Quote from: Mistwell;1111743It's rare you see this kind of denial of reality in this day and age.

You don't follow politics much at all, do you?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;11117295.- The rules should be better than a GM making things up
The rules can be better than a fledgling GM (Maybe)
The rules can be better than a shitty GM (Almost always)
The rules can be better than a mediocre GM (Sometimes)
The rules can't be better than a good GM (Almost never)
The rules can never be better than a great GM

Why do GMs use rules?  

There are a lot of GMs I've played with that have used 'house rules'.  They basically say 'the rules say this, but this doesn't work for me for these reasons, so I use these rules instead'.  Why would they even bother with updating the rules if they could go without rules completely?  

In my experience, there are two types of houserules.  The first is where the existing rules basically work fine, but they don't provide the flavor that the GM is trying to create.  You might change rules to make magic feel mysterious and dangerous, for instance - it's not that there aren't clear rules for magic - they just don't do what you want in a specific campaign.  The other set is where the rules end up breaking the world - if you follow the rules you end up in a crazy place where nothing works.  As a GM, you're forced to ignore those rules and make something better.  That's what SacrificialLamb thinks he's doing with 5Es Item Creation rules.  When you're playing a game, using the rules, and you find yourself in a place where the game breaks, you have to find a solution.  If you're a great GM, maybe this is easy.  And maybe, if you're a great GM your rules should be 'model rules' adopted by mediocre, fledgling or shitty GMs.  Because if the game rules don't work, it's an almost sure bet that the shitty GM will create a shitty rule.  

Talking about the rules in depth allows one to identify places where they don't work and suggest improvements.  A common response to that is, 'those rules don't work, but I'm an awesome GM, I don't use them and my game is fine, I do something completely different'.  And that can be a fine response if you say what that 'something different' you do is.  But saying 'the rules are fine, I do something different' is another common response and that doesn't make any sense at all.  Why would you defend rules you don't use?

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111757Why do GMs use rules?  

There are a lot of GMs I've played with that have used 'house rules'.  They basically say 'the rules say this, but this doesn't work for me for these reasons, so I use these rules instead'.  Why would they even bother with updating the rules if they could go without rules completely?  

In my experience, there are two types of houserules.  The first is where the existing rules basically work fine, but they don't provide the flavor that the GM is trying to create.  You might change rules to make magic feel mysterious and dangerous, for instance - it's not that there aren't clear rules for magic - they just don't do what you want in a specific campaign.  The other set is where the rules end up breaking the world - if you follow the rules you end up in a crazy place where nothing works.  As a GM, you're forced to ignore those rules and make something better.  That's what SacrificialLamb thinks he's doing with 5Es Item Creation rules.  When you're playing a game, using the rules, and you find yourself in a place where the game breaks, you have to find a solution.  If you're a great GM, maybe this is easy.  And maybe, if you're a great GM your rules should be 'model rules' adopted by mediocre, fledgling or shitty GMs.  Because if the game rules don't work, it's an almost sure bet that the shitty GM will create a shitty rule.  

Talking about the rules in depth allows one to identify places where they don't work and suggest improvements.  A common response to that is, 'those rules don't work, but I'm an awesome GM, I don't use them and my game is fine, I do something completely different'.  And that can be a fine response if you say what that 'something different' you do is.  But saying 'the rules are fine, I do something different' is another common response and that doesn't make any sense at all.  Why would you defend rules you don't use?

Remember this?
1.- The rules cannot be exhaustive

Your claim that the rules should be better than a GM contradicts this point.

Especially if you're not advocating (as you claim you're not) for playing RAW.

Either I can play as I want and the rules can't be exhaustive or the rules should be better than the GM.

And, since what I want in my game is subjectively better than what the rules say, I will change it. Not because the game is broken, but because I want something different. So I can say "The rules are fine, I do something different".

Probably you'd see my house rules and say they make the game worst, but that's your subjective opinion (unless my house rules do break the game).

If there was a single set of rules that did what you claim it should do it would erase the need for any other set of rules, and yet we keep seeing people developing their own rules and even whole systems. So your subjectively perfect rules aren't objectively better.

The only way you have to make the rules all important is to play RAW and to stifle player and GM creativity.

But then again I'm of the rulings not rules school, while you seem to be of the rule-lawyers school. And there's a huge difference. My style allows for the unexpected, you might jump this chasm today but fail to jump a similar or even smaller one in the future. Now that might not always make sense, so different rules, different approaches for different games/settings/styles.

