Most Often, RAW is Simply Right

I'm on record as holding the opinion that if one decides to use rules for something, then you stick to and use those rules. By rules here I mean the written game mechanics + written house rules that add/modify or remove specifics from those rules (created after careful and deep consideration of the effect). One makes character decisions as they wish and the GM will make rulings where no rules apply, but the rules are the rules where and whenever they apply binding to both the player and the GM.

If someone doesn't like the result, they should play a game where they do and even go completely without mechanical systems if their tastes are that extreme.

I recently witnessed an  great actual play example of why I hold this opinion. It came up in my son's online campaign where RAW was overruled in the middle of a combat. Let's review it here.


System Background

The system in use (Age of Heroes) is rather detailed using a hexgrid, minis (actually the D20 virtual desktop in this case) and terrain. A combatant's position is important under the rules in a number of ways. It is a High Pace of Decision system where tactical error or advantage can quickly decide outcomes, thus what a player does and where his is when doing it is of prime importance in determining the outcome.

Terrain is important in the design and in play. It's key characteristic is that terrain is a constraint upon movement and attacking and those constraints defines its role in combat resolution.

The important RAW in this example is that firing missile weapons into melee combat is dangerous.

It's assumed that during the 6 second combat round the player's true position on the hexgrid (while defined) is in truth vague and it's easy for movement during melee to result in the wrong target being stuck. The reason or this vagueness is simple, we can't manage things in real time at the table top- so we manage it based upon a tiny 'time slice' which is further abstracted due to the fact that everything moves in initiative order. What is actually on the map is a tiny bit of the all that movement and events that happened in those six seconds. But it's used as a model for the entire turn because its all we have.

But (and this is really important) dice cover many sins, and their random nature holds all the things we don't directly account for, including exact position.

Such are the limits and joys of a table top simulation.

Lastly, RAW states that in this case any missile fire into their melee well have a 40% change of striking the wrong target. The RAW provides no exception to this.



Actual Play Result

The PCs had reached the root cause of some ritual murders plaguing the kingdom and engaged the evil villains in battle. The most powerful foe was a summoned creature of great size taking up 2 hexes on the battle map. A true danger to the PCs.

One PC was engaged with the monster by a pillar within the room. Another at some distance took aim with his bow and pointed out that his ally (the PC engaged in melee with the monster) had full cover from the pillar (which would normally prevent line of sight and thus range fire that *directly* targeted him), but that the monster had 1 hex clearly in line of sight. Thus the player desired the GM to overrule the RAW concerning firing into melee and rule that the PC could not be hit, but the monster could.

The GM agreed. The analysis struck him as reasonable at the moment and he went with it. I imagine most modern GMs would, even those that are normally RAW players.

Why He Was Horribly Wrong

• The GM ignored the abstraction contained in the game design and made the incorrect assumption that the PC's and snake's position was locked and fixed for the entire combat round.

If that was true (or rather assumed true), the rule for firing into melee would never apply in melee and should be reserved only for Close Combat (i.e. characters wresting in the same hex) as melee combatants always occupy different hexes an most often have different lines of sight . This is clearly not the case in the rules, they say specific that they apply.

Further, if one still insists on considering the locations 'fixed', case the ability of the PC to defend himself would be heavily constrained by his lack of motion vs. his huge foe. Very heavy negatives should have been applied to the character's defenses, but neither the rules (which know that location is vague) nor the GM (who decided location was fixed) called for such. Thus the overruling of RAW was clearly strictly for the PC's benefit- not that of the reality of 'fixed location'. It was at best, half considered.

• The GM altered the purpose of Terrain in the design, which should act as a hindrance to attackers (i.e. providing the monster with cover) and instead turned it into an advantage to the attacker.

 

It Had Horrible Results

In addition to causing the systems abstraction and simulation elements to fail as noted above, it had a number of negative mechanical and campaign results.

• It overpowered Missile Weapons. 

The game design provides missile fire with a number of significant advantages in RAW. Beside the obvious issue of being able to attack at range, they are also harder for most creatures to defend against and have a impressive ability to one-shot most targets on a well rolled attack. One of the offsets to these advantages was the firing into melee constraint. That constraint was removed granting even more advantage to already powerful option.

• It underpowered Large Creatures

The genre the game was designed for sees large creatures as large threats and the system as a point of genre simulation provides them with a number of advantages towards this end. This ruling however overturned that concept, making them weak against missile fire (which was already a weak point for them).

• It resulted in a easy unearned player victory

The Combination of both the above factors led to a quick and easy defeat for what should have been by the RAW a difficult and dangerous encounter with no danger to PCs.

• It Set Precedent.

The players will now expect similar rulings in the future. This will go beyond the permanent increase in missile weapon power and reduction in the danger of large creatures. They will expect similar logic in the future to apply to other areas.

Further the GM will likely (consciously or not) reduce his use of terrain in future battles to make things more even against missile users. This will make future battlefields more boring.

• Unintended Outcomes

The game design never considered this ruling and thus makes no allowance for it. As a result combat will from this point on progress with a element unknown to the system, and thus highly likely to be unbalancing in its final effect.

