http://www.lumpley.com/archive/156.html

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*1-18-05*

*How RPG Rules Work*

This is description, not prescription.

The way I figure it, an RPG's rules coordinate three things:

The fictional things and events and stuff in the game. The interactions

of the players themselves. Dice, numbers, words, maps - real-world

tokens, things, props, representations. Emily calls 'em "cues" and I

think that's just right.

If you can pick it up and hand it to another player, or change it with a

pencil and eraser, it's a real-world cue. If it exists only in our heads

and our conversation, it's in-game.

So here's a rule: "1. Don't mess with the dark forest to the North, it's

Vincent's."

This rule coordinates the interactions of us, the players, with the

made-up stuff in the game. The rule says that if the in-game stuff comes

to include our characters entering the forest, we change our

interactions in a particular way: we defer to me, Vincent, about what's

what.

The rightward-pointing arrow is "our characters entering the forest,"

the leftward-pointing arrow is "we defer to Vincent about what's what."

Here's a rule: "2. Subtract the roll on the damage die from your

character's hit points."

This rule coordinates our interactions with the real-world cues we're

employing. The leftward-pointing arrow is "the roll on the damage die,"

the rightward-pointing arrow is "subtract from your character's hit

points." The die represents every real-world thing we're using: dice,

character sheets, life stones, everything.

Notice that non-RPG games' rules are all entirely like this one.

Monopoly, Chess, Die Siedler - they have no fictional in-game, just

people interacting and real-world tokens.

Here's a rule: "3. If your character has higher ground than his

opponent, make your attack roll at +3."

Now this rule takes information from the fictional in-game and applies

it to the real-world tokens we're using. The long rightward-pointing

arrow is "your character has higher ground than his opponent, +3," and

the leftward-pointing arrow is "make your attack roll."

I've drawn the long arrow /through/ the people because of course it's

the people who interpret the in-game and apply the rule.

Here's a rule: "4. If your character takes damage greater than 4 on the

damage roll, he's knocked down."

Here the rules instruct us to have certain things happen fictionally

when certain things happen in the real world. The rightward-pointing

arrow is "the damage roll" and the long leftward-pointing arrow is

"damage greater than 4, knocked down."

Here's a rule: "5. If your character's opponent tries to disarm your

character, make a Hold Weapon check. If you fail, your character is

disarmed, and you thus suffer the unarmed penalty until you retrieve

your weapon."

The more complicated your rule, the more complicated the arrangement of

arrows. The short leftward-pointing arrow is "your character's opponent

tries to disarm your character." The long rightward-pointing arrow is

"make a Hold Weapon check." The long leftward-pointing arrow is "your

character is disarmed" - the part where we imagine your character's

sword skittering across the rocks. The short rightward-pointing arrow,

at last, is "suffer the unarmed penalty."

If this were the Weapon Breakage rule instead of the Weapon Droppage

rule, the short rightward-pointing arrow would be both "suffer the

unarmed penalty" and "add 'broken' to your weapon on your character sheet."

So now, we employ various rules in various orders and combinations over

time.

Right?

This animation shows kind of what Dogs in the Vineyard or D&D or

Shadowrun or PTA or V:tM is like in play.

The way Charles' group plays Ars Magica would have practically only the

arrows between the players and the in-game lit up:

(I'm very open to correction about this, but it's my impression.)

The way my group plays Ars Magica would be about the same, but we'd have

the arrows crossing the players light up a few times per session:

And finally, Jonathan Tweet in /Everway/ describes three kinds of rules:

Drama, Fortune and Karma.

Rules like this are Drama rules.

Rules like this are Fortune rules if the real-world cues include dice or

some other randomizer; Karma rules if they don't.

On 1-19-05, *Matt* wrote:

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I really only clicked to see if comments were working, but now I feel

obliged to come up with something.

My ideal game, I think, has a balance of movement across all the arrows.

This might be a useful diagram for identifying the kind of play people

prefer by making certain arrows darker, etc. Or not. Shit, it's only 6

here and what am I doing up?