Take my Not Scooby Do game, I'm getting rid of death, but you might want it back. Are you allowed to do so? If not why?

We might even be talking about the same thing and talking past each other here. The GM is Crom and his word is final. Agree or disagree?

Quote from: Doom;1111750You don't follow politics much at all, do you?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I do follow it, and I do see that kind of thing about politics, but I think it's unusual to see it about something which isn't politics or religion.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763Remember this?
1.- The rules cannot be exhaustive

Your claim that the rules should be better than a GM contradicts this point.

I think you misunderstand.  When I GM and a situation comes up that I don't know the answer to, and I don't want to calculate it, the best thing is to come up with a ruling.  If you're in the sunken fortress of the Sahuagin and you decide to cast transmute stone to mud, it seems reasonable to me that the wall will collapse and the water will come rushing in.  Will it happen immediately?  Will it take 2-3 minutes?  When the wall collapses, will the water slam into anyone in the room in a damaging way like a tsunami, or will it be more like a bathtub filling up?  Clearly I have to figure out something that my players and I agree seems appropriate.  The rules are clear about what the spell does, but there are no rules that explain fluid dynamics and how this specific environment would be influenced by the spell.  If this type of situation comes up frequently, perhaps it is worth providing a clear explanation.  Maybe it's simple like 'water makes a STR check equal to the total depth (in feet) divided by 30 to crush any object submerged'.  So if it requires a 50 STR check to break a section of wall, I know that the fortress could be 1,500 feet below the surface (but not more) but it could become complex.  If this isn't going to be used much, leaving it out might make reading and understanding the rules easier.  If it's really uncommon it might come up and the DM doesn't remember the rule so they create their own without even referencing the RAW.  This is why rules can't be exhaustive - even where rules exist there are ways to alter the environment in ways that weren't anticipated.  In some versions of D&D we know what happens when you cast a fireball underwater, but what about a vacuum?  

Good rules not only provide instructions for how to handle most commonly suggested situations, they offer suggestions for how to rule a question when there isn't a clear answer and different people at the table have different expectations for what SHOULD happen if that situation were to occur in real life.  

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763Especially if you're not advocating (as you claim you're not) for playing RAW.

I am advocating for using the rules that you're using, or being clear when you're not.  If you tell me that Wizards get a d10 HD but they take 1d6 points of damage per spell level they cast, I can live with that.  As long as it's consistent it is a rule - it doesn't matter that it is your rule or a rule that was produced by WotC.  In general, I expect that when you change the rules, you're up front about it.  If I show up to game to a 5e game and I've made a wizard by the rules as written but you spring a 'wizards take damage when they cast spells', I might reasonably feel that you've given me unrealistic expectations.  

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763Either I can play as I want and the rules can't be exhaustive or the rules should be better than the GM.

You're not the only one playing.  Rules help the players to know what should happen and allow them to be confident that things will work consistently.  If the kobolds have a 'bomb' that they use on the players during an ambush and the players capture some bombs from the slain kobolds, they'll expect that they work for them the same way they worked for the kobolds.  Make a rule, stick to it.  But the published rules, the ones that you paid money for, should provide instructions on the situations they expect to happen.  It might be fine if 'bomb' isn't a weapon that's in the rules at all, but you might reasonably expect to know what happens if I switch from a longsword to a trident to an unarmed attack - things that happen frequently should be covered by the rules.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763And, since what I want in my game is subjectively better than what the rules say, I will change it. Not because the game is broken, but because I want something different. So I can say "The rules are fine, I do something different".

Yes.  People can take the published rules and do what they want with them.  I don't think I've ever played a game that didn't have at least one houserule.  Changing the rules for flavor reasons is fine.  Now, if I change a lot of rules to suit my personal tastes, it isn't really possible to tell other people how the game rules might work - I don't play by those rules.  My opinion of the game rules and how they work becomes less and less relevant as I throw out more and more of the game.  If you say 'Fighters work as a class because at 10th level I make Fighters into Storm Giants' you're really saying 'Fighters don't work and here's how I fixed it for my game'.  Just be honest about it.  

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763If there was a single set of rules that did what you claim it should do it would erase the need for any other set of rules, and yet we keep seeing people developing their own rules and even whole systems. So your subjectively perfect rules aren't objectively better.

