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BayardSPSR
2016-07-05, 02:56 PM
I just read the rules to Burning Wheel and watched a sample session on the internets. I don't understand why anyone would want to play it more than once, unless they were coming from a different rules-heavy system (d20/GURPS/Shadowrun?) and decided that they wanted differently complicated and slow-moving resolution mechanics.

Then I read a bunch of old game design posts from Vincent Baker and ended up asking myself the same question.

That said, I don't understand what's attractive about having more than minimal rules in an RPG, or having intrusive rules at all. To clarify, when I say intrusive rules, I mean rules than lead players to focus on what they're doing mechanically, rather than what their character is "doing" ("I lunge forwards and stab the goblin," versus "I Full Attack"). Even stuff that runs on the Apocalypse World engine seems to do this, with (for instance) Dungeon World's reliance on failed rolls for experience, which sets up an incentive to frame one's actions as those most likely to produce long-term benefit. That is, the people at the table are encouraged (or required) to interact with the rules, rather than with each other.

To clarify more, this isn't a specific criticism of Burning Wheel, which works in an interesting way. I'm asking whether, and what, people get out of front-loaded rules*, and questioning whether "working in an interesting way" is a worthy goal from a player's perspective (from a game designer's perspective, encouraging people to focus on the rules you made that distinguish your work from other people is perfectly rational).

Possibilities so far:


Competition - add mechanical challenge to make the whole thing work like a puzzle (for instance, D&D is an N+1 player RPG where most conflicts are resolved using a 2-player [team vs DM] fireteam-level fantasy tactical wargame, which can be fun in itself). This is completely fine if you really like that. To me, this feels like a less than optimal use of my time (and my friends' time), though: if I want competition against a human opponent, there are other, more challenging ways of doing that. Even if I specifically wanted to play the D&D fantasy tactical game for the sake of competition, I'd want to drop the whole RPG thing and play it like Warhammer (or similar).
Character differentiation. I want to feel like I'm playing the character I'm playing, when that character has to do something that there are rules for. That said, if there aren't rules for the thing, there's no need to describe my mechanical uniqueness when it comes to that thing, is there? That is, this seems to reverse the cause and effect: I expect that resolution systems are usually designed first, and then character variation is built in for that resolution system, rather than the opposite.
Unpredictability via encouraging people to roll dice more often. This is what dice are for, but added complexity to die-rolling doesn't add unpredictability, except through non-comprehension of the rules, which is more likely to produce a reaction of "that's the rule? Okay, I do something else" than "wow! I am inspired and excited by misunderstanding."
Basic plausibility. A system in which some things are more difficult than others, and some people are better at some things than others, makes more intuitive sense and feels less arbitrary than flipping a coin (or trying to roll a 7 or higher on 2d6) no matter what the task is, and is marginally more complex than such a system. On the other hand, a more elaborate resolution mechanic has no guarantee of verisimilitude, and may actually detract from it, even if the rules themselves are superb. That is, a perfect fencing rule system won't contribute to verisimilitude for a player who doesn't know how to fence but wants to play a character who does.
Variety: sometimes you want to try a different resolution system. This works for me, but doesn't exactly lend itself to explaining why someone would want to return to any given intrusive-rules system.
To enforce a particular play style, tone, theme, etc. This makes sense from a game designer's perspective, but doesn't follow to me as a player. If I've bought into a particular thematic/stylistic premise, I don't need rules to force me to do it; if I haven't, I won't enjoy being forced to conform to it.
Sunk-cost fallacy: I don't want this to be my conclusion.


Someone tell me what I'm missing.

*Broadly, anything that encourages you to think about rolling dice before imagining the in-character action.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-07-05, 03:04 PM
Rules are used to build a specific experience. The more complicated the rules are the more specific an experience you can build with them.

That isn't inherently a good thing, but it can be.

SethoMarkus
2016-07-05, 04:04 PM
Rules may be appealing to people who are more used to video gaming and less used to roleplaying (freeform or otherwise). People raised with video games are typically used to having an explicit list of actions they can take and may be overwhelmed with the prospect of being able to do anything; looking at the rules to determine what they may attempt rather than as guidelines for whether the succeed. I'm not saying that this is exclusive to video gamer mentality or that all video gamers would have this mindset, but it can certainly be a factor in game design decisions.

It may also be appealing to those who enjoy structure and want to play "by the rules". Having a more extensive ruleset allows for a wider variety and range of play for those that don't like to work out of the system. Rather than homebrewing a more detailed combat mechanic or improvising rules for an unorthodox action, they prefer the rules to be hard set and built in already.

Comet
2016-07-05, 04:06 PM
Competition - add mechanical challenge to make the whole thing work like a puzzle (for instance, D&D is an N+1 player RPG where most conflicts are resolved using a 2-player [team vs DM] fireteam-level fantasy tactical wargame, which can be fun in itself). This is completely fine if you really like that. To me, this feels like a less than optimal use of my time (and my friends' time), though: if I want competition against a human opponent, there are other, more challenging ways of doing that. Even if I specifically wanted to play the D&D fantasy tactical game for the sake of competition, I'd want to drop the whole RPG thing and play it like Warhammer (or similar).
The thing that roleplaying games have that tactical games don't is the interaction of rules and unpredictable storytelling. Warhammer and chess are about logical processes and competition, roleplaying games are about being presented with weird situations and coming up with even weirder solutions with the tools you are given. The more tools you have, the crazier your solutions can potentially be.


Character differentiation. I want to feel like I'm playing the character I'm playing, when that character has to do something that there are rules for. That said, if there aren't rules for the thing, there's no need to describe my mechanical uniqueness when it comes to that thing, is there? That is, this seems to reverse the cause and effect: I expect that resolution systems are usually designed first, and then character variation is built in for that resolution system, rather than the opposite.
If you have a bit of text on your character sheet that says that your character can do X unique or special thing, that thing cannot be taken away from you. Without rules you're forced to negotiate and bargain for everything you have, with rules you can just point to your sheet and say that, yes, your character does know this thing and that's that.


Unpredictability via encouraging people to roll dice more often. This is what dice are for, but added complexity to die-rolling doesn't add unpredictability, except through non-comprehension of the rules, which is more likely to produce a reaction of "that's the rule? Okay, I do something else" than "wow! I am inspired and excited by misunderstanding."
It's sort of true that you could as well flip a coin for everything, but I feel like adding layers of rules that interact with each other in ways that you might not be able to see at first glance makes things a bit more unpredictable, at least until you really get to know the ins and outs of that particular system.


Basic plausibility. A system in which some things are more difficult than others, and some people are better at some things than others, makes more intuitive sense and feels less arbitrary than flipping a coin (or trying to roll a 7 or higher on 2d6) no matter what the task is, and is marginally more complex than such a system. On the other hand, a more elaborate resolution mechanic has no guarantee of verisimilitude, and may actually detract from it, even if the rules themselves are superb. That is, a perfect fencing rule system won't contribute to verisimilitude for a player who doesn't know how to fence but wants to play a character who does.
I'm not sure I follow your fencing example. Surely a fencing system, if done well, gives you more as opposed to less? I don't need to know fencing myself, I can just follow the manouvers and statistics given in the book and I should arrive at the conclusion that these fights at least feel real enough?


Variety: sometimes you want to try a different resolution system. This works for me, but doesn't exactly lend itself to explaining why someone would want to return to any given intrusive-rules system.
Sure. I love trying out new systems and seeing what they do well and what they do badly.


To enforce a particular play style, tone, theme, etc. This makes sense from a game designer's perspective, but doesn't follow to me as a player. If I've bought into a particular thematic/stylistic premise, I don't need rules to force me to do it; if I haven't, I won't enjoy being forced to conform to it.
That works if your players are all knowledgeable about and proficient in presenting stories within that particular genre. If they're not, you might have problems. Systems like Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel solve this by making the themes and narrative frameworks of that genre part of the rules in a way that you can't go wrong with. I don't need to know anything about Arthurian legend and I will still play a great game of chivalry, melodrama and dynasties with Pendragon as long as I follow the rules..


Sunk-cost fallacy: I don't want this to be my conclusion.
100% agreed there.

kyoryu
2016-07-05, 04:38 PM
roleplaying games are about being presented with weird situations and coming up with even weirder solutions with the tools you are given. The more tools you have, the crazier your solutions can potentially be.

I disagree. That's only true if you assume that you can only do things that have explicit rules.

In some cases, having rules can lead to stymied creativity, as "creativity" becomes "how can I find a widget on my character sheet and use it?" instead of "how can I respond to this situation in the world?"

To be clear, I'm not saying that games with lots of rules can't be creative. I *am* saying that games without lots of rules are not necessarily less creative.

There's also a difference between "creative solution to in-world problem" and "creative application of the rules."

Comet
2016-07-05, 04:58 PM
I disagree. That's only true if you assume that you can only do things that have explicit rules.

In some cases, having rules can lead to stymied creativity, as "creativity" becomes "how can I find a widget on my character sheet and use it?" instead of "how can I respond to this situation in the world?"

To be clear, I'm not saying that games with lots of rules can't be creative. I *am* saying that games without lots of rules are not necessarily less creative.

