Whenever someone suggests that sometimes it’s ok to ignore the rules, someone else inevitably asks why you should even bother to use rules if you’re not going to slavishly follow them at all times, apparently to make sure that the discussion is safe from crows. A super-secret project that I’m currently working on required me to answer that question in some depth. This is what I came up with:<\/p>\n
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Due to a combination role-playing\u2019s wargaming roots and an early focus on combat and puzzle-solving that led to an adversarial relationship between players and GMs, the first few generations of RPGs were played like strategy games. The \u201cwin conditions\u201d–which usually involved survival, overcoming obstacles and increasing your character\u2019s power–were more open-ended than for a board or card game, but early RPGs were still mostly about finding ways to optimize or exploit the rules in your favor. These early games included elements of storytelling, but telling stories wasn\u2019t the main focus.<\/p>\n
Storytelling games have more in common with party games in which there\u2019s really no way to win purely through mastery of the game rules. No matter how well you understand the rules of Pictionary, you\u2019re not going to win if nobody can figure out what you\u2019re trying to draw. Also like party games, \u201cwinning\u201d has more to do with having fun with your friends than achieving victory conditions, even if those victory conditions are just a vague notion of character success. In fact, since the goal is to tell a good story, some games are more fun when characters suffer dramatically interesting failures. Storytelling games have more in common with Who\u2019s Line Is It Anyway? than Risk.<\/p>\n
Rules play a very different role in storytelling games than in RPGs rooted in strategy gaming. The goal of the rules in a storytelling game isn\u2019t to reward players who master the game system or to satisfy some vague notion of fairness or to settle interpersonal conflicts so players don\u2019t have to talk to each other like grown-ups. The goal of the rules in a storytelling game is to help the players tell the story. The following sections explain how.<\/p>\n
Collaborative storytelling without rules can be awkward for a lot of people. While childhood imagination is viewed as acceptable and even positive, engaging in imaginative pursuits as an adult is considered a little weird, at least when there\u2019s no secondary motive like personal growth or monetary gain. Even players who don\u2019t feel self-conscious or silly are sometimes intimidated by free-form storytelling due to lack of clear expectations. The game format provides an aura of purpose that makes pretending to be a fictional character seem more acceptable and the rules themselves provide guidelines and set expectations by defining characters and other story elements.<\/p>\n
Predictable stories are almost always boring stories. It\u2019s the twists, turns, and complications that keep the audience interested. Through the randomness provided by the dice, the game rules add an element of unpredictability that can send the story in unexpected directions. This both improves the story and provides more challenge to the players, since they have to react to these deviations from the obvious path.<\/p>\n
Scenes that rely heavily on character interaction are natural to GM and play because we get a reasonable facsimile of what the audience would experience. We hear the characters\u2019 dialog and in most cases see at least some approximation of their emotional reactions through the other players\u2019 facial expressions, vocal cues, and body language. Our acting and dialog might not be ready for prime time, but it’s usually good enough to ensure that everyone understands what\u2019s going on in the scene.<\/p>\n
When it comes to action scenes, things become considerably more difficult because more of the important details only exist in the imaginations of the players. Since everyone\u2019s brain works differently and most players aren\u2019t mind readers, it can be difficult to make sure everyone understands what\u2019s going on, which in turn makes it hard to make sure that the scene flows in a dramatically satisfying way. On top of that, players have to verbally describe scenes on the fly that they\u2019re used to experiencing visually or through carefully written (and re-written) prose, which can make it hard to decide what should happen next. The rules provide some structure to help ensure that everyone\u2019s on the same page and the dice rolls themselves provide a sense of the ebb and flow of the action by organizing the flurry of activity into discrete actions that we can interpret and react to.<\/p>\n
Orson Welles once said of James Cagney, \u201cNo one was more unreal and stylized, yet there is no moment when he was not true,\u201d and the accepting the difference between realism and truth is an important step in understanding story-driven role-playing. Stories don\u2019t have to be realistic, they have to be credible, and what is and isn\u2019t credible has more to do with genre conventions and dramatic resonance than scientific fact. A good super-hero movie can make you believe a man can fly, but the exact same scene would completely ruin the credibility of most buddy cop films.<\/p>\n
