It is interesting to see Ben Robbins talking about this kind of thing. I know he is the originator of the West Marches style of play. But these days I know him much more for his story games (e.g. Microscope, Kingdom) and recent blog posts such as “Principles of Ground Table” which states as its first principle “There is no GM”.
As to the content of this post: It seems fairly self evident and simple. But if you look at the comments below you’ll see Justin Alexander (of the Alexandrian) referenced this post in 2009 as an argument against that maxim of the OSR community “rulings vs rules”, which hadn’t occured to me reading Robbins’ post.
I do not have any truly useful questions for you to ponder so rather than constrain the question, run free and discuss as you wish!
This blog post wasn’t terribly exciting to me at first, but I think its the same way the foundation isn’t terribly exciting in a house. I did warm to it on a second reading and more consideration. It does feel pretty central to what it means to GM. Overall, to me the post is about managing player suspension of disbelief as we navigate imaginary worlds. The advice is good and widely applicable. While the examples are from more mechanically complicated systems like M&M, I was thinking about how it applies specifically to rules light OSR style games.
I enjoyed the opening 3 paragraphs. I find that measuring player reactions to my rulings is a good barometer to understand how connected with a particular group I am. This is one reason why I personally prefer a player who might push back against a ruling a bit as it can be the start of a negotiation that I consider part of play (as long as it falls within pre-established boundaries and is respectful). Conversely, I may find it harder to get a read on a player who is more reserved and may be surprised by a rulings and keep it close to the chest. Sometimes, these people are more likely to become discontented and more quietly drop from a game, which is fine too. If the gameplay loop of the OSR is “the conversation,” it follows that the players must be willing to converse with the GM. I believe that play culture of a game can have a large bearing on how players react to rulings they disagree with.
There is one practice I see in NSR that I consider a bit counter to the “consistency” argument the blog post lays out in the latter half. In games I’ve played in its not an infrequent occurrence that a player may devise an extremely clever solution that may automatically circumvents a hazard constructed by the GM. However, rather than this ruling effectively creating a new rule to the game, the GM proposes the solution is a one off occurrence to reward creativity, but that it will not always be applicable to prevent players from “cheesing” similar obstacles every time they encounter it.
Applying the blog post’s logic to this situation, would mean describing the events in such a way so that it is clear the situation is unique and unlikely to ever be duplicated. I see this situation as a division between systems and GM styles that prioritize consistency against those that prioritize ingenuity.
With fewer rules at play in these types of games does description become even more important? Or at some point is it really no longer about the actions of a GM and instead the level of player trust at a table?
(Also I think sometime it might be interesting to discuss the Alexandrian post mentioned above. I enjoy this space so I can sometimes forget that some people reject OSR manifestos)
This is something I try to actively avoid in my GMing - at least in the sandbox games I run at the moment. I consider part of the fun of sandbox play to be the ability of the players to “break” the challenge. But that just allows them to move on to new challenges.
This is something I have to be disciplined about - it’s easy to feel the floor dropping out from under you when you’re GMing and realise the players have thought of a away to make a whole class of challenges easier. But it’s such a great reward for the players.
An example: in a tome of necromancy the players going a technique for destroying “lesser undead” (basically zombies): drawing a ritual circle with chalk and putting a freshly plucked tooth in it. This essentially created a landmine for zombies. What I should have predicted was that the PCs would then pay the village kids to extract their teeth.
At first I pushed back (fictionally) to make it very hard. But in the next session I apologised to the players for my kneejerk reaction to them “cheesing” it. There were still some fictional challenges to overcome (the villagers’ suspicion) but fundamentally I let them make zombies much easier and the game was stronger for the players trusting me to have that freedom.
Your mileage may vary of course, but for my group this has been a really good approach.
I had to scratch my head a bit. Consistency has always been necessary for good GMing, especially to the degree that old school systems provide simulation of reality. Any GM who doesn’t maintain consistency loses people at their table, in the circles in which I game.
Then I read the Ground Table post and understood that Robbins is coming from a place where simulation isn’t important. When story-by-committee is your thing, I can see why consistency could be an issue – the needs of the story outweigh everything else. That’s certainly nothing I’m interested in, yet there seem to be lots of folks who enjoy it.