There's also a difference between "creative solution to in-world problem" and "creative application of the rules."

All true. I find creativity within a constrained framework to be a lot of fun and rules are one way to give you prompts to get those creative juices flowing.

PersonMan
2016-07-05, 05:44 PM
More complex rules open up a bunch of possibilities that don't exist in simpler systems. Being able to go through piles of rules for ideas, getting inspired by some or wondering how to make others work with the ones you're thinking of using, isn't just a means to an end. In a bare-bones system, one may quickly create a character from a concept, but in a more mechanically complex system, the game begins when you make the character - the fun can start before they ever arrive 'on screen', as you build them.

I'd also argue that "front-loaded rules" is a relative term. If I think "I want to rush in and do X", my thoughts are often going to be on the action before I consider how to accomplish said action via the rules - for me, at least, all of the rules-heavy systems I've played in aren't "front-loaded" because of that.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-07-05, 06:03 PM
I will note, though, that the more complicated parts of Burning Wheel are more or less "optional". You're encouraged not to use them until you're more comfortable with the base part of the game, which is significantly easier.

sktarq
2016-07-05, 06:16 PM
Another thing is that for some people the looking up of rules, mastering a new set (esp as a group/competitively), and the like are major parts of their social enjoyment of the game.

(I'm less sure why but I know that at least one of current players is like this and find them at gamer socials, club events for one shots, and BYOBG (bring your own board game) type nights)

nedz
2016-07-05, 06:27 PM
Because we like games with very complex rules - yes we're sad like that.
It's an intellectual challenge in, and of, itself.

Âmesang
2016-07-05, 07:36 PM
I find that I'm a big fan of rules-heavy systems… but then I've only ever played D&D 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition… with a smidge of Pathfinder; I don't have much to go by. :smalltongue:

Still, I think part of it comes from an intellectual challenge: how do I accomplish a specific act within the confines of the rules? (Such as putting in ranks in Use Magic Device so that my arcane caster can use divine scrolls; someone's got to rez the cleric when he kicks it, after all!) Besides, life sucks. It sucks for me. It sucks for my characters. Yeah, the rules can get in the way of doing cool things… yeah? Well, that's life. How you get over that and work with or around it is how you grow in experience and build character.

…suddenly I feel like Calvin's dad.

Also I've always liked knowing how things work, which is what got me into website design, computer programming, and lately amateur radio… as well as kept my interest in science strong (dark matter, dark energy, Higgs boson, &c., &c.). I'm not a big fan of the explanation that things happen "because shut up they do." Yeah, I know the wizard did it; but I want to know how the wizard did it. :smallamused:

Conversely I'm not a big fan of house-ruling things 'cause I'm lazy. Why make up rules when I've got a bunch of books written by people who did it all for me? :smallbiggrin:

Vitruviansquid
2016-07-05, 07:40 PM
Why isn't all poetry written in free verse? Doesn't following a ruleset, like villanelle or limerick, some of which can be quite strict, just prevent the poet from using the words he wants at the places he wants? Could it be that playing video games has made poets conditioned to be dependent on rules?

2D8HP
2016-07-05, 10:04 PM
The rules?
Hmmm....
I started with oD&D in the 1970's and we really didn't completely comprehended how the rules were supposed to work at first, so we mostly just winged it to start.
Oh who I'm I kidding, I still play like that. At my age I have such a bad memory for rules minutiae that when I'm forced to DM it mostly comes down to:
1) Make up arbitrary chance of success based on gut.
2) Have player roll dice.
3) Tell player what's changed.
4) Listen to learn what PC intends
5) Repeat
I'm interested in the "rules" for setting and "channeling" character creation.
After that? As a player I am interested in exploring a fantastic world, and I really don't want to think about the damn rules at all. I could be very happy with a "character sheet" that lists my PC's name, the equipment my PC is carrying, hit points left, and nothing else!
I really only want to learn what my PC is perceiving. As to "mastering the crunch" so that my PC is "an optimal build"?
Boring!
Just tell me if the DRAGONS WINGS ARE STILL FLAPPING!
-Please and thank you.
:wink:

Milo v3
2016-07-06, 01:19 AM
I'd prefer rules-heavy that creates a certain atmosphere and drives the players to do certain actions and invoke certain themes over, a rules-light-"Look, here's a system that does nothing new and can be covered by one of the many freeform systems that you probably already owned" system any day of the week.

Mechalich
2016-07-06, 01:50 AM
If you have a bit of text on your character sheet that says that your character can do X unique or special thing, that thing cannot be taken away from you. Without rules you're forced to negotiate and bargain for everything you have, with rules you can just point to your sheet and say that, yes, your character does know this thing and that's that.

This is a particularly important part of rules-heavy systems as is the converse - that if your character doesn't have an ability on their sheet and that ability is explicitly delineated in the rules then your character does not know how to or have the ability to do that thing.

These two traits are very important for helping certain kinds of players and restraining certain other kinds of players. Having explicitly listed abilities and determinant rules systems makes it much easier for players to create characters that are against time. The most traditional example being introverted, shy players producing social monkey characters. By contrast, the same set of rules can prevent social butterfly extroverts from running roughshod over a game and essentially granting all their characters massive piles of free social points because they happen to be good at talking fast.

Intensive rules systems are also used to add depth to particular mini-games that are of varying importance to a specific. In D&D combat is a minigame of vast - sometimes overwhelming - importance and thus a large ruleset is important to add tactical depth to the system. Additionally, having such tactical depth allows you to parse finer levels of differentiation between things like monsters and NPCs and as a result sell more product which is really very important from the perspective of keeping the lights on at a gaming company - because its hard to keep going when selling sourcebooks that are essentially nothing but fluff. That's how TSR and White Wolf ultimately went bankrupt. By contrast, once you produce a robust rules-lite system like FATE, then you're done.

oxybe
2016-07-06, 03:27 AM
Personally? It creates a more concrete idea of how the character operates within the game world.

Simply put, most of my characters come about when I see a rule that I would want to play around with. Something that lets me interact and manipulate the game world. It could be something as straitforward as Power Attack (reduce your accuracy for major damage) or sillier like how a PF bard can substitute his Perform(Comedy) check for an intimidate one.

These rules give me a far more concrete idea on how the character goes about resolving their problems: What type of person uses humor to browbeat others into submission? What type of person is more prone to relying on destructive, if inaccurate attacks?

These are things that have proper interaction rules too: you know how the intimidate and damage calculation rules work but how the character makes unique use of them, as opposed to most everyone else, says a lot of the character. Doubly so if you use multiple abilities to either reinforce an archetype or play against against.

To me, personally, this makes the character feel far more "real", or at least nuanced. I have a far more concrete idea on how the character will interact with the world and this lets me shape their personality with greater ease. I pick one or two core elements and build not just the mechanical framework of the character around these, but also flesh out the personality of the type of person that would make use of these abilities and how they would use them, based off the gameworld description the GM has given me.

More rules, to me, is not more restrictions, but rather more tools, foundations and frameworks I can build with and around.

Satinavian
2016-07-06, 05:02 AM
Roleplaying is a lot about decisions.

There are two things needed to make decisions interesting and engaging :

a) Stakes. You need to be somehow invested in the consequences. That is one of many reasons deadly violence is so common a theme.

b) It needs to be an informed decision. The decision maker needs to be able to make educated guesses at the outcomes. Otherwise it is not more engaging than playing roulette.

For those infomed decision rules are tremendously helpful. "Common sense" doesn't work with unfamiliar situations and those are very common in RPGs. Rules make sure, everyone at the table can have a similar idea about how things could turn out.



There are some other resons for rules :
- fairness (rules work the same way for everyone)
- versimilitude (a lot of work has been done to simulate stuff)
- consistancy (using rules enforce that the same thing works the same way every time)

But i still think, the "infomed decision"-part is the most important one. That is why complete freeform-RPG works best for settings where a lot of interesting characters come together and talk a lot to each other but no one does actually do anything important. No decision with potential dire consequences is made.

Cluedrew
2016-07-06, 07:45 AM
Another reason I can think of is sometimes you need a neutral judge to decide what a situation plays out as. If you are in the final showdown with your archrival who decides who wins? Well in a freeform game, you do which also robs the situation of some of the tension.

Now that explains they need for rules, but for more rules: it makes the judge smarter and able to account for more details. A coin toss is one thing, taking into account the relative abilities of the people involved, their methods of approach and the general situation takes more rules to encode on paper.

NichG
2016-07-06, 08:29 AM
When I'm designing things, the way I think of a rule is as a promise or expectation I'm giving to the players. So the idea is to write rules which minimize the amount of extra OOC back-and-forth needed between the GM and player in order to converge on action decision on the part of the player, and rules which guide the player into thinking of and understanding relationships in the game world a certain way.

For example, if I'm running completely freeform, and I'm running a world where there aren't pre-agreed upon conventions as to what should/shouldn't be reasonable, then I could have the following problem.

Player (1st time): I lunge at the goblin with my sword!
GM: You lunge at the goblin, leaving yourself open with your brazen attack. The goblin takes a scratch to the arm, but with your defenses down manages to get past your guard and stabs you in the lung!
Player: Wait, wait, I didn't mean I wanted to lower my defenses.
GM: Well, when you lunge, that's what happens...

