I hate it when I come out on the other side of an issue as Mo and Rob.
That is: I think the rules of an RPG as as important as the rules of a board game. Rules apply to the GM (if there is one) and to players (if there are players). These rules may be different, but them's still the rules.
For ex: AW. A GM facing rule is to say what honesty demands.
If I lie to a player, then I am breaking that rule.
You can break the rules! There's nothing saying you can't! For ex, Catan but you put the numbers out randomly rather than in the expected alphabetic order. That's rule violation! Or, Catan with 2 rounds of robber protection.
If you talk about them in advance, they are house rules. If you do it wrong, then it is breaking the rules.
And its ok to break the rules! At some point of rule breaking, you are no longer playing the same game. For ex, its not really Catan anymore if every hex has equal likelihood. That's a different game.
I've got a headache, so hopefully this makes sense.
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Yeah, I too think there's a difference between breaking the rules unilaterally and agreeing as a group to alter the rules.
ReplyDeleteWell, in RPGs, there can be the situation in which it's a rule that the GM may break the rules in order to achieve more fun for everyone.
ReplyDeleteMichel Kangro example?
ReplyDeleteMaybe a fight scene in which TPK is the most likely result. Either bad planning by the GM, bad dice rolls, whatever. If TPK would be not fun for the group total, then by all means the orcs should miss once or twice more or have suddenly some HP less.
ReplyDeleteOf course, sometimes TPK is a fun ending... :)
Michel Kangro If a known and sometimes result of the rules is so undesired as to require cheating (which is what this is), then you may be playing the wrong game.
ReplyDelete(Pssst.... reassess.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if you meant me-Rob or other-Rob, but I prefer to follow the rules when I'm playing a game, and if they're not working, work together to come up with solutions.
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl I meant other Rob! Rob Donohue.
ReplyDeleteMo Jave You reassess. I've got a headache trinkling down to my neck.
ReplyDeleteWait, am I hungry? Is this annoyed at the world, unable to perform belief revision, sneezing everyone feeling ... hunger?
Could ti be that easy?
I agree that if a group agrees, rules can be overridden, but it makes a profound statement about the game design. By house ruling you say that the game design is not fun enough and that the rules could have been better l, at least for your group. To me that means a game design that doesn't require house ruling to be fun, like five tribes, is better than one that does require it, like catan.
ReplyDelete::eats an eclair from the american version of tim hortons:::
ReplyDeleteOh, wow. Hey, did you know there are colors in the world? Like, David Rothfeder's icon is orange , and Mo Jave's is in greyscale?
Shocking! I have apparently forgotten what hunger feels like.
Some things:
1. Let me reiterate: it is OK to break the rules! It is OK to houserule them!
2. RPGs are a conversation, and the rules we accept are the boundaries to the conversation that we're having.
3. One reason it is good and proper to break rules is your group noes what they more than any game designer. Neither Vincent nor Mo nor Drew can possibly know what'll work for my group. Maybe George can't handle manipulation as a basic move, or William has forgotten what color looks like because he hasn't eaten enough today.
Ultimately, the best thign is to play a game how works best for your group. But -- and here's where I likely disagree with Mo -- when I make changes during play, I am probably doing bad design work, as I've not thought about it in depth. That is, the time and effort it takes to make a game builds towards a specific experience, and I (probably) will make less informed and less quality decisions when I do micro design under the gun.
(Dude, I was trolling in my thread.)
ReplyDelete(I.e. it's not fuck the rules. it's fuck the conversation we keep having about the rules, where every six months or so we echo into the darkness that it matters or doesn't matter ad nauseum and ad infinitem, and where folks (not saying you, mind) get really very moralistic and absolute about rules, when the RaW or RaAdopted or RaAdapted are only one small part of they ecosystem at play)
(Also, the American version of Tim Horton's is an aberration.)
Mo Jave What's wrong with Dunkin?
ReplyDeleteAlso have been up since 3 am and miiiiiiiight be a little punchy!
