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Talakeal
2015-02-09, 12:03 AM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Whenever I play in a rules light system it seems like that is all that ever happens, someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something. I personally hate it, regardless of what side of the screen I am on.

Can someone explain the appeal to me? In my experience you either get a iron fisted DM who says no to everything, in which case you are constantly frustrated and disappointed, a more lax DM in which case everyone is competing to top one another as the only limits they place are on themselves, or a more reasonable DM who allows things that they think won't cause problems, but then bog the game down with endless debate and deliberation.

Currently I am playing in two games, both of which run off the "the rules are just a guideline" philosophy. Maybe it is just the DM's I am playing under, but I have yet to have one of them approve a character action that fell outside the written rules. On the other hand, on more occasions that I can count I have been denied a rules legal action because the DM didn't like it for whatever reason. This is not fun.

Recently one of them wanted to swap out the standard skill system in PF to the 13th age system, where if I understand it correctly you write up a character biography and then convince the DM that your backstory should allow you to perform the task you want to do in the present. This sounds like it is going to be a nightmare.

On the other hand I remember when I was running a very early version of Heart of Darkness some years ago before the rules were really worked out. One of the players at my table was a door to door salesman for his day job, and he was very good at convincing me to let him do things, to the point where the other players actually got rather jealous and or mad at him about it and stopped having fun.

Really, I don't get the appeal. Unless everyone is on exactly the same page and perfectly unbiased I don't see any advantage to coming up with things on the fly over looking through a heavy rulebook and calculating the proper odds. But judging by the love of rules light games and the almost universal praise of the 5E skill system it seems like I am in the minority. What am I missing?

Sidmen
2015-02-09, 12:16 AM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do?
I wouldn't know, since this simply doesn't happen at my table. We often play in more rules-lite systems, and there has never been a "debate" about what a character can do.

Maybe its just the systems you are using, because the typical routine in my group goes a bit like this:

Player: I want to do XYZ.
GM: Ok, you'll need to roll Q and its easy/average/hard.
Player: *Rolls* I've succeeded/failed.

Then we all move on with our lives.

From your post, it sounds like whatever DM is running your games likes to say no a lot. Nothing you can do against that, besides get a better DM.

jedipotter
2015-02-09, 12:20 AM
Really, I don't get the appeal. Unless everyone is on exactly the same page and perfectly unbiased I don't see any advantage to coming up with things on the fly over looking through a heavy rulebook and calculating the proper odds. But judging by the love of rules light games and the almost universal praise of the 5E skill system it seems like I am in the minority. What am I missing?

I love Rules Light!

It does work best with players that just play the game and don't argue, of course. But once you can get the game to that point, it runs super smooth.

You get problem players in any game. In rules heavy games you get the players that try to optimize, stack the rules or make interpretations. In rules light games, you get players that try to optimize, power grab and alter game reality. Though it is all trying to get stuff past the DM.

Some players like all the rules, some like to wing it.....but the two styles don't play together. Some players are just robots that look at their character sheet, and some players like to just create stuff on the fly.

The most common problem with rule light that I encounter is players going too far. In like one second they want a character to jump up, smash in a door, shoot a target across the room in the dark and then flip and tumble backwards. They think that should be super easy, super fast and just automatically work. But the DM will just shake their head....it's way too much. Most players just cross over the line with ''it's possible 1 out of every 100 times'', so that means my character can do it at will.

I often see players go to far with things like ''I kick the guy out the window and he falls to his death''. The DM is not really happy with the ''being kicked across the room and out the window'', but if the player would have added a bit of a struggle like ''I grapple with him, and back him towards the window'' and then ''kick him'' it would have been smoother.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-02-09, 12:59 AM
Recently one of them wanted to swap out the standard skill system in PF to the 7th age system, where if I understand it correctly you write up a character biography and then convince the DM that your backstory should allow you to perform the task you want to do in the present. This sounds like it is going to be a nightmare.

If that's how they're using the 13th Age Backgrounds system, they're doing it wrong.

Here's how it should work...
--You tell the GM what you want to do
--The GM tells you what attribute to use, and asks you if you have a Background you're using
--You give a Background that's appropriate to the task ("I use my Trained Guardsman of Emerald Spire background to muscle through the crowd!", although if it's pretty clear that you're stretching (aka "I'm using my The Finest Baker in Castlekeep Background to jump over this chasm! Because, um, it reminds me of a cake I baked one time.") then the GM should just look askance at you, because really?

And that may be the disconnect: rules-lite systems require a particular level of cooperation and informality. The core philosophy of rules-lite is "don't sweat the details", and either you're drastically misapplying the rules or the GM is being way too uncooperative. My money's on the latter. A lot of people can get hung up on whether a particular skill or whatnot should or shouldn't apply to an action, when the best answer is "if it's reasonable, give the player the benefit of the doubt because it's entertaining". Of course, on the flipside, this also requires that the players step up and not game the system in inane ways.

The less cooperative both sides are, the worse the overall experience is.

zinycor
2015-02-09, 01:20 AM
Currently I am playing in two games, both of which run off the "the rules are just a guideline" philosophy. Maybe it is just the DM's I am playing under, but I have yet to have one of them approve a character action that fell outside the written rules. On the other hand, on more occasions that I can count I have been denied a rules legal action because the DM didn't like it for whatever reason. This is not fun.


Really, I don't get the appeal. Unless everyone is on exactly the same page and perfectly unbiased I don't see any advantage to coming up with things on the fly over looking through a heavy rulebook and calculating the proper odds. But judging by the love of rules light games and the almost universal praise of the 5E skill system it seems like I am in the minority. What am I missing?


Quote edited


I think the problem is that maybe you and/or the other players and GM are just playing a Rules Heavy systems (such as PF or DND) as if it were Light. PF and DnD is about those rules, having control and very clear expectations about what you can and can't do on any given situations. If you were playing a lighter game you would require other set of mind, one where you and the GM are willing to risk that this is more a "let's pretend" than a game of DnD

Comet
2015-02-09, 01:42 AM
I love arguing with the GM and being argued at as the GM. That's how we build fiction in roleplaying, asking questions and clarifying our position within it.

"Would my character know how to play the piano?"

"I don't know, you tell me. Where would your barbarian have learned it?"

"Uhhhh.... I spent a year at some lord's mansion and the butler taught me?"

"Okay, cool. You play the magical piano and wonderful things happen."

And then the GM makes notes about the mansion lord and his barbarian quest.

As long as everyone understands the game's framing, whether we're playing Solomon Kane or Final Fantasy, things should be okay. For situations that are way too exciting or unpredictable to leave to the GM's judgement just roll the dice or flip a coin or whatever the game asks of you. Good games tell you when to do this, so there should be no hurt feelings.

jedipotter
2015-02-09, 03:46 AM
I love arguing with the GM and being argued at as the GM. That's how we build fiction in roleplaying, asking questions and clarifying our position within it.

"Would my character know how to play the piano?"

"I don't know, you tell me. Where would your barbarian have learned it?"

"Uhhhh.... I spent a year at some lord's mansion and the butler taught me?"

"Okay, cool. You play the magical piano and wonderful things happen."

And then the GM makes notes about the mansion lord and his barbarian quest.


I'd never allow that as GM. This is exactly the type of thing some players do to ''tweak'' the game. They come up with ridiculous things. This is where the GM just says ''Sorry, Lo-Kar the Savage can not play the piano''

The first big problem is that it gives the player a blank piece of paper. So now Lo-Kar can do anything. No matter what pops up....oh wait, Lo-Kar can do it. You might as well just say ''Ok, Lo-Kar has infinite wishes''.

The second problem is that it just delays the argument. Ok, say the DM lets the Lo-Kar spent a year at a mansion and learned to play the piano. Then as the game goes on, more things are added to the year. Soon Lo-Kar has learned 25 things in just that one year. And it gets kind of hard to juggle the ''well he had piano practice, then he learned how to swim, and then locksmithing and then.'' It's sure a lot to cram into a day. Worse is when things don't mesh up: Lo-Kar can't spend a year working in a mine, a year sailing on a ship, and spends a year horse riding. And that does not even account for distance, like how did Lo-Kar get the 1,000 miles from The Cold Mine to the Mansion everyday...

Comet
2015-02-09, 03:56 AM
I'd never allow that as GM. This is exactly the type of thing some players do to ''tweak'' the game. They come up with ridiculous things. This is where the GM just says ''Sorry, Lo-Kar the Savage can not play the piano''

The first big problem is that it gives the player a blank piece of paper. So now Lo-Kar can do anything. No matter what pops up....oh wait, Lo-Kar can do it. You might as well just say ''Ok, Lo-Kar has infinite wishes''.

The second problem is that it just delays the argument. Ok, say the DM lets the Lo-Kar spent a year at a mansion and learned to play the piano. Then as the game goes on, more things are added to the year. Soon Lo-Kar has learned 25 things in just that one year. And it gets kind of hard to juggle the ''well he had piano practice, then he learned how to swim, and then locksmithing and then.'' It's sure a lot to cram into a day. Worse is when things don't mesh up: Lo-Kar can't spend a year working in a mine, a year sailing on a ship, and spends a year horse riding. And that does not even account for distance, like how did Lo-Kar get the 1,000 miles from The Cold Mine to the Mansion everyday...

You're right, it's open to abuse. Which is why it's best to only use it for things that aren't all that important in the long run, as defined by the game. Playing the piano isn't going to come up that often in D&D, for example, so it's okay to use that as an opportunity for the player to flesh out their character. Best case scenario, that mansion and its lord are going to come back to haunt the barbarian in some way or another.

Things that are important enough to alter the balance of the game are going to be handled by the game. For a rules-lite game, like early D&D, the list of those things is pretty short (traps, combat & treasure for D&D) so I don't feel too bad about winging the rest of it in the players' favour. Again, definitely open to abuse but I trust my players to understand the kind of fiction we're playing in and accept the GM's rulings on what is or isn't realistic within that fiction.

icefractal
2015-02-09, 04:51 AM
I'm fine with rules-light systems, if they come with a side order of shared narrative control. It takes some trust, and it takes the players and GM being on the same page, but it can be a lot of fun and let you handle wide ranging situations without much prep time or needing to write new rules.

A rules-light system - but only for the GM? Where it pretty much boils down to "players make requests, GM decides everything"? Not interested, unless it's someone I know for a fact is a really amazing GM.

One reason is things like the "Barbarian playing piano" example. If the rules aren't deciding that (by having a Perform skill, for example), then who is? It's either the player or the GM. And if it's the GM, then how is the player supposed to have any non-stereotypical background? Barbarians can only do what the GM considers "typical barbarian things"? That sounds boring as hell. I know some people really enjoy the 'class as archetype' thing, but for me it gets old fast.

neonchameleon
2015-02-09, 05:52 AM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Whenever I play in a rules light system it seems like that is all that ever happens, someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something. I personally hate it, regardless of what side of the screen I am on.

Can someone explain the appeal to me? In my experience you either get a iron fisted DM who says no to everything, in which case you are constantly frustrated and disappointed, a more lax DM in which case everyone is competing to top one another as the only limits they place are on themselves, or a more reasonable DM who allows things that they think won't cause problems, but then bog the game down with endless debate and deliberation.

Currently I am playing in two games, both of which run off the "the rules are just a guideline" philosophy.

I'm going to jump in there and say that "Rules light" and "The rules are just a guideline" are not the same thing at all. Rules light simply means that there aren't many steps, modifiers, or numbers involved - and this is entirely independent of playing with the rules as just a guideline (in my more cynical moments I think rules=guideline goes with heavier systems because no one bothers to learn them all).

Rules light is "We don't have to calculate much or look much up either on character sheets or in the rulebook". Neither more nor less.


Recently one of them wanted to swap out the standard skill system in PF to the 7th age system, where if I understand it correctly you write up a character biography and then convince the DM that your backstory should allow you to perform the task you want to do in the present. This sounds like it is going to be a nightmare.

The purpose of the skill system in 13th Age isn't what you think. The baseline assumption in 13th Age is that most of the time it's plausible you will be able to use your backgrounds - but that's not where the intense part of the system comes. 13th Age backgrounds aren't designed to make skills a test of character skill (the PF skill system doesn't really do that anyway). What they are designed to do is produce detailed descriptions and worldbuilding and be fun. If you want a challenge focussed game stay away from 13th Age - it's designed to be evocative.


Really, I don't get the appeal. Unless everyone is on exactly the same page and perfectly unbiased I don't see any advantage to coming up with things on the fly over looking through a heavy rulebook and calculating the proper odds. But judging by the love of rules light games and the almost universal praise of the 5E skill system it seems like I am in the minority. What am I missing?

The 5e skill system isn't very different from the 3.X ones (it's closer to the 4e one). The only real difference is that there are fewer example DCs and because there are fewer some of them aren't as wonky.

Anonymouswizard
2015-02-09, 06:31 AM
I haven't played in any actual rules light systems, but I do have experience in lighter/heavier games. The lightest game I've played in is Unknown Armies. But then again I've decided that telling players "this is impossible" is not going to be taken well, but if you let the player try (maybe at a penalty), roll a few dice behind the screen, and then explain just how they failed then the players will take it well. One player in my group is still mocked for when his ninja failed to sneak in the air conditioning, because I don't see it as a particularly simple thing to do (and if you have all your gear, I hope it doesn't collapse). But the key thing is that the player could try, even if they end up failing. However, I still let a critical or exceptional success allow it to happen, as it encourages my players to think and come up with ideas.

Segev
2015-02-09, 10:27 AM
When I want a rules-light game, I tend to go to what I consider the extreme of it. Risus is a system where you have 10 d6s as your "build pool." You create 3-6 or so "traits" that your character has, and assign dice to them. You and the GM agree on appropriate traits to roll when challenges arise.

Obviously, there's room for argument and abuse. "Can my 'baker' skill let me thwart the villain by using flour to dust for fingerprints?" "Well, I just put all 10 dice in 'magic,' and I always cast a spell that does whatever I need to!" But the idea in a rules-light game is that you're all being fairly cooperative, and that you're more comfortable negotiating early and often to make sure things are as balanced and interesting as possible.


I tend not to like the "rules light" games that are more intense than that, because they introduce something that defeats the advantages of being rules light (speed of chargen, lack of need to pour through rulebooks and look up interactions, less fiddly bits to optimize or watch for broken combinations) while failing to deliver the advantages of rules-heavy (mostly, clearly-defined and agreed-upon understandings of what you can and cannot do, and how to determine edge and indeterminant cases).

Thrudd
2015-02-09, 10:50 AM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Whenever I play in a rules light system it seems like that is all that ever happens, someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something. I personally hate it, regardless of what side of the screen I am on.

Can someone explain the appeal to me? In my experience you either get a iron fisted DM who says no to everything, in which case you are constantly frustrated and disappointed, a more lax DM in which case everyone is competing to top one another as the only limits they place are on themselves, or a more reasonable DM who allows things that they think won't cause problems, but then bog the game down with endless debate and deliberation.

Currently I am playing in two games, both of which run off the "the rules are just a guideline" philosophy. Maybe it is just the DM's I am playing under, but I have yet to have one of them approve a character action that fell outside the written rules. On the other hand, on more occasions that I can count I have been denied a rules legal action because the DM didn't like it for whatever reason. This is not fun.

Recently one of them wanted to swap out the standard skill system in PF to the 13th age system, where if I understand it correctly you write up a character biography and then convince the DM that your backstory should allow you to perform the task you want to do in the present. This sounds like it is going to be a nightmare.

On the other hand I remember when I was running a very early version of Heart of Darkness some years ago before the rules were really worked out. One of the players at my table was a door to door salesman for his day job, and he was very good at convincing me to let him do things, to the point where the other players actually got rather jealous and or mad at him about it and stopped having fun.

Really, I don't get the appeal. Unless everyone is on exactly the same page and perfectly unbiased I don't see any advantage to coming up with things on the fly over looking through a heavy rulebook and calculating the proper odds. But judging by the love of rules light games and the almost universal praise of the 5E skill system it seems like I am in the minority. What am I missing?

I think the problem your group is having is that "rule 0" isn't being respected. In a system where there is a lot of room for interpretation of skills and abilities, the GM needs to be respected as the final word, otherwise the game devolves into arguments as you have noticed.
A player says " I try to do this and I want to use skill x to do it", if the GM says "no, that skill doesn't apply", the player should just move on. Argument is pointless, it stops the game and ruins fun. If a gm constantly makes bad or adversarial judgements, or the players can't let go and allow the GM to be the final judge and arbiter, then such a system isn't going to work. It requires common sense, liberal openness to suggestions and a desire to cooperate on the part of everyone in the group.

Knaight
2015-02-09, 11:03 AM
I'd never allow that as GM. This is exactly the type of thing some players do to ''tweak'' the game. They come up with ridiculous things. This is where the GM just says ''Sorry, Lo-Kar the Savage can not play the piano''.

As you said, problem players can be anywhere. Provided you don't have them, this is also not an issue. Sometimes you get "Lo-Kar knows how to play the piano" sometimes you get "Yeah, Nar probably doesn't know basic currency conversions and actually could be cheated that blatantly". Though in that case that came up with an in character "The gold ones are worth more than the silver, right?" "No, Nar, that's where you're mistaken" type of situation.

Raine_Sage
2015-02-09, 11:22 AM
Rules as a guideline =/= Rules light.

Rules as a guideline means: "We're playing a super crunchy system but I don't want to spend twenty minutes leafing through books whenever I come across a rule I don't know so in those cases we're just going to wing it. We're not playing a rules light game though because I want to be able to slam on the numerical breaks hard if I feel the players are taking too many liberties."

Rules Light means: This system was not designed around simulating small details, so in the case of everything that is not combat or a test of skill the players get to decide if they can do something or not while the GM adjusts the story as necessary.


Playing a rules light game can be a bit like that trust exercise where you fall back and let someone catch you, but in most cases it's the DMs trusting the players not to run completely amok. But a DM shouldn't run a rules light game unless they're prepared to just roll with things. For example a friend of mine wanted to run a game ofMagical Burst (http://yarukizerogames.com/2014/06/03/magical-burst-4th-draft/) a rules light Magical Girl game.

One of the optional rules at character startup is that each player describes in one sentence an aspect of the city they'll be playing in. So the DM lays out the basic premise (This city is in england, it's by the coast, it's largely industrial, etc) and then each player adds a personal piece of fluff. So we go around the table.

"There's a large radio tower in the center of the city."
"There was a terrible epidemic 50 years ago."
"There's a ruined burnt out portion of the city that's never successfully been rebuilt."

While a little ominous these are all generally light and atmospheric descriptions. Then one player goes "40% of the people living there are unconvicted murderers." Which understandably brings things to a bit of a halt while we all look at him like he's nuts. But he's not breaking any rules. The rules didn't say anything other than "contribute a sentence about the city." They never said "But nothing really outlandish" and the GM just shrugged and rolled with it. So now we're living in a city where most everyone but maybe the kids and the eldery have shanked someone at least once in their lifetime. Could it be an interesting plot point? Sure. Just not one any of us were expecting.

Knaight
2015-02-09, 11:29 AM
Rules Light means: This system was not designed around simulating small details, so in the case of everything that is not combat or a test of skill the players get to decide if they can do something or not while the GM adjusts the story as necessary.

Not necessarily. There are rules games light like this, but there are also rules light games in which just about everything is either a conflict, a test of some skill, or some other thing where there is at least a broad mechanical framework the GM can use, where the players aren't making the decision. For instance, Chronica Feudalis is rules light, but there's never really any case where the players get to decide if they can do something. Meanwhile there are somewhat crunchy systems which do leave that decision up to the players, but have some sort of convoluted system behind how it works.

VincentTakeda
2015-02-09, 11:33 AM
Hillariously I'm currently running a palladium's heroes unlimited/ninjas and superspies sandbox with the caveat of 'bring your own sand'...

Before this particular group of guys I was adamantly a 'lets see how that could work' kinda gm. These guys kinda cut their teeth on d20 and 3.x so they're quite the gamists and I 'feel myself becoming the kind of gm who says no'... And occasionally when I have said no I've gotten some pushback... Most recently I've had a player adamantly deny the physics of leverage... Staunchly rejecting a principle that actually plays out in real life... to the tune of 'there's nothing you can say that will convince me'...

I'm like dude... If you can't believe in how real world physics works then I'm not sure we're gonna be able to have a meaningful gaming experience... If you're doubling down on denying how things happen in reality... if you're going to hang your happiness hat on going toe to toe every time you want physics to behave in a comic book way for the sake of the game, thats one thing, but if you're telling me I'm not going to be able to convince you that your way is a comic book way? You think thats actually how things work int he real world? Sorry man. I'm done. Its gotten that bad. So...

As a simulationist sandboxer I tend to just let my players run amok and generate their own trouble, but since part of running the sim is 'having the world react and behave in a logical, consistant manner' the players will often find themselves in situations that aren't simple cakewalks, or facing enemies that have, either through the dangers of the setting or through previous interactions with the party itself, learned how to properly prepare to defend themselves... As if the players are 'offended' that the enemy is not a foolish pushover. I'm making logically consistant decisions for the npcs and the players either disagree with it, or accept it but dont find it 'fun' to have to problem solve instead of stampede.

So, ludicrous as it may sound, particulary with the munchkin paradise that is the sdc palladium rule set, instead of being a gm and making decisions on how I think things should go, I've decided that nearly every time a decision needs to be made, instead of saying 'here's what happens' and dealing with the backlash that 'i've made an unpopular decision'... Instead I say 'here's what I think should happen, then force everyone at the table to give me their version of what should happen instead, then we all roll d20 and high roll is what happens.

Its slowed the pace of the game down a bit, but they were robbing a bank and were going through safety deposit boxes... instead of 'you open a safety deposit box and I decide whats in it... Everyone gets to contribute an idea each time and so each of them has an opportunity to build the world theyre in as they find it. It was hollywood california so when my roll came up I put a taxidermied chihuahua in one of the safety deposit boxes. Sometimes I'm funny. But for the times my idea isnt the popular idea... Now more than half of the development of the world is in the hands of the players themselves.

If I think the players are having too easy of a time of it, I'll say 'something horrible happens... here's the horrible thing that I think happens... on the other hand....' and then they have to decide what obstacle they face that they'd find more fun than what I have in mind.

Its been a funky experience so far. Instead of doubling down, or siezing power, or wasting game time arguing... I've handed 75% of the power of world building and consequences over to the players themselves. Then we let the one unbiased player at the table decide what really happens... And that player of course... Is the dice.

Deaxsa
2015-02-09, 11:47 AM
I like to question, but not argue with, the GM. i'll ask "wait, shouldnt this work that way?" or "how did THAT happen?" and he'll either say "well, XYZ" or he'll say "reasons" and it all works out. if i keep asking questions the game is slowed down and no one has fun.

TheThan
2015-02-09, 03:06 PM
Really, I don't get the appeal. Unless everyone is on exactly the same page and perfectly unbiased I don't see any advantage to coming up with things on the fly over looking through a heavy rulebook and calculating the proper odds. But judging by the love of rules light games and the almost universal praise of the 5E skill system it seems like I am in the minority. What am I missing?

It sounds like you’re describing free form role-playing, where people have complete and utter freedom to do whatever they want. There are no rules or guidelines for determining how conflict unfolds.

The problem with a system such as this is that it’s no different from playing cops and robbers. What happens? One person “shoots” the other and then the other denies they were shot and retroactively declares that he shot him first. Then the game breaks down into an argument and people’s feelings are hurt.

A proper rules light system actually… you know… has rules. Take Fate, it’s pretty rules light, but it’s got a system for resolving conflict and for determining what you’re good at and by what degree you are successful or not at doing those things. It’s easy to learn, fast to play and doesn’t get bogged down by having overly complex rules.

Games don’t break down into arguments because a roll of the dice determines the outcome.

(i know nothing about 5E, so yeah, that's why I'm referencing fate.)

Segev
2015-02-09, 03:54 PM
*cough* I think you mean "complete and utter."

kyoryu
2015-02-09, 04:07 PM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Whenever I play in a rules light system it seems like that is all that ever happens, someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something. I personally hate it, regardless of what side of the screen I am on.

This doesn't happen in my games. I mean, like never ever.


I wouldn't know, since this simply doesn't happen at my table. We often play in more rules-lite systems, and there has never been a "debate" about what a character can do.

Glad I'm not the only one.


In rules light games, you get players that try to optimize, power grab and alter game reality. Though it is all trying to get stuff past the DM.

Yeah, rules light games don't work with players that will try to really bend things to their advantage.



Here's how it should work...
--You tell the GM what you want to do
--The GM tells you what attribute to use, and asks you if you have a Background you're using
--You give a Background that's appropriate to the task ("I use my Trained Guardsman of Emerald Spire background to muscle through the crowd!", although if it's pretty clear that you're stretching (aka "I'm using my The Finest Baker in Castlekeep Background to jump over this chasm! Because, um, it reminds me of a cake I baked one time.") then the GM should just look askance at you, because really?