Player (2nd time): Okay GM, if I circle to the right and make a slashing attack, am I leaving myself open?
GM: You'd be open to the left.
Player: Okay, so I don't want to do that because there's a worg to my left. So instead, how about if I enter a guard stance and wait for an attack, and then quickly counter?
GM: Yeah, that should work.
Player: Wait - does that mean the enemies get to attack me an extra time? I don't want that...

Basically, when a player realizes that some things they thought were just descriptive could matter, they'll start asking if those things matter, which slows things down. So if I provide rules that tell the players how to evaluate for themselves the consequences of very frequent actions, that permits the players to plan under the assumption that things will behave as I told them - which means that we can reserve the above sort of negotiation for special circumstances. Also, by saying 'if you do X, then Y will certainly happen' you can cut through player hesitation and self-doubt about things. Some players will think 'there's no way that X plan will work, because Z could happen' so they just (silently) choose not to try doing X. But if as the GM, you want them to consider X a valid option, you can use rules as a promise that 'things like Z will not happen if you try X'.

So in that sense, they're tools to shape expectation and to automate parts of the game by allowing players to know what the outcome will be ahead of time in those cases.

Mr.Moron
2016-07-06, 09:06 AM
Rules remove control. They remove control from the player and the GM alike. The more the rules tell you how to resolve things the less space there is for someone to decide how something resolves.

We can imagine that in the rule-heaviest possible system a player might declare an intent to "Jump over the gap" and then a million things resolve from the tread on their boots, to the moisture levels in the soil and so on and those variables combined with some degree of randomness determine if they make it over or not.

In the lightest-possible rules system a player might declare an intent to "Jump over the gap" and then they or the GM simply decide if they make or not. At the most extreme we can imagine that it might descend into playground-style escalation of abilities and constant changes to the scenario in the setting ala Axe Cop: http://axecop.com/comic/episode-1/

The real world is that rules-heaviest place. We're bounded by strict unbreakable physical laws. We exist. Our limitations are real. To whatever extent we have free will, the result of our will is determined by a complex system of interacting pieces beyond our control.The more rules heavy something is the more engagement with it mirrors engagement with reality. I don't mean this in terms of "realism" you could have a rules heavy system that was totally bonkers and you turn into banana every time a roll you made was divisible 7. A rules heavy system that lets you fly and shoot laser beams out of your eyes in some bounded way is no different from one that limits you to walking and jumping like an actual human.

In both a rules light and rules heavy scenario the folks at the table can declare intentions and attempt things, with players and the GM acting as the will of the PCs and NPCs respectively. However the more rules heavy something is the more narrowly confined they are to just being that will, with the cold and impartial laws of the universe playing a bigger and bigger role in dictating the outcome of those intentions & attempts.

Segev
2016-07-06, 10:21 AM
I disagree. That's only true if you assume that you can only do things that have explicit rules.

In some cases, having rules can lead to stymied creativity, as "creativity" becomes "how can I find a widget on my character sheet and use it?" instead of "how can I respond to this situation in the world?"That can happen, but it's not always a bad thing, either. Sometimes, "find a widget" is giving you more options than "think of something." If I tell you to write me something. Anything, but it has to be good enough that I accept it, and all I've given you is a blank page and a pencil, it's going to be harder for most people to write something than if I tell you, "Write me a story about a princess escaping from a dragon."

If I go on to tell you to write me a story about a princess escaping from a fire-breathing dragon who can smell everything in his cave, and that she has a hairbrush, a chest full of stolen dresses, and a magical knife she managed to hide in her cleavage before she was kidnapped, the story becomes more constrained, but you have more ideas and more problems to work around.

The same is true of rules in a game: they provide a structure to hang your actions on. Rather than asking yourself, "would Princess MacGuffin have the power to put a dragon to sleep with her tears?" you can look at her character page and realize that no, she doesn't. Or maybe that yes, she does, and you wouldn't have thought to even consider it without the rules saying she had that power.


There's also a difference between "creative solution to in-world problem" and "creative application of the rules."Maybe, but sometimes it's the rules that tell you whether the "creative solution" is actually a solution at all. It's "creative" to decide that the Princess has a sword of dragon slaying that makes her immune to dragon fire and lets her kill dragons with a single swing. But it's not interesting. Rules will tell you whether it's true or not.

Rules let you adjudicate independently just how often X succeeds at Y, enabling imperfect but capable people without having to always carefully monitor whether THIS time should be a success or failure without making your character too incompetent or too capable.


Why isn't all poetry written in free verse? Doesn't following a ruleset, like villanelle or limerick, some of which can be quite strict, just prevent the poet from using the words he wants at the places he wants? Could it be that playing video games has made poets conditioned to be dependent on rules?This is an excellent analogy. Frankly, I loathe free verse poetry. I think it's mostly just badly written prose. ...but that's neither here nor there. The analogy here is good because it illustrates how structure can improve things, provide ways for something to WORK.


Another reason I can think of is sometimes you need a neutral judge to decide what a situation plays out as. If you are in the final showdown with your archrival who decides who wins? Well in a freeform game, you do which also robs the situation of some of the tension.Excellent point.


Now that explains they need for rules, but for more rules: it makes the judge smarter and able to account for more details. A coin toss is one thing, taking into account the relative abilities of the people involved, their methods of approach and the general situation takes more rules to encode on paper.Exactly. Rules-heavy allows the players (and GM) to more precisely model something without having to make judgment calls and second-guess themselves. The more often a given need-for-judgment comes up, the more it benefits from definite rules for how to handle it.

The problem with many rules-heavy systems is that they start to try to cover EVERY corner case. A good approach is to cover things that happen frequently, with good explanation of why things work as they do and are modeled as they are, so that they can be extrapolated to corner cases.

Another problem - harder to solve - is that they can get time-consuming to operate. It's a valid question, with a different answer for every table, whether a "free form" solution's negotiation and discussion over whether it SHOULD work one way or another is faster or slower than a rules-heavy solution's procedure for determining the outcome.

kyoryu
2016-07-06, 10:57 AM
That can happen, but it's not always a bad thing, either.

I never said it was. I'm merely pointing out that both rules heavy and light games have their advantages, and to simply state that "rules heavy games make creativity easier" is not a blanket truth, but rather a situational one.


Sometimes, "find a widget" is giving you more options than "think of something." If I tell you to write me something. Anything, but it has to be good enough that I accept it, and all I've given you is a blank page and a pencil, it's going to be harder for most people to write something than if I tell you, "Write me a story about a princess escaping from a dragon."

... but RPGs don't give you a totally blank sheet. They give you a situation to resolve.

And I find the "a solution good enough to accept" argument non-compelling, to be frank. Or, more accurately, it sounds like a bad GM.


If I go on to tell you to write me a story about a princess escaping from a fire-breathing dragon who can smell everything in his cave, and that she has a hairbrush, a chest full of stolen dresses, and a magical knife she managed to hide in her cleavage before she was kidnapped, the story becomes more constrained, but you have more ideas and more problems to work around.

This has nothing to do with rules or more rules. You could do the same thing with both rules heavy and light systems.


The same is true of rules in a game: they provide a structure to hang your actions on. Rather than asking yourself, "would Princess MacGuffin have the power to put a dragon to sleep with her tears?" you can look at her character page and realize that no, she doesn't. Or maybe that yes, she does, and you wouldn't have thought to even consider it without the rules saying she had that power.

Which is reasonable, and it's a matter of how well defined things are.

OTOH, sometimes the rules-based solutions are based on abusing the wonky edges of the math, and that stuff has no interest to me.


Maybe, but sometimes it's the rules that tell you whether the "creative solution" is actually a solution at all. It's "creative" to decide that the Princess has a sword of dragon slaying that makes her immune to dragon fire and lets her kill dragons with a single swing. But it's not interesting. Rules will tell you whether it's true or not.

Or the GM can say that's silly, or more likely the table as a whole will say that's silly.


Rules let you adjudicate independently just how often X succeeds at Y, enabling imperfect but capable people without having to always carefully monitor whether THIS time should be a success or failure without making your character too incompetent or too capable.

Which is really the most universally useful part of rules.

Tiktakkat
2016-07-06, 11:09 AM
1. Simulation - More rules are generally required for games that focus more on being simulations that those that focus on story or gameplay. If you want your game to be "realistic", you tend to have to pay for that with a lot more rules. One of the biggest examples from wargaming is Advanced Squad Leader, which requires a heavy binder for all of the rules, and whose turn structure is so complex that is has a rule declaring that if you forget about a rule during the turn you just ignore it and keep playing. In RPGs, the best examples come from the FGU games like Chivalry & Sorcery, which have rules that are so complex you hear more about people reading them for inspiration than you do about people using them, and where creation of a starting character is more complex than optimizing an epic level D20 system character.