ReplyDeleteClearly the spelling.
ReplyDeletewell, that's fare.
ReplyDeleteI would also have allowed "the eclairs are mostly filled with air, instead of sweet sweet goop"
I would have said the fact they're still claiming to have award winning coffee. What award? Have they gotten one since 1981?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols You are right. If we do roleplaying and an undesired outcome requires spontaneuous cheating, then the system is flawed. The question I want to raise is: If correcting the design flaws of the chosen RPG requires more work, discussion and non-fun-times then just using the RPG out-opf-the-box and fixing those few times in which the rules fail in delivering fun with cheats by the GM, then I'd conclude that cheating is overall more fun.
ReplyDeleteI do speak from experience. We had a group using the (german) Das Schwarze Auge system. We heavily modified it to accomodate our needs. This resulted in endless discussions over details, sometimes heated discussions. I think everyone was happy about most of our changes, but everyone had some house rules he didn't like and everyone had some house rule ideas that didn't find the consent of the group. After years of tweaking, we did find a majority to ban all and every house rule. That was some discussion taking months all by itself. Since then (and until my family and work prevented me from continuing said group), we played only the written, official rules.
But of course those are flawed and there were situations in which we would have had no fun, or less fun, had not our GM spontaneously and secretly house ruled some decisions - aka cheated.
See discussion on this subject and related things from my poll of a few days ago that is playing out on the results post.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Dunkin is inferior to what it was 30 years ago. Nothing is cooked on site and all the filled items are only half as full as they used to be because dough and sugar is cheaper than jellies and creams.
ReplyDeleteJust play games guys
ReplyDeleteI feel the need to point out that in Catan, placing the number tiles at random is a variant rule that actually appears in the rulebook. So it's still playing RAW.
ReplyDeleteThe usual example of a ubiquitous house-rule I see in these cases is usually from Monopoly: Fines go to Free Parking, and whoever lands there first picks up the cash.
Somewhat more on-topic, yes, I have lately heard at least one GM bemoaning how one player makes optimised characters and tries to "beat the system". I really should retort with something like, "If you want a story- and character-focussed game, why are you using a game that's built around a crunchy combat simulator? Why is it wrong for people to use the available tools to win combats? You don't want them to lose, but you want them to feel like they have to work for victory?"
Craig Judd I thought about using the monopoly example. I didn't, as free parking is one of two house rules that break the game. The second is making it not mandatory for a space to be sold off when someone lands on it.
ReplyDeleteThese two house rules were done across the country at virtually the same time, without conversation about it. And they break the game.
And, agreed, if you are playing a game where the game rewards you for system mastery, then the GM should expect some degree of that. Afterall, people respond to incentives.
Unintended consequences to game mastery always happen, especially in games with built in incentives that can be exploited.
ReplyDeleteEvery mechanic also has unexpected consequences.... and if they oppose the philosophy of the GM and players the only fix is often to patch it for your own table.
One common one in D&D was Hit Points. The random level increase rule and the random starting points rule made the game often very very deadly and discouraged continual play or investment in character by players in the early years.
One simple fix variant made those low levels much more survivable and thus encouraged people to continue play : No die roll, just maxium die value for your first level. Or, conversely, your CON was made your zero level hit point value and then each level was rolled for as achieved by class rules.
No more mages dead from a housecat scratch. No more fighters one punch killing local farmers in the bar by accident.
Knowing the consequences of choices is important. Understanding how people react to things is also important. Understanding why a rule is in place can also be important.
The old D&D rules on hit points were a carry over from wargames and the style that was expected where one had a small unit of characters, rather than an individual, so losing one member of the group weakened the group but didn't end your involvement in the game. So you had a knight, and his support squad. Losing one infantry follower wasn't an unexpected consequence in an attack. (The complex follower rules in D&D early editions basically were to develop your support squad etc.)
Joseph Teller My snarky but true reaction is something like "then don't play D&D".
