OP is just wrong.

About letting a rule break your game -- sometimes you get lucky and spot the potential breakage before the fact; often you don't. It's not fun getting surprised mid-game by bad rule design. There's enough work that goes into running and playing an RPG that you shouldn't have to slap on tons of "patches" to keep it going smoothly. If you do, then what did you pay the $30(40, 50, 60, sometimes more) for anyway? I don't expect any game to be perfectly broken-rule-free, but there has to be a minimum acceptable standard.

Quote from: Benoist;393365Rule Zero appears in role playing games black-and-white on the page, as a rule itself. Well, most role playing games anyway. Show me a board game that shows Rule Zero as part of the game's design. I'm sure you might find one somewhere, but this isn't a usual occurence, we'll agree to that.

What is Rule Zero?
I have never encountered it.

Quote from: Darran;393393What is Rule Zero?
I have never encountered it.

Rule 0... The rule that states all the rules are provisional and may be tweeked as deemed apropos for your spacific group/situation:)

Quote from: skofflox;393396Rule 0... The rule that states all the rules are provisional and may be tweeked as deemed apropos for your spacific group/situation:)

Oh, sort of a Your Game May Vary type thing?

Quote from: Benoist;393365Interesting. I don't fuck around with the rules of board, card games, Scrabble etc personally, unless it's an exception, an experiment, i.e. an exception rather than a rule.

You're not devoted to other games the way you are to RPGs. In my experience, look into the fan culture of almost any game, and you'll pretty quickly find fan-created variants.

QuoteRule Zero appears in role playing games black-and-white on the page, as a rule itself. Well, most role playing games anyway. Show me a board game that shows Rule Zero as part of the game's design. I'm sure you might find one somewhere, but this isn't a usual occurence, we'll agree to that.

I'll agree to that, I just disagree that it's a fact of much significance.

Quote from: Darran;393398Oh, sort of a Your Game May Vary type thing?

Bingo:)

Quote from: jibbajibba;393343So to be clear there are no BROKEN GAMES.... although individual rules make be broken.
You obviously never played Pirates and Plunder....

Hmm, I recall reading a review of P&P once, aeons ago, and it was overall positive. Did it miss something?

Quote from: Darran;393393What is Rule Zero?

Ideally, it's just an admission that nobody is perfect, tastes vary, and the universe isn't going to implode if you tweak some rules to your preference. If you think about it, it's kind of condescending, really. I can't imagine that not being obvious, though maybe I'm wrong and people nowadays are much more easily confused than when I discovered the hobby.

In practice, it more often than not signifies that a system is horribly unbalanced in ways that show the designers probably didn't pass 9th grade maths. I'm not talking the occasional glitch in an otherwise fluid system; nobody's perfect, and I'm not unreasonable. Rather, I'm talking about pervasive issues that require a lot of work to fix. So much so that you end up wondering what exactly you're paying the game designer(s) for.

I looked up pirates and plunder, and the big pain was it was missing rules for sailing ships and ship combat. They were supposed to be in a supplement that never got made.

One interesting thing, though: It had a rule that let you determine whether or not your character cried out when injured. This was useful for stealth mission where you may need to keep quiet after being stabbed by a guard you managed to kill quietly, but not before he wounded you.

I suppose most games could manage this via some combo of endurance + will or some sort of combat skill, like health + self control, but it was a nice touch for an early game.

Quote from: Benoist;393342My argument really boils down to users of role playing games manning up and taking ownership of their games instead of bitching about rules on some publisher's website as if they were pieces of code in an intricate program you'd have to run as-is otherwise OMG THE GAME BREKS. SKY FALLING NAO.

Okay, but why are people required to want to fiddle with the rules? Isn't this just another form of Wayism?

Seanchai

Quote from: Cylonophile;393638I looked up pirates and plunder, and the big pain was it was missing rules for sailing ships and ship combat. They were supposed to be in a supplement that never got made.

One interesting thing, though: It had a rule that let you determine whether or not your character cried out when injured. This was useful for stealth mission where you may need to keep quiet after being stabbed by a guard you managed to kill quietly, but not before he wounded you.

I suppose most games could manage this via some combo of endurance + will or some sort of combat skill, like health + self control, but it was a nice touch for an early game.

That is neat...crying out when wounded.This could be a cool flaw! :cool:

Quote from: Seanchai;393693Okay, but why are people required to want to fiddle with the rules? Isn't this just another form of Wayism?

Seconded.

Some folk don't have the time, inclination, or ability to modify their games to achieve the results they want.

Quote from: skofflox;393700That is neat...crying out when wounded.This could be a cool flaw! :cool:

Hmm, I'm not so sure it might be a flaw as much as routine. Maybe not crying out when a bullet hits your arm might be an advantage.

Quote from: Cylonophile;393720Hmm, I'm not so sure it might be a flaw as much as routine. Maybe not crying out when a bullet hits your arm might be an advantage.

advantage: nerves of steel/take it like a "man"
flaw: no back bone/cries like a baby
:hatsoff: :teehee:

what do you mean by routine?

Let me see if I understand this.  When a specific flaw is pointed out (in a well regarded game), say a shitty set of skill mechanics, the hue and cry goes out that if you can fix it, it isn't broken.  But in the general sense (or in the context of a poorly regarded game), people are rushing to insist that, in fact, a rule or mechanic can be 'broken' to the point it impacts the entire scope of the game?