Credibility of the rules as written

[coxcomb]

Over on this thread we started getting into a discussion about the intrinsic credibility of the rules as written. That was veering off topic, so here's one dedicated to that topic.

To start, I think we all agree that the rules as written are a part of system, but that many other things go into system.

My contention is that people in general are conditioned to play a game by its rules as written as a default. If I say to a group, "We're gonna play Monopoly," everyone would assume that we were playing by the rules as written. RPGs, though different than Monopoly (thank the gods), also have baseline assumptions that start with the rules as written.

No brainer, right?

But the thing is that a lot of social contract stuff is traditionally unspoken. If a GM says she's running a D&D 3E game, the amount of game expectation is usually limited to which books are kosher for making characters and which printed optional rules are being used. And, in my experience, GMs tend to make these calls as pronouncements to the group, with little room for discussion.

So the question is: what weight do the rules as written have, in general? I mean, we write them with some expectation that people will follow them during play, right? So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

Discuss.

[Brendan]

To enhance--actually, to produce--mechanical toy quality.

[lumpley]

First, rules create and sustain unity of vision. We all agree to play by this set of rules, we defer to the rules, consequently it's easy for us to agree what happens in the game.

Rules that don't accomplish this, the group ditches wicked fast. Sometimes it keeps playing without the written rules, sometimes it switches to another set of rules, sometimes it splits up. Sometimes it hacks the rules - this is the group that "simply patch[es] any rules to fit their play style." That's okay.

After a while, we've learned how to create and sustain unity of vision ourselves. We develop enough of a shared commitment to the game and to each others' contributions that we don't need the written rules to keep it up.

Some groups never get to this point, or don't care about it, or whatever. That's okay.

Now consider two possible sets of rules. The first, all it accomplishes is unity of vision. The second accomplishes something more.

If the group has self-sustaining unity of vision and is playing with the first set of rules, what happens? The rules fade away. Naturally! There's no use for them anymore. This is the GURPS group that has character sheets they never refer to, and they roll dice maybe once in a session, maybe less. This is where my own Ars Magica play has happened mostly, over the years. It's okay.

If the group has self-sustaining unity of vision and is playing with the second set of rules, though - the rules don't fade away. The group uses them all the time, just as they were designed, clipping right along. Naturally! The group is getting something from the rules that it can't get without them. It might be toy quality. It might be any number of things.

Now, I'm going to go kind of out on a limb here and say that this last case can be better than okay. The reason is, the best roleplaying, the best that roleplaying can be, right? It's not easy to do uninformedly. You can't usually do it by accident. You need either training or rules.

So the question is: what weight do the rules as written have, in general? I mean, we write them with some expectation that people will follow them during play, right? So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

I write rules to give people something better than their home-grown play style. I depend on people noticing that playing my game as written is really, really fun, more fun than they'd have by ditching its rules or drifting 'em.

-Vincent

[Bankuei]

Hi Jay,

My contention is that people in general are conditioned to play a game by its rules as written as a default. If I say to a group, "We're gonna play Monopoly," everyone would assume that we were playing by the rules as written. RPGs, though different than Monopoly (thank the gods), also have baseline assumptions that start with the rules as written.

I think in general, for the average person- yeah, they would follow the rules.  I think roleplaying occupies a unique place that actually is very interesting in regards to written rules.

Consider
-"Cargo Cult" D&D where folks had to kludge together their own rules from the dissembled mess of text they got
-Most games to this day, fail to really nail down IIEE
-Most games basically run on, "The Golden Rule aka what the GM says, goes"

These 3 things together I think provide a indicator that most gamers learn from each other in play more than the rules, to really play with "What the GM says, goes" and the rest of the rules are extra fiddlies thrown on top.

This is what I call Black Box gaming- that is, most folks are using the same assumptions for IIEE, division of credibility, etc, and usually they're unaware of it as assumptions- for them its the only way to play.  Which is where some games like Sorcerer or TROS often finds people having trouble, because they try to slam in the Black Box and either complain because it doesn't run right or else say that it runs just like game X without realizing they just slapped in Game X's engine the whole time.

So why do we have rules?  In the hopes that the cognizant portion of people will read them, try them out to achieve the indicated style of play for the game.  If they choose to modify it from there, well, hey, it's their game now.

Chris

[matthijs]

A lot of rules are basically "training wheels" (that's what they're called, right, those little extra wheels on the sides of kids' bikes?). You use them until you find don't actually need them any more. If you get a new game, the first thing you do is rip off the training wheels so you can play in the free style you've gotten used to.

Of course, if you start playing a different style of game, you need to follow rules again - for a while. And then they're internalized, and you don't need those rules, either.

...and if you've been playing one kind of game for a long, long time, having to use rules to understand a new way of gaming feels very strange. "Rules? They're for beginners, not for us sophisticated gamers!"