2. Structure - More rules means less house-ruling. If you don't want to rely on the guy running the game to decide things, or have to deal with different people running the game having different rulings, you generally have to pay for that with a lot more rules. The RPG example of this is the difference between Original D&D and AD&D, where the extra rules were intended to cut down on house ruling, and;

3. Competition - More rules means a standard of play sufficient for comparing results between groups. If you want to "know" who the better player is, you have to have absolute measures, controlled by strict rules. This was part of AD&D, but accelerated in D20, and advanced further in "4th edition". DMs were reduced from adventure creators and directors to "referees" who simply kept track of things hidden from the players by fog of war. This included things like standard ability score arrays and average hit points, and then average damage results. This was partly included in early competition, with an intent to mirror things like duplicate bridge tournaments, where the only active variables were the actual decisions of the participants.

Each is a subjective choice and preference. None are objectively better or worse than any of the others except for what an individual wants from his gaming experience.

kyoryu
2016-07-06, 11:30 AM
Also, please note that this argument has been going on for about *two hundred years*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel_(wargame)

Segev
2016-07-06, 12:24 PM
I never said it was. I'm merely pointing out that both rules heavy and light games have their advantages, and to simply state that "rules heavy games make creativity easier" is not a blanket truth, but rather a situational one.



... but RPGs don't give you a totally blank sheet. They give you a situation to resolve.And rules give you a list of what definitely can be done. They give you a tool kit. They also give you an idea, sometimes, of what can't be done; they provide more of that situation to resolve without the GM having to say "and no, you can't spontaneously add specialized gear to the princess's possessions." Or other such things. They help you know what is within the realm of possibility, and also help you answer questions of "can this creative solution even work?" They also can help you come up with creative solutions. You look at your box of tools, and see "oh, she has extremely long hair that can support her own weight? That could be useful!" whereas you may not have even thought of the Rapunzel solution without the reminder.


And I find the "a solution good enough to accept" argument non-compelling, to be frank. Or, more accurately, it sounds like a bad GM.Nonsense. You apply it yourself later on when you say the GM will call the convenient perfect-for-the-situation sword "silly." That solution is not "good enough to accept." But why? Because it's "silly," of course. But...what makes it "silly?" Sure, I am pretty sure that most people in this thread agree with that assessment (I certainly do), but by what objective standards?

Everything in a free-form game is basically trying to find "a solution good enough to accept." Because there is no objective standard. In a rules-lite game, the objective standards are fuzzy, so the question is whether the solution is close enough to within the rules to accept it. More rules-heavy games have much brighter lines of what is "a solution good enough to accept" or not. If the d20 system Princess does in fact have that +5 dragonbane sword of fire immunity on her list of equipment, well, she has it. It stopped being "silly," since clearly she planned for such an occasion and it wasn't pulled out of a dark southerly location once the situation was known. (Or, if it was, it was done according to other rules; perhaps Her Highness has a rule that empowers her to be a brilliant planner by letting her claim to have prepared for just such an occasion so many times per day.)




OTOH, sometimes the rules-based solutions are based on abusing the wonky edges of the math, and that stuff has no interest to me.Sure, but that's just as likely in a rules lite game; in fact, they invite it more because there's more room to wiggle "but it SAAAAYYYYYS..."


Or the GM can say that's silly, or more likely the table as a whole will say that's silly.As noted above, this is where the GM is saying "no, that solution isn't good enough for me to accept."


Which is really the most universally useful part of rules.Absolutely.

kieza
2016-07-06, 12:29 PM
I lean towards what you might call "rules-medium" myself. Those are systems where characters have a set of strictly defined things they can do without question--spells, maneuvers, skills, etc.--and there's a general framework for them to try other things outside of that.

My experience of rules-light systems is that, in the groups I briefly tried them with, there's always at least one guy who tries to outdo the rest of the party by using some tortured interpretation of his abilities to steal their niche. As in "I have fire magic, so that means I can freeze this river by removing heat from it." And "I have fire magic, so that means I can make the carbon in this steel lock combust." And "I have fire magic, so I can seduce this NPC by giving her the hots for me."

I tried rules-light systems with two separate groups, and I ran into three players like that. Eventually I got tired of being criticized for "stifling their creativity" and went back to systems that had more defined guidelines about what a character could do. Lo and behold, those players tried some "creative" interpretations of the character creation rules, but afterwards, they largely kept to the niches that the rules enforced.

Fri
2016-07-06, 12:39 PM
To prevent these kind of things. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqgMPTSz91E)

thedanster7000
2016-07-06, 02:47 PM
I'm a huge fan of GURPS, which can be immensely rules-heavy, but I don't feel it restricts my characters or rp nearly as much as D&D 5e (which I also like), which is (at least in comparison) very light. The depth of the rules allows me customise my character to a much greater extent than D&D.

A reason I prefer the rules-heaviness in-play is because it allows it to be more realistic and detailed, which makes the game come alive for me:
"Geoff swings his sword at Bob's arm, cutting through an artery, disabling his arm and causing severe bleeding" with actual mechanical effects is a lot more immersive to me than "Geoff stabs Bob in the arm. 3 HP."
Even if some master rp'er comes up with a huge speech on how he attacks someone, if all he does is chip off a hitbox then that description rings hollow to me.

It ultimately depends on what type of game you want to play and whether or not you want the rules to affect the story beyond 'x dies'.

Kurt Kurageous
2016-07-06, 06:46 PM
OK, I've read the thread. A lot of great points were made. These are my six reactions/summations to the thread.

IMNSHO:

1. We do not expect a player to be qualified to referee basketball before they are allowed to play basketball. Why should we expect the same of our tabletop games? The total number and complexity of the necessary to know rules of a game is directly proportional to the time it takes to learn to play the game and inversely proportional to the playability of that game. More rules you must know is more rules you must learn is less time spent playing. Playability is a big big aesthetic (standard or criteria of goodness) for me.

2. We will agree to disagree because the "perfect" system does not and cannot exist, as each judges according to their own standards. I personally prefer games that take "minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master." Chess is one such game. Go is another. If you like the complexity of a game to severely limit who you can play with, then I suggest you are an elitist. It's ok, you can own it and say it out loud. Tiktakkat cited my preferred example of this; Advanced Squad Leader, a game system with rules too cumbersome to play "right." It might make a good PC game some day, but as a tabletop it is ridiculous.

3. Speaking of video games, an ideal RPG system would be a lot like a commercially successful video game. It would take a short time to learn how to play, but a longer time to play well and much longer to play optimally. This is because RPGs and video games simulate the experiences of life. Life involves learning, which often involves making mistakes. If we seek only to play optimally, we have lost sight of the goal. Back in the dark ages, we looked to computers to run all the rules for us so we could enjoy the experience. I believe most players enjoy learning about how things interact in the simulated world, and a few are inspired to try to make better programs.

4. Rules impartially enforced in athletic competitions are essential to resolve conflict between opponents within the context of the sport. Without rules to limit behavior, a sporting competition will cease to be about the sport played and become about something else. Imagine two teams meet and agree to play baseball. Before the game, the teams begin beating each other with bats, and the surviving nine on one side proclaim themselves the winner of the baseball game by forfeit. Is this still baseball? If players are using their personal skills and not limited to their character skills, are you really in a RPG? This is why I encourage first time players to create a character that mirrors their idealized public persona.

5. Rules in poetry (like all art) are generally aesthetics. Sonnets, haikus, and limericks all have clear minimal standards with regards to their words, and what the artist does within those confines to satisfy other aesthetics like creativity, cleverness, efficiency, readability, and so forth. Free verse lacks those limits, and thus isn't really poetry at all. It's really prose that looks superficially like poetry written by those who don't want to be paid by the word but still want to say something meaningful.

6. My aesthetics in RPGs are the fun the players have and enjoyment of the story. As a new GM, if I can learn the essentials of a system well enough to tell a story that will raise the heart rate of the players while resolving combats in a brief, brutal, and meaningful way, and otherwise "adjudicate like a boss" (hat tip to the Angry DM), then it's all good. As a new player if I can learn the essentials of a system well enough to interact within the limits of my character, become emotionally connected to a story, contribute meaningfully combat that is brief, brutal, and meaningful, and understand the ruling of the GM, then it's good.

Thank you for reading me.

Tiktakkat
2016-07-06, 07:53 PM
Also, please note that this argument has been going on for about *two hundred years*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel_(wargame)

Not to mention that being proof that trolls, griefers, system haters, and other undesirables have plagued gaming for at least that long as well.

BayardSPSR
2016-07-06, 09:21 PM
Paticularly but not exclusively Comet, Âmesang, oxybe, Satinavian, kyoryu, Kurt Kurageous:

Great points. I want to respond to everything in detail, but most of the responses would be quotes followed by "That's a good point I hadn't thought of. I will think about it further."

I also want to note that in my head this branched into "what do I like about granular/front-heavy rules systems."

I do think the comparison to free-verse poetry is misleading, though. Rhyme, meter, and repetition (all of which tend to be used in free verse, if not in a rule-bound fashion) are strangely pleasing to the ear, and the most complicated poetic form has shorter rules than the average RPG (my copy of Fate Core, which I suspect to be a medium-weight system, is 310 pages).

And in response to some of the emerging disputes, the details of the rules themselves are far more important in many aspects than just their "weight;" hitpoints, for instance, aren't going to produce simulation no matter how elaborate the hitpoint rules are (unless you're simulating the ablative heat shield on a reentry vehicle, maybe?).