Mostly the same with Fate, with Aspects providing permissions to do things beyond the norm.


And that may be the disconnect: rules-lite systems require a particular level of cooperation and informality. The core philosophy of rules-lite is "don't sweat the details", and either you're drastically misapplying the rules or the GM is being way too uncooperative. My money's on the latter.

Or the players are trying to stretch things. As you said, cooperation. Rules light games don't really work in a more antagonistic environment, where it's "player vs GM".


The less cooperative both sides are, the worse the overall experience is.

Yup. The GM has to be okay with details/things they didn't plan on or think were there, and players have to be okay with things not going their way.



One reason is things like the "Barbarian playing piano" example. If the rules aren't deciding that (by having a Perform skill, for example), then who is? It's either the player or the GM. And if it's the GM, then how is the player supposed to have any non-stereotypical background? Barbarians can only do what the GM considers "typical barbarian things"? That sounds boring as hell. I know some people really enjoy the 'class as archetype' thing, but for me it gets old fast.

In Fate, if you have an aspect that would likely indicate you can play the piano, then you can clearly do so for mostly cosmetic effect. If you have an aspect that indicates it might be possible, or you're going for a stronger effect, then drop a Fate Point. One of the things that Fate Points do is provide a way for players to say "no, really, this is important to me." It provides the GM with a middle ground between "sure!" (which should be the default for unimportant things that are at all feasible) and "no way!" which, in something like Fate, should really only be used for things that truly don't relate to anything known about the character.

So in Fate, your High Concept might be "Barbarian Warrior". Which would kind of preclude playing the piano. But if you spent "Years as a Slave in the So-Called Civilized World", then it's a lot more likely you picked up some piano stuff.



Games don’t break down into arguments because a roll of the dice determines the outcome.

Right, in Fate for instance, you generally don't want to say 'no' flat out unless something *really really* is just outside the realm of possibility.

The "Barbarian playing piano" example would more likely be run based on what the players is trying to accomplish. Trying to impress someone with your playing? That's a Rapport skill check, so you still have to have the skill to pull it off.


*cough* I think you mean "complete and utter."

Are you sure? Because I'd play that game.

TheThan
2015-02-09, 04:36 PM
*cough* I think you mean "complete and utter."

yeah, slight mistake. although that does remind me of some rather bad jokes.

jedipotter
2015-02-09, 04:59 PM
As you said, problem players can be anywhere.

Rules light works the best when your playing with friends. People you know very well and get along with. Though most circles of friends have at least one person who ''tweaks'' things.

When you add in strangers, or people that don't know each other well....that is where the real problems start. Though this is true of most games.

NichG
2015-02-09, 06:00 PM
If you're arguing with the DM about something that just happened that you don't like, then likely you're doing it wrong. The natural response of almost any person in that position is going to be to first solidify their position before actually trying to compromise, which means that the more you argue, the less likely you are to get what you want. Instead, its better to accept the immediate ruling with grace, but discuss things in broader terms to adjust the DM's style over the long run.

For example, the DM rules that your water magic can't actually produce water from nothing, it can only move around existing water. Okay, that sucks, you want to avoid the nerf because you think it'll be annoying to keep track of a dozen waterskins all the time. But saying 'no, thats a bad idea, water magic should be able to produce water' is going to feel to the DM like you're attacking their authority. If you have a DM who is experienced enough, they can quash that impulse and treat the objection fairly, but an inexperienced DM is likely to push back even harder until they're resisting you not because of the ruling they actually believe is best for the game, but just to win the fight.

On the other hand, if you accept it, but then after game say something like 'You know, I find resource tracking is really tedious, and this is supposed to be a rules light game. Can you think of any way we could cut down on the resource tracking?' then it feels less like an attack. Even better, you're actually 'giving' them something - you're saying 'I have a problem that you with your DM authority have the power to fix, can you help me?'.

If you've been very enthusiastic about the campaign up to that point, it gives you credit you can use to pull off a passive aggressive argument. For example, 'you know, the magic seems a bit underwhelming, so I think I'm going to focus on something else for this character'. This only works if up until then you've been an avid supporter (you're using the sudden lack of interest to make the DM worry he's losing you). If you've complained a lot before or been lukewarm about the game, then it will tend to just create the impression that you're impossible to satisfy and the DM will stop trying.

All of this has nothing to do with rules heavy vs rules light. It's just dealing with social dynamics.

kyoryu
2015-02-09, 07:44 PM
Here's how I think the "spontaneously create water" discussion goes, ideally.

GM: "You can't spontaneously create water."

Player: "Okay, I'm guessing you're worried about it just becoming the one skill that I use all the time, is that right? I can see your point there, I don't want to overshadow everyone else. But at the same time, I don't really want to worry about tracking every waterskin and whatnot."

GM: "Yeah, I can see that. How about if we just assume you have reasonable water supplies on you for smallish effects, but for larger stuff, there has to be a source of water nearby?"

Player: "I think that'll work. I still think it might make the skill useless, but we'll go with it for now and reevaluate?"

GM: "Awesome."

(And, yes, this is how similar conversations that I've had with players have gone, roughly. Whether that means I'm lucky, or whatever, I don't know. But this is my experience.)

Talakeal
2015-02-09, 07:45 PM
I haven't actually played 13th age yet, just skimmed the book when the DM said he was going to be porting some of the rules for it into our PF game. From what I saw / heard it does not look like it is going to go over well, but I am withholding final judgment until it happens.

Also, Forgive me if I am using the terms "rules light" wrong. I guess I more mean vague.

To use a D&D analogy I mean spells like Genesis, Wish, or Polymorph any Object, or the Sarrukhs infamous manipulate form ability. These spells are so vague and permissive that you can read them to do whatever you want with them, and trying to use them boils down to negotiating with the DM.


For example, in White Wolf most of the powers are very vague about specifics, and lack anything like D&Ds nice little box that tells you range, casting time, saving throw, duration, etc. and they mostly fall under the auspice of "ask the storyteller". Mage is horrible about this as it never gives concrete rules for a lot of things, especially how many successes spells take or where the line is between coincidental and vulgar magic, making almost any spell casting turn into "mother may I." I love WoD, but it gets old. The other night I was trying to figure out if my Unbondable merit allowed me to ignore a Gaes laid on me by the fey (the text says you can "get favors from the king without swearing fealty"... whatever that means) and I mentioned how frustrating it is to never know for sure exactly what abilities my character has when playing Mage.

I was then shocked when most of the group said that that wasn't a bad thing, and that they actually preferred the extra feeling of suspense and freedom it gives.

When I say "arguing" I don't necessarily mean bitching about the DM's decision. I more mean stuff like asking if one of our merits applies in a particular situation and trying to present a compelling argument for the DM to allow it.

Now, I think my current DM just uses it as an excuse to be a control freak. For example, he will nerf or remove your abilities on the spot and if you object he will state that we aren't playing hard and fast with the rules and the books are only guidelines. On the other hand when the players have come to him and wanting to, say, swap out one class feature for another like page 110 of the 3.5 PHB suggests or want to research a new feat, spell, magic item, or skill I have yet to see him say yes once. It is frustrating.
I also know how exhausting it is from the other side of the screen having to approve 3rd party or homebrew material, and how much of a stink players will raise if you ok another player's suggestions but not theirs or, god forbid, you change your mind later.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-09, 08:05 PM
It's not like people don't argue in rules heavy games.

I don't argue at all anymore, whether the game is light or heavy. If the GM isn't going to give me something or if I would have to argue for it, fine, I don't want it. If a player wants something, fine. Yes, as was pointed out above, this means the players can do anything they want. They don't even have to wish for infinite wishes.

If a player is given narrative control of the game, and uses it to wreck the game, you've learned an important fact: that the player didn't really want to play that game. If you're a bit lucky, you've also learned what game it is that the player does want to play.

Players who want to play the game will take the narrative control they're given and use it to make the game better.

kyoryu
2015-02-09, 08:20 PM
It's really hard to say what's going on, as you're speaking a bit in generalities (or about things that I don't really have specifics on, such as what "Unbondable" really does).

That's part of the nature of the internet - we're communicating with relatively low bandwidth.

It could be that the GM is just using 'rules light' to enforce his will, etc. But that's really a GM issue, in my mind, and less of a rules heavy/rules light issue.

Talakeal
2015-02-09, 09:31 PM
It's really hard to say what's going on, as you're speaking a bit in generalities (or about things that I don't really have specifics on, such as what "Unbondable" really does).

That's part of the nature of the internet - we're communicating with relatively low bandwidth.

It could be that the GM is just using 'rules light' to enforce his will, etc. But that's really a GM issue, in my mind, and less of a rules heavy/rules light issue.

Yes, I am talking in generalities rather than specifics. Its just a general feeling I have developed over the last 25 years of gaming that vague or nonexistent rules are a pain in the butt for both players and Game Masters, and the only people who like them are people who take advantage of them (i.e.. players who can fast talk GMs into giving them more than they should or DMs who use them as an excuse to shut players down and keep them on the railroad). But the other night during my game I was told by several players that they prefer vague rules because it adds an element of suspense and freedom to the game, but I just don't see it
.

The Unbondable thing was just an example as it was what caused me to bring up my frustration with vaguely written rules to the group. Still, if you want the full text:

"Unbondable (3 pt Merit)
Vampiric blood cannot enslave your mage's will. No matter how much of it she consumes, the dreaded blood bond won't take hold. For that matter, she is immune to the eternal infatuation of the incubus' kisses and enslavement to ancient artifacts created with soul-binding powers. This merit can be powerful - a little too powerful for some chronicles - if combined with the Ghoul merit. Therefore, if a character wants to be a free-willed ghoul, bear a soul-binding ring safely, or be in any other situation where they can get favors from the king without having to swear fealty, the player has to pay double the usual amount."

VincentTakeda
2015-02-09, 09:53 PM
I think what got me over this particular hump is the realization that, at the end of the day, even systems that are seen as being rules heavy like 3.x or pathfinder are fundamentally fiat based... The torrential downpour of RAW/RAI discussions at paizo show that even though you have a lot of rules, you have 10 times more 'people disagreeing with how those rules should be interpreted' which... Yep. You guessed it. Means resolving the disagreements by either fiat, or on consensus table by table or by 'society play' in pathfinder terms. What 'appears' to be rules heavy, in this instance, ends up being rules light. Because theres so much disagreement about the rules that the only way to play is to sort through everyone's personal interpretation, which is what rules light is doing in the first place.

Think about DC's for skill checks. The DC might be published in a way that suggests it cant be changed or set by fiat. But it is a fundamental part of that system that the dm can arbitrarily adjust the dc as he sees fit for any given situation... The 'hard rule' in execution is pretty 'fiat heavy'... If you have 20 points in a skill and the gm fiats the dc to be 35 because he wants what you're trying to do to be 'a difficult thing to try at the moment'... that decision is a personal, often arbitrary thing that makes the rules as they stand pretty useless. Might as well have had a zero skill in it and he'd set the dc for 15... Rules light hidden within a system that seems on the surface to be very rules heavy.

Giving the gm the ability to adjust dcs to what he thinks is appropriate is pretty much giving him nearly abject control of what should appear to be a combination of random rolls and player choices... If he abuses that power he gets a reputation for being a 'no you can't do that' gm, which is the exact same label that gets thrown at narrativists in rules light systems. Player agency and even dice rolls will not alter how stuff goes down. So the 'rules heavy' systems usually have a backdoor built into them that makes them rules light at the end of the day anyway. Any system that discusses 'rule zero' is basically saying 'pay no attention to the man behend the curtain'.

Rules heavy systems might give some players the feeling that they have more legs to stand on because there are rules to cite... But at the end of the day a pathfinder gm is still free to throw an apl+10 at the party whenever he feels like it... He sets the dc of the skillcheck. He controls the layout of the battlemat to give the opponent tactical advantage. He's free to throw opponents at you that are purpose built to overcome your weaknesses and ignore your strengths...

Thats why rule zero browbeats every other rule. The only rule that beats rule zero is if you employ rule zero poorly, you lose all your players.

Doesn't matter how many rules there are... At the end of the day the only thing that matters is that everyone's on the same page about how things work and how much fun they're having playing by the rules they've chosen for themselves. Rock paper scissors wouldn't work if people couldnt agree that paper beats rock. Not that paper beating rock really makes much sense... Thats the nature of the game.

But the distinction between rules light and rules heavy systems isn't actually real... The number and granularity of the rules doesnt change much at the end of the day, its how much you can agree about the rules that you use... So the distinction is an illusion.

In a nutshell, pretty much any game ever that has died a grisly death at the hands of rules debates or disagreements with fiat in rules lights system is essentially a game that died because

someone said paper beats rock,
and someone else said 'how the h#ll exactly does that work?'
'well, paper *covers* rock..."
"that's total fu[cencored]ng bu[censored]t!"...

TheThan
2015-02-09, 10:02 PM
Also, Forgive me if I am using the terms "rules light" wrong. I guess I more mean vague.

To use a D&D analogy I mean spells like Genesis, Wish, or Polymorph any Object, or the Sarrukhs infamous manipulate form ability. These spells are so vague and permissive that you can read them to do whatever you want with them, and trying to use them boils down to negotiating with the DM.


Vague is a good descriptor.

But yeah, I can’t stand vague rules. I want to know what limits I have, I want to know what limits my allies have so I can work with them to accomplish tasks. I just don’t get how people can write a rule and make it so vague that it’s impossible to adjudicate without heavy handed use of rule zero.

goto124
2015-02-09, 10:53 PM
Rules heavy is helpful for playing with strangers, such as online campaigns (?)

Not necessary, I've played FFRP here for a while, but helpful when it's harder to reach an agreement.

kyoryu
2015-02-09, 11:37 PM
Yes, I am talking in generalities rather than specifics. Its just a general feeling I have developed over the last 25 years of gaming that vague or nonexistent rules are a pain in the butt for both players and Game Masters, and the only people who like them are people who take advantage of them (i.e.. players who can fast talk GMs into giving them more than they should or DMs who use them as an excuse to shut players down and keep them on the railroad).

That sounds like a pretty crappy experience.


But the other night during my game I was told by several players that they prefer vague rules because it adds an element of suspense and freedom to the game, but I just don't see it.

So ask them to explain more?

Look, your hypothesis seems to be that rules-light systems inevitably lead to arguments. That's just provably not true, by the number of people posting that it's not true in their games. So, there's something in your games that leads there, and, well, there's a single common factor in all of your games.

I've seen a lot of posts by you over the years, and one thing I've seen is that you don't have extremely high conflict resolution skills. Not to bust on you here, it's just an observation and not any kind of value judgment. Rules light games (from the player side) require that you be willing to accept and compromise the rulings of the GM. On the GM side, they require that you listen to and give credence to the things the players are trying to do, and keep an open mind about it. In both cases, they require a certain level of cooperation and compromise. If you have a problem with doing those things, then yeah, rules light games are going to suck for you.

But I don't think it's just a problem with rules light games. The people I've had problems with in rules light games were *also* problems in more rules-heavy games. It's not really a rules problem - it's a person problem.


The Unbondable thing was just an example as it was what caused me to bring up my frustration with vaguely written rules to the group. Still, if you want the full text:

Sure, so the fey geas isn't really explicit one way or the other. Since you're playing a game with a GM, part of the implicit social contract is to accept the judgements of the GM. So do so. If you're not willing to do so, I think it says more about you than it does the rules or the GM. Not necessarily in a bad way, just an "it is what it is" way.

If you knew that the fey thing was going to be a big point, and you knew that the wording was vague, the appropriate thing to do would be to clarify what it did when you took the merit. Clarifying assumptions and communicating them with the other people you're involved with is a really good thing to do.

If it was me, and the Fey thing popped up, and I had that merit, I'd see no problem with accepting the GM's judgement, no matter which way it landed. Now, if it was clear that it was being used to railroad, I'd have an issue with that, but that's because I have an issue with railroading. But, again, I don't see that as a rules thing, as a GM that wants to railroad will find an excuse to do so. It's better to just approach *that* subject directly. "Hey, I don't really like games where there's 'a plot' and as players we're dragged along a predtermined storyline. If that's what you're going to run, cool, but I think I'll sit it out." That's a much better way of handling *that* issue than getting into the minutiae of a merit's wording. Because the merit ain't the problem, it's the fact that you and the GM have totally different expectations of what a game is.


Rules heavy is helpful for playing with strangers, such as online campaigns (?)

And yet I've played rules-light systems with groups of total strangers online, without a single problem.

I'm not saying that rules-heavy systems are bad. They're just what they are. But a lot of the supposed flaws of rules light systems are just things I haven't experienced.

NichG
2015-02-10, 02:06 AM
I'll actually go beyond vague and say that I prefer systems in which I don't know the rules. To me, it's more fun to discover things in terms of in-character experimentation with powers rather than having a fixed list of exactly how everything works in front of me. Its much less frustrating if you go into things without a preconception of what something is 'supposed to' do, and simply say 'whatever happens gives me information about how it works'.

If my fireball turns into a cloud of opaque steam when I cast it during a rainstorm, that's a new thing I've learned about fire spells, not an example of my fire spell malfunctioning or failing to do what it was supposed to. The next time I need to block visibility, I can try to exploit a variant of that effect by e.g. casting the fireball into a pond or something.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 02:19 AM
That sounds like a pretty crappy experience.



So ask them to explain more?

Look, your hypothesis seems to be that rules-light systems inevitably lead to arguments. That's just provably not true, by the number of people posting that it's not true in their games. So, there's something in your games that leads there, and, well, there's a single common factor in all of your games.

I've seen a lot of posts by you over the years, and one thing I've seen is that you don't have extremely high conflict resolution skills. Not to bust on you here, it's just an observation and not any kind of value judgment. Rules light games (from the player side) require that you be willing to accept and compromise the rulings of the GM. On the GM side, they require that you listen to and give credence to the things the players are trying to do, and keep an open mind about it. In both cases, they require a certain level of cooperation and compromise. If you have a problem with doing those things, then yeah, rules light games are going to suck for you.

But I don't think it's just a problem with rules light games. The people I've had problems with in rules light games were *also* problems in more rules-heavy games. It's not really a rules problem - it's a person problem.



Sure, so the fey geas isn't really explicit one way or the other. Since you're playing a game with a GM, part of the implicit social contract is to accept the judgements of the GM. So do so. If you're not willing to do so, I think it says more about you than it does the rules or the GM. Not necessarily in a bad way, just an "it is what it is" way.

If you knew that the fey thing was going to be a big point, and you knew that the wording was vague, the appropriate thing to do would be to clarify what it did when you took the merit. Clarifying assumptions and communicating them with the other people you're involved with is a really good thing to do.

If it was me, and the Fey thing popped up, and I had that merit, I'd see no problem with accepting the GM's judgement, no matter which way it landed. Now, if it was clear that it was being used to railroad, I'd have an issue with that, but that's because I have an issue with railroading. But, again, I don't see that as a rules thing, as a GM that wants to railroad will find an excuse to do so. It's better to just approach *that* subject directly. "Hey, I don't really like games where there's 'a plot' and as players we're dragged along a predtermined storyline. If that's what you're going to run, cool, but I think I'll sit it out." That's a much better way of handling *that* issue than getting into the minutiae of a merit's wording. Because the merit ain't the problem, it's the fact that you and the GM have totally different expectations of what a game is.



And yet I've played rules-light systems with groups of total strangers online, without a single problem.

I'm not saying that rules-heavy systems are bad. They're just what they are. But a lot of the supposed flaws of rules light systems are just things I haven't experienced.


I would have asked the players in question for a more in depth explanation but we were in the middle of a game and I didn't want to interrupt the game or appear to be critical of the GMs who were within earshot at the time. If I have a chance to talk to any of them in private in the future I certainly will.

I fully admit that I am not great at dealing with people, but I won't believe that these problems are unique to or somehow caused by me. I have seen plenty of arguments between other players or other players and DMs which I have had no part in, many of which ended up with someone storming out and never coming back, throwing people out of their house, or killing off other PCs / the whole campaign. Heck, I have seen PCs fight with one another over my calls as GM because they feel that other players are getting preferential treatment from or taking advantage of me.

I have also seen LOTS of other players get into long in depth debate sessions with GMs who are trying to convince said DM to change their mind on a ruling.

Also, on the forums (these and others) I see a lot of extremely heated arguments over interpretations of rules, many of which descend into flaming and name calling. I don't take part in the vast majority of them, and these are people arguing with strangers who presumably have no ability to actually effect their lives.

As for the Unbondable merit, I didn't talk about the Storyteller with it when I took it because I honestly never imagined this situation coming up in the game. Also, I would have taken it anyway, because while I had no intention of ever using the merit it was appropriate to the character just incase it ever came up. I only though about it because a few days ago I was looking at how many merits my character has which I simply had for RP reasons, and musing about how anyone looking at my character sheet would think me a power gamer even though I would have been far better served by simply putting the points into ability scores and spheres of magic. Unbondable was at the top of my list because it is a rather expensive merit that in all my years of playing has never ever come up and likely never will, and I was really excited at the prospect of it doing something.

I absolutely will abide by the GMs ruling one way or another. I DON'T enjoy arguing with the DM, and consider it rude to do so. The thing is, I also don't like being told no for what I feel is a perfectly valid use of an ability as it makes me feel, rightly or not, like I am being somehow screwed over, and would much prefer rules that said what they do upfront in no uncertain terms so I don't have to. (This goes both ways of course, I also feel the same way when I have to shut down something my players are looking forward to).

Kiero
2015-02-10, 05:18 AM
I haven't actually played 13th age yet, just skimmed the book when the DM said he was going to be porting some of the rules for it into our PF game. From what I saw / heard it does not look like it is going to go over well, but I am withholding final judgment until it happens.


{scrubbed}

I don't like Backgrounds; I prefer concrete Skills (in an abstracted D&D4e way, not the super-granular 3.x way); but they work perfectly fine, without any wrangling in our 13A game.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 05:37 AM
{scrubbed}

I don't like Backgrounds; I prefer concrete Skills (in an abstracted D&D4e way, not the super-granular 3.x way); but they work perfectly fine, without any wrangling in our 13A game.

That's a bit hostile, don't you think? I said I just skimmed over them briefly and had them explained to me, reading comprehension doesn't much factor into it.

Would you mind shedding some light on how it is different than I understood or how you can get by without wrangling?

Coidzor
2015-02-10, 06:25 AM
No, I don't enjoy arguing with the GM.

If there's a lot of arguing with the GM going on in a cooperative storytelling game, then there's some clear problems with expectations and understanding of what they're supposed to be doing on one or both sides.

Kiero
2015-02-10, 06:31 AM
That's a bit hostile, don't you think? I said I just skimmed over them briefly and had them explained to me, reading comprehension doesn't much factor into it.

Would you mind shedding some light on how it is different than I understood or how you can get by without wrangling?

{scrubbed} You don't even need to have the book in hand, the SRD for 13A (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=13316) is free.

First thing we did in our game was explain our Backgrounds in chargen to the group. We staked out some clear areas where the thing applied, so everyone knew what we were getting at with it. I even appended D&D4e Skills to some of them for my character (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Iskander) so no one was in any doubt.

Adept of Iron Crane Style +4

Physicality (Athletics, Acrobatics, Endurance)
Elemental insights (Arcana)



An Officer's Education +2

Command/Diplomacy
History/heraldry
Tactics



Veteran of the Mountain Patrol +2

Survival (foraging, camp tasks)
Riding
Perception
Knowledge of common denizens of the mountains



Insights of the Void +1

Knowledge and practise of the Void element



Son of a Smith +1

Craft skills
Insight




Then it's reinforced in play. We all confirm our understanding of what each Background does and doesn't apply to through use. Most of the time it's unspoken, occasionally there's a question about whether something applies to a particular task, but again it's usually quite clear.

neonchameleon
2015-02-10, 08:50 AM
Also, Forgive me if I am using the terms "rules light" wrong. I guess I more mean vague.

To use a D&D analogy I mean spells like Genesis, Wish, or Polymorph any Object, or the Sarrukhs infamous manipulate form ability. These spells are so vague and permissive that you can read them to do whatever you want with them, and trying to use them boils down to negotiating with the DM.

If we look up Polymorph Any Object (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorphAnyObject.htm) we find in addition to two tables literally a dozen sentences worth of rules, a reference that this works like another spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorph.htm) (which both has four paragraphs of text and says it works like a third (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/alterSelf.htm) spell, this one with a further nine paragraphs). In short to cast Polymorph Any Object we need to import twelve paragraphs of rules from other spells.

To call Polymorph Any Object "Rules Light" is IMO ridiculous.


