The Temperature of the Rules

Posted by Sage LaTorra on Dec 7, 2011 in Indies & More | 2 comments

Each week I do an Indies & More post where I take a look at Monte Cook’s Legends and Lore column for the week and share some thoughts on how other games and designers tackle the same issues. I’m not arguing with Monte or speaking for some larger design movement, these are just my thoughts on the same topic coming from a different gaming background. Since Monte’s writing for Wizards of the Coast he can’t talk about how other games deal with these issues, that’s why I write this column. This week Monte’s topic was defaults and GM judgement.

So, thermostats, eh?

I’ll start out by saying that I’m much more of a “The temperature is set at 70 degrees. If you want it warmer or cooler, here’s how you adjust the temperature” kind of person. Actually, I’m just a “The temperature is set at 70 degrees.*” person, where the footnote talks about changing the temperature, maybe.

I feel this way because the reason I hired a home planner (which I guess would be the analogy for a game designer here) is because they have some insights to share with me on this topic. They’re setting the thermostat to 70 for a reason, right?

What Monte’s suggesting, “give the DM a lengthy bit of guidance on how to adjudicate what can be done in a round based on circumstances, with lots of basic examples” is hard to pin down. “Guidance” is tenuous at best in games. After all, as Monte mentions this is guidance the DM might ignore, which means the designer can’t rely on the GM taking it, which makes it at best advice and at worst ignored.

Of course spelling out each and every thing that can be done without an action isn’t any more tenable. The allure of roleplaying games is that the world is portrayed by a living breathing person who can respond intelligently, not just with a canned list of what you can do. A creative player will always come up with something new.

There’s a middle ground, one that Blowback and Apocalypse World are excellent examples of. These games give the GM concrete rules to play by, not advice, that the GM can use to make decisions and decide if opening a door really is an action or not.

The difference is “DM decides” vs. “DM decides, based on these principles.” Take the opening a door example Monte throws out: if the DM is left to just make a call they could make it in a style that fits any number of games. In some games doors just aren’t obstacles. Not that they can’t get stuck or locked or whatever, but that stuck doors just aren’t the type of things the players deal with. If we’re playing in the style of Lord of the Rings opening doors just isn’t a thing (even when a door is an obstacle, it’s a puzzle, not an action). In some games carefully opening doors might be a key feature. If we’re playing canny dungeon delvers then opening doors might be an action, and an important one too.

Those different DM calls lead to dramatically different games, some of which might not be what the designer designed for.

Monte nails this exactly when he says “if you take the time instead to teach DMs how to make fair, intelligent, and consistent decisions and rulings on the fly, you make it easier to DM.” But that’s just the start. If you can reduce that element of time, partially by focusing the GM right toward the game that’s played with these rules, then GM calls become an option that even a beginning group can enjoy.

The time to teach the skills that Monte mentions has, for me, been largely trial and error. Many editions of D&D don’t do a great job of telling you what types of adventures really work with them. The DM learns to make judgement calls that line up with the rules, essentially crafting their own principles to make calls by. When the game provides those principles it’s easier for new GMs and the designer can better design for the game that actually gets played.

There’s one bit where I feel like the essay goes a little off the rails: “Empowering DMs from the start facilitates simulation.” First of all, why is the GM “empowered?” There isn’t some finite pool of authority split between the designer, the GM, and the players. The GM and the rulebook (i.e. the designer) work together. The GM isn’t there to fill in the details “the way no rulebook can.” A good rulebook is written to work with the GM, not provide some rules that the GM can then do whatever on top of. A rulebook fills in rules by giving the GM a system, including GM techniques and goals, to work with.

Taking Monte’s example again, the rules can cover all possible door openings by working with the GM. Consider giving the GM this goal: “You are here to portray a fantastic world around the player characters,” and this principle: “Make the player characters the heroes.” With those two rules (not just suggestions, rules) the GM can then make a call on any door and those calls will be largely consistent from GM to GM. Is the door a towering rusted iron gate? Well, it’s a fantastic world, even a hero can’t haul tons of iron that’s rusted solid. Is the door just a plank of wood put up by some goblins? The players are heroes, so that just falls before them.

This isn’t empowering the GM (or un-empowering either) it’s just giving the GM a framework to make the judgement calls that every game demands within. Monte frames this whole discussion as “overriding” the rules, which loses the point right off the bat. Rules can still be rules while leveraging the GM’s reason and creativity.