What can rules actually contribute?

[Callan S.]

Hi Vincent,

The only worthwhile use for rules I know of is to sustain in-game conflict of interest, in the face of the overwhelming unity of interest of the players.

I'm not sure what you mean. When I play with others I get something from them creatively that I couldn't have gotten on my own. Do you mean unity in that during play the players might all synchronise in terms of creativity, all wanting the same sort of thing and thus not getting much from this except a sense of group harmony? And the fortune rules can help shake that up?


Hi Galwinganoon, welcome to the forge!

I'm not sure rules balance out play that way, so much as gamers might quote rules to try and shape the behaviour of others. The existence of the rules doesn't guarantee any change of behaviour, though a different path to the same behaviour may be taken.

Really, an GM who's had a hard week at work might snap 'none!' when asked about healing or armour repair availability, but then be observed to change his mind when reminded of a healing availability chart or some such. But this observation doesn't mean he felt compelled to use it because of the charts existence.

Chance allows us to include a random element that will sometimes disrupt and thwart the wishes of the players. Failure is necessary in gaming and having it sometimes occur when it shouldn't and sometimes not occur when it should makes gaming more interesting. The rules obviously allow us to monitor and interpret chance in a consistent way that everyone agrees upon before playing the game.

I agree they allow us to have consistency, but they don't enforce/contribute consistency. They don't really have the means to, even by consistently existing as ink in a book.

Side note: I wouldn't say failure is needed in gaming. Definitely variation in the results are needed and failure is just one result you can employ there.


Hi Doug,

I think suspense folds neatly into 'events that one wouldn't have considered putting together otherwise'. As you don't know the outcome, it's something you wouldn't have put together. Or to be precise, you didn't set (and thus didn't know) the outcome. Because you wanted the input of the dice instead.

For Technocrat13 (Eric's) point on gambling, I think the same thing holds.


Hi M.J,

I'm not sure about this authority that supports the credibility of participants. I don't think rules settle any issue of credibility or grant credibility. That'll be up to the listener, surely? Of course, the listener might think the rules are great and he then grants credibility. But that's a quality of his rather than the rules forcing that from him.

Really, users will read the book and decide what rules they respect and what they don't. And during play others at the table can call upon what the user decided (in the attempt to get credibility...as they hope he decided he respects the rule/material in question). But really what can the rules contribute to that process of decision? Baring being broadly aimed at particular demographics?

On not noticing how positive results could come about, yeah I missed that. But really I didn't even need to list two different things at the start of this thread...the second already encapsulates stuff like the negative effects, and in the same way encapsulates positive results (we otherwise wouldn't have encountered). So positive effects still folds in with that.

[lumpley]

When I play with others I get something from them creatively that I couldn't have gotten on my own. Do you mean unity in that during play the players might all synchronise in terms of creativity, all wanting the same sort of thing and thus not getting much from this except a sense of group harmony? And the fortune rules can help shake that up?

Yep. Sort of.

Let's say that you're playing a character who the rest of us really like a lot. We like him a whole lot. We think he's a nice guy who's had a rough time of it. The problem is, there's something you're trying to get at with him, and if he stops having a rough time, you won't get to say what you're trying to say.

Our hearts want to give him a break. For the game to mean something, we have to make things worse for him instead.

I'm the GM. What I want more than anything in that circumstance - we're friends, my heart breaks for your poor character, you're counting on me to give him more and more grief - what I want is rules that won't let me compromise.

I don't want to hurt your character and then point to the rules and say "they, they made me hurt your character!" That's not what I'm getting at.

I want, if I don't hurt your character, I want you to point to the rules and say, "hey, why didn't you follow the rules? Why did you cheat and let my guy off the hook? That sucked." I want the rules to create a powerful expectation between us - part of our unity of interest - that I will hurt your character. Often and hard.

We have a shared interest in the game - we both like your character, we're both interested in what you have to say, we both want things to go well. We also have an ongoing, constant agreement about what's happening right this second - that's the loody poodly. The rules should take those two things and build in-game conflict out of them.

You can see it plain as day in a bunch of games. Look at how My Life with Master's rules create the expectation that the GM will constantly have the Master "hose" the PCs. In Universalis, getting coins back into your bank depends on your participation in conflicts. In Primetime Adventures, the characters' Issue plus Screen Presence tells the GM just what to do - if I back off of the Issue, I'm not playing the game. (And then Fan Mail brings everyone in, so - like in Universalis - it's not just between you and me.) In my game Dogs in the Vineyard, the escalation rules force us both to play our characters passionately - there's tremendous pressure on us to, y'know, stick to our guns.

