010 Rulings

Joining the x-ray team today are Jason Beaumont, Eric Saltwell, and>> Hey everyone. Hello. myself, Ethan Schoonover. As always, before jumping into the main course, we like to start things off with an amuse-bouche we call Appendix X. So in appendix X, we do a little summary of all the media we're consuming currently with a particular eye towards how it could be applied to gaming. For me, what I've been into for the last couple weeks is I have finally spent a lot of time, effort, and now I guess money to get a upgrade by home theater system and my home office, a place to listen to my records and listen to music. So I guess I've been consuming just a lot more media just in general, just as I kind of enjoy that. And part of that whole process, if you're somebody like me, as you start reading tons of forums and tons of guides on, okay, here's how to listen to see if your speakers handle attack or decay correctly and all this other stuff, which kind of bops you around to different songs or different movies. And during all that, you're kind of isolating or attempting to isolate a really specific part of what you're experiencing. You're playing a piece of music and you're just trying to hear the hi-hat on the drums, or you're trying to just hear how the violin kind of comes in and out in the descriptive language that all of these use are a little bit like laughable. There's like a little bit of like this kind of crazy audiophile language that gets used. But what I've learned just kind of by experiencing it and just like reflexively listening is I think it's expanding my vocabulary for talking about senses and like what you hear and what you're seeing, which is something I've always been a little bit weak on in the tabletop experience. As a GM, I'll try to describe a scene, but it's a lot of like analogy or a lot of, "Oh, you know, like in this other thing." And I felt like my descriptive kind of just vocabulary wasn't as rich as I wish it was. It reminds me a bit of the really excellent volumes that Woxy put out for Curse of Strahd, where they actually dedicate an entire section in both like the adventure and then in their Ravenloft settings thing to just like words. Just like, you know, here's phrases that evoke certain kind of senses. And so that's been my appendix X for me is a lot of different media. And then that has been expanding my vocabulary for senses. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, me too. Wow. What a great idea. Right. Right. I do this all the time. I mean, I think we've all been in this experience where we're trying our best to describe like a tense situation or a battle or something that's happening. And finally, a player will just like be like,"Could you just draw like where everybody is and what's going on right now?" And there was a big kind of, you know, climax scene in one of the games we were all playing together where everybody was battling these cultists out back of like this old English manor. And they were doing this ritual around this giant stone kind of object. And I felt like I had really done a good job laying out like,"Okay, there's like this line of trees around it. There's this clearing. At the center of the clearing is this stone pedestal. There's all these cultists." And as we began playing and everyone would describe what their characters were doing, I was like, "That's not where any of your characters are. What are you guys talking about?" And I realized how I had failed to really get what was in my brain out onto the table well enough. Mm-mm. Mm-hmm. Oh, good point. Yeah. How about you, Eric? What have you been listening to or playing or paying attention to lately? So I've been watching Loki with my son, and it's one of our last stitch attempts to continue to partake of the Marvel milieu. And it was amazing and excellent. And the reason that I think it pulls back into gaming is that the end of it, which I thought was as good of an ending of a large multi-season piece of IP as I've seen, is that it really embodied what we've talked about in a previous episode about having kind of different modes of play as you increase in level from street-level superheroes to city-level superheroes to world-level superheroes. Mm. And Loki did that very well where it upped its game in season two and was able to really pull off expanding the scope of the story in a way that really felt like players going up in level. That's cool. I like that a lot. Yeah. I haven't watched it yet, so... Yeah. Yeah, it's strong. No, no. I'm behind on like all things TV, unfortunately. Yeah. Nice. Wow. Wow, that's amazing. So let me ask, I know that in, back to the ham radio thing for a second. My understanding is that there are channels out there that are just people reading, like, this is like a Russian radio thing where they read. Oh, the signal stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've definitely been trying to find ways in my life to add that to my games is the use of those channels and, yeah. Oh, totally. Oh, that's a really, that's a super, super fascinating idea. Yeah, that would be amazing. I always wondered, you know, when I see, you know, because we're on Discord together and stuff like that, and I see you, you know, like, I went on this hike and, you know, I have my portable ham set up, Yeah. and I contacted Cambodia. I always wonder, like, what is it that you exchange? Do you exchange call signs, or do you say something about your lives? Like, what, like, what, what does happen there?