Why do RPGs have rules?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Once again I am compelled to query, what is the virtue of a "GM decided" from all the way back in 1986 on the fun being had today, by players now?

One of the nice things is that it can preserve a sense of fairness and trust in the GM, and willing suspension of disbelief.

I had the experience a few weeks after picking up 5E of playing alongside a truly awful player who made his 20th+ level character (Wizard 11/Cleric 10 or something, loads of magic items) less effective in play than our 8th level characters. At one point he wandered off alone in a huff because other characters weren't treating him with Gandalf-level reverence, and wound up meeting the BBEG of the dungeon, an ancient lich whom the DM had already described via legend as killing armies and IIRC blowing the tops off mountains.

Idiot player proceeds to make some grandiose pronouncement and then attack the BBEG, on his own. I'm expecting him to get nuked. (Oh BTW this BBEG had appeared onscreen before to save us from a potential TPK against four mind flayers and a Balor by paralyzing everybody with a single word of power, so his immense power had already been established both offscreen and onscreen.)

Instead he lets the PC upcast Globe of Invulnerability to level 9 (the only moderately good use of his 9th level slot I ever saw from the player), and then... starts to melee him, after the player points out to the DM that he's immune to paralysis because of some ring. So they stand there in the Globe of Invulnerability trading blows until the BBEG dies!

That really broke my sense of the world as a place where stuff "really happens", and was a factor in my leaving the campaign a couple of sessions later.

If I had known that my GM were the type never to invent contrivances during play--if there were notes dating back to 1986 showing that this particular lich never retreats so much as 10 feet, or waits 60 seconds for an enemy spell to end before engaging--then I would say, "Wow, what a stupid lich. I'm surprised nobody has killed him already," but at least I wouldn't have felt like the DM was cheating to keep the player alive. I wouldn't have left the campaign.

There's the virtue you were looking for: more trust in the integrity of the setting. It's not the only way to earn trust but it's definitely a valid way to earn trust.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My point is that the whole idea of "a villain", a "big bad", is a conceit. You've created a character who has that potential - as you put it, "to meet the villain trope". That's contrivance, pure and simple!

... And my point is, How is this any different from my Prince Valiant campaign? And if the answer is "It's not", then what is the basis for saying that RPGing focused around PCs' dramatic needs, as authored by their players, involves a degree of contrivance that "simulationist" RPGing does not?

You're missing the point. If it's contrived, it's not simulationist. You should be asking "was that aspect of your campaign (GDS) simulationist?" and the answer will be "no, but subsequent play with this villain was (GDS) simulationist."

You keep assuming that we're talking about GNS simulationism, and that simulationism is a property of the game system as opposed to a particular decision made by the GM. Edwards AFAICT advocates for "purity" of creative agenda and would frown on gamist or narrativist elements in an otherwise-GNS simulationist campaign, but GDS doesn't work that way! It's normal and expected to see a G, D, and S in a mix; no GM is ever expected to be 100% focused on only one agenda.

Your attachment to Edwards's framing is blinding you.

 

[Aldarc]

This statement from Fritz Leiber strikes me as an interesting contrast to Tolkien's method of plotting out world details exhaustively in advance (e.g. the Silmarillion):

Except Tolkien didn't do anything of the sort. I think that this conflates the final published product(s) with the writing process. The mythos of The Silmarillion was originally wholly disconnected from the world of The Hobbit and even what would become Lord of the Rings. Synthesizing the stories of his Silmarillion passion project with the stories he told to his children and later published came later, often changed to be in service of the stories already told (e.g., Elrond and Elros).

Even then, according to Tolkien scholars and his own son Christopher, Tolkien was notorious for his constant revision of his notes. This is what made compiling Tolkien's notes difficult for Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, who had to work through those sometimes contradictory notes and make decisions in order to create a published version of The Silmarillion.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Except Tolkien didn't do anything of the sort. I think that this conflates the final published product(s) with the writing process. The mythos of The Silmarillion was originally wholly disconnected from the world of The Hobbit and even what would become Lord of the Rings. Synthesizing the stories his Silmarillion passion project with the stories he told to his children and later published came later, often changed to be service of the stories already told (e.g., Elrond and Elros).