For example, in White Wolf most of the powers are very vague about specifics,

Again, White Wolf games do not IME remotely fit the heading of "Rules light"

When I'm thinking of "rules light" games I think of something like the one page Lasers and Feelings (http://onesevendesign.com/lasers_and_feelings_rpg.pdf) or my own Harry Potter RPG (where characters fit on a post-it note, the rules run to two sides (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1msJTf65RayCifG66YWTnDrnnycny3h3X3yW8WKiZu64/edit), and the entire rules plus guidance (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1avqZm0uZXEVLLki7OfvveyxEF4awjWSQ_62aABPO3Ko/edit#) fit comfortably on seven sides)

And there's generally a lot less arguing in a rules light system than a rules heavy one - there's only the "Can I actually try this" question - and that is generally simple because you aren't snagging on all the rules to work out the answer.


I was then shocked when most of the group said that that wasn't a bad thing, and that they actually preferred the extra feeling of suspense and freedom it gives.

Anything can happen in the next half hour...


Now, I think my current DM just uses it as an excuse to be a control freak. For example, he will nerf or remove your abilities on the spot and if you object he will state that we aren't playing hard and fast with the rules and the books are only guidelines. On the other hand when the players have come to him and wanting to, say, swap out one class feature for another like page 110 of the 3.5 PHB suggests or want to research a new feat, spell, magic item, or skill I have yet to see him say yes once. It is frustrating.

I agree. This is the worst of all worlds. And rules light there's little need for homebrew let alone third party. Because you don't have the massive list of abilities in the first place.

Psyren
2015-02-10, 10:25 AM
I agree with the OP - rules-light just does not appeal to me for exactly this reason. As a Magic player, I like bright-line rules with clear metrics for success and failure.

I don't think overt bickering is necessarily a common occurrence - most people go along with the GM, especially in a new game - but the feelings of frustration and lack of agency do happen, and they tend to just get internalized until they bubble up and derail the campaign down the road.

When you have clear rules to point to, they are your shield against a fallible GM's errors and overreaches. You can point out that "no, this is what the designers intended" - and while the GM has the power to change or override these, there is also more chance of acquiescence or compromise too. It's all in how you correct them.


I think the problem your group is having is that "rule 0" isn't being respected. In a system where there is a lot of room for interpretation of skills and abilities, the GM needs to be respected as the final word, otherwise the game devolves into arguments as you have noticed.

Just because the GM has the final say doesn't mean you can't plead your case. If I find my character in a situation that I don't think fits his motivations or abilities at all, I am not going to just roll over and ask the GM to paddle the other side too. I don't think an argument should derail the entire campaign, but I think asking for justification in the face of perceived injustice is more than fair.

Knaight
2015-02-10, 11:26 AM
Also, on the forums (these and others) I see a lot of extremely heated arguments over interpretations of rules, many of which descend into flaming and name calling. I don't take part in the vast majority of them, and these are people arguing with strangers who presumably have no ability to actually effect their lives.

Exactly. These really heated arguments over rules interpretations on these forums are basically all over D&D, which has been a fairly rules heavy system since AD&D if not from the very start. That it is rules heavy isn't protecting against arguing; it's inciting it. Meanwhile, I have literally never seen a heated argument over the Fudge rules set despite being in Fudge circles for years - and that's a rules light game.


If we look up Polymorph Any Object (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorphAnyObject.htm) we find in addition to two tables literally a dozen sentences worth of rules, a reference that this works like another spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorph.htm) (which both has four paragraphs of text and says it works like a third (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/alterSelf.htm) spell, this one with a further nine paragraphs). In short to cast Polymorph Any Object we need to import twelve paragraphs of rules from other spells.

To call Polymorph Any Object "Rules Light" is IMO ridiculous.
I've seen a number of fantasy systems in which their entire magic system is less than twelve paragraphs, which also feature at least one fewer table. Said systems are also frequently way better balanced, and involve less referencing of an external manual 300 pages long when doing certain things (e.g. any polymorph that entails bringing out the MM).

Basically, it's as far from rules light as it gets.

Segev
2015-02-10, 11:29 AM
Exactly. These really heated arguments over rules interpretations on these forums are basically all over D&D, which has been a fairly rules heavy system since AD&D if not from the very start. That it is rules heavy isn't protecting against arguing; it's inciting it. Meanwhile, I have literally never seen a heated argument over the Fudge rules set despite being in Fudge circles for years - and that's a rules light game.

That's 'cause you just keep Fudging your results!


*absconds!*

Knaight
2015-02-10, 11:31 AM
That's 'cause you just keep Fudging your results!


*absconds!*

Oh Fudge, somebody is on to me. Time to get the Fudge out of here.

More seriously, a funny thing about Fudge is that there are active disincentives to fudge die rolls in a lot of ways.

Thrudd
2015-02-10, 11:38 AM
Just because the GM has the final say doesn't mean you can't plead your case. If I find my character in a situation that I don't think fits his motivations or abilities at all, I am not going to just roll over and ask the GM to paddle the other side too. I don't think an argument should derail the entire campaign, but I think asking for justification in the face of perceived injustice is more than fair.

There's a fine line where pleading your case turns into derailing the game. If it goes on for more than one or two question and answers, it's too much. Generally, keep the rules discussion for before or after the session. During the game, the GM makes a call, and that's it. The GM won't always make the best or correct call, but you roll with it until there is time for OOC discussion. In a group that can't get along this way, I agree that very clear rulings on as many scenarios as possible is desirable. 3.5/PF is the rule-lawyer edition, and that is great for some groups.

neonchameleon
2015-02-10, 12:21 PM
Oh Fudge, somebody is on to me. Time to get the Fudge out of here.

It was Fated to happen.

Knaight
2015-02-10, 12:43 PM
It was Fated to happen.

...Well played.

Frozen_Feet
2015-02-10, 02:38 PM
In my experience, the most common "argument" at a game table is "That horrible thing is not happening to my PC!" followed by "Pwetty please?" and puppy dog eyes. These have everything to do with a player not wanting to lose or have bad things happen to their characters, and nothing to do with the game rules or their type thereof.

When actual rules arguments occur, they tend to be between two players who both know the game system fairly well. Again, the overall classification of rules-lite versus rules-heavy is not very important, save for one obvious factor: rules-heavy games have more rules to remember, hence more rules to forget, hence more rules to argue about.

The attitudes of "rules-as-guidelines" or "rulings-not-rules" can contribute to arguments if the GM is being notably inconsistent. If seemingly similar situations are dealt with in wildly different manners, even a relatively green player will notice something is off and demand an explanation. It should be noted that Rule 0 is not an explanation, it's akin to referee blowing the whistle so the conflict can be resolved and the game continued in a timely manner. If explaining rules or rulings in a timely fashion is not possible during the game, the standard solution is to delay explanation until the game has ended, and amend misguided or mistaken rulings by the GM for the following games.

Tengu_temp
2015-02-10, 02:53 PM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Whenever I play in a rules light system it seems like that is all that ever happens, someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something.

The people you're playing with don't have the right approach for a rules light system. Considering your other gaming stories, no wonder; rules light systems generally require a more mature group, while the people you play with are anything but.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 04:43 PM
{scrubbed} You don't even need to have the book in hand, the SRD for 13A (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=13316) is free.

First thing we did in our game was explain our Backgrounds in chargen to the group. We staked out some clear areas where the thing applied, so everyone knew what we were getting at with it. I even appended D&D4e Skills to some of them for my character (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim/Iskander) so no one was in any doubt.

Adept of Iron Crane Style +4

Physicality (Athletics, Acrobatics, Endurance)
Elemental insights (Arcana)



An Officer's Education +2

Command/Diplomacy
History/heraldry
Tactics



Veteran of the Mountain Patrol +2

Survival (foraging, camp tasks)
Riding
Perception
Knowledge of common denizens of the mountains



Insights of the Void +1

Knowledge and practise of the Void element



Son of a Smith +1

Craft skills
Insight




Then it's reinforced in play. We all confirm our understanding of what each Background does and doesn't apply to through use. Most of the time it's unspoken, occasionally there's a question about whether something applies to a particular task, but again it's usually quite clear.

I actually read the SRD before posting, it didn't have enough detail to change my opinion on anything or provide any information I didn't recall.
I Note that you have gone an extra step and actually listed out what each background covers, which would certainly make it less vague (although imo it effectively just turns the background system into a watered down 3.X skill system), but it isn't in the rules. Why did you feel the need to do this if the rules in the SRD were not vague and saying they are is disingenuous?




To call Polymorph Any Object "Rules Light" is IMO ridiculous.


.

Again, maybe "vague" is better than disingenuous. But for PAO just do a quick search of the 3.5 forums and see how many threads there are about turning stuff into anti matter, or moons, or ray guns, or creatures with every template in the book, or a thousand other ridiculous things.


In my experience, the most common "argument" at a game table is "That horrible thing is not happening to my PC!" followed by "Pwetty please?" and puppy dog eyes. These have everything to do with a player not wanting to lose or have bad things happen to their characters, and nothing to do with the game rules or their type thereof.


In my experience most of the problems arise when the DM has to step in and change the rules to keep the plot on track. I have rarely seen a player argue that an NPC shouldn't have an ability, but I have frequently seen a DM rule that a monster's abilities ignores a players immunities or is immune to the players abilities. Heck, even dungeon walls often have mysterious anti teleportation fields in them.

The talk of immunity reminds me of another great vague rule. The Eldar Avatar in Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition. It was listed as immune to all "heat based attacks", but never defined what that means. It was obviously immune to flamethrowers, plasma weapons, and melta guns, but beyond that everything was a bit of a gray area. I have seen a lot of people argue that it should also be immune to lasers, explosives, or power weapons, and depending on which version of the fluff you are going by or how you interpret real world science you aren't exactly wrong. I have had the same argument in WoD actually, where fire does aggravated damage and people insist that explosives should count as fire.

icefractal
2015-02-10, 05:04 PM
In my experience most of the problems arise when the DM has to step in and change the rules to keep the plot on track. I have rarely seen a player argue that an NPC shouldn't have an ability, but I have frequently seen a DM rule that a monster's abilities ignores a players immunities or is immune to the players abilities. Heck, even dungeon walls often have mysterious anti teleportation fields in them.As far as I can tell from your other threads, this is because you play with obnoxiously railroady GMs. I'm not saying rules-light systems would necessarily be your cup of tea, but I think you should play one with a non-lousy GM before deciding.

Although what you describe is mostly "DM fiat heavy" rather than rule-light per-se, and as I said above, that's a type of system that I'd almost never be interested in.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 05:07 PM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Yes. So I don't argue. I play with people I can trust and I go with whatever their interpretation is. If that makes the game easy for them, then that's what they wanted. No point in me trying to make it more difficult.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 05:18 PM
Yes. So I don't argue. I play with people I can trust and I go with whatever their interpretation is. If that makes the game easy for them, then that's what they wanted. No point in me trying to make it more difficult.

I don't really have the luxury of picking and choosing gamers, I more or less get what I get and the only choice is whether or not I want to play. I am not a social butterfly and live in a small town, there is not a huge pool to draw from.


As far as I can tell from your other threads, this is because you play with obnoxiously railroady GMs. I'm not saying rules-light systems would necessarily be your cup of tea, but I think you should play one with a non-lousy GM before deciding.

Although what you describe is mostly "DM fiat heavy" rather than rule-light per-se, and as I said above, that's a type of system that I'd almost never be interested in.

That's a more or less new phenomenon. Up until the past 6 months I was the DM 95% of the time. I still saw players getting mad at me or one another over rulings and try and argue with me over differing interpretations of rules.

Although I do remember one time after 3.0 first came out and we first discovered the magic item creation rules. The DM insisted that they were perfectly balance and fair game and so I decided it would be fun to play an artificer. So I took a whole bunch of item creation feats and spent a lot of time and effort planning out all sorts of cool items I was going to create. Then when I finally got some down time between adventures and sat down to start crafting the DM said "I changed my mind. The item creation rules are broken. No custom items, and crafting items out of the book costs DOUBLE market value rather than half." I do remember being royally pissed about that and storming off from the table, but in retrospect that was more about the flip flop than the ruling itself.

Frozen_Feet
2015-02-10, 05:22 PM
Now that the title question has changed to "Do you enjoy vague rules which are open to interpretation?", the answer is "it depends", but in practice slides to "not really". Reason being, vague rules often lead to paradoxes. In case of a bad but firmly-written rule, even if literal interpretation leads to unintended effects (see "healing by drowning" in 3.x.), the intended behaviour of the rules is easy to chart. With vague rules, like Heat Immunity listed by Talakeal, things get really murky. I dislike absolute immunities in general precisely because telling where they should end is often a bother.

Kiero
2015-02-10, 05:29 PM
I actually read the SRD before posting, it didn't have enough detail to change my opinion on anything or provide any information I didn't recall.
I Note that you have gone an extra step and actually listed out what each background covers, which would certainly make it less vague (although imo it effectively just turns the background system into a watered down 3.X skill system), but it isn't in the rules. Why did you feel the need to do this if the rules in the SRD were not vague and saying they are is disingenuous?

Actually, I abstracted the 4e skill system, nothing whatsoever to do with 3.x. I only used it because it was something everyone is familiar with, it's no different to the additional detailing I use with Wushu (an actual rules light game) characters' Traits. I do so because I personally don't like completely undefined "choose your own" traits in games.

More to the point, though, no one else in the group did; they just listed out their Backgrounds as titles and explained them when we started the game.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 05:33 PM
I don't really have the luxury of picking and choosing gamers, I more or less get what I get and the only choice is whether or not I want to play. I am not a social butterfly and live in a small town, there is not a huge pool to draw from. What you do have, though, is the ability to work toward where you can trust those players, at least as far as the game goes. Look at why they're arguing, and why you're arguing back. What would have to happen for you to just give them what they want, without malice, and what would have to happen for them not to feel the need to ask for those things?

Seriously, what's the worst case? Someone exploits the rules and becomes unstoppable? Okay, they've won the game. Neat. Now, ask them under what circumstances they'd be interested in playing a game where their chances of success were not guaranteed, but in which you weren't going to stop them from doing things they wanted. If there's no such game, then you have an even smaller pool than you think, because those people don't want to play a game, they just want to power trip. But I feel confident in saying that most people have a game they want to play, but that it's not necessarily the one the GM is offering. Talk to them and find out what they actually want to play, what they won't go out of their way to break.

Zarrgon
2015-02-10, 05:53 PM
Does anyone else find it annoying to have to constantly debate with people about what a character can do? Whenever I play in a rules light system it seems like that is all that ever happens, someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something. I personally hate it, regardless of what side of the screen I am on.

Can someone explain the appeal to me?

It's tons of fun.

Any game will always have players that will argue with the DM about everything and anything all the time. But vague rules light takes all the ''fire and energy'' out of the Rule Obsessed players. They have a hard time arguing vague things. Though there are Vague Obsessed players too.

It will still come down to having good players/ good DM.

neonchameleon
2015-02-10, 05:55 PM
Again, maybe "vague" is better than disingenuous. But for PAO just do a quick search of the 3.5 forums and see how many threads there are about turning stuff into anti matter, or moons, or ray guns, or creatures with every template in the book, or a thousand other ridiculous things.

I said it was ridiculous not disingenuous. Moons would break the D&D rules (size) and anti-matter would be a "Don't be silly" if it came up at all. But in an actual rules light system you probably wouldn't have any ray gun arguments - what a gun does in most rules light systems is grants you permission to shoot people. It doesn't matter much whether it's a pistol or a ray gun. You just need one to shoot and it can be taken off you (sniper rifles do matter). The problem isn't the vagueness of the spell - but that the rest of the rules are specific. If the difference between two guns has no mechanical weight then there's no problem with PAO being used for the good one.


In my experience most of the problems arise when the DM has to step in and change the rules to keep the plot on track. I have rarely seen a player argue that an NPC shouldn't have an ability, but I have frequently seen a DM rule that a monster's abilities ignores a players immunities or is immune to the players abilities. Heck, even dungeon walls often have mysterious anti teleportation fields in them.

Again, this is almost always a problem not of light rules but of rules heavy. And the arms race that heavy rule sets can lead to. I can't recall ever even hearing of a rules light game having the rules changed to keep the plot on track (and would swear if it happened in any game).


The talk of immunity reminds me of another great vague rule. The Eldar Avatar in Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition. It was listed as immune to all "heat based attacks", but never defined what that means. It was obviously immune to flamethrowers, plasma weapons, and melta guns, but beyond that everything was a bit of a gray area. I have seen a lot of people argue that it should also be immune to lasers, explosives, or power weapons, and depending on which version of the fluff you are going by or how you interpret real world science you aren't exactly wrong. I have had the same argument in WoD actually, where fire does aggravated damage and people insist that explosives should count as fire.

Explosions of concussive force and flying shrapnel are clearly not heat. Neither are electrically charged weapons that disrupt molecular bonds. For the record, lasers are assuming RW physics- they work by applying a focussed spot of heat to a point to melt it even if the transmission vector isn't heat.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 06:19 PM
Explosions of concussive force and flying shrapnel are clearly not heat. Neither are electrically charged weapons that disrupt molecular bonds. For the record, lasers are assuming RW physics- they work by applying a focussed spot of heat to a point to melt it even if the transmission vector isn't heat.

Yeah, that was kind of my reasoning to. But I got the response of "Have you never seen an action movie? Explosions are nothing but balls of fire! And if they are caused by force and shrapnel why do they take victims to the burn ward afterwards!"

As for the laser thing, 40k is weird. They are usually described as "beams of explosive force" whatever the heck that means.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 06:29 PM
Yeah, that was kind of my reasoning to. But I got the response of "Have you never seen an action movie? Explosions are nothing but balls of fire! And if they are caused by force and shrapnel why do they take victims to the burn ward afterwards!" It doesn't matter what anyone's reasoning is, it matters what people believe.

That's basically how movies work. Pretty much nothing you see on screen works the way it would "really" work, but there are lots of tropes that we basically accept as true in order to get on with the story, and for the story to be interesting. Real silencers don't make a sinister little "thwip" sound, but they have in movies for years, and anyway we need a way for James Bond to do cool stuff silently, so we either ignore the incorrectness, or make up some reason why that's the way it works.

That's called "buy in." That's wanting something to work a certain way, and deciding to let it, rather than just bailing on the whole thing. You and your players are not bought into the same things, and until you are you're going to keep having arguments. The only thing I've found to work is to just buy in to what the players believe. That builds their trust in you, and will slowly make them more inclined to buy in to what you believe.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 06:35 PM
It doesn't matter what anyone's reasoning is, it matters what people believe.

That's basically how movies work. Pretty much nothing you see on screen works the way it would "really" work, but there are lots of tropes that we basically accept as true in order to get on with the story, and for the story to be interesting. Real silencers don't make a sinister little "thwip" sound, but they have in movies for years, and anyway we need a way for James Bond to do cool stuff silently, so we either ignore the incorrectness, or make up some reason why that's the way it works.

That's called "buy in." That's wanting something to work a certain way, and deciding to let it, rather than just bailing on the whole thing. You and your players are not bought into the same things, and until you are you're going to keep having arguments. The only thing I've found to work is to just buy in to what the players believe. That builds their trust in you, and will slowly make them more inclined to buy in to what you believe.

What about a PVP situation then? If one player is immune to heat and the other blows them up with a bomb, whose favor should you rule in?

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 06:38 PM
What about a PVP situation then? If one player is immune to heat and the other blows them up with a bomb, whose favor should you rule in? Rule that the player who is the target of a PVP action decide what happens to their character. If they retaliate, the other player gets to do the same thing. If the target player decides that the attack does something bad to their character, they they must want that to be the case and have no grounds for complaint or argument.

Kaun
2015-02-10, 07:14 PM
i never really had an issue with it.

Strangely enough i think i have witnessed more arguments over the interpretations of rules in heavier, stricter systems then i have in lite system where it is left more open to interpretation.

Let Loktar play the piano, who cares. Nothing like a fluid back story to get a player invested in a character and build a more 3 dimensional game. If they try and use the same trick over and over again, just tell them to come up with something new.

In my earlier days of gaming i used to worry about how every choice i made as a GM could be abused in the long run. Now my attitude is; Screw it, if they try to abuse it later i will deal with it then.

Honestly if one of your players try to abuse this kinda thing i have found this approach to be useful:

You look the player dead in the eye and you say, "hey (player), give it a rest would ya...".

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 07:14 PM
Rule that the player who is the target of a PVP action decide what happens to their character. If they retaliate, the other player gets to do the same thing. If the target player decides that the attack does something bad to their character, they they must want that to be the case and have no grounds for complaint or argument.

And at that point you have reduced all forms of competition into "see who gets bored and gives in first" which is hardly what I would consider a game, let alone a good time.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 07:23 PM
And at that point you have reduced all forms of competition into "see who gets bored and gives in first" which is hardly what I would consider a game, let alone a good time. No, what I've done is point out that there's no point spending time on player vs. player aggression, unless the players have agreed to how it should work. If they haven't then they just don't initiate it and that "competition" doesn't take place. Even if one person won't let it drop, the other can just say "No effect" over and over, and get on with the actual game.

It's not like there's a better solution, unless the rules are designed in an iron clad way to specifically allow PvP combat. I mean, there ARE competitive games available. Most of them aren't RPGs though, because when you win a PvP competition in an RPG, you don't just all shake hands and start a new game. Instead, one person gets ejected from play and, when they finally are allowed back in, probably have a grudge against the other person.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 07:49 PM
No, what I've done is point out that there's no point spending time on player vs. player aggression, unless the players have agreed to how it should work. If they haven't then they just don't initiate it and that "competition" doesn't take place. Even if one person won't let it drop, the other can just say "No effect" over and over, and get on with the actual game.

It's not like there's a better solution, unless the rules are designed in an iron clad way to specifically allow PvP combat. I mean, there ARE competitive games available. Most of them aren't RPGs though, because when you win a PvP competition in an RPG, you don't just all shake hands and start a new game. Instead, one person gets ejected from play and, when they finally are allowed back in, probably have a grudge against the other person.

Wouldn't you be better served by just laying down a "No PvP" clause before the game began then?

In a lot of games I have played in PvP combat is not only allowed but encouraged. For example in 3.5 if, say, one of the players decides to go off the deep end and run around acting blatantly chaotic evil the lawful good characters in the party are more or less required by the rules to stop them, particularly if they have a code of conduct similar to a paladins.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 07:56 PM
Wouldn't you be better served by just laying down a "No PvP" clause before the game began then? Not necessarily. Intra-party conflict is a classic part of lots of fiction, so it should be possible. But unless the rules are designed to handle it, it shouldn't be handled by the rules, but by some method the players have agreed upon.

I recommend that you not let them defer to your ruling though, since that forces you to choose between them. If they can agree how to fight, then they should be allowed to. Only when they can't agree should it not function. Since I wouldn't expect most players to agree to their character being beaten up, this might seem like a ban, but it leaves the door open for mature players.


In a lot of games I have played in PvP combat is not only allowed but encouraged. For example in 3.5 if, say, one of the players decides to go off the deep end and run around acting blatantly chaotic evil the lawful good characters in the party are more or less required by the rules to stop them, particularly if they have a code of conduct similar to a paladins. They're not required by the rules, they're required by not wanting to have all their interesting character abilities taken away. They have to be a jerk or they have to be bored. Am I the only one tired of this.

But based on what you're saying, you should have your answer: do whatever the GMs in those games do. Let me guess: they rule in favor of the people who are doing what they're "supposed to" and against the ones who aren't. Ugh.

jedipotter
2015-02-10, 08:17 PM
I love Vague rule games. I wish I knew more people that liked to play them.

It's great to have players that just follow the plot and are not playing by the numbers. It's great for things like creativity and fun. Far too many players follow the rules like they are carved in stone or something.

Worse are the players that demand all the game rule details at the start of the game. It ruins any surprise or suspense in the game play.

With rules light, a player can't look up what it says on page 42 and then interpret it to mean what they want and then use it in the game.

Anyone can study the rules and become a rule player, but not everyone can be creative on the spot. So rules light games can be much more tame and fun.

Rules light lets the GM decide what the world will be like, not some scribbles in a book.

goto124
2015-02-10, 08:24 PM
If your players do a lot of rules-lawyering to argue with the DM, a rules-lite or freeform will only make them start pulling things out of ther pockets.

Such problems can't be solved by the system.

Also, where was that thread started by jedipotter called When does the DM go too far for you, the one about goldbugs and awakened candlesticks...

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 08:26 PM
It's great to have players that just follow the plot and are not playing by the numbers. It's great for things like creativity and fun. Far too many players follow the rules like they are carved in stone or something. Think about why, though.

What I see is that people follow the rules because then (in theory) they know what they're allowed to do, and no one is going to tell them they can't. Of course, in practice that doesn't pan out because people interpret the rules in various ways.

