Warning: I'm about to ramble on about psychology and how it relates to how and why people enjoy RPGs. The following may be disorganized and boring. Read at your own risk.

Having started House's Folly again in a forum setting and using an extensive ruleset, I've been closely monitoring people's reactions to it. Some avoid joining it, others join excitedly, et cetera. Last year I had people join and then not like the experience due to the extensive rules. Whatever the case, it got me thinking. I've studied psychology in-depth, and I always like to see people's reactions to new things.

Note that I'm not offended by any of these behaviors. Playing a game tabletop style on a forum is experimental at best, and certainly not something that I expect to work well or be popular or anything like that. As a tabletop campaign/game, it works great, but that's a whole different dynamic. In that type of setting, everyone knows each other well, and in person. They are there to have fun and relax, just like the people who participate in forum RPs, but a big part of that relaxing is due to the fact that getting together to play D&D involves getting together with one's friends -- eating, laughing, telling jokes, et cetera -- these are the relaxing parts. The game provides a means for this social behavior to center around.

In a forum RP, the relaxing part comes more from telling the story of a character -- from being creative -- since most of the people RPing together are, essentially, strangers (not to mention separated by 100s or even thousands of miles, time zones, and countries). So while we are 'friends' we don't really laugh together or hang out together in real time like a group of 'friends' would when they play D&D or another tabletop RPG.

When I think of game design, I first anolyze existing games that people enjoy. "What makes the game worth playing?" is the big question. Put simply, making people think and have fun is the reason. So what makes a game thought-provoking or fun? Well, thought-provoking is easy: a good story, morally gray choices, blah blah blah. The part I have trouble with is the 'fun' part.

With tabletop games, it's the social factor combined with a sense of the group 'beating' the GM. They are trying to outsmart him/her and complete the game while the GM tries to kill them off while leading them through the thought-provoking story.

With CRPGs, it's a sense of freedom for the player. You're playing against the rules of the game, trying to manipulate them to your advantage (just like in a tabletop RPG), but the "GM" is not manifest in human form. Sounds weird, right? Well, it is, but that's technology for you. The "GM" is all of the devs who wrote the scripts into the game that prevent you from doing things. It's like having a god of some sort that picks the rules of the gameworld and you, as a player, just have to deal with it. You don't question in-game why you can't wear a duster over doctor fatigues and there is no GM there to tell you why you can't do that. You just can't. It's against the rules, and the rules are the gameworld's god. You don't mind though. I mean you might get frustrated here and there, but you never feel like you're under the Rules's thumb. Why? Because they're just rules. They're not sentient. They're not a threat to you.

So where am I going with this crazy rant? Forum RPs are a bizarre cross between tabletop RPG social-based fun and CRPG freedom/openworld-based fun. It's a human GM in a semi-social setting. There is (usually) no ruleset to govern combat, just a set of, well, morals, that govern your actions. Example? No god modding. There's no real benchmark or meaning to that rule in itself, it just acts as a collective conscience for players. It's enforced by a GM, whose authority comes from the fact that they can kick dissenters out of the RP.

What I've done with House's Folly is [censored] everything up. I made a ruleset akin to CRPG without the god-like computer rule enforcer and put the enforcement end instead in the hands of a human (me). I've also removed a lot of the social element that makes this system fun in tabletop games. I've created a hybrid that relies on a GM that acts like a dictator (not a benign god like the computer in a CRPG, but a human being, with all the same flaws as the players): enforcing a vast set of rules that players are expected to follow, even though they couldn't possibly know the ruleset as well as me (I wrote it, after all). I feel like this intimidates players. They feel like their posts are under too much scrutiny, and it demoralizes them. This lack of passion slows the RP down and eventually kills it. Players like the freedom of not having a GM breathing down their neck, and I believe that, psychologically, this is solely because the GM is indeed a human. Having a non-sentient thing like a computer program enforcing the rules is not threatening. Having a human enforce the rules is. It's the difference between believing in god and following god's rules vs. following the rules of a dictator and his police forces. It makes people uncomfortable and feel like they aren't in control (control is the deepest need of human beings, at least in the C.I.A. needs model). So, from a psychological perspective, I expect House's Folly to fail yet again.

So, knowing this going in, why did I bother spending two years writing all this crap (other than to hold tabletop campaigns with it)? Well, because I think it could work. It solves a lot of problems in forum RPs. There is no arbitrary definition of rules (like god-modding, which is essentially the GM's opinion). In fact, I would argue that, logically, the GM in House's Folly is less of a dictator than your standard GM, even in rule-lax RPs. Why? Because the GM is bound by the same rules as the players. Everything is fair in that respect. No one can cheat during combat, not the players, not the NPCs (unless the GM lies about die rolls, but come on, who does that?). Another problem solved is that the GM can really tell a story with all of these rules. Quests can be had because one person controls all NPCs. Players can choose real skills and SPECIAL stats that will actually mean something. A character can be built on more than just back-story.

I think all of these are positives that at least deserve an experimental run, and so I started House's Folly. If the RP lives to the end, players will find that I've written a full sequel to Fallout: New Vegas. I went all out with the story to test whether the ruleset alone would make or break the RP. I'm interested to see where it goes.

I think I've said what I wanted to say. It is late, so if this stuff makes no sense, let me know.

So any thoughts on rules in RPs? Am I crazy or did any of that make sense? I'd like to hear your opinions directly: do you prefer RPs with a lot of rules, few rules, or in between?