How serious do you take the rules?

[geppetto]

So in a facebook group i'm in we were talking about players trying things not necessarily covered (or covered poorly) by the rules and how to handle them. Most of the GM's said let them try it and figure out what to roll.

I'm the same way, but whats funny is we all play different games or editions, but nobody even mentioned what system we were talking about. Rules heavy? Rules light? Narrative focus? It didnt matter. The consensus was say yes and let them roll something thats reasonably fair, without stopping the game to look it up.

It made me think of something I usually tell players in the very beginning of a campaign no matter what system it is, and I always tell new players. "Dont worry about the mechanics, the primary rule is the rule of cool. So just tell me what you want to do and I can think of what to roll for it". I focus on letting them try whatever seems fun, rewarding good ideas and always keeping the game moving. Stopping to look up rules is in my top 3 pet peeves of gaming.

So I wonder what do other people think about this? Is RAW king at your table? Do you focus more on freeform actions and movement and just having fun? As a player how important is it for a GM to go by the book or do you like the adaptability more even if it doesnt always lead to consistency in rules or rulings? Wheres the line?

And do your preferences change based on the game? I know mine really dont. Even with crunchy games I dont want to look anything up mid session or worry about being told "you cant do that, its not in the rules".

[Koo Rehtorb]

If you ignore the rules you might as well be playing Calvinball. There is some leeway for rules that are badly written and don't make sense, of course.

[geppetto]

And whats wrong with Calvinball? If the table is having fun thats the whole point of getting together.

[MeimuHakurei]

And whats wrong with Calvinball? If the table is having fun thats the whole point of getting together.

What's the point of even looking at a game system, let alone buying it, if you only end up summarily discarding all the rules and make it all up yourself anyways?

[thuhnc]

I once GMed that Crab Truckers RPG; it's an extremely simple d8-based RPG whose rules fit on less than one page and are literally "highest result wins" for everything. It quickly became Calvinball. There was serial escalation until the PCs were literally slaying gods within like half an hour, at which point it became pretty pointless; any given challenge could be overcome with a successful roll using any given skill.

More recently, I GMed a playtest of my own simple and versatile homebrew d6-based RPG system, and it worked much better pretty much entirely because of bounded accuracy. Crab Truckers' binary success/failure system caused us to lose interest pretty quickly because nothing felt like it mattered-- just having a mechanic for variable difficulties (harder tasks require more successes) provided a much deeper experience.

So I guess what I've learned is the difference between "playing a game" and "telling a pointless story while occasionally rolling dice" is having successes and failures be meaningfully distinct from one another. Which, again, is pretty much just bounded accuracy. Just use bounded accuracy.

In the case of D&D specifically, bounded accuracy (and therefore a means with which to adjudicate most if not all non-combinatorial actions that could be taken in almost any circumstance) is literally in the (suggested) rules. But because the rest of the system can be relatively meticulous, I have the possibly-bad habit of wanting to hunt around for what the rules say should happen in a given situation prior to deciding if it should be interpreted as a suggestion or not.

Honestly, I think I might be more comfortable appending homebrew sub-systems on top of D&D than messing with its inner workings. I do play 5E; maybe I'm just afraid of ruining its elegance with brutalist on-the-fly interpretations.

[Khedrac]

What's the point of even looking at a game system, let alone buying it, if you only end up summarily discarding all the rules and make it all up yourself anyways?
The point is to have a starting place for the rules and ideas you develop yourself - quite a few RPG systems out there started this way from original D&D and totally re-writing the rules.

As for the original question - it depends.

When playing in a shared camapign, especially a "Living" campaign it is important to take the rules seriously.
In any game where planning ahead makes sense for character development (e.g. 3.5 D&D) then one needs to be consistent with rules. THis also applies to games where planning ahead is les simportant but characters cxan die easily and players can become attached to them (e.g. CoC) - as players will get upset if a beloved character dies because the rules work differently this week.

For home games with a fixed group it again depends - if the players regularly play in other groups using the "same" system they will again want consistency in rulings across the games (or an up-front list of house rules). If they don't, then you are free to tinker with the rules as you want so long as everyone is happy (see earlier comments baout consistency). Again, the choice of system does make a difference here - I have never played Toon or TFOS but I imagine they are much more forgiving systems for ignoring rules.

[MoiMagnus]

When I play a RPG, I expect to have a mix between a boardgame (so rule-bounded, where you have a clear-defined problem that you need to solve using the tools given by the rules) and improv theater (so rule-free, where the goal is that everybody should have fun).

When I play D&D campaigns, I expect the boardgame part to be heavily present, and the rules to be respected. Not to the point of playing RAW: when a rule feel "wrong/unfair/buggy" to some of us, it will be changed, when we find something that "should be possible but isn't", it is made possible. But the goal is to remain near enough to the core rules so that characters that don't benefits from those new rules feel "at the same level" as those who do.

When I play one-shots of other RPGs, I expect the rules to be much more flexible. I don't expect "this is forbidden by the rules" as an answer, I expect "this isn't reasonable in this universe" instead.

[Black Jester]

Rules exist to give the game a spine or a foundation; they are not supposed to limiting or constricting. When in doubt, an ad hoc ruling by the GM is not only okay, but often preferably to a strict adherence to the rules. This counts double when doing otherwise would interrupt the flow of the game, for instance when a particular rule has to be looked up to use properly.
This also means that rules applies to characters, not players. The rules cannot cure stupidity or force the players to be decent people; that opportunity onlies lies with the group as a whole. It is much more important to be a supportive, attentive and creative player than it is to know any rules beyond the very basics.

[Corsair14]

Rules as written are a framework and set of guidelines. In the name of realism I will change things here and there. I have never been under the idea that PCs are super heroes and some abilities make no sense like crossbow master feat in 5e so I change them or disallow them to make more sense. Generally I go by the rules except when physics get involved in a case where it matter. The key is consistency, once you change something you need to do it the same way every time.

[Thinker]

For my gaming group, we typically will make sure everyone understands the core mechanic and how to create a character properly. During gameplay, if we can quickly look up a rule, we'll find it before moving on. Otherwise, we'll just go with what makes sense based on the core mechanic and look it up later. Since we play with roll20 these days, most of the relevant rules are on the players' character sheets anyway or can be looked up in PDF or on the roll20 compendium pretty quickly. We do this regardless of the system - 7th Sea, PbtA, SWN, Exalted, DnD, GURPS, M&M, etc.

[Rhedyn]

So in a facebook group i'm in we were talking about players trying things not necessarily covered (or covered poorly) by the rules and how to handle them. Most of the GM's said let them try it and figure out what to roll.

I'm the same way, but whats funny is we all play different games or editions, but nobody even mentioned what system we were talking about. Rules heavy? Rules light? Narrative focus? It didnt matter. The consensus was say yes and let them roll something thats reasonably fair, without stopping the game to look it up.

It made me think of something I usually tell players in the very beginning of a campaign no matter what system it is, and I always tell new players. "Dont worry about the mechanics, the primary rule is the rule of cool. So just tell me what you want to do and I can think of what to roll for it". I focus on letting them try whatever seems fun, rewarding good ideas and always keeping the game moving. Stopping to look up rules is in my top 3 pet peeves of gaming.

So I wonder what do other people think about this? Is RAW king at your table? Do you focus more on freeform actions and movement and just having fun? As a player how important is it for a GM to go by the book or do you like the adaptability more even if it doesnt always lead to consistency in rules or rulings? Wheres the line?

And do your preferences change based on the game? I know mine really dont. Even with crunchy games I dont want to look anything up mid session or worry about being told "you cant do that, its not in the rules".
You've oddly put, "players trying whatever they want" diametrically opposed to "taking the rules seriously".

Handling things outside the rules or players having more options than the buttons on their characters sheet is the distinguishing ability of RPGs compared to board games or video games.

Being an RPG is not opposed to taking the rules seriously.

Now my personal preference is a mid crunch game. It doesn't have all the answers in the rules but I tend to cobble together mechanics as needed as my understanding of the system grows. For example, someone dropped a tree on someone else, instead of just picking a random damage number, I used the improvised weapon damage for an object of that size in the Superpowers Companion. Is that RAW? No. Was that ruling just me making up mechanics on the spot? No not really.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I see RPG "rules" as being conceptually different from board-game rules.

1. Unlike board games, the rules in an RPG do not define what is possible in the fiction. They merely give a set of mechanics with which to resolve actions undertaken. They're the interface layer between the fictional world and the real world, designed to abstract (and concretify!) things in a fun, playable, game-friendly manner.

2. Unlike board games, there is (in many RPGs) a player who is tasked with applying the resolution mechanics as presented in the rules. In some cases this responsibility is delegated to the group instead of to one individual. But in general, whoever exercises this role/task is given wide latitude to decide when and how the resolution mechanics apply, and is expected to use their judgement and chose the outcome that is best for the fun of the table and the health of the game as a whole, with rules-compliance only as one of many competing goods.

3. Unlike board games, RPGs are open-ended. Difference #1 is a consequence of this. Many, if not most, things that are possible for characters are not specified in the rules or require the application of several, otherwise unconnected rules. This inherently requires judgement and trust. Trust between the players and the GM (if such exists), trust between the players and the other players (always), and between the GM and the players (again, if such a distinction exists).

All together, RPG rules (speaking of the printed text here) are conversation starters. They're a packaged set of default resolution mechanics and content that the designers claim will work well, both together and for many groups who are intending to play games related to the material covered. They are not a binding contract--they're a place for tables to go if they don't have strong opinions about how something should be handled. A fall-back support layer. A scaffold.

The default rule-set for an RPG is free-form. But that's exhausting to do well and requires a group that works very well together. In return, you can do things in free-form that are way beyond what you can do in a more codified game. Most people (myself very much included) don't want to put forth that much effort (or don't have a group that works for them) and appreciate having some scaffolding. The "rules" are there to handle the bits that are either too involved, too unfamiliar, too annoying, or just not interesting enough to handle directly. But they're not designed or intended to be a restriction and a strait-jacket. The rules were made for the players, not the players for the rules. If they help--use them. If they don't--do something else. The only binding rules are those that the individual group itself decides are binding, not anything printed in a book somewhere.

Yes, that means that inter-table consistency is not something I value very much. In fact, I celebrate inter-table diversity. Systems that creak and groan when modified/not followed, or those that demand to be played in a certain restricted way (cf PbtA, White Wolf games) are not to my taste. Doesn't mean they're bad, they're just not for me.

[Agent-KI7KO]

I remind the GM of the exact rule, and if he handwaves it I drop the subject. If he adheres to the correct rule I will remind him again if he forgets.

[Hackulator]

It is good to try to stick within the rules when you can, but only because that makes it easier for your rulings to be consistent. I'm not a stickler for the rules but the one thing you don't want to do is make a lot of on the fly rulings that end up being very inconsistent. This leads to situations where players feel like they have no idea how things work, or even worse, like you are playing favorites because you ruled someone could do something and then later ruled something similar would not be allowed. As always, to a great extent it depends on your table and what your players will enjoy.

[Darth Tom]

In my group, we don't worry too much about the rules. If things get slow, or if the rules don't work as we think they should, we tweak them as a group to make something that we prefer. We find that more fun, and having fun adventures as a group is all we want from the game.

[Man_Over_Game]

You've oddly put, "players trying whatever they want" diametrically opposed to "taking the rules seriously".

Handling things outside the rules or players having more options than the buttons on their characters sheet is the distinguishing ability of RPGs compared to board games or video games.

Being an RPG is not opposed to taking the rules seriously.

Now my personal preference is a mid crunch game. It doesn't have all the answers in the rules but I tend to cobble together mechanics as needed as my understanding of the system grows. For example, someone dropped a tree on someone else, instead of just picking a random damage number, I used the improvised weapon damage for an object of that size in the Superpowers Companion. Is that RAW? No. Was that ruling just me making up mechanics on the spot? No not really.

I kinda agree with Rhedyn on this one. There's a major difference between a group storytelling session (Fate) and a tactically complex combat (DnD 4e), regardless of how serious you take the rules.

I think that everyone playing should have equal amounts of the spotlight, which means that some mid-crunch, balanced games are my style. I also need it to be tactically challenging, so that it's an intellectual challenge as much as an emotional one. But I also like to change things as needed, for when an exception needs to be made. DnD 5e does pretty much all of this, so that's what I play.


Shadowrun had a cool environment, but getting through a single combat scenario took forever when hacking and ghost combat each had your teammates on the "pause" menu the entire time.
RIFTS also had an amazing environment, but the rules were crunchtastic and the classes were unbalanced.
Dnd 3.5 had a problem of balance concerns, and most of the entertainment came from planning your character vs. using them (I found).
DnD 4e had a lot of problems actually doing the RP portion of RPG. It was a really cool version of Battle Chess, but the actual story didn't matter.

[2D8HP]

What's the point of even looking at a game system, let alone buying it, if you only end up summarily discarding all the rules and make it all up yourself anyways?


Because a catalog spurs imagination more than a blank page.

The rules are there for the players to have some idea of what the limits are, dice are rolled for the suspense.

GM's don't need rules, they may just make up odds.

[Telok]

I think that I end up taking the rules as seriously as they are helpful to me in running or playing the game.

Rules that help my gauge probabilities, compare options, support the narrative, and are clearly written or thought out will get more respect from me. Rules where the designers screwed up their math, didn't do the simplest basic calculations, or that undermine the narrative and/or tropes of the game, they get my derisive mocking.

The more rules in a set that are helpful, the more I'll wax poetic about the game. The more rules that aren't helpful the more I'll complain.

Out of time.

[Quertus]

You've oddly put, "players trying whatever they want" diametrically opposed to "taking the rules seriously".

Handling things outside the rules or players having more options than the buttons on their characters sheet is the distinguishing ability of RPGs compared to board games or video games.

Being an RPG is not opposed to taking the rules seriously.

+1 this. This states succinctly what I came here to say.

RPGs are, at their base, a framework of rules for understanding and interacting with the environment, for planning and predictability; mess with that, and there is no point to intelligence, sentience, planning, thinking.

However, the advantage of an RPG over a board game or video game is the ability of the human components to create an "outside the box", to allow players to attempt things not explicitly covered by the rules.

I take the rules very seriously. And I let the players try whatever they want.

Shouldn't everyone? :smallamused:

[Koo Rehtorb]

One of my favourite examples on "outside the box", as related to RPGs, is in Apocalypse World.

One of the basic moves available to all PCs is "seduce/manipulate". There is no basic move along the lines of "persuade". And that says something very specific about the game and the genre involved. This is not a game about reasonable people sitting down and having a reasonable discussion about their differences, because it's out of genre. If you want to get someone to do what you want, at least as a basic character, then you need to manipulate them in some way, or you need to use a different basic move "go aggro" to threaten them with violence. You cannot describe your character having a reasonable discussion with an adversary and have it have a mechanical impact, because the game is not about that.

On the same note, another PbtA game I've played a lot of, Masks. A teen superhero game. Similarly the "get someone to do something with words" basic move is "provoke". Again, it's not about teenagers giving a heartfelt speech about the benefits of listening to their wisdom. You have to "provoke" someone to do something, be it with threats, lies, or some other means. But the neat thing here is as your PCs level up and start to grow up you eventually gain access to the ability to take "adult moves", one of which is "persuade with best interests", which suddenly does give you the ability to try to convince someone by making an actual mature argument at them for why they should.

[DMThac0]

I feel that the books/rules of any given game provide a framework, a starting point for everyone to be on equal footing. Once the game has progressed, and/or the players have evolved, then that foundation is built upon. You start to add custom resolutions to choices that are not well defined by that foundation. The fluid nature of human interaction with a rigid structure making for some very convoluted interactions that require a non-uniform resolution. At some point in time the foundation becomes a metric with which to compare the given solution to what it defined by the book to make sure that there is some uniformity even if it does stretch the boundaries that have been set.