Folks at the Den aren't arguing for a Platonic ideal of a rule set that will replace all other games.  In fact, there's a recognition that some games do some things well and not others.  There's also a recognition that games don't NEED to do everything well.  If I'm making a game about the Wild West, you better believe I better have rules about gunfights.  But I don't have to have complex rules about how to succeed on an Accounting Skill Check.  But if I'm making a game based on 'Office Space', I probably do need to have rules about how to do well enough on an office task to avoid getting hassled by the boss.  At the Den they're willing to ask if the rule is necessary, whether it does what it is supposed to do, whether it can be reduced/simplified/standardized to apply to other ways.  Game rules are never going to be as exhaustive as reality - making the game fun (which is itself a subjective standard) doesn't mean making an Ecyclopedic rules set.  

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763The only way you have to make the rules all important is to play RAW and to stifle player and GM creativity.

I disagree - there are a lot of ways to play by the rules and still have players be creative.  And I've spent some time explaining how even if you are playing by the rules you'll reach a point where the rules are silent - that's fine - even good - but it doesn't mean having rules prevents that - even if you use them.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763But then again I'm of the rulings not rules school, while you seem to be of the rule-lawyers school. And there's a huge difference. My style allows for the unexpected, you might jump this chasm today but fail to jump a similar or even smaller one in the future. Now that might not always make sense, so different rules, different approaches for different games/settings/styles.

As a player, I expect to know what my player can reasonably be expected to do.  If I can jump the grand canyon 100% of the time, I would probably expect to be able to jump across a 5' wide pit 100% of the time; but if I 'trip and fail' on a Natural 1, it could happen in both cases - knowing the rules in advance I can make an informed decision and I'm fine.  The rules allow us to build a common framework for making decisions.  If you don't have rules that you know and I know, we have to play 'mother-may-I'.  That's a somewhat derogatory way of describing a style of play where you say something like 'there's a pit' and I have to ask you about 10 different ways I could try to bypass it (with player creativity) and you tell me which ones are automatic successes, which ones I have to roll for, and which ones I'm almost certainly going to fail.  

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763Take my Not Scooby Do game, I'm getting rid of death, but you might want it back. Are you allowed to do so? If not why?

You can do what you like.  In a game I'm running I also too away death.  Not just for the PCs - for everyone.  Everyone regenerates all damage very slowly.  Bad guys don't stay dead.  It's a major plot point.  The PCs are aware and it changes the game in specific ways.  It's important to the players that there is a justification for the rules change - in this case, if they want to bring death back, they can.  Of course, if they do, it applies to everyone.  

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111763We might even be talking about the same thing and talking past each other here. The GM is Crom and his word is final. Agree or disagree?

This is a stupid question.  I mostly agree, but if Crom is an asshat, I walk.  Crom can make all the 'final rulings' he wants, but if he wants to have players, his rulings ought to consider the needs and desires of the players.  When players expect they can do something, if Crom wants to say 'no, you can't do that', I definitely have to consider whether I'd have more fun with someone other than Crom of whether he's being reasonable.  I can think of a lot of things that Crom can do that just don't work for me.  So I agree that the GM can draw a hard line - it's up to every player whether to accept it or not.  Having shared rules agreed upon in advance helps prevent these situations from coming up.  If Crom is making rules that are better and I enjoy more, no problem.  If Crom is making rules that I think are terrible and are ruining the fun, THAT IS A PROBLEM.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111757Why do GMs use rules?  

There are a lot of GMs I've played with that have used 'house rules'.  They basically say 'the rules say this, but this doesn't work for me for these reasons, so I use these rules instead'.  Why would they even bother with updating the rules if they could go without rules completely?  

In my experience, there are two types of houserules.  The first is where the existing rules basically work fine, but they don't provide the flavor that the GM is trying to create.  You might change rules to make magic feel mysterious and dangerous, for instance - it's not that there aren't clear rules for magic - they just don't do what you want in a specific campaign.  The other set is where the rules end up breaking the world - if you follow the rules you end up in a crazy place where nothing works.  As a GM, you're forced to ignore those rules and make something better.  That's what SacrificialLamb thinks he's doing with 5Es Item Creation rules.  When you're playing a game, using the rules, and you find yourself in a place where the game breaks, you have to find a solution.  If you're a great GM, maybe this is easy.  And maybe, if you're a great GM your rules should be 'model rules' adopted by mediocre, fledgling or shitty GMs.  Because if the game rules don't work, it's an almost sure bet that the shitty GM will create a shitty rule.  