What a bunch of other games do is stop short. They establish our agreement about what's happening right this second, they contribute to our shared interest in the characters and setting - and that's it. They don't provoke us. I can, by the rules, back off your character's issues, let the conflicts fizzle, compromise and go easy, and we sit there going "I dunno, what do you wanna do?" all night. Or just as bad, the dull "things work out for the best this time too" characteristic of Star Trek: the Next Generation and games where we all like each other's characters and nobody's provoked by the rules to inflict pain.

-Vincent

[M. J. Young]

Callan--of course any group can ignore any rule; but then, what's the point of having rules? They exist to establish credibility, to say who is right when there is a disagreement. Oh, but the referee is always right? No, he isn't always right, even in groups where people say that.

Going back to our guy who falls into the water. "Sorry," the ref says, "your guy drowns."

"Wait!" you say. "That's it? What about his swimming proficiency? According to the rules, he at least gets a roll to decide whether he can swim here."

Gee, the referee really wanted that water trap to kill someone, to put the players on edge with how dangerous this place really is; but the rules have just been pulled out. That is, someone is arguing that the statement the referee just made is not credible, and he is calling on the authority of the rules to give credibility to his own statement.

Can we still ignore the rule? Sure. But the very fact that the player cited the rule indicates that he believes the referee's statement is not credible, and should be negated. If we ignore the rule, then we've established that the referee has the credibility to negate rules on which we were depending when we entered play--not a good situation in most cases. Now, if the referee can explain why the rule does not apply, then we've established that the referee has the right to make interpretations of rules that might not fit our expectations. On the other hand, if the referee bows to the rules, we've established that the credibility of the players may be bolstered against the referee by citing the rules.

On the other hand, if the rules did not exist, the player's objection would not amount to more than "I didn't expect my guy to drown, and I don't like it", maybe with a bit of "it didn't happen this way last time" thrown in for good measure. That's a lot less support for his position. The ability to point to a rule that has authority gives the player considerably more credibility in this circumstance.

I'll also point to Hackmaster, in which the players are encouraged to cite rules against the referee, and can penalize the referee for his failure to adhere to them. That's a clear example of credibility being delineated by the authority of the rules.

Clearer?

--M. J. Young

[Sean]

MJ: you wrote "I'll also point to Hackmaster, in which the players are encouraged to cite rules against the referee, and can penalize the referee for his failure to adhere to them."

True, but it's actually even worse than that. Players are encouraged to do this, but if they cite any rule in the GMG that's not in the PHB, the GM is allowed to punish them, docking them Honor IIRC. And there are deliberately contradictory statements in the PHB and GMG, along with a statement that there are no contradictions in the game.

(Remember the boardgame 'Aggravation'?)


Vincent: I love your posts in this thread. This is a place where the Gam/Nar parallel Ron pushes can be felt in full force, I think. If you're really playing an old-school game as an exercize in Step on Up, a lot of players WILL be offended if you cheat. "Dude, his armor class is only 6. That hits!" Not following the rules robs the competition of its proposed meaning.

What I think you may be pointing to here is the Narrativist version of the same phenomenon. "Make me hurt your guy" in the way you mean it is "challenge me emotionally, morally: make me address premise 'til it hurts". And it makes the game more rewarding if it helps you do that, doesn't let you slip back into the empathetic wimpout. Just like it's like 50 times more rewarding to play in a hard-core competitive game if you know PCs can get waxed due to bad die rolls (especially when die rolls are contingent on meaningful tactical choices).

It's just a different kind of hurting - different stuff is at stake.

[Callan S.]

Hi MJ

of course any group can ignore any rule; but then, what's the point of having rules?

Okay, I think this 'whats the point of having rules' question is something you'd ask me as a player, specifically as a player in your group (or someone else might ask me in their group).

I'm basically asking what rules can contribute as a designer. This is a little different. If I'm a player, I'm the one dishing out authority to rules or such. As a designer, I have no such influence over where authority gets dished out to. So, as a designer, what can I have rules contributing?

I think there's room to say that rules can act like pegs where players can hang authority if they so wish. But given the many nuances of System, I think authority can be pulled off those pegs pretty easily ("Your leaving the dungeon after defeating the huge bad guy...and fall in a water pit and drown. Okay, yeah, screw it...you get wet and muddy but get out fine. The end, HUZZAH!)