ReplyDeleteThat is, if you don't want players to look for how to break the system, then play something where that is rewarded less!
William Nichols Agreed on some levels, BUT as I said I was talking about the early years, when the alternatives to D&D were rather slim (when I originally played it we had it, Tunnels & Trolls or Runequest as the only fantasy setting mechanics options).
ReplyDeleteIn the early years EVERYONE did their own house ruling. Look back at old editions of Alarums & Excursions (what was then the premiere alternative publication to the TSR official stuff and later was the publication that spawned many of the 2nd and 3rd wave designers and GMs) and you'd see long discussions of house rules and whether they improved or caused unexpected results.
I've been around to watch the various waves of gamers and designers more than most (nearly 4 decades gaming). I remember when GMs were expected to be able to handle 12 players at the table at once too.
William Nichols "Then don't play X" can be said about any system that has rules. Rules will always be an abstraction of the stuff they try to simulate. There is always a chance that some specific situation cannot be adequatly represented by the rules in a way that gives the participants the fun they came to find in the game, being it a boardgame or a rpg. If that happens, should the fun be castaway for the sake of the rules?
ReplyDeleteOf course that will seldom be true for competitive games, but cooperative games, and I count most rpgs to be cooperative, should allow for cheating for the sake of fun if there are rules at all...
Michel Kangro he's saying "if the rules do not encourage a play style you want, don't play that game".
ReplyDeleteAaron Griffin I'm saying that there very seldom is a game which fits your style of play 100% of the time.
ReplyDeleteThe best you can say is that nothing fits YOUR play style.
ReplyDeletePlenty of games fit specific play styles I want at a time. I play them often. If you have no games
Aaron Griffin I do have lots of games I sincerely enjoy. But especially when games get more complex, and which games could be more complex then RPGs, it will be more and more difficult to fit a given persons play style and wishes in every possible in-game-situation 100%.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, if you don't encounter any situation in which the rules make a game, especially a RPG, less fun for everyone in that specific situation, even though it will be very fun rewarding in very many other situations, then I believe it would be totally silly to dismiss the groups fun by stubbornly sticking to the rules. (Also, if a game system is that good that it can generate fun in almost any given situation, it would be incredibly stupid to drop the whole game and game system because you encountered one specific weakness.
Especially in RPGS, where you usually do have a GM, whose job description includes to make stuff up, set things up with a very high degree of freedom with the final goal to generate fun for everyone, if said GM through a specific weakness of the rules, the setup of the story or a combination thereof creates a situation in which the group as a whole would not be rewarded for playing with having fun, then I do believe it's a situation in which the GM should not stupidly follow every written rule and end the fun in that specific situation for everyone.
That escalated while I was playing games.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to play a nitty gritty games of miniatures combat, and you pick up AW? Then you've picked up the wrong game for what you want.
Similarly, if you want to play a game of gods of the wastes trying to make a life for themselves and those they care about, and you pick up Star Wars Armanda? Then you've picked up the wrong game for what you want.
These are the far outlier points, which i hope we can all agree to.
Different games encourage different playstyles and different objectives; in AW I may receive XP for resetting Hx (ie, getting to know people), while in Dungeons and Dragons I may receive XP for murdering a dragon (or not, its been a while). Either way, the XP and what part of the rules are complicated tell me what the game is about; if I have come for something different from those, I should consider a different game.
And that's rather the point; cast off the notion of scarcity! You have nothing to lose but your chains, my brothers and sisters! We're living in a golden age of gaming, where I have not just one game about women flying planes during WW2, but two that I know of, and probably more. Where I have games about what happens after an adventure, games about the adventure, games where you're likely to die during the adventure, games about adventurers building strongholds, games about adventuring looting & learning about the world ...And that's off the top of my head and doesn't scratch the surface!
Point is: If a game is not geared towards the sort of play you want, then now -- if not in the 70s -- you can find one that will.