On the same note, another PbtA game I've played a lot of, Masks. A teen superhero game. Similarly the "get someone to do something with words" basic move is "provoke". Again, it's not about teenagers giving a heartfelt speech about the benefits of listening to their wisdom. You have to "provoke" someone to do something, be it with threats, lies, or some other means. But the neat thing here is as your PCs level up and start to grow up you eventually gain access to the ability to take "adult moves", one of which is "persuade with best interests", which suddenly does give you the ability to try to convince someone by making an actual mature argument at them for why they should.

First: I'm unfamiliar with either of the games you've mentioned, I'm simply tossing out a hypothetical course of action that popped into my mind.

I'm in a position where I, as a player, know that there is imminent danger approaching and I am trying to get people to vacate the area. Due to the limitations imposed by the rules I am given only one course of action: Provoke. Does this mean it is impossible for me to convince a group of people to vacate by explaining the danger that is coming and asking them to leave? Instead I must find some way to provoke them to leave, which would require getting them upset with me so I can, in return, save them from danger?

[The Glyphstone]

First: I'm unfamiliar with either of the games you've mentioned, I'm simply tossing out a hypothetical course of action that popped into my mind.

I'm in a position where I, as a player, know that there is imminent danger approaching and I am trying to get people to vacate the area. Due to the limitations imposed by the rules I am given only one course of action: Provoke. Does this mean it is impossible for me to convince a group of people to vacate by explaining the danger that is coming and asking them to leave? Instead I must find some way to provoke them to leave, which would require getting them upset with me so I can, in return, save them from danger?

Since in this case your character is explicitly a teenager - a teenage superhero, at that - I can see that being true in the metafictional sense of the game. From the description, it sounds like 'persuade rationally' is something you learn/gain access to rather than having it be automatically available - that makes sense if the intent of the rules is to reflect coming-of-age/maturity reflected through 'leveling up' via growing older.

PBtA games are odd ducks in general, but this is the sort of thing I'd expect from them.

[Thrudd]

I feel that the books/rules of any given game provide a framework, a starting point for everyone to be on equal footing. Once the game has progressed, and/or the players have evolved, then that foundation is built upon. You start to add custom resolutions to choices that are not well defined by that foundation. The fluid nature of human interaction with a rigid structure making for some very convoluted interactions that require a non-uniform resolution. At some point in time the foundation becomes a metric with which to compare the given solution to what it defined by the book to make sure that there is some uniformity even if it does stretch the boundaries that have been set.




First: I'm unfamiliar with either of the games you've mentioned, I'm simply tossing out a hypothetical course of action that popped into my mind.

I'm in a position where I, as a player, know that there is imminent danger approaching and I am trying to get people to vacate the area. Due to the limitations imposed by the rules I am given only one course of action: Provoke. Does this mean it is impossible for me to convince a group of people to vacate by explaining the danger that is coming and asking them to leave? Instead I must find some way to provoke them to leave, which would require getting them upset with me so I can, in return, save them from danger?

You, as player, would say "I run around telling everyone 'get out of there! get to da choppa!'" or "I stand up on a table and loudly announce that everyone needs to listen to me, there's danger and we need to start vacating the area." -or whatever.

Then the GM tells you what skill you should use for that or what dice to roll, if any. Often the player will have some idea that their character has a skill or ability that should help them in certain situations, but it isn't necessary. The GM will know for sure, and tell you if any rules apply to what your character is doing, and ask whether your character has a skill that applies if they don't know.

That is how RPG interactions are supposed to work, most of the time. The players are immersed in the world/fiction and say what their characters are doing. The GM tells them what happens as a result of their actions and tells them what mechanics get engaged when that's necessary. It's not like a computer game, where nothing happens without engaging with the programming and the only outputs possible are those which are generated by algorithms in the code.

[DMThac0]

PBtA games are odd ducks in general, but this is the sort of thing I'd expect from them.

I'll have to delve into them to get a better understanding, I've pretty much only played D&D and Pathfinder. Thank you for the insight.


snip...

I appreciate the depth of your explanation, however, I may have misled you.

I am a 30+ year veteran of D&D, I am simply unfamiliar with PBtA games, specifically Masks and Apocalypse World that were mentioned in the post I quoted. I don't understand how they are adjudicated in comparison to D&D so I was looking for clarification in that regard. Again, thank you for the detailed explanation you gave on adjudicating actions in general.

[NichG]

From the GM side of things, I consider rules to be tools - and while they take the form of specifying things about the world, generally they're more about the players in the end. By writing down a rule, I'm telling the players a part of the world that they can compute without me, which in turn enables planning but also tends to attract lines of play.

So in terms of taking the rules seriously, when I do so it's specifically when someone else is relying on the fact I told them 'this rule is something you can rely on'. It's meaningless to worry about precisely following a rule in those cases where it isn't being used for planning or being relied on for expectations.

Another way to put it is, rules are lamp-posts in a dark landscape that let you know guarantees about particular routes, but the lit regions aren't all there is and there's also no reason to light up areas that no one bothers to go to. The existence of a circumstance does not in itself ask for there to be a rule for it.

[Koo Rehtorb]

First: I'm unfamiliar with either of the games you've mentioned, I'm simply tossing out a hypothetical course of action that popped into my mind.

I'm in a position where I, as a player, know that there is imminent danger approaching and I am trying to get people to vacate the area. Due to the limitations imposed by the rules I am given only one course of action: Provoke. Does this mean it is impossible for me to convince a group of people to vacate by explaining the danger that is coming and asking them to leave? Instead I must find some way to provoke them to leave, which would require getting them upset with me so I can, in return, save them from danger?

So here's an actual example from play. One of the PC's mother was extremely overprotective of him. She'd recently gotten herself badly injured trying to defend him from something.

And then a situation arose a few days later in which the PC had a big world saving job to do. And of course mom wanted to step in and help. She was explicitly in no shape to be able to do anything whatsoever to effectively help at the moment, and would in fact just be a burden on him. The PC does not have the ability to take her aside and make a calm rational argument about how it's in both their best interests for her to step aside and let him work, because he didn't have that move yet. So instead what he had to fall back on was looking at her dismissively and saying something to the effect of "Go home, mom. I can't use you." Which, yes, was something that hurt her feelings and strained their relationship. But it also avoided getting her killed. And then maybe later in the game he learns a better way to deal with situations like that.

Edit for additional clarity - He first tried describing his character taking the calm reasoned approach. "Look mom, you're hurt. Maybe it'd be better if you sat this one out this time so you can get your strength back. I don't want to have to worry about you getting hurt while I'm trying to focus." to which I didn't invoke a roll at all and just described her continuing to be aggressively in denial about her ability to contribute. "Don't be silly, honey. I'll be fine. You just worry about doing your bit." It was only when he upped the ante that I gave him the chance to roll something.

[MeimuHakurei]

+1 this. This states succinctly what I came here to say.

RPGs are, at their base, a framework of rules for understanding and interacting with the environment, for planning and predictability; mess with that, and there is no point to intelligence, sentience, planning, thinking.

However, the advantage of an RPG over a board game or video game is the ability of the human components to create an "outside the box", to allow players to attempt things not explicitly covered by the rules.

I take the rules very seriously. And I let the players try whatever they want.

Shouldn't everyone? :smallamused:

Many RPG systems actually talk about the use of actions with no explicitly covered mechanic, often with a catch-all mechanic designed to broadly encompass (un-)favorable situations (circumstance bonuses for 3.PF, A/D for 5e etc.). So if actions outside the rules are already covered by the handbook, aren't you following the rules by taking the guidelines the game gives you to heart?

There's also another part in the 3.5 DMG I wholeheartedly agree with: That you shouldn't take homebrewing/houseruling lightly. Many game systems are carefully thought out in several areas and a small change can have a huge impact, often in a direction that is not desired (even the heavy imbalances in 3.PF are pointed out with evidence rather than gut feeling). In general, when you make a change to the game, try to find the most game-/immersion-breaking things you can do with that or how else this could ruin your game, because those will help you even out your homebrew/houserule to accomplish what you intend it to.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One thing that I think gets overlooked in this discussion is the idea that the rules frequently delegate authority to individuals. They have to to allow open-ended play. So as @MeimuHakurei said, by "making things up", the DM is actually doing exactly what the system is asking them to do.

This is not Rule 0--there's no modification of the rules, only applying instructions to use their own judgement about things.

I strongly prefer systems that recognize this and make explicit allowances for it. I dislike systems that either believe they can lock down everything or that hide their core assumptions[1].

[1] core assumptions are the underlying principles that, if violated or meddled with, have strong knock-on effects. For 5e, those are things like "only roll if needed" and bounded accuracy. For PbtA, it's things like "fiction drives mechanics" and "GM doesn't roll dice."

[Rhedyn]

One thing that I think gets overlooked in this discussion is the idea that the rules frequently delegate authority to individuals. They have to to allow open-ended play. So as @MeimuHakurei said, by "making things up", the DM is actually doing exactly what the system is asking them to do.

This is not Rule 0--there's no modification of the rules, only applying instructions to use their own judgement about things.

I strongly prefer systems that recognize this and make explicit allowances for it. I dislike systems that either believe they can lock down everything or that hide their core assumptions[1].

[1] core assumptions are the underlying principles that, if violated or meddled with, have strong knock-on effects. For 5e, those are things like "only roll if needed" and bounded accuracy. For PbtA, it's things like "fiction drives mechanics" and "GM doesn't roll dice."
Eh, I feel like systems can invoke rule zero to patch holes. This is normally done to simplify rules, but some systems feel it's value-added to shove GM calls into rules.

I don't, but it's a philosophical difference and has little to do with how serious rules are being treated. It does relate when a GM is of the "value-added" mindset so they insert GM calls when a system doesn't need them. This can be interpreted as not taking the rules seriously, which is a school of thought, "rule of cool", "the rules bend to me. I do not bend to the rules", etc. But some GMs do take rules seriously and also want to make "value added" calls. Those tend to gravitate towards systems where they are called to do so, rather than forcing their preference on systems that don't share that philosophy.

[Willie the Duck]

So I wonder what do other people think about this? Is RAW king at your table? Do you focus more on freeform actions and movement and just having fun? As a player how important is it for a GM to go by the book or do you like the adaptability more even if it doesnt always lead to consistency in rules or rulings? Wheres the line?

And do your preferences change based on the game?

My general answer is 'it depends.' It depends on what I am trying to achieve, on the rules being used, on whether I consider the ruleset of the game being played to be particularly vital to the play experience, on who I am playing with, and on what we mean by RAW.

There is a flavor of TTRPG play where the (or a) goal is to try to excel within a rules framework. If that's part of a gaming group's preferences, I feel it is important to respect that. Likewise, pulling the rug out from under your players is, to a greater or lesser degree, something of dirty pool (if they, by reading the rules, expected X, but you decided that the situation demands Y, some remedial communication might be needed).

More often than not, however, I tend to view the ruleset as a means to an end, and where they do not serve the end, they are jettisoned. Certainly their place within the rulebook does not make them sacrosanct (merely whether the players have legitimate reason to expect them).

Since, however, you brought up the term RAW, I thought I'd make a distinction. There are certain rules interactions where people of forums like this can endlessly parse the verbiage of the specific book text about how blah-ditty-blah interacts with wompa-lamma-do, throwing exception-based logic against each other until some consensus does or does not arise about what the ending RAW interpretation is actually correct. Oftentimes these end up appearing, at least to me, to be accidental results, and there was no specific reason that the end result is that way except the very minute interaction of the words (let's say the outcome lands one way versus the other because the author used a 'if X, then Y' statement instead of a 'when X;Y' statement, and that made all the difference). In those cases, those forum discussions are fun (sometimes), but I feel absolutely no compulsion to honor them in-game. Especially if it is something nonsensical like a falling mechanic which occasionally makes you end up falling upwards or something like that. That's a level of rules-adherence/reverence I only ever see in online discussions.

[sleepy hedgehog]

From a rulebook I only really look for a few things, setting info, a starting point for players, and a resolution mechanic.

So there are times where rules are more important:
* for the first session of a new system/campaign
* for a new group who isn't familiar with each other
* to provide a similar-ish starting point for everyone

After that first session I tend to relax them.
Especially on the GM's side.

[jayem]

The rules are there to enhance aspects of the game (including the right balance of randomness/predictability, character effects and fairness).
Breaching them has a real possibility of having negative effects on them.
However if the rules are interfering with fun/gameplay then that is bad

If/as the rules for fireball are focused on direct damage. If the in character, narratively consistent, strategic and balanced decision doesn't fall in this paradigm (e.g. to use as a flare) then it is worth having the conversation. Sometimes the rules should give (depending on as the duck says the style of play and the specific case), often verisimilitude should go (otherwise you'd scrap the combat mechanics)

[Jay R]

The problem with this discussion is that the phrasing of it assumes some things about rules that are not true. [Or at least not true for D&D from original (1974) to 3.5.]

Yes, I take the rules seriously. Here are some of the rules that I take seriously.


Dungeons and Dragons, The Underground and Wilderness Adventures, p. 36: "... everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it that way."

AD&D 1e, DMG, p. 9: "The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play."

AD&D 2E, DMG, p. 3: "At conventions, in letters, and over the phone, I'm often asked for the instant answer to a fine point of the game rules. More often than not, I come back with a question -- what do you feel is right? And the people asking the question discover that not only can they create an answer, but that their answer is as good as anyone else's. The rules are only guidelines."

D&D 3.5, DMG, p. 6: "Good players will always realize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook."

These are the actual rules as written. Many people claim to take the rules very seriously, and to stick to the rules exactly, when they really mean that they are playing their own homebrew in which they have thrown out these particular rules.

I will abide by each written rule most of the time. But I reserve the right to act on "certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play." I assume that I have "ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook." Because that's what RAW really means.

If a DM changes the rules in a bad way, with poor judgment, making an inferior game, I won't keep playing with that DM.
If a DM keeps a rule in a bad way, with poor judgment, making an inferior game, I won't keep playing with that DM.
In both cases, the problem is poor judgment, not whether he followed or changed a specific written rule.

If a DM changes the rules in a supportive way, with good judgment, making the game work well, I will keep playing with that DM.
If a DM keeps a rule in a supportive way, with good judgment, making the game work well, I will keep playing with that DM.
In both cases, the joy is good judgment, not whether he followed or changed a written rule.

There are DMs who use this fact about the rules to play a poor game. This is a very bad thing. If a player made a reasonable tactical decision based on a written rule, and what he did doesn't work due to DM arbitrariness, then that's a bad DM making a bad game.

There are DMs to use this fact about the rules to make a great game. This isn't "play[ing] Calvinball" or "only end[ing] up summarily discarding all the rules". Those are insulting phrases intended to sneer at great DMs who make great games by using the complete set of rules, rather than a truncated set that excludes the rule about DM judgment calls about specific rules.

[geppetto]

What's the point of even looking at a game system, let alone buying it, if you only end up summarily discarding all the rules and make it all up yourself anyways?

You've never played poker with wild cards? Or made your own map on a wargame? Modded a computer game? Go ask the modding community for Fallout or skyrim. People take a base game and modify it slightly to be more to their liking all the time.

People change rules for a slightly different experience all the time with games. The point is that someone else has done most of the work so instead of having to build an entire system from scratch you can just customize it to what you want.


Maybe I should give an example of what I mean. 2 cases, both are from 3X/PF because thats the crunchier one I play where rules try to codify more actions.

1. Diplomacy. Like a lot of people I dont like the skill. Just flat out dont like it. So the way I work it is that if your actively arguing with someone, haggling, debating, whatever its an opposed diplomacy check. Winner can make a reasonable influence on the loser and wont budge themselves. Or if your just trying to make a good impression on someone, give a speech, things of that nature its a simple roll, no attitude chart, if you roll really well they feel more positive towards you but you cannot automatically make them do something. No diplomancers in my game.

2. Improvised combat. First thing that comes to mind is a time I had a player want to try a moonsault off a inn roof onto an escaping bad guy on a horse. Not what i expected but okay. We decide real quick he wants to do damage and knock the guy off of the horse without killing himself, naturally.

