Why do RPGs have rules?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Because you’re wrong.

I play games of all kinds, and there really isn’t anything more plausible about the more trad type games than the more narrative focused games.

You’re still operating under this idea that everything that happens to the PCs is coincidence. Not that they’re actively trying to make things happen, but that seemingly random things happen, but then turn out to be connected to them in some way.

I call shenanighans. You defined the hooks as things that happened near the PCs:

"Hooks spring up all about... (A) this NPC has a favor to request, (B) and that NPC has lore about a nearby site, and (C) another wants his brother rescued from the Brotherhood of the Ebon Hand."

You cannot now claim that these are things the PCs made happen unless for example the PCs are the ones who kidnapped the brother and gave him to the Brotherhood.

YOU are the one who picked these examples. You're the one who made the assumptions that led to A, B, and C being NPC-driven hooks. If you'll recall, I was the one who mentioned earlier that you can have PC-driven scenarios like the PCs trying to run a con game on a wealthy businessman or seduce an emperor, and you just kept saying that was the same as NPC-driven narrative contrivance in your eyes. You're wrong.

And at the same time you accept the kind of “weirdness magnet” trope that would define D&D type play of the traditional sort… wandering adventurers with no connections to anything other than the quest for gold and xp… which is a contrivance so utter and complete that I cannot understand how you can express concern about contrivances.

This is exactly the emotional defensiveness I was talking about. You're incapable apparently of just having a normal conversation: "Doesn't a world that's been set up so that danger and chaos is logical everywhere require some degree of contrivance to create?" "Sure, but it's self-sustaining once created, and I've already said that I'm more simulationist at gametime than I am as a worldbuilder. Having a contrived setting doesn't bother me the way unexplained coincidences during play would."

Other people don't universally have the same hangups you do about needing to be seen as running a virtuously "realistic" game. Some of us are just pragmatically interested in realism, where appropriate, for what it does to gameplay (makes it easier to get in character) and willing suspension of disbelief.

 

[clearstream]

Yes, a particular person can learn about something included in E from a particular role-playing system that includes it in its S, but this something exists irrespective of the system and could be learned from another source (including, for example, someone's transcript of play or excited summary of the system)

I can restate it this way

For a particular person on any actual day on Earth, is the whole of E accessible?
Does the total set of sources on any actual day on Earth represent the whole of E?

The answer to both of those questions is very clearly "No". Therefore a particular person on an actual day on Earth can benefit from a game text (source) with rules constitutive of TTRPG possibilities novel and interesting to them.

Hilbert's Paradox* shows that even though E is a logically infinite set, on any actual day on Earth more possibilities can be added to it. "The statements "there is a guest to every room" and "no more guests can be accommodated" are not equivalent when there are infinitely many rooms." On any actual day on Earth a particular game designer can add to the possibilities by devising the rules constituting those possibilities.

There's a bit of stuff to unpack around constitutive rules, norms, and dispositions or whatever is taken for a particular person to know to do whatever amounts to some possibility. I've tried to explain it above and believe it plays out to the same ends. Essentially, you need to decide if you are rejecting the notion of constitutive rules, so that rules would not be able to extend pre-existing norms. That would run counter to mainstream thought on game rules, but there's probably an interesting debate to be had if you do!



*HB only applies to countable infinities, and whether or not E itself is countable (which honestly, I don't know) I believe there is a set matching E that can be made countable by assigning distinct non-modal identities to each possibility. E' then being the set of such identities. I've no idea how things work out if that's wrong and E isn't countable or we want to take modal possibilities into account.

 

[robertsconley]

My view is that the PCs are gonna do interesting things. There are going to be events happening no matter what.... that's the point of play.

That is a point of play, another possibility is that the players want to experience life as characters in a setting and finds that adventurous. There is no Story Now to be had. Only Story Later after all is said and done and everybody swaps tales of what happened in the campaign.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Overnight I figured out what the issue is (and you are right that so far as I can see it turns out not to turn on the type of infinity.)

The solution is suggested by hotel infinities. (How do you check new guests into an infinite hotel? Ask the current guests to all move along one room.) One perspective on E is to define it from an atemporal perspective: over all time, E is infinitely large and contains all S. Hotel infinities suggest another perspective.