Talking about the rules in depth allows one to identify places where they don't work and suggest improvements.  A common response to that is, 'those rules don't work, but I'm an awesome GM, I don't use them and my game is fine, I do something completely different'.  And that can be a fine response if you say what that 'something different' you do is.  But saying 'the rules are fine, I do something different' is another common response and that doesn't make any sense at all.  Why would you defend rules you don't use?

You don't need a SPECIFIC rule for whether you can seduce the barmaid. You just need a GENERAL rule to cover attempts to persuade, deceive, or intimate people and then a completely average level GM. So for example in D&D it's just a roll of a d20 plus your skill modifier and then a DM who needs to decide what the difficulty task level is for that scenario (is the barmaid already with someone else, is there some reason why the barmaid might be open to such attempt or not) with guidelines on what an easy, moderate, difficult, and nearly impossible set of difficulty classes might be.

AND THAT'S IT. Any average level GM can do that. They don't need a higher level of precision in the rules to accomplish this task.

But your little pet board takes these things to a different and obsessively unusual level (and calls anything short of extremely high-level precision and detail a "magical tea party"). They constantly chase more precision. They'd say no you need a chart with finer level of distinctions in DCs and also more skills and also more ways to hone those skills and more granularity in the things you can do with the skills and on and on. And if you made such a chart, they would demand even MORE level of precision including that specific type of attempt to seduce someone of the opposite sex with modifiers for a tavern setting and how that PC race reacts to that other PC race in that region with that tribal loyalty in that year.  

Because that's what some people who are On The Spectrum do with life, and this is what you get when those kinds of people focus on a role-playing game as opposed to any other activity in life without someone to mention to them hey, you've over-focused and need to step back.  That the range of possibilities for what are "good" rules is not an on/off switch of either "magical tea party" or "extremely high-level precision and details" and that people On The Spectrum have drastically different tolerances for what is an acceptable level of precision and detail and that those Non-Spectrum tolerances are just as objectively "good" as the ones for those On The Spectrum.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1111712If the rules are no better than the GM rolling dice and picking reasonable outputs, they're not adding anything.

Sure they are, they are means of communicating to the referee the procedure the author used to handle the topic. In many cases it is either more concise or because of the use of random chance it is expressed as the mechanics of a game.  It is likely that the author as part of the value the work has done the playtesting and review to make it consistent with the other procedure outline in the book.

However in the end the high level view is one referee telling another how they handled X. That in of itself is a useful. It just not the definitive end of the process, the referee making a decision based on their best judgment is.

Quote from: Mistwell;1111771You don't need a SPECIFIC rule for whether you can seduce the barmaid. You just need a GENERAL rule to cover attempts to persuade, deceive, or intimate people and then a completely average level GM. So for example in D&D it's just a roll of a d20 plus your skill modifier and then a DM who needs to decide what the difficulty task level is for that scenario (is the barmaid already with someone else, is there some reason why the barmaid might be open to such attempt or not) with guidelines on what an easy, moderate, difficult, and nearly impossible set of difficulty classes might be.

AND THAT'S IT. Any average level GM can do that. They don't need a higher level of precision in the rules to accomplish this task.

There may be people who demand greater and greater levels of precision, but that's not most of the den.  It's absolutely true that if the rules require a computer to run, they're not going to be used at the table, so those are examples of bad rules.  One quote that Frank is quite fond of is:

Quote from: Antoine de Saint-Exupery.Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away

Now it's absolutely true that some people have different ideas of what constitutes a satisfying resolution.  In combat, you don't pick a DC, roll a d20, add modifers and decide if you win or lose based on a single roll.  A combat includes potentially hundreds of individual rolls - attacks, damage, saves, as well as sometimes true random results - usually the final result isn't a foregone conclusion, and even if it was, much of the fun and most of the 'after game stories' focus in on a few of the more memorable results.  People, even years later, will say, "remember when I was the last one standing and I wanted to run but I couldn't drag three bodies with me so I used the Mace of Disruption on the lich - we knew he would save on a 3 or better but it was our only chance - and the DM rolled in the open and it came up a Natural 1!" (true story, by the way).  

Ultimately, there's a certain amount of balance to seek where complex tasks allow you to make meaningful choices.  If for seducing a barmaid you just roll a Charisma check with pass/fail then it doesn't matter if you buy a drink first, or if you previously established a relationship, or if you beat someone at a game of darts first, but in real life, those are all things that might help.  If you do it badly, it could also hurt - she might take you for a conceited blowhard.  There's a lot of things to think about and for some people and some situations, a single roll is absolutely fine - but unless you resolve combat that way I reject the idea that you think EVERYTHING should be resolved that way.  

