Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 4: The Quality of Rules
A lot of blogs and articles talk about “realism” (or verisimilitude) in RPGs and how to achieve it. Campaign Mastery is no different in this respect, a number of my articles having dealt with the subject. Over the last few weeks, as I write this, I’ve been spending time thinking about a fundamental question that a lot of these articles and opinions take for granted. Just what is “realism”, anyway?
A lot of people seem to assume that “Realism” means a slavish dedication to representing, in-game, a physical reality that is dictated by the best knowledge imparted by modern science and distributed through encyclopedias, textbooks, and the internet.
Opposing this interpretation are an equally-vocal and ideologically-entrenched faction who support an absolute fidelity to the rules as printed – sometimes, as mis-printed – in any official source.
I think they are both wrong.
An Alternative Definition
For my money, “realism” is fidelity to both the genre of the game and a subordinate fidelity to the specifics of the individual campaign, as I have explained in past articles.
That fidelity should extend to *all* facets of the in-game RPG experience and this represents an extension of the philosophy that I have previously outlined.
The truer the game mechanics are to the genre (and possibly the subgenre) in question, the “better” those rules can be adjudged to be. While some compromise may be necessary in terms of game balance or playability, this aspect of “reality” is equally critical to the effectiveness of the game system.
Similarly, the adventures that take place within the campaign should be true to the genre and subgenre, and so should the character types, and the house rules, and the encounter types, and the internal logic running through the plotlines, and, well – everything.
The Implications For Reverse-Engineering Rules
It follows that genre conventions can be used as a key to identifying the intent of the game designer when the game mechanics were designed, to an extent that is directly proportionate to the quality of those rules in terms of simulating the genre in question.
Each time that a rules system or subsystem’s mechanics become understood, a perceptive GM will ask themselves what aspect of the genre those rules are attempting to simulate, because the answer should explain not only why those particular rules are the way they are, it can shed light on the question of why other rules work the way they do, and that in turn can make those rules more comprehensible.
Similarly, if there is a rules system or subsystem that makes no sense after reading and re-reading it, identifying the genre conventions that the subsystem represents can provide a catalyst to comprehension.
The Limitations
This approach doesn’t always work. Game systems are designed by people, and nothing created by people is ever perfect. No game system is ever uniformly excellent at simulating the “realism” of a genre, even before those compromises mentioned earlier are taken into account. So this tachnique is also going to be imperfect, by definition.
However, this imperfection provides a system for measuring the utility of house rules, and that can be the most valuable outcome of this particular analytical tool.
A standard for the assessment of House Rules
If the quality of a rules subsystem is measured apon a triumverate of metrics, as described earlier, then any change in those rules must improve one of the three qualities, and by a greater margin than the cost in the other attributes if it is to be adjudged a universal improvement.
Understandably, this is quite rare. If a rules subsystem is so obviously flawed that it can be so easily improved, that flaw is usually discovered during playtesting and the game mechanic replaced with something more functional.
More commonly, then, a house rule will shift a game mechanic subsystem on one axis at the expense of some sacrifice in one or both of the other attributes. A house rule may make the game system more playable, or it may eliminate an unfair advantage conferred by a particular loophole, or it may more accurately simulate the genre of the campaign. It may even do two of these, at the expense of a massive penalty in the remaining quality.
This is where the artistry of rules design can be found, because clearly there can be no one right answer to the challenge posed by the design of a given game subsystem. Every subsystem is a compromise, and a slightly different compromise may be perfectly acceptable, even preferable, to some GMs.
One GM may be willing to sacrifice a little more playability in exchange for a lot more “realism” or much better game balance, because he has a greater capacity for remembering and interpreting a slew of complicated game mechanics. Another may make the same choice because he has settled for a more abstract subsystem elsewhere in the game mechanics to free up capacity for this more “realistic” variant on the subsystem.
Others may be overwhelmed by the existing game mechanics and need a more abstract, playable substitute for a given subsystem. Or may want to simplify this element of the game system to permit them to place greater emphasis
But here’s the thing that a lot of House Rule designers overlook: not all the rules are in play all the time. Rules on character improvement don’t make any difference to attack rolls, rules on language handling don’t make much difference when adjudicating ranged weapons fire, and so on. It’s not the total complexity that matters, it’s the cumulative moment-to-moment loading on the GM that determines whether they are overwhelmed by a change.