Rules-wise I figure this could be a charge attack, bullrush feat, improved unarmed combat feat type thing. Problem is he doesnt have those feats. Do I tell him "sorry no feats, no chance. Maybe in a few levels". Of course not. Thats lame. So I said he has to roll athletics for the distance and an attack roll to land on the guy. He's wearing armor so we call him a hard object and say he's doing 2d8 per 10 feet fallen (because risk should carry reward) but even on a hit he takes falling damage too (lessened, i use modified falling damage). Naturally on a miss he takes full falling damage and winds up flat on his face in the dirt. Also the horse will take half damage on a hit.

took less time to think of it then to type it out, probably didnt follow the rules system much for that improvised attack, but after a successful couple of rolls there was a flattened bad guy, an unconscious PC and a fun story they all brought up for months. Once the players saw they could try things that were more outside of the box they started happening several times a combat. Makes everything much more fluid and fun in combat.

[geppetto]

The problem with this discussion is that the phrasing of it assumes some things about rules that are not true. [Or at least not true for D&D from original (1974) to 3.5.]

Yes, I take the rules seriously. Here are some of the rules that I take seriously.


Dungeons and Dragons, The Underground and Wilderness Adventures, p. 36: "... everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it that way."

AD&D 1e, DMG, p. 9: "The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play."

AD&D 2E, DMG, p. 3: "At conventions, in letters, and over the phone, I'm often asked for the instant answer to a fine point of the game rules. More often than not, I come back with a question -- what do you feel is right? And the people asking the question discover that not only can they create an answer, but that their answer is as good as anyone else's. The rules are only guidelines."

D&D 3.5, DMG, p. 6: "Good players will always realize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook."

These are the actual rules as written. Many people claim to take the rules very seriously, and to stick to the rules exactly, when they really mean that they are playing their own homebrew in which they have thrown out these particular rules.

I will abide by each written rule most of the time. But I reserve the right to act on "certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play." I assume that I have "ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook." Because that's what RAW really means.

If a DM changes the rules in a bad way, with poor judgment, making an inferior game, I won't keep playing with that DM.
If a DM keeps a rule in a bad way, with poor judgment, making an inferior game, I won't keep playing with that DM.
In both cases, the problem is poor judgment, not whether he followed or changed a specific written rule.

If a DM changes the rules in a supportive way, with good judgment, making the game work well, I will keep playing with that DM.
If a DM keeps a rule in a supportive way, with good judgment, making the game work well, I will keep playing with that DM.
In both cases, the joy is good judgment, not whether he followed or changed a written rule.

There are DMs who use this fact about the rules to play a poor game. This is a very bad thing. If a player made a reasonable tactical decision based on a written rule, and what he did doesn't work due to DM arbitrariness, then that's a bad DM making a bad game.

There are DMs to use this fact about the rules to make a great game. This isn't "play[ing] Calvinball" or "only end[ing] up summarily discarding all the rules". Those are insulting phrases intended to sneer at great DMs who make great games by using the complete set of rules, rather than a truncated set that excludes the rule about DM judgment calls about specific rules.

Thats pretty much how I look at it. Maybe its just the last 10 or 15 years the discussion community and the newer systems seem to discourage this type of thinking in favor of a slavish devotion to whatever is written down in the books, or even worse whatever the newest optional supplement says.

If you were a new GM and were looking to forums for advice you could be forgiven for thinking that you were always doing it wrong to change or customize something. Its been interesting to see how many people dont actually take that view though.

[Koo Rehtorb]

"Make it up yourself. Whatever." is not game design. It's a lazy band-aid solution for poor game design.

[Willie the Duck]

"Make it up yourself. Whatever." is not game design. It's a lazy band-aid solution for poor game design.

That is a legitimate point to make in a critique of an existing ruleset one finds wanting. As a statement about individual adherence towards a ruleset, it's really not relevant. If someone wants a game that works perfectly for their needs right out of the box, I can appreciate that as a goal. Mind you, I don't find having that as a design goal has actually made designers actually make better games, but as a purely theoretical design goal it's fine*. However, it really doesn't address the topic of whether gamers should show loyalty through adherence to game rules one way or the other.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That is a legitimate point to make in a critique of an existing ruleset one finds wanting. As a statement about individual adherence towards a ruleset, it's really not relevant. If someone wants a game that works perfectly for their needs right out of the box, I can appreciate that as a goal. Mind you, I don't find having that as a design goal has actually made designers actually make better games, but as a purely theoretical design goal it's fine*. However, it really doesn't address the topic of whether gamers should show loyalty through adherence to game rules one way or the other.

It's also a huge straw-man. People are saying that the rules give you a starting point, from which you fine-tune or tinker to meet the needs and wants of the table. That the table has higher priority than anything else. Not "make it up lol" or anything even remotely matching that description.

There are binding rules. They just don't necessarily have anything to do with what's written. Written words are never binding unless the people choose to be bound or there is an outside enforcement power. Sticking to RAW out of some sense of obligation, even when it's not meeting the needs of the group, is anti-fun. It's Lawful Stupid behavior.

[Rhedyn]

It's also a huge straw-man. People are saying that the rules give you a starting point, from which you fine-tune or tinker to meet the needs and wants of the table. That the table has higher priority than anything else. Not "make it up lol" or anything even remotely matching that description.

There are binding rules. They just don't necessarily have anything to do with what's written. Written words are never binding unless the people choose to be bound or there is an outside enforcement power. Sticking to RAW out of some sense of obligation, even when it's not meeting the needs of the group, is anti-fun. It's Lawful Stupid behavior.
Yeah but if someone is playing D&D 5e and only D&D 5e while tinkering with the rules a lot, I suspect it's more they don't want to learn a better fitting system or can't find a group for anything but D&D 5e.

When someone says, "the rules are a starting point" it's implied they found a good starting point first. When in all likelihood, their starting point is "most poplar RPG" and "fine-tuning" is "fitting popular square peg into round hole". IMHO if you aren't playing D&D fantasy, then 5e is a poor starting point.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah but if someone is playing D&D 5e and only D&D 5e while tinkering with the rules a lot, I suspect it's more they don't want to learn a better fitting system or can't find a group for anything but D&D 5e.

When someone says, "the rules are a starting point" it's implied they found a good starting point first. When in all likelihood, their starting point is "most poplar RPG" and "fine-tuning" is "fitting popular square peg into round hole". IMHO if you aren't playing D&D fantasy, then 5e is a poor starting point.

I agree that if you're making huge changes to the central mechanics, or using it for a genre (either setting or style) that doesn't fit the fundamental assumptions of the system, you're better off starting with a different system.

But "good starting point" is relative to the needs of the person. Everyone's needs are different--there is no "one true system." For me, personally, the games I want to play fit 5e D&D's MO quite well. No round holes/square pegs. If it weren't so, I'd have changed systems.

But none of this says that rule compliance is an inherent good. It's a collateral good, conditional on the rules being a good starting point for your particular needs. Taking the rules "seriously" isn't something to care about one way or the other. And the RAW-worship that happens on these forums is, in my very firm opinion, a toxic thing.

[Willie the Duck]

Can we not turn this into another evaluation of 5e? This isn't even supposed to be a D&D-specific topic. We have so many thread that do this already.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Can we not turn this into another evaluation of 5e? This isn't even supposed to be a D&D-specific topic. We have so many thread that do this already.

Agreed. I've tried to keep my comments more generic, because the issue is much wider than specific editions of D&D (or D&D entirely).

The bigger questions underlying this are

What is the nature and purpose of the "rules" for a TTRPG (as compared to a board game or other games)? Are the written text of the rules a binding contract? How important is inter-table consistency? How important is intra-table (but inter-temporal) consistency?

All of these can have multiple answers for different people in different circumstances.

[Rhedyn]

I agree that if you're making huge changes to the central mechanics, or using it for a genre (either setting or style) that doesn't fit the fundamental assumptions of the system, you're better off starting with a different system.

But "good starting point" is relative to the needs of the person. Everyone's needs are different--there is no "one true system." For me, personally, the games I want to play fit 5e D&D's MO quite well. No round holes/square pegs. If it weren't so, I'd have changed systems.

But none of this says that rule compliance is an inherent good. It's a collateral good, conditional on the rules being a good starting point for your particular needs. Taking the rules "seriously" isn't something to care about one way or the other. And the RAW-worship that happens on these forums is, in my very firm opinion, a toxic thing.
I can agree with "no one true system", even the system I prefer radically changes depending on which supplements used.

As to the moral nature of "rules compliance", I am inclined to agree with other posters, "why buy the game if you aren't going to use the rules?".

And I think there is a difference between, "I have basically 3rd-party developed formal house rules that are consistent, clear, and well thought-out that I use at my table" vs "Rule-of-cool, if the rules get in the way of the story I want then we ignore them".

Most RPG devs do it part time as a hobby, if you play RPGs long enough, you are qualified to make up rules, but you can still take those rules seriously. It's when whatever rules set you are using gets regularly ignored that the contention of this thread seems to be.

[2D8HP]

The problem with this discussion is that the phrasing of it assumes some things about rules that are not true. [Or at least not true for D&D from original (1974) to 3.5.]

Yes, I take the rules seriously. Here are some of the rules that I take seriously.


Dungeons and Dragons, The Underground and Wilderness Adventures, p. 36: "... everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it that way."

AD&D 1e, DMG, p. 9: "The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play."

AD&D 2E, DMG, p. 3: "At conventions, in letters, and over the phone, I'm often asked for the instant answer to a fine point of the game rules. More often than not, I come back with a question -- what do you feel is right? And the people asking the question discover that not only can they create an answer, but that their answer is as good as anyone else's. The rules are only guidelines."

D&D 3.5, DMG, p. 6: "Good players will always realize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook."[.....]


The tradition continues:
D&D 5e DMG, p. 263:: "...As the Dungeon Master, You aren't limited by the rules in the Player's Handbook, the guidelines in this book, or the selection of monsters in the Monster Manual..."

(My 4e books are on too high of a shelf to quote but I strongly suspect something similar).


Can we not turn this into another evaluation of 5e? This isn't even supposed to be a D&D-specific topic. We have so many thread that do this already.


Awww...

Okay, a reason that I prefer to DM using '77 bluebook Basic D&D (supplemented a little bit) is it frees me to make up instead of look up

[Jay R]

"Make it up yourself. Whatever." is not game design. It's a lazy band-aid solution for poor game design.

And nobody in this thread has suggested it.

I did not myself make up "Good players will always realize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook." It's in the rules. If you play D&D 3.5e without this then you are not playing the rules as written.

Besides, that quote does not justify "Make it up yourself. Whatever." The next line in that paragraph states: "Good DMs know not to change or overturn a published rule without a good, logical justification so that the players don't rebel."

That simply isn't the same thing as "Make it up yourself. Whatever." It's much more nuanced, and is in fact a suggestion to use very careful judgment.

Please stop pretending that the people who offer carefully written support of applying DM judgment in rare situations are mindlessly suggesting "Make it up yourself. Whatever." It's not true, it's not fair, and it doesn't further the discussion in any useful way.

I specifically wrote, "If a DM changes the rules in a bad way, with poor judgment, making an inferior game, I won't keep playing with that DM." That is not consistent with your sneer of "Make it up yourself. Whatever."

You have even agreed with the basic premise, when you wrote, "There is some leeway for rules that are badly written and don't make sense, of course." You are yourself willing to apply your judgment to the rules. You just want to disapprove of anybody whose judgment, at a specific moment knowing all the facts, doesn't match what you think it should be in general, without all the facts of that game and that situation.

I have no interest in playing with a DM who ignores the requirement not to change or overturn a published rule without a good justification. That approach is just as oversimplistic as the equal and opposite notion of never applying DM judgment to the rules.

And in fact, we both agree that the DM must occasionally apply judgment to the rules. We agree that it should be a rare occurrence.

As near as I can tell, the only points I disagree with you on are:
1. whether your judgment or mine should be applied to the games I'm running,
2. whether you or my players should judge my DMing judgment, and
3. whether it furthers the discussion to use silly exaggerations like "you might as well be playing Calvinball" or "Make it up yourself. Whatever."

Gettng back to the main point: I take all the rules seriously, including the rule allowing DM judgment to supersede something in the rulebooks, and the rule saying not to change or overturn a published rule without a good, logical justification.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I can agree with "no one true system", even the system I prefer radically changes depending on which supplements used.

As to the moral nature of "rules compliance", I am inclined to agree with other posters, "why buy the game if you aren't going to use the rules?".

And I think their is a difference between, "I have basically 3rd-party developed formal house rules that are consistent, clear, and well thought-out that I use at my table" vs "Rule-of-cool, if the rules get in the way of the story I want then we ignore them".

Most RPG devs do it part time as a hobby, if you play RPGs long enough, you are qualified to make up rules, but you can still take those rules seriously. It's when whatever rules set you are using gets regularly ignored that the contention of this thread seems to be.

Any rule set regardless of the quality will have only a limited range of things it covers. That's inherent in the nature of the beast. So "going beyond" the rules will happen no matter what. These are not house-rules or "disregarding" the rules.

I look to rule sets for the resolution mechanics and for the building blocks. How I put those together is up to me. Systems that demand certain constructions (like many modern LEGO sets that are beautiful...but single-purpose) are less interesting to me. This also means that I pay attention to and follow carefully resolution mechanics. But the fiction is the most important thing. If the fiction demands that something happen (or not), then any mechanical rules that say otherwise must be discarded in that instance, even if they're useful elsewhere and else-when. And that has to happen on a case by case basis.

I, personally, don't see the need to have formalized, written rules for everything. Consistency (either inter-table or inter-temporal) only matters if the situations they apply to reoccur exactly. In most cases, the situations don't reoccur exactly enough for consistency to be warranted. Speed of resolution is way more important to me than consistency. Tables of fixed details (like DCs for specific cases), for me, are worse than useless. They're constraining and require lots of time to resolve. They're also false consistency--it assumes that any "iron door" is just like any other "iron door".

[Jay R]

As to the moral nature of "rules compliance", I am inclined to agree with other posters, "why buy the game if you aren't going to use the rules?".

For the same reason I bought a car, even though I sometimes walk.
For the same reason my home has an air conditioner, even though I don't use it in early March.
For the same reason I bought a hammer, when some of the fasteners I use are screws, not nails.
For the same reason I have a TV remote, even though it has some buttons I never use.
For the same reason I own a dictionary, even though I won't read every definition.

There are possibilities between 0% and 100%.

-------------------

Or, if you prefer:

I agree. Why would you buy a DMG if you aren't going to use the rule in it that says the DM has authority over the rules?

[Rhedyn]

Any rule set regardless of the quality will have only a limited range of things it covers. That's inherent in the nature of the beast. So "going beyond" the rules will happen no matter what. These are not house-rules or "disregarding" the rules.

I look to rule sets for the resolution mechanics and for the building blocks. How I put those together is up to me. Systems that demand certain constructions (like many modern LEGO sets that are beautiful...but single-purpose) are less interesting to me. This also means that I pay attention to and follow carefully resolution mechanics. But the fiction is the most important thing. If the fiction demands that something happen (or not), then any mechanical rules that say otherwise must be discarded in that instance, even if they're useful elsewhere and else-when. And that has to happen on a case by case basis.

I, personally, don't see the need to have formalized, written rules for everything. Consistency (either inter-table or inter-temporal) only matters if the situations they apply to reoccur exactly. In most cases, the situations don't reoccur exactly enough for consistency to be warranted. Speed of resolution is way more important to me than consistency. Tables of fixed details (like DCs for specific cases), for me, are worse than useless. They're constraining and require lots of time to resolve. They're also false consistency--it assumes that any "iron door" is just like any other "iron door".

I consider the bolded part different than the rest of your post. I think this is where we run into "do you take the rules seriously?"

