Ruler or Procedurer? - A new/old taxonomy on mechanics
I am feeling bold tonight, so I will be writing some Statements™ about TTRPGs from my personal post-OSR viewpoint.
And the first thing I want to mention is... I believe the game is not a conversation. Boom shaka boom (I would be putting images here if I could).
The game is mediated by a conversation, I'll give you that, in the case of a multi-player game, but I think it is useful to define the game as a set of in-world states (diegetic states) that change through participant's decisions and mechanics.
A participant has a viewpoint on the game world status that has to be synced with any other participants viewpoint, as the world status changes through the game. That is where the conversation appears.
But honestly, I did not want to talk about THAT. My mind is a strange thing.
Mechanics: Rules and Procedures
I believe, introducing the in-game world status as a central object of playing helps in defining how different types of "rules" interact with them. This has been talked before1, nothing new, but as always it helps myself to write these sort of things: a discussion about rules and procedures.
Rules are descriptive, Procedures are prescriptive.
Rules describe in-world objects in game terms while Procedures determine how the world evolves when rules are used. Or, in other terms, rules are written on the character sheet, procedures tell you what happens in the fiction when you change your character sheet.
Examples
Rule: Chain-mail armor has an AC of 5
Procedure: When attacking roll 1d20 in THAC0 and compare with AC to see if the attack hits.
Rule: A level 1 Warrior has 1d8 HP
Procedure: If an attack hits roll for damage. If HP is zero or negative, the character dies.
Where do rulings fall into this taxonomy? Rulings are drop-in replacements of rules that we apply by using a procedure (Did I just write that? It sounds OMINOUS).
"Oh you are hitting with a chair, the damage will be 1d4" - Ruling that makes a rule on the fly (the damage of a chair) but the procedures stay the same.
Probably, flexible procedures are the best for making quick rulings. I still may need to nail down this line of thought, but that sounds reasonable.
Games and their prescriptions.
I believe that PbtA is low in rules but high in procedures, since each Move is a prescription that tells you how the state of the narrative world changes. On the other hand, 5e has more rules than procedures: there are more in-game descriptions of objects than ways to establish changes in narrative.
In OSR/NSR games, Cairn (1e) is lightweight since it is low on rules and procedures, while Cairn 2e becomes heavier in procedures, and His Majesty the Worm is a beast of procedurality.
So... what do you think? Is rules vs procedures the same as Descriptive vs Prescriptive?