Now, seducing barmaids hasn't been a major feature of games that I've been in as either the GM or a player.  But it is something I know some people are interested in.  And there are other ways you could approach it.  Some GMs don't give you a roll unless they think you've done some reasonable amount of role-play effort.  You don't 'just roll Diplomacy'.  First you talk in character and say what you're trying to say.  Based on what you say they'll give you a roll, maybe with a benefit.  That's a fine way of approaching things and one that the Den generally disagrees with.  I'm sure there are folks there who struggle with interpersonal relations and it's quite possible that they're playing a character with a silver tongue that they simply can't do justice when attempting to role-play, but feel that their character should succeed or fail based on the character's abilities, not the players.  I can respect that too.  

For rules to have value they have to contribute to the fun of the experience, and that can be subjective.  It's okay that some people like a more 'rules-heavy' game than others - different strokes for different folks - but whether you're playing rules-heavy or rules-lite, the game you paid money for is a collection of rules and it's worth talking about whether they work or not.  

This is a thread nominally originally about ACKs.  One of the rules there is about the preponderance of locations of Elemental Power.  That's a rule that people can point out and say 'it does this but it says it's supposed to do that.  That's where I enjoy discussions on the Den the most.  They'll break down how the rule works as written, often discuss the intent and then talk about how to write a rule that actually does what you think it does.  The Den can get a little fixated on the as written part and get angry when you're going to change it, but you'll find Nerd Rage EVERYWHERE on the internet, including here.  Most people don't care that you change rules but they will bash you for changing it in ways that don't do what you say you want to.  For example, Paizo gets a lot of hate for making casters more powerful when they were trying to 'fix' the problems of 3.5 with the Pathfinder (3.75) release.

Anyone who has read my games know that I'm no fan of "mother-may-I" type mechanics. My game gives you rules for as much as I can think of. But 2,000 years of organized practice of law has found that there are no systems of adjudication that do not require a human adjudicator's involvement. The only argument is over how the adjudicator should be involved.

Start with precedent: A precedent is a legal ruling on a particular issue that can be used to help decide subsequent questions of law with similar issues. For instance, if a court is asked to decide whether a semiautomatic pistol is a legitimate weapon of self-defense, a previous ruling that revolvers were legitimate weapons of self-defense would be precedent. If the precedent is followed, it is called "binding." If the precedent is ignored, the new case is said to be "distinguished" from the old by certain new facts. For instance, the court might distinguish pistols from revolvers by pointing out that their ammunition capacity is much greater.

What does this have to do with role-playing games? One of the foundational role of the gamemaster is that of Judge, responsible for "ruling on grey areas not covered by the rules." The process of ruling on grey areas creates precedent - or what we call "house rules". How much precedent is going to matter will depend on whether your game is a "common law" or "civil law" game.

"Common law" originated in Old England as a history of legal rules created by judges when deciding disputes. The judges began with the traditional customs of how matters had been handled, and then over time built up a body of law based on those past precedents. Common law generally has little or no basis in anything written. The main disadvantage of a common law system is that there is no written "code" that citizens can consult to understand the laws of the land. The main advantage is its flexible capacity for growth and adaptation.

On the other hand, "civil law" originated in the Roman Empire as a collection or code of statutes created by legislatures. Judges interpret the statutes, but their rulings are not said to create law. The main disadvantage of a civil law system is that citizens can't depend on different judges to interpret the law the same way each time there's a case. The main advantage is that the laws tend to be more detailed and specific.

Faced with a question, a purely common-law court will look up what the court said last time it was confronted by a similar question. Meanwhile, a purely civil law court will look up what the most relevant statute says about the question and interpret it as it thinks best. Since each system has weaknesses, most legal systems today use a mix of both civil and common law, with legislators creating the overall framework of statutes, while judges fill in the gaps using common law methods based on precedent. Under this system, citizens can look at statutes to learn the baseline of the law, and then refer to past cases to understand how judges have previously ruled.

The analogy to a gamemaster in a tabletop game should, I hope, be clear. The game designer is the legislator; the game rules are the civil law; the citizens are the players; and the decisions of the gamemaster about grey areas in the rules are the common law.