In conclusion
Not everything has to make sense in a game, so long as it makes sense in the context of the genre conventions. And that’s the difference between “Realism” as most GMs define it, and how I apply it to RPG design.
- Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 1: Introduction
- Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 2: Getting Enthusiastic About Rules
- Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 3: Student, Tutor Thyself
- Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 4: The Quality of Rules
- Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 5: Rules Touchstones – Combat
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January 6th, 2011 at 6:40 am
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by JohnnFour. JohnnFour said: Campaign Mastery – Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 4: The Quality of Rules http://bit.ly/gFmcI5 #rpg […]
January 6th, 2011 at 8:17 am
Great post! I completely agree. Of course, I’m all about genre emulation these days, so it’s preaching to the choir.
Siskoid recently posted..Doctor Who RPG- Voyagers! Edition
January 6th, 2011 at 8:36 am
It’s only a choir when there’s more than one voice, Siskoid, so thanks for standing up to be counted!
January 6th, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Great article, Mike!
One of the things I’m trying out in my upcoming RPG, Mystic Empyrean (www.mysticempyrean.com), is giving GMs the option of which minor game systems they feel like including in the game world. With each system they add, a small section explains the benefits and costs of having the system in your campaign. Listening to your advice, I think I should include the intent of the system as well, so that players can decide if the rules fit the effect they’re trying to create in their game, or if they should create their own rules instead.
January 7th, 2011 at 3:13 am
Wow, that’s great, Church! It really feels great when something you’ve written can have such an immediate effect. Hope the idea proves beneficial.
January 7th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
[…] Rules Mastery For Dummies & Busy GMs Part 4: The Quality of Rules […]
January 8th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Great article, and food for thought in my recent struggle to find a ruleset that works for me as a GM and for my players.
Currently I’m prioritizing an economy of player actions that translate to rich actions for PCs. So, probably less realistic, but I still need some level of simulation for the 25% or so of my players that crave that.
January 8th, 2011 at 5:53 pm
@Anarkeith: It could be argued that the more economical the player actions have to be for a given level of translation into results, the more faith the players have to have in the process of translating from cause to effect, and the greater the level of realism that is required to achieve this. At the same time, as you have implied, it also implies a more abstract mechanism – and the two are hard to reconcile. The most extreme version of this sort of game mechanic that I’m aware of are the old play-by-email systems, where a player provides a paragraph describing what they are attempting to do and the approach that they will employ to achieve it, and the GM can spend one or more pages in reply descibing the in-game action and results for the player. I don’t know whether that’s helpful at all, but it might be kindling to help cook your food for thought.
January 9th, 2011 at 12:32 am
Great point (and example), Mike. I think this speaks to the difference between old-school RPGs (I’m thinking 1st Ed D&D, really), and 3rd Ed, for example. Early editions seemed to have space in them for DMs to adjudicate, which does require player faith. My players show up in good numbers for my monthly game, so I hope they have faith in me as a DM. So, my hope is that they’re open to rule systems that are more abstract.
A few of them have encyclopedic knowledge of various rule sets, or have written their own. Your post got me thinking more about my players, their reaction to the rules I use (both published and house) and how they worked in the context of the type of game we play. In considering house rules, I want to focus on rules to tailor my game to our actual gaming style. As you point out, for me it’s simplifying one aspect to ease the mechanical load on players and DM.
January 9th, 2011 at 4:48 am
@ Anarkeith: Actually, I would argue that both old-school and new-school require equal faith, but in different things.
Old school requires faith in the GM and his fairness and decision making and interpretive processes.
New School takes a lot of that decision making away from the GM, or tries to, with more comprehensive game mechanics. This doesn’t require as much faith in the GM as it does faith in the fairness of the game mechanics. These are game systems made with rules lawyers in mind.
House Rules, by virtue of the fact that they inherantly alter those game mechanics, require old-school faith, and are the bane of rules lawyers.
