
I tell the players when I want them to make a saving throw or an ability check. Which one (and at what target number, if applicable) is up to me to decide. Anything in the books are merely suggestions for the most common situations.

I agree here.


A big problem with the "Hey, the world doesn't work as I assumed!" is that you had those assumptions in the first place. When getting into a Jedipotter game, forget what you know - it's likely to be wrong. Secret house rules are a way to re-capture the 'spark' of a new game, if everyone goes in knowing that they should check their assumptions at the door.

Very much so. I like my game different


It's a different style of gaming. In AD&D, a healthy dose of paranoia is expected and will keep your characters alive. The relationship between the DM and the players is more antagonistic, it's in some respects similar to Paranoia although it isn't a farce.

I like that healthy dose of paranoia in 3X, Pathfinder and any other game short of like Toon.



Because JP has made it clear that she has no lack of players, and a lot of them genuinely enjoy his(Her?) campaigns. There's something amusing about control - it's sometimes very fun to give it up.

Most people enjoy my games. Not everyone, but you can't make everyone happy all the time. I'd say that most players have the most fun when they give up control. When they stop obsessing over the mechanics and rule points and just play the game.




For example, say hypothetical player Thomas doesn't like a lot of house rules. He knows this, respects that some DMs have a lot of them, so he asks about them before joining any games. Hypothetical DM Jerry doesn't want to give away his house rules, so he avoids answering in some manner or another. After the game starts, the secret house rules begin to appear. Thomas becomes upset, and begins arguing with Jerry, disrupting the game.

How do you evaluate this situation? How should Thomas and Jerry have behaved differently?

There are lots of Tommys out there. Tommy is told up front there are houserules, and secret ones. He does not have to like it or agree. But an important known house rule is :The DM has the only and final say during the game. If you have a problem, don't disrupt the game. You may bring it up after the game.

My whole play style is based around the idea: I want to play a fast paced game where I and some players have a great time. So, one of my houserules is ''no questions during the game'', for example. And I don't allow players to hold up or disrupt the game. The classic is the ''stop the game! I demand to know what is going on!'' when some event happens. I don't let players do that.





why I think what? that I look past a veneer of "oh I'm just an old school DM" that is only spouted by supporters of JP and not by JP herself,

Um...Old School, Old School, Old School. I am so at Bayside High.....



and see a game, where no actual roleplaying takes place, but a thin card-board cut out character whom no one put any energy into making an actual character, only to die soon because.......no reason apparently, because that is all that I see: no actual roleplaying, just numbers made from random tables, trying to survive and dying because you made one mistake.

My game is all about role playing. For example, as characters can't just ''remember'' learning everything in the universe....they must role play to learn things. The same way they can't just ''kill their way through an adventure'' and know the DM will keep the characters alive. They need to role-play and pick their fights.

Zrak
2014-08-17, 07:57 PM
I would say that being paid a billion dollars a good reason to try it. I have had jobs I didn't really enjoy that paid a lot less. To put your position into perspective, what I mean by "a lot less" is less than than one six-millionth of the hourly rate you would be earning to play D&D with jedipotter for eight hours. I would therefore contend that financial security for the rest of your life is probably worth spending a few hours playing D&D, even at a table you don't really expect to like, for a few hours.

Say, jedipotter? If someone offered you a billion dollars to run one session without any houserules, would you?

jedipotter
2014-08-17, 08:08 PM
Say, jedipotter? If someone offered you a billion dollars to run one session without any houserules, would you?

Yes. Of course. There is very little I would not do for a billion dollars........

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-17, 08:22 PM
Truth be told, I'd play at just about any table once in exchange for a beer and a slice of pizza. Unless they're running WOD, then it has to be a craft beer.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 08:23 PM
Well I admit this: it was a mistake to use the "billion dollars" aphorism. What a cute attempt at making her look more reasonable than me.

love how you both ignored my actual points, oh and how jedipotter has been ignoring most of the points levied against her, yet picked THAT certain one to respond to. sorry, but what one is willing to do for a million dollars or whatever has no bearing on the discussion.

I wouldn't join her games, because I am not an "R" person if you know what I mean. Those people? they wanted to join specifically to wreck her game. I may not like jedipotter, I do not trust her, but I am not going to join her games, specifically because I am not a jerk who goes around ruining peoples games just because I don't like them. life is too short. I wouldn't enjoy her games, I wouldn't see anything worth doing in them, and I'm pretty sure that if I did, it wouldn't be long before I snapped and just tried to wreck it anyways, which is why I won't because I don't want to be that kind of person.

so no, I'm not joining. I'm not joining her game for anything, because I know who I am, what I like, and how I am around people whom I DON'T like. I don't like people I can't trust, and I can't trust jedipotter, furthermore I can't play with someone who won't admit mistakes, who won't be flexible, and insulted a large group of people. I don't associate with jerks like that. me joining, mark my words, would solve nothing.

and I'm STILL not buying the "oh poor DM JP is bad at communicating" narrative.

jedipotter
2014-08-17, 08:38 PM
love how you both ignored my actual points, oh and how jedipotter has been ignoring most of the points levied against her, yet picked THAT certain one to respond to. sorry, but what one is willing to do for a million dollars or whatever has no bearing on the discussion.

Sorry, way out in the low, low,low internet country. What point did I miss?




so no, I'm not joining. I'm not joining her game for anything, because I know who I am, what I like, and how I am around people whom I DON'T like. I don't like people I can't trust, and I can't trust jedipotter, furthermore I can't play with someone who won't admit mistakes, who won't be flexible, and insulted a large group of people. I don't associate with jerks like that. me joining, mark my words, would solve nothing.

and I'm STILL not buying the "oh poor DM JP is bad at communicating" narrative.

Should I ever make one of them 'mistakes' I'd admit it....but it has not happened yet. I'm flexible. The what narrative?


If I had a billion dollars
If I had a billion dollars
Well, I'd buy me a green dress
But not a real green dress, that's cruel

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-17, 08:42 PM
My game is all about role playing. For example, as characters can't just ''remember'' learning everything in the universe....they must role play to learn things. The same way they can't just ''kill their way through an adventure'' and know the DM will keep the characters alive. They need to role-play and pick their fights.
The only issue is, when roleplaying in a any setting, playing a high-int character that has spent most of their life studying and then having that character not actually know anything about the world. It is as absurd as not being able to know your neighbors name because you can't use Knowledge (Local) without training, despite being married to the guys daughter. I don't read setting books, so even in well established settings if I'm not allowed to use skills or get knowledge OOC from the DM, my characters wind up being completely ignorant of the world they live in.

If all you play are fish-out-of-water campaigns, then sure this makes complete sense. But if I'm roleplaying as someone from the frickin town we're in, it is pretty immersion-breaking to not be able to remember things about the town. If I spent a bunch of character resources making my character a walking rolodex of the things one can encounter in the world, it means my character should be able to know what things are when he/she encounters them. This is tantamount to not allowing a rogue to disable a trap because the player hasn't studied the schematics and doesn't know how to do it IRL.

Note: Knowledge-Cheese shenanigans are an exception. i.e. No, you don't have +50 to all knowledge checks at level 1. In fact, you need to go make a new character without abusing horribly broken RAW loopholes.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 08:46 PM
{{scrubbed}}

Zrak
2014-08-17, 09:20 PM
I'm not trying to make anyone sound any more or less reasonable than anyone else. I didn't put words in your mouth. I didn't twist your words. I assumed you meant the things you said. If you didn't mean them (or, as in at least one case, basically meant the exact opposite) that is not my fault. What I am saying, as a broadly neutral party, is that you are being as stubborn and unreasonable as you accuse jedipotter of being. Whether or not jedipotter is being stubborn or unreasonable is honestly beside the point, although I would note that she asked you to clarify what she had missed and you just yelled at her without making any attempt towards meaningful conversation.

I am not out to get you. I'm not trying to make you look unreasonable. I am pointing out that what you are saying and how you are saying it makes you come across as unreasonable, at least to me. You do not give the impression that you are approaching the discussion in good faith, or making even the most basic attempt towards a meaningful discourse. I'm not even saying you aren't approaching the discussion in good faith, just that you come across as though you are not. If you are honestly attempting to engage in a meaningful, productive discourse with jedipotter and feel you cannot do so, perhaps you should consider how your own posts would come across to another, instead of just blaming her. That's all I'm saying.

LimSindull
2014-08-17, 10:34 PM
I have an insanely wild idea.

Jedipotter, Would you kindly write in detail what a player should look forward to in a campaign. (from a player's perspective) What is it that draws players to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to explore a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a DM perspective.

Lord Raziere, Would you kindly write in detail what a DM should look forward to in a campaign. (from a dm's perspective) What is it that draws a DM to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to create a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a Player perspective.

These arguments have started their own discussion thread and I have read almost everything that I can on them for this current discussion. I am asking you to argue from the perspective I have not seen either of you two argue points from before. I am not asking you to change your beliefs about the game at all. Reader's are certainly curious to see your ideas, perhaps this will make things easier to see.

Thank you for any cooperation.

Lord Raziere
2014-08-17, 11:15 PM
Lord Raziere, Would you kindly write in detail what a DM should look forward to in a campaign. (from a dm's perspective) What is it that draws a DM to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to create a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a Player perspective.


A DM? From a DM perspective, I would look forward to making a plot, but expect the players to do something that will somehow change it whether I like it or not, and have to adapt the plot to it, and improvise for the better. I would craft it so that the end is a summation and result of all their choices. Its a team game. I only do half the storytelling, they do the other half. They ultimately determine how the game is going to turn out, sure I will make villains and other such characters whose motivations and actions will pull the results in their ways as well, but the point of the story is that they are the protagonists. They the ones who can change things, and in return I write out the consequences for doing so whether they be good or bad, and often both. the joy is in making an awesome story, of judging the players actions and how they can be used to enhance the story they're in. that is what I've found enjoyable as a DM.

Graypairofsocks
2014-08-18, 12:29 AM
If you are going to have secret house rules, you should inform the players that you will have secret house rules before the game.

Mr Beer
2014-08-18, 12:41 AM
If you are going to have secret house rules, you should inform the players that you will have secret house rules before the game.

What if the existence of the secret house rules is also a secret house rule? I guess you could tell the players that whether or not there are secret house rules is covered under a secret house rule, which is a secret, so you can't tell them. Then when they first encounter a secret house rule, they know the answer to the first secret house rule, which is that there are secret house rules but not what those secret house rules are.

Or maybe it would be simpler to tell them that there is a secret house rule that forbids disclosing whether or not there is a secret house rule which forbids disclosing the secret house rules, if any? Could make life easier all around to Inception the secret house rules like this.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 04:06 AM
Whether or not jedipotter is being stubborn or unreasonable is honestly beside the point, although I would note that she asked you to clarify what she had missed and you just yelled at her without making any attempt towards meaningful conversation.
It's not even really about being stubborn or unreasonable as it is about continually ignoring stuff. I guess I can produce a quick list of completely contradictory or weird stuff that I've questioned so far. At some point though, I think that the onus can't be on us-folk to keep asking and re-asking these questions.


How do you actually justify the idea that logic has no place in anything?
Do you want the mechanics of a character to reflect their backstory, or do you want the exact opposite?
How do complicated and interesting characters fit in to the high lethality world that you espouse?
How do you contend with the fact that stopping knowledge from working fundamentally decreases the realism of a game?
Why, if you're specifically opposed to high ability scores for its supposed narrowing of possible effective challenges, are you perfectly fine with a player rolling up scores even better than what point buy could feasibly provide?

Those are the ones I remember offhand from a lot of the recent threads. Questions raised, and either completely ignored, or otherwise quoted and unanswered in an inexplicable manner. If other folk have more, that'd be nice, but I think the basic point has been made. That point being, meaningful conversation is pretty much impossible when fundamental holes in the logic of an argument go completely unanswered, so it's not really Lord Raziere that is responsible.

DM Nate
2014-08-18, 04:39 AM
The first rule of Secret House Rules is...

Kalmageddon
2014-08-18, 05:08 AM
D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

If you want to lessen the importance of game mechanics and twist things around, use a system where game mechanics are secondary in every relevant aspect of the game. As much as I personally despise them, Dungeon World and Fate come to mind. They are so simple, it's impossibile to **** them up. Go wild.
But stop trying to push your philosphy as viable in D&D. You end up with a sub-par experience. You might have fun with it, but it's not what the system is designed to do and you would probably have more fun with another system better suited to a "creative" GM. What you are doing is forced and unnecessary.

Either way, you are not doing something new. Bad DMs have been doing what you are doing for ages, obsessing over controlling their players, you are just clever or malicious enough to make a big deal out of it on a forum that, unfortunately, loves these kind of debates.

Are you able to understand this, JediPotter?
With that said, I'm done feeding you once and for all. *adds to ignore list*

Necroticplague
2014-08-18, 05:57 AM
I feel secret house rules usefulness is largely based on what kind of a game you run. In mine, it would be an abomination. My groups DM-player relationship is similar between a sports team and their organization (like the NFL). I set up the encounters, and I referee them, but I am not the antagonist, though I do describe their actions (like a sports announcer). Because I'm supposed to be a relatively neutral party, I use a lot of transparency. I expect the players to carefully go over their capabilities, what the situation might be, and then try and figure out the effective way to act. Therefore, putting up a layer of secret rules that makes them less able to effectively gauge their own abilities or the situation would be unjust in my group. However, I can see a possible use for them in more antagonistic groups, where you expect decisions to matter less, so the lack of proper information isn't as relevant.

Engine
2014-08-18, 06:42 AM
I already mentioned Ravenloft in this thread. I'll do it again: it seems I'm a control freak and antagonistic DM because some years ago I ran a Ravenloft campaign with a group who didn't know the setting and I purposefully kept secret how magic exactly works in that world because the characters couldn't possibly know that.
IMHO, it's possible to run a good D&D game with secret rules.
The players in the campaign I mentioned above learned how magic works in Ravenloft through trial & error and some research. There wasn't any antagonism at the table, because those rules aren't meant to screw with the players (and I didn't used as such): they're part of the mistery of the setting and their discovery was part of the campaign I ran.

Yes, sometimes secret rules are a way for the DM to control the players and screw with them. But saying that every DM that keeps something close to the chest is a control freak and an antagonistic DM is false.

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 07:07 AM
It's not even really about being stubborn or unreasonable as it is about continually ignoring stuff. I guess I can produce a quick list of completely contradictory or weird stuff that I've questioned so far. At some point though, I think that the onus can't be on us-folk to keep asking and re-asking these questions.


How do you actually justify the idea that logic has no place in anything?
Do you want the mechanics of a character to reflect their backstory, or do you want the exact opposite?
How do complicated and interesting characters fit in to the high lethality world that you espouse?
How do you contend with the fact that stopping knowledge from working fundamentally decreases the realism of a game?
Why, if you're specifically opposed to high ability scores for its supposed narrowing of possible effective challenges, are you perfectly fine with a player rolling up scores even better than what point buy could feasibly provide?

Those are the ones I remember offhand from a lot of the recent threads. Questions raised, and either completely ignored, or otherwise quoted and unanswered in an inexplicable manner. If other folk have more, that'd be nice, but I think the basic point has been made. That point being, meaningful conversation is pretty much impossible when fundamental holes in the logic of an argument go completely unanswered, so it's not really Lord Raziere that is responsible. And here's where the issue breaks down further. Many of the elements of Jedi's game are those comparable to other "old timey" games, a style that many people enjoy, one I've seen new players who had never rolled a d20 prior to 3.0 come to appreciate. Just as the optimization community took offense at Jedi's original posts, the counter has extended to the point that it's not even Jedi in particular who is being targeted but the entire style of play that's is being espoused. Taken in a certain light and with a grain of salt much of Jedi's position isn't nearly as drachonian as people make it out to necessarily be. We've sort of now reached a level of hypocrisy where the attacks on his position are a direct reflection of his earlier attacks on optimization. If it makes it easier, consider the game Jedi talks about to the equivalent of pun pun for the Old Timey style of play.

Now I won't say I agree with everything that's said by J, but much of it doesn't warrant the up in arms attitude, at least since as far as I can tell the "cheater optimization" rhetoric has cooled, that remains. Let me throw around the word Orcus a few dozen times like I'm making a coherent point relevant to the discussion.


D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.
I cringe every time I hear things to this effect, D&D is an extremely diverse system that can be used to emulate almost any type of game. Even in the course of a normal game you're expected to come across things the game doesn't cover and the DM is expected to make a call. The game acknowledges this is going to happen so already it's baked into the system to some degree.

NichG
2014-08-18, 07:35 AM
D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

If you want to lessen the importance of game mechanics and twist things around, use a system where game mechanics are secondary in every relevant aspect of the game. As much as I personally despise them, Dungeon World and Fate come to mind. They are so simple, it's impossibile to **** them up. Go wild.
But stop trying to push your philosphy as viable in D&D. You end up with a sub-par experience. You might have fun with it, but it's not what the system is designed to do and you would probably have more fun with another system better suited to a "creative" GM. What you are doing is forced and unnecessary.

Jedipotter aside, D&D is an excellent system for secret rules specifically because the game mechanics and knowledge thereof matter. If you want the secret rules to matter, you need a system in which the fact that they're secret modifies play - that's kind of the point, at least if you're doing it with a particular design goal in mind. Secret need not mean 'screw you for your choices', after all - the focus on that is just because of this on-going back and forth with Jedipotter, but 'random stuff summons Orcus' is not the only kind of secret rule you can have.

For example, maybe around Lv6 you intend to allow players to choose whether to spend their XP to gain levels normally or to gain Gestalt levels at a discount (e.g. to gestalt Lv1 costs 1000xp and so on) - via some in-game plot-based source, of course. Then at Lv9 you say 'ah, using the ichor of this dead god you can buy feats for 3000xp each!'. And then at Lv12 you say 'hey, this shard of the myth of the everyman lets those who interact with it get abilities from Pathfinder if they want'. Part of the point of gimmicks like that is that it unsettles pre-planned builds - now, instead of the character-building part of the game being done months ago, players have the chance to revisit their plans and see if they can make what they want happen more efficiently using the new stuff that has opened up. If you let the players know ahead of time, sure, they could optimize their builds to take advantage of the future opportunity, but then when that opportunity came along they wouldn't have to revisit things - all that work would have already been done months before.

Falka
2014-08-18, 08:44 AM
I have some "secret" houserules myself. For instance, many of my monsters work differently than those usually depicted in DnD. In my campaign setting, most monsters are vulnerable to fire and silver (anything that isn't strictly a beast or a humanoid is tagged as "monster") and divine magic triggers Good / Evil detection.

As long as it's something that isn't strictly mechanical and the players should know (like, how a feat works), I think you can have those.

Kalmageddon
2014-08-18, 08:55 AM
I cringe every time I hear things to this effect, D&D is an extremely diverse system that can be used to emulate almost any type of game. Even in the course of a normal game you're expected to come across things the game doesn't cover and the DM is expected to make a call. The game acknowledges this is going to happen so already it's baked into the system to some degree.

LOL. No.
If you were talking about d20 Modern and expansions you might have a point, albeit weak, but D&D? Absolutely not.

Airk
2014-08-18, 09:17 AM
Is it okay for me to come in here and say "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a crappy game and no one should play it?" :P


I have some "secret" houserules myself. For instance, many of my monsters work differently than those usually depicted in DnD. In my campaign setting, most monsters are vulnerable to fire and silver (anything that isn't strictly a beast or a humanoid is tagged as "monster")

This is less a "house rule" and more "hey, monsters have different stats". Now if you changed how fire vulnerability WORKED, that would be a house rule.

All that said, there's still very little case, in my book, for hiding information from the players.

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-18, 09:19 AM
I have some "secret" houserules myself. For instance, many of my monsters work differently than those usually depicted in DnD. In my campaign setting, most monsters are vulnerable to fire and silver (anything that isn't strictly a beast or a humanoid is tagged as "monster") and divine magic triggers Good / Evil detection.

As long as it's something that isn't strictly mechanical and the players should know (like, how a feat works), I think you can have those.

So every time a cleric casts a spell, people know their alignment? But the characters (especially if one is a cleric) were never around divine casters to have noticed this? And, further, do they not get to know this is happening even though the NPC's all can take advantage of it?
Seriously curious as to how this is a "secret", not trying to be antagonistic. There is a point where this could be just a mechanic, and a point where it becomes a "secret" that makes no sense for the characters not to know, and further it could turn into something that screws them over.

If your players automatically switch to the most optimal weapon (e.g. silvered) for every specific monster, without any in character reason for knowing that (knowledge ranks and checks or prior experience), then you are having a problem with them not understanding roleplaying anyway. I'll attack a ghost at least a few times before my character figures out incorporeal, because why the heck would he know stat blocks and monster rules anyway(unless I built him to know these things)? I don't view a homebrewed monster as a secret house rule, though. Once the housecat is out of the bag, disemboweling commoners, it isn't a secret anymore.

Airk
2014-08-18, 09:27 AM
If your players automatically switch to the most optimal weapon (e.g. silvered) for every specific monster, without any in character reason for knowing that (knowledge ranks and checks or prior experience),

I dunno; If like, EVERY FREAKIN' MONSTER in the world is vulnerable to silver, it'd be part of common knowledge by that point.


I'll attack a ghost at least a few times before my character figures out incorporeal, because why the heck would he know stat blocks and monster rules anyway(unless I built him to know these things)?

Oh c'mon. It's SEE THROUGH and when you swing at it once your weapon goes through it. Why do you need to attack it "at least a few times" unless you're paniced or like, wisdom 6? It's not metagaming to assume that your arrows might not work super well on the animated statue either. :P

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 10:00 AM
LOL. No.
If you were talking about d20 Modern and expansions you might have a point, albeit weak, but D&D? Absolutely not.

If you'd like to suggest things that couldn't be emulated please go ahead, but saying no and calling something weak is a bit......lacking in evidence.

Segev
2014-08-18, 10:05 AM
In fairness to the "pro secret rules" people (Jedipotter included), I think a lot of the criticism here is coming from conflating "house rules" - which represent changes to the mechanics of the system based on the DM's preferences for how those class features/skills/whatever work - and "setting-specific rules" - which are based on something funky in the setting that causes things to work "differently" than the base rule set in order to better represent something going on.

