Robin's Laws?

[Tor Erickson]

Hi Mike,

Okay, it was a stilted (but heartfelt!) analogy.  The cooking one is better, and, I think, probably more or less how Robin Laws sees the issue himself.  Basically  that there are time honored principles that have been refined across the history of role-playing, but that remain essentially unchanged.  No matter how we bake it, it's still bread: maybe we can figure out how to make a tasty loaf, but that's about the extent of it.

Now, on the one hand, there's nothing wrong with this (it's a tasty loaf, dammit!) but what if we were to compare role-playing to film.  In that case, Robin is writing from the point-of-view of someone who's been watching Hollywood movies his whole life.  Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of damn good Hollywood movies out there.  Within that grand Hollywood tradition of the Western alone, you can find about 100 years of refinements, improvements, new twists, different takes, whatever.  And maybe Robin is writing from the very peak of that tradition, taking the best tips and ideas from its entire history.  

But... what about the French New Wave?  What about Fellini?  What about the independent film studios?  Their effects were profound and can now be felt across the board in cinema.  In the 50's Hollywood thought it knew all there was to know about making movies.  We now know that's just a joke.  "Robin's Laws" reads like he didn't get it, though.

I know that you know all of this, Mike, so let me try to rephrase my point: the book reads as disappointingly ignorant, especially in light of so much publically accessible information available that undercuts and refutes its key assumptions.

I get the feeling though that we're agreeing at this point, so if you don't have something else to say, I'm happy to move on.

-Tor

[Ben Morgan]

It seems to me that, like a lot of other things in this world, YMMV. I found it useful for my purposes (the section on improvising more than anything else). Others won't.

I know I haven't been gaming for as long as some (1st edition AD&D books were nothing more than ads in comic books to me for the longest time), and sometimes when you're stuck on a particular thing -- my thing at the time being pre-game prep -- something comes along and, though it may have been haphazardly put together and accomplishes it by accident, manages to smack you upside the head and tell you "duh, you can fix it by looking at this over here", whatever it and this happen to be.

I know there's a hell of a lot in the book that is not new to us here by any stretch of the imagination (and not much at all that is, if any). But occasionally the most profound revelations are things that were staring you in the face all the time.

-- Ben

[woodelf]

I believe the most widely used significant thing to come out of the space race was the teflon-coated frying pan. We need a teflon-coated RPG mechanic to prove the Forge's worth...

Wulf

On one of: All Things Considered, Fresh Air, To the Best of Our Knowledge (that's all the radio i listen too), last week, they had a putative expert on who specifically listed Teflon (along with Tang and Velcro) as one of the things often attributed to the space race which, in fact, has little or no connection.

Just a little tidbit.

[talysman]

before the thread veers completely off topic, let me add some comments about Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering.

first: yes, some of the points made aren't original, but the way Robin Laws expresses them throws a new light on the ideas. I found it an interesting read no matter what.

second: I think it's pointless to complain that the book doesn't cover GNS properly. it's not a GNS book and was never mentioned in that context. as Ron has mentioned, the "types of player" model in the book neither affirms nor denies GNS; instead, it looks at play from a different perspective. assume for the sake of argument that there is no GNS conflicts (maybe all the players in Robin's example group prefer Sim.) in such a case, a group with a Sim Storyteller, a Sim Specialist, and a Sim Tactician is not necessarily a dysfunctional group, assuming the GM balances the players' various needs and desires. and this, of course, is exactly what the point of the book is.

third: some of the player types do seem to tend towards either Sim or Gamism, but that doesn't mean that Narrativist is left out. either the Storyteller or the Method Actor could be either a Sim version or a Narrativist version. also, the Specialist is really a catch-all category; the book uses examples like "players who always play ninjas", but "players who always like to address a premise" is a kind of Specialist as well.

what I thought was the most important part of the book -- and what no one seems to mention -- is the point about settings. Robin Laws divides RPG settings into two types: published and homebrew. nothing original there... BUT he makes a point about setting familiarity that seems to be ignored; players need to know as much about the setting as possible in order to play in it. he suggested that players should be allowed to read as much about a published setting as possible, even modules that are supposedly only for GM's eyes only. maybe this isn't a new observation, either, but judging by the huge volume of "GM only" material, it seems to be an ignored observation.

so all in all, I can't join in the Robin Laws bashing that seems to be popular in other places besides the Forge. I found the book useful. my only complaint is that it was too short, too skimpy. I would have liked to have seen more.