At any time T on Earth, the size of E is equal to the size of all the S's currently checked-in to E. Some S can be infinite in size, but that shouldn't matter here. Over the whole Universe E might be infinitely large at T, but from an Earth-person's perspective, with access only to the S's of Earth, at time T' I can always check a new S into E.

At T' I can check a new S into E, which seeing as S can have constitutive rules introducing new possibilities, expands it! Thus, from a temporal perspective, there is always worth in adding S's. From my time-bound perspective, the added constitutive rules can open up new possibilities.

This is the sort of realist perspective on infinity, that while you can speak in the abstract of infinity, you cannot actually point to an actual instance of infinity, or an instance of infinite enumeration, etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure, there have historically been hotspots of lawlessness and strife.

They tend to be somewhat contained though, rather than present throughout the world. There also can be a lot of cultural factors at play. That many of the people involved have cultural reasons for doing so. Many of the participants are intrinsically connected to the struggles that are happening, with strong bonds with other people in the area.

This idea if rootless wanderers who find adventures everywhere they go, and who have no concerns or connections beyond the drive for adventure… it exists purely to support play of D&D.

I’m sure there are examples we can find from history, but I don’t think they support this idea of an adventurer economy of the sort that’s present in the typical game setting.

D&D is about as far from history as you can get in my opinion. That said, just because there is a setting conceit that is highly gameable, that doesn't mean you can't follow through that conceit in a 'simulationist' manner that does still look to real world history and real life for guidance in shaping how things pan out. I would argue playability is extremely important and having gameable setting concepts can mean the difference between a game that lasts a week and one you keep going back to for years (I think a lot of what has sustained D&D over its lifetime is it has many core elements that are highly gameable on a regular basis). But then moment someone like Hickman asks 'what is the vampire even doing in this dungeon', I would argue you are moving more towards something trying to model a believable world. Granted that is also where a lot of people point to more story elements to RPGs becoming significant in RPGs. I think both are true though, just as it can both be true that D&D with its setting of wandering heroes is there because it works for gameability and play over time, and that this can also lead you to ask questions about setting consistency, following the fictional history of the setting, bringing real world logic into the game etc. I don't think there is a one true way here. Some people want more cinematic D&D, some people want more realistic D&D (in the senes of things flowing more like real life and not being overly cinematic---or at least being perhaps more character driven). I think when you are dealing with fantasy especially there will always be players who will want areas of the game to be grounded in something real to help make the fantasy more believable (though I also think a Terry Gilliam style campaign is entirely fine too)

 

[hawkeyefan]

Quite often IME there are but two truly important things to many players: surviving, and getting rich. Anything beyond that is a bonus.

In theory, perhaps. In practice, unless you've got a high degree of player buy-in, it'll end up being about gold and levels.

Completely depends on the players, and I probably run for a more casual lot than you do.

No, not in theory. In practice, it actually works just fine. I don't know about comparative levels of buy-in. I feel like my players are engaged, and the games in which I play the players are engaged. We've certainly bought in. I don't know if that's a high-degree.

Given as it's a world I made up, and that in its physics, geology, cultures, etc. it has to account for magic (both mortal and not) and divine interference, I find no problem with having it be a place of conflicting goals, cultures, morals, and species.

In other words, I'm going to unapologetically make it playable.

Right. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's admission that it's all contrived.

How long were those campaigns? My experience is that if they stay in one place too long the players get bored of that place, which inevitably means the characters will soon enough start doing things they shouldn't, thus wearing out their welcome. They'll have to move on.

Also, in a long campaign it's fun to change up the background or atmosphere for variety's sake. The world has jungles and deserts and oceans and arctic and forests and cities and dungeons - might as well use all of them as adventure backdrops at some point, hm?

I haven't felt the need to change scenery because of players getting bored, no.

Those GMs who see the PCs as the world's only adventurers would have it this way by default.

Again, what if they're not "adventurers"?

Just imagine for a moment that the classig paradigm doesn't apply. Let's say the PCs are not wandering adventurers.... let's say they're criminals. Or spies. Or inhabitants of a specific town.

What does that do for play? It helps focus their goals in such a way that you can make play be about those goals.

That the Emperor should conveniently show up shortly after the players decide on a whim to overthrow him?

Yes, I get the sense that some here are suggesting exactly this; that because the players have decided their goal is to take out the Emperor, it's now my duty as GM to - by way of focusing on their stated goals - somehow put the Emperor in their path.