House rules tend to be DM preferences and show up regardless of the setting, based on something the DM wants to see (or not see) happen in his game or on something he does to ease the flow of the game or increase his personal sense of verisimilitude. Jedipotter's preference of "scary unknowns" (which I disagree with philosophically, to the point that I don't think it creates fear the way Jedipotter thinks it does) leads to a house rule that, as far as I can tell, outlaws Knowledge skills. (My point of big disagreement here is that it seems Jedipotter lets people take those skills, and only tells them they don't work after the sp are expended. If that's not correct, please let me know.)

Setting-specific rules tend to be things like "spells cost hp as well as slots to cast." These should NOT be secrets to the players unless their characters could not know this until it comes up, and it is not likely to have come up in the past. If your 1st-level wizard does not know that casting spells costs hp, then it's likely that this mechanical change is a local phenomenon (and the wizard's never been in the locale before), or that the wizard never cast a spell he can remember. (Though even amnesia's not enough to really explain that; if he remembers he has limited spell slots, he probably should remember that the spell slot is only part of the resources he expends.)

DMs' house rules should be told from the get-go to players, particularly if players are building a character that will utilize those house rules in some fashion. Failure to do so is no different than if you told players that Fighters in your game got a free Martial Maneuver every level they don't get a bonus feat, and then told them that, no, you're not using Maneuvers in your game after all now that somebody built a Fighter and planned on those 5 levels he invested in it having 2 martial maneuvers for his trouble. And then refusing to let him change his build.

Setting rules are something that players should know if their characters would know it. If you don't want to allow Knowledge skills, then at the least they should be aware of how their class features and feats worked up until now. So if something has changed as of game-start, it's fine to spring it on them. It's a mystery to solve. If it's something that makes one question whether they'd ever used their class features before in their lives, however, it's a bad move.

In truth, I tend to find it frustrating and unfair to knowingly spring a world-altering change on players if it's meant to be a setting rule throughout the game and it will adversely impact their ability to play what they thought they were signing up to play. "So, as of this morning, magic doesn't work in the setting anymore," is a nasty thing to pull on the players of clerics and wizards and the like, who built what they thought were effective adventurers and now discover they're really just warriors and commoners.

The RP experience may be interesting, but it's something players should be allowed to know going in, that they're playing a character who's lost his primary power source, not a fully-featured member of a class.

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-18, 10:12 AM
I dunno; If like, EVERY FREAKIN' MONSTER in the world is vulnerable to silver, it'd be part of common knowledge by that point.

Well, yes, if every monster was vulnerable to silver I don't know why any hunter in that world would carry non-silver weapons. Would they even make weapons that weren't silvered at this point?
If, however, the int 8 farm boy-turned-hero carries a golf bag of different metals, and always pulls out the proper one, then there is probably an issue with metagaming.



Oh c'mon. It's SEE THROUGH and when you swing at it once your weapon goes through it. Why do you need to attack it "at least a few times" unless you're paniced or like, wisdom 6? It's not metagaming to assume that your arrows might not work super well on the animated statue either. :P
It may be real-life me bleeding through, but if something fails one time I'm not willing to call it a rule that it always fails. Never believe something based on n=1 :P

But seriously, if I have never seen a ghost before, and one smacks me in the face? I'm going to throw whatever I can at it, probably while quickly running away once I realize the chair I tossed went through it (okay, the running will start prior to that revelation anyway, but most likely the urinating will come after). Most of my characters, though, will probably just spend a round attacking before realizing they need to switch it up.

Earthwalker
2014-08-18, 10:15 AM
I already mentioned Ravenloft in this thread. I'll do it again: it seems I'm a control freak and antagonistic DM because some years ago I ran a Ravenloft campaign with a group who didn't know the setting and I purposefully kept secret how magic exactly works in that world because the characters couldn't possibly know that.
IMHO, it's possible to run a good D&D game with secret rules.
[snip]
Of course in your example the characters were not from Ravenloft so the characters didn't know how that world worked. It seems the issue we are talking about is characters not knowing how the world they grew up in works becuase of secret house rules. I think these are different issues.

What i don't understand is... If the GM is the only one that knows the details of the rule and i some cases the only one that knows the rule even exists, why bother having the rule at all.
Your basically just doing what you want anyway, why bother creating a house rule for it?
I too would really love an answer to this question.

D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.
[snip]

With the addition of secret rules to give an old school feel. The removal of things like knowledge skills to make this more like AD&D. I can’t help but feel the OP would be better off playing an Old School RPG one of the many clones as opposed to changing 3.5 to make it more old school.
There may be people happy playing the game but from other posts it seems that there have been a few people turning up to the Ops 3.5 games and expecting to play 3.5. These people seem to leave upset. It might avoid this by running a different system not hacking 3.5.
I do have a question for the OP as well. Do you and your players practise meal worm learning. Where they create one character who dies, but the next character knows everything about the game world the first did. So that all world knowledge is basically stored with the players not the characters ?

Airk
2014-08-18, 10:17 AM
It may be real-life me bleeding through, but if something fails one time I'm not willing to call it a rule that it always fails. Never believe something based on n=1 :P

I think it depends heavily on what "the thing" is. If it's a "thing" that kinda intuitively seems like it wouldn't work, I'd be in a lot bigger hurry to try something else.



But seriously, if I have never seen a ghost before, and one smacks me in the face? I'm going to throw whatever I can at it, probably while quickly running away once I realize the chair I tossed went through it (okay, the running will start prior to that revelation anyway, but most likely the urinating will come after). Most of my characters, though, will probably just spend a round attacking before realizing they need to switch it up.

So which is it? N=1 or not? :P

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-18, 10:20 AM
So which is it? N=1 or not? :P
What, your characters only attack once in a full round? You haven't been paying enough attention to the min/max boards :P

Kalmageddon
2014-08-18, 10:41 AM
If you'd like to suggest things that couldn't be emulated please go ahead, but saying no and calling something weak is a bit......lacking in evidence.

Things that can't be emulated without heavy use of house rules, thus defeating the point of using the system in the first place instead of choosing something more appropriate, include:

-Anything realistic and gritty.
-Anything with a heavy focus on narrative.
-Anything set in modern times.
-Anything set in the future.
-Anything where historical accuracy is important.
-Anything where the players aren't supposed to be the heroes.

Now I'm not saying that it's impossibile to have any of these things in a D&D game, I'm saying that it requires heavy house rules and A LOT of work from the GM, for which the system doesn't really provide a lot of tools, which twist and break the premise of the game and that will disrupt the already weak game balance so much that by that point you really should be playing something else, unless you have a morbid attachment to D&D.

D&D, without having to stretch the rules or implement a ton of house rules, is made for epic high fantasy adventures with 0 historical accuracy. The PCs are heroes, above the norm and posessing powers that no one else, outside of main villains and such, have access to. Gold coins are routine and 2 10ft. poles cost more than a ladder.
If you think D&D is easy to adapt to any setting or is something even remotely close to a true universal system I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken.

Engine
2014-08-18, 10:44 AM
Of course in your example the characters were not from Ravenloft so the characters didn't know how that world worked. It seems the issue we are talking about is characters not knowing how the world they grew up in works becuase of secret house rules. I think these are different issues.

Sure, they're different issues. But it seems, at least to me, that some users in this thread think that having any kind of secret rule in play in any kind of game it's bad DMing - or worse.

Jacob.Tyr
2014-08-18, 10:59 AM
Things that can't be emulated without heavy use of house rules, thus defeating the point of using the system in the first place instead of choosing something more appropriate, include:
...
Kingdom building
Large-scale Combat
Economics-based games
Super Heroes
Space Adventures


Sure, they're different issues. But it seems, at least to me, that some users in this thread think that having any kind of secret rule in play in any kind of game it's bad DMing - or worse.
I think a lot of that is in response to specifics in prior posts by JP that resulted in some... heated threads previously. Just that heat carrying over, and I myself am guilty of it at some points in this thread. There are in fact situations where things may change, or your character may be out of their element, or just lack knowledge of a topic. In these situations, not telling the players mechanics or details is, in most circumstances, the best thing to do. If your players are really heavy into roleplaying it may not be necessary to leave them in the dark, as you should expect them to act appropriately without metagaming. But, there is definitely something to be said about keeping IC and OOC knowledge the same when possible. So long as you accept it as a two way street, and let players know things that, by all accounts, their character should know.

A character, and by extension their player, should know how their abilities function in most games. Further, they should have some knowledge of their world, especially relating to topics they would have interacted with. Unless it is a specific plot point that they lack or have lost this knowledge, there isn't much place for secrets regarding the mechanics that dictate how a character interacts with the world around them. One should probably assume that, through trial and error or training, a character is most often aware of who they are, where they live, and what they can do.

Jay R
2014-08-18, 11:01 AM
Is it okay for me to come in here and say "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a crappy game and no one should play it?" :P

Sure, it's OK to make that statement. It's all right for us to disagree with it, too. By that measure, many computer games are poor games, since a lot of the point of playing them is to learn how they work. This has been true all the way back to Adventure and Zork in the 1970s.

Your statement is also a gross exaggeration. Nobody suggested the players not knowing the rules, merely not knowing all of them. This is true of any player who hasn't read (and memorized) every sourcebook the DM is using.

Changing the rules is done to solve the problem of the Click-Clicks.


“You obtain surprise over three Clickclicks.”
“Clickclicks? Oh, yeah, they’re in Supplement Three. Hand it to me. And where’s Greyhawk? It had a note about them.” A pause. “We shout out ‘November’.”
"That’s right, the Clickclicks fall over dead.”

I routinely change some rules, so the PCs don't know everything about the world they're in. And yes, the PCs were told that, before the game started. My dragons, for instance, are not color-coded for the benefit of the adventurers (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0207.html).

Also, swords get stuck in dead meat, so after each hit on a zombie, the next round is spent pulling the sword out. It made for a very memorable encounter. One high-STR player cleverly raised his sword, zombie and all, and used it like a flail against the others. They now try to use ranged weapons whenever possible. Nobody's figured out that bludgeoning weapons don't have that problem.

The PCs are experienced with zombies now, and know how to handle them.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 11:01 AM
D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.I find that this is not actually true. If anything, the more familiar people are with 3.5, the less fun they tend to have, and more likely they are to moan about how broken and unbalanced the game is.:smalltongue:

My biggest complaint against Jedipotter is that he doesn't have a good grasp on probabilities, and considers a +8 vs. DC 14 a 'sure thing'.

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 11:22 AM
Things that can't be emulated without heavy use of house rules, thus defeating the point of using the system in the first place instead of choosing something more appropriate, include:

-Anything realistic and gritty. E3, done!
-Anything with a heavy focus on narrative. This is how people choose to play the game, not a restriction of the system
-Anything set in modern times. Helped someone build such a campaign, the devils ran corporations, demon stock markets, inevitables as law enforcement. Cyberspace if you wanted to go that route is a bit trickier but you can manage with the shadow plane. Eberron already laid the groundwork for a lot of tech
-Anything set in the future. Spelljammer much?
-Anything where historical accuracy is important. No casters, done! Might need to modify equipment availability
-Anything where the players aren't supposed to be the heroes.I've had such a game pitched to me by a respected member of the playground community actually. It's amazingly easy to do, you just have a different role in the story.



Now I'm not saying that it's impossibile to have any of these things in a D&D game, I'm saying that it requires heavy house rules and A LOT of work from the GM, for which the system doesn't really provide a lot of tools, which twist and break the premise of the game and that will disrupt the already weak game balance so much that by that point you really should be playing something else, unless you have a morbid attachment to D&D. Not really, there are a lot of tools already available to do just about anything, it's mostly just deciding what options you want to have in the game. Generally all you really need is a conversation with players to go over what type of campaign it's going to be.


D&D, without having to stretch the rules or implement a ton of house rules, is made for epic high fantasy adventures with 0 historical accuracy. The PCs are heroes, above the norm and posessing powers that no one else, outside of main villains and such, have access to. Gold coins are routine and 2 10ft. poles cost more than a ladder.
If you think D&D is easy to adapt to any setting or is something even remotely close to a true universal system I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken. So you have no NPCs in your games? Sounds like you're pitching "special snowflake". The standard demographics are removed? Heck, just about any setting is littered with hi powered creatures, they're not a rarity by any means. All you're telling me is that you have a set of expectations that aren't inherently a function of the game or universal. Rather than being mistaken I seem to simply have a broader belief in what you can use this system for.

Want biological enhancements? Grafts.
Want Star Trek? Spelljammer with teleportation circles and resetting fabrication or wish traps.
Want the great human robot war? Inevitables and warforged.

Very, very few things really require extensive house ruling other than imposing limitation on the options available, but imposing limitations is par for the course in any game that's not kitchen sink and explicit in the game itself.

Airk
2014-08-18, 11:31 AM
Sure, it's OK to make that statement. It's all right for us to disagree with it, too. By that measure, many computer games are poor games, since a lot of the point of playing them is to learn how they work. This has been true all the way back to Adventure and Zork in the 1970s.

Technically, I would argue that those are not, in fact, games, but rather "puzzles."



Your statement is also a gross exaggeration. Nobody suggested the players not knowing the rules, merely not knowing all of them. This is true of any player who hasn't read (and memorized) every sourcebook the DM is using.

Same thing for me; If the players don't know how the game operates, they cannot make informed decisions. Sourcebooks, however, are often not sources of...rules.



Changing the rules is done to solve the problem of the Click-Clicks.

Irrelevant. Knowing how the rules work is not the same as knowing all information about the world. What a "ClickClick" is not 'rules' by most definitions.



The PCs are experienced with zombies now, and know how to handle them.

Same thing, IMHO. (Also, if swords get stuck in dead flesh, why don't they get stuck in live flesh? If anything, there's a lot more pressures and stuff going on in something that's alive. What is it about the zombification process that makes them so adhesive? :P)

Airk
2014-08-18, 11:35 AM
Very, very few things really require extensive house ruling other than imposing limitation on the options available, but imposing limitations is par for the course in any game that's not kitchen sink and explicit in the game itself.

I find this assertion to be inconsistent with your own examples. ALL of what you cite is basically "extensive houseruling." To say nothing of the amount of just making up new stuff to cover all 'flavors'.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 11:35 AM
The players don't need to make fully-informed decisions.

Airk
2014-08-18, 11:37 AM
The players don't need to make fully-informed decisions.

They need to be able to make decisions that are as informed as their characters, at the least, and denying knowledge of how the world works "aka 'the rules'" makes that impossible.

You will also please stop putting words in my mouth, as I did not SAY "fully-informed".

draken50
2014-08-18, 11:39 AM
I think having secret rules is stupid.

Rules are things that all participants should be made aware of prior to participating.

The only examples I can think of that involve "secret rules," come from fiction, and have to deal with tyrannical overlords, or self-important egotists who like to think they're bringing order to those they consider beneath them.

If its a rule tell people. Otherwise its not a rule, it's a trap.

Jormengand
2014-08-18, 11:53 AM
If its a rule tell people. Otherwise its not a rule, it's a trap.

So I suppose the laws of physics are traps, then. :smallsigh:

lytokk
2014-08-18, 12:01 PM
I think a DM needs to be as honest with the players as the players are expected to be with the DM. When I DM, I like my players to present me with their character concepts. This way I can make sure its appropriate for my setting, the game, and the general party level. If not, there may be some tweaks to things, or in a rare case, me simply telling my players that it just won't work for the game. If I was to design a character, present the concept as well as a general outline of progression to the DM, and have the DM approve it, and then later, when the build was just about online, have the DM tell me that one of the secret houserules completely negated the entire concept of my character I would be (and I believe rightfully) pissed.

Barring that situation, unknown house rules could be permissable, but I prefer to let my players know everything I know in regards to rule systems, but not always setting specific details.

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 12:11 PM
I find this assertion to be inconsistent with your own examples. ALL of what you cite is basically "extensive houseruling." To say nothing of the amount of just making up new stuff to cover all 'flavors'.

Of the examples I provided towards the end those are simply how to accomplish campaign settings or specifics, none of which require anything more than minor refluffing or the standard effort for a campaign setting, and I wouldn't consider either extensive. Among my responses E3 is the closest to house rules but its not very labor intensive since E games are widely understood and ultimately only require two simple rules. The Cyberspace example I'll grant could be a stretch except the shadow plane already mimics the real world much in the sense the internet does so I don't have to change much. Almost all of what I've said already exists in Canon or the rules.

Edit: correcting the auto-correct.

Millennium
2014-08-18, 12:22 PM
Is it okay for me to come in here and say "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a crappy game and no one should play it?" :P
Paranoia is a counterexample. Then again, Paranoia is a unique case, since knowing the rules is in fact against the rules.

NichG
2014-08-18, 01:00 PM
Kingdom building
Large-scale Combat
Economics-based games
Super Heroes
Space Adventures


Aside from the Economics game, I don't think these are all that hard... I've personally run Large-scale combats and two 'space adventures' style campaigns in D&D and it worked out fine (ship combat is a problem for any system though due to pilot syndrome, so my attempted solution was to make the mechanics strongly encourage boarding actions), and I've played in a campaign that used D&D but had a very Super Heroes feel to it. Kingdom building is rarer, but capped at the right level range I think it can work out well enough (certainly in older editions of D&D it worked fine) - furthermore, there's even the Stronghold Builder's Guide as far as reference material. Also, the Black Company (3rd party) sourcebook gives some rules for scaling combats up to army size, and Heroes of Battle gives stuff for having the players influence/play within the context of large-scale battles.

Arbane
2014-08-18, 01:45 PM
I cringe every time I hear things to this effect, D&D is an extremely diverse system that can be used to emulate almost any type of game. Even in the course of a normal game you're expected to come across things the game doesn't cover and the DM is expected to make a call. The game acknowledges this is going to happen so already it's baked into the system to some degree.

I still maintain that D&D is a TERRIBLE choice for modelling certain characters and settings. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?364219-Characters-you-can-t-stat-in-3-5) Yes, over the years it's become an impressive Swiss-army sledgehammer, but sometimes you just need a screwdriver instead.

For example, this effort at statting the girls from RWBY (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=11281.0), which gives us 20th level builds for a quartet of trainee monster hunters. Not to mention using bizarre races for four ostenable humans. I know, I know - spoilers, dude.)

jedipotter
2014-08-18, 02:08 PM
Jedipotter, Would you kindly write in detail what a player should look forward to in a campaign. (from a player's perspective) What is it that draws players to a game and makes them enjoy whatever gaming system they use to explore a setting. The discussions previous to this post have seemed to come from a DM perspective.


Well, to have fun. A player joins a game to have fun. And to role-play out a created character in a fictional world. I'm not sure there is more ''detail'' then that.



How do you actually justify the idea that logic has no place in anything?

Well, when does anyone follow logic? People get so wrapped up in other things that logic gets tossed aside. For example, anything anyone types on a discussion board is logically there opinion. Yet countless posters say that people should start their posts with ''well what I think''



Do you want the mechanics of a character to reflect their backstory, or do you want the exact opposite?

Of course I want mechanics to reflect on the backstory.



How do complicated and interesting characters fit in to the high lethality world that you espouse?

It's kinda like ''role-play now, your character might die at any moment''. And players go to great lengths not to have a character die. A good way to keep a character alive, for example, is by running away. Another way is to not just drop into a fight unprepared. And don't attack without some idea of what might happen.

And another is to work with the other players. A group of five x-level characters can take on Monster X...if they work as a team and fight together.....not if ''player 3 runs over and hides in shadows'' and ''player 4 teleports away'' and ''player 5 loots some dead bodies...in the middle of the fight.''



How do you contend with the fact that stopping knowledge from working fundamentally decreases the realism of a game?

It makes it much more fun, and that is the point, but also makes it more real. The idea that people are super experts on everything is just silly. Go ask some average people average question and see if they ''remember'' everything. The idea that every single person in Waterdeep knows every single person in Waterdeep is silly. It's only true in a town of less then like 500 people.

And the idea that everyone is a monster expert is just silly.

I'd say knowing nothing is no less realistic then ''everyone speaks common'' or ''Everyone can read''.



Why, if you're specifically opposed to high ability scores for its supposed narrowing of possible effective challenges, are you perfectly fine with a player rolling up scores even better than what point buy could feasibly provide?

Because rolling is random. They roll some high ability scores by chance. They just as likely might have gotten low ones. But just picking high ability scores? That is wrong.....


D&D is not made to have secret house rules. It's the wrong system to pull this kind of stuff, as it relies heavily on the player's knowledge of game mechanics.

I disagree.



But stop trying to push your philosphy as viable in D&D. You end up with a sub-par experience. You might have fun with it, but it's not what the system is designed to do and you would probably have more fun with another system better suited to a "creative" GM. What you are doing is forced and unnecessary.

I'm not a fan of most other games. I like D&D. I'm not sure what the ''system was designed to do'', maybe you can explain that?

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 02:16 PM
The phrase 'BSDMing' comes to mind for some reason.

Because thinly veiled allusions to having a BDSM fetish are clever now. :smalltongue:


I think the argument is that the style of GMing (extremely controlling, with lots of fiat and loose rules on the side of the GM, and lots of player nerfs) is not necessarily bad in and of itself, since it used to be common back in the day (apparently, I didn't play tabletops back in the day).

Just play the old games or retroclones or games actually intended to be played that way, though. Trying to bring it where it's not appropriate is just going to lead to frustration and friction(see: History of JP threads and JP's reported huge amount of friction and DM-Player antagonism/disdain/hatred due to not even bothering to try to play with likeminded people). Paranoia is Paranoia, don't try to make Pathfinder into Paranoia.


If by "Allegedly" you mean "In at least two games on this very forum" I suppose you'd be right.

Irrelevant to meatspace, though, and already established.

Not that I particularly doubt that JP has run in meatspace before.


So I suppose the laws of physics are traps, then. :smallsigh:

That doesn't even make any sense, Jormengandr.


The players don't need to make fully-informed decisions.

Yes they do, at least in terms of "should I play with this DM?" Fully-informed consent is important regardless of whether you're playing a game with them or ****ing them. Or both.


I already mentioned Ravenloft in this thread.

It was ignored, in part, because it wasn't really a good example of what we were talking about here.

There's actually a good reason for (new) Outlanders not to personally know several things. But characters that actually have been adventuring in the mists do know some of them.

Jormengand
2014-08-18, 02:21 PM
Irrelevant to meatspace, though, and already established.

So? Point is, Jedipotter has players, and anyone who bases their argument on the converse is therefore wrong.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 02:22 PM
So? Point is, Jedipotter has players, and anyone who bases their argument on the converse is therefore wrong.