So, while as a designer you might expect some authority to be hung on atleast some of the rule 'pegs', you really don't have any influence on which get it. So it's not much of a design concern, even if you hope so and so rule gets lots of authority hung on it. So without having any significant effect on authority distribution, your just looking at what the rules can possibly contribute, I think.

[Callan S.]

Hey Vincent,

Engaging description! But isn't that the same as #1, at the start of the thread? The one I gave the capes example for? Regardless, your description really underlines the potential! Thanks!

[lumpley]

But isn't that the same as #1, at the start of the thread?

Yep!

With the addition that any ol' nasty events won't do. The rules have to deliver the right nasty events, and they have to put them in the hands of the right player.

I don't think that "unexpectedness" is the key to it. I think that conflict-appropriateness is.

-Vincent

[Doctor Xero]

What I think you may be pointing to here is the Narrativist version of the same phenomenon. "Make me hurt your guy" in the way you mean it is "challenge me emotionally, morally: make me address premise 'til it hurts". And it makes the game more rewarding if it helps you do that, doesn't let you slip back into the empathetic wimpout.

Hmmmm . . .
possibly a side-tangent, but my players have made it clear to me that they consider one of the duties of the game master to know, even when no one else in the gaming group knows, when to "make" a player-through-character go on 'til it hurts and when to pull back, when to let a gruesome die roll stand for the sake of drama and when to ignore it for the sake of drama.  In many ways, for such groups, the role of the game master is to know almost presciently when to obey the game rules and when to overrule them -- even when no one else in the gaming group knows except by hindsight three months later.  An occasionally intimidating responsibility.

Doctor Xero

[lumpley]

Doc X, that's only true if you're playing with rules that don't reliably deliver. There's no need to ever fudge or overrule, if you've got good rules.

I wouldn't play a game where I had to sometimes ignore the rules to make it dramatic.

-Vincent

[M. J. Young]

The designer of Monopoly can't help it that uncounted board gamers place the tax money in the center of the board and award it to the player who lands on Free Parking. It's not in the rules, but people play that way. That's not on the designer.

The rules exist to reinforce credibility in the direction the designer believes the game should go. In D&D, the designers don't think you should be able to hit anything at which you swing, or that you should miss everything, either. They also obviously believe that some targets should be harder to hit than others, and that some characters should have a better chance to hit than others. Thus we've got AC and combat tables based on class and level (or now adjustments to chance to hit), all of which pull together to create that. In general, the designers did not think that too many other factors should be involved, in the sense that one character might be better against one opponent and worse against another--but they did include some of that in the game, such as dwarfs get bonuses against goblins and rangers get bonuses against giant class creatures, with the result that these things impact who is the best in any given situation. All of this means that the designers have created rules that give us a particular kind of game experience if they are followed.

Of course, players could ignore that completely. The guy playing the ranger says, "Hey, this is a giant class creature and I get +3 to hit it" only to have the referee say, "I don't use that rule, it's stupid." So the authority of the rules has been invalidated by the credibility of the referee--unless of course everyone at the table gets all up in arms at this and forces the referee to give the player the advantage of his character choices, based on the authority of the rules. All of this is entirely different from the idea of the player saying, "I think as a ranger my guy should get +3 to hit ogres, because they're kind of like giants, and everyone knows that rangers hate giants and are very good at fighting against them." Then when the referee says, "I don't think so" there really isn't anything more to say about it, unless the other players press on the grounds that they think that would be cool or something.

So what kind of rules do you need? You need rules that point the players in the direction of how you want them to use their credibility--what do you want to have happen in the game. Now, sometimes really crunchy rules work well for that, and sometimes really simple rules work well for that. As we often hear around here, what do you want play to be like? Write the rules that support this. In Multiverser, there's room for a lot of crunch. If one of my players tells me he wants to develop an evasive tumbling technique that will get him out of the way of incoming missile fire, that creates the opportunity for him to roll his skill at that as a defense against that kind of attack. Anything the players want to create, the rules support. Contrast this to Legends of Alyria, where what matters is the attributes and the descriptors, ultimately amounting to which character is more focused on winning this outcome. You could describe tumbling out of the way of the attack, but that's a narrative description of an outcome, not a modifier to what happens. Alyria is great at supporting exciting head-on-head character conflict, but Multiverser is better at supporting exciting tactical play. Which do you want? Write rules that support that.