A gamemaster running a rules-light game will end up acting mostly like a common law judge, forced to make rulings about particular situations without written statutes. In this case, precedent matters a lot. Fairness demands precedent. To prove this point, let's illustrate what happens when precedent is ignored. Imagine that you are running Basic Fantasy, a rules light game modeled after the classic 1980s editions of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. During a desperate retreat, Marcus, the party's fighter, wants to jump across a 15' chasm to safety. "Fighters jumping across chasms" is not covered by the rules. You decide that this is a test of heroic agility best resolved with an ability check against Dexterity. If Marcus rolls less than his Dexterity he will succeed; if not he will fail and plummet to his death. Marcus rolls a 9, less than his Dexterity of 12, and succeeds.

Next round, Quintus, the magic-user, decides he too wants to escape across the chasm. You again consult your rulebook and note that "magic-users jumping across chasms" is not covered by the rules. You decide that this is clearly a test of herculean strength, and demand an ability check against Strength. Quintus, with a Strength of 7, fails the roll, and his player demands to know why Marcus got to roll against Dexterity but he had to roll against Strength for the same task.
What can you say to this criticism? That you're the GM, your word is law, and it's your right to rule however you like on situations not covered by the rules? That there is no written rule stating which attribute is to be used in resolving the success of jumps, so this is completely fair? You can certainly say that, but it's unlikely to persuade the player of poor dead Quintus.

Let's now imagine that a couple weeks have passed, and the party must now, once again, jump across this chasm. You once again check the rules and again see no game mechanic specifying the chances of success. You announce that each character has a 2 in 6 chance of falling in, but otherwise they jump across successfully. Morne, who has both 18 Dexterity and Strength, demands to know why he now has a 33% chance of falling in, and not the 10% chance he'd have if you stuck with either of your two past rulings. You shrug. "There's no rule that says it has to be an ability check," you say.

It should be obvious that this is not a healthy manner in which to run a game. A game run like this is a game that lacks fairness, common sense, and verisimilitude. Yet it's very common when playing a rules-light game to experience this sort of arbitrary decision-making on the part of the gamemaster out of an insistence that "there aren't really any rules!" This attitude derives from a failure to recognize that, just like a common law judge creates law when he decides a case, a gamemaster creates rules when he makes rulings. Fairness to the players demands that the rules for any given situation be the same for each player in that situation.

It's common to call games like OD&D, which heavily depend on the GM's judgment calls, rules-light games, in contrast to rules-heavy games like Pathfinder, which provide exhaustive mechanics. But with our deeper understanding of common law and civil law, we can see that a gamemaster's ruling is functionally a law, just like a game designer's rule is a law. Every rules-light game will over time become heavier with rules as its judge makes decisions about how things work. Rules-light and rules-heavy are only descriptive of the starting state of the game. The only question is how much the designer has left to the GM or the legislature has left to the judge.

This being the case, when you are running a long-term campaign, you should remember that every time you issue a ruling, you have added to the "common law" of the game design. You should write down your rulings, and apply them again to similar situations in the future - or distinguish them from prior rulings to explain why they aren't being applied. The very best gamemasters do this so consistently that over time that their long-running campaigns begin to develop an entire body of house rules covering the many special situations that have arisen in their campaign. Sometimes an entire new RPG develops.

That's how my own body of D&D jurisprudence, developed over hundreds of sessions of Classic D&D, ultimately became the Adventurer Conqueror King System. Of course, my efforts with ACKS are nothing compared to the old masters. After all, the entire corpus of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is just Gary Gygax and crew's common law rulings on Original Dungeons & Dragons. Even more impressive, the legendary skill-based RPG Runequest began as a set of house-rules for D&D! (The transitional D&D-to-Runequest house rules were called the Perrin Conventions, named for Runequest's lead designer Steve Perrin.)

Quote from: amacris;1111830Anyone who has read my games know that I'm no fan of "mother-may-I" type mechanics. My game gives you rules for as much as I can think of. But 2,000 years of organized practice of law has found that there are no systems of adjudication that do not require a human adjudicator's involvement. The only argument is over how the adjudicator should be involved.

Start with precedent: A precedent is a legal ruling on a particular issue that can be used to help decide subsequent questions of law with similar issues. For instance, if a court is asked to decide whether a semiautomatic pistol is a legitimate weapon of self-defense, a previous ruling that revolvers were legitimate weapons of self-defense would be precedent. If the precedent is followed, it is called "binding." If the precedent is ignored, the new case is said to be "distinguished" from the old by certain new facts. For instance, the court might distinguish pistols from revolvers by pointing out that their ammunition capacity is much greater.