But that's what it comes down to: not having to ask to do something. Because the moment a person says "Can I do this?" they are at the mercy of the person answering that. That's not always a comfortable place to be, since that answer might really impact the amount of fun a person is going to get to have.


Worse are the players that demand all the game rule details at the start of the game. It ruins any surprise or suspense in the game play. There are other ways to get surprise than via hidden game rules, so if it ruins "any" surprise or suspense, then that's really the GM's fault.

Besides which, not everyone enjoys suspense or surprises. Again, it's an issue of giving someone else control over one's choices and options.


With rules light, a player can't look up what it says on page 42 and then interpret it to mean what they want and then use it in the game. Then how do they get to do what they want in game? All anyone wants is a clear and reliable answer to that question.


Rules light lets the GM decide what the world will be like, not some scribbles in a book. Or the players, it would seem.

I agree that a book shouldn't be given precedence, but a book can be a nucleus of open ideas that everyone can agree to. If people sit down without knowing what they've agreed to, there's a good chance that they'll be disappointed at what arises.


If your players do a lot of rules-lawyering to argue with the DM, a rules-lite or freeform will only make them start pulling things out of ther pockets.

Such problems can't be solved by the system. Agreed, it's entirely a social matter, involving trust, agreement and engagement.

neonchameleon
2015-02-10, 08:41 PM
I love Vague rule games. I wish I knew more people that liked to play them.

It's great to have players that just follow the plot and are not playing by the numbers. It's great for things like creativity and fun. Far too many players follow the rules like they are carved in stone or something.

Worse are the players that demand all the game rule details at the start of the game. It ruins any surprise or suspense in the game play.

With rules light, a player can't look up what it says on page 42 and then interpret it to mean what they want and then use it in the game.

Anyone can study the rules and become a rule player, but not everyone can be creative on the spot. So rules light games can be much more tame and fun.

Rules light lets the GM decide what the world will be like, not some scribbles in a book.

Just following the plot is emphatically not good for creativity and fun although it is, as you say, tame. It's sitting back and letting the GM tell you a story. It's workable in heavy rules games because there is interest in playing with the rules themselves. If the players are following the plot and can't kick out of it mechanically or by roleplaying they are going to have no outlets at all for their creativity other than to paint by numbers and it isn't going to be fun. It is, however going to be tame.

The best rules light games I know all recommend not having a predetermined plot, merely a couple of predetermined events and letting the plot emerge from the actions of the PCs. Far from being tame, such games can be incredibly feral. Which makes them creative and fun.

zinycor
2015-02-10, 08:47 PM
In a lot of games I have played in PvP combat is not only allowed but encouraged. For example in 3.5 if, say, one of the players decides to go off the deep end and run around acting blatantly chaotic evil the lawful good characters in the party are more or less required by the rules to stop them, particularly if they have a code of conduct similar to a paladins.

And DnD pathfinder and other games with a complex system are great at that, but not so great to imagine things or intoduce new players to roleplaying, or letting players go wild.

Example: If you were playing an horror game, you want your players focused on being immersed on the situation, behaving like they were on actual danger. Having to go look on the rulebook to know if ome action can be possible within the time that turn takes time takes you away from the ilusion of danger. In that case you are better having ideas of what your characters can do and then focus on the game should be on scenery, the horrific monster, the silence that continues through the long dungeon.

I think that simpler rules are better for this, because it let's you see roleplaying less of a optimization thing, and more as a movie protagonist.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 09:07 PM
And DnD pathfinder and other games with a complex system are great at that, but not so great to imagine things or intoduce new players to roleplaying, or letting players go wild. Not that I've ever seen. The rules allow it, but they don't really handle it well, and the amount of interpretation that's required even to use those rules just leads to arguments between players, which are far worse than arguments with the GM.

zinycor
2015-02-10, 09:16 PM
Not that I've ever seen. The rules allow it, but they don't really handle it well, and the amount of interpretation that's required even to use those rules just leads to arguments between players, which are far worse than arguments with the GM.

how so? In my experience it has been fairly simple...

A: I roll the dice! i got 18 which hits!! suck on (rolls) 4 points of damage!!!
B: oh yeah?!! well then i cast lightning bolt on you sucker!!
A: but rules says that i get an Attack of Opportunity so... (rolls).. Goddammit
B: HA! SUCK ON THIS MOFO!!! (Rolls damage)
bla bla bla

or something like that, everyone knows quite well what they are doing, and while there can be soemone saying something like (And what does the spell do?) every answer is on the rulebook, so in the end, it functionf quite well, don't really see where the arguments would be.

goto124
2015-02-10, 09:22 PM
It helps to not take things too seriously.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-10, 09:25 PM
or something like that, everyone konws quite well what they are doing, and while there can be soemone saying something like (And what does the spell do?) every answer is on the rulebook, so in the end, it functionf quite well, don't really see where the arguments would be. The same place they are in normal play. Someone sees something bad about to happen to their character, or in the process of happening, and they ask the GM if they can do something.

"Oh, a lightning bolt? Yeah, but I'm in plate armor with a metal sword, so the lightning would just ride on the outside and go to ground without harming me, right? What? Well I thought it did, and the fact that it doesn't ruins my verisimilitude!"

Or

"What's the exact timing on my opportunity attack because even if I don't hit him the voltage of a lightning bolt would cause the current to jump from my weapon to wherever I was about to hit him. What? Come on! Look this is how it would go, see?"

Et cetera, and those are only examples, so please don't spend time showing me how to deal with those. I know how to deal with those. The point is that the GM is in the position of having to say "No" to someone, even if the GM would prefer to say yes and would do so if the enemy were an NPC.

If you have never dealt with players who scramble for loopholes when they're about to be ejected from the game, I envy you. My solution is just to let them have their loopholes and then ask them if there's a situation in which they would be willing to let the rules play out without desperate pleas for special interpretations.

Necroticplague
2015-02-10, 09:28 PM
Not particularly. I prefer to have at least a decent idea about what my character can do, doing so requires that the rules have relatively consistent nature. If it turns out that all the skills I thought help me perform my character concept don't really let me do such, then suddenly my character fails at making sense. Having mechanical pieces with set in stone meanings also means that you can have more interesting interactions within the system, which are themselves something I enjoy.

zinycor
2015-02-10, 09:34 PM
The same place they are in normal play. Someone sees something bad about to happen to their character, or in the process of happening, and they ask the GM if they can do something.

"Oh, a lightning bolt? Yeah, but I'm in plate armor with a metal sword, so the lightning would just ride on the outside and go to ground without harming me, right? What? Well I thought it did, and the fact that it doesn't ruins my verisimilitude!"

Or

"What's the exact timing on my opportunity attack because even if I don't hit him the voltage of a lightning bolt would cause the current to jump from my weapon to wherever I was about to hit him. What? Come on! Look this is how it would go, see?"

Et cetera, and those are only examples, so please don't spend time showing me how to deal with those. I know how to deal with those. The point is that the GM is in the position of having to say "No" to someone, even if the GM would prefer to say yes and would do so if the enemy were an NPC.

If you have never dealt with players who scramble for loopholes when they're about to be ejected from the game, I envy you. My solution is just to let them have their loopholes and then ask them if there's a situation in which they would be willing to let the rules play out without desperate pleas for special interpretations.

isn't that why rules are for? again, Rules don't take into consideration the conductivity of your armor or anything that you imagined, if you are playing the game, you abide to those rules, especially if you are playing against another player who will call your bull****.

Now, on the games that i have played, whenever there is any PVP combat we all become rules lawyers and those who take part on it are more than anything enjoying themselves as they would playing a standard table-top game. I do realize that i have been very lucky on this.

Knaight
2015-02-10, 10:07 PM
What about a PVP situation then? If one player is immune to heat and the other blows them up with a bomb, whose favor should you rule in?

Unless they're also immune to work, there's the whole "pressure wave" thing. Plus, even rules light systems generally have things like "immunity" work in pretty specific ways, frequently have skills or skill-like traits that can be compared, so on and so forth.

1337 b4k4
2015-02-10, 10:37 PM
But that's what it comes down to: not having to ask to do something. Because the moment a person says "Can I do this?" they are at the mercy of the person answering that. That's not always a comfortable place to be, since that answer might really impact the amount of fun a person is going to get to have.

As always, I feel the fundamental disconnect here is that in most rules-vague games, you don't ask "Can I do X" you say "I want to do Y" where "Y" is some general thing (I want to damage the dragon, I want to scale the cliff face, I want to stop the sorcerer from getting off that spell) and the role of the GM (and depending on the system, the player(s)) is to then establish the conditions for doing that. That is to say, in a rules vague situation, it's never a question of can you do something, but how you do it. So for example, if you want to slay the dragon, you can do that, but how will you? It has armor that deflects most attacks, it can fly, it can breathe fire. How will you get close enough? How will you use your sword which is to the dragon as a toothpick is to you, to deal threatening and lethal damage? Answer those questions in a way that makes sense within the context of the game and you've damaged the dragon. If you want to scale the cliff, how will you do so? Are there sufficient handholds and do you have training to do so? Do you have equipment to make it easier? Do you have spells to levitate you? What will you do if you slip and fall? Answer those questions in a way that makes sense within the context of the game and you've scaled the cliff (or alternatively discovered you need another way).

Along with this I think is the philosophy that seems to go hand in hand with rules vague systems which is "don't sweat the small stuff" or alternatively "does it matter?" Can Rogar the Barbarian play piano? Does it matter? If not, then why not. If it does matter then establish the criteria that would be necessary for that to happen and use that criteria to continue to inform the game. The party needs to scale the cliff to get to the fortress, does their success or failure in scaling the cliff matter? Does it give them a material advantage or other boon that they would otherwise not have, or is it just one creative way of getting to the fortress? If it doesn't matter, then they scale the cliff, there's no need to know if they can because it doesn't matter. Now this does admittedly require the understanding from players and GM alike that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Take the water spell example from earlier. Can you create nearly infinite amounts of water with the spell instantaneously? Perhaps so, but if so, that's how water spells work in this game. How will you deal with an enemy spell caster? Likewise, did Rogar learn to play piano because he was a slave for 10 years in the city? Fine, but now 10 years of Rogar's back story have been filled out, which means he's unlikely to also be a master survivalist in the desert. He was also a slave, how did he get free? Are there people looking for him? Has he made enemies? As a GM I love working with these things in part because it's less work for me, but also because it's a fun give and take, yes you can have the shiny toy you want as a player, but in return you have to give me a shiny GMs toy. It's not antagonistic, it's cooperative and it's fun. It's negotiation, and anything that is really important to me that the players be unable to do simply means that we're doing a different negotiation. I already have my GM toy (the thing you can't do) now I have to give something to you to work with.

Talakeal
2015-02-10, 10:51 PM
Unless they're also immune to work, there's the whole "pressure wave" thing. Plus, even rules light systems generally have things like "immunity" work in pretty specific ways, frequently have skills or skill-like traits that can be compared, so on and so forth.

Oh I absolutely agree that explosions are not fire based damage. But I have had that argument come up in two separate games, once in Warhammer 40,000 where the avatar is immune to "heat based weapons" and once in WoD where werewolves are unable to regenerate from fire; both times another player insisted that explosives inflicted fire damage.

NichG
2015-02-11, 12:04 AM
Wouldn't you be better served by just laying down a "No PvP" clause before the game began then?

In a lot of games I have played in PvP combat is not only allowed but encouraged. For example in 3.5 if, say, one of the players decides to go off the deep end and run around acting blatantly chaotic evil the lawful good characters in the party are more or less required by the rules to stop them, particularly if they have a code of conduct similar to a paladins.

PvP is one of the hardest things to make work as a DM. I would expect most DMs, even otherwise good DMs, to fail to run a good campaign where PvP is the norm. If a DM has any other problems, they probably shouldn't even consider trying to do this. In that case, its far better to have a system which makes PvP unthinkably boring, because it discourages people from taking the game in a destabilizing direction.

jedipotter
2015-02-11, 02:29 AM
But that's what it comes down to: not having to ask to do something. Because the moment a person says "Can I do this?" they are at the mercy of the person answering that. That's not always a comfortable place to be, since that answer might really impact the amount of fun a person is going to get to have.

Except it does not. Just about every rules heavy game has this question asked to the GM every couple of minutes ''Can my character do X?''



There are other ways to get surprise than via hidden game rules, so if it ruins "any" surprise or suspense, then that's really the GM's fault.

I'd love to hear the other ways. Most rule heavy games make it impossible for the character to not know anything. And even worse then that, most rules heavy players will demand they know everything before the game even starts.



Then how do they get to do what they want in game? All anyone wants is a clear and reliable answer to that question.

Rules light works best when the player and the DM work together. Now DM's are often on the side of Reality and Players are often on the side of Extreme Reality. The two can work together, but there needs to be a baseline. Most DM's want a realistic game, most players want a super hero game at the least.

Or the players, it would seem.

I agree that a book shouldn't be given precedence, but a book can be a nucleus of open ideas that everyone can agree to. If people sit down without knowing what they've agreed to, there's a good chance that they'll be disappointed at what arises.


Just following the plot is emphatically not good for creativity and fun although it is, as you say, tame. It's sitting back and letting the GM tell you a story

The best rules light games I know all recommend not having a predetermined plot, merely a couple of predetermined events and letting the plot emerge from the actions of the PCs. Far from being tame, such games can be incredibly feral. Which makes them creative and fun.

It sounds good ''the players just kinda create stuff and everyone has fun and there is sunshine and happiness''. But that is not how it works.

Ok, say the GM sits back and ''lets the players be all creative''. Eventually, the players will craft a plot. A RPG really does need ''something'' for the characters to do. You can't just have the characters stand around. But once the players make the plot, the GM is the one that has to step in and make it happen.

And yes players have to ''give up creativity'', ''free will'' and even ''the arrogant stance that they are running the game'' to follow a plot. That is why plots exist.

neonchameleon
2015-02-11, 06:19 AM
I'd love to hear the other ways. Most rule heavy games make it impossible for the character to not know anything. And even worse then that, most rules heavy players will demand they know everything before the game even starts.

Not in my experience. In GURPS I don't know what we are up against. It could be just about anything because the system is that flexible,


It sounds good ''the players just kinda create stuff and everyone has fun and there is sunshine and happiness''. But that is not how it works.

Ok, say the GM sits back and ''lets the players be all creative''. Eventually, the players will craft a plot. A RPG really does need ''something'' for the characters to do. You can't just have the characters stand around. But once the players make the plot, the GM is the one that has to step in and make it happen.

And yes players have to ''give up creativity'', ''free will'' and even ''the arrogant stance that they are running the game'' to follow a plot. That is why plots exist.

"That's not how it works" except in games set up that yes it is, most of which are rules light. Games like Fate, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Dogs in the Vineyard, Hillfolk, Fiasco (actually that one's GMless), Leverage, Smallville, and multiple others. Normally ones which start off with the PCs having conflicting goals - I specifically narrowed it down to the best rules light games I know. Oh, and old school oD&D/bD&D/Traveller style open sandboxes, normally with a hexcrawl attached.

As for why plots exist, plots are inevitable when anything actually happens. They became dominant because with the arguable exception of Paranoia, the first RPG I can think of that I trust to support me if I go in without a plot pre-prepared is My Life With Master, published in 2003.

Yora
2015-02-11, 06:23 AM
I enjoy rules that are clear and precise in saying "use common sense or what seems the most appropriate in the specific situation".

Grinner
2015-02-11, 06:53 AM
A couple of observations:

Tabletop RPGs are normally lauded as having the advantage of flexibility over their computerized counterparts. In an table top RPG, you can improvise things that you normally would not be able to in, say, Baldur's Gate. Rules-heavy RPGs in theory make everything fair by laying out the rules explicitly. However, by doing that, they weaken their position of flexibility (thus the term "rules lawyer"), and with the expectations set, deviation from those rules invites argument.

A tabletop game is fundamentally a social contract. If the terms of the contract cannot be agreed upon, then there's really no point to the exercise. Therefore, the rules of a game should not be open to interpretation. However, the best games achieve this not by extensive ruling, which by the nature of language are themselves open to interpretation (i.e. RAW vs RAI discussions). Instead, they accomplish this by clearly elucidating a process by which an agreement can be arrived at.

Personally, I like the earlier description of the 13th Age rules.

Segev
2015-02-11, 10:09 AM
The same place they are in normal play. Someone sees something bad about to happen to their character, or in the process of happening, and they ask the GM if they can do something.

"Oh, a lightning bolt? Yeah, but I'm in plate armor with a metal sword, so the lightning would just ride on the outside and go to ground without harming me, right? What? Well I thought it did, and the fact that it doesn't ruins my verisimilitude!"

Or

"What's the exact timing on my opportunity attack because even if I don't hit him the voltage of a lightning bolt would cause the current to jump from my weapon to wherever I was about to hit him. What? Come on! Look this is how it would go, see?"

Et cetera, and those are only examples, so please don't spend time showing me how to deal with those. I know how to deal with those. The point is that the GM is in the position of having to say "No" to someone, even if the GM would prefer to say yes and would do so if the enemy were an NPC.Actually, I will respond to these, because the response is a blanket and general one: the rules specify what happens when you perform these actions. Lightning Bolt does what its rules say it does. There is no mention of relative voltages or slight changes in how you're positioned or even what armor you're wearing; it specifies that you get a reflex save, what that reflex save is (reflex) against what DC (calculated from spell level and a few factors on the caster's stat page by standard rules), and what happens if you succeed or fail (half or all damage rolled on caster's level in d6s).

Sure, the DM is in the position of saying "no," but it's a cut-and-dried situation. The rules say what the rules say. A good DM generally wouldn't say "yes" even if it were an NPC flinging the lightning bolt.


If you have never dealt with players who scramble for loopholes when they're about to be ejected from the game, I envy you. My solution is just to let them have their loopholes and then ask them if there's a situation in which they would be willing to let the rules play out without desperate pleas for special interpretations."Scrambling for loopholes" doesn't let you ignore the rules. If the DM decides he doesn't want the PC dead, he has options, up to and including saying, "okay, I don't want him dead, so he's at -9 hp and stabilized," or even "your spell fizzles," though such decisions to blatantly throw out the standard rules in a given instance have consequences IC and OOC.

The trouble with those kinds of "loopholes" in a rules-light game is that, if one is to be consistent, one starts accumulating many rules and conditions which start making the rules much less light. But it is a rules-light game's benefit that such things as "um...yeah, your metal armor shields you from the worst of it by grounding out the charge differential" can be said, if the players and GM want to. And without violating the rules.

But in, say, D&D 3.5e, the lightning bolt does what the rules say it does. There's no "loophole" here; the arguments are just special pleading and the request for the rules to be broken in one PC's favor should be denied.

Segev
2015-02-11, 10:13 AM
A couple of observations:

Tabletop RPGs are normally lauded as having the advantage of flexibility over their computerized counterparts.

Rules-heavy RPGs in theory make everything fair by laying out the rules explicitly. However, by doing that, they weaken their position of flexibility (thus the term "rules lawyer"), and with the expectations set, deviation from those rules invites argument.The flexibility offered by TTRPGs over cRPGs is greater than the sum of its rules, though. The things that rules never really specify, like the ability to have dialog or to propose solutions that are not preprogrammed in, to choose to demonstrate your character's good-hearted but harsh philosophy of encouraging others to be strong without flagging the computer's "you didn't do the nice and flowery thing" alignment switches, to change the entire direction of the plot by your choices...

These things are not constrained by TTRPG systems (as a general rule), even rules-heavy ones.

In a cRPG, you might have a choice of which faction to join in a conflict, but rarely will you ahve the option of joining neither and trying to recruit their underlings to your own service. (That isn't necessarily easy in a TTRPG, but you can at least try.)

That's the flexibility being referenced in TTRPGs vs. cRPGs, not the flexibility in the rules of how the mechanics operate.

Knaight
2015-02-11, 10:17 AM
But that's what it comes down to: not having to ask to do something. Because the moment a person says "Can I do this?" they are at the mercy of the person answering that. That's not always a comfortable place to be, since that answer might really impact the amount of fun a person is going to get to have.

Rules light games often have very explicit text that reduces the amount of this. With something like D&D as the DMG recommends, the DM has such complete setting control that if you want to pick up a stick in a forest, you have to ask if there is a stick there first. That's a somewhat hyperbolic example, as just about no DM is actually going to object to "I pick up a stick" in a forest, but it is indicative of a process where it is assumed that the environment only exists as described. By contrast, rules light games frequently explicitly say that if you can reasonably assume that something would be in the environment somewhere, you can use it.

Personally, I've found myself asking to do something way more often in rules heavy games. There's the question of whether you have the right special ability (feat, power, whatever), of whether the objects involved are there, so on and so forth. It's in rules light games where I generally skip straight to the just doing things step.

zinycor
2015-02-11, 10:43 AM
And there is the bigger advntage of rules light versus rules heavy...

It's easier!!

gameogre
2015-02-11, 11:17 AM
Why is it that some role playing gamers seem to treat rpg's different than any other game?

All games require all the participants to work together in order to have fun.

Rules lite,rules heavy freeform or just a friggin board game. It's a game you are playing with friends or complete strangers, in order for you all to have fun....stop the friggin arguments.

The DM is just another person at the game trying to have fun. He can be right or wrong, good or bad at rpg's it doesn't matter. His role is to run the game and try and manage it so everyone has fun.

Players are just another person at the table trying to have fun. He can be right or wrong, good or bad at rpg's . it doesn't matter. His role is to play his character the best he can and try to make the game fun for everyone.

That's it.

Rules lite isn't any better than rules heavy(and vice versa). It's the people sitting at the table that are the problem with any game.

As a player or DM with friends or complete strangers your number one goal is for everyone to have fun. That's it.

So many times I read these posts and really what people are saying is this.

I like Risk but everyone I know is playing Chess and so I play Chess but I really want to play Risk. We argue way to much when we play Chess. It's not just me, others argue as well. Risk is just better but damn it, no Risk games.

If you dislike playing rules lite games to the point where you argue the rules or detract from the game, stop playing them. If that means you don't get to play rpg's well fine, do something else. You might find that after a long time not playing you are more willing to have a good attitude playing or perhaps those other guys will want to play games more suited to your likes.

In case somehow I'm unclear.

If you belly up to any rpg table have a good attitude and be willing to do whatever it takes for everyone to have fun. If this means role playing your character different than you first imagined, playing in a game you don't really like, doing a lot more role playing than you are used to or a lot less, having to take a great DM's view of the rules as law or having to take the view of a bad one as reality, it doesn't matter. Just make the best of it and try to get everyone to have a blast anyway.

One of the best games I ever played had a horrid DM who really just liked to punish players and pc's. He would punish us for following the plot point and not thinking outside the box and punish us for not following it. We died so many times and had so many crazy overwhelming battles that we MADE it fun to just try and get through one fight. We laughed and cheered and hissed and moaned all weekend and had a great time. Granted after that we never let him DM again(till recently when we discovered DCCRPG and made him run it) but to this day we still bring up that weekend during really hard fights. That first weekend though most of us were total strangers.

The game is whatever you make it. Rules regardless of what type, don't really have anything to do with if everyone had fun.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-11, 12:43 PM
isn't that why rules are for? again, Rules don't take into consideration the conductivity of your armor or anything that you imagined, if you are playing the game, you abide to those rules, especially if you are playing against another player who will call your bull****. In theory yes, but in a roleplaying game there's leeway. The GM can always allow anything they thing is reasonable and some will do so because it tends to make players happy. In the case of PVP, though, the GM can probably only rule in a way that makes one player happy, or neither. The exception would be if the players were mature enough to accept bad things happening to their character at the hands of another character, in which case, they didn't really need the GM's ruling in the first place.


That is to say, in a rules vague situation, it's never a question of can you do something, but how you do it. So for example, if you want to slay the dragon, you can do that, but how will you? It often boils down to the same thing, if the GM happens to believe that the thing they want to do is flatly impossible. If they don't just say "no, that doesn't work," they'll just set as high a difficulty on it as they can, and conditionally modify things all to heck. If the player can talk the GM into believing it's possible or even probable, the GM may relent. If the issue is important enough to both sides, they're back to arguing.


Along with this I think is the philosophy that seems to go hand in hand with rules vague systems which is "don't sweat the small stuff" or alternatively "does it matter?" In a way. When people think there's a rule for everything, and that the rules simulate the world, then everything matters because the results of the rules tell them what the world looks like.

