@AbdulAlhazred Your sketch of the Robin Hood game, and the role that rules do and don't play in it, is terrific. I've played that sort of thing using AD&D, and Eero Tuovinen is correct that the rules are not a very suitable content delivery chassis. Adapting better rules - that allow the adding of colour as you describe (Who is my Merry Man friends with? What is the cut of my Merry Man's tights?), and that structure working through the story in a way that is better than map-and-key + random encounter rolls - will make the experience better,
without changing the core underlying structure and process of play.
@clearstream: I adopt post 626 holus bolus as an appendix to my post 627.
You asked above if I was still in agreement with the
Bitslayer essay. I'm more "Yes, and" in its regard. That "and" is what I'm exploring here: I aim to adjust my argument as follows.
A few ways of treating our material or subjects of play have been outlined, and there may be more.
They can be actively disclosed. You simply tell me the way it is. This isn't something we intend to contest.
They can be addressed playfully. We negotiate via fluid, unwritten rules.
They can be addressed gamefully. This may be something we intend to contest, perhaps because we don't want to accept it. We negotiate via written rules with a commitment to upholding them. It can be something we want to address in a particular way, where doing it that way constitutes an experience that would not be obtained or would be hard to obtain consistently otherwise.
In all cases, I believe norms and principles apply. When the intent is to shift those to specific norms and principles, those specifics must be communicated to folk outside the originating group.
Different folk observably enter play with expectations and preferences as regards subject/treatment pairings. There may be subjects they're content to simply have disclosed, and others they want to submit to game play. That could be to do with qualities of experience they hope to have, or validation, or simply habit; and no doubt other motives besides. I read Edwards to have made an argument about a preferred way to treat certain material or subjects of play. I take him to imply that it is the
necessary way, if one wants to experience those subjects ludically.
What I want to adjust is that when I used the term "ludically-crux" I inadvertently implied "crux" i.e. what was most important. I intended - what was most important to experience as game play - hence "ludically".
@pemerton pointed out the possibility of a player to whom what was most important to them in joining the session of play, was not most important to them to experience as game play. (For the sake of argument, let's suppose New-Lucy fits this description. It turns out that her strongest motives for joining a session of play are to engage in playfully revealing story and expressing her character.)
In hindsight, the notion of "ludically-crux" implied a wider ideal where I intended a narrower. One could value mechanics without those mechanics
necessarily being focused on whatever is most important to your intended play. While it seems obvious that players could be well-served choosing game texts with utility to whatever they count ludically-crux, they would be even better served choosing texts with utility to what they count crux. As I will explain below, this leads to shifting the "ought" in the ideal I'm advocating.
My "and" then is my observation that many of the innovations referred to in this thread arose from a wave of design that drew together the crux and ludically-crux. That's why it became important GM followed rules. And seeing as the crux had a far greater scope than what had formerly being counted ludically-crux, that forced a number of other design improvements (streamlining for play) informed by theory such as Baker's. My second step is to infer from Edwards, implications for "ludonarrative" (meaning narrative in the medium of game), with the explanatory consequence that the "neotrad" selection of innovations preserve their purpose to some extent wherever they are relocated to. In fact, I suggest that is part of the value in incorporating them.
Well, there are a couple things missing from your descriptions here: Rules clearly are constituted in RPGs for the purpose of regulating who, when, and why specific instances of fiction can be incorporated, as you yourself at one point imply. Now, this would seem to fall under VB's rubrik of "stuff you don't need, better handled informally" EXCEPT for the other half of that which you have elided here; which is the bringing in of the unpleasant and unexpected. We can CLEARLY see that this is where VB was leading, as AW exemplifies a rules system which does this quite gracefully! In terms of a neo-trad sort of play unpleasant and unexpected are not elements that are always necessary, so I think the question does become much more cogent here! That is, Given that the players are aiming at exemplifying a theme which is already established before play begins, what is the purpose of rules? I'd say that, to a large degree, they are employed to add color!
I'm not following how this is responsive to my
#614. Did you mean it to respond to a different post?
Let me try to give an example: You might invent a milieu and corresponding rules which are intended to allow the players to assume the roles of Robinhood and his Merry Men. Obviously fiction will include elements like King John, the Sheriff, Maid Marian, Sherwood Forest, etc. Rules might then describe the attributes of a Merry Man, facilitating the definitions of things like their particular backgrounds (fugitive nobility, impoverished knight, rogue monk, villainous poacher, etc.). The rules might further enumerate various possible bits of flavor, such as the types of weapons (longbows aside) that a given character has expertise with, NPC family members who might be brought into the story, etc. It might also specify some other sorts of color, like what sorts of acts and situations lead to an increase in the reward offered for a given character by the Sheriff (and thus regulating different sorts of fallout like the deadliness of the pursuit or whether their NPC family is threatened). I can see all of the above as potentially useful, but they're fundamentally present in order to elaborate on and ease the player burden of 'getting into character'.
Now, constitutive rules regarding the actual process of play are also going to be necessary in order to construct a true game out of this, but the question is, as Baker implies, are they really necessary? If the participants are in agreement on the nature of the milieu, and the style of play (neo-trad/OC, so presumably whether Robin and Co 'win' or not isn't actually part of the stakes) already tells us the general trajectory of the narrative, then can we not simply fill in the blanks in an informal way? Honestly, wouldn't it be at least a reasonable supposition that rules in this form of game are really present to do this merely because it eases the generation of fiction? So, for instance a structure in which the GM is told to formulate 'adventures' in the form of 3-part stories with a lead-in, a crisis, and a resolution would work reasonably well, with details suggesting specific sorts of each scene, etc. I'd think you could construct a pretty decent game of this sort by these means, but I think VB is still right that skilled participants in play are likely to find the rules more a bother than a help.
Certainly groups I've played with have made the sort of move you outline. I believe your remarks are addressed by my adjustment at top of this post. Technically, I adjust from one sort of principle to a second sort of principle. The first sort is - you ought to want X and do Y. The second sort is - you ought to do Y if you want X. You ought to settle in game play, subjects that you want to experience
ludically. One could then read Edwards as saying something equivalent to - you say you want to experience dramatic protagonism in your game play, but you are not settling that in game play: here's how you settle it in game play. I take designers to be saying something about what they intend to be experienced in game play, when they decide to incorporate the sorts of mechanics referred to. Or at least, I recommend that they decide if they are saying anything by it!
Thus turning to your "skilled participants". "Skilled" could imply that they can manage an unwritten rules structure with sufficient insight and consistency that they needn't use a written text. I have observed such groups. Or it could imply that they share norms and principles sufficiently strongly and with sufficient sophistication that they can richly treat a subject playfully. I have observed groups like this, too. I think what Baker is observing is that for either of those groups, there can still be hesitation and other glitches around saying that which no one at the table wants to say. He implies, and I would outright state, that there can also be webs of constitutive and regulatory rules that are very difficult to emulate freeform. Not because no one wants to say it (whatever they say), but because over the span of play it unfurls complexly so that it is difficult to say it any other way.