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On 1-19-05, *anon.* wrote:

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"Notice that non-RPG games' rules are all entirely like this one.

Monopoly, Chess, Die Siedler - they have no fictional in-game, just

people interacting and real-world tokens."

I would strongly disagree with this. The fictional worlds may not be as

pronounced or as strongly identified with as in RPGs, but they

definately exist.

Case in point: Diplomacy. There's you intereacting with other people and

the game board, but there's almost always a shared imaginative space of

diplomatic missions running back and forth and high-level meetings and

so on.

Even Monopoly can work this way. Who does not make sound effects when

they move their pieces? Who does not chortle like Snidely Whiplash when

they send another player to bankruptcy? And in these moments, a

fictional scene plays out.

Who knows, perhaps when Kasparov is advancing his knight, he's thinking

of a medieval kingdom?

later

Tom

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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I guess somebody was going to say that.

Maybe my best answer is:

Playing Monopoly, no arrows come rightward out of the fiction. Imagine

whatever you want, nobody else cares.

When we talk about the imaginary stuff in the game re: rules, we aren't

talking about what I'm imagining in my own personal head anyway. We're

talking about the shared fiction, which means that it's /communicated/

and /agreed to/. Kasparov might be thinking about a kingdom or his

laundry, I'm pretty sure he's not saying it all out loud and trying to

get his opponent to buy into it.

And just to head off the other half: of /course/ the players can create

house rules to make Monopoly into a roleplaying game. Whatever! I don't

think it's especially controversial to observe that, as written,

Monopoly ain't one. Lord I hope it's not.

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On 1-19-05, *C. Edwards* wrote:

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"Notice that non-RPG games' rules are all entirely like this one.

Monopoly, Chess, Die Siedler - they have no fictional in-game, just

people interacting and real-world tokens."

I totally accept and enjoy those kinds of rules in a non-RPG. They seem

annoying, unsatisfying, and extraneous most of the time when they are

incorporated into a role-playing game. It almost seems like a wasted

action to have rules that don't directly interact with the shared

imaginary space.

I want to achieve nearly 100% efficiency in my rule/work to shared

imaginary space exchange.

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On 1-19-05, *Bryant* wrote:

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Nice! Very nice. I agree with this 100% and I like the arrows a lot.

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On 1-19-05, *Chris* wrote:

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Wow! Vincent- it just struck me how much power goes into the traditional

GM's hands in that they get final say not only over what goes into that

imaginary space, but also what effects the imaginary space has back OUT

into the game itself. So, say a player wants to put a character in a

tactically advantageous situation, and even the GM agrees("You're on

higher ground, with the sun to your back, etc.") but only if the GM

decides to apply modifers back out to the Tokens in play, will the SIS

have a solid effect.

This is probably one of the best little ways of explaining the whole

social effect of gaming there. Neat.

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On 1-19-05, *Ben Lehman* wrote:

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I have this whole essay brewing about this two rightmost little arrows.

If you're going to beat me to it, let me know.

yrs--

--Ben

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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I have no plans!

What's your essay going to say?

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On 1-19-05, *Ben Lehman* wrote:

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Like most of my essays, it's going to say "Look, a thing!"

We physicists aren't so keen on the "persuasive argument" thing.

Essentially, I think some games have something called "toy quality"

where the game's mechanic itself is fun to play without needing to

reference the SIS at all. I think that games with toy quality are a

bridge to board and card and dice games. I also think it might be a key

to Gamism, but I'm not sure.

yrs--

--Ben

P.S. Hey, remember when I was talking about how "everything is system?"

I was going "look, see, those arrows are symmetric!" Just couldn't

express myself well.

P.P.S. Heck, I still don't know what system is. Is it that box on the

right? Or is that just mechanics?

P.P.P.S. Say we're using a published setting with canon guidebooks. Is

the setting in the right box or the left box?

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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The arrows are System. System is what we /do/.

The left box is a snapshot: what's happening in the game right now. You

can imagine its contents changing over the course of play, alongside the

arrows lighting up and going out.