[Mike Holmes]

Wulf, this has gone way off topic, and your last post has gone into some pretty spurrious logic. If you still think your correct, please PM me, and/or Fang, and we can discuss it there. That said, I think we're unlikey to agree on this one.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

the book reads as disappointingly ignorant, especially in light of so much publically accessible information available that undercuts and refutes its key assumptions.

Are you sure that you don't want to rephrase that? Are you aware that Robin Laws does post here from time to time (he has at least delurked to talk about Hero Wars), and likely has read at least some of what's written here? It couldn't be that he might just have a different point of view that just seems ignorant to you because of your point of view?

Well, maybe it is; I can't say I've read it. But Mr. Laws is under no obligation to cite anything here. While I'd be delighted if he did, what he publishes is his own business, and it seems to have been useful to at least some people. So I really can't find fault personally.

Just my take on it. I'd love the standard of the industry to be raised to something more like the journalistic or academic standard. But that's still off in the future if it happens at all.

Mike

[Tor Erickson]

Hi John,

Good points: I also think I'd missed the point of Ron's post about player types until you rephrased it.

What do you think about the implied division of power between GMs and Players in the book?  Does it ever break from the "GM drives, Players ride" model?   (though I'll admit there is a lot of room for shouted suggestions from the backseat)

And don't misread me: I'm not about Robin Laws bashing.  I've already said that he's designed some fine games, and I don't suppose to know how much he's keyed into GNS; I can't read his mind.  I've tried to limit the discussion to the book itself, and if I've strayed into personality critique, then I apologize.

(By the way, how's it going down in Sac town, neighbor?)
-Tor

[clehrich]

Here are three recent remarks that all point in the same direction; I'd like to weave them together a bit.

In any other industry if you tried to pull a stunt like that you'd be a laughing stock. In role-playing games, you're touted as a visionary. What gives?

I am well aware of the use and purpose of research, but I am also aware that most of it serves no purpose than to inspire more research.

Just my take on it. I'd love the standard of the industry to be raised to something more like the journalistic or academic standard. But that's still off in the future if it happens at all.

All this discussion revolves around (1) Robin's book and whether it is or is not good, useful, effective, important, etc.; (2) the relationship of the Forge (and the GNS model in particular) to the mainstream (here called the "conventional") body of the hobby; and (3) an imagined comparison between the Forge and an academic discipline, particularly one of the sciences.

First of all, as several people have mentioned, Robin's book is aimed at an audience rather wider than the Forge.  So he has to address broad issues and concerns; he can't just jump into pure theory, because who would read the book?  That said, I think the criticism being leveled is that the book could address that same audience and simultaneously raise the general level of discourse, drawing on (for example) GNS theory.

But why should he?  I mean, let's step back from the Forge for a second, and really look at the discussions here.  Fascinating, yes, but you have to admit that there is still a great deal of disagreement about the structure and implications of the basic GNS model itself -- for goodness' sake, there's an entire forum which does little but debate these matters.  So is it necessarily incumbent upon an author to take GNS as established truth?  It really looks to me as though Robin, who I gather does read at least some of what goes on here, may not consider GNS all that valuable for actually going and GMing a game.

Again, why should he?  Mike (I think) has pointed out that GNS and the Forge is quite functional and valuable, in that it generates good games.  But that's a design concern, primarily, not a "how do I GM this situation?" concern.  As I read it, the latter is Robin's focus.

In addition, GNS and Stances and all the bits and pieces of the Big Model have not as yet come to clarity on the classification of players or games.  Remember how in the model, Ron explicitly and absolutely denies that it can be used to classify people or games?  This has been a bone of some contention and considerable confusion, after all.  But Robin's concern is precisely how to classify people.  So what he's doing is not, as yet, part of the model at all.