In RPGs, like in most fiction, establishing credibility is mainly about storytelling: making sure the story follows its own rules, the world is consistent, and the character\u2019s actions and decisions make sense. Game mechanics usually come into play when there\u2019s a question of whether or not it\u2019s believable for a character to do something. In most fiction, convincing an audience that a character\u2019s actions are credible is a function of the way in which the audience experiences the story; an author does it with words, an illustrator with pictures, and a filmmaker relies on the actors\u2019 performances, special effects, and assorted Hollywood magic. Whether the scene is credible is obvious in the finished product.<\/p>\n
Since RPGs take place completely within the imaginations of the players, we don\u2019t have the kind of experiential clues that most audiences use to determine credibility, and the fact that we\u2019re the creative team as well as the audience makes our judgement suspect anyway. We use dice and game rules to fill in that gap. Since RPGs are created and experienced simultaneously, we also don\u2019t have the luxury of re-writing scenes that aren\u2019t credible. Instead of writing things that aren’t credible out of the story, we treat them as attempts that didn\u2019t succeed and try to make the story work in light of the consequences of those failures. It\u2019s one of those dice-motivated challenges we mentioned earlier.<\/p>\n
Some character actions, like walking across the room, are obviously possible. Others, like ascending to a higher plane of existence and becoming a being of pure energy, are clearly not possible (at least in most games). For these kinds of actions, you don\u2019t need to bother with the rules. For actions that fall between the two extremes, you may need to roll some dice. Some common situations in which rules are used to settle questions of credibility are described below.<\/p>\n
If Robin Hood is practicing archery, he hits the bullseye every time. There\u2019s no need to roll because the character\u2019s skill with a bow is so well-established that failure would actually be less credible than flawless success. If he\u2019s trying to make the same perfect shot to win a wager that will save Little John from execution using a warped bow while Guy of Gisbourne screams insults into his ear, his success isn\u2019t quite so inevitable, so the rules come into play. Common extenuating circumstances include:<\/p>\n
John \u201cBluto\u201d Blutarsky is a pretty skilled motivational speaker, so he should have a decent chance of rallying the troops even the the guy playing him has trouble finding the right words and stumbles over his lines. On the flip side, the English major in the gaming group can almost certainly name the characters in The Great Gatsby with no problem, but is it really believable that the Larry the Cable Guy-inspired character he\u2019s playing would recognize the name Nick Carraway? Rolling the dice allows the GM to decide whether the character\u2019s incompetence cancels out the player\u2019s ability (or vice-versa), whether the character knows something the player doesn\u2019t, and whether the character shares a particular piece of knowledge with the player.<\/p>\n
The experience gap refers to situations where the outcome is based on things the player can\u2019t fully experience. For example, the player\u2019s only indication of what the character sees and hears is what the GM describes to him. If it\u2019s uncertain whether or not the character would notice something, the GM either has to make an arbitrary decision or roll some dice. Character memory is another good example of the experience gap, since the character probably remembers details that the player has forgotten or never knew in the first place.<\/p>\n
Every character has thousands of skills that they had to learn at some point. They also have brains full of information that they\u2019ve picked up over the course of their life. For example, most 21st Century Americans know how to do basic math, drive a car, and use a smart phone, among other things. They also know the rules to half a dozen or so sports, a random smattering of history, science, English, and other things they remember from school, and the lyrics to hundreds of pop songs and commercial jingles.<\/p>\n
Since trying to translate everything a character knows or can do into game mechanics would require months of player time and a character sheet several hundred pages long, and it would still be incomplete, we have to assume that the character knows and can do a lot of things completely unrelated to the abilities described on his character sheet. Usually, a character\u2019s assumed abilities and knowledge are obvious from the character concept and other things we know about the character, so there\u2019s no need to bother with the dice unless there are extenuating circumstances. However, if a player wants to do something that\u2019s so far outside of his character\u2019s wheelhouse that it stretches credibility–for example, if a hedge fund manager wants to operate a backhoe–he should have to roll.<\/p>\n
Whenever you roll a die, there\u2019s a moment of anticipation. When combined with good storytelling techniques, this anticipation can make things more exciting, create tension, or even make the players nervous (especially if the GM asks them to make a roll without explaining what they\u2019re rolling for). Relying solely on dice rolling to set the scene is a terrible idea, but if the players seem bored, coming up with an excuse to let them roll some dice can sometimes get them back in the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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