Quote from: Kyle AaronDo we need some game book to tell us to ignore the game book if we want to?

Do you need me to answer that?

!i!

Quote from: RPGPunditThe right to change the rules is not exactly like the right to make a ruling.

I've been told that the section on how to handle rules lawyers is very telling...

RPGPundit

Now you're just being a pedantic rumormonger.  Put up or shut up.  

Quote from: JimBobDo we need some game book to tell us to ignore the game book if we want to?

I already answered this once, but again in brief:  We don't.  Newbies do.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe right to change the rules is not exactly like the right to make a ruling.

I've been told that the section on how to handle rules lawyers is very telling...

RPGPundit

The section on how to handle rules lawyers essentially tells you:
1: It's good to have someone who knows the rules and to be corrected when you make mistakes
2: It's bad if you are correctly continually or correctly wrongly
3: Stay open to minor corrections, but hold bigger discussions until after the session
4: If the game grinds to a halt, let the rules lawyer look up the rule while the game continues without their character

Quote from: J ArcaneI already answered this once, but again in brief:  We don't.  Newbies do.

In theory, yes. In practice, I doubt it.

If you watch people playing any kind of game, if it's not a formal competition then after a match or two they're making up their own rules for it. Most commonly the rules are bent or rewritten to give everyone an even chance of success. If someone's way behind in Trivial Pursuit the person asking the question may give them hints, but hints are forbidden when the score is even. Children playing ball games will adjust their play based on the skills of the other side. And so on.

Adjusting the rules so that the game will last longer and be more interesting is something which people seem to do naturally. The difference with rpgs is simply that there's one person as rules arbiter, whereas in family board games, children's games, social sports and so on the referee is simply the consensus of the group, spoken or unspoken.

So I think that newbies coming from that sort of background are more likely to adjust the rules of the rpg than people who've been gaming for a while. When people have been gaming for a while they often develop this strange trust in the written word and dice results. I find newbies don't have that. "The rules say what? Yeah, whatever. Whatever seems reasonable."

Quote from: Consonant DudeMy memory may be faulty so don't take my word for it but I believe Synnibar had something to say about this.

Correct, although that's admittedly a rare exception. Synnibarr is meant to be played entirely by the book, and the players are entitled to XP rewards or even having the current scene replayed if they ever catch the GM "cheating".

Burning Wheel is also meant to be played by the book, though it is highly modular and you are encouraged to pick out what is best for your game and fiddle with bits.

Hey Kyle,

Short anecdote, when I was a kid we stopped playing D&D when Unearthed Arcana came out because those rules didn't work for us and since they were official rules we didn't feel we could play the game and simply ignore them - seemed a bit close to cheating.

So, rather than ignore some rules, we abandoned the whole game and played something else.

Also, White Wolf stuff used routinely to promote splatbooks by saying "now you can do X".

A lot of younger gamers do play by the rules as written, and unless told expressly by said rules that they can change them do not change them.  Your experience obviously differs, but for me when I was playing as a kid we played by the rules as written as to do otherwise smacked of cheating.  It was only later we realised that didn't really apply conceptually to the kind of games rpgs are.

I think this may just be a matter of different experiences. Mine tend to line up more with Kyle's, so my guesses about what people are likely to do are more or less the same as his. I don't think we played anything very strictly "rules as written" back in the day. As kids, as college students, whenever.

Take Basic D&D, not my first game as a player (that was Marvel Superheroes), but my first as a GM. I'm sure we never bothered with "phases" in combat. We didn't get where it was coming from and didn't use it. Same with the turn/round distinction and all that stuff about how to pace dungeoneering. As an adult, reading it and using it now, I have a soft spot for that part of the system. But as a kid? I don't remember ever having used it. Or weapon specialization, for that matter. Skills? Not in D&D, even though I loved the Gazetteers. And I know when we played AD&D2e, we were using the barbarian class (not the kit), and we were juryrigging things all the time.  

Same thing goes for just about any RPG. When we played Dark Conspiracy, we used the interlock system for combat and action resolution. We made characters the GDW way, and used their character sheet and skill list, but we rolled the dice the interlock way. Or take Call of Cthulhu: we've always used the regular character creation and skill resolution, but we've never used any of the combat mechanics properly: basically we just roll to hit and roll damage. I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that, but nobody in our group has ever read that part of the system carefully enough to bother worrying about it.  

Yadda yadda.

