Brendan S has written a blog post on how  some people treat rpg rules as primarily in texts, while others treat them as residing primarily in culture of a play group and its hinterland —

“I contend that one of the major causes of misunderstanding in discussions of tabletop roleplaying games is differential prioritization of where rules should live. At base, games are bundles of practices that can be stored and communicated in various ways. For example, baseball in the United States started as a game played by amateurs using informal rules that lacked textual basis. A social club wrote the first baseball text in 1845: the Knickerbocker Rules. Tabletop roleplaying game rules can also reside ultimately in culture or in texts.”

The post felt very important when I read it, and I felt I should blog about it. Now, several days later, I cannot remember what I planned to say in such a blog post. I know it indirectly lead to Why do rpg players ignore rules? and What Do Rules Ever Do For Us?, but I thought I had something more specific to say.

I remember thinking that this clearly relates to the comments by Eero Tuovinen I summarise in Valuable insights into OSR play, and to my position in A Ruleset is an Intervention Tool (in Brendan’s terms, the latter talks about written rules as a way to modify culture).

If I remember more, I will put it here.

Status: I’m fairly confident of validity and completeness

Over on G+, Dan Maruschak laments that many rpg groups will not or cannot follow rpg rules as written. I said

“In most life contexts, believing written rules and procedures is of dubious value. When you enter a new community, you’re usually better to follow what others do rather than what the rules say you should do. The real rules — those that most people follow in practice — are unlikely to be exactly those that are written down.”

to which he replied

“Which is why I find it so aggravating that that “follow the written rules of a game” is such a hard sell. People can get no-rules everywhere else, why demand no-rules here, too?”

In other words, Dan is asking why people don’t take rpg play as a chance to enter a well-defined magic circle — to play, for a change, in an environment defined by rules.

I think the following reasons are all factors here:

Continue reading “Why do RPG groups so often ignore the rules?” →

Status:  fairly confident in this now

Why bother with rules for roleplaying games? Whether RAW from a third party text, hand-crafted by the GM, or assembled by the play group through a democratic process, rules require effort to understand, require effort to remember in play, and may give weird, unwanted results at times.

So why not just freeform, using group consensus of equals or by appointing a GM and respecting their judgement? After all, freeform games are easier to set up and more flexible in play. And if you have a stable group, or a stable play circle, you can hone your freeform play with informal procedures and conventions that meet precisely your needs. Why try to impose formal rules on top of that?

In other words, what do rules ever do for us?

Continue reading “What Do Rules Ever Do For Us?” →