>> Yeah, so for me, if I'm really doing like real distant communications, it's almost always involving a digital mode which is super structured. And it's what I do is I broadcast my name effectively my call sign, Hmm. which is Whiskey7ZuluOscarOscar. And that goes out over the air, digitally encoded very roughly. And it's actually designed to survive just the absolute worst signal degradation that you can imagine. And because of that, and this is all it's all math at the end of the day, right? Hmm. It's phase encoded, so it's shifting the sine wave back and forth. And the receiver on the other end picks it up. And then the rule of the game of this mode is that they are supposed to respond to me with their call sign and a signal report. How faint was my signal, how strong? I see. I see. I then do the same, I do a final signal report. And then in order to complete the game, we have to say goodbye. There's a little bit of a, yes, there's a little bit of a politeness step to it as well. Yeah. Oh, I like that. I like that part. And, yeah, and so once you both say goodbye, then you're, or at least one of the parties says goodbye, then it's all wrapped up and you can log it and you have completed that contact in that country. Yes, well, one of the great things is we now publish, you know, we all kind of publish, I feel like I would just be so desperate to know, like, who are you? What are you doing? Who do you think I am? You know, like, that just seems like such a fascinating part of, yeah. at least people who are very active do publish little biographies online at a common website. And so you can look up who this other person is quite often. Hmm. And it is just fascinating. I mean, I've talked to guys who are just like in a shack in the jungle. And it is, it is amazing. It's also amazing they're on the air at all. Incredible. That's amazing. So it's a wonderful hobby. I really encourage, I feel like there's a good overlap with kind of nerdy role-playing gamers. And, yeah. Of course, yeah, I'm totally with you. Yeah. All right, so let's get into the meat of the episode today. Today's episode is rules and rulings. So a ruling is, actually, let me take a step back. A rule is something that is a mechanical part of your system. It is often pulled from the text that defines the game system that you're playing. So if you're playing a fifth edition game, then rolling a d20 against, and it's trying to roll over a difficulty class, that would be an example of a rule. Or how your characters level up could be a rule. In Apocalypse World, the defined list of moves are all rules. In contrast, rulings are intended to use just human judgment as a replacement, and is what really creates one of the defining characteristics of role-playing games, which is that you can do anything. What I'm seeing actually show up more and more in the industry called tactical infinity, the fact that you could just do anything. And it's what really makes tabletop role-playing different and unique compared to, say, a computer role-playing game. And Ethan, I think you were the one that we were talking over Discord months and months ago, and you had said, "Oh, yeah, well, that's because," you know, you were referencing a philosophy of rulings over rules, which is that rulings are the things that should be primary and have authority over rules. And I thought that was really interesting and really, for me, encapsulated a lot of what the game means. And so I think our discussion today is about, hey, rulings, how do they get used? What are some of the problems that happen in using, when you use it? And then what are some of the benefits? Could you have a game that was just rulings? Hmm. And if so, what would be the cost of doing that? Like, what would you lose? And so here we are. Thoughts, folks? Go on, Ethan. It's a little bit up my alley. Because I would say that the balance between rulings and rules are what makes your table kind of almost the most unique thing, right? And, you know, I think that you're almost more than everything we discussed earlier in Appendix X about ways that you talk at the table. And I think that the way that you talk about rules or their flexibility or inflexibility and how they think about those things, I think, determines the character of the table at play almost more than anything. It's my guess. It's just my hunch when I think about what you just said, Eric. So can you give us an example of a type of—a place where you tend to rely on rulings over rules? I think that'll be good to give people an example of a ruling, but also I think help inform kind of where are rulings really valuable. Yeah, I would actually say the place where I end up more in the rulings camp than rules is actually in combat. Because I think we often get into situations where when we're in a combat scene in a game, if the GM starts from a, you know, the player describes an action, and then you're