Rules, Referees and Reality

Foreword: I have discovered my old gaming blog on the Wayback Machine!  After attempts to data mine it out of my old backups produced no success (though admittedly I didn't try as hard as I might before resorting to Wayback).  Anyways...I shall repost some of my old content here.  'Twill be interesting to see if my views have changed.

This is post #1 from that blog...from 2008...but it's a repost of an earlier article I wrote for the Gamegrene forum in 2006.

Is it desirable, or undesirable, to have referee moderation of (and intervention in) an imaginary or virtual game world? Is it the sign of a healthy game, or a sick one? Is there such a thing as a perfect set of rules that would never require referee moderation? Are computer games superior to referee-moderated games, due to their enforced consistency and lack of bias? The Lurking Gherkin ponders these questions…. (NB - I originally published this article on the excellent Gamegrene forum a couple of years back. [Edit: though I wrote those words in 2008])

The Referee Rules:

An argument that all too frequently arises between players and referees is that of the sanctity of the rules of the game versus the referee’s own judgement.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of interpretation – I’ve never seen a pen'n'paper RPG system that didn’t involve rule ambiguity somewhere in its pages, and the subjective nature of words and the multiple meanings we give them makes this inevitable. RPG systems are not written in a mathematically formalised way but instead use plain (or sometimes not-so-plain) English.

Other times, it can be a case of the referee ‘over-ruling the rules’. He or she decides that the rules of the game as written by its authors do not adequately deal with the situation that has arisen, and so they will make a judgement call. If this happens frequently in their game this can give birth to a ‘house rule’.

Not all players can happily stomach this. In particular, people who tend to play competitively want a stable, explicitly known and conservative (i.e. unchanging) rule framework that they can exploit and seek to maximise their advantage within. Particularly galling for them is where a referee’s judgements are clearly attempts to maintain ‘game balance’. They feel that they have worked hard to exploit the system to maximum advantage, and now the referee is robbing them of the fruits of their labours. (If you think about this a little you may see a parallel of this situation in the political socialism-vs-capitalism debate.)

From the referee’s viewpoint, however, their attempts to restore balance to the game may simply be compensating for rules that they feel to be an inadequate description of the reality of their campaign world. Now, if the referee goes so far as to punish the powergaming player for their behaviour, well, that is a different matter – and not a desirable state of affairs in my book! Personally, I feel that people who have worked hard to develop their character should see a proportionate and realistic return for their efforts - that is to say, realistic within the context of the referee’s conceived campaign reality.

Now, I have mentioned here several times that there may be a disconnect between the rules of the system, and the referee’s conception of reality. But is this always necessarily the case? Surely the ideal would be to find a consistent set of rules that would always give results that the referee could agree with and the players could master and exploit without fear of the referee pulling the rug from under their feet with an ad-hoc judgement. In such an ‘ideal’ world, the referee’s imaginative input to the game would simply consist of setting the scene for the players; a simple algorithm that encapsulates the rules of the game could thenceforth adjudicate the outcome of any given situation. The algorithm could be the referee applying the rules (a ‘liveware’ or ‘meatware’ implementation) or it could be a computer program (’software’ and/or ‘hardware’), but in either case it would be based purely on application of strict rules of logic with no creative re-interpretation or over-ruling of the rules.

What hope is there that such a perfect rule system might exist?

Ye Cannae Change The Laws Of Physics!

To attempt to answer this question, I want to start by looking at another set of rules to describe a particular reality; the ‘Laws’ of Physics.

Now, the idea of physics as providing a set of ‘laws’ that nature is obliged to follow is so rooted in popular culture that few people ever question this idea. As Scotty frequently quips, “Ye cannae change the laws of Physics!”

But in fact, physical theories are simply our so-far imperfect attempt to provide a descriptive model of physical reality. To my knowledge, pretty much no scientist since the eighteenth century has been so presumptuous as to refer to his or her theory as a ‘law’. Newton’s Laws of Motion, to take one example, are just plain wrong – which is why Einstein had to develop the Theory of Relativity. But Einstein’s theories do not provide a totally accurate and comprehensive picture either – they have not so far successfully been reconciled with the other great pillar of 20th century science, Quantum Mechanics. The ‘laws’ of physics can be described at best as a work in progress. To suggest that nature obeys the laws we have written is simply nonsense. They are attempts to predict what nature will do under particular circumstances, but they do not oblige nature to behave in a certain way! Furthermore, there is reason to believe that we will never have a complete set of laws that answer all our questions about the nature of reality – our descriptions will become better and better but there will always be room for improvement.

So, the ‘laws’ of physics don’t cover every situation, and are simply an approximation. But reality still goes on regardless of the imperfection of our descriptions of it, and sometimes proves our description false, in just the same way that the competent referee’s campaign does not grind to a halt when the rules prove inadequate for a particular situation, and just as – sometimes – the referee overrules the rules. (Whether this means that our physical reality also has a ‘referee’ arbitrating the outcomes of every interaction is, of course, a philosophical or theological question beyond the scope of this discussion!)