It was thinking about how the question of realism impacted on these notions that led my thinking to the concepts contained in the article. This corrospondance really gets to the foundations and assumptions and concepts at its heart – which are always worth knowing. So long as you can articulate a coherant answer to the question, “why did you write this” when you’re talking about rules, you have an objective standard of measurement of whether or not what you have written achieves its goals, and hence whether or not it is ‘realistic’ within the confines of the definition given in the article.
‘Useful’ is a whole different kettle of fish. The artistry lies in compromises between realism and practicality that don’t have cracks and flaws in places that matter. Every rule can be better in one of the three criteria that I discuss – but that doesn’t necessarily make them better in terms of the game, overall. Judging between them is where defining the objective helps!
January 13th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
There’s a lot of useful reference material out there for this article, Mike. A lot of them include means of classifying various genres of things. However, genre itself is a very nebulous term, and in itself means different things depending upon context, and a lot of discussions and debates over genre often reflect upon different understanding of this very word.
At it’s heart, genre is simply the term given to a classification of ideas, mostly in the form of media, to enable efficient labelling and generalization of the objects being classified so that they are easy to compare with each other.
In this very sense, genre is an objective or defining quality, assuming that everyone is using the same definitions. Without these scared assumptions, they become subjective and open to interpretation, which often reduces their effectiveness as labels.
Realism is just one definition of genre, and is easily related to the now somewhat standardised GNS (Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist) index of roleplaying games that tries to define their core concept or the focus of the game itself, and where the rules lie in this regard.
More often than not, realism seems to form an axis between the Narrativist and Simulationist viewpoints, which is basically the conflict between story and mechanics. I explicitly avoided using the term rules, because both of these have their own sets of rules.
Gamist viewpoints also have rules, but realism isn’t a regarded feature for RPGs with this focus, since by definition Gamist systems focus on the game itself rather than any notion of realism.
For simulationist systems, the realism comes from the mechanics to emulate a computer program – it is of no little coincidence that the more popular computer RPGs tend to use the more simulationist systems like D&D. They tend to focus on physics and science for their realism – be it for combat encounters that end up becoming like an imaginary version of Newton’s Laws of Motion, or for characters that act like case studies from Freud’s principles of psychoanalysis. Economics that rival Keynesian theory, and campaigns and cosmology that can bring in real world political and social policies.
On the other hand, narrativist viewpoints tend to favour the realism of the story, as a media for creative expressionism, improvisation, self-discovery, and freedom of thought, rather than hard and fast mechanics. They tend to favour extraction, and instead often fall upon the rules of common tropes and cliches that can often read like the developers have studied a great deal of literature and media principles, such as plot pacing, idea projection, and emotive provocation. They tend to focus more on the art of the stories and the messages they convey to the people involved.
Gamism doesn’t do realism very well – they are more focused on utility and gaming. In such a sense, gamist systems focus on the meta aspects of the game, and the realism of the game itself, rather than any aspect of roleplaying. For gamist systems, realism is the minatures, the battlemat, and the numbers, far more than what they actually represent in the imagination. Realism is the marks on your character sheet, the dice in your hand, and the book of rules in front of you. Gamism is the part that means when you say “Let’s play D&D,” the players reach for their dice bags and minis, pretty much as the response to “Let’s play some Magic” is often to start shuffling a deck of cards and grab some tokens.
It’s not really a case of defining what is realism, especially when it often becomes a debate about what is more realistic. In truth, they are all real, in very different ways, and key to gaining Rules Mastery is to understanding exactly what each system’s realism actually is – what makes your game real.
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January 13th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
@Da’Vane: I get the impression that we are once again heading for the same destination, but coming to it from very different directions.
The polar extremes of the GNS axis, and the debate over which is “better” or “right” are what I was referring to in the opening paragraphs of the article. It was, and is, my contention that a third element outweighs both – the tone and conventions of the style of adventure/narrative that the GM seeks to run.
If I’m running a high fantasy campaign, there are certain things that I expect the rules to support – melodramatic combat, armies in battle, powerful magic that can (and does) reshape the world, sweeping events that permanently change societies and their relationships to each other, and so on.