The rules then stand as the authority to which the participants can appeal, to say, "It should be played this way." They can of course overrule any and all of it, add things that work better for them, pirate it for parts, or anything else, and you can't help it. But if they say "We're playing Multiverser", everyone at the table has the right to expect that everyone is going to respect what the rule book says, unless there is credibility-based agreement to the contrary.

Am I missing the point of this thread?

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

Yep!

With the addition that any ol' nasty events won't do. The rules have to deliver the right nasty events, and they have to put them in the hands of the right player.

I don't think that "unexpectedness" is the key to it. I think that conflict-appropriateness is.

I'm not sure about what you mean by conflict appropriateness. If I think, for example, that just what the rules have suggested (through their results) is exactly what I like and would have done anyway then they haven't contributed much.

In line with that, does it have to be the right sort of nasty events and going to the right player? I mean, it's generally better to refine the rules that way, to take up some sort of direction. But even with direction the core principle is that the rules can introduce something you wouldn't have been able to produce or think of at the time (which makes it unexpected too). To do this, to some extent it'll always be at odds with being the right nasty and handing it to the right player.

[lumpley]

How about this:

If the rules provide a crap unexpected outcome - crap from the players' point of view, not the characters' - if the rules provide a crap unexpected outcome, you fudge. We all do. It's like, "the arch-villain DIES?! Screw that, roll over."

If the rules provide a crap expected outcome, you fudge. Or probably never consult the rules in the first place, like, "if you roll for that it's just gonna suck, let's skip it and go forward."

Look at roleplaying through the ages and you'll see a bunch of crappy rules providing crap outcomes, expected and unexpected, and a bunch of gamers fudging, ignoring, and deciding selectively when to consult the rules accordingly. This is exactly what Doc X said.

On the other hand...

If the rules provide a right outcome, expected or unexpected, you go with it. Good rules sometimes provide expected outcomes, sometimes unexpected - but they're never crap. There's never any need to fudge or select, because every outcome is gonna advance the game's conflicts and draw in the players' participation.

The variable that decides whether you play by the rules or fudge them isn't whether they provide unexpected results or not. All Fortune rules sometimes provide unexpected results and sometimes don't. Practically all Drama or Karma rules sometimes do, sometimes don't. What makes a set of rules worth playing by isn't its unexpectedness - it's just as I said, how well does it build in-game conflict out of inter-player unity?

-Vincent

[Callan S.]

I'm just not sure about this crap result thing. As a designer, I can think X result is the bees knees. But I have no idea what the end users think is crap...they might stick with all the other rules but get to X and screeeetch! Brake and drive around it.

I have no idea what the end users will like. So how can the rules contribute to something which isn't a crap result in their opinions? Certainly, the rules can be focused on what results I like (of course it's a very good idea to do so), but the rules wont convince end users what I like is good. Basically, in terms of what the rules can contribute, surely they can only contribute the unexpected? As a designer I'm just guessing if others will feel they deliver sweet results. Certainly as part of what they contribute, they can't make the end users come round to my way of enjoying results.

So while I'm hoping 'Ah, some groups are going to absolutely love this result' really I can only expect my design to deliver unexpected results. Or perhaps another way of looking at it is as delivering external results (not from anyone in the end user group).

The actual disjunct I'm assuming even between the designers preference and a group who really loves his rules (and sticks with them) is possitive in relatively small amounts. It adds an element of a different culture they otherwise didn't have access to. But I don't think as a designer you have much to say about this disjunct and the point where a particular group descides it just becomes a bunch of crap results.

[lumpley]

Uh...

Nope.

I mean, I can tell the difference between crap and good. I'm counting on my players to be able to do the same.

A good RPG's rules contribute a lot more to a game than just some outcomes, expected or otherwise. They contribute a whole social dynamic. As far as I'm concerned, that's what roleplaying game design is: social dynamic design. I see something I like in my own group's social dynamic, so I build rules to get at it and make it portable to other groups.

Have you played Universalis? That's a good place to start.

-Vincent

[Ben Lehman]

I'm just not sure about this crap result thing. As a designer, I can think X result is the bees knees. But I have no idea what the end users think is crap...they might stick with all the other rules but get to X and screeeetch! Brake and drive around it.

BL>  There are many different play groups with different preferences.

I'll also note that there are lots of different sets RPG rules.

I think most groups tend to use rules that are suited to their preferences, or modify existing rules to fit their preferences (drift is a form of game design!)  So yeah.

yrs--
--Ben