Quote from: dragoner;889084We all ready had too much invested in D&D to switch over to what was more crunchy battle mat type game. We did take a look at the RM arms law type stuff because of how nice the ICE MERP stuff was, but we just converted it over to AD&D, ultimately.

What was relevant then, same as today, is if that to play in someone's game, and that there was a bunch of pages of house rules to learn, it represented a barrier to entry. Someone's campaign would have to have, still does, a certain amount of gravity to draw people in past that.

Amount of rules or types of rules are only a barrier to entry if it is assumed you have to know them before you sit down and play, which, to be honest, no one I've ever played with in 35 years, does.  Hell, even the local Pathfinder crew that is 8 months into a campaign they run at the FLGS has pre-gens to hand out to newbies if they want to sit down and play.

If you don't know how to play...don't worry about it, you'll learn as you go.
If you know how to play, ok, there's changes to the standard rules, you'll learn as you go.

The problem only really materializes when you have complex systems where the byzantine clockwork inter-relation of cards...err powers I mean, leads to emergent complexity like..."My god man!  You can't let a Yithian Dragonchild take the prestige class of Dimensional Conqueror if they have the base class of Crystal Reaver!  What if they take the powers Root of the World Tree and Asp of Heaven?! DON'T YOU SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!...and even then, that problem only materializes online...and only really at The Gaming Den.

Hell, a friend of mine had a bunch of players sit down at a FLGS to play his game, which was a highly customized variant you could only loosely call D&D.  People said "Ok, how do we make up characters..." and off they went.

This whole "Sorry dude, changing Poleaxe so you can use it as a slashing, piercing or blunt weapon...we just don't know you that well.  We have to trust when it comes to polearms, man." attitude...Jesus Wept.

I'll try to get to all of these responses as best I can

QuoteOriginally Posted by Itachi
MadProfessor, I don't think that case proves much, as D&D 3e was a huge success and was pretty much on the RAW playing side.

Yes, I agree. My digression about Dragonquest was more of a historical footnote, but at that time, the rulings over rules philosophy really did dominate.  

The introduction of 3e is when some players starting bringing up balance to me and started quoting rules mid-game.  It was a bit of a shock to me then because the culture was starting to change.  I think it marks the turning point when gamers began to split over rulings vs rules.

QuoteOriginally Posted by dragoner
If things were perfect? Doesn't happen very often. It is also like respect, it's not automatic, it's earned; hard to come by and easy to get rid of. It's like the rule zero fantasy some people have, try to enforce it and they are then sitting at an empty table. Rules in their own way act as a social contract between the GM, and the players, as well as player to player.

QuoteOriginally Posted by Maarzan
This is a situation that doesn´t fall out of the sky. It is a question of similar styles and expectations and real trust is also something that has to be earned (beyond the goodwill you give for starters).
And much of these expectations are formed by having played this and that official game (bee it raw or decently house ruled )

QuoteOriginally Posted by Itachi
About the issue of the GM being the sole "guardian" of the rules, there may be a problem with that: in my group there is no fixed GM. We are 5 players that rotate wildly on the GM sit, even within the same campaign/story-arc. So the rules, for us, work as a mutual contract that we try to abide as much as possible, so to reduce disparities in rulings and playstyles as much as possible.

These are helpful explanations because they describe how vastly different our experiences have been and thus why we have different approaches to rules.

I am the GM. I have always been so and have never had a trust issue as far the rules are concerned.  I have multiple groups that want me to run games on a regular basis.  I try to run games for new players as often as I can, but I also have a group at my local games tore that consists of nothing but other GMs that have their own groups.  They have some wildly varying styles, and some are rules lawyers, but even they agree that having a fun, fair, trustworthy judge is preferable using the book as a social arbiter.  Maybe they are blowing smoke.  I don't know, but none of them will run a game for me to play in because I am the Game Master.  When I show up, they want me to run.  I am not bragging, but in nearly 40 years I have never played in a group of equals who lack trust.  