Conclusion

One last thing to note. Overruling RAW is almost always for player benefit as most players will scream bloody murder if the GM suddenly defeats their character in violation of the rules. Even if they don't, most GM will shy away from rulings against the players in any case, as most are not playing to 'defeat' them.

When added to game designs already biased towards player victory (most rpgs are, otherwise long ran campaigns by RAW would be impossible if every combat had a significant chance of player failure), the end result is a even easier campaign where the players have cheated themselves out both the challenge and the simulation the system offered.

So given all the above, why is overruling RAW so common?

Because the typical GM and player never stops to think about it. Until I pointed out the above, everyone in the group (which including three players from my own campaigns) thought they were being clever and that it was cool. They weren't, and it was wasn't. The real battle they bypassed on the other hand could have been.


Update: How it should have been resolved:

It was pointed out to me that I needed add this, i.e. it would be nice to know what the correct resolution would have been.


Basically the sequence of events needed to be played as written, and the problem would have been resolved without any of the issues above.

In short:

1. Use the Firing into Melee rule as written and determine the true target of the attack. This is required as the first step in any case as the GM needs to know who's defense and situational modifiers to apply- the ones that apply to the PC and the Creature are different.
2. Then resolve the attack using the normal rules and sequence.

Everything would have worked out.

• The abstraction would have remained intact.
• The PC would have been protected by cover from the attack, but his abstracted location still affected the outcome (i.e. there was still a 40% chance he got in the way) and the balance of Missile Weapons and Large creatures would not be harmed.

A person unfamiliar with abstraction might ask how he could get in the way and yet be protected by the pillar. Answering that fully is likely a good subject for an article on abstraction, but let's be simple and just go with the most common reason this would happen:

The archer was aiming for center of mass as is normal for ranged fire, and missed with the arrow going left towards the PC. If not for the Pillar, he would have been in serious danger from the stray arrow.

And as side notes:

Could the attacking PC have aimed for a specific part of the creature by RAW? Yes, but he didn't. Could he have taken some action to reduce the chance of hitting his friend by RAW? Yes, but he didn't.

Each of those options would have modified either the resolution itself, or the explanation of what really happened under the system's abstraction.

For Most, System Doesn't Matter

This should be filed under the heading 'Duh', but sometimes such things are worth highlighting for a moment or two.


Over the years one of the things I keep hearing people say in various forums and blogs is that the game system doesn't matter. Back when I first heard that, it struck me as impossible given that the rules of a game are... well very important to the course of what happens in a game. So the question was why were people claiming such a thing?

It didn't take long to figure out the answer if the people involved ever described one of their sessions in any significant detail or if you happen to be watching. They flatly just didn't use the rules. And when you're not using them, of course they don't matter.

D&D AC, to hit rolls and HP points? Useless when a GM allows a PC to pop the head off a villain with a simple STR check. Rules for vehicle armor and damage? Forgotten when a GM simply allows the PC to fire a round through a grate or a vision slot to inflict immediate destruction.

And so it goes.

All these have one thing in common however, they always and I can't recall a single exception- make things *easier* for the players. Following the rules is difficult you see, and might get in the way of the player's goals. Just making stuff up on the other hand is call 'creative' , when in fact it's just a cheap and very likely a stupid way of avoiding any negative possiblities in a rpg.

All nice and well if self-serving and more than a bit childish, after all one of the measures of becoming an adult used to be learning to follow the rules, to show sportsmanship while doing so, and to earn your victories while admitting your losses. Used to be, those days seem gone and I find it unlikely they'll ever return.

This explains why such horrible rules as D&D (any version, any company) and the 40K rpgs sell. None of the buyers ever used the rules enough to figure out that they suck.

The only question that remains is why people who are very willing to ignore the rules and decide outcomes based upon the most flimsy of player excuses- buy and 'play' games with a significant amount of rules in the first place? There is no possible answer that doesn't reflect poorly upon the people in question.

Converting Only War

As I've noted before (here), we found FFG's Only War to be an very safe and easy game. It's also a very broken one mechanically making the common design error of stacking bonuses resulting in PCs shrugging off anything short of anti-vehicle weapons .

While the marketing for the game is the complete opposite (i.e. promising death around every corner and uphill battles), the reality plays to what I've decided is majority mindset in RPG circles today, easy and quick wins for the plays with lots of loot and other goodies although most won't admit to it (as a talked about here).

So my group is something of an oddity. They get bored real quick with that sort of game.

As a result I've been working on expanding Age of Heroes to cover sci-fi settings in general and 40K specifically. It's a fair amount of work to say the least, but we reached the point where the draft Science-Fantasy Expansion and the 40K campaign supplement can manage some adventures.

Being test games, I used encounters that would have been a cake walk for beginning characters in Only War. Even so, The resulting change in style of play was as expected day and night.

These first two sessions ended up being violent and dangerous battles that saw two characters nearly killed, others knocked out of the battle, and the destruction of the team's M41 multi-laser (getting a replacement is far from a certainty). The PCs only managed to edge out a victory in the second one due some very timely and important Orc weapon malfunctions. As hoped, the course of the battle was like something out of a Hollywood war movie.