What does this have to do with role-playing games? One of the foundational role of the gamemaster is that of Judge, responsible for "ruling on grey areas not covered by the rules." The process of ruling on grey areas creates precedent - or what we call "house rules". How much precedent is going to matter will depend on whether your game is a "common law" or "civil law" game.

"Common law" originated in Old England as a history of legal rules created by judges when deciding disputes. The judges began with the traditional customs of how matters had been handled, and then over time built up a body of law based on those past precedents. Common law generally has little or no basis in anything written. The main disadvantage of a common law system is that there is no written "code" that citizens can consult to understand the laws of the land. The main advantage is its flexible capacity for growth and adaptation.

On the other hand, "civil law" originated in the Roman Empire as a collection or code of statutes created by legislatures. Judges interpret the statutes, but their rulings are not said to create law. The main disadvantage of a civil law system is that citizens can't depend on different judges to interpret the law the same way each time there's a case. The main advantage is that the laws tend to be more detailed and specific.

Faced with a question, a purely common-law court will look up what the court said last time it was confronted by a similar question. Meanwhile, a purely civil law court will look up what the most relevant statute says about the question and interpret it as it thinks best. Since each system has weaknesses, most legal systems today use a mix of both civil and common law, with legislators creating the overall framework of statutes, while judges fill in the gaps using common law methods based on precedent. Under this system, citizens can look at statutes to learn the baseline of the law, and then refer to past cases to understand how judges have previously ruled.

The analogy to a gamemaster in a tabletop game should, I hope, be clear. The game designer is the legislator; the game rules are the civil law; the citizens are the players; and the decisions of the gamemaster about grey areas in the rules are the common law.

A gamemaster running a rules-light game will end up acting mostly like a common law judge, forced to make rulings about particular situations without written statutes. In this case, precedent matters a lot. Fairness demands precedent. To prove this point, let's illustrate what happens when precedent is ignored. Imagine that you are running Basic Fantasy, a rules light game modeled after the classic 1980s editions of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. During a desperate retreat, Marcus, the party's fighter, wants to jump across a 15' chasm to safety. "Fighters jumping across chasms" is not covered by the rules. You decide that this is a test of heroic agility best resolved with an ability check against Dexterity. If Marcus rolls less than his Dexterity he will succeed; if not he will fail and plummet to his death. Marcus rolls a 9, less than his Dexterity of 12, and succeeds.

Next round, Quintus, the magic-user, decides he too wants to escape across the chasm. You again consult your rulebook and note that "magic-users jumping across chasms" is not covered by the rules. You decide that this is clearly a test of herculean strength, and demand an ability check against Strength. Quintus, with a Strength of 7, fails the roll, and his player demands to know why Marcus got to roll against Dexterity but he had to roll against Strength for the same task.
What can you say to this criticism? That you're the GM, your word is law, and it's your right to rule however you like on situations not covered by the rules? That there is no written rule stating which attribute is to be used in resolving the success of jumps, so this is completely fair? You can certainly say that, but it's unlikely to persuade the player of poor dead Quintus.

Let's now imagine that a couple weeks have passed, and the party must now, once again, jump across this chasm. You once again check the rules and again see no game mechanic specifying the chances of success. You announce that each character has a 2 in 6 chance of falling in, but otherwise they jump across successfully. Morne, who has both 18 Dexterity and Strength, demands to know why he now has a 33% chance of falling in, and not the 10% chance he'd have if you stuck with either of your two past rulings. You shrug. "There's no rule that says it has to be an ability check," you say.

It should be obvious that this is not a healthy manner in which to run a game. A game run like this is a game that lacks fairness, common sense, and verisimilitude. Yet it's very common when playing a rules-light game to experience this sort of arbitrary decision-making on the part of the gamemaster out of an insistence that "there aren't really any rules!" This attitude derives from a failure to recognize that, just like a common law judge creates law when he decides a case, a gamemaster creates rules when he makes rulings. Fairness to the players demands that the rules for any given situation be the same for each player in that situation.

It's common to call games like OD&D, which heavily depend on the GM's judgment calls, rules-light games, in contrast to rules-heavy games like Pathfinder, which provide exhaustive mechanics. But with our deeper understanding of common law and civil law, we can see that a gamemaster's ruling is functionally a law, just like a game designer's rule is a law. Every rules-light game will over time become heavier with rules as its judge makes decisions about how things work. Rules-light and rules-heavy are only descriptive of the starting state of the game. The only question is how much the designer has left to the GM or the legislature has left to the judge.