Recall that the only reason for those games was people's sheer incredulity in older threads that anyone would play with JP. It weakens the point, certainly, as does any emotional response or outburst, but doesn't completely erode it, in and of itself.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 02:31 PM
They need to be able to make decisions that are as informed as their characters, at the least, and denying knowledge of how the world works "aka 'the rules'" makes that impossible.This assumes that the characters are informed. There are a LOT of things people can do without knowing the extent of their ability, or about how the world works.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 02:31 PM
Well, when does anyone follow logic? People get so wrapped up in other things that logic gets tossed aside. For example, anything anyone types on a discussion board is logically there opinion. Yet countless posters say that people should start their posts with ''well what I think''
I follow logic all the time. A good number of the arguments I make here, especially as concern the way the rules of the game work, but also often concerning playstyle arguments, make use of sound logical principles. The opinion thing is somewhat unrelated, particularly as it's not really about opinions at all. In particular, if you make the claim, "Using a bag of holding is cheating," it doesn't matter whether that's an opinion or not, because you're still making that claim about people not at your table.

Of course I want mechanics to reflect on the backstory.
Definitely the better stance, though I'm pretty sure you have said the exact opposite in the past. I'm not going to hold that in particular against you, but I think it's fair to hold you to this claim if this comes up again.


It's kinda like ''role-play now, your character might die at any moment''. And players go to great lengths not to have a character die. A good way to keep a character alive, for example, is by running away. Another way is to not just drop into a fight unprepared. And don't attack without some idea of what might happen.
That doesn't seem like stuff especially linked to role playing, is the problem. You may be able to role play in this rhetorical blender, but it seems like it would be much more difficult, and like it'd be nigh impossible to seriously develop a character.


It makes it much more fun, and that is the point, but also makes it more real. The idea that people are super experts on everything is just silly. Go ask some average people average question and see if they ''remember'' everything. The idea that every single person in Waterdeep knows every single person in Waterdeep is silly. It's only true in a town of less then like 500 people.

And the idea that everyone is a monster expert is just silly.

I'd say knowing nothing is no less realistic then ''everyone speaks common'' or ''Everyone can read''.
No, not everyone is a monster expert. Only the guy who spent large quantities of time. In your system though, a person could spend their whole lives studying animals, but they'd be caught completely off guard the first time they see an elephant in-game. Not the first time they see an elephant overall, incidentally, because their research prior to the game could have taken them by an elephant, but just completely linked to the game you have. The current D&D system doesn't have everyone as monster experts. It only has monster experts as monster experts. Your system is no more realistic than "No one speaks common", or "no one can read", assuming that knowledge only started to enter the world when your players did.



Because rolling is random. They roll some high ability scores by chance. They just as likely might have gotten low ones. But just picking high ability scores? That is wrong.....
Objectionable in and of itself, due to the idea that optimization itself is wrong, but you're missing the point to some extent. My argument is that you've claimed, and I can cite this one pretty easily, that high ability scores are intrinsically bad, in addition to being bad by merit of a person choosing them.

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 02:32 PM
Recall that the only reason for those games was people's sheer incredulity in older threads that anyone would play with JP. It weakens the point, certainly, as does any emotional response or outburst, but doesn't completely erode it, in and of itself.

Recall also that one of JP's previous players popped up in the thread that started those two games. Their big complaint was they didn't get to see the mis-summons chart as I recall. Evidence however you cut it that J's had other games.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 02:33 PM
Recall also that one of JP's previous players popped up in the thread that started those two games. Their big complaint was they didn't get to see the mis-summons chart as I recall. Evidence however you cut it that J's had other games.

Indeed. Much better evidence. :smallsmile:

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 02:38 PM
That doesn't even make any sense, Jormengandr.We do not know all the laws of physics, and haven't throughout much of history. We don't know a lot about our own world - there's a lot to be discovered. Knowing all the rules takes away the magic of fantasy, because magic is dependent on NOT knowing.


Yes they do. Fully-informed consent is important regardless of whether you're playing a game with them or ****ing them. Or both.As someone who does do both (At the same time, occasionally), I can say that fully-informed consent is NOT required for something as trivial as gaming. It's largely required for the latter activity because of the sheer amount of trust and the impact on life involved (And other neurochemically-induced physio-psychological effects involved with the latter activity absent from gaming). Gaming does not have that impact, and anyone who equates the two is in dire need of greater life perspective.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 02:44 PM
Recall also that one of JP's previous players popped up in the thread that started those two games. Their big complaint was they didn't get to see the mis-summons chart as I recall. Evidence however you cut it that J's had other games.
Recall tertiarily that we can just kinda look at JP's list of created threads, and see several campaigns she's started.

Segev
2014-08-18, 02:47 PM
The laws of physics are a good example of "setting-based rules." However, if you build a scientist and design him to be an expert on quantum mechanics, only to have the GM tell you after approving your character that all of his abilities don't work because the physics of the game world are animist and there is no "quantum mechanics," that's still a trap.

It's not a trap if it's a genuine mystery that nobody has run across before and thus their experience prior would not tell them it's coming.

It is a trap if the GM is "gotcha"ing the players by springing things on them that their characters should have known before the game started due to having grown up there. It is also a trap to deliberately allow or foster a misconception about the rules at your table (which is as easy as having "secret house rules" which contradict the mechanics of the game) which influences character building decisions, only to spring it on them and thus render their character far less useful than they might have reasonably expected.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 02:54 PM
Recall tertiarily that we can just kinda look at JP's list of created threads, and see several campaigns she's started.

Indeed, much better.


We do not know all the laws of physics, and haven't throughout much of history. We don't know a lot about our own world - there's a lot to be discovered. Knowing all the rules takes away the magic of fantasy, because magic is dependent on NOT knowing.

Yes, but that's not really an analogy that's applicable to secret house rules unless you have a character who is from a different physical universe or you're going into Sci-Fi cutting-edge discoveries that are recent in-game.

Which, it's fine if you do, but that's closer to DM Nate's stuff(where I disagreed due to the particular form the execution was presented in more than the concept) than JP's stuff(Orcus in the morning, Orcus in the evening, Orcus at supper time, when Orcus is on a bagel, you can have Orcus anytime).

Ok, so I just wanted to find a place I could type that out ever since the idea struck me.


As someone who does do both (At the same time, occasionally), I can say that fully-informed consent is NOT required for something as trivial as gaming. It's largely required for the latter activity because of the sheer amount of trust and the impact on life involved (And other neurochemically-induced physio-psychological effects involved with the latter activity absent from gaming). Gaming does not have that impact, and anyone who equates the two is in dire need of greater life perspective.

You have made it abundantly clear that you have sex and game and have combined the two, yes.

There's more degrees and leeway as far as what fully-informed constitutes for gaming than sex, sure, but, no, actively withholding information to play "GOTCHA" in either situation is rude.

It's just, y'know, potentially illegal in the sexual context. :smalltongue:

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 03:00 PM
Indeed, much better.



Yes, but that's not really an analogy that's applicable to secret house rules unless you have a character who is from a different physical universe or you're going into Sci-Fi cutting-edge discoveries that are recent in-game.

Which, it's fine if you do, but that's closer to DM Nate's stuff(where I disagreed due to the particular form the execution was presented in more than the concept) than JP's stuff(Orcus in the morning, Orcus in the evening, Orcus at supper time, when Orcus is on a bagel, you can have Orcus anytime).

Ok, so I just wanted to find a place I could type that out ever since the idea struck me.Orcus is just only one potential summon. You might get Yeenoghu, Demogorgon, Belial, Talisid, or a Flumph instead.



There's more degrees and leeway as far as what fully-informed constitutes for gaming than sex, sure, but, no, actively withholding information to play "GOTCHA" in either situation is rude.A lot of games are based around withholding information. The "all rules must be known" is only one way D&D can be run... and given the huge numbers of things it can't do (Given your own lists), it's a horribly, pitifully restrictive way of playing.

Zrak
2014-08-18, 03:14 PM
As I said in an earlier thread about logic, the problem with logic is that it only really works if you agree to the premises. Most of the time, when people invoke logic, it's a faulty defense; their interlocutor is not saying that their conclusion does not follow from their premise, but is objecting to the premise itself. It's not really that logic doesn't work, it's that logic is not a useful tool for discourse.

Is jedipotter's position that characters know absolutely nothing about the world, or just that he'd prefer to establish the characters' knowledge based on backstory and roleplay rather than mechanics? I'll agree that the former doesn't make sense, but I'd actually prefer the latter to knowledge skills; I find that when I'm DMing, knowledge checks (both successful and failed) are a nuisance that strains verisimilitude and can even ruin encounters to which they're pertinent. Knowledge: Local is the worst offender, but the others have their faults, as well. I can understand why developers thought they were a good idea, but I'd either do away with or almost entirely rewrite the rules for knowledge skills if I were making a "3.5 fix."


Yes, but that's not really an analogy that's applicable to secret house rules unless you have a character who is from a different physical universe or you're going into Sci-Fi cutting-edge discoveries that are recent in-game.
Not really. Aristotelian mechanics held sway for quite some time, and were totally wrong. This means that in the real world, a lot of people who aimed siege weapons did so under numerous misapprehensions about how the projectiles of those weapons traveled. They, in other words, not only did not understand but fundamentally misunderstood the "mechanics" of their "class." You can do something your entire life and even be fairly successful at it without really understanding how it works.

jedipotter
2014-08-18, 03:15 PM
"Using a bag of holding is cheating," it doesn't matter whether that's an opinion or not, because you're still making that claim about people not at your table.

How does what I think effect other people at other tables?



That doesn't seem like stuff especially linked to role playing, is the problem. You may be able to role play in this rhetorical blender, but it seems like it would be much more difficult, and like it'd be nigh impossible to seriously develop a character.

Combat, or at least danger, brings out more of a character then just ''standing around''.





No, not everyone is a monster expert. Only the guy who spent large quantities of time. In your system though, a person could spend their whole lives studying animals, but they'd be caught completely off guard the first time they see an elephant in-game.

Ok, but before 1500, did anyone in North America...even an animal expert...ever see an elephant? Well, in D&D they would just need to roll like higher then 10 to know all about a common animal like an elephant. Even though that makes no sense.

If D&D did limit knowledge to True Experts, I'd be fine with that....but the idea that a warrior or wizard ''went to school just to learn about monsters and got a doctorate in monster stuff'' is just silly. And in D&D, you either know the truth, or know nothing at all. There is no chance you might know something wrong.




Objectionable in and of itself, due to the idea that optimization itself is wrong, but you're missing the point to some extent. My argument is that you've claimed, and I can cite this one pretty easily, that high ability scores are intrinsically bad, in addition to being bad by merit of a person choosing them.

I don't like high ability scores picked by point buys by optimizers, this is true. But It's not that I don't like all high ability scores. And if you picked by point by and did not optimize, you'd be fine with me.

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 03:19 PM
Recall tertiarily that we can just kinda look at JP's list of created threads, and see several campaigns she's started.

Yeah but that involves, like, clicking on stuff :smalltongue:

Zrak
2014-08-18, 03:23 PM
How does what I think effect other people at other tables?

I think the objection is that when you say something is cheating, it sounds like your opinion is that people who use bags of holding, in any kind of game at any table, are cheaters. Since most people don't care for being called "cheaters," the implication that their style of play is cheating, even if it's the accepted standard at their table, rubs them the wrong way.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 03:28 PM
Ok, but before 1500, did anyone in North America...even an animal expert...ever see an elephant? Well, in D&D they would just need to roll like higher then 10 to know all about a common animal like an elephant. Even though that makes no sense. Actually, to know about an Elephant in D&D requires a much higher check - which some people consider a problem, because it leads to 4e's "Bear Lore" nonsense (Admittedly caused by people taking the real world for granted. Seriously - bears are like Mini-Tarrasques.) Or 3.5's "Your common farmer can't identify a cow, or realize that a Minotaur is a different species than himself"

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 03:32 PM
Not really. Aristotelian mechanics held sway for quite some time, and were totally wrong. This means that in the real world, a lot of people who aimed siege weapons did so under numerous misapprehensions about how the projectiles of those weapons traveled. They, in other words, not only did not understand but fundamentally misunderstood the "mechanics" of their "class." You can do something your entire life and even be fairly successful at it without really understanding how it works.

Not disputing that, but, again, that example doesn't really apply well here. In that case their misunderstanding limits them, but they, with the appropriate experience, will/did/could know that doing X has Y happen, which is more than can be said with the secret houserules situation.

Unless there's a secret house rule that I missed that it does apply well to. In which case, err, well, what houserule was that?

eggynack
2014-08-18, 03:33 PM
How does what I think effect other people at other tables?
Well, it insults them, if you post those things you think on the internet. Such is the nature of things. As is though, this is a bit of a non sequitur. Whether your statements impact other tables does nothing to change the truth value of those words, and it definitely does nothing to alter the value of logic.


Combat, or at least danger, brings out more of a character then just ''standing around''.
This seems like a bit of a straw man. First, I don't recall anyone saying that you should just stand around. Hell, even with very low danger of death, you could still have a perfectly fine diplomacy or intrigue based campaign. Second, you've often stated that your campaigns have ridiculous lethality levels, apparently at the rate of a death every other round, but more likely at a lower but still high rate. There is a lot of room in between ridiculous danger and no danger. Third, as a synthesis of the first two points, there's more than one type of danger. Threaten a character with the removal of their noble status, and see how they scramble to avert that end. Then, in failure, they have to deal with a problem far more rooted in role-play than rolling a new character.


Ok, but before 1500, did anyone in North America...even an animal expert...ever see an elephant?
Perhaps not, but they may have heard of one, if the knowledge was widespread. It likely wasn't, but the fact of the matter is that we're working with a high magic world where communication can happen in a manner more akin to, say, 50 or 100 years ago. I'm not really sure about the timeline of telephones, but just figure a reality where you can contact anyone in possession of sand with a 3rd level spell, and where you can just teleport to the elephants with a 5th. Moreover, your argument would equally stop our noble knowledge haver from knowing anything about the buffalo that run nearby his village, at least prior to seeing one during the game.

Well, in D&D they would just need to roll like higher then 10 to know all about a common animal like an elephant. Even though that makes no sense.
That's just inaccurate. Elephants have 11 HD, so you would need a 21 to identify one, and much higher if you want to know everything about it. Actually, the necessary roll seems a bit high in this case.


If D&D did limit knowledge to True Experts, I'd be fine with that....but the idea that a warrior or wizard ''went to school just to learn about monsters and got a doctorate in monster stuff'' is just silly. And in D&D, you either know the truth, or know nothing at all. There is no chance you might know something wrong.
The wizard did, or at least he took a lot of classes in the relevant monsters, and did well in them (given his high intelligence). That's what putting all of your points into a skill means, and that's what you need to do in order to get anything like the perfect knowledge you hate.





I don't like high ability scores picked by point buys by optimizers, this is true. But It's not that I don't like all high ability scores. And if you picked by point by and did not optimize, you'd be fine with me.

Just to be clear here, you're saying that you don't agree with the views you put forth in this post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17918356&postcount=97)?

Krazzman
2014-08-18, 03:37 PM
In my (albeit somewhat hypocritical) opinion a player should know the things about his/her character. Every Houserule I have is not really written down. It is a chaotic mess. The Solo Campaign with my wife had this conversation:

Wife: "I'm thinking about going TWF... but that's so many feats I would need..."
Me: "I changed the rulings on them... so far no one even cared about it. Here is how it works:[explaining]".

Currently her Feats on her Barbarian//Inquisitor are TWF, Raging Vitality and Improved Initiative.

The point with that was that I wanted to make TWF more viable. It is still a 3 Feat-chain but so far no one in my games even touched it until the solo campaign started.
It shows that the stuff that is important for the player characters should be known. In some cases this can be a mystery. Like JediPotters "Bag of Holding" are rarely used and can end up crap through teleportation. Or the summoning thing. Depending on Backstory I would give hints or tell the player what the rule in effect is.

Other changes I had and did will be known to or are already known (Spell Points instead of Spell Slots and the changes to TWF, I will probably soon be forced to write them all down) so far everything about her character according to housrules or homebrew are known to her.

For my games (in the ones I play in and the ones I DM) I like a mutual understanding/agreeing.
I think it is important. Because I experienced other games where that was not really the case and didn't like it.

Jay R
2014-08-18, 03:43 PM
Technically, I would argue that those are not, in fact, games, but rather "puzzles."

They are designed by game designers, developed by game companies, sold as games in game stores, and bought by gamers who want to play the games.

Feel free to call them puzzles. But the rest of the world doesn't.

In any event, if you modify your statement to "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a [poor] game and no one should play it unless it plays in many ways like a puzzle," then you and I have very little disagreement. If you're sticking with the original statement, then calling these games puzzles is irrelevant.


Same thing for me; If the players don't know how the game operates, they cannot make informed decisions. Sourcebooks, however, are often not sources of...rules.

I agree that players should know as much about how things work as their characters do, but there is no reason for the players to understand something that their characters don't. In my current game, I give everybody a couple of paragraphs about cosmology and the gods. I gave the two clerics a two-page description that included much more.


Irrelevant. Knowing how the rules work is not the same as knowing all information about the world. What a "ClickClick" is not 'rules' by most definitions.

Monster stat blocks are unambiguously rules. If you wish to make an exception for those kinds of rules, then you and I are (once again) in closer agreement than your original phrasing indicated.


Same thing, IMHO. (Also, if swords get stuck in dead flesh, why don't they get stuck in live flesh? If anything, there's a lot more pressures and stuff going on in something that's alive. What is it about the zombification process that makes them so adhesive? :P)

I have no idea. I don't even know what the physical aspects of the zombification process is. It's as arbitrary as silver against devils and cold iron against demons. I just wanted to make the encounter slightly more memorable.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 03:48 PM
I think the objection is that when you say something is cheating, it sounds like your opinion is that people who use bags of holding, in any kind of game at any table, are cheaters. Since most people don't care for being called "cheaters," the implication that their style of play is cheating, even if it's the accepted standard at their table, rubs them the wrong way.

Less sounds like and more... that's what using the language in that way means/conveys.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 03:52 PM
They are designed by game designers, developed by game companies, sold as games in game stores, and bought by gamers who want to play the games.

Feel free to call them puzzles. But the rest of the world doesn't.

In any event, if you modify your statement to "Any game that depends on players not knowing the rules is a [poor] game and no one should play it unless it plays in many ways like a puzzle," then you and I have very little disagreement. If you're sticking with the original statement, then calling these games puzzles is irrelevant.

Rogue-likes are also rather dependent on hidden rules, and are less alike to a puzzle than an adventure game is. I've said in the past that Jedipotter's proposed style is alike to a rogue-like in that manner as a result. Still, Jedipotter's games apparently feature constantly changing hidden rules, which is a very different and very problematic thing, and as I alluded to in the post above, a rogue-like isn't the most hospitable place for role-playing, even if it's theoretically possible to do so.

My general theory of Jedipotter's games, as it stands, is that players just kinda role-play as themselves, with no actual difference from character to character. It's an idea supported by the high lethality setting, but it is an idea even more supported by the fact that metagaming is not only encouraged, but fundamentally the way the game is played. In such a game, I can grant at least a bit more respect to the style, though again, I cannot abide by the houserules changing mid-game.

Arbane
2014-08-18, 03:54 PM
There's also 'bait and switch' games, where the GM tells everyone to make characters for one game (like a spy/crime caper setting), then suddenly shifts it to another (....and while they're halfway through a mission, the Zombie apocalypse breaks out). This has its own problems (the players may well feel cheated, and nobody wants their character to get their role changed from 'computer hacker' to 'useless gimp').

BRC
2014-08-18, 03:55 PM
The question I'm wondering is: Why do you keep your House Rules secret, and when, if ever, do you reveal them.

And more importantly, how much of the "Weight" of running the rules are you carrying on yourself.

Now, it's one thing if you are running a game and you intentionally keep most of the rules to yourself in order to speed things up and avoid rules-lawyering. The players have their character sheets and their dice, they know to add this number to this dice result and give you what they rolled. Stuff like setting the DC of a knowledge check, or the specific bonuses/penalties involved with an attack, you keep to yourself.

For example, rather than the player thinking "I am making an attack roll with a -2 range penalty against a target with concealment but I have a high-ground bonus", the player just knows that they are on a tower shooting down at an enemy hiding in the bushes a bit outside their bow's optimum range.

That's one way to play, especially with newer players. the DM carries the "Weight" of doing all the math and rules knowledge, while the players focus on the story. Games go faster as players don't spend time doing math, the DM can freely fudge things for simplicity (for example, if an enemy is left with 3hp, a DM can just have them drop, rather than dragging a lengthy combat along for another round) And it works provided you return reasonably consistent results. It's not the type of game for everybody, but if people know that's what they are going to be playing, it's fine.
For something like a Knowledge skill, provided you stick to the general rule of "Higher Rolls=More Information" you're probably fine.


On the Other hand, if your intent with "Hiding" your house rules is to Trick, Trap, or Deceive your players, that's another story. If you change how you are implementing houserules mid-game. If, when a player says "I do X" you say "NOPE! HOUSERULE! X DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!" or worse, have things instantly fail without even mentioning that they ran up against a Secret Houserule. Houserules are not a weapon for the DM to wield against the players.

Players should know the rules of the game, and the DM should inform them about relevant rules as early as possible, so they don't spend an hour setting up for some plan that won't work because of a secret DM houserule. Especially if the DM is changing houserules mid-game, declaring that a spell that worked ONE way five minutes ago, now works a different way.

Kalmageddon
2014-08-18, 04:01 PM
I'm just going to let Coidzor do the talking while I just shake my head in disbelief at some of the posts I've read in here.

draken50
2014-08-18, 04:03 PM
So I suppose the laws of physics are traps, then. :smallsigh:

Wow... I finally get a chance to check on this, and wow... that's just awesome. Like, that is the worst argument I've ever seen and I obviously have internet access. Like, are you trying to go with some, "GOD is the GM of the D&D game that is life" thing? Is that the goal?

Because otherwise, I have no idea what your though process is. I mean yeah, if I guess if I went to play tennis, there's no rule that says the ball comes down due to gravity, but that's not a rule of tennis is it? I mean, if somehow I hit it and it froze over the court, it might break several known physical laws, but not the rules of tennis. So aside from some "Life is a great game" philosophical junk, I'm not getting the point.