But where the worst arguments arise is when something really matters, such as with the life of a PC or a major NPC on the line. Small stuff might tip the balance, at that point. Where once the GM didn't care if the PC managed to get a weapon out before the NPC, now they care.


it's a fun give and take, yes you can have the shiny toy you want as a player, but in return you have to give me a shiny GMs toy. I find that horrendous. The "yes, but now the enemies can do that too," is one of the worst "Yes, buts" I can think of. Maybe it's not antagonistic, but it tends to be discouraging. Why bother asking for something if the GM is going to make an effort to make you regret asking for it? I find that just leads to arguments between players, with one side wanting a thing and the other side desperately trying to shut them up before they give the GM too much power. People go back to doing only what the rules explicitly allow them.

That kind of trade off is not necessary.


Except it does not. Just about every rules heavy game has this question asked to the GM every couple of minutes ''Can my character do X?'' Yes, in games where the GM is amenable to such requests, but only partially. If the GM never grants such requests, or somehow makes players regret them, players will quickly resort to going by the absolute letter of the rules.


I'd love to hear the other ways. Most rule heavy games make it impossible for the character to not know anything. And even worse then that, most rules heavy players will demand they know everything before the game even starts. I'm not sure quite how you're getting to this. Do you mean know all the rules? Well of course they should know all the rules.

D&D, for instance, doesn't require any hidden rules to gain surprise. I'm not generally a fan of pre-planned surprises, but I'm sure it's possible within the rules known to everyone to set up a mystery or surprise that the players can't pierce. Whether that's going to be enjoyable for them is another question.


Rules light works best when the player and the DM work together. Now DM's are often on the side of Reality and Players are often on the side of Extreme Reality. The two can work together, but there needs to be a baseline. Most DM's want a realistic game, most players want a super hero game at the least. Rules-heavy also works best with cooperation.

The reason it seems like the players want something extreme is that they're often in the position of pleading for their character's survival. The GM is in the position (they often believe) of creating tension and not letting it be resolved easily. One of the bulwarks GMs rely on to keep the screws tight is "It's realistic." This, they feel, puts them in an unassailable position, because it's widely agreed that more realism is always better.


It sounds good ''the players just kinda create stuff and everyone has fun and there is sunshine and happiness''. But that is not how it works. Some of us have seen it work.


Ok, say the GM sits back and ''lets the players be all creative''. Eventually, the players will craft a plot. A RPG really does need ''something'' for the characters to do. You can't just have the characters stand around. But once the players make the plot, the GM is the one that has to step in and make it happen. Not at all. The GM is certainly a good position for someone to have at the table, so there's someone who doesn't have a character to advocate for, but a player-driven and even player-created "plot" is quite possible.


And yes players have to ''give up creativity'', ''free will'' and even ''the arrogant stance that they are running the game'' to follow a plot. That is why plots exist. This is the first time I've seen anyone claim that plots exist to make players give up creativity, free will and arrogance. Do you tend to value the plots you've created over the wishes and preferences of the players?


I enjoy rules that are clear and precise in saying "use common sense or what seems the most appropriate in the specific situation". I don't like to rely on that, because people have different and biased views on what is common sense and seems most appropriate. Then they're back to arguing.


Rules-heavy RPGs in theory make everything fair by laying out the rules explicitly. However, by doing that, they weaken their position of flexibility (thus the term "rules lawyer"), and with the expectations set, deviation from those rules invites argument. Yes, but if a person can't be flexible with a rules-heavy game, for fear of disrupting the fairness of it, I wouldn't expect them to be very flexible in a rules-light game. It took me years to understand how rules-light games could possibly work, I think because they tend to be created by people who have a lot of trust at the table, and my early groups really didn't.


Instead, they accomplish this by clearly elucidating a process by which an agreement can be arrived at. Which is often "The GM is always right."

My approach as a GM is "The player is always right," because even if they're not, they're probably not going to respond well to me telling them they're not.


Actually, I will respond to these, because the response is a blanket and general one: the rules specify what happens when you perform these actions. Yes, but GMs are generally allowed even encouraged to waive the rules when they think it is for the best.


Sure, the DM is in the position of saying "no," but it's a cut-and-dried situation. The rules say what the rules say. A good DM generally wouldn't say "yes" even if it were an NPC flinging the lightning bolt. That's not a "good" GM, that's just a "rules strict" GM. If you like that in a GM, then they're good. If you think it's an annoying trait in a GM, then they're not good.

The rules don't say that the PC can't gain the kind of protection they're claiming in my example, they just don't say anything. Assuming that that means that claim is always false is a fair default interpretation, but it's still an interpretation.


"Scrambling for loopholes" doesn't let you ignore the rules. If the DM decides he doesn't want the PC dead, he has options, up to and including saying, "okay, I don't want him dead, so he's at -9 hp and stabilized," or even "your spell fizzles," though such decisions to blatantly throw out the standard rules in a given instance have consequences IC and OOC. Oh, no! Not... consequences!

It works out to the same thing. The player pleads or argues, and the GM finds a way to placate them. It might be a major waiver of the rules, or some minor finagling that is still "technically" legal.


The trouble with those kinds of "loopholes" in a rules-light game is that, if one is to be consistent, one starts accumulating many rules and conditions which start making the rules much less light. But it is a rules-light game's benefit that such things as "um...yeah, your metal armor shields you from the worst of it by grounding out the charge differential" can be said, if the players and GM want to. And without violating the rules. That's only one way to play. I have a feeling that you think about things in a way that won't let you understand this easily, but not everyone treats consistency the same way. I would happily grant a player that kind of protection if they wanted it, and never have my NPCs benefit from it. A lot of the "many rules and conditions" you think I would have to accumulate might never arise again, leaving me consistent by default.


But in, say, D&D 3.5e, the lightning bolt does what the rules say it does. There's no "loophole" here; the arguments are just special pleading and the request for the rules to be broken in one PC's favor should be denied. I know that some people believe that the human brain is just a computer with inputs and outputs and no emotional component. For some people this belief is part of a diagnosable condition, and isn't something that can be changed. But a table top game isn't just a very complicated video game, with the GM's brain as the computer. GMs can, do, and should make judgments based not always on a strict reading of the rules, but on what is fun for the table.

Yes, some tables love just seeing the rules work, the way some people just love seeing a model train go around a track. Not everyone, though.


Rules light games often have very explicit text that reduces the amount of this. With something like D&D as the DMG recommends, the DM has such complete setting control that if you want to pick up a stick in a forest, you have to ask if there is a stick there first. I understand what you mean (though I think the wording the the effect that the GM is in charge tends to be taken further than the designers actually intended, to the point that, yes, people can become scandalized if anyone other than the GM declares something to be true) but for a lot of common things, that don't rely on the setting, players often like to have a clear understanding of what is and is not permissible. They don't have to ask if they have a sword, or if they can make an attack, or what modifiers and effects they get to add, because all those things are written down, either on their sheet or in the rules.

As far as making a basic attack, light or heavy probably doesn't matter. Where it starts to matter is with more specialized stuff. Take "Can I hit him with a bank shot off the wall near him?" I haven't read rules that could answer this specific situation, but I'm almost certain they exist and that the rules they exist in are what people would call heavy. In theory, someone using those rules doesn't have to ask if they can do this, they just state they're doing it and roll, or whatever.

In a game light enough not to include such a rule, it's going to be up to the GM to decide if it's even possible. Depending on the GM, I might not even ask, because the answer would clearly be no, or because the GM would just use it against me later.


By contrast, rules light games frequently explicitly say that if you can reasonably assume that something would be in the environment somewhere, you can use it. True, and I love how crazy that concept drives some people.

As a counter-example, though: Mongoose Traveller. Not rules light, but it has a sidebar about ships lockers, to the effect that the players can assume the locker contains any reasonable item. Not piles of precious metals, but basic tools and emergency gear. I bet more than one GM has had to scramble when they thought they'd cut off the party's communications and someone says "I get the spare radio from the locker."


Personally, I've found myself asking to do something way more often in rules heavy games. There's the question of whether you have the right special ability (feat, power, whatever), of whether the objects involved are there, so on and so forth. It's in rules light games where I generally skip straight to the just doing things step. What I'm saying is that it's not a question of whether one has the right special ability, because its right on the sheet, or somewhere in the rules. It's in a form that the GM can't say "No" to. Yes, there's still the question about whether other things are in the setting, and that's sometimes the only control a GM has.

And I feel like this boils down to control. The GM wants to control the players and the players want to control themselves. Ideally, some impartial third party, in the form of the rules, tells them at all times who has control, so there's never an argument. But in practicality there often is an argument because the desire for control is a strong incentive to interpret the rules in certain ways.

Rules-light games work, when they do, by trying to step around the issue of control a little more, or spreading it around.


And there is the bigger advntage of rules light versus rules heavy...

It's easier!! That depends on what the goal the table is trying to achieve. If it's realism, that can be hard to achieve on the fly. The same if the goal is absolute fairness, or control by the GM, or adherence to a plot.

If the goal is just to get to playing and to go by what the people at the table think, then I tend to agree that rule-light is easier, though I haven't noticed that Fate is all that easy, when my goal is to create a Gordian knot that can't just be cut.


All games require all the participants to work together in order to have fun. The point is that boardgames generally don't require the participants to "work together." They can be completely at odds and even unfriendly, but if the rules are clear then they can play together and have a reasonably good time, despite that.


Rules lite,rules heavy freeform or just a friggin board game. It's a game you are playing with friends or complete strangers, in order for you all to have fun....stop the friggin arguments. Great advice, but when a person thinks that their interpretation is the right one, be it a board game or an RPG, not arguing their position is the equivalent of just giving up and letting the other person cheat. Ideally, yes, we don't see it as cheating, but just another interpretation, and we see that avoiding the argument is preferable. Some games and some approaches to gaming, though, make it so that a lost argument means ejection from the game and a stoppage to whatever fun was being had.


The DM is just another person at the game trying to have fun. He can be right or wrong, good or bad at rpg's it doesn't matter. His role is to run the game and try and manage it so everyone has fun. Yes, but if their fun hinges on something going one way (the bad guy escaping, say) and the players' fun hinges on it going the other ways (the bad guy being pinned and pummeled to death, say), there's no way out that involves everyone having fun. A boardgame about escaping and capturing would be very clear, and someone could say well, next time I'll try a different approach, but in an RPG, where this situation is one of an infinite array the game is expect to be able to handle, the rules are more likely to be unclear and require a judgment by the GM, one of the very people whose fun is at stake.

Now, me, I just don't hinge my fun on particular outcomes, either as a player or GM. But people do, and it causes problems like this in part because people expect it to be like a board game.


Rules lite isn't any better than rules heavy(and vice versa). It's the people sitting at the table that are the problem with any game. I don't disagree. Play with people you trust, or learn to trust them.


I like Risk but everyone I know is playing Chess and so I play Chess but I really want to play Risk. We argue way to much when we play Chess. It's not just me, others argue as well. Risk is just better but damn it, no Risk games. I rarely see people argue for long about either Risk or Chess.

But it's true that "Let's play RPG X" doesn't have one particular meaning to everyone.

WarKitty
2015-02-11, 01:15 PM
Personally I've never liked rules light systems, just because even if you have generally decent people it's entirely liable to lead, if not to arguments, to a lot of unfun negotiation and compromise on things that wouldn't have ever come up if there had been rules. (Incidentally this sort of abandonment of non-combat skills is why I hate 4e.) I like my systems to have a clear definition of what "awesome at doing X" is, so I don't come to the table with a character I think is awesome only to find the guy next to me is way better at it.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-11, 01:52 PM
Personally I've never liked rules light systems, just because even if you have generally decent people it's entirely liable to lead, if not to arguments, to a lot of unfun negotiation and compromise on things that wouldn't have ever come up if there had been rules. Yeah, "generally decent" isn't probably enough. They tend to require people who want the game to work for what it is, not to make the game work for them. The common D&D approach of trying to hack the rules to allow a certain outcome is generally going to clash. It helps massively to have people on the same page as to what the game is about.

Heck, that helps in D&D, too.


(Incidentally this sort of abandonment of non-combat skills is why I hate 4e.) Craft, Perform and Profession you mean? If a player and a GM are seriously arguing over whether a character that lacks a Profession: Blacksmith skill can say they trained as a blacksmith before becoming a fighter, they're both missing the point.


I like my systems to have a clear definition of what "awesome at doing X" is, so I don't come to the table with a character I think is awesome only to find the guy next to me is way better at it. That's because "awesome at doing X" is something you've added yourself, based on your interpretation of certain numbers. That sort of thing is generally referred to as "fluff," and carries no weight. Only the numbers matter and depending on how something it simulated it might not match up well with the fluff, and that's tough. Dwarves are often described as resilient and hardy, and in 3.5 that's represented by not having their speed reduced, resistance to being moved, and saving throw bonuses. No matter what else the fluff might imply, that's all there is. No matter what someone might infer from those numbers, those traits are still all there is.

A game based more on aspects can say a dwarf is "resilient and hardy" (hopefully in a punchier way) and that applies whenever someone thinks it should, in the way they think it should. Some games connect costs to receiving benefits from "fluff" like this, but it's not actually necessary if the group has enough trust. If someone tells me that his dwarf is chugging drinks like Kool-aid because he's "resilient and hardy," I have no problem with that. That's perfectly reasonable. If someone else tells me that his elf is chugging drinks better than the dwarf, I also have no problem with that, but with a trustworthy, cooperative group, interested in the game more than their own coolness, the player of the elf probably wouldn't do that without a reason that everyone would agree is very compelling. They might, nothing's stopping them, but there's not much incentive.

And, in point of fact, the same thing is possible even in a heavy game. If someone tells me that something just would or wouldn't make sense, I'll probably agree with them. I work hard to be that agreeable. My agreeableness tends not to be abused, but if it were I'd probably just talk to the player about the game they really want to play.

Segev
2015-02-11, 02:11 PM
I have to say, I am amused by Beta Centauri and jedipotter's back-and-forth.



That said, Beta, you're advocating for rules light. That doesn't mean that you should apply rules light practice to a rules heavy game. If lightning bolt doesn't do what it says it does when I, the player, cast it, I tend to be a little annoyed because it's the DM arbitrarily changing things out from under me. Especially if I'm lightning bolting a PvPer who decided to try to hit me with his sword.

Sure, you can ignore the rules for both sides of that PvP fight. But at that ponit, why are you using the game that has those rules?

Frankly, I don't think your games would be very interesting for me. You would likely classify me as a jerk or a bully, because I would take every inch you gave me.

I am generally a pretty reasonable person, but there has to be some basis of agreement. Given our lengthy conversation about how you don't think OOC discussion is necessary, this means that my lack of common expectations with you would lead you to conclude that I am a problem player, since you'd never bother to discuss it OOC with me and it would be on me to figure out such a discussion is necessary. (Again, since in this situation, I would find it so, while you would not.)

You can absolutely prefer rules-light games. That doesn't mean that throwing the rules out of a rules-heavy game should be done just because a player is complaining that his actions have consequences in the form of other players' responses. Your play style of choice seems to me to encourage a great deal of passive aggression, and I've never seen that lead anywhere good.

I'm glad for you if it works for your group without any of those troubles. But if anybody is insisting there's only one way to play, it's you by denying that these troubles can possibly exist without those experiencing them being somehow inadequate human beings who nobody should game with.


Again: if you're playing a game with rules, the assumption is and should be that those rules will be followed. Changes to them should be clearly specified, and when the GM is going to ignore them, he should explain why and whether this is a permanent or one-off event. And he should take great care that doing so is not favoring one player over another, nor rendering one or more PCs irrelevant.

You may have no problem with the consequences of rule 0ing rather than using the rules of the game. But you cited the whiny player saying his exact timing of his AoO should change voltages as a problem. Saying, "I don't have to follow the rules which solve that problem," doesn't mean the problem lacks a solution. It means you're willfully wallowing in the problem.

WarKitty
2015-02-11, 02:28 PM
Yeah, "generally decent" isn't probably enough. They tend to require people who want the game to work for what it is, not to make the game work for them. The common D&D approach of trying to hack the rules to allow a certain outcome is generally going to clash. It helps massively to have people on the same page as to what the game is about.

Heck, that helps in D&D, too.

Craft, Perform and Profession you mean? If a player and a GM are seriously arguing over whether a character that lacks a Profession: Blacksmith skill can say they trained as a blacksmith before becoming a fighter, they're both missing the point.

Think about it this way. I show up to the to the table with a character that I've built. He was a blacksmith, and a good one, who is on a quest of vengeance now. I've written in his backstory how he worked for years, and even at one point managed to forge the pride of his life, a magic sword, the sword he's wielding now. Awesome character.

Now, another character also had the idea to build a blacksmith (let's assume we didn't compare notes on this point). And he comes in and talks about how his character was awesome, so much that he was even able to forge magic ploughs for all his farmer friends because it was so easy.

Suddenly my character's gone from looking awesome, to looking like some chump who hasn't learned a whole lot. Because me and the other character have different ideas of what an awesome character looks like. Either I need to re-write my backstory, or settle for my character not actually being awesome at a thing I wanted him to be awesome at.

Sure, some people might say well that's just fluff or backstory or whatever, it doesn't really matter. And some of us would say we don't really enjoy games where that sort of thing doesn't matter. And sure the whole thing could be worked out, but that's another level of figuring everything out and having to adjust expectations and generally spend time on stuff that's not fun and is bound to leave someone a bit disappointed.

Knaight
2015-02-11, 02:46 PM
Think about it this way. I show up to the to the table with a character that I've built. He was a blacksmith, and a good one, who is on a quest of vengeance now. I've written in his backstory how he worked for years, and even at one point managed to forge the pride of his life, a magic sword, the sword he's wielding now. Awesome character.

Now, another character also had the idea to build a blacksmith (let's assume we didn't compare notes on this point). And he comes in and talks about how his character was awesome, so much that he was even able to forge magic ploughs for all his farmer friends because it was so easy.

This is hardly something in favor of rules heavy games though. Take Fudge - it's pretty rules light. If you take the Blacksmith skill at Superb (particularly in character creation systems where you can have exactly 1 Superb skill), you have just backed up the character being an extremely good blacksmith. Somebody else who comes up with a character and assigns the skill to a lower level (maybe Good) will be worse. Even if they decide to maximize it, they don't end up better.

Psyren
2015-02-11, 02:48 PM
And there is the bigger advntage of rules light versus rules heavy...

It's easier!!

Not necessarily. If you're good at retaining information, rules heavy is actually easier, because more corner cases or uncommon occurrences are spelled out - and for the ones that aren't, there are more comparable cases to compare to.

For example, say my character wants to jump across a wide chasm. 3.5/PF have mathematical formulas that tell me exactly how far my character can jump based on his speed, strength, skill, what he is carrying and any magical buffs (or penalties) that may be active on him.

A rules-light system like 5e however does not. At most they will tell the DM "just let them do it unless you think it's difficult, in which case come up with a target number based on how hard you think it is" with some barebones guidelines on how to do that like "medium=X" or "hard=Y." Then to model any complications they will tack on an advantage/disadvantage reroll mechanic, or apply a single static bonus or penalty.

In rules-heavy meanwhile, having figured out the base case, I can add on lots of complicating factors. What if it's windy? What if I'm tired, or poisoned, or sick? What if I'm magically accelerated, or have a spell that grants me good luck? What if I can stow all my armor and items into extradimensional storage before moving, or shapeshift into a form that melds them into my body before moving? What if all of these are active at once? What if they're all active, but before my turn, an ally touches me and removes one of them? A rules-heavy system like 3.5/PF has answers to all of these situations.

Now what I will say is that for players who don't like or find it difficult to keep track of those things, rules-light is better. And this is not to say that those players are less analytical - I know a lot of math-focused people who nevertheless dislike rules-heavy games because when they sit around a table to roll dem bones, they just want to unwind and not be tracking a dozen modifiers. But for me personally, that's my bread and butter, all the moreso if I find just the right tool to automate it and I can actively verify its results on the fly to exercise my brain even more.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-11, 02:52 PM
Suddenly my character's gone from looking awesome, to looking like some chump who hasn't learned a whole lot. Because me and the other character have different ideas of what an awesome character looks like. Either I need to re-write my backstory, or settle for my character not actually being awesome at a thing I wanted him to be awesome at. Just rewrite your backstory. Why should it be particularly inviolate?

I don't see how a rules heavy game actually saves you from similar problems. Now it's not the other player screwing up your understanding about the world and your character, it's the rules themselves. Do the rules actually back up your backstory? Does the gameplay actually back it up? A character who is a "flawless marksman" can have maximized combat skills and feats and whatever, but is still going to have to roll, and will sometimes miss. The problem isn't with the rules, its with the assumption about what the rules mean.


And some of us would say we don't really enjoy games where that sort of thing doesn't matter. In what way does it matter?

Knaight
2015-02-11, 02:57 PM
Not necessarily. If you're good at retaining information, rules heavy is actually easier, because more corner cases or uncommon occurrences are spelled out - and for the ones that aren't, there are more comparable cases to compare to.

It depends. Information retention does make dealing with rules heavy systems easier, but it's one of a bunch of different skills that skew things. Mathematical and statistical intuition make rules light easier, patience for slower pacing makes rules heavy easier, quick decision making as regards adjudication makes rules light easier, so on and so forth. Then there's the matter of the specifics - well designed rules light games often cover more material better than poorly designed rules heavy games, because the rules in the latter are mostly in the form of clunkiness that doesn't actually add anything.

1337 b4k4
2015-02-11, 03:06 PM
It often boils down to the same thing, if the GM happens to believe that the thing they want to do is flatly impossible. If they don't just say "no, that doesn't work," they'll just set as high a difficulty on it as they can, and conditionally modify things all to heck. If the player can talk the GM into believing it's possible or even probable, the GM may relent. If the issue is important enough to both sides, they're back to arguing.

Something which often happens in rules heavy games as well. Ultimately, if you are leaving it to the DM to decide how easy or difficult something is (even in the most general terms of setting DCs) then you are leaving it to the DM to decide if you will be allowed to do something. The only way to prevent this abuse is to either run only pre-made on the rails adventures where every DC is spelled out and anything without a DC is impossible or to have so many DCs and rules regarding when, where and how to apply modifiers, that you might as well be playing a CRPG or running an excel spreadsheet.



In a way. When people think there's a rule for everything, and that the rules simulate the world, then everything matters because the results of the rules tell them what the world looks like.

But where the worst arguments arise is when something really matters, such as with the life of a PC or a major NPC on the line. Small stuff might tip the balance, at that point. Where once the GM didn't care if the PC managed to get a weapon out before the NPC, now they care.

And that's perfectly fine. There's no reason why everything always needs to matter the same amount every time. That way leads to madness like requiring your thief to roll lock picking until they succeed for every door, even if there's no hurry. In fact, even rules heavy D&D acknowledges this with the Take 10 / Take 20 mechanics, which are simply codified versions of "don't sweat the small stuff". Good rules light games give you the rules to resolve "things that matter" in a general sense and tell you to otherwise go with what works best for the story and the game.


I find that horrendous. The "yes, but now the enemies can do that too," is one of the worst "Yes, buts" I can think of. Maybe it's not antagonistic, but it tends to be discouraging. Why bother asking for something if the GM is going to make an effort to make you regret asking for it? I find that just leads to arguments between players, with one side wanting a thing and the other side desperately trying to shut them up before they give the GM too much power. People go back to doing only what the rules explicitly allow them.

That kind of trade off is not necessary.

How is it not necessary? It is by definition the consequence of having narrative control. If you declare something to be about the world, and you give that declaration the authority of rules, then that has consequences for all. As a GM if I decide that a magic sword gives players the ability to bypass armor on arachnids, then the consequence of that is my arachnids are not as dangerous to the PCs. There's no reason why the same doesn't apply to PCs exercising narrative control. If you want your water spells to be able to spontaneously create infinite amounts of water, and as a GM I allow that, then that decision on our parts has consequences. It shapes the very world. It's not about making "an effort to make you regret asking for it", but it's logical consistency (that thing that so many people keep clamoring for). Nothing is free (unless of course it doesn't matter, in which case ... well ... it doesn't matter). Of course the requirement is that you are playing with a GM you trust and one who's there to make the game interesting and fun, but frankly that's a requirement whether you're playing rules light, rules heavy or freeform. If you can't trust your DM and your fellow players to be mature and cooperative in a cooperative game, then you shouldn't play with them. Personally I find beating other players or the GM into submission with rules to be far more tedious than any amount of negotiation and consensus building I've experienced in rules light games.


This is the first time I've seen anyone claim that plots exist to make players give up creativity, free will and arrogance. Do you tend to value the plots you've created over the wishes and preferences of the players?

Eh, by definition any "plot" that is followed is going to require time form of surrender on the player's part for free will and creativity. There's a reason the idiot ball (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall) is a trope. This is not a bad thing, any more than the choice of system also requires the surrender of some free will and creativity as no, your space marine with laser cannons, cybernetic implants and jetpacks doesn't fit in the small farming village of the pseudo-medieval world.


Oh, no! Not... consequences!

