Quote from: blakkieWell then RPGPundit was certainly misrepresenting what "The Forge" says, because my gribberish doesn't match up with what he said.

You and I will not agree on this point, nor any of your other points presented so far. I see no need to continue the exchange.

Quote from: gleichmanYou and I will not agree on this point, nor any of your other points presented so far. I see no need to continue the exchange.

I'm remembering this line.  This is a great line!

Does it work in person?  Or do you really need the internet to use it?

Quote from: VellorianYou really think that?

Honestly, I've never seen the creation of a mechanic as a difficult thing.  Once you had the basic concept of how the mechanic works solved (pools, roll one die high, roll one die low, roll many dice and add together, roll many dice and pick the highest, spin the wheel, pick a card, etc.) it all falls into place pretty easily.

Even when it comes to social rules, you can simmer most of it down to 5-6 basic concepts (and their reverse) thus giving you a good basis for modification.  

The hard part for me is creating rules to allow someone else to create rules.  The meta-rules are the harder part.

I think that creating good rules is hard, yes. Good from the objective point of ultimately achieving the desired effect.  The meta-rules you mention represent or is linked to, I believe, the flexibility that is largely expected in social rules to allow them to function in a wide variety of game situations.

Quote from: blakkieReally?  Are you saying there wasn't actual rules at the gaming table in the old days. Maybe it's just my foggy memory but I remember there being a lot of them. Just most of them weren't written down in the book, or at all.  They were largely in the DM's head and come out is tidbits here and there, and as such tended to suffer from distortion and incompleteness and other problems associated with that medium.  Occationally a DM would have some sort of document on house rules, some much thicker than others, but of the ones I saw they largely ignored character social abilities as well with little more than an occational bone tossed that way.

I don't think it's fair to conflate an entire school of gaming with personal experience.  Just because DMs in your experience acted this way does not mean this is the way every group was run.

In my experience, for example, I've never had a DM that kept the rules to him/herself (some of them could be asshats in a myriad of other ways, mind you, but hiding the rules wasn't the reason why).  The few I ever encountered who worked out elaborate social rules always either spelled them out in house rule documents or established them verbally at the table before play began.

Quote from: blakkieOccationally a DM would have some sort of document on house rules, some much thicker than others, but of the ones I saw they largely ignored character social abilities as well with little more than an occational bone tossed that way.

The granddaddy of all role-playing games defined a character's social ability as one of it's six primary defining characteristics for characters (i.e., Charisma).  What most groups that I played with did was simply role-play the social interaction of their characters, taking things like that Charisma characteristic into consideration.  If little children can just role-play social interaction when playing imaginative games without rules, why can't adults?

QuoteIn my experience, for example, I've never had a DM that kept the rules to him/herself (some of them could be asshats in a myriad of other ways, mind you, but hiding the rules wasn't the reason why).

I'm not talking about intentional withholding.  I'm talking about a limitation on oral communication and keeping stuff in your heard.  The full set of "the rules" would usually only come out over time and tended to be subject to change, occationally without notification. But lord help you if you were joining a gaming group midstream, or even missed a couple of sessions where important bits of the rules came out.

QuoteThe few I ever encountered who worked out elaborate social rules always either spelled them out in house rule documents or established them verbally at the table before play began.

My highlighting.

But how is this so different from someone selling that document for others to use?  Someone putting their work out there and trying to get some renumeration for their effort makes them a swine?  Hell, those poor folks that did that were swine themselves, because it seems safe to assume that they actually took the time to think about what would make good social rules.

Quote from: VellorianI'm remembering this line.  This is a great line!

Does it work in person?  Or do you really need the internet to use it?

It works in person with persons of reason.

Or if backed by my series 80 .45

Quote from: blakkieI'm not talking about intentional withholding.  I'm talking about a limitation on oral communication and keeping stuff in your heard.  The full set of "the rules" would usually only come out over time and tended to be subject to change, occationally without notification. But lord help you if you were joining a gaming group midstream, or even missed a couple of sessions where important bits of the rules came out.

Okay, I see where you're coming from here.  I think what you're talking about will happen in any group that sticks together for any length of time; people grow comfortable with one another, adapt to one another, and approach a game in certain ways because "that's the way we do it around here."

As far as incorporating new people into a group or bringing others up to speed, I'd put that down as a failure of the group.  If you bring someone into a game and you play with a ton of house rules, it's your responsibility to tell that person.  Likewise if someone missed a session where new rules were formulated.  To do otherwise is asshat-ery, imo.  Again, it's not fair to characterize a whole section of gamers due to one's limited experience (otherwise I'd be crying about AD&D being a game only for those who want to play lionoid beings with retractable razor claws attaining 300th level in two weeks of play).

Quote from: blakkieMy highlighting.

But how is this so different from someone selling that document for others to use?  Someone putting their work out there and trying to get some renumeration for their effort makes them a swine?  Hell, those poor folks that did that were swine themselves, because it seems safe to assume that they actually took the time to think about what would make good social rules.

Ah, well this is something else entirely, and I'm not gonna argue with that.  My response had more to do with characterizing a segment of gamers in accordance with personal experience.  While I've come to love this site in my short time here (people here view RPGs the way I do for the most part), I don't necessarily agree with everything that's said here.  But everything that's said is certainly a part of this site's charm!

Quote from: blakkieBasically creating usable rules is hard.