QuoteOriginally Posted by Kyle Aaron
So this supports your point that setting is more important than system. Because setting is more social than system. The buildings of the game world, the NPCs, the religions and rituals and background events - all that setting stuff - this engages people more than do charts and tables and rule 4.11.2(a), generally speaking.

As well, setting is usually better able to engage the less-than-dedicated players that systems. People don't want to read 100 pages of rules before they play, and most settings are made deliberately familiar with things people already recognise from commonly-read books and movies. Nobody needs to read the rulebook to know what an elf or a cyborg commando are. This, incidentally, is the reason games like Tekumel are not as widely-played as games like D&D. They're the setting equivalent of Advanced Squad Leader. Interesting for some of us geeks, but not very accessible and will put off casual players.

Absolutely!

QuoteOriginally Posted by Lunamancer

I think part of the problem is that people create artificially narrow definitions of terms. Like "rules" for example. Rules in a computer game really can't be broken. The programming can neither handle nor allow it...

Lunamancer, I am trying to follow your train of thought and figure out what it adds up to. Perhaps I am wrong but it seems to me that you are saying that nobody really plays 100% RaW.  I hate to over simplify your many points, but am I getting the gist?

Quote... You know what I like about rules? They provide a certain level of consistency...

I think that a lack of consistency is perhaps the major concern of many people who reacted negatively to a rulings approach.  I have rarely had a problem with it, but it has come up in my games from time to time.  Being a rules-flexible kind of GM, I do strive for consistency, but I do not let it dominate the character of the campaign.  I often wonder if other old style GMs have a problem with it given today's' audience.

Quoteoriginally Posted by AsenRG
Because it's a statement of opinion. Opinion=/=fact.
Consider for a moment that some games, say GURPS, already assume that you'd need to adapt the rules...because using all the rules at once is outright impossible (some variant rules contradict each other). Consider that some games are custom-made for a specific campaign, say Pendragon, and running it with them yields better results than running it with other games.

Bah!  This doesn't prove that my statement was an opinion rather than a fact, though I at least agree that Pendragon is a game that requires minimal rules tinkering and is often more successful if left alone.  However, at the table it is also a game that requires a lot of rulings and trust from the GM.

Quote"Anti-flexibility crowd". Classy.
"Why their way works". Do you have any doubts it does?
...you do understand that after this sentence alone I wouldn't bother explaining anything (assuming I was in said crowd). Don't you?

Okay, okay.  I was slightly provocative, but that's because the campaign-first people were explaining themselves, and the rules-first people were just ranting and insulting people.  It is difficult for me to understand the pov of people who put the rules before the campaign because it is so far outside my experience.  I wanted better explanations.  Thanks to the people above, I have some.

QuoteOK, but which group are you in? I get it you're in the flexible-approach people. Why don't you explain the answer to that question, then?

Because I don't have a single concrete answer and I was hoping to hear from others.

Quote from: Maarzan;889140With this constellation it would also be the duty of the GM to make sure that every participant is getting a complete view of the situation as long as it is necessary to make decisions.
If you don´t give this information we are back to players guessing or having to try to read the GM mind.

Unfortunately I can´t detect any arguments why rules-based understanding is problematic. Could you please point me to it?

Suppose from a mathematical perspective, you have a couple of different choices, A, and B. You could also have choices C, D, E, F... and so on to infinity if it makes you happy. But we can focus on just two without loss of generality. How do you evaluate which choice to make mathematically? Most logically, it would be to add up all the benefits of A, subtract out all the drawbacks, do the same for B, then compare which is better. Pretty simple, right?

Okay, now apply it. Let's say you're trying to decide whether to A - go out to see a new movie, or B - to not see the movie. B is sort of a baseline case, so really we only have to evaluate A. Simple enough. We just need to see whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

The drawbacks would include things like the price of admission, the two hours spent where you could have been doing other things, and the aggravation of fighting traffic to get across town. You know yourself pretty well, so you know more or less how to evaluate these things. So the only question left is this: is the entertainment value of seeing the movie worth all that?

