Fundamental Rule of RPGs

[baduin]

The continuous discussions about the interpretation of rules, and most of all D&D 4e keyword rules system, has persuaded me that people make often a simple, but fundamental mistake here. To mitigate that problem, I suggest the following basic rule for traditional RPGs (as distinguished from GM-less wargames and from narrative games of the type popular at Forge). Such a rule will fit only some game styles, of course, but I think the consideration whether it will fit your game will tell you a lot about your style of gaming.

Modified version:

"The rules of the game describe only typical and usual situations. When the DM has to resolve a situation not described in the rules, he is absolutely forbidden to do it by interpreting the rules, literally or otherwise. He should instead imagine how it would happen in the game world.

If only one effect is possible, DM is to describe it without any dice rolls.

If the result depends on pure chance, DM is to decide the probability of different results and roll a die (or percentile dice) to select one of them. When establishing probabilities of result, he should take into account any similar situation described in the rules.

If the situation is a test or contest of skills, abilities, or similar, he should use the rules of the game as the model, modify them as appropriate and describe the result based on them. He can for example modify the rules by adding some modifiers, or by using some kind of roll with changed results, or in any other appropriate way. GM should take care that his solution remains consistent with the cases described in the rules."

Original version:

"The rules of the game describe only typical and usual situations. When the DM has to solve an atypical or unusual situation, he is absolutely forbidden to interpret the rules, literally or otherwise. He is instead obligated to imagine how it would happen in the imaginary world in which the game takes place.

If only one effect is possible, DM is to describe it without any dice rolls.

If the result depends on pure chance, DM is to decide the probability of different results and roll a die (or percentile dice) to select one of them.

If the situation is a test or contest of skills, abilities, or similar, he should use the rules of the game as the model, modify them as appropriate and described the result based on them. He can for example modify the rules by adding some modifiers, or of changing the results of the test, or in any other appropriate way."

[Bigode]

Common sense isn't. And not necessarily because I'm talking about retards. Just pick 2 people with different backgrounds, ask them what happens in some weird imaginary situation (BTW, have you thought that situations for which finding clear-cut rules isn't trivial probably are more bizarre than expected?), and you might get entirely different answers.

[Username17]

I don't think that's terribly accurate. For example, many times only one effect is possible but the degree of effect has ramifications for later events. Dice generate not just decision trees, but also weight the effects of such trees.

Although lately I've seen a disturbing tendency in people to persistently misapply the basics of random number generation. Not just very vocally on this board, but on Paizo, Gleemax, and RPG.net. Here are some probability facts:

• Before you perform a task, your chances of performing the task successfully do not depend on your personal awesomeness or determination, nor do they depend on how important it is for the roll to come up one way or another. The dice and the target number are whatever they are, and the chances involved are entire impersonal.
• The chances of doing two tasks in a row are the chances of the first task times the chances of the second task.
• The chances of succeeding at a second task after you've already completed a first task is the chances of performing the second task alone. For a coin-flip example, everyone who already got a heads on the first flip has a 50% chance to get heads on the second flip. It's called selection bias. Instead of looking at how 50% of the people will get a first heads and 50% of those people will get a second heads, you're just looking at how 100% of the 50% of the people who happened to get a first heads have a 50% chance of getting a second heads.
• Results that don't matter don't affect odds. If you win on a 20 and your game is over on a 1 and you retry on all other numbers - your chances of victory and defeat are 50%. When looking at the probabilities in the long run, results where you try again don't even exist.

-Username17

[Absentminded_Wizard]

"The rules of the game describe only typical and usual situations. When the DM has to solve an atypical or unusual situation, he is absolutely forbidden to interpret the rules, literally or otherwise. He is instead obligated to imagine how it would happen in the imaginary world in which the game takes place.

So who determines what's "typical"? You seem to be trying to invent an arbitrary excuse to say, "Well that's not a typical situation; it's up to the GM" whenever somebody comes up with a broken result of a rule.

[ZER0]

GM's are irresponsible. Some try very hard (myself included) but we all make mistakes. The rules are there for the GM to follow more-so than the players. The only time it should be acceptable for the GM to "imagine how it is to happen" is when there is not a rule already in place to control the situation.