For example, a hero attempting to shove a nigh invulnerable werewolf over the edge of a boat so that the party can escape from it is "cool". In 3.5 D&D, if he doesn't have the right feat-chain or build, he can't do that. In 5e, if he rolls low it fails. In another system he might make an opposed attribute check and spend meta-luck currency to increase the chance of success.
If the 3.5 DM just let's the tactic work regardless of rules, or the 5e DM hands out advantage merely because the shoving tactic seems cool to them (rather than the ad-hoc tactical reason), or any other system where the out come of the rules/dice is altered to make the "cool" idea work, then you aren't taking the rules seriously.

I am of the philosophy that the rules should be taken seriously, wherever their source. If rules aren't working for your group, change them so that they will. But I disagree with ignoring the rules whenever the fiction "demands" something else.Your rules can take into account the fiction and I believe it is better for table if you evolving table-specific rules-set remains consistent.

[DMThac0]

I want to point out that, and unfortunately I'm falling back on the D&D wagon only because that's the one I'm most familiar with, when it comes to rules adherence the Devs have even broken from and completely dismissed "Rules as written" in front of large studio audiences:

Crawford completely removed an entire story line/character arc from a module that was being aired because he didn't like the way it was written and felt it was a better game without it.

If we are to adhere to the "rules" then wouldn't it be exampled by one of the game developers rather than the game developers changing things to fit what they feel would make a better game in that moment?

[Eldan]

We have a rule at our table. Once per session, anyone may call "Show of hands, is this stupid?" and if a majority of hands go up, we'll write a new house rule.

[Rhedyn]

If we are to adhere to the "rules" then wouldn't it be exampled by one of the game developers rather than the game developers changing things to fit what they feel would make a better game in that moment?

That would be "appeal to authority". What the game devs of the 'The World's most Popular RPG' do does not govern what "should" be done by virtue of them doing it nor does it prove the opposite (fallacy fallacy).

Buuut for 5e, it is meant to be ran how ever you feel D&D should be ran. Ideally the DM is consistent and doesn't change that vision from moment to moment. I don't think we are arguing about the source of rules here, just whether following them at the table should be done.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I did not myself make up "Good players will always realize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superseding something in a rulebook." It's in the rules. If you play D&D 3.5e without this then you are not playing the rules as written.

Yes. And this is a lazy band-aid solution for a notoriously poorly written game. It may well be true that people who play D&D 3.5 have an actual need to ignore the rules sometimes because the rules of that particular system produce nonsense game breaking results at times. I tend to play games that work, as written, 100% of the time, so this isn't an issue for me. I object to the culture that says the GM having to have the power to go outside the rules of the game is a good thing. It may be a necessary thing, for some systems, but it's a necessary evil.

I'm sure you manage to do good things with these systems. This is because you're probably a good GM that manages to cover well for the system's flaws, rather than because the system is well designed.

[Theoboldi]

I myself have never seen the rules of roleplaying games as more than a framework or starting point. To paraphrase one of my favorite game designers, Kevin Crawford, me and the people at the table with me are going to be the best judges of which rules work for us and what we want our game to look like. Not some game designer who is creating his own idea of a fun game for as broad of an audience as possible.

That's why I generally prefer games that have somewhat looser rules and can support heavy modification over ones that require you to follow the rules closely but give you a specific and planned-out experience in return.

That is not to say my games are a free-for-all, or that I just throw the rules out wherever I want to. At least, not without everyone at the table agreeing. I just don't consider them particularly important beyond being a convenient tool.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For the same reason I bought a car, even though I sometimes walk.
For the same reason my home has an air conditioner, even though I don't use it in early March.
For the same reason I bought a hammer, when some of the fasteners I use are screws, not nails.
For the same reason I have a TV remote, even though it has some buttons I never use.
For the same reason I own a dictionary, even though I won't read every definition.

There are possibilities between 0% and 100%.

-------------------

Or, if you prefer:

I agree. Why would you buy a DMG if you aren't going to use the rule in it that says the DM has authority over the rules?

I have bunches of rule books that meet some or most of the following criteria--
* They are for systems I will never run
* They are for settings I will never use
* They contain lots and lots of content I will never see directly in use.

Why did I buy them then? For inspiration. For mechanics, items, monsters, etc. that I can borrow and convert. For themes. For advice that I can translate. For philosophy. For ART, in many cases. For maps.

Mechanics, to me, are among the least important parts of a system, and the more detailed the mechanic the less meaningful it is. Broad resolution mechanics (d20 + MOD vs TN, for example, or advantage/disadvantage) are useful. "The TN for doing X under Y conditions is Z" is not useful to me. The important parts are the themes, the patterns, the ideas for adventures it sparks. There are a lot of mechanically beautiful, totally soulless games out there. Where all the effort was spent polishing the statistical distributions until they gleamed, but none was put into making it be able to do its real job--serving as an interface/translation layer between the shared fictional world and the players.

[DMThac0]

That would be "appeal to authority". What the game devs of the 'The World's most Popular RPG' do does not govern what "should" be done by virtue of them doing it nor does it prove the opposite (fallacy fallacy).

Buuut for 5e, it is meant to be ran how ever you feel D&D should be ran. Ideally the DM is consistent and doesn't change that vision from moment to moment. I don't think we are arguing about the source of rules here, just whether following them at the table should be done.

Well, fallacy fallacy or not, it does help display that each DM/GM is going to run their games according to their whims and desires at no serious detriment to the game, in most cases.

I would agree that the rules placed forth by the books are necessary when beginning to play a game. However, in many of the TTRPGs that I have had shown to me, I have watched them take those rules and bend them, sometimes to extremes. I have watched the GMs omit rules due to their misunderstanding, dislike, or lack of knowledge, and it has not caused a game to fail or fall apart. I have watched GMs adhere to the rules like gospel and the games were amazing. Conversely I have watched both approaches fail due to various reasons. Rules adherence does not seem to be a primary factor in these games. It seems to be a consensus by the table as to how close they want to keep to the core rules.

[JoeJ]

Yes. And this is a lazy band-aid solution for a notoriously poorly written game. It may well be true that people who play D&D 3.5 have an actual need to ignore the rules sometimes because the rules of that particular system produce nonsense game breaking results at times. I tend to play games that work, as written, 100% of the time, so this isn't an issue for me. I object to the culture that says the GM having to have the power to go outside the rules of the game is a good thing. It may be a necessary thing, for some systems, but it's a necessary evil.

I'm sure you manage to do good things with these systems. This is because you're probably a good GM that manages to cover well for the system's flaws, rather than because the system is well designed.

That's pretty amazing. What game did you find that works as written 100% of the time? I've never seen, or even heard of one that does that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's pretty amazing. What game did you find that works as written 100% of the time? I've never seen, or even heard of one that does that.

Lots of things work that way...if you overlook all the times when they don't. Or when the system only gives broad principles and resolution mechanics but has you create all the details (ie FATE). It seems to me that you have somewhat (although not exactly) a "choose 2" scenario:

1. High level of mechanical detail.
2. Open to multiple settings and play-styles
3. Strict rules compliance without significant in-play adjustments.

Choose at most any two (safely). FATE gives up #1 to allow #2 and #3 to apply whole-heartedly, as do many "lighter" systems. 3e D&D pretends to hit all 3, but in practice the second clause of #3 fails miserably. 5e D&D doesn't even try for #3, and is much lighter on #1 than 3e D&D, although it's not light by any external measure. 4e D&D failed the "multiple play-styles" part of #2, and still required significant in-play judgement calls.

[JoeJ]

Lots of things work that way...if you overlook all the times when they don't. Or when the system only gives broad principles and resolution mechanics but has you create all the details (ie FATE). It seems to me that you have somewhat (although not exactly) a "choose 2" scenario:

1. High level of mechanical detail.
2. Open to multiple settings and play-styles
3. Strict rules compliance without significant in-play adjustments.

Choose at most any two (safely). FATE gives up #1 to allow #2 and #3 to apply whole-heartedly, as do many "lighter" systems. 3e D&D pretends to hit all 3, but in practice the second clause of #3 fails miserably. 5e D&D doesn't even try for #3, and is much lighter on #1 than 3e D&D, although it's not light by any external measure. 4e D&D failed the "multiple play-styles" part of #2, and still required significant in-play judgement calls.

Fate isn't really a game so much as a toolkit that you can use to build a game. You have to adapt it to whatever setting you're using, and decide which of several methods you're going to use to implement whatever cool things you're using, such as magic, psi, airplanes, structure fires, etc. It's not hard to do, and there are lots and lots of worked examples, but it intentionally requires the GM to make some decisions about what the rules are going to be.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Fate isn't really a game so much as a toolkit that you can use to build a game. You have to adapt it to whatever setting you're using, and decide which of several methods you're going to use to implement whatever cool things you're using, such as magic, psi, airplanes, structure fires, etc. It's not hard to do, and there are lots and lots of worked examples, but it intentionally requires the GM to make some decisions about what the rules are going to be.

So it mainly gives you meta-rules (rules about what the rules should look like), but then leaves the implementation up to the GM. This allows you to be fully rules-compliant and have it still work all the times, but it means that two different "FATE" games will play very very differently from a mechanical perspective.

It's about levels of detail. If you want a broadly capable game, you have to either go modular (GURPS, which still has very strong assumptions about certain things) or you have to go broad-strokes/meta-rule style.

[Rhedyn]

There are a lot of mechanically beautiful, totally soulless games out there. Where all the effort was spent polishing the statistical distributions until they gleamed, but none was put into making it be able to do its real job--serving as an interface/translation layer between the shared fictional world and the players.An unexpected but welcomed attack on Starfinder and PF2e :P


It's about levels of detail. If you want a broadly capable game, you have to either go modular (GURPS, which still has very strong assumptions about certain things) or you have to go broad-strokes/meta-rule style.
Nah, neither of those are systems. Games like Savage Worlds or Cypher System tend to be actual systems while in games like GURPS 4e, the devs throw a bunch of tools at you and tell you to build it yourself. While in games like FATE/Fudge (I've read Fudge not FATE), the devs talk about how to make a game, work through some examples, and then have you take a go at making the toolkit to make your game.

Meanwhile the midcrunch systems tend to have various setting books that either append to a core system to make it setting specific or present a shared invisible toolkit as something cohesive.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Nah, neither of those are systems. Games like Savage Worlds or Cypher System tend to be actual systems while in games like GURPS 4e, the devs throw a bunch of tools at you and tell you to build it yourself. While in games like FATE/Fudge (I've read Fudge not FATE), the devs talk about how to make a game, work through some examples, and then have you take a go at making the toolkit to make your game.

Meanwhile the midcrunch systems tend to have various setting books that either append to a core system to make it setting specific or present a shared invisible toolkit as something cohesive.

I read Savage Worlds. It makes very specific assumptions about what's wanted--things that work for a tiny fraction of all games. So you end up failing my criteria #2. Which is totally fine. But a long way from being universal. And no, if I had to play SW, I'd end up house-ruling it up the wazoo and leaving out huge chunks (and adding in other chunks), because lots of things about it bug me strongly. But this is not the SW forum, so I'll leave it at that.

To each their own.

The point about either going broad or deep still stands. You can choose a point somewhere in the middle, but there are always tradeoffs in either direction. That's a fact of human nature and what is playable, not about quality of design.

[JoeJ]

So it mainly gives you meta-rules (rules about what the rules should look like), but then leaves the implementation up to the GM. This allows you to be fully rules-compliant and have it still work all the times, but it means that two different "FATE" games will play very very differently from a mechanical perspective.

It's about levels of detail. If you want a broadly capable game, you have to either go modular (GURPS, which still has very strong assumptions about certain things) or you have to go broad-strokes/meta-rule style.

Meta-rules is a good way of putting it. And I would call GURPS meta-rules as well; one of the absolute requirements for any GURPS game is for the GM to decide which rules are in use, and which advantages/disadvantages are allowed.

[Rhedyn]

I read Savage Worlds. It makes very specific assumptions about what's wanted--things that work for a tiny fraction of all games. So you end up failing my criteria #2. Which is totally fine. But a long way from being universal. And no, if I had to play SW, I'd end up house-ruling it up the wazoo and leaving out huge chunks (and adding in other chunks), because lots of things about it bug me strongly. But this is not the SW forum, so I'll leave it at that.

To each their own.

The point about either going broad or deep still stands. You can choose a point somewhere in the middle, but there are always tradeoffs in either direction. That's a fact of human nature and what is playable, not about quality of design.You admittedly don't like the system that much, so I cannot expect that you have dug very far into supplemental material (or even the current most recent edition). You'll have to just trust me when I say that things like Saga of the Goblin Horde, Nova Praxis, and Savage Rifts all change the game in very different directions than what something like a Corebook only inspired game is going to offer.

Of your "pick 2 or 3" list, I would say Savage Worlds would gives up a bit on each one. It's not mechanically exhaustive like GURPS, but appears to some people as really detailed. It's very focused on stories that "would make for a good movie or TV show" which is really broad, but not universal. The rules are abstract, so they will serve you best when apply rules where they fit the best, a strict D&D 3.5 RAW approach will cause endless frustrations.

I don't agree that a rules-set should ever require in-play adjustments. Rule-gaps are fine. The rules requiring changes in the middle of play to be workable are bad.
I guess an example of that is "Monster Y does X damage, unless that would kill a player then it will do Z damage". If you are doing that all the time and that playstyle is working for your group, then you have the wrong system. (of course for some groups the style only works because the players don't realize that things are being fudge, but that gets into the morality of lying to your players to make an RPG system work for your table)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Meta-rules is a good way of putting it. And I would call GURPS meta-rules as well; one of the absolute requirements for any GURPS game is for the GM to decide which rules are in use, and which advantages/disadvantages are allowed.

GURPS has both meta-rules and "concrete" mechanics. One gives information to GMs about what portions play well together; the other gives specific mechanics for specific outcomes. But yes, you're not supposed to use everything.

That's different than FATE (which is much less of a toolkit than Fudge, from which it sprang), for which the main rules are meta rules. Rules about how to invoke aspects, fate points, abstract, disconnected mechanics that apply to almost any possible interaction (but lack granular details).

So FATE gives you a basic framework but expects you to design and hang your own mechanics on top of it, including hacking at the framework to make things fit. GURPS gives you both a modular framework and a huge supply of modules designed to slot in (with compatibility rules to keep the chaos to a minimum).

They're accomplishing the same basic task (providing a way to build highly-varied worlds and games within the same overall frame) very differently, and it shows. They also have completely different basic world-views (GURPS being notoriously gritty and FATE being notoriously cinematic, among others), but that's separate.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't agree that a rules-set should ever require in-play adjustments. Rule-gaps are fine. The rules requiring changes in the middle of play to be workable are bad.
I guess an example of that is "Monster Y does X damage, unless that would kill a player then it will do Z damage". If you are doing that all the time and that playstyle is working for your group, then you have the wrong system. (of course for some groups the style only works because the players don't realize that things are being fudge, but that gets into the morality of lying to your players to make an RPG system work for your table)

Defining "workable" in the abstract is meaningless. There are rules that work 90% of the time...but not 100%. Cases where the "general case" breaks the fiction in this one particular case. In those cases, I'm totally fine with throwing out the rule for that case. Or rules that work for 90% of parties, but not for this particular one. This doesn't make the rule bad, just not universal. And in my experience, there are no meaningful, universal TTRPG rules. Everything has its place and region of applicability.

[Rhedyn]

Defining "workable" in the abstract is meaningless. There are rules that work 90% of the time...but not 100%. Cases where the "general case" breaks the fiction in this one particular case. In those cases, I'm totally fine with throwing out the rule for that case. Or rules that work for 90% of parties, but not for this particular one. This doesn't make the rule bad, just not universal. And in my experience, there are no meaningful, universal TTRPG rules. Everything has its place and region of applicability.
You can design rules such that they conver the 90% well but not the 10% at all.

I vastly prefer that than the rules covering 90% well but 10% wrong. That's the kind of rule that should be changed.

Aside: Fudge is a 100% universal. No where close to my favorite system though.

[Jay R]

Everything you've written is based on the false claim that following the rule you don't like is going outside the rules.