[coxcomb]

Bankuei

I totally agree with your observations wrt gamers learning to play form each other & what GM says goes.

But in my own experience (which started just after the "cargo cult" D&D phase with Champions) the GM is usually chosen by new players based on familiarity with the rules. "He knows how to play, let's let him be GM." The assumption here is that the GM is most familiar with the rules, and that playing by the rules is the goal, so put him in charge.

Let me put this another way, in case I'm not making sense. The original question that sparked this for me was whether a group is likely to reapportion credibility among players without the rules saying so. Should we expect players to speak up when their visions about the SIS are not fulfilled by the GM if the rules say the GM is the boss of the story?

My experience says clearly no. The dynamic I have nost often observed is that players will speak up about what the GM is doing, if (and *only * if)they have printed rules to back up their point. And if the rules clearly say that the GM runs the story and what he says goes (which *most* of them do), I have experienced player misery and resignation.

So I'm saying that, unless the rules specifically state that you should do something different from the traditional way to roleplay that most folks in the hobby learned from D&D or WW, they won't think of doing them. The rules have to tell you to break from Conventional Wisdom, or you can't count on folks doing it.

Am I making any sense?

[Bankuei]

Hi Jay,

So I'm saying that, unless the rules specifically state that you should do something different from the traditional way to roleplay that most folks in the hobby learned from D&D or WW, they won't think of doing them. The rules have to tell you to break from Conventional Wisdom, or you can't count on folks doing it.

I agree with that.  The "fundamental" assumptions about how play works for those games is the Black Box I'm talking about.  That, for the most part, is why stuff like Dust Devils is easier for those guys to get than Sorcerer.  Because the very mechanics cut out any chance of Black Box gaming.  Either they throw down the book like Lovecraftian blasphemy or else their eyes get real wide and they get excited and scared.

So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

I think you just answered your own question, now didn't you? :)

Chris

[TonyLB]

A lot of rules are basically "training wheels" (that's what they're called, right, those little extra wheels on the sides of kids' bikes?). You use them until you find don't actually need them any more.

Umm... is this a counter-argument to Vincent's point above?

Because it sounds like you're agreeing with what he says about the "first ruleset"... rules that only achieve unity of vision and nothing more.  But you're phrasing it as if it applies to all rulesets, whether they provide something more or not, which runs counter to what he's saying about the "second ruleset"... rules that provide both unity of vision and something more.

I totally agree with Vincent's post, and in fact cancelled a post that was saying much the same thing (far less eloquently) when I saw his post appear.  So that's why I'm sticking up for it as if it were my own point... I kinda wish it were.

[clehrich]

It seems to me that what Matthijs describes, and what Vincent is calling the "unity of vision" type of rules-set, operates somewhat differently than has been proposed here.  I think Jay is dead right to be talking about credibility with respect to textual rules-sets.

To my mind, the process of developing unity of vision in a play-group is very much that of constructing and absorbing a peculiar and difficult-to-pinpoint set of relations between how the group operates socially and how the rules construct those relations.  

If the group begins with a set of rules that are formulated to have a strong role in this, as for example AD&D, then the process of constructing such a unity is significantly a matter of constant cross-checking to be sure "we're doing it right."  Of course, no set of rules can be so comprehensive and specific that such "doing it right" can occur without significant input from the play-group, but certainly the balance can and does shift a good deal.

Over time, that constructed set of relations becomes internalized and in fact largely naturalized.  It becomes "obvious" that gaming "is done like that," not as a matter of choice but because that's what gaming "just is."  Once this full internalization has occurred within the group, the rules-set becomes theoretically discardable, but in practice it cannot be discarded, because all play already incorporates the rules as interpreted by the play group.

If the rules-set(s) used to formulate this group practice was formal and constructed rhetorically to have a dominant role, to set aside the rules is to make a gesture against the rules; the group may well not perceive itself as able to play "properly" without the rules symbolically present (the stack of books, the DM screen, etc.).  If the rules-set is constructed so as to formulate a "freeform" conception among the group, they may feel that pushing aside the books and such is an act of maturing.  WoD games incorporate this rhetoric to a significant degree, in their comments about discarding rules that don't work for you.

But my point is that in any event, the dynamic and ongoing interpretive relationship with the rules continues even if the rules have been overtly set aside.  This is the origin of the "common wisdom" about gaming, and I feel strongly that the rhetorical and systematic formulation of certain games---most obviously AD&D---has a lot to do with this.

For example, imagine a group that has been playing AD&D for some years.  They are feeling bored and dispirited, and decide to try something new.  They have heard about the cool new indie things, and decide to play InSpectres.  Now a reaction sets in that Jared and Ron have discussed many times in reference to InSpectres: several basic points about how that game works violate expected norms of play.  In some cases, this is liberating: the group sees a new way to play and begins formulating a new unity of vision.  In others, they find InSpectres not all it's cracked up to be, overrated by those weirdos on the Forge.

