[RPG Theory] RPG Rules - This Is Personal

[stevekenson]

It occurs to me that roleplaying game rules are tweaked, modified, and revised far more than the rules of any other type of game. Most boardgames change very little over time: they might see some modification, variants, or the like, but remain largely consistent, certainly not the degree of change you find between the first and current edition of D&D, or the very first and current editions of Hero System or even GURPS.

I wonder if the reason for that might be the intense identification RPG players have with their in-game proxies, their characters. You hear a great deal with RPGs about the “feel” of play, debates about simulationism vs. narrativism, and other discussions about what the purpose of RPG rules even is (beyond, one assume, “to play the game by”). A lot of this seems to stem from the impression that a virtual person’s “life” is governed by these rules, rather than just a faceless game piece. Nobody cares what the queen’s reason for attacking the opposing rook is in Chess, nor does anyone seem to care what the One-Eyed Jack thinks is “wild” in Poker. There are no “characters” in those games, no story or narrative, just an abstraction with a set of rules and an end-state.

By the same token, RPGs are the only real sort of game to ascribe different motives to the player and the game-piece. That is, when you’re playing Monopoly, you make decisions based on how to win the game, not on sound financial advice or your ideas about the market or affordable housing. RPGs, on the other hand, often run into conflict between the “sensible” choice (both in objective terms and in terms of the most efficient exploitation use of the game rules) and the “character-driven” choice, wherein the character’s fictional preferences are taken into account.

RPG character are (at least obstensibly) unique. Even if they fit various niches and archetypes (or character classes) they have their own names, personalities, histories, and such. Little wonder gamers are often invenerate tinkerers, who monkey around with the rules trying to get just the right “feel” to them. Add to that the fact that people play and enjoy RPGs for different reasons, having different ideas of what constitutes a “successful” RPG system, and it’s no surprise that we see so many variations of our favorite games, with more coming along all the time.

Comments

[samaritan1975.livejournal.com]

It could also be that boardgames don't have the burden of trying to 'emulate' anything, nor adapting to character interactions.

[dewinblaidd.livejournal.com]

What, other people don't roleplay their monopoly characters?

I mean, *cough*, yeah who does that.

I thought that whole changing the rules every 4 years thing was just a scheme to sell more books. Kind of the same thing the computer industry does.

Some changes are for the good though. While I still wax nostalgic about WEG StarWars, I'm relieved that I have not had to roll 40d6s in quite some years. =P

[dewinblaidd.livejournal.com]

often run into conflict between the “sensible” choice and the “character-driven” choice

I have a RL friend who remains pissed at me to this day because during one of our D&D campaigns, while the party was fighting an army of hobgoblins, her character came running up to my character (who was in combat with multiple hobgoblins) and yelled that she was going into the church to try and rescue the children, or something like that. Ironically, the hobgoblins had tunneled under the walls and come out in the catacombs under the church, so when the rest of us figured that out our wizard set the building on fire. While she was still inside. Apparently that was MY fault for not telling anyone that she had gone in there. Like I could have possibly heard her shouting over the war that was going on around me. =P

She lived through it, so I don't know what the big deal was. She had quite an amusing scene where she was fighting a horde of frightened goblins all trying to clamber up the bell rope so that they could jump out of the flaming building. (We blocked the doors). How often do you get to have a real swashbuckling swordfight dangling from a rope in a D&D game? Really? She ought to be thanking me =P

[jediwiker.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I think there's too *little* modification in RPGs. Many, many players I've spoken to over the years feel not only that they have no business adjusting the rules to fit their play style, but that any new rulebook/supplement that comes out has to be adopted, wholesale, into the existing campaign.

Rather than players over-identifying with their characters, I think it's more of a case of inability to suspend disbelief--particularly as relates to the perceived shortcomings of a given ruleset. For example, if the players can't agree to accept that a 100-foot fall isn't automatically fatal (as the mechanics prove), then the players are likely to work together to "improve" the rules for falling damage.

Of course, it's usually when the players depend on the rules simulating their perceived "reality" that this issue comes to the fore, and the players start tweaking the rules. But it can go either way. If the players push a villain off a cliff, they want him to die when he hits the bottom, no save, no modifiers. HOWEVER, if the villain pushes them off a cliff and they die, then the rules are clearly broken *the other way*, and require serious tweaking to make falling *less* lethal.

I can remember having long, long arguments while playing 1st Ed. Champions, about whether a character should be able to combine a martial punch with a move-by attack ... and how many times we tweaked the rules, tried them, tweaked them again, and so on. In fact, in the 1E D&D campaign I played in, we reworked monks over and over, because playing them was a lot less fun than playing any other class ...

JD

[saxon-pagan.livejournal.com]

>>I thought that whole changing the rules every 4 years thing was just a scheme to sell more books.<<

dewinblaidd expressed my own thought. I think there's a world of difference between an individual GM tweaking the rules of the game to fit his personal campaign and a RPG company yanking the plug on a viable game and replacing it with something different. Of course they're going to keep doing that, because whenever Malibu Stacey gets a new hat everyone rushes out to buy it.

Legally WOTC have the right to publish a new game and call it "Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons". Ethically, at least in my opinion, it was at best a questionable marketing scheme. And I don't mean to pick on WOTC - other companies have done the same thing. Admittedly, when it comes to board games, you can also buy funky versions of Clue and Risk, but the companies who produce these don't discontinue the original games.

I still favor the classic, original D&D over all of the so-called "advanced" iterations. I miss Gamma World. So I may be somewhat biased in my opinion. But I think if you're going to make up a new game, even if it's loosely based on an older game, it ought to have a new name and not pretend to be something it isn't.

[wordwill.livejournal.com]

My ability to play chess well was severely hampered by my desire to create relationships between the pieces... and my need to characterize them.

"Your Rook is a real jerk," I'd say.

I am still not so good at chess.

Purpose of Rules

[77im.livejournal.com]

To me, the key factor is that RPG rules are primarily a means to an end (role-playing being that end); while for other games, the rules are an end unto themselves (one plays chess in order to play chess). So it makes sense that people would continually invent new RPG rules to try to better achieve that end.

Similarly, if one views the end-goal of board games as "fun competition with friends," then it makes sense that game companies would constantly invent new games, which they do. They just don't give them the same names as the old games. This is probably because the goal of a board game is better understood by people than the goal of an RPG. By calling their game "Dungeons & Dragons," Wizards is telling us to expect a role-playing experience that is like previous versions of D&D. To keep the analogy going, the Cranium line of games all share a similar theme and play experience, so it makes sense to call them "Cranium."

In short, the game-play experience is the important thing, and the game rules themselves will continually evolve to improve the game-play experience.

[gamescribe.livejournal.com]

I think the key point is that you don't "Win" an RPG; yet, we all still have a natural competitive drive, so instead of trying to "win" we try to "do the best you possibly can." You start to compete against the game itself. Given that, it's no surprise that people want to change the game because, and this is also part of it, you want to "do the best you possibly can" to emulate a certain kind of storytelling.