If we can’t even find a complete set of rules describing our own physical reality, what hope do we have to create such a complete set of rules for an imaginary reality?

Well, that rather depends on the scope and level of detail that we require this imaginary reality to have. To invoke our ‘laws of physics’ example again, Newtonian Mechanics is a ‘good enough’ description of most everyday physical interactions between objects such as cars or billiard balls or even swords and shields. It is not very good at describing the physics of very massive or fast-moving objects – for this we need to invoke Relativity which is broader in scope – and is not very good at describing the physics of interactions occurring on a very small scale– for this we need Quantum Mechanics which deals with a finer level of detail.

So, provided we don’t want to ask awkward questions, Newtonian Mechanics is fine. And in a similar way, a game system that is a gross over-simplification of reality works OK as long as we don’t take it places where it wasn’t designed to go, and are willing to content ourselves with its limitations.

So, given that, ultimately, all rule systems are to some degree an over-simplification of the reality we are seeking to describe, how do we cope with situations that the rules were not designed for? The thing is, game systems don’t even have the scope or detail level of Newtonian Mechanics – and they don’t embody scientific theories or principles such as chemical interactions or optics or thermodynamics. They operate at a much more macroscopic level of detail, and deal with the interactions of a fairly limited range of entities – so it doesn’t take long before imaginative people start trying to step over the boundaries of the system’s scope or want more detail than the system provides.

Pole Position

Furthermore, such systems can sometimes exhibit ‘pole behaviour’. This is a term I am borrowing from analogue circuit theory – electronic circuits produce a particular output when subjected to a particular input, and a well-behaved circuit should aim not to have any ‘poles’ in the range of outputs that are produced by the expected range of inputs to which they will be subjected. A ‘pole’ is a particular finite input that will result in an infinite output (in practice physical limitations would prevent a truly infinite output but the output voltage could be sufficiently high as to damage another circuit further down the line).

Now most role playing or simulation game systems are, despite their imperfections from a scientific viewpoint, nevertheless so complex and so varied in their possible inputs from players and referees that it is simply not practical for their designers to analytically identify all the poles of their system. This is one of the reasons that games need to be playtested before releasing them. Of course, a small ruleset, such as that used in a scenario-specific simulation boardgame, is much easier to troubleshoot, both through analysis and playtesting, than a multi-volume RPG.

One way in which many game systems deal with ‘pole behaviour’ is to have enforced limits or ‘caps’ on game metrics such as character attributes or skill/class levels or armour class / defense / attack bonus / etc. An ideal system wouldn’t need these artificial restraints, and the frequency with which these restraints appear is one measure (in my opinion) of how ‘good’ a system is. First edition D&D rules regarding character attribute scores that were introduced in Deities and Demigods are a fine example of this sort of thing – the maximum score in any attribute was set at 25; even the gods did not go beyond this limit! This was to prevent characters from increasing their attributes ad infinitum, of course. But if the system handled attribute scores in a sensible way and if the magic system (always the wildcard in any fantasy game system!) were more carefully written, those caps wouldn’t need to be there - at least, in principle.

Where the rules don’t have such limits applied to truncate an undesirable instance of ‘pole behaviour’, the referee needs to apply his or her judgement to fix the problem.   Another thing that a referee can do, where appropriate, is to employ alternative sets of rules to resolve results depending on the game situation.

What about software / hardware rules implementations? Well, I think these tend to be even more in need of these limits than a human referee-moderated system, due to the speed at which knowledge of newly discovered system exploits can propagate between participants in a multiplayer game.  Capping attributes at a certain level prevents this sort of thing from occurring.

From Hero to Zero

As well as ‘poles’, analogue circuits exhibit things called ‘zeroes’. This corresponds to a null response to a given input. The corresponding phenomenon in game terms would be where the rules simply don’t cover a particular activity. In a game, this would manifest itself as a place you simply can’t get to or an activity you can’t perform, and this tends to be the biggest drawback of computer games. Can your avatar spit in an enemy’s face? Can they conceive a child? No? Then those are system zeroes. Now this, even more than fixing undesirable ‘poles’, is where a human referee comes into their own in comparison with a software / hardware rules implementation. A human referee can take their players into those places that there are no rules for and moderate what happens using their imagination and real-world experience.

It may be pointed out that in a computer game there is nothing to stop you from imagining that you have done the above things. After all, in a pen'n'paper RPG, all you are doing is imagining. Why should a computer game that gives you a visual representation of your character prevent you from imagining that your character is doing things that the interface makes no allowance for? Could two players not pretend that their avatars have conceived a child between them?