If this were a math problem in school, the answer would be "not enough information." You don't know what the entertainment value of the movie is. You won't know and can't know until you actually see it. The information required to mathematically evaluate the action is itself only revealed through action. There is no rational mathematical solution to this problem. Where it gets interesting is when you step back and realize virtually every decision in life fits this form.

We're used to games providing definite mathematical answers. Some games call for thinking a few moves ahead, so your choice now doesn't come down to what "score" you receive for making this move, but rather based on how well it sets you up to win or lose down the road.

Some games bring in probability. So you may not know exactly what will happen yet, but you have at least a probabilistic framework. If you're playing blackjack and you have 14, you know if you hit you bust on 8, 9, 10, J, Q, or K. If you're playing multi-deck blackjack, you know that's about a 46% chance of busting. If you're counting cards, you may be able to get an even more precise probability than that. Based on what the dealer has showing, you can similarly figure the odds of his busting. Based on this information, you make a choice. You may still lose, but as long as you correctly played, you don't regret the choice. You know if you had it to do all over again, you would have made the same play.

Poker, however, erodes the utility of mathematics. Sure. You can look at your cards, and if you're a wiz you can compute the probability that another player has cards to beat you. But then some players fold. And now there's a selection bias. You have to assume those who didn't fold have better-than-average hands. But how much better than average are they? Good enough to beat your hand? How do you calculate that? And then of course, there's always the possibility that someone is bluffing. How do you know that? How do you calculate that probability?

To the degree that there is slightly more to RPGs than there is to poker, and to the degree that RPGs aren't an arbitrary collection of rules but rather are constructed in a way to represent something organic, the usefulness of math falls off cliff.

Even blackjack players know this. A lot of blackjack players will leave the table if just one player isn't playing optimally. Even if the guy wins off his bad bet. Why? Because a player making a bad choice draws too many or too few cards which in turn at the very least changes the odds of the dealer busting. A blackjack player, whose gaming experience literally lives and breathes math and probabilities, knows his expectations of the odds goes down the toilet under even the slightest human decision.

Quote from: Lunamancer;889159Suppose from a mathematical perspective, you have a couple of different choices, A, and B. You could also have choices C, D, E, F... and so on to infinity if it makes you happy. But we can focus on just two without loss of generality. How do you evaluate which choice to make mathematically? Most logically, it would be to add up all the benefits of A, subtract out all the drawbacks, do the same for B, then compare which is better. Pretty simple, right?

Okay, now apply it. Let's say you're trying to decide whether to A - go out to see a new movie, or B - to not see the movie. B is sort of a baseline case, so really we only have to evaluate A. Simple enough. We just need to see whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

The drawbacks would include things like the price of admission, the two hours spent where you could have been doing other things, and the aggravation of fighting traffic to get across town. You know yourself pretty well, so you know more or less how to evaluate these things. So the only question left is this: is the entertainment value of seeing the movie worth all that?

If this were a math problem in school, the answer would be "not enough information." You don't know what the entertainment value of the movie is. You won't know and can't know until you actually see it. The information required to mathematically evaluate the action is itself only revealed through action. There is no rational mathematical solution to this problem. Where it gets interesting is when you step back and realize virtually every decision in life fits this form.

We're used to games providing definite mathematical answers. Some games call for thinking a few moves ahead, so your choice now doesn't come down to what "score" you receive for making this move, but rather based on how well it sets you up to win or lose down the road.

Some games bring in probability. So you may not know exactly what will happen yet, but you have at least a probabilistic framework. If you're playing blackjack and you have 14, you know if you hit you bust on 8, 9, 10, J, Q, or K. If you're playing multi-deck blackjack, you know that's about a 46% chance of busting. If you're counting cards, you may be able to get an even more precise probability than that. Based on what the dealer has showing, you can similarly figure the odds of his busting. Based on this information, you make a choice. You may still lose, but as long as you correctly played, you don't regret the choice. You know if you had it to do all over again, you would have made the same play.

