Quote from: TristramEvans;629141Good enough for shits and giggles. Meaning the fraction of a chance is so small its not worth accounting for as anything besides "freak act of God".

Odd, I thought the point of fantasy adventure was "freak act of God", you know- slaying dragons, fighting what to us would be impossible odds, etc. I'd think that someone really into that would aim the game design *at* that 1%, or at least allow for it.

Note: I don't carry it that far myself, but that's why I don't play D&D.

Quote from: gleichman;629144Odd, I thought the point of fantasy adventure was "freak act of God", you know- slaying dragons, fighting what to us would be impossible odds, etc. I'd think that someone really into that would aim the game design *at* that 1%, or at least allow for it.

Context would matter. I'd be more likely, as a GM, to give a player that !% chance if they were doing something heroic like facing down a dragon, then if they said "hey, I have enough hit points, I'm just going to walk off this mile-high cliff-face. Faster than walking down."

Quote from: gleichman;629138I have never said that.

Both games I play was written in 1980, and I consider those games to be the best the RPG has ever offered.

Then I'm either confusing you with another poster (if so, my bad), or I don't understand what your tool analogy was all about.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629148Then I'm either confusing you with another poster (if so, my bad), or I don't understand what your tool analogy was all about.

I don't recall a recent tool analogy that I made.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629147Context would matter. I'd be more likely, as a GM, to give a player that !% chance if they were doing something heroic like facing down a dragon, then if they said "hey, I have enough hit points, I'm just going to walk off this mile-high cliff-face. Faster than walking down."

I understand the impulse.

For my part, I wouldn't punish the player for taking advantage of a set of rules I picked to play and told him was in use. I'd let him walk off the cliff, review my rule selection and either issue a written house rule or change systems before the next game.

Quote from: gleichman;629151I understand the impulse.

For my part, I wouldn't punish the player for taking advantage of a set of rules I picked to play and told him was in use. I'd let him walk off the cliff, review my rule selection and either issue a written house rule or change systems before the next game.

I would punish the player for that (well its no really "punishment" for them to take the natural consequences of a choice), mainly because the player isn't playing their role. I'd make the call, the player could challenge that, but the argument would have to be based upon that .001% chance of survival rather than the rules themselves.

Honestly, though, in that situation, I'm most likely to tell the player what would be obvious to their character: "if you walk off that cliff, you're going to die". If they said "But I have 130 Hit Points!" I'd look at them blankly and ask "What's a Hit Point? Your character has never heard that term before."

But I'd always feel free, as the GM, to alter or ignore the rules where they are superseded by common sense and my judgment based on the context.

Quote from: gleichman;629149I don't recall a recent tool analogy that I made.

this one...

Quote from: gleichmanThe stick plows worked for a lot longer than 30 years before a better version was invented in what... 1797 according to a quick google.

People got along without flying until 1903 and many thought that idea insane.

If you're going to say you don't want to do something, debate it on the merits. Not if it has or hasn't been done, nor how successfuly you've been in the past with other methods.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629119I appreciate your attempts at mediation, but when it coems down to it there's a fundamental impossibility of communication, as Traveller is unaware of and obviously doesn't understand the style of roleplaying I advocate. The fact he think its 'bizarre' shows that he's ignorant of the majority of roleplaying's history.

Oh, we do, on a very fundamental level, in that I believe rules are for the most part the least importance and are merely there to serve as a tool for the GM for his job, whereas Traveller clearly believes that the rules are "Laws" that should be obeyed by the GM as much as the players, and that the GM exists primarily as, how did he put it? Custodian to the rules? He also cannot conceive of why players wouldn't need to know the rules, suggesting he really doesn't understand the difference between a player who makes choices as a living person in a shared imagined space, rather that he's only ever played to the rules. Its fine if thats what he wants, but it certainly should not be the standard line or definition of a GM, as its an exceptionally limited and obtuse view of roleplaying.

I dunno, this 'rules as God' PoV seems to be getting more and more common online in the last few years. Is this what WoTC has done to gamers?

As i mentioned it is clear you approach the subject in different ways, and that is due to your different viewpoints.
I do dare say that you have common ground, though ....

Personally, i just think "Whatever gets the job done, i'm fine".