The right box is everything that's real that we consult to help us

decide what's happening in the left box. Along with dice and the writing

on character sheets and stuff, it can include the contents of setting

guidebooks. Really though, the vast most of the contents of setting

guidebooks simply don't appear in the illustration; they wait outside of

frame in case we want them.

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On 1-19-05, *Ben Lehman* wrote:

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Check.

Rules printed in the game book: Cue or System?

yrs--

--Ben

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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System if we're using them right now, nothing if we aren't. "Using them"

includes things like "if we get into combat, there goes the whole rest

of the session - let's talk to them instead."

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On 1-19-05, *Ben Lehman* wrote:

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Cool.

Now I still can't understand that other thread, where I was like "it's

all system" and other people were like "what?" I was hoping it would

illuminate that. I think I'm still right, though.

Anyway, thanks a bunch. Just going to go stare at the animations now.

yrs--

--Ben

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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Link me to the other thread?

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On 1-19-05, *Ben Lehman* wrote:

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http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12001

And look! There's your diagram!

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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Linkinated <http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12001>.

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On 1-19-05, *nothings* wrote:

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I'm sure you've thought of all of this already, Vincent, but I found

your explanation a little confusing, so I have tried to go through in a

little more detail and a slightly different focus.

http://nothings.org/writing/rpg/elements.html

My apologies if I've slipped on any Forge-ian terminology, as I'm not

actually a regular reader.

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On 1-19-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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Nothings: linkinated <http://nothings.org/writing/rpg/elements.html>.

(corrected)

Well, I agree that you have a different focus. I think that the

differences between mine and yours can probably all be summed up in

their opening sentences: my "...an RPG's rules coordinate..." vs your

"...the activity of game-playing can be reasonably characterized by the

interaction of..."

Like, I don't include a picture of the rules because all I'm talking

about is the rules. I also don't include props or snacks - except as

real things inside the d6 picture, if and only if a rule refers to them.

Also having a GM outside of the group is nonsense, no matter how you

slice it. If you want to talk about distribution of authority within the

group, cool, and that's when a GM can come up - but the GM's a person

same as the rest of us.

And about my arrows and dice: I consider the interesting bit of rolling

a die to be the interpretation of it, not the rolling of it. Thus "roll

the die" is an arrow pointing from the die to the players; from the

origin of the information to its destination.

Um, so now what? This conversation will make more sense if either you

ask me to comment on yours, which I'd be happy to do in another thread,

or else you ask me questions about mine, which I'd be happy to answer

here. Or both!

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On 1-20-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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Ben, I reread that thread, most of it anyway. Here's a thing:

The goal of designing rules is to change social contract.

When I design a set of rules, I'm trying to change the way that people

relate to one another, within the confines of the game. I'm trying to

force, trick, or provoke them into treating one another in particular,

possibly unnatural ways. I'm fuckin' around with their working creative

relationships.

Beyond apportioning credibility, rules create /permission/ and

/expectation/. Permission and expectation are the real building blocks

of social contract; cunningly designed rules have access to human

interactions at a deep level.

So, sure, there are no complete RPGs; as you say, the complete RPG is

playerless. It may work better to think of RPG rules as strong or weak,

flexible or brittle: a strong RPG draws the players into its particular

play, where a weak one allows them to play however comes naturally. A

flexible RPG can survive or redirect a broad range of preexisting social

dynamics, where a brittle one requires a particular social dynamic to

already be in place, or the game crashes.

Am I making sense? Am I kind of on your topic?

*I bumped this thread up to the front page. Let's talk about my diagrams

here.*

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On 1-20-05, *Rognli* wrote:

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This is like the Central Theorem of Roleplaying. For dummies. With

friendly, unscary illustrations. It doesn't get any better...

Can I translate it for publication in the only Norwegian gaming-zine,

"Imagonem"? And before you ask; no we can't pay you, cause we don't make

any money. But I will tell everyone you are very cool.

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On 1-20-05, *Vincent* wrote:

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Sure!

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Handle:

Consider including your email address in the body of your comment.

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