immediately kind of decomposing that into, like, some certain rules for them. I think oftentimes they try to hunt for what those rules are a little bit to figure out what their moves are, you know, in a sense. And so I will oftentimes, even when I know I could probably get down to brass tacks on a rule here, I'll use movement in combat as an example, right? Yeah. I think, you know, when you learn, like, somebody can move 25 feet a turn versus 30 feet a turn, I almost never think of that in play. I just think of, like, one character is kind of speedy, and if, like, the move that they're trying to pull off expresses that speediness, my ruling often is like, "Okay, that sounds reasonable. You know, your difficulty level is going to be this," right? And so I think that's where I often end up in that interplay, where even when I know the system has some mechanics in place for me, and I could do the work to present some rules at the table, I often find myself, depending on the players I'm playing with, wanting to go more in the ruling category. And then I'll pull out the rules here and there, like, "Okay, what you're describing is this kind of thing that the system has," and then I'll use that as a way to illustrate, like, the way the system works. Is that what you were looking for, Eric, as an example? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what is—for you there, what is the benefit principally that—about play efficiency? That you don't have to go back to the rules system and that slow down your game? There's definitely that part. I think that's a benefit, but to me, it's more about encouraging expressiveness at the table, because especially I think we often, the three of us, end up playing with people that don't have the level of system mastery that we have. Yeah. I mean, they're not on, like, making a podcast about how RPGs work. Sure. They're more than happy to come once a week or two and play with us and explore the worlds that we're creating. And so for them, they don't know how promotion points work in the Blade Runner game. And so I often will gently bring in, "Okay, there's this mechanic, there's this mechanic." Right. But if I think it's going to hamper their expressiveness or if I see them kind of flipping through the rulebook in between times when their character is highlighted, that's often when I try to, like, more foreground the rulings versus the rules. Yep. Yep. Right, right. Yep. Yeah, I don't know. Right. Yeah, I think about the—we played with Jason. There was a hex crawl in the ocean, right? Oh, yeah. And so we landed on an island, and there was a hex crawl, and all of a sudden, the rules about, "Oh, how much food do you have?" and all of this, all of a sudden became the game. Yeah. I think what's really interesting about what you said, Ethan, is, to me, is that rules set expectations about what is going to be fun in the game, right? Mm-hmm. It says, "Here's how you're going to play and what it's going to be about." And if I contrast, like, talking very specifically about Torches, there is a OSR or, I don't know, there is a game called Five Torches Deep, which is very D&D-esque. But they have an interesting mechanic where Torches lasts an hour of, or whatever, 20 minutes of playtime, not of character time. Oh, neat. Yes, and there it is supposed to be. That is the point of the game, and the fun you're having is the tension that comes from being resource-limited, and resource-limited in kind of a Red Market-sy kind of a way, which is a zombie apocalypse game that really doubles down on this concept of, like, everything has a cost from resources. And that's what the game is about, versus, like you're saying, Ethan, here in most 5e player, most actually role-playing games, I don't want to track encumbrance. I don't want to track how long the Torch lasts, because that's not where the fun is supposed to be. What's interesting about what you just said, Eric, to me is I wish I could run a hex crawl with all of the rules that a hex crawl provides while still having the evocative kind of description and a style of play that a more rulings-heavy system does. And I think that if I was more experienced with hex crawls, I think that if I had things maybe better memorized or I was able to kind of do things on the fly, I could have made the system more hidden from you. And when we were all doing that ocean exploration hex crawl, it would have felt as narrative as our other things, but just underpinned by some new rules. But because I was so new to hex crawls and I was just learning how to do them, I think I foregrounded the ruling so much. But to me, that became a really joyful part of our play. We were exploring kind of what it meant to play in this other style. But I bet if we had spent a year doing it, as a table, we would have learned the rules so much more innately that we would have become more expressive and evocative in our play versus, "Okay, who's doing the foraging today?""Roll your foraging dice and then you're going to figure out how many fish you just caught." Right. Okay, here's my pitch then. So in that scenario, Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. you kind of had like the core hex crawl rules top