This being the case, when you are running a long-term campaign, you should remember that every time you issue a ruling, you have added to the "common law" of the game design. You should write down your rulings, and apply them again to similar situations in the future - or distinguish them from prior rulings to explain why they aren't being applied. The very best gamemasters do this so consistently that over time that their long-running campaigns begin to develop an entire body of house rules covering the many special situations that have arisen in their campaign. Sometimes an entire new RPG develops.

That's how my own body of D&D jurisprudence, developed over hundreds of sessions of Classic D&D, ultimately became the Adventurer Conqueror King System. Of course, my efforts with ACKS are nothing compared to the old masters. After all, the entire corpus of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is just Gary Gygax and crew's common law rulings on Original Dungeons & Dragons. Even more impressive, the legendary skill-based RPG Runequest began as a set of house-rules for D&D! (The transitional D&D-to-Runequest house rules were called the Perrin Conventions, named for Runequest's lead designer Steve Perrin.)

And with this the argument should be over. The GM is Crom and his word is law, but he's bound by fairness and precedent. Thus we don't need rules that should be better than the GM.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1111833Thus we don't need rules that should be better than the GM.

Then why the ever-loving fuck should I give any TTRPG company money.

Or is Crom too fucking stupid to understand economics?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;11117295.- The rules should be better than a GM making things up
The rules can be better than a fledgling GM (Maybe)
The rules can be better than a shitty GM (Almost always)
The rules can be better than a mediocre GM (Sometimes)
The rules can't be better than a good GM (Almost never)
The rules can never be better than a great GM

From experience the rules can never be better than a bad DM because a bad DM can ruin anything. This is something we try to hammer into the thick skulls of board game designers too when they start obsessing over making rules to stop players from cheating, or being the "leader" or working together or whatever bugaboo they are obsessing over this time. It does not matter how many rules you stuff the game with. It is not going to stop poor behavior or flat out bad behavior.

Back to RPGs. Mythic spends all of maybee a paragraph in the whole book on cheating. And it boils down to "dont cheat" with some examples of gaming the system. And finishes with essentially "If you are going to cheat at a solo game then why even bother playing?".

Back on topic. Wasn't the Den one of the spin off cults from the Forge and GNS "theory"?

Quote from: Mistwell;1111743At first it meant "They will never come out with 5e". Then when it came out, the argument (without any glimmer of an admission or even acknowledgement that they were previously wrong) morphed into "It's just a bare skeleton crew at WOTC pretending to produce D&D but really it's just a few books as a placeholder so they maintain the intellectual property and brand rights but D&D is really dead."

And then when it started to sell extraordinarily well, the deep denial set in. Any way to spin good sales news as neutral or bad was taken. And if it was undeniable evidence, they just called it outright a lie. A lot of "Yeah they said 4e was selling well too, which was a lie, so obviously this must be a lie as well" type responses.  When you point to FIVE YEARS of the PHB being in the top 100 best seller list on Amazon you hear claims like "That's just one book" and "That's just discounted books on line and not game stores, and they wouldn't be blowing it out at discount online if it were really selling well" (as if that's how Amazon works).

And then the conversation turns back to slower release schedule, and the amount of fluff being higher than the amount of crunch in some books, and the decrease in the number of expansion books. And all this, in their warped conspiracy-laden minds, is "proof" 5e is just a placeholder edition and somehow not a real edition of D&D which at this point is just a brand and not a real game anymore.

It's a level of genuine insanity. It's rare you see this kind of denial of reality in this day and age.

This is doppelganger Mist making perfect sense again. Truly the End Times are nigh.

So these are the nuts that some 4e cultists (not actual 4e players) over on BGG keep trotting out as 'proof' 5e is dead. Or never existed at the far end of the loony claims. I just assumed it was more of the same ol same ol.

Quote from: Mistwell;1111768I do follow it, and I do see that kind of thing about politics, but I think it's unusual to see it about something which isn't politics or religion.

Around the time of the Forge and Pundit's Swine (storygamers) that changed as more and more of these nuts treat RPGs like a religion. Or as I've noted before. Like a fetish. And use all the tactics of both when co-opting or attacking other styles of play.

Quote from: Omega;1111840Wasn't the Den one of the spin off cults from the Forge and GNS "theory"?

I don't believe so, no. I'm not sure they take GNS seriously, either: haven't seen it mentioned over there, that I can recall.