Interesting. I had a different impression, but if it's just an interesting contrast to Brandon Sanderson's exhaustive pre-plotting instead of Tolkien's then it's irrelevant to this thread's Tolkien discussion and I apologize for bringing it up.

 

[Aldarc]

Interesting. I had a different impression, but if it's just an interesting contrast to Brandon Sanderson's exhaustive pre-plotting instead of Tolkien's then it's irrelevant to this thread's Tolkien discussion and I apologize for bringing it up.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that a lot of fantasy authors who like to world-build and pre-plot their stories, especially those writing in the 90s and onwards grew up playing D&D. Sanderson even said that his first attempt at writing at age fifteen produced a terrible book that was like a hybrid of Tad Williams and Dragonlance.

And much as I said before, I do think that likely many people get the impression when looking at Tolkien that his world-building was performed systematically in advance because they mistake the final product for the actual writing process, which I think likely colors how many authors and gamemasters feel world-building should be done.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

A game biz colleague of mine once said that the practical effect of taxonomies in rolegaming (like some kinds of manifesto in the arts and humanities generally) is to give the advocate of a particular cause grounds on which to talk naughty word about every kind of potential rival or competitor. That was, egad, something like twenty years ago, but doesn’t seem less true or relevant now.

Mmmm. I can see how this would be the practical effect among toxic people, but it's not the practical effect among the sorts of open-minded, intellectually humble people I enjoy talking to.

Among such people, the practical effect of asking where Morrolan e'Drien and Aliera e'Kieron sit on the alignment spectrum is merely an interesting discussion of their observed behaviors and traits, undoubtedly with an acknowledgement that alignment is ambiguous when applied to realistic characters, and probably some sort of list of evidence in all directions (evil-ish: Morrolan took great joy in painfully dismembering his opponent in a duel; good-ish: Morrolan is always happy to help a friend, even if there's nothing in it for him or if it might cost him his life; good-ish: in Tsalmoth, Morrolan tries to dissuade Vlad from pointlessly killing someone who accidentally hurt him badly while pursuing a different goal). There probably won't be a consensus on an ultimate decision but that's okay.

The practical effect of taxonomies is to catalyze interesting thinking and discussion.

P.S. Also the practical effect of reading Blacow's taxonomy (Glenn Blacow's "Aspects of Adventure Gaming") was, for me, enlightenment about the need to communicate my GMing style and priorities clearly to prospective players, so they can decide whether or not they're interested in the game I am interested in running. I don't necessarily need to make them read the article but I should find a way to make my style very clear very quickly.

 

[clearstream]

It’s an interesting challenge to see how far you can actually go in articulating and advocating for a combination of features you like without dragging down other combos. I find that it’s actually really hard to do at any length longer than a paragraph or so.

So true. I would put it as a virtue, over interesting challenge! Not just to avoid dragging down, but also to avoid denying those other combos.

That's the most painful to witness: when the very possibility of a distinctive experience is eroded. That can be hard to avoid, because played TTRPG defies tidy categorisation: there's bleed, drift, rephrasing, adjusted emphasis, alternative purposes.

I feel we just have to accept the inherent thorniness of these conversations, and value conflicting views for the perspectives they offer.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Except Tolkien didn't do anything of the sort. I think that this conflates the final published product(s) with the writing process. The mythos of The Silmarillion was originally wholly disconnected from the world of The Hobbit and even what would become Lord of the Rings. Synthesizing the stories his Silmarillion passion project with the stories he told to his children and later published came later, often changed to be service of the stories already told (e.g., Elrond and Elros).

Even then, according to Tolkien scholars and his own son Christopher, Tolkien was notorious for his constant revision of his notes. This is what made compiling Tolkien's notes difficult for Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay, who had to work through those sometimes contradictory notes and make decisions in order to create a published version of The Silmarillion.