I continue thinking, and will continue responding as new ideas emerge.


Not to mention that being proof that trolls, griefers, system haters, and other undesirables have plagued gaming for at least that long as well.

Millenium Challenge 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002), while recent, is the ultimate example of griefing/trolling on both sides of a serious, $250 million training exercise.

Âmesang
2016-07-06, 10:04 PM
As in "I have fire magic, so that means I can freeze this river by removing heat from it."
To be fair, what does happen when you cast Otiluke's freezing sphere on a body of water after using Energy Substitution/mastery of elements to turn it into acid, electricity, fire, or sonic damage? :smalltongue: Then again I believe "removing heat" is the explanation for how cone of cold works, so…

Tiktakkat
2016-07-06, 10:30 PM
Millenium Challenge 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002), while recent, is the ultimate example of griefing/trolling on both sides of a serious, $250 million training exercise.

So like . . . NOBODY in that group ever heard the story about the Japanese staff wargame of the Battle of Midway where they ordered the umpires to ignore the results of their carriers getting sunk then went on to "win" the game only to get beaten even worse in the actual battle?


As for the other issues, I just noted the "why" before.
For my preference, I've played games along the whole spectrum, and liked and hated games along the whole spectrum. It really depends a lot on the particular game.
Some "require" more rules; some "require" less rules.
Some go too far; some don't go far enough.
Some take way too long to even play; some are over too soon even if you get to replay right away.
But most importantly, it doesn't cost me anything if someone likes different games than I do. Certainly I'd enjoy it if they liked everything I liked and we got to play all the time, but if they don't they are entitled to their fun as much as I'm entitled to mine. What is more important is that they are gamers too, and keep the hobby going strong enough that there is a better chance I will run into someone who likes the games I like.

kieza
2016-07-06, 10:52 PM
To be fair, what does happen when you cast Otiluke's freezing sphere on a body of water after using Energy Substitution/mastery of elements to turn it into acid, electricity, fire, or sonic damage? :smalltongue: Then again I believe "removing heat" is the explanation for how cone of cold works, so…

If he wanted heat magic, he could have taken heat magic, and it would have cost just slightly more points because it's more broadly applicable (heat OR cool things, make heat without fire, etc.). But he took fire magic instead, which should have allowed him to create, control, and/or diminish fires--as in, actual open flames. There are lots of interesting things that could be done with that: fireballs, walls of fire, flaming swords, solid flames made into tools, creatures made out of fire, burn up the oxygen in the room, use a focused flame as a plasma cutter...I'd even have let him use flames to negate electrical charges and lightning, based on how fire can conduct electricity. Instead, he tried twisting fire magic into all sorts of things with only the most tenuous connection to fire, and aside from breaking the suspension of disbelief whenever he "discovered" a new power he had, it encroached on the territory of the ice mage and the social manipulator in the party.

Zombimode
2016-07-07, 12:58 AM
Another point to consider is that, for some people at least, using and interacting with rules is fun.

Even if we ignore all the possible positive effects of rules on the roleplaying aspect: in a free-form or rules-lite game, I enjoy to roleplay my character. In a rules-heavy game (for that I like the rules) I enjoy roleplaying my character no less. But in addition I can enact in another activity that I enjoy: playing a game.

Knaight
2016-07-07, 01:04 AM
Another point to consider is that, for some people at least, using and interacting with rules is fun.

Even if we ignore all the possible positive effects of rules on the roleplaying aspect: in a free-form or rules-lite game, I enjoy to roleplay my character. In a rules-heavy game (for that I like the rules) I enjoy roleplaying my character no less. But in addition I can enact in another activity that I enjoy: playing a game.

This is the main thing I was coming to post - I favor rules light games in the specific context of RPGs most of the time, but a huge part of the point of having the mechanics is the fun of interacting directly with the mechanics.

The other point is that all rules exist on a spectrum, and the advantages of a rules heavy system relative to a rules light system are more or less the same as the advantages of a rules light system relative to freeform. Similarly the disadvantages are more or less the same. I'd argue that the advantages accumulate more and more slowly (the more rules get added, the less important stuff is added with each rule), and the disadvantages get added more and more quickly, particularly the disadvantage of plain old mechanical load, and that it creates different balance points for different games and different people.

Milo v3
2016-07-07, 01:33 AM
If he wanted heat magic, he could have taken heat magic, and it would have cost just slightly more points because it's more broadly applicable (heat OR cool things, make heat without fire, etc.). But he took fire magic instead, which should have allowed him to create, control, and/or diminish fires--as in, actual open flames. There are lots of interesting things that could be done with that: fireballs, walls of fire, flaming swords, solid flames made into tools, creatures made out of fire, burn up the oxygen in the room, use a focused flame as a plasma cutter...I'd even have let him use flames to negate electrical charges and lightning, based on how fire can conduct electricity. Instead, he tried twisting fire magic into all sorts of things with only the most tenuous connection to fire, and aside from breaking the suspension of disbelief whenever he "discovered" a new power he had, it encroached on the territory of the ice mage and the social manipulator in the party.

There is an easy fix for this.... If isn't not related to fire according to the meaning when he took the power, he cannot do it. Ta da.

Segev
2016-07-07, 09:50 AM
I would argue that most "gateway" RPGs actually do try to have the "easy to learn, difficult to master" sort of deal going on. This is particularly true of D&D 3e, 5e, and (ugh) 4e. It is possible to play those games with characters created in just a few minutes, with basic understanding of the combat rules. It is rougher if the whole group is brand new, but a new player can come in and play a simple-to-use character pretty quickly. Assuming his group helps him do so by pointing him to the basic options, rather than trying to "help" by helping him optimize with umpteen gizmos and rules subsets to master.


In my experience, rules-lite games are often WORSE at this, because they presume a level of experience and understanding of what an RPG is on a conceptual level, and that the players are innately aware that the "game" is not, in fact, the thing, but is just an instrument to model the thing. While there is argument over the validity of that statement, it is certainly possible to play RPGs with that mindset. The difficulty arises from the fact that RPGs are games, and people who enter into them start from a mindset of them as games. So to move past the game to the thing it models takes more mastery of the genre, I think. And that's where a more rules-heavy, but with simple entry points, game helps the new player.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-07, 10:07 AM
I have never been and will probably never be one to see "interacting with the rules" as the point or the fun part of an RPG. I loath the way things (rules, talents, feats, whatever) "stack" or "cross-over" in certain RPG systems to make juggernaut combinations, and to be totally honest it leaves me feeling a bit disappointed with other players when they start trying to game the system and view their characters as an optimized set of mechanics rather than a character.

The rules/mechanics of an RPG exist to model the world, the characters, and the interactions thereof.

The rules are the servant, not the master.

The setting, the characters, the interactions, the emergent story... those things are the actual territory; the rules are only a map for navigating that territory.

kieza
2016-07-07, 10:33 AM
There is an easy fix for this.... If isn't not related to fire according to the meaning when he took the power, he cannot do it. Ta da.

Yes, I agree, but that's where the problems started: I said "no, that's not something fire magic can do." He said "Why not? It should be" and argued about it for five minutes, because there weren't sufficiently clear rules for fire magic. (It was FATE, or something based on it, and "fire magic" was an...aspect? I think? It's been a while. But he said he wanted to play a fire mage, so he took "fire magic" as an aspect.) And then when I (and other people at the table) wouldn't budge, he grumbled that I was "stifling his creativity."

I don't object to using a hammer creatively. I do object to using a hammer like it was a socket wrench, or an electric drill, or a jackhammer. So yeah, I prefer systems that have more thoroughly defined rules, because then I have something to back me up when I say "no, that doesn't work." When the rules leave a lot of things up to the DM's judgement, there's a certain subset of players who interpret that as "you can do anything if you argue until the DM gives in."

goto124
2016-07-07, 10:56 AM
it leaves me feeling a bit disappointed with other players when they start trying to game the system and view their characters as an optimized set of mechanics rather than a character.

Relevant to apply Stormwind Fallacy here? People who want to make characters, will make characters. They don't suddenly stop (your idea of) roleplay because they're presented with a complex system. Worse come to worst, they switch to a less complex system so that they can put in more energy into roleplay.

People who find their fun in fiddling around with the mechanics, will do that, These people will not make or play characters just because they're forced into a rules-lite system. And they typically aren't forced into systems they don't enjoy. You're not forced to play with these people either, if you don't like them.

gooddragon1
2016-07-07, 11:12 AM
Rules may be appealing to people who are more used to video gaming and less used to roleplaying (freeform or otherwise). People raised with video games are typically used to having an explicit list of actions they can take and may be overwhelmed with the prospect of being able to do anything; looking at the rules to determine what they may attempt rather than as guidelines for whether the succeed. I'm not saying that this is exclusive to video gamer mentality or that all video gamers would have this mindset, but it can certainly be a factor in game design decisions.

It may also be appealing to those who enjoy structure and want to play "by the rules". Having a more extensive ruleset allows for a wider variety and range of play for those that don't like to work out of the system. Rather than homebrewing a more detailed combat mechanic or improvising rules for an unorthodox action, they prefer the rules to be hard set and built in already.