Poker, however, erodes the utility of mathematics. Sure. You can look at your cards, and if you're a wiz you can compute the probability that another player has cards to beat you. But then some players fold. And now there's a selection bias. You have to assume those who didn't fold have better-than-average hands. But how much better than average are they? Good enough to beat your hand? How do you calculate that? And then of course, there's always the possibility that someone is bluffing. How do you know that? How do you calculate that probability?

To the degree that there is slightly more to RPGs than there is to poker, and to the degree that RPGs aren't an arbitrary collection of rules but rather are constructed in a way to represent something organic, the usefulness of math falls off cliff.

Even blackjack players know this. A lot of blackjack players will leave the table if just one player isn't playing optimally. Even if the guy wins off his bad bet. Why? Because a player making a bad choice draws too many or too few cards which in turn at the very least changes the odds of the dealer busting. A blackjack player, whose gaming experience literally lives and breathes math and probabilities, knows his expectations of the odds goes down the toilet under even the slightest human decision.

Nice analysis of blackjack and poker, but I can´t see any relevance regarding RPGs.

In an RPG math isn´t primarily about dryly calculating abstract winning chances but it is a language and tool to describe the setting in a way that is less suffering from interpretations and personal associations than descriptions alone.

It is also a tool that is transformating the personal input/experiences of the character through the bottle neck of linguistic information flow to something that is accessible for the player and something the group can handle to find common terms and evaluations of a situation.

Regarding freedom:
Rules don´t have the task to evilly constrict the personal freedom of a participant but to enable several people to play a common game at all.
Just think about trying a football, a soccer, a basketball, a volleyball and a hockey player trying to do a ball game without setting the common rules first because someone could feel artificially limited ...

Quote from: Madprofessor;889149Lunamancer, I am trying to follow your train of thought and figure out what it adds up to.

I don't know if this would help you any, but here goes: You know that saying, good in theory, bad in practice? I say bullshit. If it doesn't work in practice, it was a shitty theory to begin with. Good theory actually works. It's practical.

So when I do engage in theoretical discussions, I reject agenda-driven ideas in favor of honest observation. I reject cutesy little models in favor of what people are actually playing and draw logical conclusions from there to get a broader understanding. I reject specialized definitions of common words in favor of how they're actually used.

QuotePerhaps I am wrong but it seems to me that you are saying that nobody really plays 100% RaW.  I hate to over simplify your many points, but am I getting the gist?

Well, if a football team is trying to deliberately injure the opposing team's star quarterback during the superbowl, is the game being played according to the Rules-as-Written?

I mean, it does depend how you define RaW. That sort of thing is against the rules, but you'd be labeled crazy to suggest that the game is being house-ruled or running by fiat because of it. I don't think it would be a very good definition of RaW. It's a rather dogmatic one.

QuoteI think that a lack of consistency is perhaps the major concern of many people who reacted negatively to a rulings approach.  I have rarely had a problem with it, but it has come up in my games from time to time.  Being a rules-flexible kind of GM, I do strive for consistency, but I do not let it dominate the character of the campaign.  I often wonder if other old style GMs have a problem with it given today's' audience.

I don't know if "today" necessarily has anything to do with it. The problem (well, maybe not the only one) is the conflation of feature and benefit. I suppose the longer the two are linked, the more a body of theory and knowledge are built upon it, the more people will be confused and the harder it will be to unpack. And there are some really bad consequences to the conflation of feature and benefit, but that's not really what this thread is about.

Quote from: Maarzan;889166In an RPG math isn´t primarily about dryly calculating abstract winning chances but it is a language and tool to describe the setting in a way that is less suffering from interpretations and personal associations than descriptions alone.

It is also a tool that is transformating the personal input/experiences of the character through the bottle neck of linguistic information flow to something that is accessible for the player and something the group can handle to find common terms and evaluations of a situation.

That's a pretty sentiment, but does it have any meaning?

My example of going to the movies was to demonstrate virtually every decision requires guesswork. We gain knowledge and become better at guessing when the world gives us feedback, communicating via results. So if you're claiming that it's all about communication and not results, I'm claiming you're making a meaningless statement.