I would like to note this is the precise opposite of your argument above that players having narrative control shouldn't have consequences.


That's only one way to play. I have a feeling that you think about things in a way that won't let you understand this easily, but not everyone treats consistency the same way. I would happily grant a player that kind of protection if they wanted it, and never have my NPCs benefit from it. A lot of the "many rules and conditions" you think I would have to accumulate might never arise again, leaving me consistent by default.

Then by definition you have found something that doesn't matter, and the appropriate action is to resolve it as such. Meaning if whether or not a protection works a certain way will never be something you will use with your NPCs, but it does matter to the player because their character will die without it, then give them the protection. As you said, it will never come up again.


But a table top game isn't just a very complicated video game, with the GM's brain as the computer. GMs can, do, and should make judgments based not always on a strict reading of the rules, but on what is fun for the table.

Which is exactly how and why a rules light game can work, even among strangers. So now I'm confused, you seem to be swapping back and forth between arguing for and arguing against rules light games.


As far as making a basic attack, light or heavy probably doesn't matter. Where it starts to matter is with more specialized stuff. Take "Can I hit him with a bank shot off the wall near him?" I haven't read rules that could answer this specific situation, but I'm almost certain they exist and that the rules they exist in are what people would call heavy. In theory, someone using those rules doesn't have to ask if they can do this, they just state they're doing it and roll, or whatever.

In a game light enough not to include such a rule, it's going to be up to the GM to decide if it's even possible. Depending on the GM, I might not even ask, because the answer would clearly be no, or because the GM would just use it against me later.

Again, why is the fact that something you can do is also something NPCs could do a bad thing?


That depends on what the goal the table is trying to achieve. If it's realism, that can be hard to achieve on the fly. The same if the goal is absolute fairness, or control by the GM, or adherence to a plot.

Only if the measure is against some objective external standard. The fact is, it only matters in as much as everyone at the table is happy with it. Is it realistic that falling 20 feet results in no damage every time? No. Does it matter? Only if the people at the table care, otherwise, it's "realistic" enough for the game they're playing.

neonchameleon
2015-02-11, 03:55 PM
Eh, by definition any "plot" that is followed is going to require time form of surrender on the player's part for free will and creativity. There's a reason the idiot ball (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall) is a trope. This is not a bad thing, any more than the choice of system also requires the surrender of some free will and creativity as no, your space marine with laser cannons, cybernetic implants and jetpacks doesn't fit in the small farming village of the pseudo-medieval world.

Huh? No. This is the case if and only if the GM is the Storyteller and the PCs are there as actors in their play. Rather than that the PCs are independent actors (and trust me, it's very easy for PCs to grab the Idiot Ball and run it past the goal line and half way up into the stands). The GM normally needs to provide an inciting incident and probably a twist. But the rest can be left to the players as long as there's general pressure there.

icefractal
2015-02-11, 04:10 PM
Think about it this way. I show up to the to the table with a character that I've built. He was a blacksmith, and a good one, who is on a quest of vengeance now. I've written in his backstory how he worked for years, and even at one point managed to forge the pride of his life, a magic sword, the sword he's wielding now. Awesome character.

Now, another character also had the idea to build a blacksmith (let's assume we didn't compare notes on this point). And he comes in and talks about how his character was awesome, so much that he was even able to forge magic ploughs for all his farmer friends because it was so easy.

Suddenly my character's gone from looking awesome, to looking like some chump who hasn't learned a whole lot. Because me and the other character have different ideas of what an awesome character looks like. Either I need to re-write my backstory, or settle for my character not actually being awesome at a thing I wanted him to be awesome at.That's what I'd call a calibration problem, but since the place I've often seen it show up is effect-based games such as HERO (not remotely rules-lite), I don't think this is a rules issue.

It can show up in any part of a game where the mechanics are not firmly connected to the fluff - and every game has at least a few areas like that. The same freedom that means people can have any concept they want and be mechanically equal also means that someone can come in with a mismatched concept that makes other characters less cool just by existing.

NichG
2015-02-11, 04:19 PM
The calibration problem is interesting since there actually is a really easy way for a system to address it, and its one which naturally should be accessible with more rules-light games, but which for some reason doesn't seem to be the case all that often. That is to say, dedicate a significant portion of the rulebook towards describing the world - what is normal, what is rare, etc. The reason I say that it should be more accessible with rules-light games is that you've freed up a large page count by going rules-light, so you could fill that with setting information and details to motivate an understanding of the world you're trying to present.

I guess the reason it doesn't happen that often is that a lot of rules-light games try to be 'universal' game engines. But then you end up with a game which is all-around content-light.

Knaight
2015-02-11, 04:26 PM
The calibration problem is interesting since there actually is a really easy way for a system to address it, and its one which naturally should be accessible with more rules-light games, but which for some reason doesn't seem to be the case all that often. That is to say, dedicate a significant portion of the rulebook towards describing the world - what is normal, what is rare, etc. The reason I say that it should be more accessible with rules-light games is that you've freed up a large page count by going rules-light, so you could fill that with setting information and details to motivate an understanding of the world you're trying to present.

I guess the reason it doesn't happen that often is that a lot of rules-light games try to be 'universal' game engines. But then you end up with a game which is all-around content-light.
All-around content-light can be fine though. There's a particular niche for a system which provides the structure needed to run a game, but is pretty much quietly out of the way; this is particularly true of a generic system. Plus, it's often less the details of the world that need to get across, and more some main themes, which makes examples so powerful. This is one of the things I really like about Chronica Feudalis (rules light) and REIGN (not rules light). Both have solid examples and are written in a style that you really get what they're supposed to be about, what people who are good at things can be expected to do, etc. Both do a very good job calibrating expectations.

1337 b4k4
2015-02-11, 04:38 PM
Huh? No. This is the case if and only if the GM is the Storyteller and the PCs are there as actors in their play. Rather than that the PCs are independent actors (and trust me, it's very easy for PCs to grab the Idiot Ball and run it past the goal line and half way up into the stands). The GM normally needs to provide an inciting incident and probably a twist. But the rest can be left to the players as long as there's general pressure there.

Eh, I think at this point we're mostly arguing degrees. I'm not saying so much that players become actors in plays where things are set out, but that following a plot (as opposed to building one after the fact) requires a certain level of buy in from the players. This can be a minimal as "yes, every normal person would flee in terror never to return, but we're playing Call of Cthulhu so we're going into the horrible supernatural murder house" method of going places or the ever popular "hail fine traveler, you look the trustworthy sort, would you like to join our quest" method of putting together a party. Following a plot requires players and DMs alike to agree to reign in some of their free will (or use that free will) to advance the plot by mutual agreement.

Beta Centauri
2015-02-11, 04:49 PM
A rules-light system like 5e however does not. At most they will tell the DM "just let them do it unless you think it's difficult, in which case come up with a target number based on how hard you think it is" with some barebones guidelines on how to do that like "medium=X" or "hard=Y." 4th Edition does it both ways. There's the usual table for jump distances, but there are also stock difficulty numbers to use. I don't have to know how wide a chasm is, I just have to know if it's Easy, Moderate or Hard to jump over.

What gives people conniptions about that is when they decide they don't want to risk jumping (because Failure Is Boring in D&D) and try to come up with some risk-mitigating approach. For instance, trying to place their ladder across it. Knowing the distance across the chasm and the height of the ladder might get you most of the way there, but there goes any abstraction the GM was hoping to apply. In come the arguments about whether a 10 foot ladder usefully bridges a 10 foot (or even 8 foot) gap.

But even those kinds of questions are not worth having a harder system. If someone isn't interested in taking the risk, fine: their idea to mitigate the risk works and they can either cross it automatically, or roll whatever skill against whatever DC. Whatever. Just spare me any discussion on it.

Jay R
2015-02-11, 08:18 PM
You asked one question, and then described a totally different situation.

I have no problem playing under a rules-heavy game, in which all details are spelled out (which just means the game is based on a writer's idea of how the world works), and I have no problem playing under "vague rules which are open to interpretation" (which just means the game is based on the GM's idea of how the world works).

That answers the question in the header. No problems.

But the game situation you describe in the body? I hate games that break into arguments. A player who cannot accept a GM's rulings shouldn't play under that GM. If the GM cannot get a player to accept his rulings, the GM sometimes needs to ask that person to leave the game.

In last week's game, the DM at one point said, "That's meta-knowledge. You can't do that." I thought he was mistaken, but I followed his ruling, and hit the black pudding with my sword. No problem. He's the boss.

You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.

I really dislike games in which the GM makes unfair or inconsistent rulings, and I really dislike games in which the players argue over the rulings. I accept that the GM's rulings aren't always what I think is right. If I trust the GM, I accept his (or her) ruling, even when I disagree. If I don't trust the GM, I didn't even start playing with him.

None of that has anything to do with how vague or precise the rules are.

zinycor
2015-02-11, 09:08 PM
You asked one question, and then described a totally different situation.

I have no problem playing under a rules-heavy game, in which all details are spelled out (which just means the game is based on a writer's idea of how the world works), and I have no problem playing under "vague rules which are open to interpretation" (which just means the game is based on the GM's idea of how the world works).

That answers the question in the header. No problems.

But the game situation you describe in the body? I hate games that break into arguments. A player who cannot accept a GM's rulings shouldn't play under that GM. If the GM cannot get a player to accept his rulings, the GM sometimes needs to ask that person to leave the game.

In last week's game, the DM at one point said, "That's meta-knowledge. You can't do that." I thought he was mistaken, but I followed his ruling, and hit the black pudding with my sword. No problem. He's the boss.

You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.

I really dislike games in which the GM makes unfair or inconsistent rulings, and I really dislike games in which the players argue over the rulings. I accept that the GM's rulings aren't always what I think is right. If I trust the GM, I accept his (or her) ruling, even when I disagree. If I don't trust the GM, I didn't even start playing with him.

None of that has anything to do with how vague or precise the rules are.


+1!

Damn this forum really could use a like system

Talakeal
2015-02-11, 11:25 PM
You asked one question, and then described a totally different situation.

I have no problem playing under a rules-heavy game, in which all details are spelled out (which just means the game is based on a writer's idea of how the world works), and I have no problem playing under "vague rules which are open to interpretation" (which just means the game is based on the GM's idea of how the world works).

That answers the question in the header. No problems.

But the game situation you describe in the body? I hate games that break into arguments. A player who cannot accept a GM's rulings shouldn't play under that GM. If the GM cannot get a player to accept his rulings, the GM sometimes needs to ask that person to leave the game.

In last week's game, the DM at one point said, "That's meta-knowledge. You can't do that." I thought he was mistaken, but I followed his ruling, and hit the black pudding with my sword. No problem. He's the boss.

You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.

I really dislike games in which the GM makes unfair or inconsistent rulings, and I really dislike games in which the players argue over the rulings. I accept that the GM's rulings aren't always what I think is right. If I trust the GM, I accept his (or her) ruling, even when I disagree. If I don't trust the GM, I didn't even start playing with him.

None of that has anything to do with how vague or precise the rules are.

As to your bolded statement, that is a very D&D centric view. There are plenty of games which do not have all powerful Game Master, and even if you are playing in such a game the group as a whole can still overrule the Game Master by simply ignoring or expelling him. But that goes into a whole "social contract" discussion which is only tangentially related to the issue at hand.

I am not really talking about refusing to accept the DMs authority. Take for example these two hypothetical feats:

Feat A:
This feat makes the character immune to fire damage.

Feat B:
Due to Efrreti ancestry this character has a certain knack for surviving in extreme temperatures. this character finds that most open flames do not bother them and they are quite at home in all but the fiercest infernos due to their tolerance for heat.

Now, if I get hit by a fireball and have feat A i am not going to take any damage. But if I take feat B, well, anytime I get hit by a fireball I am going to have to ask the DM for a ruling.

In either case the DM CAN decide the feat does nothing, and in either case I CAN choose to quietly accept it, to argue against it kicking and screaming, or anything in between. But I would certainly say that feat B requires the DM to make a ruling while feat A works fine if you simply sit back and follow the rules as written.

zinycor
2015-02-12, 01:37 AM
As to your bolded statement, that is a very D&D centric view. There are plenty of games which do not have all powerful Game Master, and even if you are playing in such a game the group as a whole can still overrule the Game Master by simply ignoring or expelling him. But that goes into a whole "social contract" discussion which is only tangentially related to the issue at hand.

I am not really talking about refusing to accept the DMs authority. Take for example these two hypothetical feats:

Feat A:
This feat makes the character immune to fire damage.

Feat B:
Due to Efrreti ancestry this character has a certain knack for surviving in extreme temperatures. this character finds that most open flames do not bother them and they are quite at home in all but the fiercest infernos due to their tolerance for heat.

Now, if I get hit by a fireball and have feat A i am not going to take any damage. But if I take feat B, well, anytime I get hit by a fireball I am going to have to ask the DM for a ruling.

In either case the DM CAN decide the feat does nothing, and in either case I CAN choose to quietly accept it, to argue against it kicking and screaming, or anything in between. But I would certainly say that feat B requires the DM to make a ruling while feat A works fine if you simply sit back and follow the rules as written.

On the other hand, feat B has a lot more flavor and may give advantage on certain situations where you are talking to Efrretis or fire spirits because of that heritage. And you wouldn't really need to ask the DM everytime you get hit by a fireball, you will only need to ask him once and in very special ocassions like: this fireball actually is powered by the power of the abyss so instead of being immune you only absorb half the damage, ehich may very well happen for Feat A.

anyway, As i said before, i think the main advantage of simpler rules isn't on these cases but in that is more player and DM friendly, since doesn't require you to memorize every spell, types of actions, or other thing that don't really matter when you are just having a good time or trying to play your character

Zarrgon
2015-02-12, 02:53 AM
You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.

I really dislike games in which the GM makes unfair or inconsistent rulings, and I really dislike games in which the players argue over the rulings. I accept that the GM's rulings aren't always what I think is right. If I trust the GM, I accept his (or her) ruling, even when I disagree. If I don't trust the GM, I didn't even start playing with him.

None of that has anything to do with how vague or precise the rules are.

Very true!

Rules light or rules heavy, a GM normally has to make dozens of calls a game. Even the rules heavy games are no help as they only cover so much. In a typical game, dozens of things come up that are not covered in the rules. And in a rules light game, almost nothing is covered in the rules.

A player really just needs to go along with the GM's rulings. That is how a game works.

Talakeal
2015-02-12, 03:38 AM
Very true!

Rules light or rules heavy, a GM normally has to make dozens of calls a game. Even the rules heavy games are no help as they only cover so much. In a typical game, dozens of things come up that are not covered in the rules. And in a rules light game, almost nothing is covered in the rules.

A player really just needs to go along with the GM's rulings. That is how a game works.

What about games that don't?

I have played in plenty of RPGs that have the group as a whole decide on rulings rather than one all powerful GM, heck some RPGs do without the Game Master entirely.

Even D&D, which is among the strongest supporters of the "DM is always right" style has numerous pages in the DMG about how the DM should only change rules in a careful and deliberate manner as a last resort rather than simply shouting out mandates on a whim.

icefractal
2015-02-12, 03:39 AM
You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.Eh - only to an extent, IME. Most of the groups I've been in, even when playing D&D, the DM is more like a president than an absolute monarch. They get a lot of leeway, and certain things are explicitly their prerogative, but ultimately authority derives from the group as a whole.

Now that said, I've fortunately never run into an actual DM/group standoff. It's more like minor stuff - the DM says something happens according to X rule, the players correct him that it doesn't work in that way, no big deal. If the DM decided to change the rules on the fly instead - I'm not sure what the response would be like, because none of our DMs have desired to be autocrats. But I don't think "automatic acceptance" is likely.

NichG
2015-02-12, 05:12 AM
Even D&D, which is among the strongest supporters of the "DM is always right" style has numerous pages in the DMG about how the DM should only change rules in a careful and deliberate manner as a last resort rather than simply shouting out mandates on a whim.

This isn't really a comment against the DM making rulings, its just saying 'whatever you do, you should do so for a reason'. It's almost a non-statement, as if to say 'if you are going to DM, you should try to DM well'

Talakeal
2015-02-12, 05:26 AM
This isn't really a comment against the DM making rulings, its just saying 'whatever you do, you should do so for a reason'. It's almost a non-statement, as if to say 'if you are going to DM, you should try to DM well'

It is kind of a gray area.

For example says, page 14 says: "Make sure that a change genuinely improves your campaign for everybody." This is an absolute statement. It doesn't say "should" or "may".

But then again page 18 says "The DM really can't cheat, what you say goes."

So, say I am mad at player B because he ate the last slice of pizza. I then proclaim "The goblin gets a +10,000 bonus to damage against player B's character, killing him instantly. Suck it loser!"

I clearly didn't make this change to improve the campaign for everybody, in fact I explicitly made it for the sake of making it less fun for player B. But then again, page 18 says whatever I say goes. So which page wins out?

Ultimately I think it boils down to a case of "can" versus "should". And if in the above example the other players at the table said "Hey, DM, chill out. We aren't going to just sit back and let you kill off or friend like that. Would you mind reconsidering his untimely death?" I really don't think it is fair to say they "aren't playing the game."

NichG
2015-02-12, 05:42 AM
It is kind of a gray area.

For example says, page 14 says: "Make sure that a change genuinely improves your campaign for everybody." This is an absolute statement. It doesn't say "should" or "may".

But then again page 18 says "The DM really can't cheat, what you say goes."

So, say I am mad at player B because he ate the last slice of pizza. I then proclaim "The goblin gets a +10,000 bonus to damage against player B's character, killing him instantly. Suck it loser!"

I clearly didn't make this change to improve the campaign for everybody, in fact I explicitly made it for the sake of making it less fun for player B. But then again, page 18 says whatever I say goes. So which page wins out?

Ultimately I think it boils down to a case of "can" versus "should". And if in the above example the other players at the table said "Hey, DM, chill out. We aren't going to just sit back and let you kill off or friend like that. Would you mind reconsidering his untimely death?" I really don't think it is fair to say they "aren't playing the game."

This is making the situation more complicated than it needs to be. You're DMing. You're trying to run a game for other people. It's self-evident that you should try to do this well. It has nothing to do with D&D's rules or other rulesystems, its more fundamental than that.

Nobody is going to write a rulebook that says 'you should try to make your players as unhappy as you can'. That fact that we don't see such a thing isn't a deep statement about judgement calls versus pre-determined rules, its just a natural extension of 'people don't like playing games with jerks, so don't be a jerk'.

zinycor
2015-02-12, 08:55 AM
It is kind of a gray area.

For example says, page 14 says: "Make sure that a change genuinely improves your campaign for everybody." This is an absolute statement. It doesn't say "should" or "may".

But then again page 18 says "The DM really can't cheat, what you say goes."

So, say I am mad at player B because he ate the last slice of pizza. I then proclaim "The goblin gets a +10,000 bonus to damage against player B's character, killing him instantly. Suck it loser!"

I clearly didn't make this change to improve the campaign for everybody, in fact I explicitly made it for the sake of making it less fun for player B. But then again, page 18 says whatever I say goes. So which page wins out?

Ultimately I think it boils down to a case of "can" versus "should". And if in the above example the other players at the table said "Hey, DM, chill out. We aren't going to just sit back and let you kill off or friend like that. Would you mind reconsidering his untimely death?" I really don't think it is fair to say they "aren't playing the game."

Really missed the point of what you were trying to say here, or how rules help or not in this situation?

If you are going to take such a literal reading on the rules obviously the more rules light version, stated by NichG, would be better. That's to say: If you are going to DM, you should try to DM well.

1337 b4k4
2015-02-12, 09:27 AM
I am not really talking about refusing to accept the DMs authority. Take for example these two hypothetical feats:

Feat A:
This feat makes the character immune to fire damage.

Feat B:
Due to Efrreti ancestry this character has a certain knack for surviving in extreme temperatures. this character finds that most open flames do not bother them and they are quite at home in all but the fiercest infernos due to their tolerance for heat.

Now, if I get hit by a fireball and have feat A i am not going to take any damage. But if I take feat B, well, anytime I get hit by a fireball I am going to have to ask the DM for a ruling.

In either case the DM CAN decide the feat does nothing, and in either case I CAN choose to quietly accept it, to argue against it kicking and screaming, or anything in between. But I would certainly say that feat B requires the DM to make a ruling while feat A works fine if you simply sit back and follow the rules as written.

But you're not comparing comparable things. Words have meanings too, and Feat A is immunity to fire damage and Feat B is explicitly NOT immunity to fire damage. If the same book with Feat B includes in the fireball description that the flames are about as hot as a camp fire, then that answer to "do I take damage from the fireball" is "No". This isn't a rules light /vague vs rules heavy issue, it's a "Do you want to have blanket immunities in your game" issue.


It is kind of a gray area.

For example says, page 14 says: "Make sure that a change genuinely improves your campaign for everybody." This is an absolute statement. It doesn't say "should" or "may".

But then again page 18 says "The DM really can't cheat, what you say goes."

So, say I am mad at player B because he ate the last slice of pizza. I then proclaim "The goblin gets a +10,000 bonus to damage against player B's character, killing him instantly. Suck it loser!"

I clearly didn't make this change to improve the campaign for everybody, in fact I explicitly made it for the sake of making it less fun for player B. But then again, page 18 says whatever I say goes. So which page wins out?

Ultimately I think it boils down to a case of "can" versus "should". And if in the above example the other players at the table said "Hey, DM, chill out. We aren't going to just sit back and let you kill off or friend like that. Would you mind reconsidering his untimely death?" I really don't think it is fair to say they "aren't playing the game."

Presumably, there are other words before, between and after pages 14 and 18 that include more on being a DM. But even if there were not, the two statements are not mutually exclusive. It is true that you as the DM can't cheat and that what you say goes. But anyone who's played a crappy game before knows that just because you're following the rules doesn't mean you're playing a fun game. So if the DM is making new rules (which they can, because anything goes) but those rules are making the game unfun, then they aren't fulfilling their duties under the first statement. Accepting the DM as the final word requires first and foremost that you have someone fulfilling the role of a DM. A DM who fails to fill their role is no more playing the game than players who refuse to accept the DMs arbitration. Both sides have a responsibility.

Earthwalker
2015-02-12, 09:31 AM
[snip]
Feat A:
This feat makes the character immune to fire damage.
Feat B:
Due to Efrreti ancestry this character has a certain knack for surviving in extreme temperatures. this character finds that most open flames do not bother them and they are quite at home in all but the fiercest infernos due to their tolerance for heat.

See if both these feats are options to add into DnD I prefer the first. If they are to be added into a system where “Fire Damage” was not a thing I don’t think it really matters they are both just as vague. If the game is like DnD and its rules heavy. If you have gone to the trouble of having rules desiding the different types of damage, then use those key words in your other rules as well. That seem simple enough to me. Someone even complained about this is the rules design thread started by Yora.
Ok now on the notion of wanting to know what your character can do in rules heavy and light systems. Lets say we have a situation where you are chasing down someone that kidnapped your sister (the dasatard). You chase him to the roof tops and see he is already a roof ahead of you. To get to him you can take a long path that’s safe (a ladder is streatched across the gap) or you can jump the gap and hope for the best. Lets say the gap is 12 foot wide.

Rules Heavy –
Player : Can I jump the gap?
GM : Lets see, (thumbs threw rule book) : Ok if you make an athletics test you can clear a number of feet equal to the result as long as you have a running start. Whats your athleics ?
Player: erm 4 ranks + 2 from dex so 6.
GM ok you have 40 move rate so that gets you another +4 bonus for every 10 foot over 30. You are looking at +10 and you need to roll and get 12 or more.
Player : Well I jump then.

Rules Light
Player: Can I jump the gap?
GM : Well its an easy athletics test. So you have 3 athletics dice. You need one success to get across.
Player : Ok but I have a trait “Family comes first” I want to use that to get advantage on this roll for 2 more dice.
GM: yep that seems ok roll.

Now both these examples the GM is telling the player the rolls and the rules. So the player knows what his character can do. If you choose to play where the GM just says “There is a gap” but gies you no more information then you have no idea if you can jump it (Rules Heavy or Light)


Ok getting back to feat B. This works well as a trait in some rules light systems. If you have a trait that applys you get advantage (lets say you roll two more dice for tests). The vague wording of the trait means that you can use it in multiple places as an advantage. This helps the player.
It can give you advantage for dessert survival.
Or Advantage to resist a fireball.
Or Advantage when trying to trade with a Djinn.
The GM can if he likes use it as a disadvantage when dealing with the Djinns natural enemies.
I think the only reason I would prefer the feat B (trait) is if the system supported its use. You can use it for advantage when it makes sense to (yes this needs moderating).
The early feat (feat a) has a system disadvantage as it simple resolves any conflict about fire damage. It just say no, no fire damage. (until someone else has a feat, Your fire damage is counted as super fire damage that bypasses things imune to fire damage (This is so a DnD thing))

Jay R
2015-02-12, 09:51 AM
You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.
As to your bolded statement, that is a very D&D centric view.