I can't understand how that's your take away. I feel like you're not even attempting to understand. You describe that in your game if they decide to kill the emperor then you better start considering things about the emperor. That's exactly what I'm talking about. No one's saying that as soon as they decide to kill the emperor, he wanders into the Inn they're sitting in.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I call shenanighans. You defined the hooks as things that happened near the PCs:

"Hooks spring up all about... (A) this NPC has a favor to request, (B) and that NPC has lore about a nearby site, and (C) another wants his brother rescued from the Brotherhood of the Ebon Hand."

You cannot now claim that these are things the PCs made happen unless for example the PCs are the ones who kidnapped the brother and gave him to the Brotherhood.

YOU are the one who picked these examples. You're the one who made the assumptions that led to A, B, and C being NPC-driven hooks. If you'll recall, I was the one who mentioned earlier that you can have PC-driven scenarios like the PCs trying to run a con game on a wealthy businessman or seduce an emperor, and you just kept saying that was the same as NPC-driven narrative contrivance in your eyes. You're wrong.

I'm afraid you misread. Those examples were describing more trad based play. Things continually happening to the PCs or continually being available for the PCs to interact with.

These are not examples of the PCs making anything happen. My point was that they are no less contrived.

This is exactly the emotional defensiveness I was talking about. You're incapable apparently of just having a normal conversation: "Doesn't a world that's been set up so that danger and chaos is logical everywhere require some degree of contrivance to create?" "Sure, but it's self-sustaining once created, and I've already said that I'm more simulationist at gametime than I am as a worldbuilder. Having a contrived setting doesn't bother me the way unexplained coincidences during play would."

That's fine. You can have whatever preference you want. Just recognize that's what they are.

Also, you've now made reference to my emotional state in a few posts... I've not done that to you at all. I've not said you are incapable of reason or that you're too emotional to have a discussion. I've simply continued to try and discuss.

Other people don't universally have the same hangups you do about needing to be seen as running a virtuously "realistic" game. Some of us are just pragmatically interested in realism, where appropriate, for what it does to gameplay (makes it easier to get in character) and willing suspension of disbelief.

I'm not claiming my game is more realistic than anyone else's. Quite the opposite, in fact... I'm saying the kind of plausibility that Simulationist GMs cite as their goal is a concern in most games. Internal consistency and building on what's come before... these are core elements of the games I play.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Some people want more cinematic D&D, some people want more realistic D&D (in the senes of things flowing more like real life and not being overly cinematic---or at least being perhaps more character driven). I think when you are dealing with fantasy especially there will always be players who will want areas of the game to be grounded in something real to help make the fantasy more believable (though I also think a Terry Gilliam style campaign is entirely fine too)

I just wanted to call this out as an example of reasonable dialogue that I'd like to see more of in this thread. "Cinematic" is a good example of a non-emotionally-defensive contrast to "realistic" gameplay. It is possible to like either for various reasons.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

.
I'm not claiming my game is more realistic than anyone else's. Quite the opposite, in fact... I'm saying the kind of plausibility that Simulationist GMs cite as their goal is a concern in most games. Internal consistency and building on what's come before... these are core elements of the games I play.

If it were the same kind of plausibility (as opposed to e.g. cinematic plausibility), you'd just shrug and say "I guess I lean simulationist then" in response to someone answering a question about "what's the point of simulationism?"

 

[hawkeyefan]

That is a point of play, another possibility is that the players want to experience life as characters in a setting and finds that adventurous. There is no Story Now to be had. Only Story Later after all is said and done and everybody swaps tales of what happened in the campaign.

That's the same point. The players don't want to experience a mundane life as everyday folks in the setting. They're going to be atypical in that sense. They're going to have interesting things happen to them.

The idea that these interesting things being unrelated to them is somehow more realistic is absurd.

When I play, I roleplay. I make characters with distinct personalities and motivations and act accordingly in-game. I am not interested in being part of a narrative. I am interested as a player in experiencing the life of a setting. Interacting with those who inhabit the world. Getting involved in their complications and perhaps introducing a few of my own to further my character's goals. The metgaming that PbtA, FitD, Fate and other similar style games have you doing doesn't help me and gets in the way when I play.

That's your stance. And while it's fine, the fact that you see these things as obstacles does not make them universally so for everyone. It's a quality of you, not a quality of the game mechanics.