Mechanics that reflect Setting

[Ben Lehman]

Do credibility rules affect how the setting is percieved by players (not PC's)?

BL>  In short, credibility rules affect how players (not PCs) can effect and change the shared imagined space, which includes the setting.  So, uh, yes, but possibly not in the way that you're thinking of...

To say it a different way: a credibility rule does not say "bob falls" but rather says "bob gets to say what happens after he steps off the cliff."

yrs--
--Ben

[Callan S.]

Basically the difference between playing between under one GM and another can be marked. In this case where its handing out narration between players it can be quite similar. Of course the difference in narration is a product of each player, but the difference being allowed to be there is is product of the rules. The difference, allowed by the printed rules, causes a distortion in the perception of the SIS.

It could just be a small distortion and easy to ignore. But the principle is there. It's important to realise it can be there even if it regularly goes without note because it's small.

[M. J. Young]

The question has been raised as to whether the rules are part of the setting. Neelk has answered that they are not; I'm going to challenge that from a different angle.

I assert rather that the setting is part of the rules.

I'm serious about this; it's one of the things I have learned from playing Multiverser over the past decade or so.

Rules, under the general understanding here, have authority; that means someone can appeal to them to determine what happens in the shared imaginary space, and if that individual has the requisite credibility to appeal to the rules, they define the shared imaginary space.

In this sense, "the sky is blue" is as much a rule as "a long sword does d8 points of damage against small and man-sized targets". Both define the shared imaginary space.

Thus the distinction between setting and rules is to some degree illusory.

It is not entirely illusory; after all, setting and system are two of the explorable elements. There is a degree to which all five elements--color, character, and situation being the other three--are all facets of the one thing, the exploration, the shared imaginary space. We distinguish them generally into these five categories, but the lines are always a bit fuzzy. To say that characters are not part of setting is clearly nonsense. So, too, to say that system is not part of setting is nonsense, as is saying that setting is not part of system. The five elements are all part of each other, interconnected in ways that are impossible to completely separate. They are distinct only on the most theoretical level, in that each has a core aspect which we can identify as its own center around which the others are arranged, each can be the center point around which all the others are defined and integrated, or the peripheral to any of the others.

So you can't really separate them.

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

But the setting as portrayed in books, can be quite different. Say the portrayed setting has mages running around blowing up things as good as the gun guys (cough, rifts, cough), but really the magic rules are quite mute. The author can make quite a distinction between setting and rules. In a way, that's like writing two RPG's, one which works by the settings 'rules' and one by the rules themselves, sans setting.

I'll adjust my stance and say rules are seperate from setting. But the results of those rules definately are part of setting. The funny thing is, you can read about the books setting in the 'fluff' text. But you can't really know it until play, where the results start to show up. Again, reading two seperate RPG's, in a way.

[neelk]

But the setting as portrayed in books, can be quite different. Say the portrayed setting has mages running around blowing up things as good as the gun guys (cough, rifts, cough), but really the magic rules are quite mute. The author can make quite a distinction between setting and rules. In a way, that's like writing two RPG's, one which works by the settings 'rules' and one by the rules themselves, sans setting.

Getting back to Valamir's original question, this is one of the reasons I pay more attention to the "fluff" than the formal rules -- the writers are generally thinking more about what's cool and compelling in the fiction than in the rules, and that's what I want.

I'll adjust my stance and say rules are seperate from setting. But the results of those rules definately are part of setting. The funny thing is, you can read about the books setting in the 'fluff' text. But you can't really know it until play, where the results start to show up. Again, reading two seperate RPG's, in a way.

I just thought of another example. I'm putting together a little rpg called Frodo and the RingForce!, and one of the rules of the game is that every session opens with the players singing the game's theme song. The reason this rule exists is that most people are going to be just a little embarrassed singing in front of their friends, and mild mutual embarassment is a really effective way of bringing people together. It doesn't have anything to do with the setting; it's purely a way of getting the players into the right mood.

[Jonathan Walton]

I think that things become "real" in an rpg when the stuff that the players create is recognized and manipulated by the other players; I see the other players at their happiest when what they make up is recognized by the others.

This is an amen to an amen.  I feel like this should be highlighted in red in most roleplaying texts: "Use what others throw at you; this is a collaborative game, so collaborate dammit!"

Actually, the current version of the Torches mechanics in Torchbearer is trying to get at EXACTLY this goal: having players acknowledge the Color contributions of each other and continuing to co-support them.

[M. J. Young]

But the setting as portrayed in books, can be quite different. Say the portrayed setting has mages running around blowing up things as good as the gun guys (cough, rifts, cough), but really the magic rules are quite mute. The author can make quite a distinction between setting and rules. In a way, that's like writing two RPG's, one which works by the settings 'rules' and one by the rules themselves, sans setting.

Ah, I see what you're saying.

...this is one of the reasons I pay more attention to the "fluff" than the formal rules -- the writers are generally thinking more about what's cool and compelling in the fiction than in the rules, and that's what I want.

I'm not sure whether it would occur to me to do that.

To compare, there are drawings in the AD&D books of characters doing things none of my players' characters ever did. I have my doubts whether Empiricol the Chaotic really could have gotten away with riding through the streets firing spells at innocent bystanders who annoyed him without the entire army taking him down. I took the artwork as color, something to get you in the mindset of the game world. To my mind, the portrayed setting can't have mages running around blowing things up as easily as the gun guys, because that's not really setting material--that's color text, trying to get you in the mindset of the game world.

As another example, closer to home for me, I'd like to think that the adventures of the characters in Verse Three, Chapter One realistically portray adventures that you could have in Multiverser. What they don't do is portray adventures that you will have. To move from the mode of game play to the mode of novel creation, I had to make some very significant changes in my thinking--in the novel, the climax of the story comes when the characters are together; in play, when characters come together the usual mode of play is interaction, not terribly dramatic, and rarely leading to a single climax. The thing I realized was that when I design "gather worlds" for play, I make them very open places where players can do all kinds of things and there's no real focused adventure for them (solo worlds often have something onto which the player characters are expected to latch that drives an adventure). This facilitates player preferences and interests, because the player characters aren't forced to work together. In the novel, I realized that my "gather world" had to be extremely focused and plot-driven, because it had to be the culmination of a book that was going to end there.

Now, if you're expecting Multiverser play to produce adventures and stories similar to the novel, I think you won't be disappointed; but if you're expecting that the parallel will include the characters coming together in the sort of friendships and cooperations that the novel characters exhibit, that's not something the game drives--it's something the players have to provide or not, as they prefer. So the text is great for getting you into the feeling of the game world and the kinds of adventures that happen, but it's not completely accurate.

I won't defend game texts I've never read, and maybe there is this complete discontinuity between the setting the game supports and the setting the game promotes. I'd say that was an incoherent game, though. Whether you take the position that the setting supported by the system is the actual one (discarding the setting text in the books) or that the setting described in the color text is the actual one (discarding rules that interfere therewith), you are tossing out rules/text that are incoherent, based on the recognition that there is a conflict within the text and the decision to use a specific editorial principle to resolve it.

Setting is still part of system, in that sense, and system part of setting; it's just that the whole is incoherent as you've described it.

--M. J. Young