I just thought, perhaps people don't know where i stand in this ..
On the insane jump thing, i just may give the jumper a D20, and say "Roll a 1, and you survive.."
But since i fancy (perhaps insane?) crossings of genres, even if the character do die, i might allow it to stick around as a ghost ... or similar.
To me, that may just open up a new plotline to ... explore.

I prefer my rules clear and simple, so there wont be any arguments, but when the rules doesn't cover things it is up to the GM to make the decision, and i also fudge dice rolls whenever i see it fit to do.
To me there is a Good reason to why GM stands for Game(s) Master, those exact words, and yes, this means i Disagree with Traveller on that subject, but i have not bothered enforcing it for the sake of the progress of this thread.

I think the "rules is god" is a counter-reaction against the freeform gaming, and perhaps also an attempt to bring back some of the "gaming" part to the rpg's.
And by "gaming" i mean like in miniatures games that may have rpg-tendencies, like Heroquest and Space Crusade, or Descent and Doom (boardgame).
That is at least an idea that i fully like ....

Quote from: TristramEvans;629156this one...

Ah.

That was for a line of debate (i.e. saying this is how it's always been, and thus how it always must be)- not a rule system (i.e. 1980 HERO vs. 2012 Only War).

Sorry if it wasn't clear.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629155I would punish the player for that (well its no really "punishment" for them to take the natural consequences of a choice), mainly because the player isn't playing their role.

Since for me, the rules are the physics of the setting- the player is playing their role.

I just happened to pick a set of physics that sort of sucks. Thus the fault (and punishment) should be mine. Hence the player gets 'alway' with it, and my adventure/world has to suck it up.

Quote from: RandallS;629046I fix all such loopholes in the rules by informing players that reality trumps the rules and that the rules are just guidelines for the GM as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

It was an absurdum argument to illustrate the point. The players are aware of the rules in lopts of different ways, from buying equipment to the limitations of their characters and so on.

Quote from: RandallS;629046I do the first often, the second occasionally, and there is a spell in one of my settings that could be used to spin characters on their heads (although it normally just levitates the target and spins him around very fast in the air) -- yet I have no trouble finding or keeping players.

Oh so you arbitrarily decide to spin characters on their heads every half hour and players are okay with that? If not, you're responding to a point you made up yourself, not the one I made.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629119I appreciate your attempts at mediation, but when it coems down to it there's a fundamental impossibility of communication, as Traveller is unaware of and obviously doesn't understand the style of roleplaying I advocate. The fact he think its 'bizarre' shows that he's ignorant of the majority of roleplaying's history.

What I found bizarre is your insistence that players should be discouraged from learning the rules. Do you forbid anyone who has GMed that system from ever playing in your games? Because they're going to know the rules as well as you do.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629119whereas Traveller clearly believes that the rules are "Laws" that should be obeyed by the GM as much as the players, and that the GM exists primarily as, how did he put it? Custodian to the rules?

Show me once where I said the GM was a custodian to anything. Show me, please. No? So again it's easier to make up arguments to respond to than deal with what's actually being said, but it doesn't actually get anywhere.

I reckon you've had similar arguments with so many people that you can't tell the difference at this stage.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629121The GM was wrong for making it 30d6. They should have said "okay you're character dies", and that's that.. A Kilometer high cliff is instant death for any living being. They'd die before they hit the ground, and HP certainly don't enter into it.

People have fallen from higher than that before and survived. Lots of living beings have. I won't even ask why you think they'd die before the ground (that's not what terminal velocity means). But that's not the point being made.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629121The player wouldn't have made the decision for their character to jump off the cliff without also being aware of the rules.

Players can be aware of the rules, players most often are aware of the rules. This is a reality which means that fixes for shitty rulesets as well as on-the-fly adjustments for Awesome should probably be agreed upon by everyone.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629121This is, in my experience, and overwhelmingly good thing. I'd rather have a game with a creative, intelligent GM capable of making common sense rulings and confident enough to allow their judgment supersede the limitations of any ruleset based on in-game context than one who simply arbitraily enforced the rules even when they made no sense like a "by the book" banal police officer anyday.

In my experience if the ruleset is consistently in need of on-the-fly adjustments you're playing with a shitty ruleset.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629121again, played this way for 30 years, and my group has tons of fun.

Again, unless you are saying you make characters spin on their heads regularly for the hell of it, you're answering a different argument than the one I made.