That false claim isn't even crucial to your point. You prefer a system that will handle everything, rather than a system that trusts the DM's judgment. A good case can be made for that preference, and it doesn't require any falsehoods to back it up.

If you stopped claiming that following the rule you don't like is going outside the rules, we could have a great talk about game design.

But as long as you keep maintaining this falsehood, all I can do is keep correcting you on the facts.

I'm serious -- try it. Build the case for the kind of game you like, without claiming that people following the rules of D&D are going outside the rules. They aren't, and that false statement is getting in your way.


Yes. And this is a lazy band-aid solution for a notoriously poorly written game.

This is simply not true. Applying careful judgment is not lazy. It isn't a band-aid slapped onto a game after it was written -- it has been the concept the game was written around, all the way back to Dave Arneson's first game, before there were any written rules.


It may well be true that people who play D&D 3.5 have an actual need to ignore the rules sometimes because the rules of that particular system produce nonsense game breaking results at times.

Nonsense. They isn't ignoring the rules; it's part of the rules. Until you acknowledge that this is part of the rules, everything you say about D&D will be false.

If you had a bad experience with nonsense game breaking results from a DM who didn't fix issues when they came up, then those problems came because the DM refused to play the game as written.

I'm talking about playing the game as written. You are talking about refusing to play the game as written, producing nonsense game breaking results, and then blaming the rules because you refused to use the rule that would have prevented it.


I tend to play games that work, as written, 100% of the time, so this isn't an issue for me. I object to the culture that says the GM having to have the power to go outside the rules of the game is a good thing.

I don't go outside the rules of the game. I apply the rules of the game, including the rule you don't like, which is intended to prevent the results you don't like.


It may be a necessary thing, for some systems, but it's a necessary evil.

It's not an evil. It's a design that works fine. You don't like it? That's fine. But I do like it, because I play with competent DMs who use good judgment as the rules expect them to.

Following the rules is not going outside the rules.
Following the rules is not going outside the rules.
Following the rules is not going outside the rules.

Even if you don't like the rules.


I'm sure you manage to do good things with these systems. This is because you're probably a good GM that manages to cover well for the system's flaws, rather than because the system is well designed.

The system's "flaws" aren't flaws. The flaw comes in because you want to play without a crucial rule. That causes problems, so you blame the system. That's like disabling the brake on a car, and then blaming the manufacturer because the system didn't prevent an accident. The system would have prevented the accident if you had used the system.

The rules do not produce nonsense game breaking results. D&D does work, as written, 100% of the time. You just don't want to play it as it's written. The game as written expects unique situations to be handled by the person in charge of the session who knows the exact situation.

Your entire discussion here is based on the false assumption that "as written" means "without the written rule that Koo doesn't like". It's not true. "As written" means using all the written rules, even the one you want to falsely claim is a band-aid, rather than basic to the game design.

The DM doing exactly what the rules say to do is not "go[ing] outside the rules of the game". It just isn't. And all your sneers won't change the fact that DM judgment is a part of the rules of the game.

You don't like games that have DM judgment built in. OK, that's your preference, and there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to like it. You don't have to play it. Have fun playing the games you enjoy.

But please stop saying that people playing the game as written (including DM judgment) are going outside the rules. They aren't. They are playing the complete ruleset.

And please stop claiming that it's a band-aid to fix a bad design, when it is in fact the core of the design.

I repeat:

Everything you've written is based on the false claim that following the rule you don't like is going outside the rules.

That false claim isn't even crucial to your point. You prefer a system that will handle everything, rather than a system that trusts the DM's judgment. A good case can be made for that preference, and it doesn't require any falsehoods to back it up.

If you stopped claiming that following the rule you don't like is going outside the rules, we could have a great talk about game design.

But as long as you keep maintaining this falsehood, all I can do is keep correcting you on the facts.

I'm serious -- try it. Build the case for the kind of game you like, without claiming that people following the rules of D&D are going outside the rules. They aren't, and that false statement is getting in your way.

[Rhedyn]

<Long rant>In a discussion about, "how seriously do you take the rules?", arguing that changing the rules is within the rules is at best facetious and completely misses the point.

You are arguing that there is no distinction between taking the rules seriously or not seriously because at any point a DM can change the rules on spot for any reason. That's a stupid point to be making and no one really cares what pointless internet points you are giving yourself by making it.

[2D8HP]

In a discussion about, "how seriously do you take the rules?", arguing that changing the rules is within the rules is at best facetious and completely misses the point....


Then I fail to see the point as well.

Jay R correctly pointed out that "DM fiat" has been part of the game from the beginning.

To expand on what he already cited:
From Dungeons &Dragons vol. 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (1974)
page 36, which I'll quote some more from for context:

"AFTERWARD:
There are unquestionably areas which have been glossed over. While we deeply regret the necessity, space requires that we put in the essentials only, and the trimming will oftimes have to be added by the referee and his players. We have attempted to furnish an ample framework, and building should be both easy and fun. In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you? Write to us and tell about your additions, ideas, and what have you. We could always do with a bit of improvement in our refereeing."

[Satinavian]

Then I fail to see the point as well.

Jay R correctly pointed out that "DM fiat" has been part of the game from the beginning.

And like alignment it is something most RPGs that are not D&D have long left behind.

We are still in the general Roleplaying game section, so we should not assume that DM fiat is RAW. It rarely is.

[Corsair14]

What games is it not? Been playing various games since 1990 and have never seen one where the DM cant use fiat to move things along or change rules. Admittingly I skipped dnd 4e since it was such trash.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What games is it not? Been playing various games since 1990 and have never seen one where the DM cant use fiat to move things along or change rules. Admittingly I skipped dnd 4e since it was such trash.

I'd love to see an example of a game where the rules cover everything and never need judgement calls about how or when or where to apply the rules.

Actually...there are such games. They're video games and board games. And they get there by locking things down to where every possible option is explicitly codified and nothing that's not explicitly permitted is allowed.

And that's not a style I'm looking for in a TTRPG--video games have way better graphics and more "complex" mechanics. If I want a locked-down, on-rails, everything-not-permitted-is-forbidden gameplay, I'd play them instead. TTRPGs need freedom and openness, which inherently involves judgement calls (aka "GM fiat").

[Aneurin]

And like alignment it is something most RPGs that are not D&D have long left behind.

We are still in the general Roleplaying game section, so we should not assume that DM fiat is RAW. It rarely is.

Really? I'm struggling to think of an RPG that doesn't say something to the effect of "it is okay to change things that don't work for your group" somewhere. Because no set of rules is perfect. There is always something that isn't fleshed out enough for your individual group's needs, and something that's too fleshed out and needs simplifying because it isn't important and detracts from the game.

And that isn't a flaw in the game's design by any means, it's just that it isn't possible to cater to every group's specific wants and needs. The rules are a framework, and I'll pick the best framework for what I want, but I accept it is not and cannot cater to my every want and need, and will require some alteration.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Really? I'm struggling to think of an RPG that doesn't say something to the effect of "it is okay to change things that don't work for your group" somewhere. Because no set of rules is perfect. There is always something that isn't fleshed out enough for your individual group's needs, and something that's too fleshed out and needs simplifying because it isn't important and detracts from the game.

And that isn't a flaw in the game's design by any means, it's just that it isn't possible to cater to every group's specific wants and needs. The rules are a framework, and I'll pick the best framework for what I want, but I accept it is not and cannot cater to my every want and need, and will require some alteration.

And in my eyes it's total hubris to think otherwise, and is a sign of bad design. Accepting human nature and designing your system with that in mind is good design, not bad design. Demanding that everyone else bend to your style (at the risk of things breaking if they don't) is bad design.

[MoiMagnus]

D&D have 3 main pillars: fight, exploration and social. There are huge difference between campaign depending on how much of each of the 3 pillars are present, and campaigns with huge political scheming are almost "another game" compared to door-monster-loot campaigns.

Similarly, D&D has rule 0 about the DM being responsible for managing the rules (and not just applying them). There are huge difference between campaign depending on how much the DM make use of this rules. Campaign that are RAW are hugely different from campaign that aren't.

(And I agree that the name is not well chosen, because the DM having to change the other rules is a rule by itself, but RAW is used in practice to describe campaign where the DM doesn't, so it is the definition of RAW in practice)

To answer the initial question, in D&D and other RPGs, I tend not to take the rules too seriously. (I have Descent and plenty of other very good boardgames when I'm in the mood of following the rules)

It is probably due to the fact that I learnt to DM with Paranoia (I technically was already DMing before that, but I was crap). And that the base of Paranoia DMing can be resumed in "The players don't have any right of knowledge, including rules, the result of your rolls, the full result of their actions, the real effects of their powers, or anything. Any information given to the players is an information you want them to have for a reason, should this information be true, or false, or not retroactively chosen to be true or false. Your goal as a DM is to manipulate them into having an interesting game, as Pavlov would train his dogs."

Of course, transposing Paranoia DMing to other RPGs is a very bad idea (when you play D&D, you want the result of your actions to be predictable, you want internal consistency to understand the universe, ...). But it certainly influenced my vision of the rules: they are a tool for the DM, nothing more.

[Rhedyn]

Then I fail to see the point as well.

Jay R correctly pointed out that "DM fiat" has been part of the game from the beginning.

To expand on what he already cited:
From Dungeons &Dragons vol. 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (1974)
page 36, which I'll quote some more from for context:

"AFTERWARD:
There are unquestionably areas which have been glossed over. While we deeply regret the necessity, space requires that we put in the essentials only, and the trimming will oftimes have to be added by the referee and his players. We have attempted to furnish an ample framework, and building should be both easy and fun. In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you? Write to us and tell about your additions, ideas, and what have you. We could always do with a bit of improvement in our refereeing."

No one is arguing that. The question of the thread is if you treat existing rules seriously and what value there is in that.

Citing the rule, "you can change the rules" as an excuse to change existing rules while at the same time treating them seriously is side stepping the meat of the original question to make a purely philosophical point that is only exploiting the lack of very careful wording in the question.

[Quertus]

You cannot describe your character having a reasonable discussion with an adversary and have it have a mechanical impact, because the game is not about that.

On the same note, another PbtA game I've played a lot of, Masks. A teen superhero game. Similarly the "get someone to do something with words" basic move is "provoke". Again, it's not about teenagers giving a heartfelt speech about the benefits of listening to their wisdom. You have to "provoke" someone to do something, be it with threats, lies, or some other means. But the neat thing here is as your PCs level up and start to grow up you eventually gain access to the ability to take "adult moves", one of which is "persuade with best interests", which suddenly does give you the ability to try to convince someone by making an actual mature argument at them for why they should.

I was wondering who would ever want to play in such a game, then I remembered The Incredibles. So I can imagine the pitch. Sounds really, really niche to me, but I suppose "everyone's an idiot" must have its appeal, since people play the game.


I agree that if you're making huge changes to the central mechanics, or using it for a genre (either setting or style) that doesn't fit the fundamental assumptions of the system, you're better off starting with a different system.

But "good starting point" is relative to the needs of the person. Everyone's needs are different--there is no "one true system." For me, personally, the games I want to play fit 5e D&D's MO quite well. No round holes/square pegs. If it weren't so, I'd have changed systems.

But none of this says that rule compliance is an inherent good. It's a collateral good, conditional on the rules being a good starting point for your particular needs. Taking the rules "seriously" isn't something to care about one way or the other.

How did you get there? Reading that, I hear "lots of support for A, therefore not A".

If the rules are a good for what type trying to do (which you are arguing that they should be, right?), doesn't that mean that the GM should take very seriously any deviation from said good rules?

Maybe I'm just coming at this from a different PoV, but, IME, most GMs are idiots, who don't think through the ramifications of their changes, and just break the system with knee-jerk changes which break things, necessitating more knee-jerk changes, until they're left with a worse and more complicated kludge than if they had just understood and stuck with the original system in the first place.


And the RAW-worship that happens on these forums is, in my very firm opinion, a toxic thing.

What do you mean?

RAW is the new common. Discussions should, by default, be discussing RAW; otherwise, we're talking past each other.

Idiots changing things without understanding what they're changing is toxic - not just in gaming, but in software, too. Anyone who derides "sacred cows" is a huge red flag for me - I read that as "I am ignorant as to what value this has, and I don't care to educate myself. Further, I feel free to make changes in ignorance of the ramifications of those changes".

So, do you believe that you can explain to someone as opinionated as myself, who holds the opinions i just described, why (and in what context) you believe caring about RAW to be toxic?


How important is inter-table consistency? How important is intra-table (but inter-temporal) consistency?

All of these can have multiple answers for different people in different circumstances.

For me, "inter-table & intra-table (but inter-temporal) consistency" is always (generally) important. Even if I'm never going to play the game. I have the expectation of being handed the rules, plus a (very short) primer on "this world", and be able to read and understand your campaign notes / story of your adventures / what have you, and not experience "but that's impossible!" moments (barring PCs being intentionally misled, etc).


it frees me to make up instead of look up

Because I initially misread you, I have a new ad:

Alarm - it frees you to make out instead of look out.


I consider the bolded part different than the rest of your post. I think this is where we run into "do you take the rules seriously?"

For example, a hero attempting to shove a nigh invulnerable werewolf over the edge of a boat so that the party can escape from it is "cool". In 3.5 D&D, if he doesn't have the right feat-chain or build, he can't do that. In 5e, if he rolls low it fails. In another system he might make an opposed attribute check and spend meta-luck currency to increase the chance of success.
If the 3.5 DM just let's the tactic work regardless of rules, or the 5e DM hands out advantage merely because the shoving tactic seems cool to them (rather than the ad-hoc tactical reason), or any other system where the out come of the rules/dice is altered to make the "cool" idea work, then you aren't taking the rules seriously.

I am of the philosophy that the rules should be taken seriously, wherever their source. If rules aren't working for your group, change them so that they will. But I disagree with ignoring the rules whenever the fiction "demands" something else.Your rules can take into account the fiction and I believe it is better for table if you evolving table-specific rules-set remains consistent.

I suppose I'd say that the rules and the fiction matching is a requirement for me for "good" rules.


Well, fallacy fallacy or not, it does help display that each DM/GM is going to run their games according to their whims and desires at no serious detriment to the game, in most cases.

You've clearly had different GMs than I have. Ignoring rules at a whim has a large correlation with bad tables / bad GMs IME, and is, I'd expect, a huge red flag on a great many gamers' lists.


I would agree that the rules placed forth by the books are necessary when beginning to play a game. However, in many of the TTRPGs that I have had shown to me, I have watched them take those rules and bend them, sometimes to extremes. I have watched the GMs omit rules due to their misunderstanding, dislike, or lack of knowledge, and it has not caused a game to fail or fall apart. I have watched GMs adhere to the rules like gospel and the games were amazing. Conversely I have watched both approaches fail due to various reasons. Rules adherence does not seem to be a primary factor in these games. It seems to be a consensus by the table as to how close they want to keep to the core rules.

This seems a keen observation.

Of course, since every table I've played at by definition had me as a player (or GM), it gets rather difficult for me to have experience with a table with "**** the rules" as a consensus.

[MoiMagnus]

Idiots changing things without understanding what they're changing is toxic - not just in gaming, but in software, too. Anyone who derides "sacred cows" is a huge red flag for me - I read that as "I am ignorant as to what value this has, and I don't care to educate myself. Further, I feel free to make changes in ignorance of the ramifications of those changes".


My music teachers used to say "First master the rules, then transcend them".
And talk about how the greatest artist were breaking most of the rules we were forced to follow, but it was ok because they knew what they were doing.
+If you break a rule without understanding it, you will most likely just do crap.
+If you follow a rule without understanding it, you will at least not do complete crap.
+If you truly understand a rule, you will understand when to break it and when not to.

[Theoboldi]

My music teachers used to say "First master the rules, then transcend them".
And talk about how the greatest artist were breaking most of the rules we were forced to follow, but it was ok because they knew what they were doing.
+If you break a rule without understanding it, you will most likely just do crap.
+If you follow a rule without understanding it, you will at least not do complete crap.
+If you truly understand a rule, you will understand when to break it and when not to.

