Its not how LARGE it is... its HOW its used.

[silva]

In a recent discussion I had, a colleague argued that the Sorcerer rpg is showing its age because its dice mechanics are clunky and were never efficient enough to achieving what the game was setting out to achieve by themselves. Then another pal said the dice mechanics in Sorcerer are only half the game, and that it was the specific procedures, techniques and tools on HOW to play/GM it that really made the game shine.

This reminded me of the Apocalypse World discussion we´re having, where some people seem to judge the game by its dice mechanics alone, while ignoring that it has a very explicit "HOW to play it" aspect which (in the author´s own words) is fundamental for achieving the gaming experience it aims for.

So, it strikes me that this kind of thing is pretty new in the hobby, no ? I mean, traditional games like Gurps and D&D do not have actual "How to play" rules, on the contrary they even go out of the way to say "Do what you want with these rules! Nobody will show up on your door with a gun". There was never a phrase in a D&D or Gurps book in the likes of "If you dont play the book this way, you´re playing it WRONG!" or something.

So what do you guys think ?

[hogarth]

The 1E AD&D DMG was full of comments about how you were supposed to play the game, and Gary Gygax certainly believed that it was possible to play AD&D "wrong".

[Voss]

Are you really going to create another thread and another thin premise (disproven in the first reply) to defend that shitty game?

Of course you are.

Anyway, if a game is built so that if you don't play it exactly the right way it utterly fails... I'm going to go ahead and call that bad design. Not a feature.

[Kaelik]

Anyway, if a game is built so that if you don't play it exactly the right way it utterly fails... I'm going to go ahead and call that bad design. Not a feature.

This. Good design incentivizes the behavior it wants to create. If your game tells you to do X, but makes it easier to do Y, then you failed at game design.

3.5 doesn't have to tell people to have a bunch of combats and not play diplomacy the talking game. Because the rules make it really fucking unfun to play diplomacy the talking game and really fun to go dragon hunting.

[silva]

Voss, would you consider it a bad design even if its "non-mechanical rules" really promoted the game intended premise/goals as intended, during actual play ?

The 1E AD&D DMG was full of comments about how you were supposed to play the game, and Gary Gygax certainly believed that it was possible to play AD&D "wrong".

Interesting, didnt know that.

[silva]

This. Good design incentivizes the behavior it wants to create. If your game tells you to do X, but makes it easier to do Y, then you failed at game design.

Can we cite Vampire: the Masquerade as a example offender here ? I mean, the way you read the text and play advice, it looks like the game should be all about dramatic personal horror, but then when you get down to actually play it, its system constantly tempts you to be a night-superhero.

3.5 doesn't have to tell people to have a bunch of combats and not play diplomacy the talking game. Because the rules make it really fucking unfun to play diplomacy the talking game and really fun to go dragon hunting.

Agreed.

But cant we have examples where non-mechanical rules have as much saying on how the game develops as mechanical ones ? The Sorcerer example looks a good one, no ? I mean, the way the book instructs for the use of bangs, kickers and scene framing makes me believe that a group that dont make use of those would be swimming in a totally different direction from a group who does (or the direction intended by the very author).

Do you think non-mechanical rules are less valid than mechanical ones ? (or, in other words, non-numerical rules are less valid than numerical ones ? )

Edited for reprhasing

[K]

But cant we have examples where non-mechanical rules have as much saying on how the game develops as mechanical ones ?

No.

There are no "non-mechanical rules" because those two terms are contradictions. It's an oxymoron.

Certainly, people enjoy the shit out of flavor text. I personally have great fondness for Rifts and have bought many books and read even more, but I've only played it a handful of times because the rules are terrible and the play experience those rules create is terrible.

The only real guiding principle for RPGs is "could a randomly-chosen friend run a fun night with this game?" When that answer is "no," then you know that it's a bad game that you probably won't play a lot of. Games like Shadowrun, DnD, or Vampire tend to be fun even when people do everything wrong, but I don't think just anyone can make Rifts worth playing with the poor rules and the great flavor text.

[Voss]

Voss, would you consider it a bad design even if its "non-mechanical rules" really promoted the game intended premise/goals as intended, during actual play ?

No, because you just sputtered incoherently. The writer can gibber about what the 'intended premise' is all he wants.

It is actually even worse design if the rules don't support the intended premise that the writer keeps banging on about. It is a perfect sign that said writer should accept his failure and go home. And his supporters should stop proselytizing like shadzars.