If I’m running a low fantasy campaign, there are completely different genre conventions that are assumed.
The point of the article is that no objective measure of the quality of rules structure is possible if the game mechanics don’t provide and reinforce those genre conventions. It’s a notion that came to me when I was contemplating the fact that 3.x tries to encompass the entire spectrum of the fantasy genre, and fails to completely nail either as a result. High level magic is too powerful, and magic items assumed to be too prevelant, for a low-fantasy campaign, but magic isn’t powerful enough, and the mechanics are not abstract enough for a high-fantasy campaign either – they get in the way, and need extension. It occupies a middle ground, neither this nor that, in the process staking out its own little niche.
All too often, when people are assessing House Rules, or even changes to the Official Rules, they operate exclusively on the GNS axis, or they talk about the “flavor” having changed without being able to summarise exactly how and why. That’s because they are using the GNS axis and there’s no place on it for genre considerations, so they are reduced to saying “it’s different and I love it because it’s better for the game I want to run” or “it’a different and I hate it because the changes get in the way of the game I want to run” – frequently simplified to the basic reaction with no analysis whatsoever. Those assessing the changes then dive directly into game mechanics and specific changes because there is no tool in their understanding for generalising.
Each edition of a game system occupies a slightly different position on the GNS-and-Genre landscape to the one before it, defining it’s own “comfort zone” in terms of the genres that it can comfortable simulate without rules modification. Some of them will overlap – some won’t, and don’t. I think that’s the source of a lot of the angst felt over the “edition wars” of D&D. From everything I’ve seen and heard, 4e does a better job of focussing on the low-fantasy end of the fantasy spectrum, and it’s better-defined in it’s focus on that niche. It’s geared to shorter campaigns so that characters never get to the point of being capable of the sweeping and epic attributes of a high-fantasy campaign. My tastes run to high-fantasy, and even 3.x with Epic-level characters doesn’t lean far enough in that direction for me; but those rules are closer to simulating the chosen genre of the games that I am running, that can and will take many years to play out, than 4e. So for my games, 3.x is better than 4e.
If I’m running 1930s-to-1950s science fiction, the rules system that I will reach for before any other is original Traveller – simply because they capture the essence of the genre conventions better than any game system I’ve encountered since.
Because of that fidelity to the conventions of the genre, and subgenre, those rules are better in the context of such a campaign. They may be less “realistic” in terms of simulating real-world physics but they are more “realistic” – if “realism” is defined in terms of the style of campaign under consideration and the genre conventions that go with it, and that was the point of the article.
“Realism” is only a virtue if it matches the genre and sub-genre of the campaign. Which is pretty much what you’ve said in the last sentence of your comment. That’s why the article eventually abandons the use of the term in preferance for “better” or “worse”. And that’s where this whole journey started – attempting to define an answer to the question of how one could judge the merits of a particular House Rule.
January 13th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
@Mike – as I mentioned, there are other definitions of genre, and most discussions relate to debates about these definitions. I focused on just one – the GNS spectrum – as this relates best to the over-arching genre of the game.
The comparison between high- and low-fantasy campaigns, and for that point, sci-fi, pulp noir, and others are all of another different definition of genre.
For example, there is literary or setting-based genre – which often contain concepts, ideas, and tropes, including relevant specifics for rules which are tailored to them. Spycraft actually includes rules for tailoring camapigns for different genres, and as a result, changing the balance of actual mechanics – making certain actions easier or harder, or speeding up or slowing advancement rates, and so forth. Even something as simple as whether or not characters make saves from massive damage can drastically change the genre.
In the video games industry, genre is more commonly used to define the gameplay itself, revolving around how the players are going to interact with the game. The Escapist recently worked on a new spectrum for video games which defines gameplay in terms of conflict vs. exploration and strategy vs. action axis, upon which classic video game genres like driving simulations, shooters, and real time strategy are linked.
This above model can easily be interpreted as to whether the focus of the game/campaign is on story development against powerful antagonists, or whether it is focused on more sandbox and status quo like gameplay; and whether or not the rules/mechanics favour comprehensive and in depth tactical thought, or quick and simple random fun.
