What value do you place on rules over "story"?

[nexus]

This is a question about gming style. Do you value the rules of the game over entertainment and story or think the rules are secondary to such things? Are you a "gamemaster" or a "storyteller"?

[Fireg0lem]

While I'll always ditch the rules in favor of a good story, I don't think a good gamemaster should need to do that very often. So, I voted 2.

[Captain Obvious]

I've seen too many Storytelling style games turn into thinly masked superheroics, because people were more concerned about doing cool things than keeping a ground in reality. While I suppose this could be a good story/bad story issue, I prefer to let the rules provide a basic framework of how the world works, and on rare occasions, bend, twist, or dump them altogether to further a good story.

[Chimpira]

For my Champions game I quite frequently bend the rules. Usually it is not for combat mechanics though. For example, I had a player that is a magic user. He did not spend any points on Detect magic or the KS:Magic. I figured he did not realize how important these things would be to a magic user. So I went about showing the importance of this to him. He entered a site where a huge ritual magic spell had taken place. Before he walked right into it I told him that his nose was bleeding. I, then, told him that although he could not detect magic for the most part, he has been around it so much that something with an enormous background count would be to much for even his senses to ignore. It was not in the rules but added to the story of my game and everyone was more on their toes because they knew something big had happened.

[OddHat]

Story always comes first for me, but the rules are very useful storytelling tools. I've tried almost-no-rules storytelling games, and they tend to go poorly. The rules provide a much-needed framework for the story.

While I would not let anything get in the way of a really good scene or idea, I would do everything I could to construct that great game moment within the rules.

[John T]

#2 for me. Story is extremely important to me, but I ALWAYS try to ensure that it fits the ruleset in question, whatever I'm using at the time.

I game with a lot of people that know the rules for most of the games we play, to one degree or another, and while they almost NEVER raise a rule question in-game, I do my best to keep "rule-breaking scenes" and "scene-breaking rules" to an absolute minimum.

John T

[CrosshairCollie]

I cling *very* tightly to the rules, because I have a (perhaps overdevelopped) fear of being arbitrary, and what I consider 'cool story stuff' may not be someone else's ... so it'll look like I'm just picking on or ignoring someone. I can't think of any situations where the game's rules would really interfere with the story, though, except possibly in the case of villains escaping or somehow getting KOed in the early goings before he can generate a credible threat ... which just means I need to layer the story a little. Oh, HE wasn't the master villain ... let's add 300 points to him and make HIM the master villain.

[RavensPath]

I go the other way. Rules are good, but arbitrary. I have seen too many games, both Hero and other, ruined by rules lawyers. I voted 3, but I still try to follow the rules as much as possible. But if the rule doesn't fit with the story I suspend it for a bit. This goes in my benefit as the GM as well as to the benefit of the players sometimes.

[TheEmerged]

If this were a 5 step poll with pure game at 1 and pure story at 5, I'd come in around 4. I voted "both" but the fact is I rarely let game rules drive a story -- although I will occasionally use aspects of the game take part. For example, one of the adventures in our current campaign involved a freshly-erupted nova whose main power is that she was Invisible to Danger Sense...

When I want a wargame I'll play an actual wargame.

[tkdguy]

I prefer to have a happy marriage between the two. I understand the importance of rules, but I don't want to use them to beat my players over the head with it. Likewise, I know players who will try to use the rules against a GM unless the latter makes it clear HE has the final say, and not the rulebook.

I try to get players to "take the bait," but if the players go off and do something different, I improvise or have a backup plan. And I KNOW how my players like to throw a monkey wrench in my plans!

[Doctor Otaku]

Both have an equal importance in how I run a campaign. Plus, when the players think that they have seen the last of an archvillain and the damage rolled from the fight proves it. Having the bad guy plot device himself from death is very entertaining. And there's also the fringe benefit of seeing the looks of shock and disbelief on their faces. :eg:

[travellerne]

For me, it changes from game to game and session to session.

Some games are most fun with rules lawyering, etc.. Others are most fun with the freedom of pure fantasy storytelling. Most games stay somewhere in the middle.

TNE

[CrosshairCollie]

Both have an equal importance in how I run a campaign. Plus, when the players think that they have seen the last of an archvillain and the damage rolled from the fight proves it. Having the bad guy plot device himself from death is very entertaining. And there's also the fringe benefit of seeing the looks of shock and disbelief on their faces. :eg:

The problem with this, in my experience, is that the players will get EXTREMELY frustrated by this if it's done frequently. I was once in a game where the GM stretched everything to its limit to prevent his precious bad guy from being hurt or captured ... at one point, we all ICly gave up because it was pointless.

[Vondy]

I voted "storycentric." I regard gaming as a social event revolving around cooperative storytelling. At the same time the rules are important as they allow for a consistent and fair system of conflict resolution within the story - a story with multiple authors, even if one of them is directing the general flow, will seldom get written without agreed upon guidelines. The rules are there to ease the process and enhance the fun - not to rule the fun. And that's where, in my games, their authority stops. Or so I tell myself.