I find the idea that I need to be a master of game design comparable with what the likes of Mozart and Bach are to music just so I can switch around the rules of a fantasy elf game to my liking to be patently ridiculous. I am not trying to reinvent roleplaying as we know it. What I'm doing is customizing a game to the tastes of myself and those who play with me, which non-masters have done since the concept of a game first existed.

The idea that doing so is toxic is ridiculous, and claiming that people like me are stupid and ignorant is insulting. (That is directed at Quertus' comment, by the way, not at yours MoiMagnus.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

How did you get there? Reading that, I hear "lots of support for A, therefore not A".

If the rules are a good for what type trying to do (which you are arguing that they should be, right?), doesn't that mean that the GM should take very seriously any deviation from said good rules?

Maybe I'm just coming at this from a different PoV, but, IME, most GMs are idiots, who don't think through the ramifications of their changes, and just break the system with knee-jerk changes which break things, necessitating more knee-jerk changes, until they're left with a worse and more complicated kludge than if they had just understood and stuck with the original system in the first place.


Yes, we know you think most GMs are idiots. But that's an outlier position (or should be). And here's the thing (for me at least)--I trust my GMs to have a better sense of what is fun (for my table) than the designers do. That's natural--they're much closer to the scenario and they're my friends. They're also doing things for this specific table. Hand-crafting a solution for 1 table allows things that won't work for a general solution.

The "good" rules are good in that they're an acceptable answer most of the time. Enough so that it's not worth changing things, because the effort/reward ratio is wrong. That does not invest them with any special authority. It just means that they're a useful set of defaults that don't need changing. Right now, anyway.



What do you mean?

RAW is the new common. Discussions should, by default, be discussing RAW; otherwise, we're talking past each other.

Idiots changing things without understanding what they're changing is toxic - not just in gaming, but in software, too. Anyone who derides "sacred cows" is a huge red flag for me - I read that as "I am ignorant as to what value this has, and I don't care to educate myself. Further, I feel free to make changes in ignorance of the ramifications of those changes".

So, do you believe that you can explain to someone as opinionated as myself, who holds the opinions i just described, why (and in what context) you believe caring about RAW to be toxic?


Caring about what is written isn't toxic. But the RAW-primacy mentality on these forums takes that to new levels where what's written is the only thing that matters. And even moreso--it's not just what's written, but it's all the layers upon layers of "commentary" and interpretations. "RAW" pretends to be something objective, but it's a secondary layer of interpretation that involves heavy proof-texting (taking phrases out of context), ignoring polysemy (the same word can mean different things in different contexts), "magic-word" thinking ("they didn't say the one magic phrase that means X, so X isn't required!") and other casuistry that would make even the most hardened, jaded jailhouse lawyer think you've gone too far. It requires the sort of analysis that would get an attorney sanctioned under Rule 11 (or just flat out disbarred). It also ignores all the non-mechanical rules (yes, Virginia, they exist) such as the setting-based restrictions on PrCs, etc. That is, it's RAW in name only. In practice it's "what can I get away with as a munchkin" or "how can I weaponize these rules to prove someone else wrong and force them to allow my (table-fun-harming) actions without them blaming me."

And it's designed to promote a sense of player entitlement--that DM restrictions in the name of setting, game balance, or anything else are wrong and that making rulings or houserules are somehow dirty. It encourages people to dig into rules and get into arguments, instead of keeping the game moving. It focuses attention on the rules layer instead of on "how do we have a fun time at this table." It's all about proving people wrong. And it doesn't even do its job of allowing discussion, because everyone has their own standards of evidence. There are more knock-down, drag-out fights on the 3e forums than anywhere else, despite this obsession with so-called RAW.

Knowing the rules is important, because lots of times what people want to do is already there (and not buried that far). But being obsessed with the minutia of the wording is reading way more into that wording than was there to begin with. And it has long since lost any connection with what the game system was designed to do and become its own set of rules (meta and otherwise).



For me, "inter-table & intra-table (but inter-temporal) consistency" is always (generally) important. Even if I'm never going to play the game. I have the expectation of being handed the rules, plus a (very short) primer on "this world", and be able to read and understand your campaign notes / story of your adventures / what have you, and not experience "but that's impossible!" moments (barring PCs being intentionally misled, etc).


Yeah, there we disagree. I prize inconsistency. I want to be surprised by something working other than how I expect it to. I don't expect the rules to be anything more than an interface layer for one particular table. When I sit down at a new table, I expect to have to change my style and my expectations to match the new table. I certainly don't expect anything other than the basic resolution mechanics to remain significantly unchanged. I find the idea of bringing characters fundamentally unchanged between tables (if not set in an explicitly shared world) to be wrong at a visceral level--those characters don't fit into the new setting unless built from the ground up. And if I'm rebuilding them, then rule changes are just worked into the flow.

For me, the rules don't really map the setting more than casually. I could play a session in my setting in almost any rule-set (including free-form) and have it work similarly. Because the fiction takes priority over everything else. Binding the setting to the rules is how we get the (somehow fun) trainwreck of the Forgotten Realms--you have creatures created under many different rulesets all interacting and being half-ported, so none of your lore makes sense. I'd prefer to disconnect the two--the rules only exist for the game. If I'm writing fiction, I'm not paying attention to the mechanical rules.

I recently ran 2 free-form, purely-narrative, one-on-one sessions in my ongoing D&D 5e campaign. We explored backstories and ended up finding a bunch of new things out about the underpinnings of the campaign (including that two of the characters knew each other peripherally from childhood, but didn't recognize the other when they met up due to intervening events).

My default rule-set is free-form. Mechanical rules are there only to take some of the load off me, to help me resolve uncertainty in a way that's fun for everyone and less work than making it up myself. If they help, they help. If they don't help, I don't feel obligated to use them. And I'm a rules-jackdaw--I find bits and bobs from many systems and work them into my own games as I feel appropriate. Rules purity is not something I value. Every table I DM for is different, because they want different things.

[Quertus]

What games is it not? Been playing various games since 1990 and have never seen one where the DM cant use fiat to move things along or change rules. Admittingly I skipped dnd 4e since it was such trash.

That's a good question. Any takers?

Also, personally, I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that the oft-cited 3.5 "rule 0" is intended to allow the GM to fill in the gaps in the rules, not explicitly to change them.

Not that there might not also be rules allowing the GM to change the rules, mind, just that that wasn't how I read rule 0 ages ago.


And that's not a style I'm looking for in a TTRPG--video games have way better graphics and more "complex" mechanics. If I want a locked-down, on-rails, everything-not-permitted-is-forbidden gameplay, I'd play them instead. TTRPGs need freedom and openness, which inherently involves judgement calls (aka "GM fiat").

Although I agree with this, I personally strongly prefer to limit "GM Fiat" to things not covered by the rules.

Also, I prefer to use "table fiat", and leave the GM out of rules decisions whenever possible. Nothing produces bad rules like an entitled authoritarian.

The tables I've been at that worked best were the ones where the GM did not make the rules. (Including and perhaps especially when I was GM)


To answer the initial question, in D&D and other RPGs, I tend not to take the rules too seriously. (I have Descent and plenty of other very good boardgames when I'm in the mood of following the rules)

To turn that around, when I don't want to take the rules seriously, I've got freeform. Why would I claim to be playing "D&D" when i was ignoring the rules?

That said, I'm all about custom content, and even good world-building that includes explicit decisions from the default rules. And certainly about adding to the rules for situations that they don't cover - that's what makes tabletop RPGs better than computer "RPGs" or board games.


It is probably due to the fact that I learnt to DM with Paranoia (I technically was already DMing before that, but I was crap). And that the base of Paranoia DMing can be resumed in "The players don't have any right of knowledge, including rules, the result of your rolls, the full result of their actions, the real effects of their powers, or anything. Any information given to the players is an information you want them to have for a reason, should this information be true, or false, or not retroactively chosen to be true or false. Your goal as a DM is to manipulate them into having an interesting game, as Pavlov would train his dogs."

Of course, transposing Paranoia DMing to other RPGs is a very bad idea (when you play D&D, you want the result of your actions to be predictable, you want internal consistency to understand the universe, ...). But it certainly influenced my vision of the rules: they are a tool for the DM, nothing more.

While I'm glad that you don't attempt to apply Paranoia to D&D, I am uncertain what you mean by "the rules are a tool for the GM".

The rules are, IMO, an interface for communicating about and interacting with the world.

[Rhedyn]

There is no inherent value to rules written in a book. I advocate treating your game's rules seriously, but the source of the rules can come from anywhere. I am not against changing a game. I am against ignoring established rules because they lead to a result you don't like and then going back to those rules as soon as the 'blip' is over. If rules are going to be changed/ignored in X cases, then you should change the rules and keep a consistent game going forward.

Now, following the written rules is important when deciding if a game works for your table or when the GM is leaning on the inherent aspects of a game to produce fun. You can't deviate a ton from RAW and then declare that an RPG book plays good or bad because you didn't play that game.

[Quertus]

My music teachers used to say "First master the rules, then transcend them".
And talk about how the greatest artist were breaking most of the rules we were forced to follow, but it was ok because they knew what they were doing.
+If you break a rule without understanding it, you will most likely just do crap.
+If you follow a rule without understanding it, you will at least not do complete crap.
+If you truly understand a rule, you will understand when to break it and when not to.

This - plus the statement "most of my GMs fall into that first category" - pretty well explains my position and experience.


I find the idea that I need to be a master of game design comparable with what the likes of Mozart and Bach are to music just so I can switch around the rules of a fantasy elf game to my liking to be patently ridiculous. I am not trying to reinvent roleplaying as we know it. What I'm doing is customizing a game to the tastes of myself and those who play with me, which non-masters have done since the concept of a game first existed.

The idea that doing so is toxic is ridiculous, and claiming that people like me are stupid and ignorant is insulting. (That is directed at Quertus' comment, by the way, not at yours MoiMagnus.)

Clearly, you haven't seen the toxic detritus my GMs have produced.

Question for me insulting you: Do you consider "no wealth" to be a valid and balanced rules change for 3.5? Do you consider "you can cast all your spells at will" to be a valid and balanced rules change for 3.5? Do you consider both together to be a balanced and valid rules change for 3.5? Do you consider "you actually get spells known as a class feature, can cast your spells instantly on your turn, have a chance to ignore disruptions to your spells" to be valid and balanced rules changes between 2e and 3e? Do you consider "rather than just finding random items, we'll make magic item shops the default" to be a valid and balanced rules change between 2e and 3e?

If you answer "yes, that's all perfectly balanced, there are no possible rules interactions that will change the balance of the game, let alone in a way anyone could consider 'bad', by making all of those changes", then, yes, you may consider me to be willing to point out your ignorance regarding rules interactions and the effects of changes.

If you have such ignorance, and feel insulted when it is pointed out, I'mma claim that's on you.

[Theoboldi]

If you answer "yes, that's all perfectly balanced, there are no possible rules interactions that will change the balance of the game, let alone in a way anyone could consider 'bad', by making all of those changes", then, yes, you may consider me to be willing to point out your ignorance regarding rules interactions and the effects of changes.

If you have such ignorance, and feel insulted when it is pointed out, I'mma claim that's on you.

What in the world does any of this have to do with what I just said? I said that you don't have to be an experienced scholar of game design who perfectly understands the purpose of every rule to make your own changes so the game plays more like you want it to.

Heck, I've not played 3.5 in over 5 years at this point! I've never played 2nd edition! I've moved almost completely away from D&D! I have no idea how to answer any of these! Do they make the game more fun for the people using them? Did you play in those games and dislike the changes? I have literally no context for what you are throwing at me.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What in the world does any of this have to do with what I just said? I said that you don't have to be an experienced scholar of game design who perfectly understands the purpose of every rule to make your own changes so the game plays more like you want it to.

Heck, I've not played 3.5 in over 5 years at this point! I've never played 2nd edition! I've moved almost completely away from D&D! I have no idea how to answer any of these! Do they make the game more fun for the people using them? Did you play in those games and dislike the changes? I have literally no context for what you are throwing at me.

That was a combined expression of bad experiences Quertus has had with DMs. So now he assumes that all DMs are bad and that all changes are bad unless proved otherwise. In my mind, that's a personal flaw.

I've had good changes and bad changes, but I prize the flexibility to say "yes, that's the rule, but it doesn't fit right here," so I'm willing to take the bad with the good.

[Quertus]

Yes, we know you think most GMs are idiots.

That's not quite accurate. Hmmm... perhaps, "there are plenty of GM horror stories on the internet, that the majority of gamers would agree with the assessment, 'that GM is an idiot'. My experience with GMs may be atypical or anomalous, but, IME, most (but not all) of my GMs have demonstrated similar levels of idiocy even if they were otherwise good GMs".

So, the short, oversimplified version is not, "I think most GMs are idiots", but "IME, most GMs are idiots".


Caring about what is written isn't toxic. But the RAW-primacy mentality on these forums takes that to new levels where what's written is the only thing that matters. And even moreso--it's not just what's written, but it's all the layers upon layers of "commentary" and interpretations. "RAW" pretends to be something objective, but it's a secondary layer of interpretation that involves heavy proof-texting (taking phrases out of context), ignoring polysemy (the same word can mean different things in different contexts), "magic-word" thinking ("they didn't say the one magic phrase that means X, so X isn't required!") and other casuistry that would make even the most hardened, jaded jailhouse lawyer think you've gone too far. It requires the sort of analysis that would get an attorney sanctioned under Rule 11 (or just flat out disbarred). It also ignores all the non-mechanical rules (yes, Virginia, they exist) such as the setting-based restrictions on PrCs, etc. That is, it's RAW in name only. In practice it's "what can I get away with as a munchkin" or "how can I weaponize these rules to prove someone else wrong and force them to allow my (table-fun-harming) actions without them blaming me."

Ah. Hmmm... Although I would word it differently, yes, I think I agree that... hmmm... "extreme RAW that clearly violates RAI and breaks the system should not be mandated at the table". Of course, that said, I believe in "balance to the table", so... if that interpretation is balanced for the table, use it; if it isn't, great, even if it's the rules, if it produces something unbalanced, you're not going to get to play it.

So... "RAW as Mandate" fails at producing munchkinry when "balance to the table" is one of two required house-rules (the other being, "don't be a ****").


And it's designed to promote a sense of player entitlement--that DM restrictions in the name of setting, game balance, or anything else are wrong and that making rulings or houserules are somehow dirty. It encourages people to dig into rules and get into arguments, instead of keeping the game moving. It focuses attention on the rules layer instead of on "how do we have a fun time at this table." It's all about proving people wrong. And it doesn't even do its job of allowing discussion, because everyone has their own standards of evidence. There are more knock-down, drag-out fights on the 3e forums than anywhere else, despite this obsession with so-called RAW.

Well, GM restrictions in the name of game balance are wrong. And wrong-minded. And toxic. Instilling a "balance to the table" mindset, and players fixing any imbalances is the non-toxic version of this strategy. Because player > build > class. You cannot get balanced contributions out of balanced playing pieces when played by an unbalanced player base.

I'll go so far as to claim that giving the GM the sole authority to make the call on what is balanced is itself toxic. It's the players playing the game who know how the characters feel, how their contribution feels. It's the table that should decide whether the Monk is UP or OP, whether BFC is UP or OP. If they feel that the Monk needs nerfs, and BFC needs to be a free action, so the Wizard can actually contribute, who is the GM to disagree?

For player entitlement... I'm all about player entitlement. Players are entitled to build whatever they want, and do whatever they want in a game, so long as they don't violate the code of the table (the table's balance range, whether PvP is allowed, whatever).

Changing the rules is wrong/dirty. I mean, it's dirty pool to change the rules of pool mid-game; why would you think otherwise for an RPG? How many GM horror stories have the GM changing the rules to railroad their story?