See, I thought we were talking about D&D. You know, where there are spells and stuff constantly designed to break our known physical laws. So yeah, players are making the assumption that gravity works as normal, especially because there are rules for falling damage and the like. If you think your viewpoint of quantum mechanics is going to effect the outcome of player actions in a D&D game, i.e. your going to arbitrate, via some methodology solely within your control the outcome of the actions of the players, a critical failure table, a percentage roll for whether their impertinence of using magic to alter the world will cause the destruction of the game universe, a if you get hit for 10 damage you're character rolls fortitude to avoid pooping themselves. Then yes, those are rules you've decided to use, and I think it's stupid not to tell the players.

If however, you really are and want to talk about "secret rules" that affect matter in the known physical universe... I think you might have the wrong board.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 04:10 PM
The rules of D&D sort of simulate a world.

Zrak
2014-08-18, 04:13 PM
Not disputing that, but, again, that example doesn't really apply well here. In that case their misunderstanding limits them, but they, with the appropriate experience, will/did/could know that doing X has Y happen, which is more than can be said with the secret houserules situation.

Unless there's a secret house rule that I missed that it does apply well to. In which case, err, well, what houserule was that?

I think this depends on the setting. If wizardry is something that's widely studied by open-minded people using modern scientific methodologies, sure. If that's not the case, it's totally reasonable for even a fairly experienced wizard not to know exactly what can go wrong with any given spell or why it will. If the mis-summon chance is 1%, a mage who doesn't focus on summoning could easily go their whole life without knowing it exists, and a mage who does focus on summoning could easily only learn of it the first time it happens to him, if his teacher just got lucky or he's self-taught. In a vaguely medieval setting, I'd argue it's more reasonable to assume scientific methodologies and advanced networks of open communication aren't really in place.


That's just inaccurate. Elephants have 11 HD, so you would need a 21 to identify one, and much higher if you want to know everything about it. Actually, the necessary roll seems a bit high in this case.
Regardless of whether the DC is too high or too low for an elephant, I think the point is that the system of basing the DC on HD rather than proximity or ubiquity is fundamentally broken.

Knaight
2014-08-18, 04:19 PM
Regardless of whether the DC is too high or too low for an elephant, I think the point is that the system of basing the DC on HD rather than proximity or ubiquity is fundamentally broken.

I'd agree with this, though it's often less a matter of ubiquity and more a matter of distinctiveness - there are a lot of ubiquitous rodents, but it's a lot easier to tell a moose from an elk than it is to distinguish between them for a lot of people, based entirely on moose being distinctive, interesting creatures that catch peoples attention, and pine squirrels generally just not being that way.

Still, that's a reason to be opposed to the implementation of knowledge skills in D&D, not the existence of knowledge skills conceptually. Jedipotter has consistently opposed knowledge skills in general, not just D&D's lousy implementation.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 04:20 PM
Regardless of whether the DC is too high or too low for an elephant, I think the point is that the system of basing the DC on HD rather than proximity or ubiquity is fundamentally broken.
It's not a perfect system, I admit, but replacing it with, "Knowledge skills don't really exist, and no one knows about elephants at all," just seems ridiculous to me. Creating some knowledge house rules where proximity and ubiquity are taken into account seems reasonable enough, and just applying game allowed circumstance bonuses and penalties when things seem out of whack seems similarly reasonable, but this way of going about it seems completely unreasonable, and worse than any possible issues with the HD based knowledge system.

draken50
2014-08-18, 04:32 PM
The rules of D&D sort of simulate a world.

Fair enough, so then do you consider "Water is wet" to be a houserule?

How about: "Icy surfaces are slick?" Is that a houserule?

See, I would consider "Every time a pc makes a jump check, I roll a d20, and if I get a 2. They are instead launched in to orbit." That seems to me to be a houserule. A silly one, but I think it makes a reasonable example.

Now then if the GM wants to say: "The gravity of your planet has been rendered unstable due to magical blah blah blah. There are instances of people and things launched from the surface never to be seen again, presumably due to some combination of an upward force, and a localized flux of gravity" Then at least the players know it can happen, and understand there is some inherent risk to jumping.

So while I think this rule would be kind of weird. I'd still expect to be made aware of it, in some manner by the GM rather than finding my character dead in space after trying to jump over a stream with absolutely know explanation due to a "secret house rule". Which as a player, I would assume was just the GM being a **** and having no actual interest in the game beyond messing with the players.

Edited:(for this last section, please note that I am referring to the hypothetical GM of my proposed example, not anything or anyone else on this board. Thank you)

Vhaidara
2014-08-18, 04:35 PM
It's not a perfect system, I admit, but replacing it with, "Knowledge skills don't really exist, and no one knows about elephants at all," just seems ridiculous to me. Creating some knowledge house rules where proximity and ubiquity are taken into account seems reasonable enough, and just applying game allowed circumstance bonuses and penalties when things seem out of whack seems similarly reasonable, but this way of going about it seems completely unreasonable, and worse than any possible issues with the HD based knowledge system.

Actually, eggy, you forgot that, in Jedipotter's campaigns, characters know everything about monsters that the player knows. So, in fact, every PC whose player has access to the SRD and Google can tell you that this is (http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/004/cache/african-elephant_435_600x450.jpg) an elephant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm), even if they have an Int of 3 and have never left their alien colony on the moon (which is completely insular and self supported) before now.

Zrak
2014-08-18, 04:35 PM
It's not a perfect system, I admit, but replacing it with, "Knowledge skills don't really exist, and no one knows about elephants at all," just seems ridiculous to me. Creating some knowledge house rules where proximity and ubiquity are taken into account seems reasonable enough, and just applying game allowed circumstance bonuses and penalties when things seem out of whack seems similarly reasonable, but this way of going about it seems completely unreasonable, and worse than any possible issues with the HD based knowledge system.

Has jedipotter actually said that "no one knows about elephants at all"? The impression I got was that characters' knowledge base was established based on their background and RP, essentially by fiat. I don't really see a problem with this, since I feel like knowledge in my games ends up bordering on this, anyway; if someone is playing a Paladin who has dedicated his life to hunting undead, I don't care what he rolls, he knows what a vampire is.


I'd agree with this, though it's often less a matter of ubiquity and more a matter of distinctiveness

Yeah, that's a good point. I think there are enough factors that it's pretty hard to make rules that model knowledge with any verisimilitude, and even the most verisimilar rules still run the risk of both successes and failures being anything from frustrating to encounter-breaking. In general, I think a rules-light approach to character knowledge just makes more sense. You obviously don't have to agree, but I think it's a tenable position to take on the subject, given the number of potential pitfalls.

Jormengand
2014-08-18, 04:41 PM
Wow... I finally get a chance to check on this, and wow... that's just awesome. Like, that is the worst argument I've ever seen and I obviously have internet access. Like, are you trying to go with some, "GOD is the GM of the D&D game that is life" thing? Is that the goal?

Because otherwise, I have no idea what your though process is. I mean yeah, if I guess if I went to play tennis, there's no rule that says the ball comes down due to gravity, but that's not a rule of tennis is it? I mean, if somehow I hit it and it froze over the court, it might break several known physical laws, but not the rules of tennis. So aside from some "Life is a great game" philosophical junk, I'm not getting the point.

Your lack of observance of the point is irrelevant to the value of my argument, but given your inability to comprehend I suppose I shall have to explain further.

We do not know all the laws of physics, and in fact neither has anyone memorised the entirety of every Dungeons and Dragons Revised Third Edition sourcebook ever to come to be. There are, and will always be, rules of which you are unaware. That, however, is neither a bad thing, nor is it a "Trap" of any calibre.


See, I thought we were talking about D&D. You know, where there are spells and stuff constantly designed to break our known physical laws. So yeah, players are making the assumption that gravity works as normal, especially because there are rules for falling damage and the like.

Might I suggest, given that you so frivolously wasted your time informing me as I already knew that you did in fact have access to the internet, use this fact in aid of aquiring a dictionary definition of "Analogy"?

My point, whether or not you are capable of understanding such a point, is that there are and will always be rules of which you are not aware, And That's Okay. You may have noticed the Total War games on this forum, in which only the gamesmaster is actually aware of all the rules in operation. Indeed, some games (such as Alea Iacta Est or Roll to Dodge) actually require that the DM, GM, ST, OP, Arbiter or whatever they might be create rules on the spot (the entire rules text of the former being 2 pages long, and of the latter half a page), and even in Dungeons and Dragons, and even in non-role-playing-games (such as Warhammer 40,000) acknowledge that not all situations are necessarily covered by the rules as written.

Incidentally, I advise most of the posters in this thread never to take up free-form roleplaying.

Scowling Dragon
2014-08-18, 04:48 PM
Personally if a video game secretly kept track of information that you thought did not factor in only to use a surprise reveal of that information to punish you that would be the worst and most insulting thing I had ever seen.

For example sometimes you hear:

"We need to Hurry Bla bla bla has the empress"

But usually you just take the time to grind or such.

And then surprise reveal:

"Haha we where keeping track of time! Empress is dead!"

Thats not good game design.

SiuiS
2014-08-18, 04:48 PM
I keep a lot of my house rules secret. Players are told some, can figure out others, but most remain unknown. Though I lot of my houserules are more setting rules, if you see a difference between the two.

To play D&D, one only need to know the basics like roll 1d20 vs the DC of something and to subtract hit points when damage is done. You don't ''need'' to know every rule to play the game.


This is true. But this is also an exercise in good faith.



I wonder though how you handle any event in the game. Say you have a spellcaster character and go to cast a spell...and it fizzles out. Do you immediately start screaming at the DM and say how you can't trust them?

I've been in both possible versions of this scenario, actually.

If a spell fizzles out, you would assume that there is a reason, and investigate it. It's an anomaly – not a usual happenstance – and should be considered relevant. Here, trust in the GM is what allows you roll with the occurrence and let it enhance play. You so not engender trust in your players.

Frankly, you're a jerk. You like being a jerk, you get off on this jerk-behavior, and you rationalize it behind a bunch of contradicting platitudes ("roll with DM changes", "Trust no one"). And that's fine. It's okay to be a jerk. I'm a jerk. And a narcissist! But let's call a spade a spade. Your houserules outline and glorify DM behavior that is arrogant, antagonistic, and self indulgent beyond any real use.


I'd like to point out that JP ignore the knowledge skill preferring for the players 'to find about it in game'-essentially boiling all knowledge & spellcraft checks to being useless-this being one of the houserules she has said she uses which she would spring on a player meaning the investment of skill points which could have been used elsewhere have been wasted.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Spell craft could be used as an investigative skill rather than a knowledge one, say; a sort of skill based detect magic parameters check.


But your players should trust you, despite you not even telling them the rules of the game that you are adjudicating?

Yeah.


Sooooo, why did we need a new thread to address any of this?

Yes. The OP was interesting, although it quickly became antagonistic and polarized.

The concepts are worth talking about. It's just that the current execution – that is, the people on both sides already embroiled in the topic – are set in their trenches and bring up past stuff rather than going into an abstract discussion.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 04:49 PM
Actually, eggy, you forgot that, in Jedipotter's campaigns, characters know everything about monsters that the player knows. So, in fact, every PC whose player has access to the SRD and Google can tell you that this is (http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/004/cache/african-elephant_435_600x450.jpg) an elephant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm), even if they have an Int of 3 and have never left their alien colony on the moon (which is completely insular and self supported) before now.
It's a pretty odd resolution to the problem, but it vaguely works as one, in keeping with the aforementioned rogue-like structure. If the answer is in fact just, "The character is the player," then that's reasonably self consistent, though I don't know that it necessarily reflects her views.

Has jedipotter actually said that "no one knows about elephants at all"? The impression I got was that characters' knowledge base was established based on their background and RP, essentially by fiat. I don't really see a problem with this, since I feel like knowledge in my games ends up bordering on this, anyway; if someone is playing a Paladin who has dedicated his life to hunting undead, I don't care what he rolls, he knows what a vampire is.
She's said similar things, certainly, claiming that knowledge checks just give you absolutely nothing. Sure, it's possible that she allows a character in elephant culture to know about elephants upon entering the game, but it seems pretty obvious to me that anything as indirect as, "I took three separate classes on elephants in school," will yield nothing.

Because, really, that is the kind of knowledge we're talking about, when a character has a dozen points in a skill, a synergy bonus from another skill, and maybe even an ability that boosts that skill. Knowledge reflects what a character has learned, so while there are some plausible corner cases where a character has knowledge coming into a game, the assumption here is that characters have never really learned anything prior to the game. Never read "A Brief History of Elephants", never gone to a lecture series on the nature of elephants, and never had a long and productive chat with an elephant expert about how cool elephants are. Experience, and not the leveling kind, begins in the moment your character poofs into the world for the most part.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 04:53 PM
Personally if a video game secretly kept track of information that you thought did not factor in only to use a surprise reveal of that information to punish you that would be the worst and most insulting thing I had ever seen.

For example sometimes you hear:

"We need to Hurry Bla bla bla has the empress"

But usually you just take the time to grind or such.

And then surprise reveal:

"Haha we where keeping track of time! Empress is dead!"

Thats not good game design.

You've clearly never played a large number of text adventure games, or adventure games.

One of them (a really good one) T-Zero, required you to change the date in the BIOS, to a leap year in order to complete the game, and didn't tell you. It's one of the best games I've played, ever in fact.

BRC
2014-08-18, 04:58 PM
You've clearly never played a large number of text adventure games, or adventure games.

One of them (a really good one) T-Zero, required you to change the date in the BIOS, to a leap year in order to complete the game, and didn't tell you. It's one of the best games I've played, ever in fact.

You may have enjoyed it, but I wouldn't throw around the word "Best" like that. "Favorite" would probably be better. Personally, I would be furious at a game that did that. I would hate that.

There is a difference between a game being CHALLENGING, and a game being HARD. Between a game being hard to BEAT, and hard to PLAY.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 05:00 PM
You may have enjoyed it, but I wouldn't throw around the word "Best" like that. "Favorite" would probably be better. Personally, I would be furious at a game that did that. I would hate that.

There is a difference between a game being CHALLENGING, and a game being HARD. Between a game being hard to BEAT, and hard to PLAY.

Well see the point of T-Zero was finding the complicated and convoluted solutions. That was a design choice. Figuring out the exact words to use to solve a lot of the problems. I would state that it is one of the better games as far as text adventure games go, although I could see how somebody wouldn't enjoy that. I've played it with several people though, and most of the folks I've met who were into IF games, did think it was one of the best, which really as far as games go is a good working definition.

Scowling Dragon
2014-08-18, 05:03 PM
And thats why Adventure games are remembered with "WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO TO SOLVE THAT PUZZLE?" and not fond memories.

Adventure games are not lauded for their game design. :smallannoyed:

draken50
2014-08-18, 05:05 PM
Your lack of observance of the point is irrelevant to the value of my argument, but given your inability to comprehend I suppose I shall have to explain further.

I generally consider the ability of a point to be easily understood to be in its favor. Ignorant lout that I am though, I appreciate your magnanimous decision to further expound upon your point.


We do not know all the laws of physics, and in fact neither has anyone memorised the entirety of every Dungeons and Dragons Revised Third Edition sourcebook ever to come to be. There are, and will always be, rules of which you are unaware. That, however, is neither a bad thing, nor is it a "Trap" of any calibre.

Indeed, there is still however the decision to use rules outside of those provided, either as variants or totally new. Which the GM is aware of, and has decided to use. This is absolutely within the GM's purview and I have no issue with that. I do however believe that those rules should be communicated to the players, before they are effected by them. This would negate their secrecy, and which was the only problem I had with "secret houserules."


My point, whether or not you are capable of understanding such a point, is that there are and will always be rules of which you are not aware, And That's Okay. You may have noticed the Total War games on this forum, in which only the gamesmaster is actually aware of all the rules in operation.

I was not in fact, though further explanation of said rules might influence my opinion. The decision to say, use rules that effect combat, such as related to rain, because... let's say it's raining. The gm, given the rules may not need to tell the players that it will be raining during the battle. (I'm assuming from my experience with games of a similar name for the pc, that this is some kind of combat oriented game. This of course could be wrong.) However, I would expect the GM, to expound upon what the rule changes as a result of the rain are. Powder being wet ect.


Indeed, some games (such as Alea Iacta Est or Roll to Dodge) actually require that the DM, GM, ST, OP, Arbiter or whatever they might be create rules on the spot (the entire rules text of the former being 2 pages long, and of the latter half a page), and even in Dungeons and Dragons, and even in non-role-playing-games (such as Warhammer 40,000) acknowledge that not all situations are necessarily covered by the rules as written.

I don't believe the arbitration for unaccounted for situations is something that would be considered a "secret house-rule." As a GM I have had to do this before, and I have explained my considerations and "ruling" as a result. I have also created rules for some unique situations that were explained to the players before-hand, as well as the fact that they would not be applied outside that specific situation/scenario.

For me, for something to be a "Secret House-rule" it would need to be a prepared constant (for the session, encounter whatever). Thereby something GM is aware of, is aware the players are not, and does not communicate, that specifically changes the normal mode of play. I don't consider an enemy having a different special ability to be a houserule, so much as a decision related to encounter creation. I do believe however, that any "house-rules" related to the actions the players can take, and their potential consequences should be communicated.

The example provided above, meets the criteria I am using. Needing to figure out what methodology to resolve an unusual and unexpected action would not be a "secret house-rule," by my limited definition.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 05:05 PM
And thats why Adventure games are remembered with "WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO THAT TO SOLVE A PUZZLE?" and not fond memories.

Adventure games are not lauded for their game design. :smallannoyed:

They are in fact lauded for introducing concepts that have been carried forward. Furthermore the clever wordplay and puzzles are part of those games. It's fine to say "I don't like adventure games" but to say: "All adventure games are unequivocally badly designed" is not a really a statement that people will concede on average.

BRC
2014-08-18, 05:06 PM
Well see the point of T-Zero was finding the complicated and convoluted solutions. That was a design choice. Figuring out the exact words to use to solve a lot of the problems. I would state that it is one of the better games as far as text adventure games go, although I could see how somebody wouldn't enjoy that. I've played it with several people though, and most of the folks I've met who were into IF games, did think it was one of the best, which really as far as games go is a good working definition.

Well that's a different story.
If the context of the game was challenging the players by requiring convoluted and out-of-the-box solutions, then the player is already in the mindset to think about crazy stuff like changing the BIOS to a leap year.

However, to use SD's example, thousands of games use the "HURRY! YOU MUST GO DO THE THING!" line, and then let the player loose into the overworld to do whatever they want. When they do decide to do the thing, events play out exactly the same regardless of if they went straight there, or spent some time grinding and doing side-quests. They always arrive just in time to do X.

Game designers know this, they know Gamers think like this, so if they have a character say "YOU MUST DO X IMMEDIATELY!" then set an invisible timer, and punish the player for wandering around doing other stuff before going to do X, then they are deliberately tricking the player by using their preconceived notions against them.

I guess that in certain contexts it might be acceptable, but in general if it's just a way for the devs to say "HA HA STUPID PLAYERS!", it's not right.

Scowling Dragon
2014-08-18, 05:07 PM
And also known as the pretty dead genre, with modern day version pretty much dumping most of the design aspects.

Engine
2014-08-18, 05:08 PM
Personally if a video game secretly kept track of information that you thought did not factor in only to use a surprise reveal of that information to punish you that would be the worst and most insulting thing I had ever seen.

For example sometimes you hear:

"We need to Hurry Bla bla bla has the empress"

But usually you just take the time to grind or such.

And then surprise reveal:

"Haha we where keeping track of time! Empress is dead!"

Thats not good game design.

Mass Effect 2 has something like that.
You know, one of the most successful and appreciated games of recent history.

Zrak
2014-08-18, 05:09 PM
Personally if a video game secretly kept track of information that you thought did not factor in only to use a surprise reveal of that information to punish you that would be the worst and most insulting thing I had ever seen.

For example sometimes you hear:

"We need to Hurry Bla bla bla has the empress"

But usually you just take the time to grind or such.

And then surprise reveal:

"Haha we where keeping track of time! Empress is dead!"

Thats not good game design.

No, that's not game design you like. I, for one, don't have a problem with my actions having unforeseen consequences in a game.

BRC
2014-08-18, 05:11 PM
Mass Effect 2 has something like that.
You know, one of the most successful and appreciated games of recent history.

That does not mean that aspect of the game is good by association.

Mass Effect is loved because of it's graphics, storytelling, characters, and gameplay.

Not because they hit you with an invisible ticking clock near the end of the second game.

Mass Effect 1 had a terrible inventory management system, and tedious Mako sections. Those did not become great because the rest of the game was good.

Mass Effect 3's ending is one of the most hated five minutes in gaming history. The rest of ME3 is great, but that dosn't make the ending good.

Old school adventure games like Monkey Island are loved because of their style and humor, not because of "Try using every object with every other object" based gameplay.

People enjoy a night out drinking with friends, that does not mean that the hangover they receive the following morning becomes a pleasurable part of the experience.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 05:15 PM
There's actually a really great podcast about successful use of this sort of thing, particularly changing rules in this case, hereabouts (http://ludusnovus.net/category/podcasts/page/2/). The example used, and one I have played and greatly enjoyed, is the classic "Karoshi Suicide Salaryman", in which the rules change haphazardly from level to level, often including in its puzzles solutions things like using different keys than normal or adjusting volume.

Still, that case feels very different from this one. Not changing the rules of a game is a basic rule of game design, so while it can be broken, it should be broken with care. I don't feel like the way that Jedipotter says that she breaks this rule is particularly careful, or particularly trustworthy. It also doesn't feel like the sort of rule breaking that should accompany this sort of game, based more on character than on trying to figure out the rules in a world where they're always changing. T-Zero can be based on that sort of thing, but it doesn't feel like D&D should be.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 05:19 PM
That does not mean that aspect of the game is good by association.

Mass Effect is loved because of it's graphics, storytelling, characters, and gameplay.

Not because they hit you with an invisible ticking clock near the end of the second game.

Mass Effect 1 had a terrible inventory management system, and tedious Mako sections. Those did not become great because the rest of the game was good.

Mass Effect 3's ending is one of the most hated five minutes in gaming history. The rest of ME3 is great, but that dosn't make the ending good.

Old school adventure games like Monkey Island are loved because of their style and humor, not because of "Try using every object with every other object" based gameplay.

Actually the solving the complex puzzles is an important aspect of those games. It wasn't the minigame or what-not, it was the whole game, you can't say that it wasn't something people enjoyed. Only that you didn't enoy it.