I think this kind of illustrates a few things about my shift away from this kind of worldbuilding in my RPGing. There are other factors as well, but this summarizes a few.

First, that kind of worldbuilding is just incredibly difficult to keep straight. Here's the guy who's considered the master... and he had all kinds of contradictions. His son and another professional author had trouble reconciling some of it. And this is someone who had time to do multiple drafts and revise things prior to publishing.

Second, the vast majority of that information just doesn't make it into play. To stick with Tolkien, if the Lord of the Rings is play, and the Silmarillion is the GM's backstory... it's superfluous. I understand that this information can help guide a GM's judgments during play, but that's not a necessity, and it also means that things totally unseen to the players (and likely to remain so) are what's shaping play. I don't think that's ideal for what's supposed to be an exercies in shared creativity.

Third, The Silmarillion is terrible. I think there's a reason that his first attempt with it was rejected, and so it became a background for a more viable story in the form of LotR. There are obviously interesting ideas in The Silmarillion, but the way it's constructed and presented is just not all that interesting. How this relates to RPGs is that presentation matters... just crafting encyclopedia style histories spanning thousands of years doesn't mean it's interesting to read, let alone to shape play.

Fourth, all the effort and energy that goes into this fictional history is, in my opinion, misplaced effort. As a GM I should be creating interesting things for the players to interact with... NPCs and locations and situations and the like. Sure, some of those things may need a bit of historical context, but there's no need to lock everything in ahead of time. Doing so denies me the flexibility to incorporate the ideas of the players should a more interesting take present itself during play that I'd not thought of.

These are the lessons that I've learned considering Tolkienesque worldbuilding. The pros it has on play are minimal compared to the cons.

 

[clearstream]

I think this kind of illustrates a few things about my shift away from this kind of worldbuilding in my RPGing. There are other factors as well, but this summarizes a few.

First, that kind of worldbuilding is just incredibly difficult to keep straight. Here's the guy who's considered the master... and he had all kinds of contradictions. His son and another professional author had trouble reconciling some of it. And this is someone who had time to do multiple drafts and revise things prior to publishing.

Second, the vast majority of that information just doesn't make it into play. To stick with Tolkien, if the Lord of the Rings is play, and the Silmarillion is the GM's backstory... it's superfluous. I understand that this information can help guide a GM's judgments during play, but that's not a necessity, and it also means that things totally unseen to the players (and likely to remain so) are what's shaping play. I don't think that's ideal for what's supposed to be an exercies in shared creativity.

Third, The Silmarillion is terrible. I think there's a reason that his first attempt with it was rejected, and so it became a background for a more viable story in the form of LotR. There are obviously interesting ideas in The Silmarillion, but the way it's constructed and presented is just not all that interesting. How this relates to RPGs is that presentation matters... just crafting encyclopedia style histories spanning thousands of years doesn't mean it's interesting to read, let alone to shape play.

Fourth, all the effort and energy that goes into this fictional history is, in my opinion, misplaced effort. As a GM I should be creating interesting things for the players to interact with... NPCs and locations and situations and the like. Sure, some of those things may need a bit of historical context, but there's no need to lock everything in ahead of time. Doing so denies me the flexibility to incorporate the ideas of the players should a more interesting take present itself during play that I'd not thought of.

These are the lessons that I've learned considering Tolkienesque worldbuilding. The pros it has on play are minimal compared to the cons.

A case in point, that ties a critique to personal experience and presents a strong contrast to my own.

 

[Aldarc]

Third, The Silmarillion is terrible. I think there's a reason that his first attempt with it was rejected, and so it became a background for a more viable story in the form of LotR. There are obviously interesting ideas in The Silmarillion, but the way it's constructed and presented is just not all that interesting. How this relates to RPGs is that presentation matters... just crafting encyclopedia style histories spanning thousands of years doesn't mean it's interesting to read, let alone to shape play.

Nope. This is the point where you crossed a dangerous line with me.