Compared to the previous cake walks, this was far more satisfying.

I don't really expect the rate of character deaths to increase over anything but the long term. Age of Heroes has very decisive and bloody combats with a high rate of PC incapacitation and injury, but still keeps PC death unlikely to support long campaigns. Unlike most modern RPGs however, character deaths are possible and indeed become likely if unless the players keep their heads about themselves.

At this point I'm very happy with the result.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Was worried that this movie would throw itself aground by making seriously overt political statements and screwing up what was best about the first Captain America movie.

In the end, it turned out better than I expected and all in all I liked the movie more than not.


The characters were well done and in general true to themselves, the action scenes were great, and I was surprised that they didn't go with the Black Widow romance instead setting up a possible future connection with Sharon.

On the political side of things, I think they managed to walk a nice tightrope that allows viewers on the Left to blame Bush/Military thinking as the 'big picture Bad Idea" while the Right can point to Obama's Kill List and expanded Drone use (the makers of the film openly claimed the latter as their inspiration for what it's worth).  If one insists on being political at all, at least that's ideal method for a big tent pole summer movie.

However on both sides of that question they backed away from making it a strong link by making the US President and other government members and SHIELD agents the first targets of the Insight Weapons.  In short, they made it so big and so disconnected from loyal US citizens that they blow their underlying 'message'. So yes, better than expected although I think less than what the makers thought they were doing.

Other than that it's just a general and obvious warning that one can go too far on the Security-Freedom scale. In that line some of it (the scenes between Cap and Fury for the most part) come off a lame half-arguments that doesn't let anyone really address the issues. More walking the tight rope while pretending otherwise.

Still for my part, I could have done without any of it as none of it added to my enjoyment of the movie. On the bright side it was a passing moment easily ignored.

But there was a much more major part of the plot I didn't like...

Modern comics love giving readers neat characters and awesome toys, and then destroying them. And now the movies have followed in that path first with the Iron Man armors and in this movie with SHIELD. I like SHIELD, it's cool and fun- more so than the CIA (where Sharon ended up) or the FBI (who I assume are the guys arresting the Hydra senator). Now it's gone (at least for while, there's still a TV show named after it assuming it doesn't get canceled).

I also didn't care for the fact that they basically tossed all the heroes of the past under the failure bus (Peggy Carter and Howard Stark where the founders of SHIELD, and thus the ones who allowed it be corrupted from the beginning). There should be room for "Heroes of another Story" without them being torn down revealed to be fools or road kill. In fact this applies to the whole background of the movie, in which every evil and threat of the post-war period is due to the manipulation of a single comic book villain group instead of the evil that mankind does as a matter of course.

As to the grittier and darker take this movie represents, I do think there's room for stale beer in a comic book movie, as long as its contained. But in this case it was too far reaching, and cast the entire world in terms of failure. This was the Dark Age of comics with a Golden/Silver Age character guest starring.

And perhaps that's why I ended up liking the movie more than not, because I've come to view the world as entering its own Dark Age and would like an icon of what was great about the past to still exist. Still, wouldn't it be nice to have more than one of those?

Deadly Games- Now without Death

One of the common conflicts one sees in online RPG forums is that between posters who say that the PCs risk death in their games, and those who want to play their characters without worrying about losing them to random and often meaningless events. The former call the latter wimps and pound their chests about how hardcore they are.

Previously I personally didn't care much about either side, not because I didn't have a opinion- but because I play both ways depending upon the campaign's genre. I took them at their word and passed them by.

However I've noticed something about "Our Campaign is so Deadly" types that arose out of our Only War experience a bit back. On of the players in the online campaign made the statement "this game is so deadly...", but no one had died. How could he say that? Then a thread over on therpgsite referenced my posts about those campaigns and the same subject came up there and so I put the question to the 'deadly game' proponents there.

And guess what? None of these players of these so called 'deadly games' actually could give an example of a significant PC being killed.

The key word there is *significant*, as I did get examples of characters that hadn't been played long dying, 1st level guys in a D&D dungeon crawl, newly created 5th level D&D characters intended to introduce new players to the game, or a PC in a CoC that wasn't meant to last more than a few sessions anyway. Those were the examples I got. But of characters dying after years of play with real history behind them? None except for those I provided myself.

In short, these 'deadly' campaigns would kill the hamsters (i.e. short lived PCs that don't really have much player investment) but long lived ones were in practical terms as safe as the wimpiest 'PCs don't die unless they want to' campaign.

And to add an even weirder outcome, most of the people who started the thread making the claims of deadly campaigns- ran from the thread and repeated their clearly untrue claims in other threads. They were completely unwilling to face the fact that their threats of 'deadly campaign' had been proven empty by their own history. I must wonder if they are lying to themselves as much as they are lying to others.

So in the future dear reader, if you see one of those types- asked when was last time he had one of his long played PCs die. Or anyone else in the campaign. Odds are good that you're get a blank look, or find out that they don't do long-run campaigns at all.