Vhaidara
2014-08-18, 05:23 PM
Mass Effect 3's ending is one of the most hated five minutes in gaming history. The rest of ME3 is great, but that dosn't make the ending good.

You know, this is just plain false. I don't know how it was originally (I've had it explained by a friend) because I played with the extended cut, but I thought the ending was great. It was one of the better endings I've seen to a game, though it lacked the person-by-person epilogue I've loved in previous Bioware games.

Engine
2014-08-18, 05:23 PM
That does not mean that aspect of the game is good by association.

Mass Effect is loved because of it's graphics, storytelling, characters, and gameplay.

Not because they hit you with an invisible ticking clock near the end of the second game.

Mass Effect 1 had a terrible inventory management system, and tedious Mako sections. Those did not become great because the rest of the game was good.

Mass Effect 3's ending is one of the most hated five minutes in gaming history. The rest of ME3 is great, but that dosn't make the ending good.

Old school adventure games like Monkey Island are loved because of their style and humor, not because of "Try using every object with every other object" based gameplay.

People enjoy a night out drinking with friends, that does not mean that the hangover they receive the following morning becomes a pleasurable part of the experience.

I mostly agree with you. My point was that you could have a great game even with a time limit to do something. It's not the time limit that makes the game great, but the game that makes the time limit acceptable.
By the way, I have no problem with time limits in videogames. I find a worse game design seeing a NPC that says I should hurry, but if I wait nothing happens. It's something I wouldn't accept at my table, both as a DM and player. Why should I accept - or thinking it's good game design - that in a videogame?

Vhaidara
2014-08-18, 05:35 PM
Personally if a video game secretly kept track of information that you thought did not factor in only to use a surprise reveal of that information to punish you that would be the worst and most insulting thing I had ever seen.

For example sometimes you hear:

"We need to Hurry Bla bla bla has the empress"

But usually you just take the time to grind or such.

And then surprise reveal:

"Haha we where keeping track of time! Empress is dead!"

Thats not good game design.

Also, side note, as someone studying Game Design in college, I consider this to actually be excellent game design, DEPENDING ON YOUR GAME. And both sides have merit.

Side One: No invisible Timers
This creates a much more realistic world. Has no one else ever played a game like Skyrim and been like "Hey, I've been screwing around in the mountains picking herbs and eating them and casting spells on animals to raise my skills for a year. Let's go back to town. Hey, the same people are in jail. Hey, no one has dealt with the bandits in X location. Hey, the war is still going on but no one has lost a family member to it in the past year. In fact, nothing has changed! Am I the only person capable of doing ANYTHING in the world?"
So the world becomes completely static, besides when and where you are interacting with it. Which is, in my opinion, totally immersion breaking.
But, it lets YOU do everything, by not letting anyone else do things.

Side Two: Invisible Timers (I'm counting things like "You have a week to do this" or anywhere else where time-sensitivity is implied)
So, you get a bandit bounty, but then get caught up in the Companions questline. And then the Mages College. and the the War, and then the "saving the world" thing. By the time you get back, you check that bandit camp, and it's empty. Someone else (maybe the guards, or one of the army's that wanted the abandoned fort/mine) has cleared it out and collected the reward.
So now, the world is less static (will always be at least a little, because of major questlines). Much more immersive, if you don't do something for long enough, someone will.
However, now you can't do EVERYTHING

Side Three: Visible Timers
OH MY GOD MY SCREEN IS COVERED IN TIMERS WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN!?!?!?!?!?!
No one likes this option.

BRC
2014-08-18, 05:39 PM
I mostly agree with you. My point was that you could have a great game even with a time limit to do something. It's not the time limit that makes the game great, but the game that makes the time limit acceptable.
By the way, I have no problem with time limits in videogames. I find a worse game design seeing a NPC that says I should hurry, but if I wait nothing happens. It's something I wouldn't accept at my table, both as a DM and player. Why should I accept - or thinking it's good game design - that in a videogame?

The time limit isn't the problem, it's the secretive nature of that limit. Any game designer worth their salt should know that gamers will assume they have all the time in the world unless something in the UI specifically tells them otherwise.in fact, many open world games encourage you to grind and do sidequests between main quests in order to stay at the right level.

Within that context, hiding a timer is basically just the game having a laugh at the player's expense, punishing the players for not playing the game "right" without any indication of the "right" way to play besides NPC dialogue that players have been trained to ignore.

draken50
2014-08-18, 05:39 PM
I don't think their being consequences for ignoring a time sensitive plot hook/quest or whatever really counts as a "secret house-rule."

The characters may not have that information, and the GM/Video game may have set time limit, that may also adjust depending on player actions, but that's not really a house rule so much as a mechanic tied to the quest.
I guess you could argue that "Dark Warlock crystals take 5 days to charge," as a secret house-rule, but unless a player is playing a Dark Warlock and trying to charge a crystal, and said character should know how long they take to charge.

A player, playing a Dark Warlock who gets into a fight and has a GM that says, "you can't do that. In my setting you have to have charged dark warlock crystals, and you didn't buy any, and obviously haven't charged any so you explode." Yeah, that's a secret house-rule right there.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 05:43 PM
Also, side note, as someone studying Game Design in college, I consider this to actually be excellent game design, DEPENDING ON YOUR GAME. And both sides have merit.

There is, however, a fourth side, and it is the one being put forth. That side is, "Some invisible timers." In this game, if you leave one bandit quest idling, it'll stay perfectly stable for the whole game, but if you leave another, it'll time out, without any indication of which is which. I don't think that side has much merit. Have timers, or don't have timers, but be really frigging clear about which system you're using, if not by direct statement than by example (preferably a low stakes example, early in the game).

Qwertystop
2014-08-18, 05:58 PM
The time limit isn't the problem, it's the secretive nature of that limit. Any game designer worth their salt should know that gamers will assume they have all the time in the world unless something in the UI specifically tells them otherwise.in fact, many open world games encourage you to grind and do sidequests between main quests in order to stay at the right level.

Within that context, hiding a timer is basically just the game having a laugh at the player's expense, punishing the players for not playing the game "right" without any indication of the "right" way to play besides NPC dialogue that players have been trained to ignore.

Collorary: It doesn't have to be a big obvious numeric countdown, as long as it's clear that there is actually a limit. For example, Majora's Mask makes the limit clear by structuring the game so that you have to hit it at least once (and rewind) before you can go to any dungeon or do any sidequests (before you hit the limit, I don't think it actually tells you you have three days, and before day two, it's not clear that the moon is falling at a speed other than plot.

Other options are also possible - most that I can think of would be some way of making the progress visible. For example, if the horrible cloud of doom is moving slowly towards the capital city, or the Dark Rituals Of World Domination And Stuff have a shifting pattern of spinning rings and lines around the Big Magic Circle With A Bad Guy In It that's clearly increasing in size towards the Source Of Most Good Things (as opposed to flickering randomly or animation-looping).

Possibly also put something in, during an in-engine cutscene just before the player regains control, to show what happens when the Bad Thing reaches some less-critical Good Thing nearby, so it's very clear. It helps if it's big enough to be seen from everywhere, or if the antagonist wants to create fear by putting a video of it on the many TVs all over the place, or by making a gigantic illusion of it in the sky, or if there's some local creature more attuned to the situation that can give you a general idea of how much time is left (either verbally or by visibly deteriorating).

There doesn't need to be a big countdown, but there should be something to tell the player that this time, "hurry" isn't just for dramatic tension.

Zrak
2014-08-18, 05:59 PM
I just still don't see the problem with not being able to foresee the consequences of all your actions in a videogame or tabletop game. Decisions in the real world can have ramifications you didn't expect or intend, I don't see how that carrying over to video games or tabletops is inherently bad design.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 06:12 PM
There is, however, a fourth side, and it is the one being put forth. That side is, "Some invisible timers." In this game, if you leave one bandit quest idling, it'll stay perfectly stable for the whole game, but if you leave another, it'll time out, without any indication of which is which. I don't think that side has much merit. Have timers, or don't have timers, but be really frigging clear about which system you're using, if not by direct statement than by example (preferably a low stakes example, early in the game).

Why? Maybe some bandit quests are more appealing to mercenaries, and others simply aren't worth their time. If you have all invisible timers or none, you're in some respects hurting realism (or at least the sense of it). It can be frustrating to bump against a timer you weren't aware of, yes, but that isn't the end of the world. Also frustration in games is not always bad.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 06:17 PM
Why? Maybe some bandit quests are more appealing to mercenaries, and others simply aren't worth their time. If you have all invisible timers or none, you're in some respects hurting realism (or at least the sense of it). It can be frustrating to bump against a timer you weren't aware of, yes, but that isn't the end of the world. Also frustration in games is not always bad.
Even if there is some level of inconsistency in how things are timed, I think that said inconsistency should be a part of the game that's made clear in some fashion. Moreover, if some things are kept on the timer in keeping with realism, then other things should be too. Yes, some quests won't disappear over time if you leave them alone, because there's nothing there to take them away, but if there's a quest for whom no timer is illogical, then that quest must by necessity have a timer, so as to maintain that consistency. The important thing here is that there is, in fact, a uniform passage of time that holds over the entire game. Some things change with time, and some things don't in particular, but that time passage itself should be a clear cut thing.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 06:35 PM
Even if there is some level of inconsistency in how things are timed, I think that said inconsistency should be a part of the game that's made clear in some fashion. Moreover, if some things are kept on the timer in keeping with realism, then other things should be too. Yes, some quests won't disappear over time if you leave them alone, because there's nothing there to take them away, but if there's a quest for whom no timer is illogical, then that quest must by necessity have a timer, so as to maintain that consistency. The important thing here is that there is, in fact, a uniform passage of time that holds over the entire game. Some things change with time, and some things don't in particular, but that time passage itself should be a clear cut thing.

It's important to note that one of the things you value in games is consistency but that isn't necessarily true of everybody. Sometimes it's more fun to have things be a little skewed or random. Sometimes surprises can improve gameplay.It really depends. Logical gameplay can be taken too far, and what bothers you may be perfectly tolerable to somebody else.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 06:37 PM
Incidentally, I advise most of the posters in this thread never to take up free-form roleplaying.

Free-form roleplaying is incredibly different from what's being discussed here, Jormengand. Again, equating FFRP with springing secret rules on people doesn't quite fit. Sure, there's RPs like that and then there are RPs where pulling that kind of stunt is the height of rudeness.


This is true. But this is also an exercise in good faith.

There is no good faith, IIRC. Trust is a Weakness. Love is a Lie. Compromise and discussion and working with one another are all Surrender. :/


And thats why Adventure games are remembered with "WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO TO SOLVE THAT PUZZLE?" and not fond memories.

Adventure games are not lauded for their game design. :smallannoyed:

Even here, there's a spectrum. Some are lauded as masterpieces. Others gave rise to the line "insane adventure game logic."


Even if there is some level of inconsistency in how things are timed, I think that said inconsistency should be a part of the game that's made clear in some fashion. Moreover, if some things are kept on the timer in keeping with realism, then other things should be too. Yes, some quests won't disappear over time if you leave them alone, because there's nothing there to take them away, but if there's a quest for whom no timer is illogical, then that quest must by necessity have a timer, so as to maintain that consistency. The important thing here is that there is, in fact, a uniform passage of time that holds over the entire game. Some things change with time, and some things don't in particular, but that time passage itself should be a clear cut thing.

Interaction between the player and game world needs to be as clear as possible to avoid confusion. So you have to balance your other concerns with "will the player(s) continue to be able to engage with the game?"


You know, this is just plain false. I don't know how it was originally (I've had it explained by a friend) because I played with the extended cut, but I thought the ending was great. It was one of the better endings I've seen to a game, though it lacked the person-by-person epilogue I've loved in previous Bioware games.

You liking it and having no experience of the initial ending or community reaction doesn't make the backlash something people made up in their heads. :smallconfused:

AMFV
2014-08-18, 06:41 PM
Free-form roleplaying is incredibly different from what's being discussed here, Jormengand. Again, equating FFRP with springing secret rules on people doesn't quite fit. Sure, there's RPs like that and then there are RPs where pulling that kind of stunt is the height of rudeness.



Not necessarily. RPGs are far too young to have such established standard of conduct in them. Springing surprise house rules may be seen as rude to one person, or exciting and interesting to another. We've had enough people comment from the latter group to suggest that to state that it is only the one is at best clouding the issue to fit better your preferences.



Interaction between the player and game world needs to be as clear as possible to avoid confusion. So you have to balance your other concerns with "will the player(s) continue to be able to engage with the game?"

Providing that avoiding confusion is a goal, if you're trying to foster a spirit of paranoia and nervousness confusion may be a useful tool and not something to be avoided.

QuickLyRaiNbow
2014-08-18, 06:45 PM
You know, this is just plain false. I don't know how it was originally (I've had it explained by a friend) because I played with the extended cut, but I thought the ending was great. It was one of the better endings I've seen to a game, though it lacked the person-by-person epilogue I've loved in previous Bioware games.

I suppose he may have been hyperbolic, but the ending of ME3 was widely criticized. Lots and lots of people hated it. You've got Bioware devs promising in interviews that Dragon Age: Inquisition won't have an ending like ME3's. Kotaku wrote an article about how the ending was "disrespectful". Gamefront has a 5 Reasons the Fans Are Right article about hating the ending. PCGamer described it as "famously divisive". Even Forbes published a series about how "(t)he Mass Effect 3 ending controversy remains one of the most fascinating bits of fan revolt I've seen in my time as a video game journalist".

Specifically on the topic of the thread, I haven't read the thread. I just jumped in to see if there were arguments. Generally my experience in games has been that transparency is good.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 06:48 PM
It's important to note that one of the things you value in games is consistency but that isn't necessarily true of everybody. Sometimes it's more fun to have things be a little skewed or random. Sometimes surprises can improve gameplay.It really depends. Logical gameplay can be taken too far, and what bothers you may be perfectly tolerable to somebody else.
I think there is a time and place for illogical gameplay, or odd inconsistencies, but I think that you have to be really damned careful with how you use it, and know exactly what purpose you're trying to serve by making the change. This sort of tool is a dangerous one to work with, and can easily leave players feeling like they don't trust the DM/creator, or otherwise angry. In fact, that can be one reason to use such a tool, to create that sort of disconnect between player and creator. I think the issue is that I don't think that the way Jedipotter uses this tool is appreciative of the danger involved with using it, and I think that she often uses tools of this variety in order to maintain some odd form of control over her players, instead of for some higher game design purpose.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 06:48 PM
Not necessarily.

I did just state that there was a range of options, yes. So what are you not necessarilying at me for? Are you trying to argue that people don't have a range of responses?


RPGs are far too young to have such established standard of conduct in them.

But FFRPs are, from board to board, group to group, person to person, which was what I was actually addressing here rather than RPGs.


Springing surprise house rules may be seen as rude to one person, or exciting and interesting to another.

Maybe, but it's better to determine that one's players are cool with it rather than assuming everyone likes it. Y'know, sort of like springing sex and sexual misconduct on your players?


We've had enough people comment from the latter group to suggest that to state that it is only the one is at best clouding the issue to fit better your preferences.

Most of them have been "on the side of the DM," though, so that needs to be taken with its own grain of salt. Not that it's relevant here because my post that you're quoting had nothing whatsoever to do with the point you're arguing here.

Also, I'm not the one clouding the issue by saying "ALL FFRPS ARE EXACTLY ONE WAY," over here, to use hyperbole to help clarify the relative positions here.

I'm the one pointing out that there's a spectrum in contrast to that absolutist sweeping pronouncement.

Capisce?


Providing that avoiding confusion is a goal, if you're trying to foster a spirit of paranoia and nervousness confusion may be a useful tool and not something to be avoided.

...Even there you have to balance it with getting people to continue playing the game unless you're Hideo Kojima.

It's not something to be used lightly, irresponsibly, or if one doesn't know what one is on about in mucking about with such things.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 07:01 PM
I did just state that there was a range of options, yes. So what are you not necessarilying at me for? Are you trying to argue that people don't have a range of responses?

No, I'm trying to argue that what you are referring to as "the height of rudeness" does not universally qualify. It would need to be universally accepted as such to be so. Rudeness is defined by societal standards, so if society is split over an issue you can't declare that one side is "the height of rudeness" without being dismissive of the other side and not addressing any points at all.



Maybe, but it's better to determine that one's players are cool with it rather than assuming everyone likes it. Y'know, sort of like springing sex and sexual misconduct on your players?

That is hardly equivalent. Sex is a known topic that many people have trouble with, also most people do not want sexual topics brought up out of the blue. Since most people concur on this subject you could say: "It is very rude to bring up sexual topics unasked", but you can't do that with secret rules or unclear rules since there isn't a general consensus there, not even close from what I can tell.



Most of them have been "on the side of the DM," though, so that needs to be taken with its own grain of salt. Not that it's relevant here because my post that you're quoting had nothing whatsoever to do with the point you're arguing here.

That's not even remotely true, very few people have come here simply to post in JediPotter's defense as far as I can tell. The majority of people have come here to respond to allegations that nobody would enjoy a style of game like that, and have provided counter-examples. Such as Paranoia, Old School D&D and several others.

Since the accusing side is the one making the sweeping pronouncements they're the ones that have to defend said statements. I haven't said: "All games should contain secret rules" only "See here are demonstrably games that people have enjoyed that contained rules that were explicitly not for player eyes, to include at least one serious game and one non-serious game." Which should be sufficient to refute that allegation.




It's not something to be used lightly, irresponsibly, or if one doesn't know what one is on about in mucking about with such things.

Come on, I absolutely will be not be lectured about not taking my freetime activities seriously enough. Seriously, that's absurd, yes, it's possible that somebody could do something that will change a game in a way that people don't like, but implying that it's mucking about with things that are beyond the ken of most mortal DMs, absolutely not, that's ridiculous. Yes, I give a lot of thought into my rulings as a DM, but I absolutely don't think that this is in all cases necessary.


I think there is a time and place for illogical gameplay, or odd inconsistencies, but I think that you have to be really damned careful with how you use it, and know exactly what purpose you're trying to serve by making the change. This sort of tool is a dangerous one to work with, and can easily leave players feeling like they don't trust the DM/creator, or otherwise angry. In fact, that can be one reason to use such a tool, to create that sort of disconnect between player and creator. I think the issue is that I don't think that the way Jedipotter uses this tool is appreciative of the danger involved with using it, and I think that she often uses tools of this variety in order to maintain some odd form of control over her players, instead of for some higher game design purpose.

Again, see above. If people enjoy it, who cares. It's not a "dangerous tool" it's part of a game. Seriously, I play spades, everybody plays spades differently, everybody. And it's fun no matter how you play it. I play D&D, very few groups play D&D the same way.

Lastly. We have never seen Jedipotter play a game, or run a game, we don't know how she genuinely uses the rules, as I've pointed out, most of the things we see from her, I've seen in advice columns from Gary Gygax, and a lot of people really enjoyed his games. So we are not in a position to judge, because we have no idea, we don't know, we can speculate, based on her flawed communication and the fact that she likes to be controversial, but we really have no idea, and assuming we do is a pretty harsh assumption with absolutely no unbiased narrative.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 07:21 PM
Again, see above. If people enjoy it, who cares. It's not a "dangerous tool" it's part of a game. Seriously, I play spades, everybody plays spades differently, everybody. And it's fun no matter how you play it. I play D&D, very few groups play D&D the same way.
From a player perspective, you don't have to care much about fundamentals of game design. From a designer or DM perspective, the fundamental rules of game design are damn important. Understanding this stuff is how you make games that people enjoy, even if it's only part of the whole of that experience. Play D&D however you like, but on at least some level, know why you make the decisions you do about how the game works. Doing so just makes the game work better.


Lastly. We have never seen Jedipotter play a game, or run a game, we don't know how she genuinely uses the rules, as I've pointed out, most of the things we see from her, I've seen in advice columns from Gary Gygax, and a lot of people really enjoyed his games. So we are not in a position to judge, because we have no idea, we don't know, we can speculate, based on her flawed communication and the fact that she likes to be controversial, but we really have no idea, and assuming we do is a pretty harsh assumption with absolutely no unbiased narrative.
I can only have the understanding of her situation that I have. Jedipotter's ability to communicate her ideas of game design are her responsibility, rather than my own. If she'd like to adjust her past positions on things, and she apparently has on some issues (though I can't say I completely trust the change), then that is entirely her prerogative.

Brookshw
2014-08-18, 07:52 PM
From a player perspective, you don't have to care much about fundamentals of game design. From a designer or DM perspective, the fundamental rules of game design are damn important. Understanding this stuff is how you make games that people enjoy, even if it's only part of the whole of that experience. Play D&D however you like, but on at least some level, know why you make the decisions you do about how the game works. Doing so just makes the game work better. Hogwash, you've never been asked to run a game where you didn't have complete mastery of the systems rules? I know I've had plenty of opportunity to successfully do so. Most games, especially D&D, don't even expect rules and system mastery. Remember that bit in the DMG that talks about how if you don't know a rule just make something up so you keep playing rather than stop the game to figure it out? I'm not even so sure that I'd say knowing the rules always makes a game better to begin with, lots of groups like "rule of cool" style games where you'll bend or break the rules for the sake of fun.



I can only have the understanding of her situation that I have. Jedipotter's ability to communicate her ideas of game design are her responsibility, rather than my own. If she'd like to adjust her past positions on things, and she apparently has on some issues (though I can't say I completely trust the change), then that is entirely her prerogative. The problem with this is that you have player testimonial and the only thing we've had definitive evidence of is that the player in question didn't like secret summoning rules iirc, not any laundry list of things they didn't like about how the game was run. Considering that player had joined a thread specifically to talk about what they didn't like about JP's game I think it's likely they would have listed other elements if they stood out. If that's correct then you're ignoring the sample set you have in front of you to push for some other conclusion, ignoring the evidence that doesn't agree with your hypothesis if you will.

