Why have no rules?

[Jack Aidley]

Hi Vincent,

I'm not sure whether the first part of your post was meant to be in reply to me or not. If it was I don't understand how, 'cos I think I agree with everything you said there.

Jack, I hope you can see that from this angle, your "assuming the GM is capable of ruling swiftly and effectively" undoes the whole rest of your post.  You can't assume that.  You can't even assume a GM, let alone one whose input into the game is to be accepted without negotiation.

Why not?

The costs associated with having that sort of GM are far worse than the costs of learning slick, well-designed rules.

What costs are these? Beyond, perhaps, a difficulty in finding such a GM?

Eh, let me backpedal that last to: at least you have to balance the costs, you can't hide them behind an "assuming the GM...".  Whether the costs are worse in balance is up to each of us individually.

Well, quite. Freeforming is not, and cannot be, one size fits all, that's not the point. The point is that freeforming frees you from the cost of the rules. Of course, it also removes any benefits those rules could bring as well - so whether that tradeoff works depends on what your doing, who you are and who you're playing with.

Absolutely crucial to all of this is understanding what rules do, which is structure negotiation.

I think some rules do a lot more than this. Take a look at Great Ork Gods, the rules here don't just tell you how to resolve a situation they tell you what the situation is and how it works. A sizeable chunk of the play is caused by the rules. The same is true of a some of the rules in a lot of games; particularly the magic rules.

Regards,

Jack

[Thierry Michel]

what roleplaying situations have you found that no rules is better than having rules for those specific situations?

Whenever everyone agrees on the desired outcome of a decision.

[pete_darby]

what roleplaying situations have you found that no rules is better than having rules for those specific situations?

Whenever everyone agrees on the desired outcome of a decision.

I'd go a little further, and say that it's whenever a strict reading of the rules for a given situation made me go "Huh? That's screwy!"

For case studies... Murphy's Rules on the Pyramid site. Some of them would be better served by having more, or more detailed rules, but for the most part, Murphy's rules arise from not thinking the implications of rules through.

(My favourites come from RuneQuest... Whenever the Uroxi have a shindig, approx 5% will mistakenly detect Chaos and go berzerk. Whenever 1000 Lunar Hoplites charge, about 30 of them will accidentally impale themselves in their spears. IN the city of Pavis, approx 14 people a day are spontaneously swept up into the Godplanes, as they then were)

[lumpley]

Hey Jack.  The first part of my post wasn't addressed to you, you're right!

The cost of having a GM who gets to make non-negotiable rulings is: it undermines player authorship and introduces, not just structure, but power-based hierarchy into a game group.  The people I play games with are my peers and collaborators, so even when we take on different responsibilities, everyone's input is negotiable.  Exempting a GM is no small thing.

It's also not freeforming, if freeforming means non-structured negotiation.  "My word is law" isn't non-structured.  It's a big-time rule.

Absolutely crucial to all of this is understanding what rules do, which is structure negotiation.

I think some rules do a lot more than this. Take a look at Great Ork Gods, the rules here don't just tell you how to resolve a situation they tell you what the situation is and how it works. A sizeable chunk of the play is caused by the rules. The same is true of a some of the rules in a lot of games; particularly the magic rules.

Mm, you took "structure negotiation" to mean "resolve a situation."  That's not what I meant.  Some rules resolve situations, but most don't - some rules limit character action or control the flow of metagame resources or undermine player authorship or recreate physics or impose a certain aesthetic on in-game magic, or whatever bazillion other things rules accomplish - but they all work by structuring negotiation.

(Also notice that I'm not talking about resolving a situation to a full stop, I'm talking about resolving one situation into the next.  An essential step is setting up, causing, how-it-works-ing the next situation.)

So other than the GM thing, I agree with you.

-Vincent

[quozl]

This is some great discussion.  Thank you everyone!

However, I should have clarified from the first post that I'm talking about written rules only.

[Jack Aidley]

Hi Vincent,

The cost of having a GM who gets to make non-negotiable rulings is: it undermines player authorship and introduces, not just structure, but power-based hierarchy into a game group.  The people I play games with are my peers and collaborators, so even when we take on different responsibilities, everyone's input is negotiable.  Exempting a GM is no small thing.

Ok, this seems to be a fun game of misunderstanding the other.

That's not what I mean at all. What I meant was that the GM be able to decide what happens quickly and in a manner that the players are happy with in most circumstances. Since doing that is a major part of what the GM does in the freeforming I do, all I'm actually asking for is a competent GM. I'm certainly not meaning to imply a GM with absolute authority beyond any negotiation.

Looking back I see that I should have spotted what you were thinking from your early post, sorry.

Cheers,

Jack.

[M. J. Young]

The problem with "system" is that it is used synonymous with "rules", and that it is the only word used to descibe "the way we organize and play RPGs".

Actually, unless I  missed a page somewhere, in Forge usage "system" and "rules" have very different meanings.

"Rules" are the written structure, including the books chosen to define the game (e.g., D20, WoD, Multiverser) along with any agreed codified statements of rules, usually called "house rules", to which anyone can refer as an authority defining how play outcomes are to be adjudicated.

"System" is the actual way play progresses, generally regarded as fundamentally about the distribution of credibility: who is empowered to make what decisions regarding the content of the shared imaginary space.

Rules become part of play through system; that is, someone with credibility under the system can thereby apply the rules when he believes they should apply.

Rules thus are what's in the book or on paper or otherwise codified; system is what we actually do in play.

--M. J. Young