I would call it an "on-topic for this thread" centric view.

Going back to the original post:
The first paragraph discussed "someone is arguing with the GM over whether or not their character can do something."
The second paragraph was about how much the GM would allow.
The third paragraph was about being denied options by the GM.
The fourth paragraph was about somebody trying to convince the GM to let the backstory affect the skills available.
The fifth paragraph was about a salesman talking the GM out of too much.
The final paragraph acknowledged that your opinion is in the minority, and asking what you're missing.

The GM making rulings was the topic throughout your entire opening post. That's the topic you brought up.

If you want to change the subject to the kinds of games that don't have GMs, or in which the GMs aren't the referees, I suggest that you start a new thread. This one is unambiguously about the appeal of rules light situations and GM rulings

Frozen_Feet
2015-02-12, 09:59 AM
It's not D&D centric at all. It's part of the GM's job as a referee, and was inherited from wargames. It would be just as true of a soccer match referee or a Blackjack dealer.

Psyren
2015-02-12, 11:51 AM
If I don't trust the GM, I didn't even start playing with him.


This is great if you know ahead of time, but sometimes you don't have reason to distrust someone until after the game is underway and several rulings have been made. Or sometimes you are friends with this guy for quite a long time before they start DMing for you - this can happen often when other players take up the DM mantle. At that point some form of confrontation does take place, though I agree it should not derail the session if at all possible.

Jay R
2015-02-12, 01:48 PM
This is great if you know ahead of time, but sometimes you don't have reason to distrust someone until after the game is underway and several rulings have been made. Or sometimes you are friends with this guy for quite a long time before they start DMing for you - this can happen often when other players take up the DM mantle. At that point some form of confrontation does take place, though I agree it should not derail the session if at all possible.

So what? If she makes rulings I disagree with, I may discuss it briefly, but will then accept the ruling and move on. If she makes rulings I cannot trust, I walk away.

This is no different from refusing to play a computer game if the software gives absurd results I can't accept.


It is kind of a gray area.
...
So, say I am mad at player B because he ate the last slice of pizza. I then proclaim "The goblin gets a +10,000 bonus to damage against player B's character, killing him instantly. Suck it loser!"

That's not a gray area. That's a DM who is deliberately destroying the game. All competent players leave the game instantly.


I clearly didn't make this change to improve the campaign for everybody, in fact I explicitly made it for the sake of making it less fun for player B. But then again, page 18 says whatever I say goes. So which page wins out?

Both of them, of course. The DM didn't "cheat", but I won't play the game he's running.

I'll go further. If I know about it, I wouldn't play with a DM who considered this even if he ultimately decided against it. In my earlier post, I wrote "If I trust the GM, I accept his (or her) ruling, even when I disagree. If I don't trust the GM, I didn't even start playing with him."


Ultimately I think it boils down to a case of "can" versus "should". And if in the above example the other players at the table said "Hey, DM, chill out. We aren't going to just sit back and let you kill off or friend like that. Would you mind reconsidering his untimely death?" I really don't think it is fair to say they "aren't playing the game."

No, but that is completely different from any of the situations discussed in the first post. A DM killing your character for taking a piece of pizza is an example of "vague rules which are open to interpretation". Note that you are quoting rules from a fairly rules-heavy version of D&D.

Milodiah
2015-02-12, 02:35 PM
There's a difference between rules that are open to interpretation and rules that are actually ambiguous thanks to terrible semantics. Let me post one that, depending on how you take it, makes a specific class incredibly powerful or incredibly horrible.

This is from the Rifts RPG, by the way...here it is:

"Select three Fire Magic spells from levels 1-4. Each additional level of experience, the character will be able to figure out/select one new spell."

Interpretation 1: Select three Fire Magic spells of any SPELL level at CHARACTER levels one, two, three, and four. From level five onward, select one spell per level.

Intepretation 2: At first CHARACTER level, select three Fire Magic spells of SPELL levels 1 to 4. Each CHARACTER level from 2 upwards, however, there are no restrictions on the spell level you can select, so long as you only take one.

The spell level versus character level problem strikes again...especially since spell levels don't come up nearly as much as in D&D. To a D&D-inclined player, Interpretation 2 seems more correct. However, I'll point out that in Rifts most casters can learn any spell of any spell level given the chance and the time, even if they don't have enough total mana P.P.E. to be able to cast it by themselves. There's no rigorous chart indicating how many spells of each SPELL level you can learn every CHARACTER level like D&D, sometimes there's not even a suggestion to the GM how many would be reasonable.

And no, I didn't clip this and post it out of context. I posted it with about as much context as it freaking has.

Segev
2015-02-12, 03:02 PM
Palladium in general, and RIFTS in specific, seems rife with situations wehre the wording is ambiguous to the point that you have to ask your GM what they're doing.

For what it's worth, I read it as follows: At level one in this OCC (occupational character class), select three spells, which can be chosen from spell levels 1-4. At second level and beyond in this OCC, select one spell of any level.

The ambiguity I would actually wonder at is if it means "three spells from each of levels 1-4," or "three spells total, selected from levels 1-4."

The "spell level 1-4" limitation on your starting spells seems in line with how Rifts tends to run power level: start with a big bulk of what makes you iconic, but cap the power level of any one thing. Remove caps after chargen because gains are so rare (and really, you're limited by your mana points, too).

VincentTakeda
2015-02-12, 03:06 PM
And access to spells of a high level are pretty common even for low level characters... In Black Market, there's a class that gets access to a particular 15th level spell at first level by default. The above reference might be from an older rifts book... Core ultimate's psionics classes have a very clean outline of what powers come when, so the publisher may agree that the writing in previous editions wasnt clear enough.

Segev
2015-02-12, 03:23 PM
Oh, yeah, some OCCs get very high-level spells at first level, but those tend to be very specific high-level spells that are part of the iconic "feel" of the class. The rule referenced above was about selecting spells of the player's choosing, rather than a specific iconic spell.

I know the Shifter, for instance, gets Dimensional Rift, which is at least level 12 or 13, and which most Shifters lack the PPE (mana) to cast even with their special class-granted discount, at least for a number of levels. (There are tricks to getting enough PPE, but they take some in-character doing.)

kyoryu
2015-02-12, 04:17 PM
Just following the plot is emphatically not good for creativity and fun although it is, as you say, tame. It's sitting back and letting the GM tell you a story. It's workable in heavy rules games because there is interest in playing with the rules themselves. If the players are following the plot and can't kick out of it mechanically or by roleplaying they are going to have no outlets at all for their creativity other than to paint by numbers and it isn't going to be fun. It is, however going to be tame.

The best rules light games I know all recommend not having a predetermined plot, merely a couple of predetermined events and letting the plot emerge from the actions of the PCs. Far from being tame, such games can be incredibly feral. Which makes them creative and fun.

I agree with this so hard. In fact, my theory is that D&D has become more rules heavy over the years precisely *because* player agency has been reduced in the way it's typically presented.

I think of it as "minimum engagement" or "minimum decisions". Players have a minimum amount of decision power that they want to engage in. If you remove it from some areas ("plot"/where we go/what we do) you have to increase it in other areas (tactical options, character builds, etc.) to keep interest.

Psyren
2015-02-12, 04:42 PM
So what? If she makes rulings I disagree with, I may discuss it briefly, but will then accept the ruling and move on. If she makes rulings I cannot trust, I walk away.

This is no different from refusing to play a computer game if the software gives absurd results I can't accept.

Walking away is a last resort, particularly when IRL friends are involved. I am more of a "let's talk about it and compromise" kind of personality. I won't derail a game session to do it (beyond, say, one round of point-counterpoint explaining why I'm not okay with a particular ruling or how I think it could be better) but neither blind acceptance nor instant rage-quit are palatable to me.

Pippa the Pixie
2015-02-12, 04:59 PM
I agree with this so hard. In fact, my theory is that D&D has become more rules heavy over the years precisely *because* player agency has been reduced in the way it's typically presented.


1E and 2E and D&D were all very rules light. Each DM had to make up tons of stuff on the fly, and there was no good place to look for examples or advice. And most DM's did a fine enough job..........but there were always unhappy players.

And not every DM is good at making stuff up. A lot of old DM's would just get all flustered when they had to make up rules for something on the spot. And there was always the ''reality'' bit too: a lot of DM just are not experts on everything. How far can a person high jump? How hard is it to dive in to water from a flying dragon? How can a DM make up rules for stuff they know nothing about?

Even worse, there were a lot of Bad DMs. A player might try to have a character swing on a rope, and the DM would roll a 1d100 and if they got higher then 50 they would make it. And then when the character tired to lasso an object they would roll a 1d12 and if they got higher then 8 they would do it. And then when the player wanted the character to jump over a ten foot pit, the DM would say it's impossible and too far.

So starting with 3E, D&D tried to fix that. By adding more rules they hoped to avoid lots of things Bad DM's might do and reduce player vs DM arguments. The idea was simple: more rules and the idea that everyone must follow the rules. So with the rules as a base, everyone could have fun. Though all it really did was shift the arguments from ''stuff'' to ''rules''....and D&D games still have ''stuff'' arguments.

NichG
2015-02-12, 05:55 PM
Walking away is a last resort, particularly when IRL friends are involved. I am more of a "let's talk about it and compromise" kind of personality. I won't derail a game session to do it (beyond, say, one round of point-counterpoint explaining why I'm not okay with a particular ruling or how I think it could be better) but neither blind acceptance nor instant rage-quit are palatable to me.

Walking away shouldn't be a last resort, especially where IRL friends are involved. One should recognize whether or not the issue is a difference in style, or simply a lack of skill on the DM's part. If its a lack of DM skill, then you can help them improve, but if its a difference in style then that means for you to be happier with the way things are going, they're going to have to be less happy - and possibly their other players will be as well, if they've gotten together a group centered around their style.

A player who isn't enjoying themselves but is hanging around out of a sense of duty is actually doing harm to the game as a whole - they're debating and negotiating things which other people at the table presumably don't have a problem with, bogging down the game, and in general unenthusiastic players just don't add very much. The best thing you can do as a friend is to step away from an game being run in a style that you aren't actually on board with and give that seat to someone who would appreciate it for what it is.

Talakeal
2015-02-12, 05:55 PM
I don't know why, but the statement "You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word." just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it is because I am an anti-authoritarian at heart, or maybe I feel that you are insulting my taste in games as my favorite RPGs, as a player, GM, and designer, all say that the group as a whole rather than the DM has the final say on which rules you will be using.

I will also say that if I only played with people who I trust completely and had to either sit quietly and accept everything or walk out when there was a disagreement with the DM (and vice versa when I am on the other side of the screen) I don't think I would have ever played in a campaign that lasted more than a few sessions.

This all goes into social contract stuff though, which is really not really my intent in starting this thread. Frankly this topic has been done to death, especially in threads like:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?191678-There-is-no-quot-Rule-Zero-quot-!

In most discussions of the topic I find myself to be in the "moderate" position and disagreeing with extreme views on both sides. I accept that the GM has a lot of responsibility and authority, but I still consider them a fallible human and in the end just another player at the table whose enjoyment is worth no more and no less than anyone else's.



Anyway, when I talk about arguing with the GM I don't mean putting my foot down and yelling and screaming. I more mean presenting your case for when you want to do something that you believe is within the rules but aren't sure or are asking permission to violate the rules when you think it is appropriate. An "argument" in the classic sense, where you present your point of view and respond to criticisms hoping to convince someone else that your are correct, and, on the other side, being able to question the GM's opinion when you believe they are in error.

neonchameleon
2015-02-12, 06:01 PM
1E and 2E and D&D were all very rules light.

I'm sorry. Did you just call the system that Gygax claimed you had to play by the rules and had rules about how the monsters attacked if the PCs weren't wearing helmets buried away on page 28 of the DMG, and the potion miscibility table, rules light? Or were you talking about the one with the weapon vs armour type rules and non-weapon proficiencies?

Neither 1e nor 2e in any way qualifies as a rules light game even if most DMs needed house rules to cover gaps. Indeed I'd say a "By all the rules" 1e game using the core three rulebooks is heavier than a core 3.0 or 3.5 game - and 2e is almost that heavy.


So starting with 3E, D&D tried to fix that. By adding more rules they hoped to avoid lots of things Bad DM's might do and reduce player vs DM arguments. The idea was simple: more rules and the idea that everyone must follow the rules. So with the rules as a base, everyone could have fun. Though all it really did was shift the arguments from ''stuff'' to ''rules''....and D&D games still have ''stuff'' arguments.

3.0 wasn't that at all. It was mostly intended to be a codification and streamlining of the 2e rules (cutting the saves down to ones that made sense, putting all classes onto the same sort of baseline, etc.) It cut and shredded subsystems so initiative and surprise were now coherent - and thief skills now used the same approach as non weapon proficiencies. While cutting a whole lot of what the designers considered to be fiddly crap like certain spell drawbacks and the saves. (Of course that's not how it ended up working out).

My actual belief is that AD&D 1e, 2e, 3.X at up to about level 8 and player-facing 4e are all of about similar complexity as that's about what the average player can stand, and it's little different to GURPS or any of a number of other moderately heavy games.

Kiero
2015-02-12, 06:36 PM
1E and 2E and D&D were all very rules light. Each DM had to make up tons of stuff on the fly, and there was no good place to look for examples or advice. And most DM's did a fine enough job..........but there were always unhappy players.


No, they categorically were not "rules light" or anywhere close to it. They were chock-full of rules, but so many people couldn't be bothered to read and apply them, that they made **** up on the spot instead. Hell, AD&D2e even had a whole series of extra rules called the Players' Option series, just in case the plethora of rules in the main books weren't enough for you.

Obak
2015-02-12, 07:41 PM
Part of this problem is seeing the DM as some almighty entity, I never liked it when players adresses me as "almighty DM" becaus it gives the impression that the DM is the only important participant at the table and the players are optional. This is of course silly, a DM without players is called a writer and a mostly mediocre one in most cases.
For a game to become more than a hackney railroad tale of Krunt the cliché barbarian and his disgusting little kender friend batteling inferior races and in general reenacting the abridged version of The white mans burden, it takes player interaction. Sometimes rules come in the way for this ("No, you are a barbarian, barbarians can't play the piano because of the illiterate feat!") And locks PCs into rigid roles.
As with many things though, this boils down to personal taste and ability.
Some people appreciate limited choices and work better with clear boundries and defined roles, other create truly astonishing works of fiction when their imaginations are allowed to run wild.
Personally I cant say i prefer one or the other, both have merits. Rule heavy games often take the form of a tactical battle game while rule light systems allows me to focus on my characters personallity without worrying that my build is sub optimum.

What makes or breaks a system for me is weather it is fast and easy to learn, I hate slow systems with multiple dice rolls, tables and refering to different books and chapters. This kills the mood quicker then a clown themed negligé.
DnD actually passes this test, with a little training combat flows rather naturally as long as everyone is familiar with their characters abilities.
This does not mean however that I am against winging it when it comes down to flavouring out what PCs can do, in that case I am a firm believer that the DM never should say "no, that is impossible" but rather "yes, but..." or "roll a die". Relinquishing controll to the players are often rewarding and creates far better and memorable games than having them slog through the same boring "you sit in a tavern getting piss drunk when..." story again and again...

Beta Centauri
2015-02-12, 07:49 PM
You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word. You can say that about yourself, but not about others. Don't gatekeep.

But, okay, sure. Everyone at the table has to accept me as the final word. And my final word is "What do you think? Yeah? Cool! And..."

Jay R
2015-02-12, 08:40 PM
I don't know why, but the statement "You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word." just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it is because I am an anti-authoritarian at heart, or maybe I feel that you are insulting my taste in games as my favorite RPGs, as a player, GM, and designer, all say that the group as a whole rather than the DM has the final say on which rules you will be using.

You really don't want to talk about the topic you started this thread with, do you? Everything you wrote in the opening post was about a game in which the GM has the final say. I know that there are other kinds of games. But that's not what you asked about.

I'm not insulting a taste in games that are off-topic. I'm just staying on the topic of this thread. I won't talk about that kind of game in a thread about games in which the GM has the final say.


I will also say that if I only played with people who I trust completely and had to either sit quietly and accept everything or walk out when there was a disagreement with the DM (and vice versa when I am on the other side of the screen) I don't think I would have ever played in a campaign that lasted more than a few sessions.

That may be true. But I have played without major player/DM arguments for 40 years, in campaigns that have lasted for years. And I have never walked out of a game.

I have told GMs why I thought their ruling was wrong, and then accepted the rulings. I have had long discussions about rulings between sessions, and sometimes (not often) convinced GMs to back down. I have backed down when players convinced me that they were right. I have refused to back down to players when I knew something they didn't about the game. But I have never, from 1975 on, had to "constantly debate with people about what a character can do."

That is your description, from the first paragraph of the first post in this thread, and it is simply doesn't happen just because it's a rules-light system.

But does happen - in any system - when a single player will not back down when the ruling doesn't go his way.


In most discussions of the topic I find myself to be in the "moderate" position and disagreeing with extreme views on both sides. I accept that the GM has a lot of responsibility and authority, but I still consider them a fallible human and in the end just another player at the table whose enjoyment is worth no more and no less than anyone else's.

Then we shouldn't play together. In every game I play, the GM is not like another player, he is like the referee. In the rules to original D&D, there is no reference to a Dungeon Master, but many references to the referee.

In the playoffs this year, the Cowboys lost the ball at a crucial moment because the interpretation of a rule made it happen. Nobody on that team thought the ruling was correct, and a lot of people still don't. But the team could not play football, even for one more play, until they accepted that the ruling of the official was final.

The team filed a protest the next day. I suspect that the rule will be re-written for clarity by next season. But to play the rest of that game, they all had to accept that the referee's ruling was final. Not necessarily correct. Just final.

I repeat: You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word.


Anyway, when I talk about arguing with the GM I don't mean putting my foot down and yelling and screaming. I more mean presenting your case for when you want to do something that you believe is within the rules but aren't sure or are asking permission to violate the rules when you think it is appropriate. An "argument" in the classic sense, where you present your point of view and respond to criticisms hoping to convince someone else that your are correct, and, on the other side, being able to question the GM's opinion when you believe they are in error.

I don't care how you do it. If it leads you to "constantly debate with people about what a character can do" (your phrase, not mine) then it's in the way of playing.

I'm here to play, not to argue. I would never stay in a game like many of the games you've described over time. (And I repeat - I have never walked out of a game.

Talakeal
2015-02-12, 09:25 PM
Then we shouldn't play together. In every game I play, the GM is not like another player, he is like the referee. In the rules to original D&D, there is no reference to a Dungeon Master, but many references to the referee.

In the playoffs this year, the Cowboys lost the ball at a crucial moment because the interpretation of a rule made it happen. Nobody on that team thought the ruling was correct, and a lot of people still don't. But the team could not play football, even for one more play, until they accepted that the ruling of the official was final.


A sport's referee isn't there to have fun. He isn't your friend. He is likely a professional who is getting paid for the doing a job. He has no vested interest in the game and has to remain impartial. And I believe that in many sports a referees call can be overturned by his superiors in particularly egregious situations.

There is a world of difference between this and one of your buddies who wants to spend his free time at a gaming table.



I would never stay in a game like many of the games you've described over time. (And I repeat - I have never walked out of a game.

If you refuse to play under a DM who you don't trust and yet have never walked out of a game in 40 years you are EXTRAORDINARILY lucky. That's all there is to it. Regardless of statements about RPG players or GMs, there is a huge number of people who are simply not trustworthy in ever walk of life.

Heck, the current game I am in is run by someone who is, as best as I can tell, a pathological liar, both at and away from the table, and is among the least trustworthy people I have ever met; I didn't choose him to be the DM, I merely moved to a new area and was looking for a game and found a players wanted flier on the wall of the local game shop. This was pure chance, and now I either have to play under someone I don't trust or walk out. This has nothing to do with me, that's just how the cards fell.

I have played with good guys and bad guys, honest people and liars, friends and enemies, strangers and longtime colleagues, and more than a few crazy people. Some of them I liked, some of them I didn't. Some of them I trusted, some I didn't. Some I picked to be in the game, some picked me, and some were invited by other players without my knowledge or permission. That isn't saying anything about me or the hobby, that is just the nature of long running group activities and the varied nature of human personalities. That you haven't had to experience any of the bad along with the good is, to me, incredible.



That may be true. But I have played without major player/DM arguments for 40 years, in campaigns that have lasted for years. And I have never walked out of a game.

I have told GMs why I thought their ruling was wrong, and then accepted the rulings. I have had long discussions about rulings between sessions, and sometimes (not often) convinced GMs to back down. I have backed down when players convinced me that they were right. I have refused to back down to players when I knew something they didn't about the game. But I have never, from 1975 on, had to "constantly debate with people about what a character can do."

That is your description, from the first paragraph of the first post in this thread, and it is simply doesn't happen just because it's a rules-light system.

But does happen - in any system - when a single player will not back down when the ruling doesn't go his way.



I am currently playing in two games.

One is PF. In this game the DM likes to constantly change rules on the fly, and so you never know what your character can or can't do. So you literally have to ask permission before taking any action and try and convince him why you should be allowed to do things. To make matters worse this is the afore mention untrustworthy guy, so he actually will tell you that you are wrong about the rules and proclaim that it is how the game is written rather than his house rule. So, for example, if a pick up 5d6 to roll damage for my 5th level fireball he will tell me that fireball actually uses d4s and that I am doing it wrong.

The other game is Mage. This game has a much better DM, but a much less precise rule-set. The books is very vague and contradictory. You are almost never given exact rules for how character ability works, just vague suggestions filled with fluff text and purple prose that often contradict text found in other parts of the book. If I want to do something in Mage 9 out of 10 times I need to present what and how I am performing my task and present it to the Storyteller and then wait for him to come up with a response.

In both of these places I would rather just know what I can or can't do and how to do it and then get on with the game. It is annoying to constantly have to ask permission and wait for a response. I don't like to feel that I am being "cheated" or "cheating" someone else based on how the call goes. "Debate" or "Argument" might be too strong for what I am talking about.



I repeat: You are not playing the game until you accept that the GM is the final word. .

Am I reading to much into this statement? Because if you are simply saying that any time spent discussing the rules is time spent not actually having fun and playing the game then I 100% agree with you and that is, more or less, the point of my OP. If that is what you meant I don't take any offense for it and apologize for raising the issue.

But it sounds more like you are being dismissive of people who do not play the same way you do. I have played in:

Freeform games without a GM.
One on One games where if you don't compromise the game ends regardless of who is "right".
Games where we rotate GM's on a weekly basis.
Tournaments where an actual referee or organizer was present to oversee the GM.
Playtests where I, as the game's author, watched the game and was on hand to explain rules and answer questions, but didn't actually participate in running the game.
Games at one of the player's houses where he would simply kick everyone out if he didn't have the final say.
Games at stores where the store owner would impose crazy rules on the games even if everyone at the table was ok with it.
And most commonly, groups where we vote on house rules and interpretations of ambiguous printed rules.

In none of the above situations does the GM have the final word. But these are all very real games that I and other people have put a lot of time and effort into and gotten a lot of fun and enjoyment out of. To dismiss them as "not real games" is very hurtful and, imo, flat out wrong.

But again, that is just how I read your statement. If I am reading too much into it I apologize and retract what I have said, but by placing it by itself and in bold with an exclamation mark it seems like you wanted to draw attention to it and imo invited reading deeply into it.

Psyren
2015-02-12, 09:53 PM
Walking away shouldn't be a last resort, especially where IRL friends are involved. One should recognize whether or not the issue is a difference in style, or simply a lack of skill on the DM's part. If its a lack of DM skill, then you can help them improve, but if its a difference in style then that means for you to be happier with the way things are going, they're going to have to be less happy - and possibly their other players will be as well, if they've gotten together a group centered around their style.

How will you know which it is if you go immediately to walking away? This is contradictory :smallconfused:



A player who isn't enjoying themselves but is hanging around out of a sense of duty is actually doing harm to the game as a whole - they're debating and negotiating things which other people at the table presumably don't have a problem with, bogging down the game, and in general unenthusiastic players just don't add very much. The best thing you can do as a friend is to step away from an game being run in a style that you aren't actually on board with and give that seat to someone who would appreciate it for what it is.

And I have no problem stepping away if necessary, but I'd like my voice to be heard first. The GM may not even realize there's a problem or that I'm thinking about leaving if I clam up about it.

1337 b4k4
2015-02-12, 09:57 PM
Am I reading to much into this statement?