On the other hand, having clear rules allows you to have expectations of a what a DM should ordinarily allow and be doing over the course of a game and thus you can expect an explanation for deviations from the normal rules to be well thought out rather than simply playing a game of Calvinball.

Segev
2016-07-07, 11:14 AM
It's also worth noting that mechanical fiddling can lead to a "character." There is nothing magical about coming up with the character concept and then figuring out how to make it work with whatever mechanics you have (which could include a lot of fiddling), versus seeing some neat mechanical options and building a character around them. Inspiration stemming from mechanics is still inspiration.

kyoryu
2016-07-07, 11:33 AM
In my experience, rules-lite games are often WORSE at this, because they presume a level of experience and understanding of what an RPG is on a conceptual level, and that the players are innately aware that the "game" is not, in fact, the thing, but is just an instrument to model the thing.

The best rules-lite games push that work to the GM, allowing the players to respond to the description of what's happening around them with a response based on the situation.

A lot of it also depends on what basic game loop you're dealing with. Specifically,

1)
GM: "This is the situation."
Player: "I do thing!"
GM: "This is the new situation."

or

2)
GM: "I move my pieces in accordance with the rules like so!"
Player: "I move my pieces in accordance with the rules like so!"
<repeat>

They're both perfectly fine ways to play, and have strengths and weaknesses.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-07, 11:53 AM
Relevant to apply Stormwind Fallacy here? People who want to make characters, will make characters. They don't suddenly stop (your idea of) roleplay because they're presented with a complex system. Worse come to worst, they switch to a less complex system so that they can put in more energy into roleplay.

People who find their fun in fiddling around with the mechanics, will do that, These people will not make or play characters just because they're forced into a rules-lite system. And they typically aren't forced into systems they don't enjoy. You're not forced to play with these people either, if you don't like them.

Not really "Stormwind Fallacy", because I'm not claiming what the fallacy claims -- that is, I'm not claiming an either-or zero-sum situation between optimizing or role-playing. In fact, people who intentionally build mechanically horrible characters because they believe in such a false dichotomy, because they once read "flaws make the character" and took it as sacred gospel, can be just as disruptive. Within the framework of what I'm trying to map, model, whatever term you want to use, I still go for a mechanically solid build in the system being used.

My point is what I said -- that the rules are the means, not the ends.



It's also worth noting that mechanical fiddling can lead to a "character." There is nothing magical about coming up with the character concept and then figuring out how to make it work with whatever mechanics you have (which could include a lot of fiddling), versus seeing some neat mechanical options and building a character around them. Inspiration stemming from mechanics is still inspiration.

Very true, and I'm not claiming otherwise.

thedanster7000
2016-07-07, 04:39 PM
I find that rules disrupting rp occur in simple games rather than more complex ones. More complex or in-depth rules can allow for more roleplay than freeform because you know the exact limits of your character's unique abilities, and the world interacts with them accordingly and consistently.

oxybe
2016-07-08, 04:06 AM
I have never been and will probably never be one to see "interacting with the rules" as the point or the fun part of an RPG. I loath the way things (rules, talents, feats, whatever) "stack" or "cross-over" in certain RPG systems to make juggernaut combinations, and to be totally honest it leaves me feeling a bit disappointed with other players when they start trying to game the system and view their characters as an optimized set of mechanics rather than a character.

The rules/mechanics of an RPG exist to model the world, the characters, and the interactions thereof.

The rules are the servant, not the master.

The setting, the characters, the interactions, the emergent story... those things are the actual territory; the rules are only a map for navigating that territory.

I will have to disagree.

You state


The rules/mechanics of an RPG exist to model the world, the characters, and the interactions thereof.
Yet follow up with

The setting, the characters, the interactions, the emergent story... those things are the actual territory; the rules are only a map for navigating that territory.

If your character's choices are made independent of how they know the world interacts with them, that the environment the character exists in has no effect on their choices... are you truly roleplaying?

To use slight hyperbole, say you're playing in a GURPS game set in the real world California. You wouldn't say "My character is an anime lover and will walk to Japan!" then proceed to attempt to mindlessly traverse the pacific in a pair of cheap crocs.

You and your character are both aware of the rules of the game: specifically drowning, swimming and exhaustion.

No, your character will have to sit down and make plans on how to safely get to Japan, likely by taking a plane and all the hubbub around that, like passports and vaccinations.

This is because the rules inform you and your character on how the world works: things fall towards the ground and take X damage, your movement speed is Y in a given timeframe and this is how you resolve [Action Z]. The character's wants should inform you on how they wish to interact with those rules.

Our weaboo example character would likely need to save up some funds for travel, lodging, food, etc... So they may do overtime at work for more pay or decide to put off the trip until their next review where they hope to get a raise.

This is the key to Tao of the Oxybe: full understanding that mechanics and characterization are the Ying and Yang of PCs, both separate yet at the same time influencing each other to create a balanced and interesting whole.

There is no master or servant in regard to the relationship between rules and characters as one informs the other on your choices and actions.

If a character is allowed to ignore the rules too often, at some point you should ask yourself if you would just be better using a system akin to a game of calvinball (or in a less tongue in cheek answer, a different ruleset that focuses on your preferred style of play more): if the rules don't infer to some extent how your character interacts or wishes to interact with the game world... that how the world works and responds to the character's actions has little effect on their choices... what's the point of the rules?

On the flipside, the rules should allow for some leeway towards a character's wants: this is where the GM and rule 0 come into play... the rules can't realistically model everything (in truth most rulesets, even the more generic ones, try to model a style of play or at least a given genre or two or some themes) so some amount of adjudication is to be expected. In addition, knowledge of the rules, and how the character interacts with them, will help you, the player, be informed on how your character interacts with the reality they exist in.

What severity or weight is there behind a character's actions if they completely disregard, dismiss or make light of the reality they're making those choices in?

Rules and Roleplay are both as integral and important to the medium as one another... It's why it's called "Roleplaying Game" and not simply "Roleplaying" or "Game".

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-08, 06:27 AM
I will have to disagree.

You state


Yet follow up with


If your character's choices are made independent of how they know the world interacts with them, that the environment the character exists in has no effect on their choices... are you truly roleplaying?

To use slight hyperbole, say you're playing in a GURPS game set in the real world California. You wouldn't say "My character is an anime lover and will walk to Japan!" then proceed to attempt to mindlessly traverse the pacific in a pair of cheap crocs.

You and your character are both aware of the rules of the game: specifically drowning, swimming and exhaustion.

No, your character will have to sit down and make plans on how to safely get to Japan, likely by taking a plane and all the hubbub around that, like passports and vaccinations.

This is because the rules inform you and your character on how the world works: things fall towards the ground and take X damage, your movement speed is Y in a given timeframe and this is how you resolve [Action Z]. The character's wants should inform you on how they wish to interact with those rules.

Our weaboo example character would likely need to save up some funds for travel, lodging, food, etc... So they may do overtime at work for more pay or decide to put off the trip until their next review where they hope to get a raise.

This is the key to Tao of the Oxybe: full understanding that mechanics and characterization are the Ying and Yang of PCs, both separate yet at the same time influencing each other to create a balanced and interesting whole.

There is no master or servant in regard to the relationship between rules and characters as one informs the other on your choices and actions.

If a character is allowed to ignore the rules too often, at some point you should ask yourself if you would just be better using a system akin to a game of calvinball (or in a less tongue in cheek answer, a different ruleset that focuses on your preferred style of play more): if the rules don't infer to some extent how your character interacts or wishes to interact with the game world... that how the world works and responds to the character's actions has little effect on their choices... what's the point of the rules?

On the flipside, the rules should allow for some leeway towards a character's wants: this is where the GM and rule 0 come into play... the rules can't realistically model everything (in truth most rulesets, even the more generic ones, try to model a style of play or at least a given genre or two or some themes) so some amount of adjudication is to be expected. In addition, knowledge of the rules, and how the character interacts with them, will help you, the player, be informed on how your character interacts with the reality they exist in.

What severity or weight is there behind a character's actions if they completely disregard, dismiss or make light of the reality they're making those choices in?

Rules and Roleplay are both as integral and important to the medium as one another... It's why it's called "Roleplaying Game" and not simply "Roleplaying" or "Game".


You're calling aspects of the setting (the "reality" in which the game takes place) "rules".

And no where did I suggest ignoring the rules, that's your inference.

The point is that the map is not the territory -- that "Rule Zero" as you mention has to exist is direct evidence of that fact. The fact that one set of mechanics can fail to properly map some "territories" (that is, some settings / genres / playstyles), that rules can be disconnected from what the GM/players want, is further evidence that rules do not define the "reality" in which the game takes place, they can only succeed or fail to varying degrees to map that "reality".


There are players who look at the mechanics of a game as the ends, rather than the means -- they put "winning" the mechanical part of the game ahead of the characters, the setting, the story, the interactions between characters, and everything else that separates an RPG from being just a really complicated game of craps.