In either case, it is not true that they no longer need the rules of AD&D.  They are using those rules, as they play InSpectres.  In one case, they are formulating a new unity of vision against the backdrop of a the AD&D rules-set; in the other, they are reconstructing the same unity of vision from the AD&D rules-set.  In the latter case, InSpectres doesn't work, because it doesn't run well on those rules, but even in the former case the liberation and fun provided is significantly generated by the fact that AD&D was already there.

Thus the rules credibility in texts to which Jay refers is largely a matter of how such rules are constructed, systematically and rhetorically, as part of the process of formulating a play-group unity of vision.  AD&D, and in my relatively limited experience the vast majority of "mainstream" or "big publisher" games, does this strongly.  A great many of the smaller indie games do not do so, but some do, e.g. DitV, TRoS, MLwM, and so on.  If a play-group plays DitV and nothing else for a while, and loves it, I would expect them to formulate a strong unity of vision that works well for that game, then be disappointed or surprised by the disjuncture experienced when they try to play something that works quite differently.

[Doctor Xero]

Consider another analogy.  Perhaps the game rules relate to game play for a specific long-standing gaming group in the same way that language principles relate to communication for native speakers.

(with apologies to linguists, communication scientists, and language scholars for simplifying for the sake of analogy)

Basically, all languages operate according to the interrelationship of langue and parole.  Langue is the "official" rules/principles of a given language (including "official" definitions), to which everyone directly or indirectly refers but which no one really uses all the time.  Parole is the language as it is actually used by people, which is derived from and shaped by the "official" langue but never completely follows it, instead being formed also by context, situation, and even personal aesthetics.  Eventually, parole changes will become so accepted that they are incorporated into langue.  And so it goes.

A concrete example in games would be the fact that surveys have shown that the majority of players of Monopoly assume the rule about getting money for landing on the Free Parking spot has always been part of the official rules.  No, it has always been a popular house rule (although I remember hearing that it might eventually be incorporated into the official rules -- has that happened yet?).  It has been such a popular house rule that it might as well be official -- and if it appears in the written official rules for the game, then the parole of the Free Parking house rule will have become the langue of the game.

I think the same thing happens with games, e.g. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  The rules provide a langue off which the individual gaming groups develop their own parole.

In other words, the weight or power of game rules comes from the house interpretations they inspire more than from their ability to command absolute obedience.

Doctor Xero

[clehrich]

Dr. Xero,

As I'm sure you can guess, that was the analogy I had in mind.  Which then has all sorts of structural implications....

[TonyLB]

Such as?

[Doctor Xero]

Dr. Xero,

As I'm sure you can guess, that was the analogy I had in mind.  Which then has all sorts of structural implications....

I concur -- including casting doubt on some of our efforts to design the holy grail of the all-encompassing game system, for by the concepts of your and my posts, such a grail is not a lofty unattainable goal but more an undesirable goal altogether.  (The only languages in which langue is immutable are dead languages!)

This is also harkens back to the thread on player responsibility in that the effort to create weighty rules which cover everything unintentionally eclipses player responsibility for one's own protagonization, import, immersion (if that is what one wants), etc.

Doctor Xero

[clehrich]

Such as?

Such as a bunch of things I'm not going into unless Jay wants me to, since it's his thread.  But basically by the langue/parole analogy, rules are sets of relations, not objects with intrinsic meanings.  Extending from the point that they are obviously relations in some sense, and abstractions to boot, this entails that rules-sets are best understood as structural formations of which only a very limited number of relations are immediately obvious.  Which further entails that the formulation of a play-group's "unity of vision" is a matter of absorbing and naturalizing not only the overt relations---raw mechanics, setting, etc.---but of constituting the rules-set as a social authority structure to which the play-group's specific structures must conform, and of mystifying (concealing even from themselves) the ways in which perceived nonconformity amount to the construction of even more rigorous authority.

[lumpley]

... the formulation of a play-group's "unity of vision" is a matter of absorbing and naturalizing not only the overt relations---raw mechanics, setting, etc.---but of constituting the rules-set as a social authority structure to which the play-group's specific structures must conform, and of mystifying (concealing even from themselves) the ways in which perceived nonconformity amount to the construction of even more rigorous authority.

This is very true (pray God I understood it). It's also just the luddly puddly again, isn't it? The group incorporates the rules (to some extent) into the process by which they decide what happens in the game?

So then what?

A set of rules that does no more than foster unity of vision isn't worth designing. We've already got a zillion sets of rules that foster unity of vision and then nothing, and this despite the fact that anybody can get unity of vision just by trying good-naturedly. Whether a given group keeps using these rules or lets them drop out hardly matters. The process by which the rules foster unity of vision matters even less - unity of vision is a dime a dozen.

Why have rules? The answer is, why indeed? - unless the particular ruleset you're talking about contributes more to the game than mere unity of vision.

-Vincent