Rules Lawyers: The Most Important Rules in all GURPS

[Ulzgoroth]

I don't really trust any GM who thinks it's good to lean on rule zero, rather than a sometimes-necessary backup option for failure modes, especially realtime ones.

GM's unassisted judgement, no matter what else it may be, is opaque. It makes cause and effect into a psychological guessing game.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by tbone

Out of curiosity: One often hears of the dreaded "Rules Lawyer" who badgers the GM with technicalities and literal readings of rules that favor the PC. But how often do such players actually plague the game table?

I ran typically about five GURPS games at each of three conventions per year, so have run into it. I remember one player who became so notorious for it at a single convention that before the end of the weekend us GURPS GMs referred to him privately by his first initial--and we all knew who was meant.

I played an online game with a player who did the rules lawyer thing. When I showed a list of dozens of times Basic says some variation of "the GM has the final say," he insulted me and immediately left.

[Alden Loveshade]

When it comes to games where the rules can and do clearly cover every single thing that can be done in game play, I'm a rules lawyer. If I play tabletop Poker, Monopoly, Chess, Checkers, etc., I keep the rules handy. Doing that can discourage and even eliminate arguments. When a disagreement starts, I'll say, "Let's look that up."

But RPGs like GURPS let you do everything you could possibly do in real life and a whole lot more (engage in starship battles, travel back to World War II, turn an elf into a frog, etc.) There's no way any set of rules is going to cover all of that in precise detail. Which is why the GM's word is final--although, again, the most important rule is "have fun."

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

I showed a list of dozens of times Basic says some variation of "the GM has the final say," he insulted me and immediately left.

There will always be players who refuse to understand that the "game" in "roleplaying game" is a historical accident, and in fact that RPGs aren't "games" in the mathematical sense, but a kind of interactive storytelling with a few incidental algorithms to introduce risk and randomness. Such people typically want closed, boardgame- or wargame-like rules sets (like chess) that could in principle be judged by a computer, and that limit human judgment to the choice of which piece to move or which strategy to adopt. That is, they want only the "moves" to be subjective, not the rules framework itself – which of course puts them at odds with exactly what caused RPGs to diverge from the wargames that inspired them, which was the desire to have the rules become mutable from within the game, much as an author might redraft a passage or chapter!

In some cases, this is because they lack some fundamental social skill, making them bad at negotiation and renegotiation with the other people at the table. In others, it's because they got burned by a bad GM one time, and have decided to overreact and assume that all GMs are like that (in extreme cases, they see the GM in much the same way that anarchists see "the Man" or "the System": inherently corrupt and adversarial to them). In yet other cases, it's because they came to RPGs from boardgames or wargames, with the mistaken belief that since boardgames, card games, dice games, RPGs, wargames, etc. are all tabletop games made by the same kinds of companies and sold at the same kinds of shops, they should all play the same way. And in a rare few cases, it's because they don't like playing games at all; their real hobby is mathematical modeling, whether that means creating characters, vehicles, or worlds.

I think we just have to suffer the existence of such people as part of the price of playing RPGs.

We get the same thing in Argentine tango: There are people who can't grasp that it's a 100% improvised dance, with no basic step or fixed patterns that go with particular music; that it has no globally recognized standards for teaching or competing; and that it has a deep, broad, opaque social dimension that's more important than the technical one. They try to compare it to ballroom dance, or to salsa, or to some other style. They wonder where the "level system" is. They think the teachers should be able to produce teaching certificates. They can't grasp why conversational skills, networking, looks, style of dress, personal hygiene, etc. all matter more than how well you dance. So they become difficult, cause issues, and eventually have to be invited out.

My interest in RPGs actually comes from the same part of my brain as my interest in Argentine tango: a desire to engage in improvisation, interpretation, social interaction, and semi-structured chaos.

[Anders]

The problem is that while it's true that the GM makes the rules, that doesn't tell me why I should play GURPS rather than make up my own rules. I heard Douglas Cole discuss adventures and why he doesn't accept stuff like "the GM may insert his own treasure here." The reason I buy adventures is because I don't have the time, the inclination, or the aptitude for doing that. The same goes for rules.

Also, Kromm - have you thought about learning how to play jazz?

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Kromm

There will always be players who refuse to understand that the "game" in "roleplaying game" is a historical accident, and in fact that RPGs aren't "games" in the mathematical sense, but a kind of interactive storytelling with a few incidental algorithms to introduce risk and randomness.

The first time I played an RPG, it felt like no other game I had played before. It seemed less like a game and more like being inside of a story, just like you said. It still feels that way to me.

Originally Posted by Kromm

We get the same thing in Argentine tango: There are people who can't grasp that it's a 100% improvised dance, with no basic step or fixed patterns that go with particular music; that it has no globally recognized standards for teaching or competing; and that it has a deep, broad, opaque social dimension that's more important than the technical one. They try to compare it to ballroom dance, or to salsa, or to some other style.

I had a related difficulty in music; as a kid, choir and piano were definitely follow the notes and timing exactly. I loved that. But when I started learning about improvised music, it was a "whole 'nother ball game." It took me a while, but I found I loved that too.

[ericthered]

The corollary to rule zero is this:


"The GM must have the fun of the players as his foremost concern"


Without that rule, rule zero can easily wreck as much harm as good on a game. Players need to be able to trust their Game Masters.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Kromm

There will always be players who refuse to understand that the "game" in "roleplaying game" is a historical accident, and in fact that RPGs aren't "games" in the mathematical sense, but a kind of interactive storytelling with a few incidental algorithms to introduce risk and randomness.

I don't understand why you'd play, let alone write, GURPS if that's what you want. There are lots of games that are actually built around the idea that they're interactive storytelling rather than having almost all of the published material being in the 'incidental algorithms' that are often seen to obstruct that agenda.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I don't understand why you'd play, let alone write, GURPS if that's what you want. There are lots of games that are actually built around the idea that they're interactive storytelling rather than having almost all of the published material being in the 'incidental algorithms' that are often seen to obstruct that agenda.

GURPS is generic and universal. Not everybody wants the same crunchy bits to spice up their fluff . . . that changes with genre, power level, play style, etc. Most of GURPS is there to give specific micro-sets of gamers the spice they need for their games; there are dozens or hundreds of such micro-sets, whence hundreds of supplements and sub-systems. The problem is when the entire oeuvre is taken as "necessary." While we appreciate the business of collectors who buy everything, we don't really aim the game at using more than a few percent of it at a time.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

There are lots of games that are actually built around the idea that they're interactive storytelling

Also – and I don't expect agreement, but this is important to me and certainly how I see it – those games fail at interactive storytelling because they generally offer rules for that. GURPS takes the stance that interactive storytelling comes almost entirely from the players of the game and doesn't require rules. Thus, by focusing its attention away from that, it does a good job of supporting it.