This is a valid point to be making. However, the factor that I think tends to select against bilateral screen-plus-mind’s-eye play of this nature is that the game reality is then spanned across multiple storage media – the on-line environment, and the player’s own imagination and memory. This is kind of an awkward representation of game reality to maintain. If your character is visually represented on-screen in front of you, it’s not easy I think to keep a modified image in your mind of how they ‘really’ look and act in their imagined state. This is only my opinion and the experience of others may differ, but it’s surely much easier if the whole thing is either in your mind, or else entirely on the screen, but not half-and-half.  And difficult as it may be to picture your digital avatar as pregnant, for example, what happens when they give birth (well, I am not suggesting a depiction of the literal act, but what comes after it).  Can you create a baby avatar?  In some games or online virtual environments it will be possible to do so but in others it simply won't be part of the design spec.  I merely cite it as an example of a system zero in most computer games that can easily be handled by a human referee in a pen'n'paper RPG.

The Computer: Friend or Fiend?

So am I saying that referee-moderated games are better than computerised ones? Well, that all depends on what you want from the game, of course! At present, computers are dumb beasts compared to the human brain with its 100 billion neurons and their 100 trillion connections. And they cannot, as yet, do something as clever as decide to use different sets of rules based on an intuitive grasp of what best suits the current game situation. However they are very good at performing specialised operations at astonishing speed – for example, handling a melee combat between avatars in real-time!

In comparison a referee and group of players rolling dice and looking things up in tables and books are like a pack of tortoises on tranquilisers. The other day I ran a combat that lasted 8 melee rounds in game time which took around four hours of real time (admittedly this was a fairly complex engagement involving multiple melee combats, psionic combats, missile fire and magic use, taking place in a rather unusual environment). The question is, would it have been more enjoyable if it had only taken eight minutes of real time? With this slow-motion blow by blow exposé of the engagement everyone got to share in the drama of each other’s struggle, and that in itself was part of the fun I think. It’s simply a different sort of experience – more of a shared group experience and less of a personal experience. Players who are impatient to get on with their own character’s actions and who don’t care about the detail of what the other characters are going through will probably enjoy the faster-paced computer format more than the slow motion action of the tabletop. Provided the inherent zeroes of the computerised system do not appear in the output response generated by their range of likely inputs, or they do not mind restricting their inputs to those that will not generate zeroes, this format will be more satisfying to them – lack of flexibility is a worthwhile price to pay for the ability to do more of what they enjoy in less time than it takes in a pen'n'paper system. 

Provided human civilisation doesn’t receive a knock back in the impending future, computerised games will of course continue to grow and develop, and the range of what can be done in the online environment will gradually improve over time. There will eventually be much more diversity, especially when ‘MMOG World Builder’ software becomes available that enables any Tom, Dick and Harriet to create their own online game world with its own rules (and then just watch the intellectual property lawsuits fly!). Genetic evolutionary algorithms could develop game software automatically to meet a given set of requirements without human intervention. Human-computer interfaces will improve as our understanding of neurobiology increases. Artificial Intelligence will blur the distinction I have made here between human vs computer moderated games – a sufficiently savvy AI could tackle those poles and zeroes I mentioned, writing new campaign material and game rules on the fly. However, we will probably be approaching, or even have passed, a technological singularity by the time these later things happen which will cause such a cultural upheaval that it is impossible at this time to predict exactly how things will pan out. Also the existence of AI will raise all kinds of ethical concerns and there will be those opposed to even creating such a thing, much less employ it as a plaything in an online game world.

Reality You Can Rely On

Well, I started this rather lengthy ramble by talking about the nature of rules and campaign reality, and the referee’s role as the final arbiter of that reality. I guess I should do some kind of summing up:

Referees should not be afraid to make their own rules up or make a judgement call that disagrees with the ‘official’ rules of a game, if they are doing so because they feel those rules are not a good depiction of reality in their game world. And players need to accept that this is part and parcel of the game (although if they feel the referee is being in some way inconsistent or biased, they should feel free to politely point this out!). It is not even ‘wrong’ for a referee to choose to switch between rule systems in order to find the most appropriate solution to a given game situation.

No-one has ever discovered a ‘perfect rules system’, and in fact there may be no such thing at all. Even the ‘laws’ of Physics aren’t a perfect set of rules; reality is whatever happens, rules simply try to describe this in a formalised way, but what actually happens takes precedence over what the rules say should happen. And the final arbiter of what happens in a campaign world is always the referee. (In real life – who knows, for sure?). The key point is – Reality takes precedence over Rules, and it is healthier to regard game rules as an attempted description of, rather than an ultimate definition of, the game reality.

Computer game worlds are not in any sense ‘more perfect’ than human-moderated ones; they simply have different advantages and disadvantages. Key limitations are that in such worlds the rules DO define rather than describe reality, and lacking a referee these worlds offer no faculty to provide ongoing creative input in reaction to unusual statements of player intent – although the removal of a human referee may be seen as an advantage for those who regard a human referee as a biasing factor or unpredictable factor that reduces their ability to compete on a ‘level playing field’ in the limited range of activities that the game specialises in.

The main advantage of computer games is fast handling of a small range of specialised activities – although this may, by some, also be regarded as a disadvantage, as it reduces the level of detailed shared experience.

The present distinction between computer-moderated and human-moderated games will gradually blur, but the barrier will not truly collapse between them until certain new revolutionary technologies come into force. But by the time that happens, all bets are off anyhow!