Frozen_Feet
2016-07-08, 07:21 AM
Aspects of a setting ARE rules for a specific game. Quite often they're the root from which all other rules grow from.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-08, 07:37 AM
Aspects of a setting ARE rules for a specific game. Quite often they're the root from which all other rules grow from.

I'm definitely with you there. That's why I don't like the 'kitchen sink' systems which try to be for all possible settings at the same time. They either only really work for whichever setting it was originally designed for or they work in a mediocre sort of way for everything rather than well for one.

NichG
2016-07-08, 07:38 AM
If your character's choices are made independent of how they know the world interacts with them, that the environment the character exists in has no effect on their choices... are you truly roleplaying?


I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. Even without rules, you have other things which create a connection between the world and the choices made in it. You have expectations informed by your previous interactions with that world, genre conventions, or just intrinsic (and potentially mistaken) beliefs. Having a pre-specified rule which you know as absolute truth is one way to create that connection, but its not the only way. It has the upside of being fast (which is helpful because players can't spend multiple years actually living in the world), but in exchange it is a much more artificial way of relating to the world than via building expectations from your own experience.

For instance, you say 'you and your character are both aware of the rules of the game', with regards to 'why I can't walk to Japan from California', but there are lots of ways that people can have that sort of automatic conception of the limits of their world without being given an absolute truth to base them on. Maybe someone told me 'Japan is far away, you can't get there on foot' in conversation. Maybe I tried crossing a swimming pool that way once and it failed, and I judge that an ocean is like a really big swimming pool so that probably won't work either. In real life, the thing that I'm aware of is not the 'rules' of reality per se, its my approximation of what I think those rules are based on my life experiences.

Which means that when you rely too much on external rules for this, you lose something - the ability to be wrong, or to have a different understanding compared to someone else. There's a balance.

Segev
2016-07-08, 09:02 AM
Rules lite systems and even freeform work for the same reason novels do: we have a baseline understanding, at least at a gross level, of what can and cannot happen based on real-world experience, and we project that understanding onto the story. You can't walk to Japan from California because there is too much water in the way. You can't jump from here to the moon because humans can't jump that high. You can't become President of the United States without a lot more work than simply declaring the intention and rolling a "politics" stat because our real-world experience tells us that the process is hard and uncertain enough that it needs to be modeled by a lot of different actions that all lead up to its success or failure.

Rules lite and freeform break down when we get to the boundary cases. Can you walk/wade/swim across this river? It's too much water to say "yes" in the same way you would about a 4-inch deep puddle of standing water, but it doesn't immediately sound impossible that anybody could do it. In a novel or free-form game, the writer or the GM would describe some measure of obstacle and opposition and challenge as he felt appropriate for the situation, and then say the character did or did not make it across, probably based on what the GM/writer thought would be best for him to tell the story he has in mind. A good GM would cooperate and collaborate with the player to figure out the better story outcome before making his decision.

In rules lite games, the GM makes a judgment call as to whether this is a boundary case or not, and then picks some rules widget in the simplistic resolution system to try to determine it. The nature of such games is that most fail to suggest breaking it down into a series of sub-obstacles and challenges, but it can be done. In any event, some broadly-applicable stat is usually brought to bear and checked for success or failure. (Equally unfortunately, many GMs think multiple obstacles mean each is a stone wall if you fail; be cautious of this if you run such games. Just because the PC failed the rules lite challenge of dodging the undertow doesn't mean he can't try to grab a low-hanging root and pull himself out that way, for instance.)

Rules heavy games tend to have much more specific rules, with specific difficulties and examples, and encourage encounter design to be spelled out with specific challenges. The GM knows the challenges of that river, and whether this game models it as a simple singular roll against a "swim" stat or as a series of them. The obstacles will all be statted out, with specific mechanics for how they can be interacted with. The number of rules for varying abilities will also give the player a tool kit he can draw upon without having to ask the GM if he's drawn upon it too much. In a rules lite or free-form game, for instance, "but I'm strong!" can only be said so often before the GM says that you're not THAT strong. In a rules heavy game (and some rules lite ones), the fact that you have a Swim skill of +5 and a craft (reed breathing pipes) skill of +3 means you can, in fact, make that breathing pipe and get that +2 bonus and that yes, that is enough with your roll to get you past the deep part of the river.

There are strengths and weaknesses to each. But the rules heavy game really does free the player up to think about what his character can do, rather than having to wheedle for his character's background to apply in THIS way THIS time. Rather than the GM looking askance at his request to use his "Master Chef" skill to swim across, the fact that he has as part of his build to be a "Master Chef" a list of skills for wrestling the rarest of sushi-producing fish personally into submission means he can bring the relevant subset of those to bear in his efforts to cross this river.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-08, 09:20 AM
Aspects of a setting ARE rules for a specific game. Quite often they're the root from which all other rules grow from.


I'll use an infamous example - falling damage.

In some games, falling damage is handled so poorly that it's possible to survive a fall from great heights nearly unscathed - it's as if the character just landed on his feet, or bounced, or something. Clearly, this is contrary to any expectation we would have for most settings, as most of them have a sort of "like the real world, unless..." default for things like physics (projectiles follow ballistic arcs, basic adherence to Newton's laws of motion, 9.8m/s2 makes long falls bad, etc).

There are those GMs/players, however, who will insist that because the rules allow a character to fall 100s of feet, hit the ground, and walk away like nothing happened, that this defines the reality of the game -- if the mechanical game rules say it happens that way, then it happens that way -- rather than examining how the mechanical game rules have failed to model the reality of the game setting. They view the rules as the ends, rather than the means.

When I talk about "the rules", I'm taking about the mechanical game rules, not the "rules" of the setting within itself.

I hope this helps clarify my point.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-08, 10:16 AM
There are those GMs/players, however, who will insist that because the rules allow a character to fall 100s of feet, hit the ground, and walk away like nothing happened,

I don't see why that's a problem if you want to play that sort of game. If you're talking 3.x, by the time 20d6 damage (average of 70, but it could easily be 100+) isn't a threat, the players are basically demi-gods, able to slay dragons or scores of lesser soldiers. Many characters in the old epics did crazy stuff like that all of the time.

Though one could also argue that the character is spreading his cloak like a makeshift parachute to absorb the fall/grabbing bits of the cliff to make it multiple small falls etc. which the rules don't bother to describe.

I'd actually argue that the bigger cause of how casual the players are about such damage is the ease of cheap healing. Outside of combat, such a fall just means spending 12-13 charges on a wand of Cure Light, costing approx. 200 gold. If the group actually had to spend significant daily resources on healing the 20d6 damage such a fall caused, they'd avoid it unless absolutely necessary.

Segev
2016-07-08, 10:17 AM
I'll use an infamous example - falling damage.

In some games, falling damage is handled so poorly that it's possible to survive a fall from great heights nearly unscathed - it's as if the character just landed on his feet, or bounced, or something. Clearly, this is contrary to any expectation we would have for most settings, as most of them have a sort of "like the real world, unless..." default for things like physics (projectiles follow ballistic arcs, basic adherence to Newton's laws of motion, 9.8m/s2 makes long falls bad, etc).

There are those GMs/players, however, who will insist that because the rules allow a character to fall 100s of feet, hit the ground, and walk away like nothing happened, that this defines the reality of the game -- if the mechanical game rules say it happens that way, then it happens that way -- rather than examining how the mechanical game rules have failed to model the reality of the game setting. They view the rules as the ends, rather than the means.

When I talk about "the rules", I'm taking about the mechanical game rules, not the "rules" of the setting within itself.

I hope this helps clarify my point.

This is an interesting one, because I really do see both sides of the argument. Setting aside for the moment the argument that a game with levels might really intend for the high-level characters to be able to do things like "superhero landing" and just soak the damage from great heights, the reason this failure of the rules to model reality expectations is such a problem is that it fails in precisely the same way a lack of rules would: you don't know whether it "makes sense" for the character to survive or not.

And it is a rules failure, but it is not unreasonable for the player to do the calculation and expect the rules to be followed. "But... I built my guy to be tough. He should survive that fall." It gets even worse when the player thought he was being totally reasonable taking a given risk that put him high up, and the GM thought he was being really foolish but wasn't going to stop him, and now the player has "no, I don't care what the rules say, you can't survive that" sprung on him AFTER it's too late to change things so this isn't going to screw his PC over.

2D8HP
2016-07-08, 11:31 AM
I'll use an infamous example - falling damage.

In some games, falling damage is handled so poorly that it's possible to survive a fall from great heights nearly unscathed - it's as if the character just landed on his feet, or bounced, or something. Clearly, this is contrary to any expectation we would have for most settings But not without genre precedent! It's been years since I saw it, but IIRC Danny Glover's character in "Predator 2" fell through a freakin' building, got up and continued to fight!
Badass!
Arnie never did that!

Âmesang
2016-07-08, 02:30 PM
Please. Mr. Bean started every episode hitting the ground and walking it off. :smallamused:

Segev
2016-07-08, 02:33 PM
Gives new perspective on the phrase, "hit the ground running," doesn't it?

wumpus
2016-07-08, 03:06 PM
Rules may be appealing to people who are more used to video gaming and less used to roleplaying (freeform or otherwise). People raised with video games are typically used to having an explicit list of actions they can take and may be overwhelmed with the prospect of being able to do anything; looking at the rules to determine what they may attempt rather than as guidelines for whether the succeed.