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Let's try it again:

You're saying that true immersion is best reached if the GM handles all of the rule decisions and indeed the operation of almost everything except the dice and the PC's sheets. This is because the singular vision of a GM and the lack of immersion-snags work best for you. You're saying the GM should arbitrarily change rules as they see fit, which a) works fine if the players are unaware of the rules and b) the GM is able to deal with that. And not all GMs are, not out of malice but because rule changes can have knock on effects which aren't immediately apparent among other things.

That 20d6 rule for example was I'm sure put into place to stop teleport other becoming the most dangerous spell in the universe. The reality-bending side effect either wasn't considered or wasn't considered important.

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I'm saying that rules don't interfere with immersion if the players are sufficiently familiar with them, and it is more helpful than otherwise if the players help to uphold the rules themselves, at a minimum in terms of taking some of the strain off the GM. Also the rules are written down, there's nothing to stop the players reading them.

If the GM causes bad things to happen to the group by changing the rules, the players might rightfully feel hard done by. This is why I feel the cooperative aspect is important. How you would deal with that situation is not neccessarily how other GMs might deal with it, and can lead to all sorts of problems, which is why I'd be cautious about including it in the basic definition of the role of the GM.

The bottom line is however if you're constantly swapping rules around you need a better set of rules.

The setting is a different story of course, and do not confuse the two.

Anyway I'm encouraged by the discussion so far, as far as I can see we made it as far as the GM's interactions with the rules before serious objections were raised so I'm confident a unified definition can be reached on the last hurdle. Obviously none of this is set in stone and it's all wide open for adjustment if good enough reasons are put forward.

Quote from: TristramEvans;629134The point of an RPG is to have fun.

Therefor the game that provides the most fun for any one group is the best game for that group.

whereas you've continually argued that RPG systems have improved over time and that modern game systems are objectively better than older game systems.


The two PoV don't mesh.

Well, they do, if you look at it this way:
There is a reason why Rpgs became big as a part of "geek culture".
The original rules were a mix of fantasizing and broken and/or rules that was hard to understand.
Then, after playing those games a long time, you do know its inns-and-outs, and where the house rules and/or GM/DM rulings is neccesary, and these things are learned by the ones that play with you.

However, some rpgs that is done today, has learned from past mistakes, and is easier, less broken, and so on, and therefor, objectively better.
Yes, objectively.
However, to the one that knows all the inns and outs of the old game, that old game is still percived as subjectivly better than the objectively better game ...

The two PoV do mesh, in that way.

Quote from: The Traveller;629168What I found bizarre is your insistence that players should be discouraged from learning the rules. Do you forbid anyone who has GMed that system from ever playing in your games? Because they're going to know the rules as well as you do.

Back in the 1970s, many people (including Gary Gygax) regarded that as unfortunate. Becoming a DM entailed giving up some opportunities for discovery. Preferably, there would be enough experienced players serving as DMs, and enough opportunity for low-level adventures as well, not to deprive newcomers of the thrills.

Not only was this often not the case once D&D books (especially the Basic sets) started to spread the game far in advance of experienced players, but also many people happened to prefer being the "knower of all."

I don't know how it was elsewhere, but what I heard in my town during the D&D 3E years was that there was a shortage of DMs because people found the job less appealing than formerly (whereas plenty of people liked the new attitude toward rules when they were playing characters).

Quote from: Phillip;629182Back in the 1970s, many people (including Gary Gygax) regarded that as unfortunate. Becoming a DM entailed giving up some opportunities for discovery.

This is what I don't understand, the discovery should probably be in the setting rather than the rules, unless the GM whips up a new type of magic or or flying ship or something, which is still mostly in the setting. There's too much of a borderland between setting and rules in some arguments here, the two are fairly distinct for the most part.

Quote from: Phillip;629182Not only was this often not the case once D&D books (especially the Basic sets) started to spread the game far in advance of experienced players, but also many people happened to prefer being the "knower of all."

This would reflect my experiences as well, once players start to learn the rules they want to learn more. Which is perfectly understandable, people want to know the rules of the game they are playing.

Quote from: gleichman;629159Since for me, the rules are the physics of the setting- the player is playing their role.

I just happened to pick a set of physics that sort of sucks. Thus the fault (and punishment) should be mine. Hence the player gets 'alway' with it, and my adventure/world has to suck it up.

I haven't yet come across a system that actually models "physics" in a way that was still gameable, so I prefer to see the rules simply as a means of arbitrating Reality Clash between players.