The vast majority of my group's role-playing experiences, going back two decades to when we were in college, has primarily been using homebrew systems or our homebrew rules grafted onto a base like Fudge.  Heck, even the D&D game I played in college had an entirely custom combat system grafted on to it.  In my experience, not so hard if you know what you are doing.  The secret is to design rules to produce the effect you want in play, not rules that serve other criteria like symmetry, mathematical purity, simplicity, complexity, completeness, and so on.  Work backward from what you want them to do in the game.

Quote from: blakkieGiven the struggle in the beginning just to get combat rules that were usable it isn't surprising that social rules were just kinda tossed out there as "you figure it out".  But over time people, and I'm talking collectively, have learned how to make better combat rules (for different applications). So now more attention is being put on how to make social rules that are fun and enjoyable.

I would say that there is no one right criteria for what's "usable".  For example, a lot of the rules-light games and more abstract "conflict resolution" systems being tossed out actually abstract a lot of combat into "you figure it out" or "you just say what your character does".  So there is hardly a single trend that all games are following here.  And of course for plenty of people, the earliest role-playing systems were "usable" and there are a lot of people still using them (I still see plenty of pitches for the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, for example and KenHR's signature talks about playing Classic Traveller).

Quote from: blakkieSo I say bully for people trying to do that, and boo to the swine that piss on people for taking the time to reflect on how games are actually played.

Let me offer another good rule to follow.  "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."  For a lot of people, just role-playing through social interactions isn't broken and they don't need someone to fix it for them.

Quote from: BalbinusI've no idea what pundit is trying to do, but blakkie did miss the point pretty badly.

Actually, what I'm trying to do is to be uncharacteristically compassionate and argue that there really is an honest to god difference in the most basic conception of what they imagine "roleplaying" to be versus what we imagine it to be; except rather than their idea that they are the sophisticates and we "common" gamers are the brutes, I'm arguing that they are the ones who feel like they need rules to actually do anything at all in an RPG, whereas we're the ones who know you can just roleplay it.

I mean shit, Blakkie because case study #1 for my fucking point. He literally cannot seem to conceive of the idea that the majority of gamers will not only not allow a lack of rules about social interaction to stop them from playing out said social interaction, but will actually find that far PREFERABLE than to having that same social interaction hamstringed by a bunch of rules or methods of how you must do it.

In the words of the immortal Sir Laurence Olivier, "Good god man, why don't you just ACT it?!"

RPGPundit

Quote from: John MorrowLet me offer another good rule to follow.  "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."  For a lot of people, just role-playing through social interactions isn't broken and they don't need someone to fix it for them.

Fucking right.  Especially when any and every attempt to "fix" them has been misguided by a concept of "roleplaying" that has nothing to do with what the majority of gamers actually do; its been an unmitigated disaster.

The position of the "social rules theorists" is in violation of the Landmarks: the vast majority of gamers are perfectly happy with the social rules as they are.

RPGPundit

Quote from: blakkieI think that creating good rules is hard, yes. Good from the objective point of ultimately achieving the desired effect.  The meta-rules you mention represent or is linked to, I believe, the flexibility that is largely expected in social rules to allow them to function in a wide variety of game situations.

Blakkie,

What you keep repeatedly missing is that for a great many gamers the absence of social rules is intentional, the inclusion of social rules is not a boon.  It's not an issue of whether they are good rules or not but whether one wants rules there at all.

Until you can accept that that is a valid preference this discussion will go nowhere.

An absence of social rules does not imply they were too difficult, generally it is a conscious design decision.  It has no implication for the importance of social conflict in actual play, literally looking at a ruleset with no social rules does not enable you to make any assessment of how much a given group prioritises social conflict.

Honestly Blakkie, I have no issue accepting that some people like rules in this area, why can you not return the compliment by recognising that some people do not?

I've yet to play with an ardent freeformer, whose motivation for freeform wasn't the fact, that he was a sore loser. Every freeformer I played with, was the kind of cry-baby that threw a tantrum, whenever things weren't going the way he wanted them to go.

So if the majority of roleplayers really want no rules for roleplaying, it makes me wonder if that's because they can't handle being told that they screwed up. Is "freeform roleplaying" just a safe haven for people who can't bear to lose in a game? That would be quite pathetic.

Quote from: BalbinusHonestly Blakkie, I have no issue accepting that some people like rules in this area, why can you not return the compliment by recognising that some people do not?

Who the hell said that I didn't?  Let me guess, I just need to read the threads since I last posted and left?  Or was it just never there at all?

EDIT:

QuoteWhat you keep repeatedly missing is that for a great many gamers the absence of social rules is intentional, the inclusion of social rules is not a boon.

Why does there need to be "one"? What's wrong with actually developing the rules that are always there anyway? Why does there need to be RPGPundit's Us and Them? He IS the swine from his blog essay.  Close the doors and keep the faithful in, don't expand the types of people that play RPGs, inbred till you can't breed no more.

P.S.  John Morrow  Even with the cops & robbers type situation with D&D, and where the system advancement RAW largely ignores 'social' ways to do that, there are still a crapload of rules.  They just aren't written down.

Whitter:  I'm as fast to point out a sore loser or bad sport as the next guy (and way faster than most) but I've met plenty of free-formers who play free-form with a serious edge, making themselves vulnerable to judgment/loss, and then taking those defeats with equanimity when they occur.

So I think you've had a pretty bad exposure to free-formers, and that's rough, but there's reason to think it may not be a representative sample.  I hope that's a cheering thought for you.