Oddly enough, it seemed like the entire industry was trying to get more and more rules heavy during the 1980s, when "video gaming" RPGs was basicaly "Atari adventure" and at best something like rogue (maybe something more simple but with redefined character sets on home computers). Note these rules never seemed to be about covering *everything*, just trying to make combat, magic, and other things more complicated, with more options and more descriptive of the action. Look to things like "Rolemaster" and "Chivalry and Sorcery" for 80s table-driven games.

Things changed, and at least for D&D players, 3e seemed to change expectations to "full coverage" of rules. This was wildly different than anything the grognards had encountered. The idea that the DM was expected to follow the rules was absurd (pull that on a 1e DM and expect to backroll for years of parasite infection). There was also the danger of play stopping for long periods of time while players tried to figure out how the rules applied, and which action/spell/whatever was optimal in that segment of play (don't grapple: we need to get to at least another room before we wrap up tonight).

I think it was pretty independent of video games, but I suspect that Monty Cook and the rest were likely impressed with just what a software DM could do and were trying to create a game that could cover all the bases. It only later appeared obvious that while they may have covered a huge amount of things, anything *not* covered tended to be excluded from the game. This pretty much made the game even worse for anything not combat related or otherwise covered by rules.

My guess is that one thing game designers took from software is that when your rules break, let them break hard. In software this means your bugs are obvious, in game design this means the DM steps in and rules on the fly. If you are going to bother to have someone behind the screen, you might as well let them make a ruling or two. A DM who knows the characters, the setting/dungeon, and the players is likely better able to make a good ruling than stretching a rule built for something else. Of course, if you overdo this you may as well have no game at all (and to a certain degree, things like D&D have "very little game at all" outside of combat), but at least it allows such things to exist.

I haven't really yet heard what went right or wrong with 5e. It seems to cover most of the problems of 2e, 3e, and 4e without having too many people whining about it. I'm guessing all the people who whined at first are happily playing Pathfinder and not at all concerned with the second most popular game.

2D8HP
2016-07-08, 04:17 PM
I haven't really yet heard what went right or wrong with 5e. It seems to cover most of the problems of 2e, 3e, and 4e without having too many people whining about it. I'm guessing all the people who whined at first are happily playing Pathfinder and not at all concerned with the second most popular game.Judging from the threads at this Forum, the complaints about 5e seem to be mostly at higher levels. Some miss the "options" of 3.5 others the "balance" of 4e. For me my main complaint is that I have an old brain, and it's just plain harder for me the learn these rules than it was for me to learn oD&D and 1e AD&D! But I strongly suspect that's because of my age not the rules (and that the younger version of me would have loved the additional "crunch")!
If however you limit the rules to just the "Starter Set" and the free online "Basic Rules" (http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/PlayerBasicRulesV03.pdf) supplemented by "gut informed" house rules, plus what I internalized back in the 70's and 80's, then I think it's great! But it seems that "cherry-picking", and making up stuff is more frowned on, and it's now more expected to use all and only current RAW, which feels like a hard adjustment to make.

Segev
2016-07-08, 04:21 PM
Judging from the threads at this Forum, the complaints about 5e seem to be mostly at higher levels. Some miss the "options" of 3.5 others the "balance" of 4e. For me my main complaint is that I have an old brain, and it's just plain harder for me the learn these rules than it was for me to learn oD&D and 1e AD&D! But I strongly suspect that's because of my age not the rules (and that the younger version of me would have loved the additional "crunch")!
If however you limit the rules to just the "Starter Set" and the free online "Basic Rules" (http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/PlayerBasicRulesV03.pdf) supplemented by "gut informed" house rules, plus what I internalized back in the 70's and 80's, then I think it's great! But it seems that "cherry-picking", and making up stuff is more frowned on, and it's now more expected to use all and only current RAW, which feels like a hard adjustment to make.

I suspect that it's less that you're too old, and more that you don't want to learn new systems in general. You probably are perfectly capable of absorbing 5e; it's...actually a lot simpler than AD&D 1e or 2e were. And captures more than a small amount of their feel.

Knaight
2016-07-08, 04:22 PM
Judging from the threads at this Forum, the complaints about 5e seem to be mostly at higher levels. Some miss the "options" of 3.5 others the "balance" of 4e. For me my main complaint is that I have an old brain, and it's just plain harder for me the learn these rules than it was for me to learn oD&D and 1e AD&D! But I strongly suspect that's because of my age not the rules (and that the younger version of me would have loved the additional "crunch")!

Whether there even is additional crunch is debatable. I learned oD&D and 4e at approximately the same time, and of the two 4e was the easier to learn, less crunchy, more intuitive of the two - with 5e being another step towards simplicity.

Kurt Kurageous
2016-07-08, 04:58 PM
I loath the way things (rules, talents, feats, whatever) "stack" or "cross-over" in certain RPG systems to make juggernaut combinations, and to be totally honest it leaves me feeling a bit disappointed with other players when they start trying to game the system and view their characters as an optimized set of mechanics rather than a character.

Thank you for saying so. I've never put it in those words but feel exactly the same. I wonder if I've done something wrong if I haven't optimized, but at the same time, it's not why I play the game. I'm here to participate in a collective story-telling process, either as the DM or as a player. It's a lot like making a movie, but it costs a lot less and takes less time.

If we are talking an investing portfolio, then maybe I care about optimization. But a portfolio is not a character, and I'm glad I generally don't treat them the same way.

Kurt Kurageous
2016-07-08, 05:08 PM
I suspect that it's less that you're too old, and more that you don't want to learn new systems in general.

This is why I stayed away from 4e entirely, and can't stand to hear the chatter of Magic the Gathering players.

I was willing to reinvest the time and rebuy the books because I believed the game was learnable, playable, and runnable. I believed this because I trusted the person who told me about it. They were right. I really like 5e.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-08, 06:39 PM
Thank you for saying so. I've never put it in those words but feel exactly the same. I wonder if I've done something wrong if I haven't optimized, but at the same time, it's not why I play the game. I'm here to participate in a collective story-telling process, either as the DM or as a player. It's a lot like making a movie, but it costs a lot less and takes less time.

If we are talking an investing portfolio, then maybe I care about optimization. But a portfolio is not a character, and I'm glad I generally don't treat them the same way.


Something else to keep in mind is that "optimizing" is not an all-or-nothing exercise.

You can put some effort into making the character's mechanical build more sound or efficient, without making that the primary focus or turning it into a "find the perfect combo and build around that" exercise.

I say this because I've seen more than a few players presume a false dichotomy of "role-playing or roll-playing", and they will make no effort at all to even "clean up" the build on their characters and will come to the table noticeably behind the curve of the other characters (even in pure point-buy systems that don't have much stack at all). For example, a character with multiple powers that use a roll of attribute+Y (skill), and he's not invested a single point in Y... and it turns out he never will, because his concept is "a guy who's not any good at the powers he has" (not in those words, but certainly in intent and effect) and he didn't want to "ruin the concept" by having the character gain any real competence.

BayardSPSR
2016-07-08, 08:21 PM
Adding a thought:


many GMs

This is a good reason to have more granular or "harder" rules: they can (and perhaps ought to) insulate against over-reliance on a GM's gauge of what's appropriate for the group and the game the group is playing. Is a "harder" or "heavier" system's ability to do this in pursuit of whatever it's pursuing a good measure of the quality of its design? Possibly contrasting with the use of "flexibility" as a measure of the design quality of "lighter"/"softer" systems (assuming they actually mean to be flexible)?

Or am I conflating two different spectrums (flexible/predictable and hard/soft) by assuming that since hardness can be an effective tool to enforce predictability, hard but flexible systems ought not exist (or are making poor use of their own medium when they do)?

And on a tangent from that, is observing where and how a given system is hard or soft the right way of judging where and how its designers intended it to be flexible or predictable, or is that just circular logic?

EDIT: Or at a certain point, does the opposite become the case, as heavier rules become more difficult to implement exactly? That is, might there be a certain mid-point (or range) at which an RPG's predictability can be maximized?


I haven't really yet heard what went right or wrong with 5e. It seems to cover most of the problems of 2e, 3e, and 4e without having too many people whining about it. I'm guessing all the people who whined at first are happily playing Pathfinder and not at all concerned with the second most popular game.

My only evidence is anecdotal, but so far 100% of the people I've spoken to in person IRL about their experience with 5e are thoroughly satisfied with it and have no complaints. That said, I haven't had any personal conversations about groups' decision to use it rather than another set of rules beyond people deciding to "experiment with the new thing."

GPuzzle
2016-07-08, 08:45 PM
I'm one to optimize 4e, and I'll be honest: I see it as a cross between pure roleplay and pure gaming. I'm telling a story, but I'm also playing that story. Why do people play boardgames? For the same reasons
as to why people play rule-heavy systems. Because they like it.

In addition, they play them and not boardgames because they have control, they get attached to those characters, it adds context into the fight. It's a boardgame with a story in which you are the characters. And people like that.