Otherwise, we end up with the Retarded Animal Babies philosophy of "I'm going to roll some dice for effect then make some shit up." The reason that we point out certain RaW as being completely dumb is because if it's not cleared up, it can only be assumed that whoever was writing it wanted it that way and it's that way for a reason. If the RaW don't make sense, then the GM doesn't need to make stuff up. That's the point where the rules need to be changed in advance to stop that sort of bullshit.

[baduin]

So who determines what's "typical"? You seem to be trying to invent an arbitrary excuse to say, "Well that's not a typical situation; it's up to the GM" whenever somebody comes up with a broken result of a rule.

GM determines what is typical, of course. How? By looking at the rules and seeing what is described there.

Additionally, I assume a competent game designer. If your rules are designed by an idiot who is searching for excuses, they will obviously be bad, with my rule or without it.

Why such a rule is necessary? Because rules can foresee only a limited number of situation, and both real and imaginary worlds include an infinite number of situations.

You can, of course, train yourself to be an amateur lawyer and decide the result of unforeseen situations by interpreting rules, usually literally. But there is one problem: the results will usually make no sense when imagined as happening in the imaginary world.

The game rules, when treated as physics of the game world, are simply not enough complicated to model it well. Human brain is actually not very good at using such kind of mechanical rules - computer are infinitely better at this - and any precise rules which are to be interpreted by a single human will be VERY simplistic.

On the other hand, human brain is very good at intuitively discerning and foreseeing very complex situations. This is how we are able to understand each other, discern objects we are seeing, etc. In particular, human brain is able to decode situations which cannot be described in a formalized way (eg the difference between living/dead, intelligent/nonintelligent etc). Using that ability allows for a much more complex game-world.

Common sense isn't. And not necessarily because I'm talking about retards. Just pick 2 people with different backgrounds, ask them what happens in some weird imaginary situation (BTW, have you thought that situations for which finding clear-cut rules isn't trivial probably are more bizarre than expected?), and you might get entirely different answers.

Of course. That is why you must have ONE, and only one, GM - and why he must be good. D&D keyword rules system is designed to replace GM, as much as possible, by a simple rules-interpreting machine (simulated by the human GM, unfortunately). This way anyone can be GM.

This is actually an interesting example of the similar process happening in the real law. The exponentially increasing number of legal rules is intended to replace the judgment of the person deciding. It is hoped that in that way the verdicts will be consistent and objective. My previous remarks can be a clue as to mistakes inherent in this approach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phronesis

Unfortunately, there is no way to exclude the judgment of the DM and have an entirely objective game system, as long as you intend your game to model some imaginary world. If you build a game with strict rules, you will get something more resembling chess than RPG.

But that does not mean that rules are unimportant. They are very important, but they cannot do everything.

The rules can decide common situations: The enemy has a weapon in hand and is aware of me. I attack him with my sword.

But the game usually will have no rules directly describing some less common situations, eg:

A warrior with a flaming sword is fighting a wizard armed with a wand of scorching ray inside a wooden house. What is the chance the house will burn down? Can you put out the fire with an Ice storm?

[Josh_Kablack]

The continuous discussions about the interpretation of rules, and most of all D&D 4e keyword rules system, has persuaded me that people make often a simple, but fundamental mistake here. To mitigate that problem, I suggest the following basic rule for traditional RPGs (as distinguished from GM-less wargames and from narrative games of the type popular at Forge). Such a rule will fit only some game styles, of course, but I think the consideration whether it will fit your game will tell you a lot about your style of gaming.

Okay then, my style of gaming tells me that this sort of thing is utter rubbish inexcusable in all but the most childish of games:

"The rules of the game describe only typical and usual situations. When the DM has to solve an atypical or unusual situation, he is absolutely forbidden to interpret the rules, literally or otherwise. He is instead obligated to imagine how it would happen in the imaginary world in which the game takes place.

Are you out of your gourd trippin on the imaginary power of the DM? Or do you just find cops and robbers the perfect RPG?*

You start from the premise that no set of rules can cover every eventuality and reach the conclusion that the answer to anything is DM fiat without any other considerations whatsoever, and you do this with no intermediate explanation.

The whole point of having an interactive storytelling game is for people to *interact* during that story - not for the DM/GM/Storyteller to just decide what happens on his whim all the time. If you don't like that, you should not be engaged in interactive fiction activities. Which is a fine choice in and of itself, go tell stories to kids or write books, and I will be happy for you - but when you pretend that RPGs should be non-interactive is when I jump up and down screaming.