[hogarth]

The 1E AD&D DMG was full of comments about how you were supposed to play the game, and Gary Gygax certainly believed that it was possible to play AD&D "wrong".

Interesting, didnt know that.

What is perhaps somewhat new (hopefully I put in enough weasel words there) is the idea of games that aren't the usual adolescent power fantasy where you become a hero by beating up all of your enemies. Even in the case of old games like Call of Cthulhu or Toon, where the genre clearly is not centered around that kind of narrative, published adventures were still mostly just strings of combat encounters not too dissimilar from a D&D module.

And yes, if your game is not just "D&D, but with different monsters", you do have to be very explicit about that in the "How to Play the Game" section of the rules.

[silva]

K, swap "non-mechanical" rules for "non-numerical" ones. Do you believe non-numerical rules are less valid to rpgs than numerical ones ?

The only real guiding principle for RPGs is "could a randomly-chosen friend run a fun night with this game?" When that answer is "no," then you know that it's a bad game that you probably won't play a lot of. Games like Shadowrun, DnD, or Vampire tend to be fun even when people do everything wrong, but I don't think just anyone can make Rifts worth playing with the poor rules and the great flavor text.

This paragraph stumbles on so much subjective/personal preference material that I dont know if its a joke or what.

Ie: D&D is a wargame trying to be an rpg, while Vampire and Shadowrun are plagued by late 80s /early 90s trend of "complexity for complexity sake". (Rifts I dont know)

So, when you say "Rifts has unplayable rules" you´re commiting the mistake to assume that every rpg player has the same criteria/taste/opinion about what constitute simple/complex/good/bad/playable/unplayable rules.

[ishy]

For me, it is like a movie or TV show; No matter how great the intentions of the creator are, if it sucks I'm going to stop watching / playing your game mock your game on the internets.

[silva]

Ishy, but a non-numerical rule is more than just intentions. Take Sorcerer kickers and Apocalypse World First Session and Fronts, for example - they dictate how the entire game will develop, potentially having a much bigger impact than the numeric/resolution mechanics.

[John Magnum]

I think there's a spectrum of vaguness/concreteness at play here. Trivially, I could make a "rule" of "Always have fun, respect other players, come up with interesting scenarios and characters" and declare that everyone who isn't following that rule is playing the game wrong.

What you want are rules that are concrete enough to have actual influence on how people play the game and behave and are also actually functional and successful.

[silva]

What you want are rules that are concrete enough to have actual influence on how people play the game and behave and are also actually functional and successful.

This. Its the more concrete ones that Im talking about here.

(I think the ones I cited above are good examples of rules that fall on the more concrete side of the spectrum)

[darkmaster]

So what you're asking, and I'm just trying to make sure we're clear, is weather or not it's a good thing for a game to tell the players exactly what to do and that they fail if they don't do exactly that instead of letting them make their own story. No it's not good.

That's not to say a system can't give direction. I don't think the setting agnostic version of Amber Diceless will really be that much good, because without the structure and direction given by Zelazny's universe the game just- wouldn't have much besides the magical tea party to go on. But Amber never told you what you HAD to do. The mechanics, such as they were, just encouraged a particular play style which happened to coincide with the setting the stories were to take place in.

[Mask_De_H]

Anyway, if a game is built so that if you don't play it exactly the right way it utterly fails... I'm going to go ahead and call that bad design. Not a feature.

This. Good design incentivizes the behavior it wants to create. If your game tells you to do X, but makes it easier to do Y, then you failed at game design.

3.5 doesn't have to tell people to have a bunch of combats and not play diplomacy the talking game. Because the rules make it really fucking unfun to play diplomacy the talking game and really fun to go dragon hunting.

Isn't the failure of the talking game in the points where murderhoboing isn't an option one of the Great 3.X Hack White Whales? And hasn't all of the spell related shit we and others have found completely fuck up the expected behaviors past level...10 if you want to be generous? Don't the Tomes exist because 3.5 failed at game design in many many ways?

To silva: "One true way"-ism was not only codified by Gygax, it still exists with modern grogdom and GNS idiots. If the mechanics to a game are fucked, the game is fucked. It can have good ideas, it can even be fun, but it's fucked.

[Kaelik]

Isn't the failure of the talking game in the points where murderhoboing isn't an option one of the Great 3.X Hack White Whales? And hasn't all of the spell related shit we and others have found completely fuck up the expected behaviors past level...10 if you want to be generous? Don't the Tomes exist because 3.5 failed at game design in many many ways?