[Magmarock]

I chose "both" because I am somewhere in the middle.

It varies, though. For example, I will (on rare occasion) have a plot device that defies the rules, just because there has to be things in the world that no one fully understands.

Also, I tend to you a lot of ad hock(?) ruling and that leans toward storytelling.

When playing the game, I'm the type of player that is okay with what the GM informs me how a villain's powers affects my PC... I don't insist that the GM tell me how the power is built (something that drives me nuts when I am GMing).

On the other hand, when building PCs, our group is very rule-driven. PCs must be built "legal" to be accepted and played in the game. This is our great equalizer.


Mags

[BlackSword]

Our group goes with both. Currently we are learning/running Spycraft, so we reference the book a lot more in order to make sure we understand the rules. In this way, once we know the book we will be able to run a lot more fast and loose, but still keep within the rules. The rules are important because they make sure that there is some standard way to measure an action. With Hero I tend to use the rules as guidelines to help me out of combat. In combat we play the rules.

[Lord Mhoram]

I do both.

I look at the rules as the physics of the universe. It is how the players through their characters interact with the world. If the players understand the world and the rules, then they make choices based on those rules, just a like a scientists makes his descisions based on his knowledge of the laws of science - If those rules are bent or broken because the GM feels like it, it causes problems in suspension of disbelief, character immersion or story flow. I want the rules to be in the background, and by not changing them and making sure the players are well versed in them, that happens.
Now this attitude would seem to put me in the first camp, but the reasons I do this... .not for a "gamist" reason but because the stability of the rules (in this case what amounts to the rules of the universe) help in, as I mentioned above, story related activities. So I put myself in the both catagory.

Nothing destroys a good story for me as a player than a GM who arbitrarily breaks rules to fit the plot or story. The rules are the language of the interactive storytelling, and if rules are being broken we may as well go back to "Bang I shot you" "no you didn't" "yes I did". In the poll choices the top choice had the line "I see myself as a referee" I don't. That is the rules' job. My job is to tell stories in that framework.

All that being said, I suggest to the players to leave some XP unspent to use in the course of an adventure (to be able to buy a KS magic or the magic sense mentioned earlier (and I loved the solution there btw)), and allow stuff like power stunts. New players I allow a great deal more freedom on, but right now my group .... well... the shortest tenure of HERO is 15 years, so we all know the game inside and out by now.

So I consider myself a Storyteller in the sense that story is why we are here, but I also consider the rules somewhat sancrosanct because they are the language we are writing the story in.

[Corven_Ren]

I voted #3 Story has always been the most important aspect to me almost every gm I have played with has bent the rules in favor of making the story more interesting. I will give an example in brief of on such thing happening.
I was playin a solo D&D campaing with a friend of mine gming and I had created an elven thief. I was 1st level and had snuck my way into this compund to do a little bit of burglary. I wonund up swingin from balcony to balcony to get into and on what was going to be my last attempt the rope gave way and I plumeted 4 stories down through the roof of an adjoining house. Now by game rules I should have died I took 24 points of damage from the fall and had a massive 8 hp. Rather than kill me he put me at 1 hp and I managed to crawl out of the house and passed out in an alley. I eventually made my way back to the inn where I was staying passing out numerous times along the way and was out of action for 5 months game time. Since that time I have al;ways placed story aqbove rules

[zornwil]

I voted "storycentric." I regard gaming as a social event revolving around cooperative storytelling. At the same time the rules are important as they allow for a consistent and fair system of conflict resolution within the story - a story with multiple authors, even if one of them is directing the general flow, will seldom get written without agreed upon guidelines. The rules are there to ease the process and enhance the fun - not to rule the fun. And that's where, in my games, their authority stops. Or so I tell myself.
This is so close to how I feel I quoted it; I voted for the middle category, though I'm actually not so sure if that's how Von D-Man voted but I think so. Regardless, I selected the middle with basically this opinion. I think that for most adventuring-type games, the conflict resolution tools of a good gaming system are indispensible, and I'd add that I think they very much become a part of the story, at least if the GM is on his toes. For a trivial example, it's the way one throws something interesting in the mix when that "18" is rolled, or, for another, it's the description when that high-BOD attack hits a character easily torn apart but who rebuilds himself - "The blade slices you in half, neatly, so much so that your upper and lower parts are still resting together and beginning to fuse back again..."

[arcady]

I've come to feel the story is the responsibility of the players more so than me. I'm the world and the game, they are the story. I'm the editor, they're the writers. I'm the director, they the actors.

I will give you as detailed an environment and situation as I can, I will hold to the rules as well as I can, but the people who show up at my table are responsibile for doing something within that that then crafts the story.

The story is vitally important, but it isn't my responsibility.