of mind, but maybe not that deep bench of like, oh, here's the other like 300 rules about hex crawls that you can sort of like draw on to create that kind of evocative like rulings play. Now, I think there's two types of rulings that we're talking about. One is like, I really liked the term that you used. It was almost a computational thinking term, right? Like that you, when you have a combat scenario and somebody describes what they want to do, what they want to achieve or their general action, you then decompose it into specific rules that can be applied. And because you have such a deep bench of knowledge in terms of what the possible rules that could be applied in any given scenario are, Right. rather than apply all those like, you know, 20 rules, you know, movement, encumbrance, light, et cetera, you sort of pick and choose what also fits and matches the tone of play at that moment to create that evocative experience. Mm-hmm. And so there's rules where you're applying the rule very specifically and kind of formulaically. Then there's rulings where you are drawing on different rule components and kind of mixing them up into like, Mm-hmm. these are the rules that will apply in this scenario, which is a form of rulings. And then I think there's probably a third tier of rulings, which is like rule of cool stuff and more like, we're not really, I'm applying my own judgment here. Mm-hmm. It's pure adjudication. It's not a specific rule other than adjudication. I feel like I'm probably not the best person to do it, but I also feel like I apply it all the time, which is like, Could you describe Rule of Cool, Ethan? Because I think that's a really rich vein to discuss. the rule of cool is a very, very simply like if, you know, given a scenario in any given game, the thing that feels the coolest should be the thing that you, that happens. And then that it's okay. And not just the thing that feels coolest. The thing that feels coolest is like, doesn't mean like people get what they want, but there's sort of like the narrative payoff is highest. Yeah. So that's, yeah, and I feel like when I'm applying the rule of cool or something like the rule of cool, it's usually, feels like that opposite case, right, which is like the rule of tension. What creates a tense, exciting situation? Um, rather than like, I think what I see Jason do a lot, and I really appreciate, is highlighting a moment of awesome for a character and therefore for a player. Yeah. I mean, I think that within the rule of cool spectrum, there's like a rule of like, totally rad. Mm-hmm. And then there's like the rule of narrative payoff. Right. And there's sort of that, that broad spectrum. Yep. So I want to just wrap up my thought before I turn things back over, though. Uh, yeah. And that is that I would say the most rule bound games are not the games with the most rules. The most rule bound games are the games with the fewest rules because you feel more obligated to apply that rule or those rules. So in a sense, you could actually make a case that D&D is one of the least rule bound games out there, because especially if you know all the rules, you can do that kind of like middle tier that we're talking about, where you're like dynamically applying different rules, especially as a skilled GM, Jason, like as you and which I think you really are. You know, when you're when you're decomposing our intent into the rules that you want to apply, it is so satisfying as a player to have you say like, OK, this is what you want to do. Here's the rules that I'm going to apply to this scenario. And then we do our roles and the probabilities take over. Hmm. Yep. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's so satisfying because there's both like I feel like you have cost. It's like it's like going to a custom tailor. Right. You know what I mean? Like the guy, he's like, oh, I'm going to take these measurements and I'm going to do all this. Okay, so what I just heard you say was that if you have a very universal rule system, And it is going to this is going to fit this situation perfectly. Right. Hmm. And I think that's it. Interesting. Yeah. one of the problems or challenges can be that because that rule always applies everywhere, it doesn't leave room or space for the GM to apply these kind of little mini rule rulings, right, which are just custom in the moment rulings that make little, very situation-specific rules. Am I smelling what you're stepping in? Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about universality so much, although that may apply here. Yep. I was just thinking that, like, if you have a rule system like a one sheet or something like that and it's got like two rules on it, you're always going to use those two rules. Right, exactly, yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Because that's all you have. Right. That's your entire tool. Like this is, you know, Maslow, if every problem looks like, you know, a nail or if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Do you want to summarize dread for our listeners that don't know? I will say that those two rules that have to matter a lot, right? And I'll use dread as an example, which Eric has been running a Delta Green scenario via dread with us for the last couple weeks. I'm going to go ahead and close out the show. Actually, Eric, why don't you summarize dread since you're the master of it? Yeah. I'm going to close out the show. Yeah, so, Dread is a horror role-playing game where the core mechanic, rather than rolling dice, is that when you do something dangerous, you make a pull on a Jenga tower, and if the tower falls, then that is doom for your character. That's right. And what I'm curious about, Eric, is that's the only rule of dread, I think. When you think of applying that rule at play, I feel like it's a ruling when you decide to apply the rule. Yeah. It is very much so. That's right. Yes, or like, and in the same way that you might choose a difficulty class when you're using more of a D20 system, there is this, well, how hard or how dangerous do I think this thing is? And therefore, how many pulls of the Jenga tower do you need to make in order to be successful and not be doomed, which I think is, again, another place where we as GMs, even inside of the rule system, the rules provide opportunities for rulings. I actually think that interaction between rulings and rules is some of the most interesting spaces in RPG design. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Yep. your definition is right like successfully outcome. Sure. Yep. That's the whole point of this podcast, right? But the outcome of the game is satisfying for everybody, even if like their player is Yep. dying, right? Which happens all the time in games that Eric runs. And that you when you're doing that, though, and you're creating these like successful outcomes, the player trust increases for the game master and you can do riskier stuff, right? You can take bigger moves, I think, as a game master, if you've established a lot of trust Hmm. with your players, and you can, and by bigger moves, I kind of mean like riskier, more dangerous, more like bigger narrative payoffs, more impactful, maybe even more negative because your players trust you. Actually, so I have the most uncomfortable and least successful moment of my life in playing RPGs was I had played with three other players through my whole high school career. So, yeah, I think that's the whole point of this podcast. Hmm. I think that's the whole point of this podcast. And we played multiple times a week, and we were all best friends, and we had so much of that ethem, so much of that trust. And I could really – and I was the perma GM, and I could really push us right to that line of, you know, this could be problematic and things are getting worse. And then I went to college, and my college hall, I played – we played a game, and I ran D&D for them. We were playing Dark Sun, and I tried to do exactly that same thing. And because I didn't have all that trust built up, it was a complete disaster. We ended in the middle of the – we stopped playing because they thought I was being an oppositional GM who was just trying to screw them. And they started to have secret meetings to talk about what they were going to do so that I couldn't – yes, because they didn't want me hearing ahead of time and then being able to thwart them. I feel like that trust and that inner – like, that is clearly the challenge of rulings, I think, is that it does require that trust. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yes. Totally, absolutely, yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I think it doesn't happen at all anymore. And I would say that back in the '80s, you know, it was really hard to find information about role-playing games. You would go down to your local Walden Books, or if you were lucky, a hobby shop, you and you'd pick up something like Dragon Magazine or a supplement. Nobody had an actual play to go watch. Nobody had other tables even maybe that they ever participated in. And I'm sure, Ethan, you experienced something similar to me, which was the player that would show up with a Dragon Magazine that they had purchased that had some rules that they wanted you to then follow, because they were like, "Oh, well, here's actually how the monk works," or whatever."I actually have psionic powers now." And you're like, "Wait, what? How does this--?" Like, "Oh, I guess this is true because it's in the magazine," right? It was that back and forth, because you were trying to figure out, like, what this game even was, you know, because there was nothing else like it. yep Right. you Absolutely. Yeah. so I definitely love the aspect of Mm-hmm. Right. That's right. Yeah. you Mm-hmm. Hm. you you what do you guys think would be beyond the fact that there's this problematic play that you talked about and I think that's really interesting about how either early in my career we had to rely a lot more on rules to avoid problematic play or maybe even the whole culture had this right that maybe Mm-hmm. if it weren't for the 80s we would all have rule systems that relied much more on rulings than we have my question to you guys is what if we had a system that was just rulings what do you think we would lose Go up, please, Ethan. Yeah. yep and why not I agree with you what do you think is that what what have I lost