The point of having a game system with rules is to use those rules to resolve contested situations. And while those rules will not be able to cover all eventualities, applied perfectly, interpreted consistently, nor free from contradictions, people at a minimum level of maturity will be able to interpret the rules to apply to unusual situations in manners analogous to existing rules. A sane and knowledge DM will be able to extend the rules of the system to cover unusual situation so that the mechanics are still recognizable to the players without having to handwave the system and play magical tea party. People who want to just argue what they imagine should happen are going to get into frequent insolvable arguments due to differing ideas about the background - especially in the types of escapist fantasy portrayed in most RPGs. A Player may argue that realistically large explosions tend to kill people while another player may argue that in action movies, the hero can always safely jump away from the expanding CGI fireball. (Even when the explosion destroys a city and the hero is just an ordinary pet dog) while a third player may argue an anecdote about how marines in 'Nam purposefully blew grenades close enough to themselves to risk shrapnel wounds in hopes of getting a trip back home - and none of these arguments are fallacious.

Instead of the GM merely saying "it's an explosion, you die/leap to safety/get that shrapnel wound" it's a far better idea to extrapolate from the existing damage/ death/ evasion/ reflex save rules and desired chance of lethality to adjudicate the scene within the game actually being played.



---


*Ok, I'm done ranting, and with taking you seriously, please go back to playing your game of "Shot you!" "Nu-uh, you missed!", "Did not" now

[baduin]

I see that I formulated my rule a bit unclearly. Perhaps the next version will be better.

"The rules of the game describe only typical and usual situations. When the DM has to resolve a situation not described in the rules, he is absolutely forbidden to do it by interpreting the rules, literally or otherwise. He should instead imagine how it would happen in the game world.

If only one effect is possible, DM is to describe it without any dice rolls.

If the result depends on pure chance, DM is to decide the probability of different results and roll a die (or percentile dice) to select one of them. When establishing probabilities of result, he should take into account any similar situation described in the rules.

If the situation is a test or contest of skills, abilities, or similar, he should use the rules of the game as the model, modify them as appropriate and describe the result based on them. He can for example modify the rules by adding some modifiers, or by using some kind of roll with changed results, or in any other appropriate way. GM should take care that his solution remains consistent with the cases described in the rules."

[Bigode]

First, that sounds so close to interpreting to me that I'm not even sure there's a difference. Second, whenever the GM applies ad-hoc judgement that disagrees with player impressions, they're literally telling the players that their characters (assuming they're involved in the situation requiring judgement) don't really behave the way the players expect. Which's a rather undesirable thing to happen. So, we'd like to be able to discuss. And the subjects of some games are esoteric enough that discussing them directly varies between painful and impossible. Hence using rules interpretation as a middle layer. Third: lots of that seems to come from retarded writing and lazier playtesting. Case in point: the genre has 2 people with weapons aflame fighting in an enclosed space - how the fvck you don't have rules for fires (if you desire them to exist - some games might consider handwaving them away a virtue, but in that case the "they don't happen, so you don't put them out" answer's actually damn easy to get)?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Additionally, I assume a competent game designer. If your rules are designed by an idiot who is searching for excuses, they will obviously be bad, with my rule or without it.

The continuous discussions about the interpretation of rules, and most of all D&D 4e keyword rules system, has persuaded me that people make often a simple, but fundamental mistake here.

D&D keyword rules system is designed to replace GM, as much as possible, by a simple rules-interpreting machine (simulated by the human GM, unfortunately). This way anyone can be GM.

It looks to me like you've made two mistakes here. First, you talk about competent game designers in a thread inspired by 4e rules discussion. Second, you're getting on people's cases for using the 4e keyword system the way it was meant to be used.

And just for the record, I've heard enough horror stories to convince me that assuming the GM will have the wisdom of Solomon is a foolish approach to game design.

[baduin]

I think the explanation of this problem will require a bit of historical discussion. Throughout history, games were abstract and had simple rules which allowed complex strategies - eg chess, go, etc.

At the beginning of XIX century a Prussian junior officer named von Reisswitz invented a game which was NOT abstract - it was intended to simulate reality, although only of battlefield. This game was called Kriegsspiel and was from that time on used to train staff officers.

http://www.nhmgs.org/articles/historyofwargaming.html

This games was very rules-heavy, with rules, die modifiers etc, for every eventuality. This was called rigid Krieggspiel.