The best answer my senile mind remembers seeing regarding "how to deal with idiot GMs making bad rulings" that I've heard anyone give is to remove the GM from the equation - when a ruling needs to be made, let the table make the ruling. Still has issues, which is why I'd personally rather dig into the rules (and the parallel discussion of "what would be fun for this table") and lose an hour from the session than have to retcon the session, and lose the whole session. Or, per some horror stories, lose the whole group over a truly boneheaded ruling.

Further, the game is not a shark - it doesn't die if it doesn't keep moving, as evidenced by sessions that occur days or weeks or months apart. However, a bad ruling can kill a game. Or a group.

I do agree that "proving people wrong" is a bad / toxic mindset to have. And that people view things differently. IME, this is just further evidence that the table is better able to say what the table will accept than the GM is. Especially given some of the (perhaps atypical) idiots I've had as GMs.


Knowing the rules is important, because lots of times what people want to do is already there (and not buried that far). But being obsessed with the minutia of the wording is reading way more into that wording than was there to begin with. And it has long since lost any connection with what the game system was designed to do and become its own set of rules (meta and otherwise).

Agreed. 3e really needs to be (or at least have been) a live, supported system. WotC was, well, either short-sighted, or fiscally clever, for not having the developers create official RAI errata.


Yeah, there we disagree. I prize inconsistency. I want to be surprised by something working other than how I expect it to. I don't expect the rules to be anything more than an interface layer for one particular table. When I sit down at a new table, I expect to have to change my style and my expectations to match the new table. I certainly don't expect anything other than the basic resolution mechanics to remain significantly unchanged. I find the idea of bringing characters fundamentally unchanged between tables (if not set in an explicitly shared world) to be wrong at a visceral level--those characters don't fit into the new setting unless built from the ground up. And if I'm rebuilding them, then rule changes are just worked into the flow.

Well, first, games like you describe would have 0 value to me. If I cannot use my characters to explore human psychology, letting the same character without rebuilding them experience the diversity of content that can only be had under multiple GMs, then RPGs would lose their primary value to me.

Now, I prize Exploration. I want to think in a game. I don't want my thinking to be, "if I try to swing my sword, will it spontaneously explode in this world?", unless swords spontaneously exploding is actually part of the world-building, and intellectually stimulating to explore. I want my characters to be able to say, "huh, swords didn't explode where I came from, let me investigate the underpinnings of the universe to see why they do that here, and what else that means for the worlds physics, metaphysics, etc".

Most GMs disappoint, intellectually, IME.


Every table I DM for is different, because they want different things.

This is the most promising statement I've seen on this topic. Kudos!

TBH, that is one of my personal weaknesses - my style does not change as significantly as it should based on my table. My GMing range is, in certain dimensions, rather limited.

This is one of the reasons I like 1-shots, for new players to see my range, and display their range, and for us to discuss what combinations of things within everyone's range we think would be most likely to produce a game that we would all enjoy.

Being able to successfully vary your style to match your table - heck, being able to know what style would match your table, even if you cannot necessarily produce that style - is a great (and, IME, rare) GMing asset.

I can at best use a near-Epimethian version, and simply use a series of 1-shots for everyone to display their gaming range, and to facilitate discussion of the topic.

So, if you're cognizant of it, what's your special sauce?

[Quertus]

What in the world does any of this have to do with what I just said? I said that you don't have to be an experienced scholar of game design who perfectly understands the purpose of every rule to make your own changes so the game plays more like you want it to.

Heck, I've not played 3.5 in over 5 years at this point! I've never played 2nd edition! I've moved almost completely away from D&D! I have no idea how to answer any of these! Do they make the game more fun for the people using them? Did you play in those games and dislike the changes? I have literally no context for what you are throwing at me.

So... grrr... let's say I want better gas mileage, so I make my car body out of foam rubber. There's no possible disadvantage, no possible interaction with physics that makes this a bad idea, right? And I want my tires to last longer, so I make them out of aluminum. Oh, and I want to see better, so I remove the whole top of the car, that is obstructing my view.

This is the level of "making changes with ignorance of their consequences" that I am discussing.


That was a combined expression of bad experiences Quertus has had with DMs. So now he assumes that all DMs are bad and that all changes are bad unless proved otherwise. In my mind, that's a personal flaw.

I've had good changes and bad changes, but I prize the flexibility to say "yes, that's the rule, but it doesn't fit right here," so I'm willing to take the bad with the good.

A good guess, but not exactly.

I mean, yes, I've had GMs try those rules changes in 3e. But it is by no means an exhaustive list. And, given that I once edited a 20-page document of rules changes (not for D&D), and several times was given lists nearly as long, well, it's really, really far from being an exhaustive list of inanity.

Also, several of those were "rules changes between 2e and 3e that Playgrounders claim (correctly or not) that are, in part, responsible for the martial/caster divide". Even the 3e designers seemingly failed to think through the ramifications of all of their changes.

I don't assume all GMs are bad; I do, however, believe that, for sufficiently functional base rules, all rules changes are likely to be bad unless the GM person making the change understands the ramifications of the rules change. Which, IME, most don't.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Quertus,

I have yet to have a DM that I thought was an idiot. I've had DMs do things I didn't like (variant encumbrance, setting-based rules that I didn't like), but that's just a matter of me not matching the table's consensus.

I also have not had a DM who tried to fiat all by himself, and do not support that. Table consensus is important, but the DM has the final say. Because, at least in D&D, the DM has the final say on everything. Nothing happens in game until the DM accepts it. Should the DM use it capriciously? No. Do they have that power? Yes.


I guess my secret is that I just don't care. I'm not trying to explore anything meta in particular. I don't have a plan in mind. I simply have a setting that I care about and want to see how the players engage with the setting. And more than anything, I want my players to have fun. I DM dominantly for a school club (usually 2 groups per school year), so none of them have any significant system mastery. Most of them have basically 0 exposure to "classic" fantasy. I want them to come away from the club having had a great experience. One of the most meaningful things I've had in my career was a note from a player after she graduated. As a matter of backstory, we were playing a heavily modified version of 4e in short little bursts (~30 minutes during lunch once a week).

It said something like

I came to D&D club because I needed somewhere else to be during lunch instead of sitting with the group of people I had been. I'm really grateful that I did. I finally found a group of friends and a place I belonged. A place where I could be weird and that was normal.

I had another one who told me that club meetings were the only thing that kept her going through her rough senior year of high school. None of the players were friends before, but they quickly became friends. Since then they've kept up the games, becoming DMs and players in their own rights. And they've stayed friends.

I realized with that experience that the important thing was that the players had fun. I personally would have sacrificed goats (or other people!) for a chance like that in high school. Everything I do for the world is motivated by the players. That's when I have the greatest inspirations for my setting--when the players say something or make a guess that's totally different than what I had planned...and their guess fits better. When, while talking to the players, there's that lightning-strike moment where it all unfolds and this little new bit creates a wave of new things that all fit perfectly. That's what I live for. To see something I never expected from my own setting. Or to see the players start caring about the parts I didn't think were important. That's been all the NPC "pets" they've dragged along. The in-universe alliances and institutions that they've built. And none of those depend on the rules. They're all orthogonal to the rules. So the rules are just a toolkit I pull out when I need some help and put away when I can handle it myself.


I break "rules" into a few categories, each with different levels of adherence.

1. Basic resolution mechanics (ie 1d20 + MOD vs TN). These don't change except in the rarest of circumstances. An Attack roll will always be the same, and will always be against AC. Saving throws are saving throws. Ability checks are always the same resolution.
2. Meta rules. These are rules (usually non-mechanical) that constrain or guide how the rules should really look. These tend to be important and versatile enough that they rarely need changes.
3. Setting-override rules. What player options are available, large-scale allow/deny lists, how does magic work, etc. These get set by the setting and then stay that way.
4. Specific rules for specific situations. How does darkvision work. Are we going to track ammo? What's the DC for X? These change all the time, even during a game (for some specific things). These I don't care about and always default to whatever runs the fastest (that the table will accept).

[MoiMagnus]

While I'm glad that you don't attempt to apply Paranoia to D&D, I am uncertain what you mean by "the rules are a tool for the GM".

The rules are, IMO, an interface for communicating about and interacting with the world.

By "the rules are a tool for the GM", I mean that "rules have a purpose".
Some rules exist to improve immersion.
Some rules exist to give a feeling of fairness.
Some rules exist to give a feeling of agency.
Some rules exist to give a technical challenge.
Some rules exist for simplicity and efficiency of the system.
...
They all are tools that exist for one of multiple reasons.

And depending on what atmosphere I want (or more precisely, what kind of atmosphere we've agreed to have during session 0, or what kind of atmosphere I've described in the abstract of my scenario in the RPG-mailing list of the club), I will give priority to some rules over others, sometimes expanding their reach farther than what is suggested inside the rule-book (when I use a rule-book, because if I see that I will need to really alter a RPG, I'd rather use the homebrew systems that I've already tested multiple times).

The standard example being "when is a skill check needed, and how much can you do with a just a skill check without expanding resources?".

Because if I want to DM an "group of incompetent hero, succeeding trough looney-tune like behavior", I will probably ask a lot of skill test for trivial maters (because sure, maybe you didn't see that hundred of ninjas around you that aren't even trying to hide from you), while allowing test for stuffs that are clearly impossible without absurd luck (one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing!).

While if I want to DM a team of "epic hero", a lot of tests will be auto-success. And if I DM to players who actually read and remember the description of skills rather than just the name of them, then I will try to be faithful to the texts of those skills.

[Theoboldi]

So... grrr... let's say I want better gas mileage, so I make my car body out of foam rubber. There's no possible disadvantage, no possible interaction with physics that makes this a bad idea, right? And I want my tires to last longer, so I make them out of aluminum. Oh, and I want to see better, so I remove the whole top of the car, that is obstructing my view.

This is the level of "making changes with ignorance of their consequences" that I am discussing.

To be honest, after rereading that list you gave me earlier, it seems like some of those changes are perfectly reasonable, and you just personally dislike them so you proceed to call them stupid. At the very least, the changes to casters between 2nd edition and 3rd seem to be very popular with a lot of people. Granted, they did break the balance quite heavily but that's another topic entirely. Even games that are unbalanced in a vacuum can have the unintended side effect of being fun for some people. Also, more importantly, that was the actual game designers making those changes, not some GM at his home table, so I don't even know what the relevance is.

Beyond that, the fact that some GMs make bad changes that nobody at the table likes does not matter to me. I've no interest in a GM who pays no attention to everyone having fun at the table. Likewise, why should somebody's harebrained idea to make a car out of rubber prevent me from getting my own sprayed with a new colour, or to convert it into a cabriolet? Which would, indeed, mean removing the top, to go with your metaphor. (The feasibility of this in real life being another matter entirely. I do not mod cars, and this is only a metaphor.)

I certainly don't see why stupidity and ignorance should be an assumption here. That is pointlessly petty, when all people like me want to do is modify rulesets that they enjoy to better serve their own and their table's purposes.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The standard example being "when is a skill check needed, and how much can you do with a just a skill check without expanding resources?".

Because if I want to DM an "group of incompetent hero, succeeding trough looney-tune like behavior", I will probably ask a lot of skill test for trivial maters (because sure, maybe you didn't see that hundred of ninjas around you that aren't even trying to hide from you), while allowing test for stuffs that are clearly impossible without absurd luck (one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing!).

While if I want to DM a team of "epic hero", a lot of tests will be auto-success. And if I DM to players who actually read and remember the description of skills rather than just the name of them, then I will try to be faithful to the texts of those skills.

This is a case where I actively dislike systems that provide a hard rule about when you should roll for such things. Because, as you say, it all depends on the tone, genre, and situation. Even within a single session I'll be straight-arrow on some things (forcing rolls for things) and loose on others. Someone wants to do an ineffectual action mostly just for a joke? Depending on the situation it'll either be an auto-success (where it has little mechanical significance) or a roll (if failure would be just as funny as success). Playing a light-hearted game? I'll bend some things so it stays that way.

The rules are entirely a tool for the table to shape the game they want. They are subservient to the table's desires, not vice versa. An outsider cannot say "you're playing wrong" merely by looking at printed words. They might be able to give advice on how they can play better by observing the actions and how it's working (or not working), but the rules alone are merely persuasive attempts.

Does this make forum discussion harder and less definitive? Sure. But that's not something I strongly value (and in fact most of the "this is right/that's wrong" discussion is worthless or counterproductive compared to "what has worked for you, and in what circumstances" or "I'm doing X and it's not working, what can I do better/differently?" discussion).

[Rhedyn]

This is a case where I actively dislike systems that provide a hard rule about when you should roll for such things.
I have yet to find a skill system outside of D&D 3.X that specifies exactly when you need to roll for things. Even GURPS 4e is a lot more vague and has a "do not need to roll" category.

I think it is actually quite rare for systems to do this.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I have yet to find a skill system outside of D&D 3.X that specifies exactly when you need to roll for things. Even GURPS 4e is a lot more vague and has a "do not need to roll" category.

I think it is actually quite rare for systems to do this.

Good. My main point of comparison was d20 and 4e D&D, both of which are firmly on the "you must roll for that" side of the spectrum. Both of which were things I disliked about those systems. Too frequently you end up with epic heroes looking like idiots who can't walk straight. Or bear lore.

[Thrudd]

My process: Analyze the rules that are written, decide what works for the game I want to run. Change and create to fill in perceived insufficiencies, with an eye toward rules addressing those situations that I know are going to be common in-game. The intent behind the rules is providing meaningful strategic/tactical choices for the players while also creating verisimilitude- the outcome of mechanics should be consistent with the fictional reality and not exploitable to a degree that would create nonsense outcomes.

During play, if something is found not to work as I want it to, I'll edit it. If something comes up more than once that needs a ruling but doesn't have a rule yet, Ill make a rule for it so it is handled consistently in the future.

I prefer that a mastery of the rules not be needed by players in order for them to make good game choices- they should be able to make choices purely in-character, and rules will simulate that good in-world choices have generally good outcomes. Even if they don't know every rule, I want the players to know that there are fair and consistent rules in play guiding the events of the game.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I prefer that a mastery of the rules not be needed by players in order for them to make good game choices- they should be able to make choices purely in-character, and rules will simulate that good in-world choices have generally good outcomes.

I don't even ask the rules to simulate things, but I do demand that the in-character, fiction-level choices have priority. If the rules as written don't allow the obvious fictional outcomes, the rules must give way (or not be used at all).

I ran a great one-shot game for some total newbies as a part of a charity gaming event--not a single one knew the rules. Heck, they didn't know a d20 from a d4. And it was a blast. They had pregens that gave them basically a stat block, a personality/background, and a card giving them the "things I can do on my turn" in very general phrasings. All they did was tell me what their character did, and I translated it into mechanical terms and told them what to roll. They didn't even have to worry about adding things--I knew what their modifiers were (because they were all simple). We had a good combat with them thinking way more out-side-the-box than most of my players and doing things other than "I attack". We had a great investigative/social set of scenes.

Sure, it was exhausting on my end because I had to also be the full mechanics engine without the players shouldering some of that load. But their role-play was beautiful. They got into the characters more than most I've seen, in part because they weren't trying to fit their actions into some "optimal" rules framework. They were just acting like they thought their character would.

[Jama7301]

I have bunches of rule books that meet some or most of the following criteria--
* They are for systems I will never run
* They are for settings I will never use
* They contain lots and lots of content I will never see directly in use.

Why did I buy them then? For inspiration. For mechanics, items, monsters, etc. that I can borrow and convert. For themes. For advice that I can translate. For philosophy. For ART, in many cases. For maps.

This is why I like to sometimes go through Drive Thru RPG and pick up a book someone has mentioned in passing. It's the only reason why I own Numenera, Blades in the Dark, Technoir, and Ars Magica. I'll get through them Some Day, and maybe even try to run a one shot in them to get a better feel for them, but today is not that day.

[Rhedyn]

Good. My main point of comparison was d20 and 4e D&D, both of which are firmly on the "you must roll for that" side of the spectrum. Both of which were things I disliked about those systems. Too frequently you end up with epic heroes looking like idiots who can't walk straight. Or bear lore.
3.X did a decent job "simulating" with all the less-than obvious rules to address things like that.