yep But I think that it is transmitted, you mm-hmm prior to the internet, it was player to player or book to player and you sort of tried to figure out what it might be. I don't want to understate how important the first time you ever saw a TSR television ad or something like that. Seeing this cool game, this hobby presented in a television ad, that was like, that was canon. yeah sure Mm. That was cultural canon. you I was like, "Oh wait, look at how they're all sitting around like that. Look at that one guy in that ad had an interesting piece of paper in front of him. I don't know what that sheet was but I better figure that out because it looks like that's maybe part of the game too and maybe I'm not doing it right." We had to figure out how to transmit and create that culture. And then it got transmitted from person to person. That all was implicit role playing game culture. And we still carry that with us today we carry that from game to game. And part of that is how we have established trust. And if you had a game that was just all rulings and it just landed on this alien planet then you don't have that culture. And I think it would be a bad time for a lot of people until they figure it would take a long time to create that culture again. yep I don't know, I guess I'm just what I'm advocating for is like, I think that there is I'm gonna push on that for a second I have a secret theory that the role an implicit level of culture that you have to bring to any sort of gameplay specifically role playing gameplay for it to be successful between humans. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. playing game I just described is the most popular role-playing game on earth but it is only played between its target audience is four to eight year olds that it is make-believe right and and I actually totally agree with you Ethan Sure. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. that there is an important thing that gets added on top that it is it structures this play and it creates this defined culture and it helps you Okay. understand what am I trying to do when I'm playing it'll you know I think a game is again is play where you're trying to overcome unnecessary obstacles and that's not me that's coming I forget who who who came up with that definition but in that world where it's just rulings where you're playing make-believe I think the problem is that you don't have those you don't feel so much like Yeah, this is, let's, I think we need to get Jason's feedback on this because, you know, there are those obstacles that to overcome you are yep yep as, as we all have kids and as you raise your children, um, some part of your brain suppresses Mm-hmm. the early pain of the struggles of those early years. mm-hmm uh-huh yep You think back only to the glorious moments, but I wonder, Jason, you, your kids are a little bit younger than the rest of us. Mm-hmm. So I absolutely agree with you, Eric. That's the four to eight year old kind of play zone. I seem to remember that as I grew older, we started to do more like a cartoon play or comic book play. So like, you know, you hit like seven, eight, nine, and I feel like a lot of it was thematic yep yep around stories that we had seen or read. Mm. And I feel like what's happening there is that's the natural, you're naturally gravitating and this goes back to our IP episode, but you're naturally gravitating towards a world or rule system of some sort. There are some constraints and if you are drawing from a shared play environment or like a shared narrative environment of some sort, you're sort of implicitly adopting some rule set. that's that's really interesting I agree But Jason, do you, I mean, since your kids are a little bit younger, I feel like you're you a little bit more in touch with that evolution. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head that it's an evolution. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's definitely a developmental stage where everything is rulings-based, to Eric's point, and then it becomes a little bit more rules-based. And that's not just in their play; that's in their lives, right? Like, I think that just as how we parent them, Absolutely. I think, you know, the three of us as kind of modern, progressive parents, I think probably weren't very rules-heavy, but we're more rulings-heavy when we were kind of raising our kids. Absolutely. And now that my kids are getting to the age where they're starting to enter middle school, there's rules. There's now things where, you know, I'll give an example. It's going on in my life right now, which is, you know, my daughter just started middle school, and she sometimes wants to not go. She wants to stay home and have fun in the way that she did at grade school in her little, like, hippie grade school, right? you Absolutely. If you don't have a rule that says that you can't do that, Absolutely. if it's always a ruling, then it's a every morning, you know, the parental hell that you often get to where your kid is just kind of, like, lobbying you and debating you on, like, why the ruling should go their way, right? And I think that's where you start to transition more into, like, well, here are the rules, here is, you know, kind of the responsibilities, you here are some of the consequences, because our own real life starts to have more of that. you And I don't know if you're ready for that kind of play at the make-believe age, Absolutely. Absolutely. to Eric's point, but I do think that if our work lives were only rulings, or if video games were only rulings, like, it doesn't make sense. you Like, it doesn't, like, hold together. yep yep There's, like, a mechanical nature to these, you know, things. And that's when rules come in. And that helps us understand what is possible and what is harder and what is easier. And I think to Eric's point, I think Eric's thesis of RPGs is about overcoming obstacles, I think. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that if the obstacles are only rulings, that's just not as satisfying. you yep It's a, did I correctly lobby Ethan? Did I correctly lobby Eric? Did I put on a big, did I throw a big enough tantrum that he finally gave up? Right? Whereas the rules actually create the obstacle of weight, of meaning. right it's almost like should I be proud that I was successful right like did I Absolutely. Absolutely. Ah, yeah. earn it no way and I think I think you're right or when I tie all of what That's a great, I love that line. you said together in my head it makes me think that though then I've read this is somewhere else that the value of a rule system not just rulings is that it creates outcomes that no player at the table would want and that yeah yeah yeah Oh, interesting. Wow. That's a fascinating line. Wow. Yeah. yeah and I feel like that that's that's probably true right that it and I think I think that's why you're a very adept Delta Green GM. there's also an element there of that's also what randomness and dice bring to the table as well is not just bounce and variation but creating outcomes that none of you would have wanted but that at the end of the day you're really happy happened you mm-hmm Because I would characterize the style of play of Delta Green as one where you're just, you go from one shit show to another. Right? right And that's, and by the way, it doesn't end in anything other than the worst shit show. Right? Yeah. And I think that you need a GM that views rulings and rules and the balance between them as, like, that's the play that I'm guiding. you right And Eric, everything you just said just kind of opened my eyes to why I enjoy playing those kinds of games with you. And why, you know, when you say DM D&D game, which is very much a power fantasy game, I've noticed you spend most of your time subverting the power fantasy more than you do being like, yeah, you did it. yes yeah You got the Sword of Gondor. You're going to lop some heads off. You're like, no, too bad the sword's cursed. okay And the head you're going to lop off is your best friend's. Yeah. mm-hmm Right? Like, that's like a very, like, Eric moment in a game. you Right? So I guess to me, that goes back to the ruling and rulings balance. A specific GM brings to the table is the flavor that they're creating for the table. I just want to link this back to the issue of randomization of the world as well, because I'm not enamored of roguelike play, and by roguelike play I mean referencing the original video game where everything is a randomized world, and there are plenty of role-playing game scenarios like this where you roll dice to determine the dungeon and things like this, and I really need things to be kind of born out of somebody's mind, and not just that, to have been crafted and written down somehow. yep oh no I feel it too I definitely feel it in when I think about it I think am I I want to feel like I am, that it's tractable. I want to feel like the world is tractable, that there is a world for me to overcome and engage with, and I don't know why that's so important. I think it's a quirk of my psyche, but... being but I think this is in the best possible way that it feels almost like the best part of simulation ism in role-playing game which is that the role of simulation which we should talk about as an episode is that it it makes that world feel real and it makes it feel like the that I am overcoming those challenges and they are you know it's in some sense real challenges that I can feel proud that I overcame Alright, so here's my premise, here's my pitch again, a new one, and that is that rulings, yep go ahead if it's just ruling, if it's just adjudication on the spur of the moment, like, you mm-hmm"You try to do that, but here's what actually happens," or, you know, "Here's the result, here's my adjudicated result," you and that's just coming out of the mind of the GM, it's not fun. uh-huh It has to be the rulings that are most enjoyable are the rulings, like you just presented as a scenario, Eric, where you said, like, "Okay, you want to do that thing that's not in the rule set. right Here's my ruling," which is really kind of a dynamic mini-rule that you're creating. you absolutely yep yep And that ties back to the way I think Jason really excels, which is like, "I know a thousand rules, you I have a thousand tiny screwdrivers in my tool chest, I'm going to present you with the five that are