I'm not particularly defending the book itself.  All I'm saying is that what he's doing has very little direct connection -- for good or ill -- to the Forge's various interconnected models.

So this brings us back to Wulf's question: is what we're doing practical or useful at all?  Is it the case that research simply generates more research?  Is Robin's Laws what we should actually be doing, since it's more directly applicable?

My own answer is that what we're doing, and what the model is about, and all of that is indeed useful.  Does it just generate more research?  Gosh, I hope so.  That's how academic research works.  The fact that bakelite or teflon or whatever came out of a particular research project has very little to do with it.  Pure research is valuable because you learn something, not because it may have incidental application.  So insofar as the Forge is all about pure research, it's about our trying to figure out what RPGs are and how they work, in detail.  We haven't solved those problems yet, but that's a goal.

But in addition, the Forge isn't particularly about pure research.  It's quite constrained, actually: a great deal of what goes on here is about particular games, particular projects, and particular problems.  All that often spins threads in a more "pure theory" vein, but even here there is a constant push for the concrete example.  

Personally, I'd like to see less constraint, and more pure theory, but that's because I'm a theory-head in my professional life as well as my gaming one.  But the initial quotations all center around the comparison of the Forge discussion to other forms of research and analysis.  I worry about seeing that comparison formalized and extended -- we'd all have to recognize that doing this will greatly expand discussion, make it often a good deal less practical, and require much higher standards of logic and evidence.  I really doubt that reformulating the Forge on a rigorous academic model, scientific or otherwise, is going to make it more attractive or influential; indeed, I suspect that half the current contributors would bail in a heartbeat.

[M. J. Young]

Not having read Robin Laws' book, and knowing little enough about him but that he is highly respected for creating some games of good repute, I was just going to read this thread. Then as it was perhaps coming to a close,

That said, I think the criticism being leveled is that the book could address that same audience and simultaneously raise the general level of discourse, drawing on (for example) GNS theory.

But why should he?

I was prodded to get into the discussion.

As I recall, this began with a post

The book was published in 2002 by one of the most popularly renowned names in RPG-design; written as a standard reference on good GMing. It's supposed to be a collection of GM wisdom, both Robin's and that of many others.

And it sounds pretty damn much exactly like the kind of advice I was reading when I first got into the hobby 14 years ago.

Assuming Tor's guestimated date to be accurate, that's 1988. Now, does anyone here think that mainline gaming has not changed at all since 1988?

But that's not exactly the point. Tor isn't so much complaining that Mr. Laws didn't include a clear understanding of GNS; he's more complaining that the man seems to have ignored several kinds of players who clearly exist, because they are in large part the basis for the GNS data (whether or not the conclusions are correct--are there any narrativists reading this forum? were you narrativists, possibly frustrated narrativists, before you read this forum, or were you actually gamists or simulationists, quite happy with that, until you found out that there was a different kind of play possible?). Tor is not complaining about a lack of discussion about the intricacies of Stance; he's observing that Mr. Laws not merely ignores the idea but writes as if only very narrow early RPG stance rules are ever used.

There's a lot about Multiverser, and therefore a lot about the core of my work, that is very traditional; on the other hand, in the rules when we promised to release supplemental materials (primarily world books) we said we'd include tips for referees as they were relevant. In The Second Book of Worlds, in The Prisoner of Zenda, we include such a tip that was completely unimagined in early games and outside anything mentioned in the core rules of our game: the use of a cut scene to describe the action of a particular encounter if the player chooses not to be part of those events. That's something I encountered on the Gaming Outpost forum discussions when these conversations were being held there. It's also something you probably would not have found in a book of referee advice written in 1988 (and if it is in Mr. Laws' book, I apologize for using a bad example).

The point is that even in handling traditional and mainstream games, there are a lot of ideas and techniques that have been developed in the past dozen years which could be extremely useful to a novice referee. I don't think I would expect a book of advice for novice referees to delve deeply into definitions of stance or GNS or a lot of other things, but I would expect such a book published in 2002 to contain information not found in a comparable tome published a dozen years earlier--even if it's only the use of cut scenes, letting temporarily sidelined players run NPC's, or allowing players to add material detail to the set as they describe their characters' actions. Not mentioning some of this at least as possibilities seems to me negligent; writing narrowly such that the reader would infer such ideas were outside the realm of roleplaying (e.g., that the referee alone defines the scene, or that players shouldn't have access to information outside their characters' knowledge) when you obviously know better would seem to create culpability on the part of the author.