But "the d20" is one of those things I hold up as, "inherently adds crunch to the game" along with "HP" and "Classes". The d20 is not a great randomizer with it's flat distribution for something as mundane as skills. You either need a lot of rules (3.5) or a lot of unwritten rules (5e when to roll) for it to "work right".

[Thrudd]

I don't even ask the rules to simulate things, but I do demand that the in-character, fiction-level choices have priority. If the rules as written don't allow the obvious fictional outcomes, the rules must give way (or not be used at all).
Yes. The difference between us at this point is probably that when the rules aren't giving sensical fictional outcomes on a regular basis, I fix those rules so I have something I can use, rather than resigning to fiat on every outcome. If the situation is a one-off edge case, well then a one-time ruling is acceptable. If it is a situation which the characters will be regularly facing, it needs a good rule.

I expect a rule to work for the vast majority of cases where it applies, and if it doesn't then it needs to be fixed. I don't just decide to go on playing with a rule that produces unwanted results on a regular basis. Free-forming in situations that should be mechanized is not preferable. If I had decided an area of the game can be free-formed, then there's no rules for that in the first place. The rule is "these situations are free-form".

Maybe the real difference is, I try to anticipate and choose what rules I need and like before the game starts, and stick to that unless something turns up obviously broken. I want the experience to be consistent and fair as a game, above all. It sounds like you make those decisions on the fly in each game session (maybe that's not accurate), and consider consistency on the narrative layer of the game as the primary importance. A rule that you ignore today might be useful to you tomorrow, so you don't worry about it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes. The difference between us at this point is probably that when the rules aren't giving sensical fictional outcomes on a regular basis, I fix those rules so I have something I can use, rather than resigning to fiat on every outcome. If the situation is a one-off edge case, well then a one-time ruling is acceptable. If it is a situation which the characters will be regularly facing, it needs a good rule.

I expect a rule to work for the vast majority of cases where it applies, and if it doesn't then it needs to be fixed. I don't just decide to go on playing with a rule that produces unwanted results on a regular basis. Free-forming in situations that should be mechanized is not preferable. If I had decided an area of the game can be free-formed, then there's no rules for that in the first place. The rule is "these situations are free-form".

If it's a consistent problem, I'll fix it consistently. One example is that I rule that if two people are in darkness and neither can see each other, both have disadvantage to hit each other (instead of the advantage of being unseen cancelling the disadvantage of being blind). Because I don't like the fictional outcome of them canceling. But I'd be fine playing the other way if others insisted.

But most things aren't that consistent. I'm pretty context sensitive--if two things differ in their context, I'm fine with one being free-form and the other having a rule, if that makes sense. And I'm very comfortable with setting target numbers on an ad hoc basis, because those are exquisitely context sensitive. This is especially true with knowledge-type checks. Rolling a 20 on one type of creature might give you a trickle of information. A 20 on a different creature might give you everything...or more likely you wouldn't have even had to roll. And those creatures might be different types of trolls (for example). Depends on who you are and what you already know/where you came from/etc.

[Thrudd]

If it's a consistent problem, I'll fix it consistently. One example is that I rule that if two people are in darkness and neither can see each other, both have disadvantage to hit each other (instead of the advantage of being unseen cancelling the disadvantage of being blind). Because I don't like the fictional outcome of them canceling. But I'd be fine playing the other way if others insisted.

But most things aren't that consistent. I'm pretty context sensitive--if two things differ in their context, I'm fine with one being free-form and the other having a rule, if that makes sense. And I'm very comfortable with setting target numbers on an ad hoc basis, because those are exquisitely context sensitive. This is especially true with knowledge-type checks. Rolling a 20 on one type of creature might give you a trickle of information. A 20 on a different creature might give you everything...or more likely you wouldn't have even had to roll. And those creatures might be different types of trolls (for example). Depends on who you are and what you already know/where you came from/etc.

That makes sense- and the sort of rules you cited that don't have clear effects are the sort that demand fixing and ruling on, imo. The darkness effect is definitely a rule that needs fixing. Knowledge mechanics are a constant source of problems, for multiple reasons.

I'm guessing you probably are not as "loosely goosey" with the rules as it sounds like sometimes. I'd rather that the players know that the rules are being followed, with the caveat that I've changed rules I think need fixing, and will make on-the-fly rulings on the rare edge-cases that are unruled or when a rule appears broken. I want them to know that when the dice get rolled, it means something, and I'm not just interpreting every result according to the outcome I prefer. So in the Lore example, I'd probably create categories of Lore that require different results. Rare creatures almost nobody has ever seen or heard of would be obscure Lore, high difficulty to get little info. Common creatures are common knowledge, easy to get even obscure details. The only on-the-fly call might be what category a given bit of Lore should be in, if for some reason I did not foresee this being sought out by the players or have invented the whole thing on the fly.

[Rhedyn]

If it's a consistent problem, I'll fix it consistently. One example is that I rule that if two people are in darkness and neither can see each other, both have disadvantage to hit each other (instead of the advantage of being unseen cancelling the disadvantage of being blind). Because I don't like the fictional outcome of them canceling. But I'd be fine playing the other way if others insisted.

But most things aren't that consistent. I'm pretty context sensitive--if two things differ in their context, I'm fine with one being free-form and the other having a rule, if that makes sense. And I'm very comfortable with setting target numbers on an ad hoc basis, because those are exquisitely context sensitive. This is especially true with knowledge-type checks. Rolling a 20 on one type of creature might give you a trickle of information. A 20 on a different creature might give you everything...or more likely you wouldn't have even had to roll. And those creatures might be different types of trolls (for example). Depends on who you are and what you already know/where you came from/etc.

In the context of 5e D&D, none of that is "not taking the rules seriously". You changed a rule that wasn't working and 5e doesn't cover skill DCs beyond a vague difficulty.

That isn't the example I have seen you defending where, "the rule works 90% of the time and is wrong 10% of the time, but we just ignore that rule during the 10% and leave the rule completely unchanged".

[PhoenixPhyre]

That makes sense- and the sort of rules you cited that don't have clear effects are the sort that demand fixing and ruling on, imo. The darkness effect is definitely a rule that needs fixing. Knowledge mechanics are a constant source of problems, for multiple reasons.

I'm guessing you probably are not as "loosely goosey" with the rules as it sounds like sometimes. I'd rather that the players know that the rules are being followed, with the caveat that I've changed rules I think need fixing, and will make on-the-fly rulings on the rare edge-cases that are unruled or when a rule appears broken. I want them to know that when the dice get rolled, it means something, and I'm not just interpreting every result according to the outcome I prefer. So in the Lore example, I'd probably create categories of Lore that require different results. Rare creatures almost nobody has ever seen or heard of would be obscure Lore, high difficulty to get little info. Common creatures are common knowledge, easy to get even obscure details. The only on-the-fly call might be what category a given bit of Lore should be in, if for some reason I did not foresee this being sought out by the players or have invented the whole thing on the fly.

I just don't see the returns from trying to proactively categorize things to any level of formality. Because it also differs based on background--what's a common creature for a Byssian may be completely unfamiliar (not even legendary) to a dwarf from Fuar Uulan. And both may be in a party together. I wrote a (long) document containing the "common knowledge" just about the political and social mores of the various cultures of one part of my setting. Ended up at 15 pages of bullet points. And that didn't even cover monsters at all.

I just prefer to give lots of information--knowledge checks are almost always an ad hoc degree of success roll or purely passive (10+MOD, no roll needed) degrees of success.

As for being loose, it's mainly between tables and with target numbers. I'd much rather make up a TN and go with it (or just base it loosely on the basic resolution mechanics) instead of trying to calculate things to any precision. I also try to err in the player's favor (setting it a bit lower than I might initially think, rewarding clever or "non-standard" approaches, etc). Trying to be too precise only costs time and gives an illusion of predictability and certainty--you're well within the resolution limit of the system at that point and are mostly just seeing noise.

Between tables, I'm much more flexible. I'm a player in 1 game and a DM for 2, currently. As a player, I say "here are the default rules, how do you want to run things?" (since I'm the most familiar with them) and then go with whatever the DM decides. Because it really doesn't matter to me. My DM has a few particular quirks that aren't how I'd do things, but whatever. Not important. In one of the two I DM for, I'm very "rule of cool", because the party is quite quirky. Things like using a ceramic jug of soup (stored in hammer-space where it doesn't cool down) as an improvised thrown weapon to knock down a fleeing guard. That was resolved as a non-proficient attack roll, with a STR save to not get knocked prone. DC totally made up on the spot, mainly because it was hilarious. The other campaign I'm much more strict on, because there are particular players who try to munchkin and make it a comedy campaign where the others don't want that. That one's much more "heroic/cinematic" than the first.

Edit: and a common thing I'll do in an area of sensitivity (like something that might kill a character or dramatically change the circumstance) is say "OK, here's how I'm thinking of resolving it (or here are the default rules). Here are the consequences. Should we go with this? Is there a better way? Is this what you want to do?". I treat action resolution as a conversation between the DM and the player(s) involved, and try to come to consensus. Most of the time it's obvious, but in special cases I try to get buy in before doing anything. And I give opportunities to back out and do something else. I very rarely (and then only when there's other considerations such as setting constraints) simply say "here's what happens, like it or not." And those usually have to do with plot twists.

[5crownik007]

If characters lack physical capacity to do something, I do not allow an attempt. I. E. Trying to fly without wings.

Otherwise, roll and most likely fail.

[Drascin]

My basic position is fairly simple. Rules exist to help the game along so that we don't have to think about how to resolve specific things, to create interesting/fun fiction outcomes, and to incentivize certain genre behaviours. A rule that succeeds at none of these things gets summarily tossed. I trust my GM to change the rules, and when I GM I honestly make up a lot of stuff on the fly with very little worry, based on the general air around the table.

Basically, I guess I tend to feel that if you trust some random-ass game designer on the other side of the world to have a better grasp of what will be fun for the group than your GM, why are you playing with that GM in the first place? I certainly wouldn't play with any GM I wouldn't extend at least that much trust.

[Quertus]

Basically, I guess I tend to feel that if you trust some random-ass game designer on the other side of the world to have a better grasp of what will be fun for the group than your GM, why are you playing with that GM in the first place? I certainly wouldn't play with any GM I wouldn't extend at least that much trust.

What about some random board game designer? Why shouldn't Knights get to take a free turn when they capture a piece, pawns move two spaces forward at will, and Queens get their own version of "castling" to swap positions with adjacent Bishops? Why should Chess be a standardized game at any given table, rather than a different game at each table?

[Eldan]

Eh, we've done that. I've had far more fun playing Peasant War Chess, Stealth Chess, Dungeon Chess, Time Travel Chess or 3D-chess than "regular" chess.

Edit: In fact, I'd go so far as to say that a lot of my best board game nights started with someone going "Wouldn't it be interesting if..."

We also play comped warhammer with homebrew army books and outdated edition models allowed, kitchen table magic and once added a research tree to Risk.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What about some random board game designer? Why shouldn't Knights get to take a free turn when they capture a piece, pawns move two spaces forward at will, and Queens get their own version of "castling" to swap positions with adjacent Bishops? Why should Chess be a standardized game at any given table, rather than a different game at each table?

Category error. No-DM board games are closed systems where the players already have stakes in the outcome (and thus cannot adjudicate fairly). TTRPGs have none of those properties.

Now if you see TTRPGs as inherently competitive, where the DM is on the other side and where the rules prescribe every possible action...

[geppetto]

What about some random board game designer? Why shouldn't Knights get to take a free turn when they capture a piece, pawns move two spaces forward at will, and Queens get their own version of "castling" to swap positions with adjacent Bishops? Why should Chess be a standardized game at any given table, rather than a different game at each table?

A. people do in fact do that and it can be a lot of fun.
B. Board games are competitive. Mastering the rules and using them against other players is part of the skill and the point. TTRPGs are not competitive. Your playing with the other players, not against them, including the GM with the goal of creating a shared story. If your trying to win an TTRPG your entering "bad wrong fun" territory.

[Zilong]

Seeing as how in one of my games I'm basically the only one who knows the rules in any depth, I take them as seriously as I need to make things interesting. To an extent that is true about the other game as well where pretty much everyone has some GM experience. Luckily, I know the rules well enough for the systems I run where I can make the rules work for me instead of being beholden to RAW.

[Pauly]

I break rules into two groups
:- core rules that need to be followed meticulously (eg combat, magic, social interactions). These are also usually the most well designed and well tested rules in the system.
:- auxiliary rules that are open to tweaking (eg ship sailing/combat in D&D, crafting weapons). These rules are often slapped together by someone who has little to no idea of the intricacies of the thing they’re trying to simulate. Depending on how important it is to the campaign it will either be handwaved with a simple skill test or I will try to port in another system that does the job in sufficient detail.

I also tend to have degrees of success or failure with auxiliary rules. For example in a D&D campaign where the players are trying to navigate a ship, a small failure is making landfall in the same kingdom as their target, a medium fail is making landfall at a place they can re-orientate themselves, a large fail is not finding land at all and a catastrophic fail is making landfall at an enemy base. For core rules I tend to have binary outcomes, you hit or you miss.

[Malphegor]

I'm fond of serious rule stuff because it avoids the DM throwing at us a magic item he made up on the spot that I have spent months trying to achieve with RAW abilities... but also sometimes it's fun to keep things fun and not make everything a challenge.

Ultimately I suppose it's ideal if everyone's playing the same game. if the rules are treated loosely, then everyone should be on the same level of playing the game loosely.

[MoiMagnus]

I'm fond of serious rule stuff because it avoids the DM throwing at us a magic item he made up on the spot that I have spent months trying to achieve with RAW abilities... but also sometimes it's fun to keep things fun and not make everything a challenge.

Ultimately I suppose it's ideal if everyone's playing the same game. if the rules are treated loosely, then everyone should be on the same level of playing the game loosely.

Right.
If you play with people that already have their 20 levels ready at the first session, going away from what they expect from RAW will frustrate them.
Conversely, if you play with peoples that literally discover the capacity of their next level up at the moment they gain a level, you can add stuff on the spot without poblems, they will be very happy.
Or if you play with experienced players that are bored if most of their power actually come from their class / anything from the books and want the most relevant part of their power to be unique to this campaign, that's yet another situation.

(Those examples are exaggeration of course, I've never seen a full table of people of either kind)

[Quertus]

I'm fond of serious rule stuff because it avoids the DM throwing at us a magic item he made up on the spot that I have spent months trying to achieve with RAW abilities... but also sometimes it's fun to keep things fun and not make everything a challenge.

Reminds me of the time I played an "inventor"/crafter, where the GM didn't let me make anything, then just handed the party something better than I could make by RAW - and priced it at a gazillion times cheaper than even the closest thing I could make. :smallannoyed: :smallfurious:

I feel your pain.

[ZenoForce88]

At my table I tend to follow the rules as closely as possible. But my group as the understanding that if something comes up, like a rule that is situational, or that we all don't remeber clearly. Rather than pause and look it up, the GM will make a Judgment Call, then after the game the rule will be looked up, and will work as per the book from that point on.

[Friv]

What about some random board game designer? Why shouldn't Knights get to take a free turn when they capture a piece, pawns move two spaces forward at will, and Queens get their own version of "castling" to swap positions with adjacent Bishops? Why should Chess be a standardized game at any given table, rather than a different game at each table?

People house rule board games all the time. I've played versions of Chess where kings had the same power as Queens (did not help), where the "en passant" rule was not allowed because the players agreed it was weird and they didn't want to think about it, and with various rules for what happens when a pawn crosses the board. And Chess is relatively simple.

I've played house-ruled versions of Mysterium, Settlers of Catann, Pandemic, Warhammer... there have often been times where a group says, "the rules say this but we're not fans of how that plays out so we do it different."

Heck, look at Monopoly and the Free Parking rule. This isn't a new phenomenon.