The restatement of a principle from long ago would then be useful for folk who haven’t been exposed to the notions that game reality should reflect reality as much as possible and do so consistently.
The ground table post is from 2025; the blog club post is from 2006. I don’t think Robbins was talking about story games there. Sorry if I confused things by bringing up the recent post.
Again it’s a formative post - to me an explanation and embellishment of “Rulings not Rules” - I find I disagree with Alexander a fair bit…
It’s generally common sense if one takes a high referee control system that is focused on trust. The job of the referee as neutral arbitrator combined with the idea that players should learn about the world and use that knowledge to overcome obstacles. One can’t learn if the world is inconsistent and one can’t trust the referee if they are constantly changing things (why are they doing it… are they trying to push the characters into a specific “story”?). That said there is a reason that a lot of areas of referee ruling are not rules - they are edge cases, and edge cases need to be adjudicated in different ways sometimes. I would say that rather then be entirely consistent it’s important to be transparent. To me the referee should strive for consistent mechanics for rulings, but that they are making a ruling rather then creating a full house rule, implies that the situation adjudicated needs to remain flexible. We can’t have rules for everything.
The other side of this for me - and I don’t know that there’s much OSR blog writing on it is that the variety of mechanics - “esoteric” instead of “unified” design gives referees a larger number of well understood mechanics to pull into play in their rulings.
This post has been on my mind for the last couple of weeks. (“Fixing Mothership Combat” has been back in the zeitgeist after The Alexandrian’s criticism, and “Same Description, Same Rule” was a cornerstone of Justin’s conception of player agency.)
The OSR heartbreaker market proves there is a wide swath of adequate rulings one could apply to similar B/Xy scenarios. I disagree that distinct models always imply distinct fiction to some degree, as Ben suggests.
“The same description” is a spherical cow. The blorb we’re modeling is orders of magnitude more complicated than the systems we’re using to represent it. Characters never step into the same river twice.
In my experience, it’s far more likely for trad systems that take this principle seriously to catch themselves between two horns:
Unintended consequences of an insufficiently complex system produce outputs that diverge from the shared world in our heads
Or
The complexity necessary to avoid those unintended outputs renders the system impractical for use and reference in play
“Rulings, not Rules” is about providing the group the freedom to model the fiction as best they can during each moment at the table. The alternative - asking GMs/ designers to produce a system that can efficiently and reliably model an entire fictional world - is unrealistically difficult.
Perhaps, though, the argument is that you should use a consistent model for the same fiction within a given campaign? Hence a ruling: once we’ve encountered this situation (e.g. underwater movement) in the campaign, it should function the same next time* so the players can gain understanding of how the shared fiction works.
Different campaign or a different group you can start again with another “model” for the same situation.
(*Or if it’s not going to function the same, the GM should say, “hey, I think I made a bad ruling last time. Let’s try again”)
…so the players can gain understanding of how the shared fiction works.
This is where I get off the bus.
When I’m playing ItO, I don’t believe that “when you hold three bulky items, you become defenseless” is a law of the fictional space. I believe it’s a simplified representation of the complex relationship between “carrying heavy stuff” and “being vulnerable in a fight”. Nobody should be miffed if the rule changes to represent the fiction better (“So can I carry 10,000 apples and keep my hp?” can and should be shot down with an ad hoc inventory ruling.)
Consistent rulings speed up play - that’s its utility. Normalizing player questions about resolution (“how would we resolve this motorcycle jump mechanically if I tried it?”) and GM transparency (re: Gus) allows the kind of planning Ben is worried about in the article while preserving ruling flexibility.
I see where you’re coming from. But the next time someone wanted to carry 10,000 apples, you would expect to be consistent about the ruling used to deal with this edge case?
I’m not really sure I’m disagreeing with you. And I definitely agree about normalizing discussing mechanics before players commit to an action. This may just be a discussion of what “consistency” means to each of us.
And the next time some player wants their PC to haul giant bags of apples, the same ruling should apply. It should apply to oranges, even. ; ) It may apply differently to hauling a stack of bricks, which is dissimilar. The player will have an understanding that’s in the same ballpark, though, and that’s the sort of consistency that’s necessary for good play experiences.
Like Martin said, I’m not certain I’m disagreeing with you. Consistency doesn’t arise from a single ruling. It’s the repeats of a situation where consistency can be found.