You absolutely are. You're reading "The DM's word is final" as "The DM is all powerful, all knowing, all wise and you're a fool for daring to question his authority and you should feel bad.". There's a difference between "the DM is the final arbitrator" and "the DM should be a raging tyrant". But JR is right. If you are going to play in a game that has a GM, then you have to accept that ultimately the DM is the arbitrator and therefore the final word. They may encourage and seek input, they may even vote with the players on outcomes, but the very nature of a game specifying one person as the arbitrator and judge is that they are ultimately the final say, and you can't play the game unless you're willing to accept that fact.


How will you know which it is if you go immediately to walking away? This is contradictory :smallconfused:

And I have no problem stepping away if necessary, but I'd like my voice to be heard first. The GM may not even realize there's a problem or that I'm thinking about leaving if I clam up about it.

Who has suggested immediately walking away without engaging in other forms of general social conflict resolution first? There's a huge gulf between "hashing out all your differences in the middle of the game" and "walking away the moment something doesn't go your way".

kyoryu
2015-02-12, 10:24 PM
But does happen - in any system - when a single player will not back down when the ruling doesn't go his way.


This. A thousand times, this. The most argumentative player I've had argued in Fate. He also argued in D&D 4 that there wasn't a horse that had a 12 movement speed (there was). He argued in every system, in every game, whenever things didn't go his way.

Talakeal
2015-02-12, 10:26 PM
You absolutely are. You're reading "The DM's word is final" as "The DM is all powerful, all knowing, all wise and you're a fool for daring to question his authority and you should feel bad.". There's a difference between "the DM is the final arbitrator" and "the DM should be a raging tyrant". But JR is right. If you are going to play in a game that has a GM, then you have to accept that ultimately the DM is the arbitrator and therefore the final word. They may encourage and seek input, they may even vote with the players on outcomes, but the very nature of a game specifying one person as the arbitrator and judge is that they are ultimately the final say, and you can't play the game unless you're willing to accept that fact.
.

I never said the DM had to be a raging tyrant to have absolute power. I have played in plenty of games where the DM was a perfectly reasonable guy but who still had the final say. But still; what about the list in my previous post:


I have played in:

Freeform games without a GM.
One on One games where if you don't compromise the game ends regardless of who is "right".
Games where we rotate GM's on a weekly basis.
Tournaments where an actual referee or organizer was present to oversee the GM.
Playtests where I, as the game's author, watched the game and was on hand to explain rules and answer questions, but didn't actually participate in running the game.
Games at one of the player's houses where he would simply kick everyone out if he didn't have the final say.
Games at stores where the store owner would impose crazy rules on the games even if everyone at the table was ok with it.
And most commonly, groups where we vote on house rules and interpretations of ambiguous printed rules.

In none of the above situations does the GM have the final word. But these are all very real games that I and other people have put a lot of time and effort into and gotten a lot of fun and enjoyment out of. To dismiss them as "not real games" is very hurtful and, imo, flat out wrong.
.


In none of these cases is there a DM who has ultimate final say. Are you saying these aren't "real games"? Or are you saying that anyone who doesn't accept the DM's authority isn't a "real gamer"? Or just that people who argue with the DM and don't accept their authority will inevitably be booted out of the group? Because I can tell you from personal experience that none of those are true.

VincentTakeda
2015-02-12, 10:49 PM
This kills the mood quicker then a clown themed negligé.

Google image dont fail me now... Ohhh baby!

Honk my foam red nose... whuhuhuhuhuhuhu.

A flower that squirts you when you sniff it takes on a whole different context...

The least explored circus fetish.

Nothing beats kinky love to calliope music.

I'm a bad bad gm... Thats right. You know you like it. Why do you think the ringmaster always has a riding crop.

Subdual damage! subdual damage!

*cough cough* ahem... that escalated quicky.

Zarrgon
2015-02-12, 11:25 PM
You absolutely are. You're reading "The DM's word is final" as "The DM is all powerful, all knowing, all wise and you're a fool for daring to question his authority and you should feel bad.". There's a difference between "the DM is the final arbitrator" and "the DM should be a raging tyrant".

I see this extreme all the time:

''The DM's word is final'' =''DM is all powerful'' = ''players are weak''

And this extreme:

''One DM is a jerk, abuses his power and bullies his players''= ''All DM's do it''

First off, not matter the game....you might get stuck playing with That Guy.

But most RPG's are made with the idea of a GM makes the call. It's the fast and simple and easy way to keep the game moving. Everyone just agrees to go with the DM's call. After all the alternative is horrible: where player X takes up two hours of game time arguing with the DM about how heavy a rock is....

1337 b4k4
2015-02-12, 11:53 PM
In none of these cases is there a DM who has ultimate final say. Are you saying these aren't "real games"? Or are you saying that anyone who doesn't accept the DM's authority isn't a "real gamer"? Or just that people who argue with the DM and don't accept their authority will inevitably be booted out of the group? Because I can tell you from personal experience that none of those are true.

As JR said, you keep avoiding your own topic here. You explicitly asked about games with a GM. In a game with a GM, the GM by definition has the final say. With that in mind, let's look at your games:

Freeform games without a GM.
No GM, so no GM to have final say. Not applicable.

One on One games where if you don't compromise the game ends regardless of who is "right".
Assuming neither person was designated as a GM, no GM, not applicable. Assuming one person was designated as GM, you yourself just admitted, if you aren't accepting the GMs word as final, you aren't playing.

Games where we rotate GM's on a weekly basis.
Doesn't matter that the GM rotates. Whoever the GM is has the final say while they're a GM. It's the nature of having a GM

Tournaments where an actual referee or organizer was present to oversee the GM.
The Referee or Organizer is the GM who has delegated some degree of authority to a sub-GM. The GM's ruling is still final, it's just once removed from the players.

Playtests where I, as the game's author, watched the game and was on hand to explain rules and answer questions, but didn't actually participate in running the game.
Again, assuming a GM is designated, their word is final. That they can consult you on questions is irrelevant. Unless you would actively prevent you from ruling against your intentions, they have every right and ability to decide to ignore you.

Games at one of the player's houses where he would simply kick everyone out if he didn't have the final say.
So an extreme example of "If you don't accept the GM's rule as final, you aren't playing". In this case a very literal sense of "you aren't playing"

Games at stores where the store owner would impose crazy rules on the games even if everyone at the table was ok with it.
If the game has a GM, the GM elects to run the game at said store and therefore consents to using the rule. The GMs word is still final.Their word in this case is accepting the outside influence.

And most commonly, groups where we vote on house rules and interpretations of ambiguous printed rules.
Again, if there is a GM designated, ultimately it's still their final call. How do you resolve ties in voting? Ultimately you either are picking an arbitrator or are playing a game without a GM. Even if you have a GM, but still vote and always go with majority carries as a rule, the unfailing reality of games that require a GM is that without your GM, the game does not continue. They still have final say and it is by sheer social construct and custom that the voting resolution ends with things that go against the GMs specific wishes in that instance.

Further to answer your questions: No, No and Possibly

Talakeal
2015-02-13, 12:38 AM
As JR said, you keep avoiding your own topic here. You explicitly asked about games with a GM. In a game with a GM, the GM by definition has the final say.

At this point I don't care about "my own topic", I am purely responding to JR's statement that if you don't accept the GM as the final authority you aren't really playing. This is absolutely not true in my experience, and to say otherwise is both a bit insulting and a sort of "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

Now, if you want to redefine what the term "Game Master" means then go ahead; but don't say it is "my topic" when I was describing a fundamentally different sort of Game Master. I was using it to mean the guy who sits behind the screen and runs the adventure, playing the NPCs, assesses the difficulty of rolls, narrates the result of player action, etc. It is perfectly possible to have a guy who does all this without being the "final authority", I have done it many times.



Freeform games without a GM.
No GM, so no GM to have final say. Not applicable.

One on One games where if you don't compromise the game ends regardless of who is "right".
Assuming neither person was designated as a GM, no GM, not applicable. Assuming one person was designated as GM, you yourself just admitted, if you aren't accepting the GMs word as final, you aren't playing.

Games where we rotate GM's on a weekly basis.
Doesn't matter that the GM rotates. Whoever the GM is has the final say while they're a GM. It's the nature of having a GM

Tournaments where an actual referee or organizer was present to oversee the GM.
The Referee or Organizer is the GM who has delegated some degree of authority to a sub-GM. The GM's ruling is still final, it's just once removed from the players.

Playtests where I, as the game's author, watched the game and was on hand to explain rules and answer questions, but didn't actually participate in running the game.
Again, assuming a GM is designated, their word is final. That they can consult you on questions is irrelevant. Unless you would actively prevent you from ruling against your intentions, they have every right and ability to decide to ignore you.

Games at one of the player's houses where he would simply kick everyone out if he didn't have the final say.
So an extreme example of "If you don't accept the GM's rule as final, you aren't playing". In this case a very literal sense of "you aren't playing"

Games at stores where the store owner would impose crazy rules on the games even if everyone at the table was ok with it.
If the game has a GM, the GM elects to run the game at said store and therefore consents to using the rule. The GMs word is still final.Their word in this case is accepting the outside influence.

And most commonly, groups where we vote on house rules and interpretations of ambiguous printed rules.
Again, if there is a GM designated, ultimately it's still their final call. How do you resolve ties in voting? Ultimately you either are picking an arbitrator or are playing a game without a GM. Even if you have a GM, but still vote and always go with majority carries as a rule, the unfailing reality of games that require a GM is that without your GM, the game does not continue. They still have final say and it is by sheer social construct and custom that the voting resolution ends with things that go against the GMs specific wishes in that instance.


I could go through and rebut your responses one by one, but there is no point as we aren't actually talking about gaming anymore. At this point you are getting into reasoning that simply can't be logically argued against. If you define the GM as "anyone who has authority" rather than the person who is running the adventure and consider abiding by someone else's decision to ultimately be the same thing as forcing them to abide by your decision then we are now debating philosophy that has no practical application at the gaming table.

NichG
2015-02-13, 01:05 AM
How will you know which it is if you go immediately to walking away? This is contradictory :smallconfused:

Well ostensibly you've stayed long enough to know that you aren't happy with the state of the game, or you wouldn't have a problem to resolve in the first place. And if you know what the problem is, you can observe the other players' reactions, compare it to other times you've encountered that problem in the past, etc.

1337 b4k4
2015-02-13, 07:55 AM
Now, if you want to redefine what the term "Game Master" means then go ahead; but don't say it is "my topic" when I was describing a fundamentally different sort of Game Master. I was using it to mean the guy who sits behind the screen and runs the adventure, playing the NPCs, assesses the difficulty of rolls, narrates the result of player action, etc. It is perfectly possible to have a guy who does all this without being the "final authority", I have done it many times.

And in your capacity as Game Master, if the group voted on a particular interpretation of the rules, an you refused to enforce it or otherwise used an alternative interpretation anyway, what would happen to the game? It would come to a crashing halt, right? Because ultimately any game that establishes one of the players as the arbitrator is by definition giving that person final say. This is not a value judgement, it's not good or bad or indifferent, it simply is a fact of that sort of game design. Acknowledging facts is not insulting, nor it acknowledging a fact about a specific type of game saying that all other gaming is somehow not "real" gaming.


If you define the GM as "anyone who has authority" rather than the person who is running the adventure and consider abiding by someone else's decision to ultimately be the same thing as forcing them to abide by your decision then we are now debating philosophy that has no practical application at the gaming table.

If you could point out where I said the GM is "anyone who has authority", that would be outstanding. Otherwise I will thank you to not put words into my mouth. My continued point is and always has been that any game which designates one person as the referee and arbitrator by definition has made that person's word the final in any disagreement in the game. The GM in games which require them is a unique position in that it is the only position without which the game can not continue. If half the players for a game don't show up, the game can still be played. If the GM doesn't show up, the game doesn't go on. This unique property of the GM is what ultimately gives their word the final say, even if the books don't explicitly say it. That the GM is the final word for a game does not preclude alternative forms of dispute resolution from executive fiat being used, but all of the alternative forms still require the DM to abide by that resolution rather than continuing as they originally wanted to. This is not true for players for whom failure to agree with the rulings leads either to silent sulking, continued argument or ejection from the game. I fail to see what's so controversial about this concept or why it's so insulting to you. This is not a discussion of how the DM should behave, or how social dynamics within the group should be resolved, it is simply an acknowledgement of the facts surrounding a game design which appoints one player as the arbitrator and runner of all things no directly connected to the PCs.

neonchameleon
2015-02-13, 08:07 AM
Heck, the current game I am in is run by someone who is, as best as I can tell, a pathological liar, both at and away from the table, and is among the least trustworthy people I have ever met; I didn't choose him to be the DM, I merely moved to a new area and was looking for a game and found a players wanted flier on the wall of the local game shop. This was pure chance, and now I either have to play under someone I don't trust or walk out. This has nothing to do with me, that's just how the cards fell.

...

I am currently playing in two games.

One is PF. In this game the DM likes to constantly change rules on the fly, and so you never know what your character can or can't do. So you literally have to ask permission before taking any action and try and convince him why you should be allowed to do things. To make matters worse this is the afore mention untrustworthy guy, so he actually will tell you that you are wrong about the rules and proclaim that it is how the game is written rather than his house rule. So, for example, if a pick up 5d6 to roll damage for my 5th level fireball he will tell me that fireball actually uses d4s and that I am doing it wrong.

If that's an actual answer, no gaming is better than bad gaming. Seriously, no rules are going to protect you from them because they are just going to ignore the rules. Walk away.

And if the DM is changing the rules in ways which aren't open to interpretation this has nothing to do with the precision of the rules themselves.


The other game is Mage. This game has a much better DM, but a much less precise rule-set. The books is very vague and contradictory.

Here the problem is Mage - I know of no RPG anywhere that's as confusing a mess of defined abilities and undefined abilities that you need to ask the Storyteller about than Mage. If you were to play the same game in the vaguer Fate Core then you wouldn't be having most of the problems you are. The problem isn't so much "I'm a probability manipulator. If I spin this tumbler will it land on the first number to open the safe?" (answer: Roll to Create an Advantage at Foo DC) but "I'm a mage with an Arete of three and two dots in Entropy and one in forces, but none in matter, three dots in dexterity and one in security systems. Can I manipulate the tumbler of the safe?" (answer: *flick flick Entropy, flick Forces, flick flick Matter* Storyteller judgement call anyway).

With a setting as wide open as Mage you're going to need GM judgement calls for coincidental magic all the time. And the rules you actually have don't help anyone know what the answer should be.

zinycor
2015-02-13, 09:29 AM
Am starting to see that the purpose of this thead has been lost, or at least the OP doesn't really care about the main topic that he asked for, so i will just walk away now.

see ya!

NichG
2015-02-13, 02:31 PM
Here the problem is Mage - I know of no RPG anywhere that's as confusing a mess of defined abilities and undefined abilities that you need to ask the Storyteller about than Mage. If you were to play the same game in the vaguer Fate Core then you wouldn't be having most of the problems you are. The problem isn't so much "I'm a probability manipulator. If I spin this tumbler will it land on the first number to open the safe?" (answer: Roll to Create an Advantage at Foo DC) but "I'm a mage with an Arete of three and two dots in Entropy and one in forces, but none in matter, three dots in dexterity and one in security systems. Can I manipulate the tumbler of the safe?" (answer: *flick flick Entropy, flick Forces, flick flick Matter* Storyteller judgement call anyway).

With a setting as wide open as Mage you're going to need GM judgement calls for coincidental magic all the time. And the rules you actually have don't help anyone know what the answer should be.

My understanding is that this problem is actually less of an issue by the book, because you should have made a rote in advance for any particular type of concrete thing you want to do. So e.g. before game you'd say: 'I'm a probability manipulator with a couple dots in Entropy. I want to make a rote that lets me luck into passwords, combinations, etc. Is that reasonable?'. Then you and the DM negotiate the mechanics, and it becomes a particular thing you know how to do from then on.

Segev
2015-02-13, 03:26 PM
I don't know if that's something you are by-the-book required to do, or if it's just supposed to be "easier," or what. I do know that the Mage games I've played have had a lot of spontaneous effect-creation. We never bothered with rotes. This may have denied me some of the experience, honestly. I am not sure. I never, myself, quite grasped what purpose they served. (Mind, I'm talking about oWoD, not nWoD.)

NichG
2015-02-13, 03:59 PM
I don't know if that's something you are by-the-book required to do, or if it's just supposed to be "easier," or what. I do know that the Mage games I've played have had a lot of spontaneous effect-creation. We never bothered with rotes. This may have denied me some of the experience, honestly. I am not sure. I never, myself, quite grasped what purpose they served. (Mind, I'm talking about oWoD, not nWoD.)

I've generally had the same experience, but that seems like maybe its an artifact of people just not bothering with them (similar to how many tables don't bother with multiclass XP penalties in D&D).

At least based on the above comment, one of the purposes that they would serve would be to get certain mechanical things solidified ahead of time so there's no debate during game about what actually can or can't be done.

Talakeal
2015-02-13, 05:52 PM
Am starting to see that the purpose of this thead has been lost, or at least the OP doesn't really care about the main topic that he asked for, so i will just walk away now.

see ya!

I agree that the intent has been lost, but I am not sure how you get the idea that I no longer care for it.

My intent with the original post was to ask why people preferred systems with rules that are vague and open to interpretation and how they avoided spending all of their time discussing mechanics rather than actually using them in such games.

People seem to think I want to argue about the nature of DM power and whether the DM should have the authority to make the call. I don't, that topic has been done to death and I have already come to peace with it in my own game. I was, however, a burt hurt by the implication that my game is therefore not a "real game" and took a moment to defend that position.

kyoryu
2015-02-14, 01:02 AM
My intent with the original post was to ask why people preferred systems with rules that are vague and open to interpretation and how they avoided spending all of their time discussing mechanics rather than actually using them in such games.

It's not the vagueness. It's the fact that with fewer rules, there's less to look up, and it's easier to make a ruling and get on with it.

We don't spend our time arguing mechanics because we start with what's happening "in the world", make a quick judgement on what the roll should be, and get on with it. This works when you have non-argumentative players that aren't trying to "pull one over" on the GM, and a GM that isn't combative with the players. It also helps when you keep everyone entertained. I get as little, or less, arguing in Fate than I do in heavier rules systems.

Talakeal
2015-02-14, 05:41 PM
It's not the vagueness. It's the fact that with fewer rules, there's less to look up, and it's easier to make a ruling and get on with it.

We don't spend our time arguing mechanics because we start with what's happening "in the world", make a quick judgement on what the roll should be, and get on with it. This works when you have non-argumentative players that aren't trying to "pull one over" on the GM, and a GM that isn't combative with the players. It also helps when you keep everyone entertained. I get as little, or less, arguing in Fate than I do in heavier rules systems.

Yeah, as I said "rules light" is probably a the wrong term (hence why I changed my OP). Mage, for example, is not rules light, the core book is 300+ pages and has dozens of supplements. But it is extremely vague and often contradictory. Checkers, on the other hand, is pretty rules light, but arguments in that game are rare (although I do recall getting into one when someone had the opportunity to make a single jump over a double jump and their opponent insisted they had to take the double jump instead).

I don't think you need to be combative, or argumentative, or trying to pull one over on the DM for things like this to occur. You just need to have different expectations. If you think something is reasonable and the other person isn't you are going to spend time making the request and probably supporting it with evidence, and they will likely do the same. And if the ruling goes against someone's expectations (regardless of who they were) that person is likely going to have some form of (usually very mild) negative emotional reaction. Its no fun for anyone to have a complicated plan (let alone a character concept or an entire adventure) ruined because they have a different understanding of the rules than the people they are playing with.

kyoryu
2015-02-14, 05:59 PM
Yeah, as I said "rules light" is probably a the wrong term (hence why I changed my OP). Mage, for example, is not rules light, the core book is 300+ pages and has dozens of supplements. But it is extremely vague and often contradictory. Checkers, on the other hand, is pretty rules light, but arguments in that game are rare (although I do recall getting into one when someone had the opportunity to make a single jump over a double jump and their opponent insisted they had to take the double jump instead).

I understand that. Still, Fate is a game that runs pretty much on GM interpretation and "rulings". There's very little that's codified - for instance, "how far can you throw something" just isn't a thing.

I think probably the *worst* thing is to have vague rules inserted in a generally firmly-defined ruleset.


I don't think you need to be combative, or argumentative, or trying to pull one over on the DM for things like this to occur. You just need to have different expectations. If you think something is reasonable and the other person isn't you are going to spend time making the request and probably supporting it with evidence, and they will likely do the same.

Or, you just say "okay, that works" and move on. Which is the experience that I have *personally* seen. I'm not talking theory here. This is how I see things go at my table.

This doesn't mean it's how things will go at your table. But if that's the case, it's pretty clear that the determining factor ain't the rules. Again, the argumentative player I had in mind was argumentative in *every* game.


And if the ruling goes against someone's expectations (regardless of who they were) that person is likely going to have some form of (usually very mild) negative emotional reaction. Its no fun for anyone to have a complicated plan (let alone a character concept or an entire adventure) ruined because they have a different understanding of the rules than the people they are playing with.

*Shrug* it's usually not an issue in games I've seen. A little bit of being open to other peoples' interpretations on both sides goes a long way. If you're the type that believes your interpretation is by definition right (and I've met those people), then it's going to be a problem.

Hell, one time I had a guy try to do some runic magic one the run. I told him no, because in my mind, runecasting either involves carving runes, throwing runes down, etc. Just thinking of stuff "on the run" didn't work. The rest of the table agreed, we quickly clarified what it did, and moved on. I told the player if he wanted to change his character or figure something else out, we'd do so.

Nobody got upset. Nobody was mad. The entire conversation was about 30 seconds. I've had longer arguments in D&D about how fast a horse moves. I point this out because this was a huge difference in how the character would be able to play from there on out, and it *still* didn't devolve into a long argument. When both sides are willing to listen, really consider the other view, and compromise, it generally doesn't.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying you haven't had the experiences you have. I don't doubt that. *However*, my experiences are different, so that's pretty much clear proof (combined with everyone else) that vague rules systems do not inevitably lead to endless arguments.

neonchameleon
2015-02-14, 06:08 PM
I understand that. Still, Fate is a game that runs pretty much on GM interpretation and "rulings". There's very little that's codified - for instance, "how far can you throw something" just isn't a thing.

I think probably the *worst* thing is to have vague rules inserted in a generally firmly-defined ruleset.

Agreed. Tight and tight works. Vague and vague works. Vague rules and firm definition is horrible. GM changing the rules on the fly for the PCs is the worst.

Raimun
2015-02-14, 07:05 PM
Nah, vague rules are just that. Vague. There's no knowing how they will work out when the situation is on.

Sure, I could see that sometimes fictional characters could have capabilities that even they don't know about. However, this is usually well established.
Either it's just temporary and they are just starting out. Think of superhero films that tell the origin story of a superhero. They have crazy powers which they are just discovering. After this, they should have a reasonable measure of their capabilities and they can properly begin their adventures.
If this uncertainty about your own capabilities is permanent, it's most likely that in game terms they would be NPCs. These are the kind of guys who might jumpstart the plot of the week but they certainly don't adventure because they are usually emotional wrecks since they have no control or understanding of their powers.

However, the above does not apply to basic skill usage. There it should be well established what one can and can not do.

Anyway, I like to know what are the limits of my characters. That knowledge helps me to play them more authentically.

1) With one characters I would know that a few modern time criminals present overwhelming opposition.
2) In same game, a different character might try to take the criminals on if he could fight underhanded and get a drop on them. It's preferable that he's armed and they aren't. It would also help if they were sleeping.
3) In different game, a character would know that he and couple of buddies can take a dozen goblins in open terrain because they are at the moment in a nice little formation and he can cast Color Spray at them.
4) In same game the same character would know in a later time period that he can obliterate a dozen goblins with a single spell... unless he wants to save the spell slot and take a few turns single handedly hacking them down with a sword. It's not like the goblins would be able to land a single blow that he can't parry. He knows that opponents that are his equal try that all time and also fail all the time.

kyoryu
2015-02-14, 07:14 PM
So, in Fate, as an example...

If you attack someone, you can deal stress or consequences if you get past your defense. This is all very strictly mechanically defined.

However, you may not be able to attack, or defend in a particular way based on the given situation. This is left deliberately open to interpretation.

Similarly, if you try to unlock a chest or something, how that interacts with a skill (it's called an Overcome) is very well defined. However, the difficulty of doing so is, again deliberately, left undefined.

And it works pretty well, at least in my experience. I may be lucky in that I have people that are happy to come to a quick consensus and get on with the game. Part of that may be that my players also trust me that a single bad roll isn't going to screw them over - it could get them in hotter water, but they'll have a chance to dig themselves out of any trouble they find themselves in (a chance, no guarantees!).