Back to outside the box games, Eggy, plug your keyboard into port two, we're reading your mind :smallbiggrin:

eggynack
2014-08-18, 08:09 PM
Hogwash, you've never been asked to run a game where you didn't have complete mastery of the systems rules? I know I've had plenty of opportunity to successfully do so. Most games, especially D&D, don't even expect rules and system mastery. Remember that bit in the DMG that talks about how if you don't know a rule just make something up so you keep playing rather than stop the game to figure it out? I'm not even so sure that I'd say knowing the rules always makes a game better to begin with, lots of groups like "rule of cool" style games where you'll bend or break the rules for the sake of fun.
You might not need really solid understanding to make basic rules, but when you start fiddling with those fundamentals, you should really know why you're doing so. A list of rules like that are in that podcast I mentioned before, and include stuff like the game being playable the whole way through, the game being governed by consistent rules, and it being possible to avert failure. Even lesser changes are probably best made with an understanding of why you're going about it (I'd advise knowing why you're nerfing a spell, and why it actually needs to be nerfed, before nerfing it, for example), but these cases are pretty important to understand.


The problem with this is that you have player testimonial and the only thing we've had definitive evidence of is that the player in question didn't like secret summoning rules iirc, not any laundry list of things they didn't like about how the game was run. Considering that player had joined a thread specifically to talk about what they didn't like about JP's game I think it's likely they would have listed other elements if they stood out. If that's correct then you're ignoring the sample set you have in front of you to push for some other conclusion, ignoring the evidence that doesn't agree with your hypothesis if you will.
Perhaps, though there are some explicitly stated things that Jedipotter claims she does that I disagree with. Overall, even if this game as presented isn't the one she's playing, I think it's worth arguing against this odd and theoretical game that's being presented.


Back to outside the box games, Eggy, plug your keyboard into port two, we're reading your mind :smallbiggrin:
That's kinda the point, actually. When the game chose to break the fourth wall in that way, and alter the rules to some extent, it was a really big deal, and simultaneously conscious of the way it was making that alteration. I think that, if you're going to have your D&D game require your player to switch the player to the other rhetorical port, you should know why you're doing that, at least on some level. The basics are critical in that way. It's like the syntax and semantics of games, and it's usually a bad move to mess with those things haphazardly.

NichG
2014-08-18, 08:16 PM
And also known as the pretty dead genre, with modern day version pretty much dumping most of the design aspects.

Actually, there's been a huge resurgence in point-and-click style adventure games in the last few years. There's a few major companies who have been steadily producing them (not to mention the new 'hidden object' sub-genre...) And as far as game design they're all over the place.

Off the top of my head:

- The 'Sherlock Holmes' series (Testament, Nemesis, Awakening, vs Jack the Ripper, etc). These tend to be very 'arbitrary puzzle'-esque.
- Yesterday, The Next Big Thing, Runaway, etc are more story-driven but are still highly adventure-game style, including all the old elements.
- Deponia series - take old-style random adventure logic and combine it with a main character who is pretty delusional and the weird logic makes sense (in that your character can't figure out how to do things like a normal person)
- Resonance (pixel-art style even!). Multicharacter collaboration puzzles where different characters have different 'abilities' and access (one character is thin so fits in pipes, another is fat so he doesn't, ...)
- Recent Monkey Island games.
- A bunch I haven't yet played: Memoria, Lost Horizon, Book of Critter Chronicles, ...

So, very much not a dead genre.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 08:52 PM
You might not need really solid understanding to make basic rules, but when you start fiddling with those fundamentals, you should really know why you're doing so. A list of rules like that are in that podcast I mentioned before, and include stuff like the game being playable the whole way through, the game being governed by consistent rules, and it being possible to avert failure. Even lesser changes are probably best made with an understanding of why you're going about it (I'd advise knowing why you're nerfing a spell, and why it actually needs to be nerfed, before nerfing it, for example), but these cases are pretty important to understand. No, you don't need to go that complex. Most of the rules aren't even "fundamental" like you seem to think they are - and the big reason to change rules is because they either don't feel right and don't sit well with your group or playstyle, to break up Gamer Complacency, or to divert the focus of the game from one area to another (A lot of them take it off the character sheet and put it back on the game being played. 3.5 has very pretty character sheets, but I find that 'mature' games play like a bland trainwreck.)

eggynack
2014-08-18, 08:56 PM
No, you don't need to go that complex. Most of the rules aren't even "fundamental" like you seem to think they are - and the big reason to change rules is because they either don't feel right and don't sit well with your group or playstyle, to break up Gamer Complacency, or to divert the focus of the game from one area to another (A lot of them take it off the character sheet and put it back on the game being played. 3.5 has very pretty character sheets, but I find that 'mature' games play like a bland trainwreck.)
Regular rules aren't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fundamental rules of game design. If you decide to just remove all of the meaning of player agency in a game on a whim, because you dislike mature games or something, then that just seems like the wrong move.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 09:02 PM
Regular rules aren't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fundamental rules of game design. If you decide to just remove all of the meaning of player agency in a game on a whim, because you dislike mature games or something, then that just seems like the wrong move.

Well Player Agency is a very nebulous concept, and the appropriate amount of it varies pretty heavily from game to game.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 09:03 PM
Actually, eggy, you forgot that, in Jedipotter's campaigns, characters know everything about monsters that the player knows. So, in fact, every PC whose player has access to the SRD and Google can tell you that this is (http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/004/cache/african-elephant_435_600x450.jpg) an elephant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm), even if they have an Int of 3 and have never left their alien colony on the moon (which is completely insular and self supported) before now.

Assuming that he's using a 3.5 Elephant, and not a 4e, AD&D, or Savage Worlds elephant.
Regular rules aren't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fundamental rules of game design. If you decide to just remove all of the meaning of player agency in a game on a whim, because you dislike mature games or something, then that just seems like the wrong move.Here's a list of the "Fundamental rules of game design":

eggynack
2014-08-18, 09:06 PM
Well Player Agency is a very nebulous concept, and the appropriate amount of it varies pretty heavily from game to game.
I'm talking about games which would remove said agency completely, making it physically impossible to impact the progress of the game in any fashion. Just varying the quantity isn't really enough to break fundamental rules of game design, though it's certainly something you should pay attention to, lest you end up railroading folks without meaning to.

Edit:
.Here's a list of the "Fundamental rules of game design":
I linked to a podcast (http://ludusnovus.net/category/podcasts/page/2/) with a reasonable starting list, which you don't actually have to listen to to see the list, and listed some examples in my post. There's not some sort of perfect ultimate list, but stuff like nerfing or banning a spell where the players know you're doing that wouldn't qualify. As a decent analogue, consider removing pretty much all punctuation from part of a work. It's been done, but it's not the sort of tool you should make use of without a damn good reason.

Double edit: And if you're implying that such rules do not exist, are you seriously claiming that the idea that you should be able to play a game isn't such a rule (Breaking the rule, in this case, would mean something like just being physically incapable of leaving the start menu, due to a glitch of some kind)? Seems pretty fundamental to game design to me.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 09:22 PM
I'm talking about games which would remove said agency completely, making it physically impossible to impact the progress of the game in any fashion. Just varying the quantity isn't really enough to break fundamental rules of game design, though it's certainly something you should pay attention to, lest you end up railroading folks without meaning to.



Well the issue still remains that it isn't always easy to see how much agency you have or don't have. I assume that complete removal of player agency is virtually impossible. After all even if you're reading from a script, one can still vary performance, which is agency. There is no way to completely remove agency, and as long as you are interacting with the world through your character there is some form of agency, now if it's meaningful may be a significant factor, but that's really a matter of taste.

So there really is no way to completely remove player agency as long as you still have players who are not you.

Coidzor
2014-08-18, 09:23 PM
No, I'm trying to argue that what you are referring to as "the height of rudeness" does not universally qualify. It would need to be universally accepted as such to be so. Rudeness is defined by societal standards, so if society is split over an issue you can't declare that one side is "the height of rudeness" without being dismissive of the other side and not addressing any points at all.

Uh, no. There are some RPs where such would be interpreted as the height of rudeness and other RPs where it's perfectly A-OK is precisely not what you think I said while also being what I actually said there. :smallconfused:

I may have mentioned the height of rudeness earlier, but that was a separate point in a separate context and relates more to my feelings about this sequence of threads and the ethoses people have been espousing in them.


That is hardly equivalent. Sex is a known topic that many people have trouble with, also most people do not want sexual topics brought up out of the blue. Since most people concur on this subject you could say: "It is very rude to bring up sexual topics unasked", but you can't do that with secret rules or unclear rules since there isn't a general consensus there, not even close from what I can tell.

Not exactly equivalent, but the parallels are there. Especially with JP's narrative about the effect their secret houserules have on those they don't give stockholm syndrome. :smalltongue:

It's a sensitive subject where you need a good understanding of who you're playing with and what you're doing with it, specifically, and you're still better off discussing such things with them rather than taking your personal knowledge of the person and guessing.

Paranoia is played with the knowledge that there are secret rules. Mao is played with the knowledge that **** is going to be made up... or it's to play "got'cha" and take advantage of newbies, though that's a lot harder due to knowledge of Mao being wider spread, partially thanks to the internet.


That's not even remotely true, very few people have come here simply to post in JediPotter's defense as far as I can tell. The majority of people have come here to respond to allegations that nobody would enjoy a style of game like that, and have provided counter-examples. Such as Paranoia, Old School D&D and several others.

All the posts I've seen on the subject have been mostly about such things being for the DM's enjoyment in oldschool suicidal D&D. My apologies. Paranoia's already been addressed as different, and I don't really feel like reinventing the wheel there, sorry.


Since the accusing side is the one making the sweeping pronouncements they're the ones that have to defend said statements. I haven't said: "All games should contain secret rules" only "See here are demonstrably games that people have enjoyed that contained rules that were explicitly not for player eyes, to include at least one serious game and one non-serious game." Which should be sufficient to refute that allegation.

Several conversations going on. Lots of people making sweeping pronouncements. This is GITP, after all. Part of what makes this a bit of a slog, even without cases like this where there's clearly some misunderstanding of one another going on here.

Besides, in this context, specifically, the sweeping pronouncement in question was Jormengand's about all FFRPs being riddled with secret house rules and the like.

Which only relates to FFRPs, rather than RPing as a whole, unless one's definition of RPing doesn't include tabletop RPGs.

Mine does, in case there was any confusion as to my meaning.


Come on, I absolutely will be not be lectured about not taking my freetime activities seriously enough.

Then you haven't understood what I was getting at. My apologies for not being clearer the first time around. If you're going to do it, do it well. JP and most of the espoused methods of doing so that aren't Paranoia have not been persuasively argued to be doing it well.

BRC had a post about the sort of questions you need to be able to answer when going down that path. So far, asking those questions myself has drawn the equivalent of a blank stare of confusion and a conversation of talking past one another.


Seriously, that's absurd, yes, it's possible that somebody could do something that will change a game in a way that people don't like, but implying that it's mucking about with things that are beyond the ken of most mortal DMs, absolutely not, that's ridiculous. Yes, I give a lot of thought into my rulings as a DM, but I absolutely don't think that this is in all cases necessary.

No, just beyond the abilities of anyone demonstrated here thus far. And something to take seriously rather than do without good reason as you had appeared to espouse. My apologies for misunderstanding you as arguing that secret house rules don't need a good reason for being secret.

If you do think that secret house rules are good without being thought through and having a good reason for them, well, I don't think that I can find a way to allow for that perspective to be anything but wrong to me.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 09:27 PM
Well the issue still remains that it isn't always easy to see how much agency you have or don't have. I assume that complete removal of player agency is virtually impossible. After all even if you're reading from a script, one can still vary performance, which is agency. There is no way to completely remove agency, and as long as you are interacting with the world through your character there is some form of agency, now if it's meaningful may be a significant factor, but that's really a matter of taste.

Actually, there is a way to have complete removal of player agency - Try being in a game with Trekkin's DM.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 09:28 PM
Uh, no. There are some RPs where such would be interpreted as the height of rudeness and other RPs where it's perfectly A-OK is precisely not what you think I said while also being what I actually said there. :smallconfused:

I may have mentioned the height of rudeness earlier, but that was a separate point in a separate context and relates more to my feelings about this sequence of threads and the ethoses people have been espousing in them.

I would say that it's more dependent on table than on RPG, after all D&D 3.5 is not that far removed from AD&D where secret rules and no-save you dies, are part of the game.



Not exactly equivalent, but the parallels are there. Especially with JP's narrative about the effect their secret houserules have on those they don't give stockholm syndrome. :smalltongue:

It's a sensitive subject where you need a good understanding of who you're playing with and what you're doing with it, specifically, and you're still better off discussing such things with them rather than taking your personal knowledge of the person and guessing.

Paranoia is played with the knowledge that there are secret rules. Mao is played with the knowledge that **** is going to be made up... or it's to play "got'cha" and take advantage of newbies, though that's a lot harder due to knowledge of Mao being wider spread, partially thanks to the internet.

But really don't have a narrative, we don't know if her players are taken advantage of, or if they even mind it. After all, people read books with the tomato surprise ending and enjoy them. I don't think that houserules are a sensitive subject, not even a little bit. Certainly not one that is on the level of sexual abuse or sexual topics.



All the posts I've seen on the subject have been mostly about such things being for the DM's enjoyment in oldschool suicidal D&D. My apologies. Paranoia's already been addressed as different, and I don't really feel like reinventing the wheel there, sorry.


But players enjoy those kind of suicidal paranoid games as well. Or some of them do. My father for example, much prefers that style of gaming, in fact he dislikes the way that 3.5 structures the relationship between player and DM, even when he is not in fact the DM, I would expect that he is not alone in that particular viewpoint.



No, just beyond the abilities of anyone demonstrated here thus far. And something to take seriously rather than do without good reason as you had appeared to espouse. My apologies for misunderstanding you as arguing that secret house rules don't need a good reason for being secret.

If you do think that secret house rules are good without being thought through and having a good reason for them, well, I don't think that I can find a way to allow for that perspective to be anything but wrong to me.

And that's fair, but you have to admit that there are games where they work, even without a lot of thought being put into them. I'm arguing that secret rules or whatnot are entirely the purview of whatever group is playing, and how serious or non-serious they are depends on that. I for one rarely tend to do anything without thinking about it. But I'm not going to judge another group if they have a working system along those lines.


Actually, there is a way to have complete removal of player agency - Try being in a game with Trekkin's DM.

Even that isn't total. You can always leave, and that's agency.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 09:29 PM
Well the issue still remains that it isn't always easy to see how much agency you have or don't have. I assume that complete removal of player agency is virtually impossible. After all even if you're reading from a script, one can still vary performance, which is agency. There is no way to completely remove agency, and as long as you are interacting with the world through your character there is some form of agency, now if it's meaningful may be a significant factor, but that's really a matter of taste.

So there really is no way to completely remove player agency as long as you still have players who are not you.
It's less possible in a tabletop, but the example presented in the podcast is a game called Ramses, in which all of your actions have the same results, regardless of your input. No varying in performance whatsoever. A similar example is Progress Quest, in which, after setting up initial stats, of whom strength is the only one of any relevance, the game just proceeds without any input whatsoever. I suppose you could argue that the stat choosing step is agency, but then again, the game could easily not have that step, and that step barely impacts anything anyway. It seems nearly impossible to have a game without agency, but that's just because it's such a fundamental rule of game design.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 09:33 PM
It's less possible in a tabletop, but the example presented in the podcast is a game called Ramses, in which all of your actions have the same results, regardless of your input. No varying in performance whatsoever. A similar example is Progress Quest, in which, after setting up initial stats, of whom strength is the only one of any relevance, the game just proceeds without any input whatsoever. I suppose you could argue that the stat choosing step is agency, but then again, the game could easily not have that step, and that step barely impacts anything anyway. It seems nearly impossible to have a game without agency, but that's just because it's such a fundamental rule of game design.

But here's the thing, how are the players going to know that they would get the same results regardless of their actions? Apparent agency is really what's important, I'll admit as a DM I've occasionally had the same exact encounter in all directions, because I wanted to give players a feeling of control that was greater than what it actually was. So while they had no agency, going any direction produced the same encounter, they weren't aware that this was in fact the case.

Edit: So again unless players have access to the scientific method or ask you point-blank, they won't be aware of their actual agency, and the important thing is their perception of their agency.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 09:38 PM
But here's the thing, how are the players going to know that they would get the same results regardless of their actions? Apparent agency is really what's important, I'll admit as a DM I've occasionally had the same exact encounter in all directions, because I wanted to give players a feeling of control that was greater than what it actually was. So while they had no agency, going any direction produced the same encounter, they weren't aware that this was in fact the case.
I'm pretty sure that all of the in-game results are just that the character lazes around and does nothing, so it's reasonably clear that you're not impacting the game, and Progress Quest is incredibly obvious about the fact. Gregory Weir has a separate podcast on false agency, incidentally. Man, that guy is awesome. Haven't been into the whole pretentious indie game thing for a bit now, but he was pretty great at it.

Edit: As for false agency being OK, I'm not really sure on that count. It seems like a pretty crappy thing to do to players, especially in the long term, where you might as well just be playing the game by yourself.

Sartharina
2014-08-18, 09:42 PM
Even that isn't total. You can always leave, and that's agency.I'm kind of torn on admitting that this is true, and taking a crack at just how bad Trekkin's DM was (It will forever dominate your destiny!)

Arbane
2014-08-18, 09:56 PM
It's less possible in a tabletop, but the example presented in the podcast is a game called Ramses, in which all of your actions have the same results, regardless of your input. No varying in performance whatsoever. A similar example is Progress Quest, in which, after setting up initial stats, of whom strength is the only one of any relevance, the game just proceeds without any input whatsoever. I suppose you could argue that the stat choosing step is agency, but then again, the game could easily not have that step, and that step barely impacts anything anyway. It seems nearly impossible to have a game without agency, but that's just because it's such a fundamental rule of game design.

I don't think Progress Quest really qualifies as a 'game'. It's more of a complex screen saver.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 10:00 PM
I don't think Progress Quest really qualifies as a 'game'. It's more of a complex screen saver.
I can see the argument, though I tend to consider it a zero player game. That's just how fundamental rules of game design roll though, and why breaking them is a big deal. Breaking some of them leaves you with a non-game, and breaking others breaks the trust of players and changes the entire nature of a game.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 10:47 PM
I can see the argument, though I tend to consider it a zero player game. That's just how fundamental rules of game design roll though, and why breaking them is a big deal. Breaking some of them leaves you with a non-game, and breaking others breaks the trust of players and changes the entire nature of a game.

Well again the question is, if you think your choices are relevant isn't that what matters? For example if I sat somebody down at Progress Quest and told them that it was a game, then it's as much a game as anything else...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/20

See the above example.


I'm pretty sure that all of the in-game results are just that the character lazes around and does nothing, so it's reasonably clear that you're not impacting the game, and Progress Quest is incredibly obvious about the fact. Gregory Weir has a separate podcast on false agency, incidentally. Man, that guy is awesome. Haven't been into the whole pretentious indie game thing for a bit now, but he was pretty great at it.

Edit: As for false agency being OK, I'm not really sure on that count. It seems like a pretty crappy thing to do to players, especially in the long term, where you might as well just be playing the game by yourself.

But I'm not playing the game by myself. Hell as a DM, I'm not really playing the game at all. I'm providing the backdrop for it. Which requires a different outlook than that of a player. I have to compromise more than a player might be expected to. I have to balance encounters to cater to various players without appearing that I'm doing that, I have to be able to make it appear to players that their choices are meaningful. I am not a full time DM, meaning I don't have 40+ hours a week to focus on developing each different possible plotline. But I still have a responsibility to stretch my preparation to make it appear as though there is more of a world than I have time to construct.

This is like the facade fronts in a western film. I have to make it appear as though there is an entire world, when really it's only what I have prepared. And a lot of times this involves a combination of creating improvisation on the spot to react to unexpected player decisions, and a combination of attaching matching actions that were preplanned to player decisions. Meaning I'll have actions that I can insert when appropriate, similar to a fill in a piece of music.

I suspect (and I haven't had time to look) that Gregory Weir (if he is an indie game guy) would vehemently oppose the idea that the Player and the DM have fundamentally different roles, but they do (in my experience) and a DM needs to think and act differently to make the game interesting for the players.

kyoryu
2014-08-18, 10:51 PM
But here's the thing, how are the players going to know that they would get the same results regardless of their actions? Apparent agency is really what's important, I'll admit as a DM I've occasionally had the same exact encounter in all directions, because I wanted to give players a feeling of control that was greater than what it actually was. So while they had no agency, going any direction produced the same encounter, they weren't aware that this was in fact the case.

Edit: So again unless players have access to the scientific method or ask you point-blank, they won't be aware of their actual agency, and the important thing is their perception of their agency.

"It's okay to lie if you don't get caught."

Yeah, I don't buy that.

Railroading is fine, just be honest about it.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 10:56 PM
"It's okay to lie if you don't get caught."

Yeah, I don't buy that.

Railroading is fine, just be honest about it.

All roleplaying is lying. I'll repeat ALL ROLEPLAYING IS INHERENTLY DISHONEST. Inasmuch as acting or writing is dishonest. We aren't playing a board game, I'm not cheating or violating the rules. I'm creating an illusion that there is more present then there actually is, that's good, it allows for better suspension of disbelief on the players and improves their enjoyment of the game. As a DM it's my responsibility to create a world for players to experience even though it is impossible to create the detail that would need to exist in a real world

Edit: Furthermore it's not railroading in the sense, that I, David, the mighty GM want the players to go through the door, because I, David, the Mighty GM have that power. It's that I, David, the working stiff don't have time to build a response to every possible scenario, I don't have infinite time or resources, so I create a response that feels organic to the player and improves their enjoyment. That's the purpose of that trick, not to fool the players into going the way I want them to. But to fool them into believing that they are participating in a more developed world, which is what is important in the end. Yes, it's dishonest, but not anymore dishonest than me using a false accent to get into character, or than me acting as a character in the setting.

eggynack
2014-08-18, 11:09 PM
Well again the question is, if you think your choices are relevant isn't that what matters? For example if I sat somebody down at Progress Quest and told them that it was a game, then it's as much a game as anything else...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/20

See the above example.
I don't think you can really define a game like that, or else the definition is a bit meaningless. I mean, maybe it actually just is meaningless, but that seems kinda, y'know, not meaningful. In any case, I do vaguely support the notion of progress quest as a game, but it's certainly not much of a game.


But I'm not playing the game by myself. Hell as a DM, I'm not really playing the game at all. I'm providing the backdrop for it. Which requires a different outlook than that of a player. I have to compromise more than a player might be expected to. I have to balance encounters to cater to various players without appearing that I'm doing that, I have to be able to make it appear to players that their choices are meaningful. I am not a full time DM, meaning I don't have 40+ hours a week to focus on developing each different possible plotline. But I still have a responsibility to stretch my preparation to make it appear as though there is more of a world than I have time to construct.

