Quote from: estar;1026453Let me ask folks this, can you run a tabletop roleplaying campaign without a rulebook?

Just sit down with a group of players with some dice, pen, and paper. Describe the setting to them, have them tell you want kind of character they want to play. Everybody writes down notes. Then the next session you start playing. Using just what the players have on their notes, and you using your experience about the setting and genre to figure out when the dice needs to be rolled and what are the odds.

If you say you can't. Then I ask you to consider that if you were able to do the above and make it fun and enjoyable even if only for one session. You will that much better when you use your favorite set of rules. It will help you understand what really important about the rules and what not. That there are many elements to running a tabletop roleplaying campaign that rules don't and can't address. That heart of the experience is the player interacting with a setting as their character.

Sorry to be late to the party again...

Yes, I can, and I regularly do so in my games. I've been asked repeatedly how I do it, and my reply is that because I am playing a particular world-setting and have made sure to be very familiar with it, I can make decisions quickly enough so as not to impede game play. Ask Gronan how it works; he's played in my Tekumel and Barsoom games. If I was to name a formal 'set of rules', I'd say Free Kriegspiel and/or Braunstein.

Your second paragraph is exactly how I ran my game sessions in Ancient Egypt and Barsoom, last Free RPG Day at the local FLGS, the the players in each session told me that they had a great time.

Yep.  If you KNOW your setting up, down, left, right, backwards, and sideways, that's all you need.

I personally use things like the OD&D combat system because it gives me as the referee surprises... four kobolds wipe out a party of 9 player characters, all dice rolled in the open... and I use things like the D&D treasure charts because they give me as the referee surprises. like 4 first level PCs discovering some gems and three of them randomly roll huge, huge values and these four PCs are now amazingly wealthy.

I * COULD * think up things like that, but as referee I like to be surprised too.  For everything else, though, it's as Chirine says; know the world and the rest follows.  Insult Deja Thoris, and John Carter WILL invent new ways of killing somebody just to try them out on you.

It requires that the players either know the world also (like Barsoom) or trust the referee.

Which leads me once again to my oft-repeated aphorism:  If you don't trust the referee, don't play with the fucker.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026982Which leads me once again to my oft-repeated aphorism:  If you don't trust the referee, don't play with the fucker.

Meh, I'm not very trusting. Call me skeptical, but humans are fallible. So I don't really fully trust anyone as the GM, including myself. That's one reason I like games with dice. Using rules and dice helps me to remain fair and honest. Using dice also result in surprises which is another reason I like dice.

There is a difference between "trust to be infallible" and "trust to be honest."

I expect honest.  If the referee accidentally makes a different ruling six months later, I'd bet a nickel none of us will remember.  In which case, I'd say no harm, no foul.

Quote from: Bren;1027001Meh, I'm not very trusting. Call me skeptical, but humans are fallible. So I don't really fully trust anyone as the GM, including myself. That's one reason I like games with dice. Using rules and dice helps me to remain fair and honest. Using dice also result in surprises which is another reason I like dice.

I like and use dice as well, in my games, as I do like the surprises that result and the game play that results from them. Trust, like Gronan says, comes from the players trusting the GM to play fair - I'm not talking about fallibility; that does happen, and that's where knowing the world setting and any game rules being used comes into the game.

On the other hand, if simple honesty is in question, then I'm out. If it's a common issue in today's games, then you can count me out of them, too.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1027003There is a difference between "trust to be infallible" and "trust to be honest."

I expect honest.  If the referee accidentally makes a different ruling six months later, I'd bet a nickel none of us will remember.  In which case, I'd say no harm, no foul.

Agreed. When did 'the rules are there to protect the players from the GM' become a thing, if I may ask. I simply cannot imagine a game session like this; it's just right out of my experience.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1027005Agreed. When did 'the rules are there to protect the players from the GM' become a thing, if I may ask. I simply cannot imagine a game session like this; it's just right out of my experience.

When people who stunk at playing at age 14 started working in the industry and changing the rules rather than learning to play.

In at least some cases, I know for a fact that's what happened.

The trust question for me is orthogonal to the issue of setting.  There has to be a basic level of trust (to maintain honesty, as y'all said) for the game to be worth doing at all, sure.  I like surprises, and I like the randomness of the dice for that reason also.  What I don't like, in the case of "just running my setting" is the constant back and forth over things that I'd rather just establish in rules.  This isn't even a trust question for me.  That is, I'll embed something in a rule not because the player want that because they don't trust me, or that I don't trust myself to be consistent, but because I don't want to put the work in.  

It may very well be that I have this attitude because I'm from the second generation of gamers, the ones that started with some established rules, who didn't have a strong background in war gaming, and certainly not in war gaming handled by a referee.  We dabbled in that, but it wasn't an established thing by the time we were hot after RPGs.  You might say that, for many of us, it doesn't matter whether the guy with chain and shield and sword at this level of skill versus this other guy at a slightly lower level with spear, is set to an accurate representation.  It only matters that is be semi-plausible within the context of the game.  Sometimes, there is some idea about how magic works in the setting or the economy or what not, where I do care.  Then I'm more or less doing it the older way.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1027006When people who stunk at playing at age 14 started working in the industry and changing the rules rather than learning to play.

In at least some cases, I know for a fact that's what happened.

It explains fourth edition at the very least.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1027005Agreed. When did 'the rules are there to protect the players from the GM' become a thing, if I may ask.

It not a thing. It just a segment of our hobby playing in a particular way. The game store, the internet, the conventions are all loud and visible but they are just a small slice of a much larger hobby of people playing in the privacy of their own group whether at home or using some internet enabled form of communication.

Quote from: estar;1027012It not a thing. It just a segment of our hobby playing in a particular way. The game store, the internet, the conventions are all loud and visible but they are just a small slice of a much larger hobby of people playing in the privacy of their own group whether at home or using some internet enabled form of communication.

That's a relief, thank you.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026982If you don't trust the referee, don't play with the fucker.

Agreed.

And by trust, I mean "I trust I'm gonna have a good time".

If I doubt I'm gonna have fun at game, I've got plenty of other fun things to do.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1027005Agreed. When did 'the rules are there to protect the players from the GM' become a thing, if I may ask. I simply cannot imagine a game session like this; it's just right out of my experience.

When games started seeing design elements towards that end, I can't tell you (and as estar mentions, it exists much more in discussion than in real-world implementation). I think, the idea of it might have some roots in the same cultural zeitgeist as the 'Killer DM' that is lampooned in things like Knight's of the Dinner Table.The D&D module Tomb of Horrors (again, the idea of it more than the actual product, which was out of print for many years and grew in the retelling) might have been a big part of it. Hard to say.

Well, at the very least, Skip Williams said in as many words that his goal for his work on D&D was "to protect the players from the arbitrary whims of the dungeon master," so yeah, it is a thing.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1027075Well, at the very least, Skip Williams said in as many words that his goal for his work on D&D was "to protect the players from the arbitrary whims of the dungeon master," so yeah, it is a thing.

That could be what you say it is or it could be the fact when you go into more detail especially with combat players tend to be picky about following exact letter of the rule. I seen both attitudes.

They are close cousins but not born of the same reasons. One views referee as being a big bad guy that the poor little players need protection from. The other is a negative view about the referee being wildly inconsistent about their ruling on the odds of hitting a fighter with four years of battle experience while he wearing chainmail and holding shield while fighting in a rainstorm. So seek to codify every possibility.