Um... a limited scope comment about incentivizing specific behavior is not an all purpose claim that 3e is particularly well designed in all respects, or even about the reason those incentives are what they are.

[Mask_De_H]

Isn't the failure of the talking game in the points where murderhoboing isn't an option one of the Great 3.X Hack White Whales? And hasn't all of the spell related shit we and others have found completely fuck up the expected behaviors past level...10 if you want to be generous? Don't the Tomes exist because 3.5 failed at game design in many many ways?

Um... a limited scope comment about incentivizing specific behavior is not an all purpose claim that 3e is particularly well designed in all respects, or even about the reason those incentives are what they are.

It's the example you used to back up your claim, mate. S'not my fault it isn't a good one.

[Kaelik]

It's the example you used to back up your claim, mate. S'not my fault it isn't a good one.

No you fucking retard, it is a great example, you are just fucking retarded.

Me: "D&D 3e makes combat more fun than diplomacy, so lots of people use it for combat and not for diplomacy."

You: "But D&D 3e isn't good at balancing each of the 400 classes as just as good in combat, so doesn't that really mean that D&D incentivizes people talking instead of combat."

Me: "No."

[silva]

To silva: "One true way"-ism was not only codified by Gygax, it still exists with modern grogdom and GNS idiots

Agreed. Though I dont see how "one-true-wayism" relates to the topic at hand.

If the mechanics to a game are fucked, the game is fucked. It can have good ideas, it can even be fun, but it's fucked.

Dont know if I agree with this.

IMO, what says if the game is fucked or not is the perception and tastes of a given player. And this perception is informed by a lot of factors: rules, setting, props (types of dice, cards, etc), themes, illustration, text, actual play experience, etc. The rules component is simply one among these factors. Ie: A player may find that a set of mathematically perfect mechanics tastes like styrofoam, while a set of mathematically broken mechanics tastes like liquid awesome. In fact, a friend of mine loves Shadowrun because he likes to throw buckets of dice, and doesnt bother the least that its system is mathematically broken.

Hope that made sense. Im on a hurry here.

[Voss]

To silva: "One true way"-ism was not only codified by Gygax, it still exists with modern grogdom and GNS idiots

Agreed. Though I dont see how "one-true-wayism" relates to the topic at hand.

I recommend holding a mirror up to the first post in this thread.

What says if the game is fucked or not is the perception and tastes of a given player.

And yet, despite people repeatedly telling you that it isn't to their tastes, you're still going to keep tilting at the local windmills?

Nevermind that you never get anywhere with these threads, and eventually give up having convinced no one of anything, at some point basic logic and learning behavior should encourage you to stop posting about this crap anywhere but a forum dedicated to fellating the author.

[silva]

Sorry Voss, didnt understand your post. My point with this thread is to talk about this kind of non-numerical rules - which I confess being something new to me - and not "keep tilting at their windmills" (whatever that means, Im not a native speaker ).

BTW, have you encountered these kind of rules in some game ? Or your intention here is simply trolling the thread ?

[Grek]

Non-numerical rules can be good. See: the board game Diplomacy, the party game Werewolf and Truth or Dare.

But they're still rules, and they still require balancing, attention to detail and adjudication. It doesn't follow that making other rules stop using numbers would be an improvement.

[K]

K, swap "non-mechanical" rules for "non-numerical" ones. Do you believe non-numerical rules are less valid to rpgs than numerical ones ?

Rules that are logic operators work. Vague commandments pretending to be rules don't work.

For example, you can have rules that are IF/THEN statements where "IF I attempt stealth THEN I get to bypass this specific danger", and this will consistently feel the same for indivual players. A game like DnD produces a predictable play experience through rules that individual players can take or leave in an objective manner because everyone is giving their personal opinion on a similar and predictable experience.

On the opposite side, vague commandments like "Make the game dark" that you see in games like Vampire don't work because the commandment is completely subjective. Different DMs will have different levels of ability to follow the commandment and thus the experience is completely unpredictable. This is why people have fun superhero games with Vampire.... great DMs might be unable to follow your commandments, but they can make a fun game with your rules.

Wring down commandments is easy because its lazy thinking for people who won't notice that it doesn't work.

[ishy]

Ishy, but a non-numerical rule is more than just intentions.

Ah yeah, non-numerical rules can greatly impact play.
For example: aquatic pcs can go on adventures that feel very different, even though their numbers are exactly the same.