You've still provided zero evidence and zero reasoning to make your case. I guess I'm just supposed to take your word for it that language--which was developed over many thousands of years, adopted freely, and all for the sole purpose of communication--should somehow be considered low on the communication totem pole?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, my friend.

There's a couple things going on here...

Madprofessor is coming from the point of view of a GM, where the rules are supposed to represent the setting at his table.  So if he thinks they don't in some way, they get changed.

Maarzan's thrown out a few times now "feels artificially limited" which means he's trying not to sneer openly at either...
1. PC's who want the rules changed for their special snowflake character.
...or...
2. GM's who want fiat so they have power over the players (sexual references will come in at some point)
...or both, I'm not sure which dog whistle he's using.

In any case, it doesn't matter, because it sounds like what he wants is rules protection from assholes.  Rules don't do that. Ever.  Feet do.

Quote from: CRKrueger;889144This whole "Sorry dude, changing Poleaxe so you can use it as a slashing, piercing or blunt weapon...we just don't know you that well.  We have to trust when it comes to polearms, man." attitude...Jesus Wept.

Pinhead?

Trust wasn't my term, though it's good enough to demonstrate that I would trust to not have to sit through a half hour polemic of 'how D&D got polearms wrong' then supposed to read ten pages of special rules. Which I won't do and then pick an axe or something, and have to deal with a passive aggressive attitude for picking the axe. Or the Randian Objectivist world that you wrote as a perfect refutation of Bernie while marathon listening to Alex Jones; and you have it as a railroad where the party are secret socialists that will either have to convert or be destroyed. Or meeting the super GMPC that owns/controls/etc. everything; and any of that happens halfway through the game. Then as the fun dies and you want to quit, but don't want to be accused of ruining it by being the first to leave. Sort of trusting people to not be idiots which goes counter to reality.

However, if you have a long established group, or campaign, it doesn't apply as much because, the rules changes were by consensus, or the campaign has built up it's own momentum, eg the "gravity" that draws people past the house-rules. Still someone writing their own heartbreaker, or really wanting to play something else, so the house-rules are a bait and switch; and I have seen all of this happen. Thus RAW is often easier, as when you sit down you know what to expect.

Quote from: Madprofessor;889149Bah!  This doesn't prove that my statement was an opinion rather than a fact, though I at least agree that Pendragon is a game that requires minimal rules tinkering and is often more successful if left alone.

I think the examples prove it, but we're used to disagreeing in unity at this point:).

QuoteHowever, at the table it is also a game that requires a lot of rulings and trust from the GM.

Have you noticed who's saying that "running a game by RAW" doesn't require lots of rulings and trusting the GM?
It's only, or mostly, the people that don't like the idea of running a game by the RAW, that's who. Why would you take their opinion over the opinion of those that actually have experience with that mode of play?
I can tell you, from experience, that no matter how expansive the RAW is, the GM always needs to make rulings. Where's the contradiction with the Pendragon example?

QuoteOkay, okay.  I was slightly provocative, but that's because the campaign-first people were explaining themselves, and the rules-first people were just ranting and insulting people.

Point me to a post of mine in this thread where I insulted anyone.

QuoteIt is difficult for me to understand the pov of people who put the rules before the campaign because it is so far outside my experience.  I wanted better explanations.  Thanks to the people above, I have some.

Provocative again, aren't you;)?
Let me put this in context for you. People that play games RAW don't put the rules before the campaign (or at least, not all of us do...I suspect there are some that would create this impression, just as some people who dislike RAW are, sometimes, looking to stroke their own ego and unwilling to let their players make any unapproved changes to the in-game situation).

For most of us, however, we just use RAW when and because we believe running the game RAW serves the campaign better (frex, by providing a rather extensive shorthand for what's possible, what's likely, and what isn't either of those things). That's also why we take quite the effort to pick the right game that, if possible, wouldn't require alterations (or, if it's GURPS, picking the right optional rules)!
It's all about fine-tuning the ruleset to fit the campaign and setting. But there are different ways to do that;).