most applicable and will be most enjoyable in this scenario, and now you have to assemble the thing with those five tiny screwdrivers." Right? Like, "I'm presenting you with a set of tools when I'm presenting you with rules that apply to this scenario." And that's really, I would say, like, I wonder, my proposal is, all rulings are actually a presentation of a dynamic set of small rules. but yeah that are kind of created in the moment as necessary and then can Right. choose to vaporize into thin air or not I love that. Thank you. okay so I have an example and then my question to you guys is is this a ruling That's a really, yeah, that's a super useful way of thinking about it. and if it isn't what is it so I was we were playing Knights black agents and there is a rule in Knights black agents called heat and so this is as you do things if it attracts attention that can cause badness and I don't even think I was following the rules but I think what what we had done was the characters had come into a bar and they had done some stuff that had generated some heat and I was gonna do a role which would determine whether or not that heat was gonna catch up with them and were we gonna have a scene where they had to flee as the police came you know or as somebody came and I don't remember if that's really what the Knights black agents rule is but here's what I did right it was just like in the moment I was like okay I want to make this more tense at a moment of tension and we were playing in Jason's house and I asked him for a cup and we rolled the heat but rather than exposing it right away we left it under the cup until they were well enough into the scene and then we would reveal it right and so like that rule was sitting there the whole time and the the players could look at the cup and feel like I don't know what's gonna happen I don't know what's gonna happen but it was already done is that a ruling and if not is it a rule what is it It's a quantum rule, right? It's not a rule or a ruling yet, right? yeah I totally agree with you I mean it was a sorry it was really successful as Yeah. Yeah. It's also, okay, this is blowing my mind. Why don't we do this all the time, actually? I was going to say, I bet that was a great moment at the table. a result yeah yeah Wow. Boy, that's really got my gears turning. I don't think I've ever experienced something like that in a game, yeah where there's like a kind of a predetermined component yeah that everybody commits to that is sort of random but then revealed. yeah and what's it right and I think what's interesting about it is that it it doesn't it's not really a part of any resolution system because it does not impact the result right it is it's it's window dressing it is like an aesthetic Mm-hmm. component not actually a mechanical component but boy does it have effect Absolutely. yeah Oh, interesting. Well, on that note, because I think that's something that I would definitely want to add to play, I really am intrigued by this thought of how simulation ism is something that is why don't we bring it back a little bit? We had a wide-ranging discussion about rules and rulings. Why don't we each talk about what we would bring back to our tables from our discussion today? Eric, why don't we start with you? a necessary pre-component for challenge and overcoming challenge and I need to think because I'm actually somebody who I think likes under the covers to do some quantum orking in order to create tension for those who are unaware quantum work is a commonly used phrase in the industry which means like oh if I've prepared a really great encounter with an orc and my players go somewhere else they don't take the left path they take the right path just move the York over I'm willing to do that if I think it creates a greater tension and I think what I need to reflect on is what are the rules that tell me when I can do it and it does build tension but then when does it violate the what Ethan's talking about which is that I want to feel like I'm acting in a world that is real and is you know has some kind of heterophenomenological truth to it Mm-hmm. I definitely am going to think more about this idea of rulings as dynamic mini rules you because I don't think I present them like that and I don't think that, and I think my rulings kind of are weaker because of that, but I think if I am trying to give players a little bit more volition, a little bit more opportunity for choice between those scenarios, I think that's Eric's strength and I'm going to steal it. I think for me, we got a little bit of a conversation about hex crawls and expressiveness and the balance between rules and ruling when doing a hex crawl-style campaign. For me, over some time off coming up over the holidays and stuff, I'm hoping to read Justin Alexander's book. He's the person who does the excellent RPG blog called The Alexandrian. He's got a book out called So You Want to Be a Games Master. He's written quite extensively about hex crawls and point crawls and how to run them. I'm hoping to take some of the things we talked about today, some of the knowledge that I'm hoping that book gives me, and learn how to be better balanced in that kind of play.