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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