How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[hawkeyefan]

Maybe. Depends on the character and the circumstances. All I know is, the more most players IME know about the system, the more that knowledge encourages them to game the system for advantage.

Would the character not try to gain advantages in the game world?

 

[billd91]

The problem is that's a transient pleasure at best; its not like you're not going to know after repeated play anyway. So on the whole is it valuable enough for the downsides?

The downsides being... what, in this situation? That the players might find an encounter more difficult if not approached optimally? Or that they might suffer a TPK by fighting that which they shouldn't fight?

 

[GrahamWills]

I'd draw a distinction between rules (the relationship between THAC0 and AC) and values/instances of rules (what a monster's AC is).

For rules, my thoughts are:

• There are a minimal set of rules each player should know to play. The fewer those are, the better as it means I can get started with a new group (e.g. at a con) rapidly.
• I am generally happy with players having access to all rules and will encourage them to do so.
• The exceptions to the above are when it will be more fun for the players to have those rules revealed over play. This is often a campaign-specific thing, and it's rarely more than one or two rules per campaign

For values, my thoughts are:

• Players generally know all values associated with their characters.
• Players need to have some in-game reason why their characters takes actions based on player knowledge of other values.
• I don't care if the player is reading the stats on the red dragon their characters are fighting during the fight. So long as they observe the above rule, if it makes it more fun for them, go for it!
  • I tend to trust my players to run their characters with their character knowledge only.
  • It's generally easier to play if your player knowledge is similar to character knowledge, so my players are unlikely to look up or ask for stats if their character wouldn't know.
• The exceptions to the above are when it will be more fun for the players to have those values revealed over play. This is often a campaign-specific thing, and it's pretty rare.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Would the character not try to gain advantages in the game world?

The question is whether he'd genuinely have enough information to do so. Depending on the game world and how things work, this can go either way.

Example in point: RQ 3 character with cuirboilli torso armor and a Protection spell up. You can probably tell the Protection spell is up and know enough to have an idea how your weapon will do at penetrating the armor--but the spell doesn't have a gauge visible that will tell you how many points it is, and there's a lot of difference as to whether its 1 point of 5 points.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The downsides being... what, in this situation? That the players might find an encounter more difficult if not approached optimally? Or that they might suffer a TPK by fighting that which they shouldn't fight?

Mostly that you make the exchange of combat rolls more complicated rather than just being able to tell the player the numbers so they can do their own bookkeeping as it goes.

 

[Cadence]

You could, but when "it isn't" is vanishingly rare, is it really doing anything to be coy?

It feels like imperfect knowlege and surprise are a thing in some genres or situations? (Is that a replicant or just a person? Which one of them is the Kryptonian in disguise? Who has the image projector on over their armor? Which one has the ring of protection? Is that the car with the bullet proof glass or not? Is the door reinforced?)

A game without any of those is fine if that's what folks like.

 

[Cadence]

Mostly that you make the exchange of combat rolls more complicated rather than just being able to tell the player the numbers so they can do their own bookkeeping as it goes.

I'm all over telling them once they'd reasonably know or have figured it out, in part for that reason.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It feels like imperfect knowlege and surprise are a thing in some genres or situations?

Sure, but those are specifically not the situations I'm talking about.

You're playing a game set in the modern period where covert psionics is going on. There may be someone with a telekinetic field, but barring that, armor is modern armor; no supertech, no enchantment, just stuff you can actually go out and buy in reality.

Is being coy about the armor in that serving any particular purpose?

(Is that a replicant or just a person? Which one of them is the Kryptonian in disguise? Who has the image projector on over their armor? Which one has the ring of protection? Is that the car with the bullet proof glass or not? Is the door reinforced?)

A game without any of those is fine if that's what folks like.

I give an example above. Sometimes a game can have all kind of surprises (is the guy we thought was a precog actually a telepath?) without weapons or armor specs being pretty much ever mysterious.

 

[billd91]

Mostly that you make the exchange of combat rolls more complicated rather than just being able to tell the player the numbers so they can do their own bookkeeping as it goes.

That doesn't seem like much of a burden to me, so I'm not really seeing the minor lack of efficiency as a significant downside.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That doesn't seem like much of a burden to me, so I'm not really seeing the minor lack of efficiency as a significant downside.

Depends on the system. Not all games have the interaction between armor and weapons being simple.