Quote from: Madprofessor;889149I am the GM. I have always been so and have never had a trust issue as far the rules are concerned.  I have multiple groups that want me to run games on a regular basis.  I try to run games for new players as often as I can, but I also have a group at my local games tore that consists of nothing but other GMs that have their own groups.  They have some wildly varying styles, and some are rules lawyers, but even they agree that having a fun, fair, trustworthy judge is preferable using the book as a social arbiter.  Maybe they are blowing smoke.  I don't know, but none of them will run a game for me to play in because I am the Game Master.  When I show up, they want me to run.  I am not bragging, but in nearly 40 years I have never played in a group of equals who lack trust.

Not sure what you mean by "trust"? Faith? English is sort of a vague language. Logically still the rules remain the social contract, from which the fundamental interactions of the players/GM with the universe of the campaign setting are derived. It is simply quicker and easier to play by the rules as written, rather than to wait on decisions, or to be looking things up or changing things mid-stream.

Quote from: Lunamancer;889170That's a pretty sentiment, but does it have any meaning?

My example of going to the movies was to demonstrate virtually every decision requires guesswork. We gain knowledge and become better at guessing when the world gives us feedback, communicating via results. So if you're claiming that it's all about communication and not results, I'm claiming you're making a meaningless statement.

You've still provided zero evidence and zero reasoning to make your case. I guess I'm just supposed to take your word for it that language--which was developed over many thousands of years, adopted freely, and all for the sole purpose of communication--should somehow be considered low on the communication totem pole?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, my friend.

Almost all nontrivial decisions have a range of uncertainty and thus are theoretically guesswork.

My point is, that your point is so trivially and obviously right, that this is not what formalized rules and numbers in a game is about.

With a game you have two big tasks to fulfill, get the player information about his character and his situation and make the resulting view about these situations as compatible as possible between the players. It is to give them the best possible position to make these guesses similar educated as their characters.
But the input for the character is much bigger then what the player has available from descriptions alone and thus elements get abstracted to game mechanics.

And of course describing language alone is lacking to give exact descriptions. Being told to bring "many rolls for breakfast" will make you bringing you how many of them?

Quote from: CRKrueger;889172There's a couple things going on here...

Maarzan's thrown out a few times now "feels artificially limited" which means he's trying not to sneer openly at either...
1. PC's who want the rules changed for their special snowflake character.
...or...
2. GM's who want fiat so they have power over the players (sexual references will come in at some point)
...or both, I'm not sure which dog whistle he's using.

In any case, it doesn't matter, because it sounds like what he wants is rules protection from assholes.  Rules don't do that. Ever.  Feet do.

Preset rules don´t stop assholes directly, they are a tool for communication. But they hamper them on their way and thus assholes try to get rid of them or make them as vague as possible as often as possible.

Quote from: CRKrueger;889172There's a couple things going on here...

Madprofessor is coming from the point of view of a GM, where the rules are supposed to represent the setting at his table.  So if he thinks they don't in some way, they get changed.

Maarzan's thrown out a few times now "feels artificially limited" which means he's trying not to sneer openly at either...
1. PC's who want the rules changed for their special snowflake character.
...or...
2. GM's who want fiat so they have power over the players (sexual references will come in at some point)
...or both, I'm not sure which dog whistle he's using.

In any case, it doesn't matter, because it sounds like what he wants is rules protection from assholes.  Rules don't do that. Ever.  Feet do.

I really do think that trying to analyze this thread for "sense" is a waste of time. People have expressed opinions about things and have interpreted opinions as facts and facts as opinions.

And that's a fact.

Or an opinion.

Quote from: Maarzan;889192And of course describing language alone is lacking to give exact descriptions. Being told to bring "many rolls for breakfast" will make you bringing you how many of them?

Whatever number you want, the English language has a word for it.

Quote from: Lunamancer;889197Whatever number you want, the English language has a word for it.

Which is a number ...

Quote from: Maarzan;889199Which is a number ...

Which language can communicate.