Different philosophies concerning Rules Heavy and Rule Light RPGs.

[Gimby]

The bit that I've bolded is pretty striking to me. Is that a thing?

Not so much in D&D (outside of Paladin falling) but in White Wolf derived systems there's often a judgement - Virtue rolls to take a certain action in Exalted, Humanity damage in Vampire and so on. Implicit in this is the DM judging your character shouldn't do that based on backstory or stats.

On one level, you can even expand this to (mundane, at least, for everyone to agree on) fear effects.

 

[Bill Zebub]

You just imagine that I'm the sort of GM that...

Tell you what, I'll stick to my experience and you stick to yours. I won't try to tell you what you imagine.

 

[Retros_x]

I think its a fallacy to think that rules-light leads to more fight and discussion, I think its the other way around. Because its IMPOSSIBLE to have rules cover everything there always will be rulings by a DM. But the more used DM and players are to rules the more a ruling becomes an abnormality and thus a source of contention.

And I definitely had the same moments of bringing D&D players to more rules-light system getting a sparkle in their eyes realizing now they could actually play what they want, the old promise of TTRPGs become true.
On the other hand I don't judge people who like more rules, I also sometimes just want to play a more "defined game".

 

[pemerton]

I think that idea of sticking to what’s prepared being fair has lingered in D&D and similar play while the game has changed in other ways, and so it no longer seems as relevant as it may have been In those days.

Well that's the weirdness - to me, at least - of much contemporary D&D play: it retains legacy techniques (like prep and adherence to prep) even though the context in which those techniques emerged and made sense has passed.

 

[pemerton]

It seems so. I was referencing a post by @Celebrim in which they stated:

I require players to submit a backstory in D&D explaining who their character is and by extension how they expect to play that character. If the character is an elf but doesn't feel very "elfish" I will not approve the character for play.

OK. I guess that's a thing!

 

[Thomas Shey]

For typical home play, I fail to see the difference in "fairness" between something created days in advance, and things created moments in advance. Fairness is not extant in the time difference, but in the details of the choices in creation.

In the old days the critique of "flexkeying" (changing things on the fly) was that it was tool for overriding skilled play; in other words, you'd set something up, the players would come up with a plan that sidesteps/overcomes it, so you change it so their plan doesn't work. That's at least a different kind of unfairness to big brute force things you can do even preparing in advance just because you're the GM.

 

[Thomas Shey]

On the subject of rules lawyering, I don't object to a player raising a rules issue at the table. For one thing, sometimes I'm misremembering or misapplying the rules, and a clarification is welcome. If I have a player at the table with a head for the rules, even though to a large extent at my tables "the rules" are "my house rules", then I find that a good thing and am happy to have someone assisting me at the table.

The problem with rules lawyering isn't "caring about the rules" per se. The problem is with a player that only raises rules objections when he feels the ruling isn't favorable. You can tell the good ones because they are like, "I hate to bring this up, but by the rules shouldn't I be drawing an attack of opportunity here?" or something of that sort where they bring up rules that negatively impact their situation as much as ones that help them.

The group I played with at the time got the damnedest look from a guest GM running a Champions game because most of the group pointed out he was deciding a situation too kindly and counter to the rules impacting one character (including the player of that character). It just boggled him we'd do that, but our policy was "we keep our powder dry."

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't understand why. For any encounter I will describe things for the players, but I would never go out of my way to "communicate reasons" how "different" everything is....for some reason. Sure the Chasm of Doom on the 655th Layer of the Abyss has a higher jump DC then the chasm nearby the goblin cave. But the vast majority of other chasms look fairly plain and alike, but still might have a various ranges of DCs.

And the reasons for those differences should be communicated to the players. If two chasms are similar and the conditions are similar (weather, space to run, terrain, etc.) then the DCs should be the same or at least very close to the same.

If the conditions are different such that the DC for the second chasm is higher, then that should he made clear to the players.

Personally, I just state the DC and tell them how I calculated it. I know some folks prefer not to tell the players the actual numbers for some reason, but at the very least the GM should share the factors that affect the DC. Something like “You’ve made similar jumps before but the recent rains have left the ground slick, and there are powerful wind gusts that could make jumping more dangerous”.

I mean, this is one of the basic functions of running the game.

It does not make any sense to me. As nearly everything in a RPG that is encountered should be different, not just the same things over and over and over again.

No one is talking about the same thing over and over. We’re talking about two instances that are very similar. It could be a pair of chasms, it could be two doors within the same structure, it could be two windows leading into a structure, two guards with similar dispositions… or any number of other things. There is plenty of this kind of stuff in an RPG, and it’s beneficial as a game to maintain consistency when needed.

To clarify, no one is saying that all chasms should be the same, or all doors or guards or what have you. But consistency is helpful for portraying these things to the players. It gives them a baseline of expectations from which they can then approach the situation.

Maybe not?

I would suggest at least listening to people when they describe play that’s different from yours and not immediately characterizing it as some cartoonish version of what they’re saying.

It comes across as if you can’t understand that there are other ways to do things than the way you do them.

And maybe listening to some of these comments will lead to a better understanding of different views about gaming. Which then… maybe… will help you in dealing with your players who you’re always complaining about.

I agree the easy way out is to just tell the players everything up front. The game does run much smoother if the GM holds each of the players hands and guides them. This is one of the things that makes my game style so hard for many players. I will describe the narrow ledge, the rain and the water on the ledge.....but it is up to the players to figure out all that might change the DC.

See this is the kind of cartoonish description that does you no favors. Sharing information is not “holding the players’ hands”. It’s what the DM has to do for the game to work.

I'm not sure dungeons are puzzles?

What would you say a dungeon is in the terms of a game?

I would say simply not giving away tons of game information often. Typically the players and characters won't know most game information...nearly always.

I would argue that in most cases, the characters would be aware of much more than of what they wouldn’t be aware.

I provide players with an abundance of information. That doesn’t mean I don’t withhold key unknown details. But what I don’t do is make them pixelbitch for every scrap of information, especially things that would he readily apparent to the characters.

As either a player or GM, there’s nothing I dislike more than the game bogging down as the players slowly try to guess the GM’s secret detail that will allow play to continue.

I would not agree with either of your two examples. But I would say players would not know nearly all abilities, spells or magic items a foe might be using at one time. And I sure don't think the GM should do a Buddy Move to have players find and encounter everything all the time. Like some sort of quantum encounter.

I didn’t comment on the abilities or magic of an enemy. Though I still would say you can probably share more details than you likely are. If an enemy has full plate and a shield and some kind of magic defense, you can describe all that and let the players know he has a high AC. Personally, I’d just say the AC because there’s nothing to be gained from withholding it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I do the opposite. In most of my games (as player or GM) we 'discover' who the characters are during play. Sometimes a player will have a particular backstory in mind which they share, but sometimes it just starts with "I feel like playing an orc cleric/priest type character..." and 10 or 20 sessions later that character has developed a whole persona.

There used to be an old term for this during the rec.games.frp.advocacy days; DAS (Design At Start) versus DIP (Develop In Play). It was largely just a matter of taste early on with the tendency for games to be kind of unmoored to any background of a character, but as it got common for some background elements to actually have mechanical weight, full-blown DIP got a bit less common.

 

[Thomas Shey]

During the game session, I do. We can revisit after the session and if I feel my ruling was egregiously bad then something can be changed. Arguments at the table are time wasters and fun ruiners.

Wheras I think some things need to be fixed when they happen, not unspooled and retroed three hours later when there's potentially been knock-on effects for the rest of the session.