This is like the facade fronts in a western film. I have to make it appear as though there is an entire world, when really it's only what I have prepared. And a lot of times this involves a combination of creating improvisation on the spot to react to unexpected player decisions, and a combination of attaching matching actions that were preplanned to player decisions. Meaning I'll have actions that I can insert when appropriate, similar to a fill in a piece of music.

I suspect (and I haven't had time to look) that Gregory Weir (if he is an indie game guy) would vehemently oppose the idea that the Player and the DM have fundamentally different roles, but they do (in my experience) and a DM needs to think and act differently to make the game interesting for the players.
There are places where you can lower agency, because of convenience, or for a higher purpose. It's only when your game just has no agency that problems arise, when every plan of attack leads to the exact same result, or when every path leads to the same place no matter what. The parts of the game that lack agency are a bit pointless, so they should usually only act as filler between parts that have plenty of agency. As for Gregory Weir, I somehow doubt that he'd take that position. The guy screws around with agency more than most, and talks about exceptions to the need for agency because they're a pretty interesting route in game design. It's not like his stance on false agency is just, "False agency is universally dumb."

I'm of the belief that it's necessary to learn and understand these sorts of rules, whether they apply to game design or literature, so that we can know how best to break them. Books can eschew all kinds of syntax, and games can skip everything from agency to consistent rules. However, if you're going to break those rules, you should know that you're breaking them, and you should know why. That understanding is critical, because otherwise you end up with a mess. If you don't know how important agency is, then you could fail to have a sufficient quantity of false agency, or not have a real purpose for that agency, and you could end up with players that feel unnecessarily railroaded. The same sort of end applies to a lot of these rules, to greater and lesser extents. Even standard houserules, at least ones made out of game instead of in response to things you don't know the rules for, should be made with a critical eye.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 11:15 PM
I don't think you can really define a game like that, or else the definition is a bit meaningless. I mean, maybe it actually just is meaningless, but that seems kinda, y'know, not meaningful. In any case, I do vaguely support the notion of progress quest as a game, but it's certainly not much of a game.

So define it, meaningfully, what is a game? I used to play games where I had no agency, driving games for example, the one where you try to look for each of the letters of alphabet on signs. There is no agency in that, and it's a game. Slug-bug, no agency, and it's a game. Craps, no agency, and it's a game. The problem is that "a game" is not a well defined term.

And what's worse, neither is agency. You always have some measure of agency, whether or not you'd admit that this is the case it's true.



There are places where you can lower agency, because of convenience, or for a higher purpose. It's only when your game just has no agency that problems arise, when every plan of attack leads to the exact same result, or when every path leads to the same place no matter what. As for Gregory Weir, I somehow doubt that he'd take that position. The guy screws around with agency more than most, and talks about exceptions to the need for agency because they're a pretty interesting route in game design. It's not like his stance on false agency is just, "False agency is universally dumb."

Well I don't have time to read his stuff, or especially listen to it, which is why I prefaced it with "I would expect". Indie folks tend to (not always but often are) more in line with things that bring DM and Player roles closer together, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.



I'm of the belief that it's necessary to learn and understand these sorts of rules, whether they apply to game design or literature, so that we can know how best to break them. Books can eschew all kinds of syntax, and games can skip everything from agency to consistent rules. However, if you're going to break those rules, you should know that you're breaking them, and you should know why. That understanding is critical, because otherwise you end up with a mess. If you don't know how important agency is, then you could fail to have a sufficient quantity of false agency, or not have a real purpose for that agency, and you could end up with players that feel unnecessarily railroaded. The same sort of end applies to a lot of these rules, to greater and lesser extents. Even standard houserules, at least ones made out of game instead of in response to things you don't know the rules for, should be made with a critical eye.

Well agency is too poorly defined to have a critical study of it. It's all gut feeling and instinct anyways, there's no proper definition, as we've pointed even the term is nebulous. So you can't formalize rules, so saying "I know the formal rules of game design" is kind of a silly statement. Now one might say, some people are inherently better at controlling agency than others, and that's probably true, but it's still mostly a matter of reading your players, and having a gut grip on things, it's not something that's even consistent enough to come up with a set of formal workable rules for even one group, and probably for even one DM-Player relationship, as such saying that somebody should know the formal rules of it is kind of meaningless, they're moot, they're open to discussion.

NichG
2014-08-18, 11:32 PM
Might I suggest that at this point it appears this is a semantic argument about the 'rules of game design' being rules rather than, y'know, sets of observations about the psychology of players and how they interact with different situations?

I feel like the main objection in this line of conversation has been to the idea of calling what people know about game design 'rules', because it points to the idea of some objective judgement on matters of style and preference. But eggynack introduces this concept of rules just to continue to talk about breaking them as a way to explore new ground! So at no point is it really relevant to consider these things as dogmatically as is being done.

Instead, if we just consider it as 'evidence' and 'expected outcome' then the entire conflict seems like it should evaporate. 'Games that have been successful have done X, Y, and Z; games that have done Q have tended to flop; the common point of view is that this is because of the following factors...' is something that everyone in the thread can work with - those opposed to dogmatic rules should be able to see that evidence is evidence and that while their situation may work out differently, that must be because of some underlying reason for it to work out differently and not just because its them and not the other guy who is doing it. Those proposing a more systematic understanding of game design can still make the point that its not just a complete unknown with people shooting into the dark, but that we actually do have a lot of information about what does and doesn't work (without excluding people who haven't been to game design school and who aren't familiar with these 'rules' as they're taught from the discussion).

eggynack
2014-08-18, 11:45 PM
So define it, meaningfully, what is a game? I used to play games where I had no agency, driving games for example, the one where you try to look for each of the letters of alphabet on signs. There is no agency in that, and it's a game. Slug-bug, no agency, and it's a game. Craps, no agency, and it's a game. The problem is that "a game" is not a well defined term.
I don't think I've ever come up with a perfectly satisfactory one. It's a tricky chunk o' stuff. Still, I do think that those games have some degree of agency. In the first cases, you can either spot the majigs or fail to do so. In the case of craps, the goal is to make money, and you get to choose what things to bet on and how much to bet. You have no input on the dice end, and neither is any choice particularly better than another, but had you made a different choice, there would be a different outcome.


And what's worse, neither is agency. You always have some measure of agency, whether or not you'd admit that this is the case it's true.
I generally consider agency in games to be defined by your choices having some impact on progress and outcome.


Well agency is too poorly defined to have a critical study of it. It's all gut feeling and instinct anyways, there's no proper definition, as we've pointed even the term is nebulous. So you can't formalize rules, so saying "I know the formal rules of game design" is kind of a silly statement. Now one might say, some people are inherently better at controlling agency than others, and that's probably true, but it's still mostly a matter of reading your players, and having a gut grip on things, it's not something that's even consistent enough to come up with a set of formal workable rules for even one group, and probably for even one DM-Player relationship, as such saying that somebody should know the formal rules of it is kind of meaningless, they're moot, they're open to discussion.
I think we have a reasonable understanding of what agency is, and how it works, even if it's an imperfect one. Game design and writing alike are arts rather than sciences, after all. Overall, it's reasonably possible to judge when you've broken one of these big rules, because they're such fundamental parts of what a game is. It's pretty rare that a game will do that as a result. Knowing rules of this type is pretty simple as well, as they generally match expectations. Really, I don't expect anyone to have crazy formal understanding of game design, but if you're going so far as to change rules mid-game, have a bunch of secret rules, or remove most or all agency from a game, having a good reason doesn't seem like a crazy thing to expect.

Edit: @ NichG: I suppose that sounds reasonably workable, though I'm not yet sure if it actually touches the core of the argument.

AMFV
2014-08-18, 11:52 PM
Might I suggest that at this point it appears this is a semantic argument about the 'rules of game design' being rules rather than, y'know, sets of observations about the psychology of players and how they interact with different situations?

I feel like the main objection in this line of conversation has been to the idea of calling what people know about game design 'rules', because it points to the idea of some objective judgement on matters of style and preference. But eggynack introduces this concept of rules just to continue to talk about breaking them as a way to explore new ground! So at no point is it really relevant to consider these things as dogmatically as is being done.

Well the problem is that the rules aren't really something people agree on, which means that insisting people know them is a pretty meaningless thing. Basically the issue I'm having is that by implication stating that one must understand the rules of game creation before making houserules, is a nebulous thing.

It is literally almost impossible to foresee all possible outcomes of any particular change in a standard roleplaying system, they are inherently much too complex for that. Meaning that making houserules is kind of a crapshoot to begin with, but it's not necessarily something that should be undertaken carefully, rather it's something that you should be able to change back quickly, in which case houseruling in secret does help, because that lets you evaluate where you might not be able to and then shift back if there's an issue.



Instead, if we just consider it as 'evidence' and 'expected outcome' then the entire conflict seems like it should evaporate. 'Games that have been successful have done X, Y, and Z; games that have done Q have tended to flop; the common point of view is that this is because of the following factors...' is something that everyone in the thread can work with - those opposed to dogmatic rules should be able to see that evidence is evidence and that while their situation may work out differently, that must be because of some underlying reason for it to work out differently and not just because its them and not the other guy who is doing it. Those proposing a more systematic understanding of game design can still make the point that its not just a complete unknown with people shooting into the dark, but that we actually do have a lot of information about what does and doesn't work (without excluding people who haven't been to game design school and who aren't familiar with these 'rules' as they're taught from the discussion).

The problem is that you can't even really say 'Games that have been successful have done X, Y, and Z; games that have done Q have tended to flop; the common point of view is that this is because of the following factors...' Because there aren't enough consistent. For example in Film (which is more studied) it's not clear why some Blockbusters, for example the Lone Ranger, flopped, while others, such as Transformers were successes financially. It is pretty nearly shooting into the dark to make an understanding of what controls popular trends.

It's even harder to determine what will have value, once monetary success and popularity is no longer the main criteria, and for games at your house it shouldn't be.


I don't think I've ever come up with a perfectly satisfactory one. It's a tricky chunk o' stuff. Still, I do think that those games have some degree of agency. In the first cases, you can either spot the majigs or fail to do so. In the case of craps, the goal is to make money, and you get to choose what things to bet on and how much to bet. You have no input on the dice end, and neither is any choice particularly better than another, but had you made a different choice, there would be a different outcome.

Well you assume that you would have a different outcome if you made a different choice, that's part of how casinos get you. They as near to fix the odds as possible, and watch as people go from Red to Black and back, and lose, because you can't beat the odds.

[QUOTE=eggynack;17965925]I generally consider agency in games to be defined by your choices having some impact on progress and outcome.

Well even that's nebulous, what is a choice? Is how I act in games a choice? Is which games I participate in a choice? Is the color of die I roll a choice? Is what color shirt I wear a choice? There are choices that are going to have little to no effect, and there are choices that I will attribute an effect to. So not all choices have an effect, and not all in game choices have an effect (could be negated by rolls, rules, or whatever)

So agency is fundamentally limited already. Now we come to the second part of the definition, progress and outcome, which are as nebulous in terms of roleplaying games as the term agency is. Furthermore there is no way you can know if your actions fundamentally changed anything without being able to go back and repeat the same action and different actions under the same circumstances.



I think we have a reasonable understanding of what agency is, and how it works, even if it's an imperfect one. Game design and writing alike are arts rather than sciences, after all. Overall, it's reasonably possible to judge when you've broken one of these big rules, because they're such fundamental parts of what a game is. It's pretty rare that a game will do that as a result. Knowing rules of this type is pretty simple as well, as they generally match expectations. Really, I don't expect anyone to have crazy formal understanding of game design, but if you're going so far as to change rules mid-game, have a bunch of secret rules, or remove most or all agency from a game, having a good reason doesn't seem like a crazy thing to expect.

My problem is that "a good reason" isn't something that can be defined. And Agency is not the goal of all games, entertainment can be a goal, socialization can be a goal. And those are all as nebulous. Agency is not well defined. You can say "removing agency is bad", but complete removal of agency is impossible. Because I can always leave and that's always a choice that fundamentally will affect the game. I can refuse to participate, that's agency. So there is no way to remove agency completely. And there is no way to have complete agency. So everything is someplace on a spectrum of close to no agency and close to complete agency, which means that you can't say: "That's removing all agency" since that's impossible.

eggynack
2014-08-19, 12:08 AM
Well the problem is that the rules aren't really something people agree on, which means that insisting people know them is a pretty meaningless thing. Basically the issue I'm having is that by implication stating that one must understand the rules of game creation before making houserules, is a nebulous thing.

It's not so much about perfect understanding of some set of standardized rules of gaming construction. Ultimately, it's about trying your hardest to have a good reason for your decisions, with more crazy or un-game things generally requiring more justification. It's pretty much impossible to have reasoning at hand for every little thing you do, but the more of that sort of underlying logic you have, the better the outcome will be.

I think it's a pretty good way of going about things, once you get used to it. As an example:

"Why did you choose to remove agency from this short stretch of the game?" asked the King of theoretical questions.

"I couldn't possibly have things prepared for the entire game, and doing this was crucial to get the game to run properly," answered theoretical AMFV.

"Why did you remove agency from this very long stretch of the game?" asked the King.

"I used that tool to underscore themes of helplessness and predestination that have been playing a role throughout the game, only to come to ahead here. At first, the player is meant to lack knowledge of that lack of agency, but it's a thing that's eventually supposed to be far more clear, at which point the player has the opportunity to either break through that wall, or be doomed to this pre-chosen path," answered theoretical AMFV.

It's a thing that makes good sense to me, at least.

Edit:
Well you assume that you would have a different outcome if you made a different choice, that's part of how casinos get you. They as near to fix the odds as possible, and watch as people go from Red to Black and back, and lose, because you can't beat the odds.
You would be correct in that assumption. Different choices have different outcomes in this case, even if one choice isn't necessarily better than another.



Well even that's nebulous, what is a choice? Is how I act in games a choice? Is which games I participate in a choice? Is the color of die I roll a choice? Is what color shirt I wear a choice? There are choices that are going to have little to no effect, and there are choices that I will attribute an effect to. So not all choices have an effect, and not all in game choices have an effect (could be negated by rolls, rules, or whatever)
I may have been somewhat unclear. The idea of agency isn't that all choices matter, but that a player has choices that do matter. If the player doesn't have choices of that variety, then there is no agency.


My problem is that "a good reason" isn't something that can be defined.
Of course not. That's where serious thinkin' comes in, and why you shouldn't do things willy nilly. None of us can make perfect choices, but I think we can make choices that make sense to us. If perfect game design were possible, well, things would be a whole lot different, but it's a thing to strive for.


And Agency is not the goal of all games, entertainment can be a goal, socialization can be a goal. And those are all as nebulous.
Agency does tend to be a pretty core goal though, whether the ultimate outcome is as simple as, "I died/survived", or as complicated as, "I finished the game/scenario with one of many outcomes." If you have one of those other things as your goal though, to the exclusion of agency somehow, then that can be a good reason in and of itself.


Agency is not well defined. You can say "removing agency is bad", but complete removal of agency is impossible. Because I can always leave and that's always a choice that fundamentally will affect the game. I can refuse to participate, that's agency. So there is no way to remove agency completely. And there is no way to have complete agency. So everything is someplace on a spectrum of close to no agency and close to complete agency, which means that you can't say: "That's removing all agency" since that's impossible.
Leaving is really more like having agency in real life than like having agency in a game. Perfectly defining these limits of agency is pretty irrelevant though. Whether we're talking about no agency, or that point on the spectrum as close as possible to it, it's pretty much the same thing.

NichG
2014-08-19, 01:25 AM
The problem is that you can't even really say 'Games that have been successful have done X, Y, and Z; games that have done Q have tended to flop; the common point of view is that this is because of the following factors...' Because there aren't enough consistent. For example in Film (which is more studied) it's not clear why some Blockbusters, for example the Lone Ranger, flopped, while others, such as Transformers were successes financially. It is pretty nearly shooting into the dark to make an understanding of what controls popular trends.

It's even harder to determine what will have value, once monetary success and popularity is no longer the main criteria, and for games at your house it shouldn't be.

If you've run and participated in enough games, you have lots and lots of data on this topic even just in one's own campaigns. The point is, you can learn from what has gone before. To do so, you have to be willing to be introspective and to ask questions like 'why did things go the way they did?'. Calling those 'rules' has clearly gotten the conversation off to the wrong foot, but I think its equally silly to pretend that what happened in the past tells us nothing at all about how trying those ideas again in the future will go.

For example, I know that when I presented certain kinds of political intrigue to my players it systematically fell flat. By thinking about why that was, I can understand that creating a feeling of hopelessness and making the problem seem 'realistically large' places most players, who are already on unsure footing, in a state of mind where they tend to give up and just go with the flow. This can be generalized too - making anything in the game seem like its going to take forever will encourage the mindset of finding a shortcut. That's something that's useful to know if you want to run a long, winding epic; basically, don't give players an idea when it begins of how long the overall journey is going to be.

Furthermore, I have to recognize that as much data as I have about my own experiments, the collective knowledge of tens of thousands of people out there who are doing the same stuff and having various reactions is an incredible resource which I can tap. And its worth taking that information into account when figuring out what I want to try next. And that I think is the core of eggynack's point. Not that there's some 'school of game design' which you need to get a diploma from before you can be allowed to make house rules, but that when you do something you should do it with purpose and keeping in mind what has happened other times in which you or other people have done similar things.

SiuiS
2014-08-19, 01:46 AM
Mass Effect 2 has something like that.
You know, one of the most successful and appreciated games of recent history.

There is a difference in that the mass effect ones do not actually impact the core of the game in any way whatsoever. In one of them, you may have to deal with slightly harder choices. In the ther, you'll have to do slightly more fetch-questing. The game is unchanged.

The discussion here is about the section during [REDACTED]'s death scene. [REDACTED] falls. Cliffs are involved. [REDACTED] dies. There's an interrupt that let's you think you can save [REDACTED] but the outcome is no different; it's just a heartstring pluck.

The Jedipotter stuff is more like having your controller unplugged or having the options set so your shoot button doesn't shoot.



There is no good faith, IIRC. Trust is a Weakness. Love is a Lie. Compromise and discussion and working with one another are all Surrender. :/


Oh my, direct paraphrasing? That's terrible and reaffirms my stance.


Hogwash, you've never been asked to run a game where you didn't have complete mastery of the systems rules? I know I've had plenty of opportunity to successfully do so. Most games, especially D&D, don't even expect rules and system mastery. Remember that bit in the DMG that talks about how if you don't know a rule just make something up so you keep playing rather than stop the game to figure it out? I'm not even so sure that I'd say knowing the rules always makes a game better to begin with, lots of groups like "rule of cool" style games where you'll bend or break the rules for the sake of fun.


The difference between a mistake and stupidity is that you know better when you're being stupid.
Not knowing a rule and proceeding as best you can is one thing; actively undermining the actions and intentions of someone on multiple levels – both by removing their agency here, by making their spell fail out of the blue, and also at an earlier point by deciding to not allow them the ability to make meaningful choices – is not ruling to keep the game moving. It is malicious. And even of it were not by itself malicious, doing so for these reasons ("There is no good faith, IIRC. Trust is a Weakness. Love is a Lie. Compromise and discussion and working with one another are all Surrender.") clearly is. It's preemptive malice.


Assuming that he's using a 3.5 Elephant, and not a 4e, AD&D, or Savage Worlds elephant.Here's a list of the "Fundamental rules of game design":

Expecting a 3.5 elephant in 3.5 while playing 3.5 at a 3.5 game is not an assumption in the standard sense. It's an educated stance based on facts and foundational principles such as "my DM is not actively lying to me".

And no, far voyaging mind, it's possible to tell the truth about a fiction. It's not lying just because it's grounded in make believe.


Actually, there is a way to have complete removal of player agency - Try being in a game with Trekkin's DM.

I don't know. I mean, I remember those threads, but when I had a DM that bad we booted him. Player agency is not a strictly in-game thing.

Curbstomp
2014-08-19, 02:05 AM
On the topic at hand, I think that a few house rules regarding off-screen events can work well. But things that directly effect the characters and their builds are, in my opinion, something to present up front during character creation.

In my own games I often have setting rules to give flavor to a world or nation/race in the world. For example, in my current campaigns the only Elves in setting are Forestlord Elves and their default language is Druidic. They are Celtic in theme right on down to the torcs and blue paint and are filling the role of mysterious barbarians. That said, these setting specific rules modifications were things the players were informed of the day of character generation. The rules are consistent between sessions and between campaigns if they take place in the same world. I run a fairly large gaming group and have for about a decade. Currently I run three weekly campaigns in the same setting with a different assistant DM in each group. This allows for the occasional crossover game between player groups and seems to be fairly fun for all involved. Particularly as the group keeps growing campaign to campaign. The last two campaigns were held in two weekly sessions, but the numbers got up to fifteen or so players between the two sessions, so for the new one I switched to three groups of five players each. One has since added a sixth player.

Every once in a while there may come a temporary change to game mechanics (often caused by PC's and occasionally villains) but those are (usually)temporary, fixable, preventable, and story-driven. If some mad wizard is trying to dimension lock the plane for example and the PC's know about it for twenty levels and do nothing to address it (or chose to help the wizard) then eventually the mad wizard's goal may come to pass.

For other rules changes, I try to stay with the books as written and remain consistent with interpretations where they are not precise. Sometimes I will use shortcut rules behind the DM screen though. For generating treasure or for bar games or what have you. Things that are not mechanically linked to the PC's particularly if they are happening in the background. Like when PC's bet on an arena match between two NPC's that they are not effecting in any way. I would generally resolve that with an opposed check for the sake of speed (though I might describe the fight) rather than actually fight it out.

Just my two cents.

-Curb

AMFV
2014-08-19, 02:18 AM
And no, far voyaging mind, it's possible to tell the truth about a fiction. It's not lying just because it's grounded in make believe.

But there is a license for dishonesty. I like when movies use tricks to make things appear real to me. Because I expect things to appear a certain way, the same is true of written things. We aren't telling the truth about a fiction, we're using a certain specific kind of dishonesty to improve the fiction.

SiuiS
2014-08-19, 02:33 AM
But there is a license for dishonesty. I like when movies use tricks to make things appear real to me. Because I expect things to appear a certain way, the same is true of written things. We aren't telling the truth about a fiction, we're using a certain specific kind of dishonesty to improve the fiction.