--M. J. Young

P.S.--is there any chance that Laws wrote this fifteen years ago and submitted it to SJGames, and they've only now decided that it's a marketable product based on the increased visibility of his name?

[Mike Holmes]

Actually your point makes ours MJ. There were Narrativists from day one.  Would a game book written in 1978, have had stuff about Narrativists in it? Should it have? 1988? 1998? 2003?

There is nothing that's changed about mainline gaming in all 25 years. The book is, I would guess, meant to appeal to mainline gamers. As such, this means describing play as it ever was, which means standard division of power, no overt director stance, and Narrativist play as a covert subset of Simulationist play. Or as "role" playing as opposed to "roll" playing.

Is there now a theory that may better describe a certain subset of player? Yes. Does it have to be addressed in all books on advice to GMs? No.

Mike

[Tor Erickson]

Hi MJ,

I think we're pretty much on the same page regarding the book.  That said, there are a number of points in "Good Gamemastering" that I don't find in the ADnd 2nd ed. "Campaign Sourcebook" (1990).  I think John touched on the most important of them, namely that Robin encourages the GM to provide lots of info about the setting and scenario to the players, even when that info goes beyond what the characters know.

-Tor

[Tor Erickson]

Howdy Mike,

So you really don't think that mainstream play could benefit from a deeper understanding of player's goals, specifically when those goals are narrativist in nature?

-Tor

[Mike Holmes]

Howdy Mike,

So you really don't think that mainstream play could benefit from a deeper understanding of player's goals, specifically when those goals are narrativist in nature?

-Tor

That would be reading in.

I believe that a book aimed at making play better for he majority of players need not address Narrativism to achieve that goal. Even for the Narrativist players. If I understand correctly, much of the advice in the book would help any GM with any player.

Narrativists have long played games that were not particularly supportive of their style. That is the system didn't support it, the GM did not support it, the other players did not support it. Yet they did it anyhow. A Narrativist can still have fun and do their thing despite a lack of support. Would they be better off if every GM understood their play preferences better? Sure. Does that make it absolutely neccessary for that information to be included in every book on GM advice? No. Could an author have an opinion that such information could be confusing, or even damaging to the style of book he's putiting out? Yes.

One last point. Maybe Laws has not at all kept up on things in terms of theory. Maybe he's blissfully ignorant of this sort of discussion as a whole. Again, what obligation does he have to keep up with theory? If the advice seemed helpful at one point in history, why would that change just because the theory has changed. He's doing what he thinks he should to help the hobby. And he's being challenged because he didn't include our theories.

Well, I wish he was on our side, too. But I can't hold him responsible for committing an act for which there is no standard that says that it's irresponsible to do so. This is not academia, it's a hobby. When that changes, you can bring him before the appropriate committee to have his credentials reviewed.

Mike

[talysman]

hi, Tor... things are going fine down here in Sac; how are things up in the foothills?

What do you think about the implied division of power between GMs and Players in the book?  Does it ever break from the "GM drives, Players ride" model?   (though I'll admit there is a lot of room for shouted suggestions from the backseat)

I've been planning to re-read the gamemastering book, but as I recall, it never breaks from the traditional D&D gamemaster vs. players division. on the one hand, this seems peculiar, since the book was published after Laws wrote Rune, which doesn't have a traditional gamemaster at all (and none of the advice in the gamemastering book is useful for playing Rune.)

on the other hand, it is a book on good gamemastering, not on good role-playing, so we can assume that the book was not written for Rune players at all. I also just looked up an interview he did with OgreCave where he quite bluntly states that he has no intention of doing a book on good role-playing.

[Thierry Michel]

So, do you (a generic 'you') think that a "Forge's Laws of Good Gamemastering" would be very different or do you think that the exercise is pointless in itself ?

(I found Robin Laws book interesting - stimulating, even, sometimes)