Later, another German officer called du Vernois invented "free Krieggspiel". It was rules light system, in which the umpire, an experienced officer, estimated the result of your action based on his battlefield experience, from time to time rolling a die to emulate random results.

http://www.kriegsspiel.org.uk/index.php ... &Itemid=58

This is an example of free Kriegsspiel:
http://www.archive.org/details/rulesfor ... 00grearich

The benefit of the free system was that you were able to try literally anything, whether it was codified in the rules or not, and even most exceptional factors could be taken into account. On the other hand, the game depended utterly on the umpire: if he was inexperienced, followed obsolete theories, or was biased, the game would be worse than useless for the participating officers.

There finally emerged a compromise version, with strict rules, but allowing the umpire to deviate from them if the situation required that.

In RPGs the situation is similar, except that it is rather difficult to get an experienced GM, since few of us has any experience in the magical combat.

But the four system of games remain the same:
1) abstract
2) realistic with complicated rules covering all possibilities
3) realistic - mixed. strict rules which do not cover all possibilities, but allow the GM to deviate from them or make an independent decision if the situation required that.
4) realistic - free

There is one difficulty - since the scope of the game is much wider than in a wargame, the option two can be applied only to a part of game - eg to the combat part.

Original D&D rules were very near the Free system, and slowly accumulated enough rules to change into the mixed system. D&D 3ed was very near option two - allthough offically it remained a mixed system, as explained here:

Often a situation will arise that isn’t explicitly covered by the rules. In such a situation, you need to provide guidance as to how it should be resolved. When you come upon a situation that the rules don’t seem to cover, consider the following courses of action.
• Look to any similar situation that is covered in a rulebook. Try to extrapolate from what you see presented there and apply it to the current circumstance.
• If you have to make something up, stick with it for the rest of the campaign. (This is called a house rule.) Consistency keeps players satisfied and gives them the feeling that they adventure in a stable, predictable universe and not in some random, nonsensical place subject only to the DM’s whims.

D&D 4ed rules clearly belong to the category 2: realistic with complicated rules covering all possibilities - at least in regard to combat. In fact, at times it gets very near category 1 - abstract. Outside of combat the situation is unclear: skill challenges are clearly abstract rules, in many other aspects the DM has free hand.

Which system is better? None. They are simply different. On the other hand, it is very important that the rules clearly say to which category they belong, that they are actually correctly designed for that category, and that all players understand the consequences. You cannot simply decide that you will run the same rules as if they belonged to a different category. This is impossible; rules for each category must be written in a different way.

The keyword-based system of D&D 4ed is designed clearly in such a way as to require no independent decisions by the DM, only rules interpretation - at least in combat. It is not done very well, which is not surprising - writing that kind of rules is very difficult and requires very precise mind.

In addition, D&D 4ed is supposedly an exception-based game. Exception-based rules are used nearly exclusively by very abstract games, with only some "flavouring" of imaginary reality. For that reason in practice D&D had to be based in large part on keywords, and it still remains very abstract.

And, to return to my proposed rule: That kind of rule can be used only by the "mixed game", ie category 3: strict rules which do not cover all possibilities, but allow the GM to deviate from them or make an independent decision if the situation required that.

If you do not trust your GM, you should play games belonging to categories 1 or 2, which, of course, cannot use such a rule.

[JonSetanta]

Later, another German officer called du Vernois invented "free Krieggspiel". It was rules light system, in which the umpire, an experienced officer, estimated the result of your action based on his battlefield experience, from time to time rolling a die to emulate random results.

Gygaxian.

I personally prefer something closer to the former, but a small to moderate amount of 'feels-right' arbitration is always necessary.

Otherwise I'll seriously just go play Dungeon Crawl. We're people, not machines.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

And, to return to my proposed rule: That kind of rule can be used only by the "mixed game", ie category 3: strict rules which do not cover all possibilities, but allow the GM to deviate from them or make an independent decision if the situation required that.

Except that your rule falls outside the obvious requirement for the GM to arbitrate any situation that the rules don't cover. You basically want to be able to throw out rules that cover a given situation if the GM decides that situation isn't "typical."