This could just be different experiences talking, so maybe it's not generalizable. You can say, a lot of kids, it would never occur to them not to play by the book. And maybe you're right. But I can counter, a lot of kids, it would never occur to them to pore over the rules in enough detail to play by the book. And if you asked them, they'd tell you they were playing by that game. I mean, that's my experience there. Maybe when it comes to which experience the group will have, it matters which of those kids is the one with the book?

Here's a question. And I admit it's a bit of a "gotcha" question, so maybe not entirely fair. But is it possible your group was just ready to move on from AD&D at the point Unearthed Arcana came out? Were you guys really using all those 1e rules? Weapon speeds? Those wonky tables for this weapon versus that armor class? The distinction between turns and rounds? Training? Encumbrance? Etc etc? Were you really playing without ignoring official rules?

Rich

Quote from: richforestHere's a question. And I admit it's a bit of a "gotcha" question, so maybe not entirely fair. But is it possible your group was just ready to move on from AD&D at the point Unearthed Arcana came out? Were you guys really using all those 1e rules? Weapon speeds? Those wonky tables for this weapon versus that armor class? The distinction between turns and rounds? Training? Encumbrance? Etc etc? Were you really playing without ignoring official rules?

Rich

Good question, good examples too.  We used none of that stuff, but I don't think we were otherwise ready to move on.

To be honest, I struggle to rationalise my 14 year old self's thought processes.

QuoteTo be honest, I struggle to rationalise my 14 year old self's thought processes.

I know what you mean. I struggle to even remember my 14 year old self's thought processes.

Quote from: richforestHere's a question. And I admit it's a bit of a "gotcha" question, so maybe not entirely fair. But is it possible your group was just ready to move on from AD&D at the point Unearthed Arcana came out? Were you guys really using all those 1e rules? Weapon speeds? Those wonky tables for this weapon versus that armor class? The distinction between turns and rounds? Training? Encumbrance? Etc etc? Were you really playing without ignoring official rules?

Like quite a few other people who have written about this (Hi Jeff!), we weren't really playing AD&D -- we were playing B/X D&D with all the extra bits that we liked from AD&D added on.  When Unearthed Arcana came out we added the bits we liked from that too, and ignored the rest.  We did the same with articles from Dragon.  The ones we liked got added, and the ones we didn't got ignored -- or sometimes used for a session or two, and then ignored.

Considering a comparatively simple game like Monopoly is extensively house-ruled to the point that many people are surprised when they find out parts of the game aren't really in the "official rules" -- it's not surprising that much more complicated games like D&D are also extensively house ruled.

The idea that you can completely standardize gameplay for all groups when you are dealing with 100s or even 1000s of pages of rules is a bit hard to believe.

So, RPG Pundit, have we answered your question? Is it in there?

As a way of clarifying that I'm not suggesting a universal principle and that there are always exceptions, I myself started off with a fairly fast and loose approach to RPGs, but that was largely because I had to.  The main game we were playing at the time was Rifts, and trying to play that game "by the book" will induce Lovecraftian madness.  Plus, I'd come from a theater background at the time, and was really more interested in the roleplaying aspect, with the mechanics either necessary evil, or extra gravy, depending on how good the system was.  

But at the same time, I didn't have the same approach to other sorts of games I played.  There were the optional rules in Risk I mentioned, but those were still "official", they were just optional.  I'd certainly experimented with making my own games, I designed a boardgame based on The Black Pearl when I was 13, but when it came to someone else's stuff, I stuck by the rules.

Quote from: J Arcane...but when it came to someone else's stuff, I stuck by the rules.

I don't feel that sort of obligation. As long as my players are able to agree to the rule changes I might or might not make, the only limits I see are the ones that make the game not fun. (Which obviously varies.)

The game, the system, the setting are not supposed to be a ball and chain, but rather a trampoline from which jump off from.

From P's blog:

QuoteNo Rule 0. Yes, GMs can create house rules, but it does not appear that they can make rulings on the spot. In fact, in the section on how to deal with Rules Lawyers, one of the things that is most notable is that it DOESN'T tell you that you can just tell him to shut up or fuck off, or that you as GM overrule his knowledge of the rules. No, apparently you're supposed to apologize if you've made an error, or you're allowed to put off discussion till the end of the session, and the rules lawyer is allowed to take all the time he wants to look up the rule while his character exists in a limbo (and cannot be harmed by the monsters or anything else).

Emphasis his... but I'd have bolded that part myself.