As for D&D 4th Edition, everything I have seen and heard implies that it is geared for tactical combat, but many people favour lower-level play and campaigns simply because of the information overload that accompanies higher level campaigns which often make it more work for less reward. A big part of this comes from the rules trying to cover for every eventuality, it seems, and even GMs begin to lose track of what the creatures can do and when they can do it. Thus, this appears to be more of a feedback result than any actual definitive genre decision.
Da’ Vane recently posted..The Legend of Zelda Revised Sourcebook
January 13th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
Okay, I see where you’re coming from. However, this blog relates to Tabletop RPGs, with the occasional left-field tangent to that subject. Since RPGs would be just one of the genres as defined by the videogame industry, I don’t see how that definition of genre is really applicable. I was using the term genre as it is conventionally used within the English Language. It would be preferable – and avoid confusion – if some other term could be found for what the Videogames industry are defining here, because the traditional sense of the word would still apply to their products, but I have to admit that I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
Story development vs sandbox, and tactical depth vs hack-and-slash, are functions of a given genre’s definition, in my book, or – in some cases – subgrenre. Another such function is heavy vs weak continuity. There are undoubtedly others, all serving (in combination) to define a particular genre, subgenre, and campaign within a given subgenre. That’s an example of exactly the sort of thing I was talking about when I said that the game mechanics had to properly reflect the genre and its conventions in order for them to be considered “good mechanics” when implementing that genre.
In theory, there is absolutely nothing to stop you from using D&D to run a victorian-era horror adventure, or traveller, or toon. But the mechanics of those systems would be a poor fit for such a campaign; they would hit the wrong beats, emphasise the wrong things, and behave inappropriately. Large quantites of the rules would have no relevance, while vital areas of the genre might not be addressed at all.
Regarding 4e, I agree with your assessment of the system and the probable cause of the increased focus on lower-level sandboxed gaming. Regardless of the reasons for the decisions, the fact ultimately remains that 4e is less conducive to high fantasy than 3.x/d20. It might be the best thing since sliced bread, the best game system ever when viewed from the standpoint of achieving it’s target niche – but if it doesn’t service my campaign needs, or your campaign needs, or anyone’s campaign needs, its not a good set of rules so far as they are concerned. It becomes counterproductive, hindering instead of helping. Which rather proves my point, I think.
January 14th, 2011 at 2:35 am
Well, what most people regard as genre for things, including RPGs, is in fact derived from literary and other non-interactive media, so is really only one half of the definition.
The video games industry definition of genre is exactly the same as every other definition, but the list is different, because video games deal with interactive media. In fact, the definition of a video game as part an roleplaying game is actually based on the amount of freedom and choice that the player has within the game with regards to their own character.
Most video games can be classed as roleplaying games under the definition that the players are playing a role within a story – be it a platform game like Mario, and action-adventure game like the Legend of Zelda, or a computer roleplaying game like Morrowind.
Since tabletop roleplaying games are best described as a form of interactive storytelling with a structured rules system, they are best defined by genre with an eye towards both literary genres and video game genres, since they actively use both extensively to become their own medium with their own list.
As it stands however, genre discussions for roleplaying games tend to be like alignment discussions in D&D where one side argues the Law vs. Chaos axis, and the other argues the Good vs. Evil axis, without regard to the fact that the other axis/definition is also part of the discussion.
Pretty much as we often seem to do, Mike, where we come to the same conclusions but from different directions and viewpoints that although relevant, often only represent a small aspect of a much larger picture.
Da’ Vane recently posted..The Legend of Zelda Revised Sourcebook
November 13th, 2013 at 11:10 am
[…] that I use to teach myself the basic rules of a new game in about 18 one-hour sessions. Part Four, The Quality Of Rules, considers the question of “realism” within an RPG and derives a principle for […]
August 31st, 2015 at 11:31 pm
[…] vs. Narrative vs. Simulationist, which was last discussed in the comments section of my post “The Quality Of Rules” but that relates to the level of narrative vs. game mechanics within a campaign or rules […]