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.
The Wrong Kind of Wax 