First; I'm sorry. When I wrote that a number of rebuttals sprang to mind I didn't want to deal with. But it's not okay for me to call you out for something you didn't even do. That's my mistake and I'll try to avoid it in future.


I think you're using a fundamentally different (and, it seems to me, no applicable) understanding of dishonest. In the same way that racism can be quibbled because the anthropological definition of racism requires it to have institutional backing but personal level racism exists, I think that while the word dishonest could be extended to apply to Roleplaying, it's not useful and is in fact misguided. It's a Socratic dialogue, wherein we take this set of constraints to be true and work within them. That's the basis of verisimilitude, isn't it?

If I recount past exploits of a game in the voice of considering them actual history, that's not dishonest. It just doesn't have explicit context. If you instead mean such as the opening of the Birdcage, where it is implied for a scene that Robin Williams is having an affair when he is really playig host to his adult son, then that's a possibility but it's false to say that because the possibility exists to trick someone that you are always counted as having tricked them.


Or perhaps I just misunderstand what you mean. After all, this is a conversation I tried to avoid via snarky one-liner and cattiness. I am not as well-grounded in the ideas as you are yet. Am I off the mark?

eggynack
2014-08-19, 02:47 AM
And that I think is the core of eggynack's point. Not that there's some 'school of game design' which you need to get a diploma from before you can be allowed to make house rules, but that when you do something you should do it with purpose and keeping in mind what has happened other times in which you or other people have done similar things.
Sounds about right, I suppose. Purpose is a really important thing, especially when you're doing something off the beaten path. I tend to apply this stuff more to writing than to game design, but I figure that it applies reasonably well here too.

Zrak
2014-08-19, 03:07 AM
I generally consider agency in games to be defined by your choices having some impact on progress and outcome.

Secret houserules do not diminish the impact of one's choices, though, they merely inhibit the ability to unerringly predict what that outcome will be. I generally don't run games with houseules, secret or otherwise, since my groups have tended to be generally houserule-averse and I'm an accommodating guy, but I make a point of including unforeseen (or at least unmentioned) consequences into a lot of narrative decisions, which doesn't strike me as a whole lot different. The players' choices absolutely impact their progress and outcome, but not always in the way they hope or a way they can unfailingly predict. The same seems, generally, to be true of jedipotter's rules and secret houserules in general. Casting a summon spell is a choice which impacts the party's progress and outcome, regardless of whether or not there is a mis-summon chance; the possibility for the spell to go awry only makes the specific impact the choice will have more difficult to predict.

eggynack
2014-08-19, 03:11 AM
Secret houserules do not diminish the impact of one's choices, though, they merely inhibit the ability to unerringly predict what that outcome will be.
I think the player agency thing is a bit of a side-discussion, connected to hidden and changing house rules in that they both break fundamental rules of game design. There is probably a level of disconnect between action and reaction at which player agency becomes somewhat pointless. Those choose your own adventure books are a reasonable example of that sort of thing, I think.

NichG
2014-08-19, 04:05 AM
There's also an implicit assumption that is being made here, which is that secret house rules will always be things that are designed to trip up or screw over the players. However that's not necessarily the case, and is an orthogonal point to whether the secrecy itself is a problem.

Since we're using game design examples, take something like Chrono Trigger's secret set of 3-party-member combos. They're not listed in the manual, they require finding specific items and equipping them on the right people to activate, and if you manage to do so its a strictly beneficial surprise. Clearly (to me at least) this is different than, say, games where the surprise is 'oh by the way, for this fight we're ignoring the way your abilities are supposed to interact with the world after you've spent 3/4 of the game learning those interactions'.

And that seems to be generally true among my players' reactions to things. If they get the ability to learn new super-powers that aren't in the book, they don't care if they didn't know in advance. Heck, if there's something where I say 'this is an unknown thing and it could have negative consequences, do you want to partake?' then even if it screws them over they're generally okay with it, because its a secret they could choose to gamble on or not of their own volition. Things can be secret without removing agency - in fact, the secretiveness of things can be a direction in which agency can be expressed: which mystery do you solve, which thing do you investigate more deeply, etc?

Earthwalker
2014-08-19, 04:56 AM
Setting Expectation

I am unsure from the OP if the people playing the game know before starting that secret houserules are in play.
When starting a new campaign with a new group I will always try to explain what the new campaign is about, what system will be used. What changes have been made and give any information that might effect character creations. (e.g. In the game world I have choosen all dwarfs are treated as second class citizens and if you choose to play one your options will be limited)

Can anyone think of a good reason not to set expecations at the start of a game ?
What are the pros and cons of not telling players about the existance of secret house rules ?

Knowledge Skills

OMG these things are broken but there is an issue with the fluff linked to the crunch of the game that seems to be causing more problems.
(I think I am talking Pathfinder here not 3.5) A player has never seen an Elephant before in his life. He does have a high knowledge nature. while adventuring the character spots an odd animal. Asks the GM if he can roll knowledge nature on it (DC 18). He get 23, rolling above the number and beating it by 5 granting him two bits of information about the beast. So the GM tells him, the basic information. Its a herd animal that is a herbivour. (The GM doesnt have to say its name) He also gains additional information so the GM tells him that the thick hide will make it harder to hurt. (If he wants the GM can just give the AC of the elephant)
Someone with high ranks in knowledge skills knows how to apply what they have learned to new situations, it does not mean that they know everything about a field. So in the example its not that they know elephants, its that they can recognize this animal from similarities with other animals.

Brookshw
2014-08-19, 05:52 AM
You might not need really solid understanding to make basic rules, but when you start fiddling with those fundamentals, you should really know why you're doing so. A list of rules like that are in that podcast I mentioned before, and include stuff like the game being playable the whole way through, the game being governed by consistent rules, and it being possible to avert failure. Even lesser changes are probably best made with an understanding of why you're going about it (I'd advise knowing why you're nerfing a spell, and why it actually needs to be nerfed, before nerfing it, for example), but these cases are pretty important to understand. I don't have any objection to having a goal in mind when you change a rule, but the notion you proposed of some form of higher level of understanding is dubious. The DM needing some deeper grasp is in fact the sacred cow that J has held up several times and has been derided for. I don't think your views are especially consistent here. The whole thing is also a bit of a red herring, as the side conversation is demonstrating, that the notion of what is a game shouldn't be infringed upon. Apples and oranges there, what is a game, and what particular elements compose a particular game. Changes to rules don't change that you're playing a game. No one, not even J, has even gone to the extent you're discussing with the whole "eliminating agency" bit completely.



Perhaps, though there are some explicitly stated things that Jedipotter claims she does that I disagree with. Overall, even if this game as presented isn't the one she's playing, I think it's worth arguing against this odd and theoretical game that's being presented. Fine, but that doesn't justify the persistent attacks on a style of game that can be quite enjoyable for many, you're just establishing there are particular elements that might not suit your particular tastes.




Regular rules aren't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about fundamental rules of game design. If you decide to just remove all of the meaning of player agency in a game on a whim, because you dislike mature games or something, then that just seems like the wrong move. Again, nothing more than a red herring. No old school game that I can think of completely removes player agency or does much to impact the fundamentals you're upholding as your sacred cow. J might have some particular examples (such as a spell changing to another after you cast it based on their preference) that demonstrate such things and I can completely get why such would be objectionable, I'd be bothered by it as well, but that's not an excuse to say that a different style is incorrect. Poor execution in one specific is a silly reason to cast stones at the whole.

eggynack
2014-08-19, 06:24 AM
I don't have any objection to having a goal in mind when you change a rule, but the notion you proposed of some form of higher level of understanding is dubious. The DM needing some deeper grasp is in fact the sacred cow that J has held up several times and has been derided for.
I don't really know where she's indicated that line of thought all that much. It seems like you're equating my view with the idea that DM's have some higher understanding of the game inherently, because that's a lot more like what she's said in the past. As for a higher level of understanding, it's not necessarily a thing that comes from continuous study of the game, but rather, as I've held more recently, a thing that comes from making these sorts of decisions with purpose. If you're going to institute a secret house rule, you should think deeply about why you're doing that, what the house rule is trying to accomplish, and whether such a drastic move is the best and/or only way to achieve your goal.


I don't think your views are especially consistent here.
I'm not really sure how not. I mean, I'm sure the whole thing can't be held up as one solid and unchanging stance, but I think it's all kinda pointing in the same direction.

The whole thing is also a bit of a red herring, as the side conversation is demonstrating, that the notion of what is a game shouldn't be infringed upon. Apples and oranges there, what is a game, and what particular elements compose a particular game.
I don't think it's necessarily a red herring, so much as it is just a standard side conversation with no necessary or claimed connection to the main argument at hand. I was all, "There are these fundamental rules of game design, including this one over here," and then other folk were like, "Nah, I find this rule that is unrelated to Jedipotter's doings objectionable."

Changes to rules don't change that you're playing a game.
Perhaps, though it can very much change how a game is perceived by players, and the emotional state of those players.

No one, not even J, has even gone to the extent you're discussing with the whole "eliminating agency" bit completely.
I don't think I ever really indicated that that's the path she takes. They're just examples of the sorts of things you shouldn't screw with without good reason, with a known and unchanging rule set being one of them.


Fine, but that doesn't justify the persistent attacks on a style of game that can be quite enjoyable for many, you're just establishing there are particular elements that might not suit your particular tastes.
I don't really know how much evidence of mass enjoyment I have, as even Jedipotter's own accounts include a reasonable quantity of game-exodus. As for the latter thing, that almost seems like the whole point of the discussion. She says that a thing is to her tastes, and seeks to justify that stance, and those opposing her say that that thing is not to their taste, and seek to justify that stance. I'm not really sure how much deeper the purpose here can go.


Again, nothing more than a red herring. No old school game that I can think of completely removes player agency or does much to impact the fundamentals you're upholding as your sacred cow.
Not old school games as much, no, although some of them did break the rule that a game can be played all the way through with glitches, which doesn't count for much. I'm not really sure how the fact that these rules are broken an extremely small amount of the time, such that people only really considered breaking them recently, hurts my argument though. Seems to help it, actually.

J might have some particular examples (such as a spell changing to another after you cast it based on their preference) that demonstrate such things and I can completely get why such would be objectionable, I'd be bothered by it as well, but that's not an excuse to say that a different style is incorrect. Poor execution in one specific is a silly reason to cast stones at the whole.
I think there're a whole lot of reasonable reasons why I've cast stones at the whole, though if Jedipotter confirms the theory that her games make use of the roguelike model to some extent, with characters as mere extensions of the players, then that'd clear up a lot of oddness.

Edit: Also, really don't think I've thrown a mass of hate-stones, especially relative to madam "Optimizers are all cheaters," over there.

Double-edit: Just checked the thread for me-words. All I could really see of game disparaging were those five points of oddity or contradiction I cited, where I either ultimately agreed with her new and finalized stance, or continued the argument with statements I will stand by, and later, where I said that her use of secret/changing house rules as a tool seems likely to be rooted in control, rather than some higher purpose.

On that point, I suppose I didn't particularly cite or elaborate, but I now call upon the spirit of past Jedipotter, where she oddly claimed that compromise is never ever appropriate, and seemed to stand by that position later when challenged on it. I can also recall times where her house rules were in response to folks trying to subvert either her plans or setting, as was the case in that odd "sack of ruined feathers" argument from way back when. She could always correct me in my assumption, and I'll freely admit that I was mistaken if it turns out that there is a really good justification for this stuff, but as is, all I have to go on is past behavior, and it all kinda points in one direction.

Engine
2014-08-19, 06:48 AM
There is a difference in that the mass effect ones do not actually impact the core of the game in any way whatsoever. In one of them, you may have to deal with slightly harder choices. In the ther, you'll have to do slightly more fetch-questing. The game is unchanged.

The discussion here is about the section during [REDACTED]'s death scene. [REDACTED] falls. Cliffs are involved. [REDACTED] dies. There's an interrupt that let's you think you can save [REDACTED] but the outcome is no different; it's just a heartstring pluck.

The Jedipotter stuff is more like having your controller unplugged or having the options set so your shoot button doesn't shoot.

Please read the post I quoted. Jedipotter's stuff wasn't mentioned.

AMFV
2014-08-19, 08:06 AM
I think the player agency thing is a bit of a side-discussion, connected to hidden and changing house rules in that they both break fundamental rules of game design. There is probably a level of disconnect between action and reaction at which player agency becomes somewhat pointless. Those choose your own adventure books are a reasonable example of that sort of thing, I think.

I think Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books have agency, and it's not necessarily pointless. And soon as you say: "pointless" it becomes entirely a matter of taste. What has a point and is meaningful in terms of impact is determined and furthermore, people have cited a feeling of agency even in games that have none, literally none, that was the point of the Weather Channel comic, even though Gabe had no actual ability to manipulate events the effect was the same as if he had.


First; I'm sorry. When I wrote that a number of rebuttals sprang to mind I didn't want to deal with. But it's not okay for me to call you out for something you didn't even do. That's my mistake and I'll try to avoid it in future.

Well to be fair I was responding to a different and much harsher allegation.



I think you're using a fundamentally different (and, it seems to me, no applicable) understanding of dishonest. In the same way that racism can be quibbled because the anthropological definition of racism requires it to have institutional backing but personal level racism exists, I think that while the word dishonest could be extended to apply to Roleplaying, it's not useful and is in fact misguided. It's a Socratic dialogue, wherein we take this set of constraints to be true and work within them. That's the basis of verisimilitude, isn't it?

Well Plato would probably say that anything that is pulling away from the fundamental truth of things is in fact dishonest. The same way that he would suggest that creating stories for shadows in the cave is.



If I recount past exploits of a game in the voice of considering them actual history, that's not dishonest. It just doesn't have explicit context. If you instead mean such as the opening of the Birdcage, where it is implied for a scene that Robin Williams is having an affair when he is really playig host to his adult son, then that's a possibility but it's false to say that because the possibility exists to trick someone that you are always counted as having tricked them.

What I'm saying is that all of fiction and movies exist to trick. You're forcing people to suspend their disbelief, that's tricking them, you want them to feel that the world they are interacting with is as real as the real world to allow for a suspension of disbelief. That is a principle that is as true for games as anything else.

I'm not necessarily talking about how one discusses a game in the past, I'm talking about giving people a sense that there is a choice when there isn't. That's dishonest, but it's not a form of dishonesty which is in this particular case bad. It's the same thing as using a voice that isn't your own is dishonest, you're creating a representation which does not reflect the way reality is.



Or perhaps I just misunderstand what you mean. After all, this is a conversation I tried to avoid via snarky one-liner and cattiness. I am not as well-grounded in the ideas as you are yet. Am I off the mark?

I'm not sure. I think the problem is that you are treating all dishonesty as lying for personal gain, rather than as misrepresenting.

eggynack
2014-08-19, 08:14 AM
I think Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books have agency, and it's not necessarily pointless. And soon as you say: "pointless" it becomes entirely a matter of taste. What has a point and is meaningful in terms of impact is determined and furthermore, people have cited a feeling of agency even in games that have none, literally none, that was the point of the Weather Channel comic, even though Gabe had no actual ability to manipulate events the effect was the same as if he had.

Maybe a bit, but I'd figure that there would be agency to about the same extent as exists in your cited game of craps. People make decisions, and those decisions have an impact on outcome, but those decisions aren't really informed by anything. So, I don't know how much agency you currently think Craps has, or how much agency it's generally perceived as having, but the two situations seem reasonably analogous.

AMFV
2014-08-19, 08:32 AM
Maybe a bit, but I'd figure that there would be agency to about the same extent as exists in your cited game of craps. People make decisions, and those decisions have an impact on outcome, but those decisions aren't really informed by anything. So, I don't know how much agency you currently think Craps has, or how much agency it's generally perceived as having, but the two situations seem reasonably analogous.

Well Craps has probably the minimum level of agency to be considered a game. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books have more because they allow for cheating and breaking the game as a form of agency, which would generally get you killed in craps. As far as impact, that's really going to depend, agency in craps can have a huge real world impact, you could become the richest man in the world, or broke. That's a massive impact based on a decision that only follows probability. In a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure your agency determines the story, that's more agency than almost anybody reading a book ever has.

The point is as you've agreed that there is agency present in all of things (and therefore likely in all forms of games) at this point determining the right amount of agency becomes an argument about taste and not about hard rules.

Earthwalker
2014-08-19, 09:09 AM
The point is as you've agreed that there is agency present in all of things (and therefore likely in all forms of games) at this point determining the right amount of agency becomes an argument about taste and not about hard rules.

The amount of agency is about taste. What is a good idea is letting your players know that kind of thing before the game starts to avoid confusion and upset. Don't sell the game as a sand box type game then put the players on tracks. Equally don't sell the game as a 3.5 DnD game but SECRETLY house rule it into a AD&D game.

Play Old school AD&D if you like. Play 3.5 if you like. Even play 3.5 like old school AD&D but at least let the players know. The idea of secret house rules seem to be in part to add mystery, but as an additional effect its trolling players of the game.

Can I ask you AMFV, if you have players who want to play 3.5 whats the best way to discouage them from your game of old school AD&D with a 3.5 look.
Option 1 - Tell them up front that you use some 3.5 rules but you have changed the system to be more like AD&D and run it that way.
Option 2 - Tell them you are playing 3.5 and keep your changes secret so they can find out after investing time into the game.

I personally go with option 1. Option 2 while allowing for more mystery I feel causing more upset for players.

AMFV
2014-08-19, 09:16 AM
The amount of agency is about taste. What is a good idea is letting your players know that kind of thing before the game starts to avoid confusion and upset. Don't sell the game as a sand box type game then put the players on tracks. Equally don't sell the game as a 3.5 DnD game but SECRETLY house rule it into a AD&D game.

Play Old school AD&D if you like. Play 3.5 if you like. Even play 3.5 like old school AD&D but at least let the players know. The idea of secret house rules seem to be in part to add mystery, but as an additional effect its trolling players of the game.

Can I ask you AMFV, if you have players who want to play 3.5 whats the best way to discouage them from your game of old school AD&D with a 3.5 look.
Option 1 - Tell them up front that you use some 3.5 rules but you have changed the system to be more like AD&D and run it that way.
Option 2 - Tell them you are playing 3.5 and keep your changes secret so they can find out after investing time into the game.

I personally go with option 1. Option 2 while allowing for more mystery I feel causing more upset for players.

The problem is that the distinction you're seeing between playstyles isn't clear-cut. In this discussion we've been talking about extremes. But really there may not be as much difference in play, or the shift may be gradual. My personal feeling is that the type of DM who uses secret houserules is very likely to communicate what sort of DM they are in conversation, there is no bait and switch here, the problem is that you bought a car you didn't even look at, that would be the effective analogy. It's as much a player responsibility to talk to the DM to try to figure out if he (or she) is the sort of person they want to game with as it is a DM responsibility to be able to effectively describe their game.

After all, since most of these things are as we said, matters of taste, what one Player considers to be "a complete removal of agency" may not even be in the same ballpark as what the DM (or another player does). So that's why it's the player's responsibility to figure out if the game is something they want. One DM might say "I'm Old School" and mean that it's a fairly gritty world where you can die with no saves and people need to be continually paranoid, another might ascribe a completely different meaning to it, and that's why it's your responsibility as a player to determine what the DM is describing and if you want to be involved in it.

Jormengand
2014-08-19, 09:29 AM
Free-form roleplaying is incredibly different from what's being discussed here, Jormengand. Again, equating FFRP with springing secret rules on people doesn't quite fit. Sure, there's RPs like that and then there are RPs where pulling that kind of stunt is the height of rudeness.

Well sure, go ahead and ignore my entire point and pretend that the joke at the end was my argument, why don't you? Oh wait, because you don't actually have a response to my real argument.

What a surprise.

Earthwalker
2014-08-19, 09:32 AM
[snip]
One DM might say "I'm Old School" and mean that it's a fairly gritty world where you can die with no saves and people need to be continually paranoid, another might ascribe a completely different meaning to it, and that's why it's your responsibility as a player to determine what the DM is describing and if you want to be involved in it.

Well you didn't seem to answer my question but it was loaded. I did just honestly want to know where you stood on the whole secret thing.

Lets carry on with your example then and I am player asking about the GMs game. And I ask the question are thier any house rules.

Do you tell me yes there are you can't know them.
Or
No there are no house rules (becuae they are secret)
Or
Yes and here they are.

I mean the first tells me all I need as a player for the game, and probably wouldn't play.

I also find it strange that you think that finding out about a game is all work to be done by the player and the GM has no responcibility to make his style known. It seems strange to me as working from both sides I want comunication about the game to be as clear as possible.

AMFV
2014-08-19, 09:42 AM
Well you didn't seem to answer my question but it was loaded. I did just honestly want to know where you stood on the whole secret thing.

Lets carry on with your example then and I am player asking about the GMs game. And I ask the question are thier any house rules.

Do you tell me yes there are you can't know them.
Or
No there are no house rules (becuae they are secret)
Or
Yes and here they are.

I mean the first tells me all I need as a player for the game, and probably wouldn't play.


I've already said that the former was the more appropriate answer. But... A DM still can develop secret houserules in the course of the game. And isn't necessarily required to be forthcoming about the existence of houserules.

Additionally the question is this: If you're enjoying a game and then it turns out that there dozens of secret houserules in effect, do you leave? I mean you're enjoying it, is that enough of a matter of principle that you would leave a game over it?



I also find it strange that you think that finding out about a game is all work to be done by the player and the GM has no responcibility to make his style known. It seems strange to me as working from both sides I want comunication about the game to be as clear as possible.

Because it is easier for a player to understand what he or she will dislike than it is for the DM to understand what the player will interpret from his communications. In the former case you have a player evaluating his own tastes, in the latter you have the DM expected to evaluate the player's tastes, and semantics. That seems like a fairly unreasonable hurdle to me. Now it is somewhat the responsibility of the DM, but again the DM may say something like "Old-School" or "Low-Magic" or "High Player Narrative Control" or "Low Player Agency" which would mean something very different to them than to the prospective player. It is the DM's responsibility to advertise appropriately and the player's responsibility to ask for appropriate clarification on issues that might be complex.

Brookshw
2014-08-19, 10:10 AM
snip

What? The responsibility of communication is bilateral and dms aren't solely for players enjoyment? Preposterous! Stone the heathen!

@Eggy: I owe you a response, forthcoming once I'm back at a comp.