The GM's Dagger Pt 2

Why the rules matter

If a GM is to be the keeper, enforcer and arbiter of the rules before all other things, then a reasonable follow-up question is “Why are the rules so important?” For some reason, RPGs are the only games where rules are treated as optional and this issue permeates the entire culture. You will often find football fans arguing over the merits of specific rules and how they’re enforced at the college and professional level, but could you imagine a referee stepping in front of the camera and saying, “The ruling on the field would normally be holding, but we do not enforce holding as a penalty on my field because I think it’s more fun.” This fundamentally changes the way the game will be played and, unless the NCAA and NFL decide to completely do away with holding as a penalty, it will only apply to this specific game. This is self-evidently bad as it means that every single game played will be under a slightly different ruleset depending on which crew is officiating the game. There’s nothing consistent to appeal to or plan for when the rules are constantly in flux. Inconsistent rules are not fair in the purest, most objective sense of the word.

RPGs are games and games are defined by their rules. Rules set the frame within which all participants must act. In soccer, a team must place the ball into the opposing team’s goal but they cannot manipulate the ball with their hands. Only the goalie is permitted to use his hands defensively. Contact with other players is strictly limited so that tackles, holds or blocks are expressly prohibited. Those are the parameters under which the game of soccer is played and soccer players must develop their skills accordingly. These rules are accepted from FIFA and Premier League all the way down to pickup games played in dirt fields by little Peruvian boys. Failure to observe these rules results in punishment in organized play and social shaming in informal play. Sometimes folk games immerge by removing from or adding to an established ruleset. Gaelic football, Australian football and Rugby are all examples of this, being offshoots of traditional football or soccer. All three games are acknowledged as being different entities from the root game and have their own separate evolutions from each other. Sometimes these offshoots develop heated rivalries with one another as in the Brazilian vs Japanese Jiu-Jitsu rivalry. Both call themselves Jiu-Jitsu and both employ similar techniques in many instances, but there’s a fundamental difference in focus that makes them completely different martial arts.

What does all of that have to do with roleplaying games though? Well, as RPGs have developed, a culture of cavalierness towards the rules has developed along with it. The fault for this lies squarely at the feet of the man himself, Gary Gygax, who included the following statement in the 1974 Men & Magic book from the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set:

These rules are as complete as possible within the limitations imposed by the space of three booklets. That is, they cover the major aspects of fantasy campaigns but still remain flexible. As with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity — your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors, and the fact that you have purchased these rules tends to indicate that there is no lack of imagination — the fascination of the game will tend to make participants find more and more time. We advise, however, that a campaign be begun slowly, following the steps outlined herein, so as to avoid becoming too bogged down with unfamiliar details at first. That way your campaign will build naturally, at the pace best suited to the referee and players, smoothing the way for all concerned. New details can be added and old “laws” altered so as to provide continually new and different situations. In addition, the players themselves will interact in such a way as to make the campaign variable and unique, and this is quite desirable.

Men & Magic (1974), Pg. 4

From here, the concept of “Rule Zero” was born and, even though it clearly states that players should begin simply and lean heavily on the text of the rules and expand outward and upward as they build mastery. Tim Kask and Gary Gygax would expand upon this in the introduction to 1976’s Swords & Spells where they state that fantasy is not rigid, but rather imaginative and that players should feel free to amend or expand upon the rules when appropriate, with Tim Kask emphasizing that balance must be maintained, even putting balance in all-caps. Gygax would go on to elucidate in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979) that the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law, advising that Dungeon Masters might encounter players looking to manipulate them by using the written words divorced from their greater context. By including these passages, Gygax et al clearly wanted to send the message that D&D had room for creativity and expansion, but the rules exist to ground the game with some kind of uniformity. The world of wargaming had a long tradition of community interaction and discussion. Gygax clearly wanted this for D&D as well and that kind of community can only exist if there’s something solid to refer back to. All of this talk about roleplaying has to be undergirded by something and that something is necessarily the rules.

In his seminal comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, cartoonist Bill Watterson introduced a game called Calvinball, created by the titular Calvin, a game with only one rule; players cannot play the same way twice. In the strip, Calvin invents the game out of frustration with his attempts to join a baseball team and the rigidity of organized sports. Being a six year-old boy, Calvin frequently struggles with accountability for his actions and comes up with esoteric ways to avoid it. All children, at one time or another, struggle to understand something that their peers have already understood. All children discover differences between themselves and their peers in aptitudes. Maturity is recognizing this and learning to apply yourself and your skills to solve problems. In this process, a mature person may realize that the juice is not worth the squeeze and decide to disengage from it. At first blush, Calvinball seems like it’s Calvin withdrawing from sports into his own imagination, but the last comic strip to feature Calvinball brings reality into sharp focus. What starts as a game of football between Calvin and Hobbes devolves into Calvinball with Calvin stating that “Sooner or later, all of our games turn into Calvinball…” Calvin is unable to stick to a coherent set of rules, even in an imaginary game with his imaginary friend. Specifically, this comic shows that Calvin pivots to Calvinball when he’s asked to hand over the ball. At any point where he would lose the upper hand, he evokes Calvinball to avoid consequences.

For the past 40 years or so, Gary Gygax’s “Rule Zero” has not been interpreted as a license to build upon a foundation of knowledge and experiment, but to throw out rules when they are found to be inconvenient. The RPG commentariat has turned Rule Zero into Calvinball. Little effort, if any, is given to understanding the rules as they’re written. As a good friend of mine says, they’ve been found difficult and left untried. Like Calvin, they have decided that their arbitrary rules are more fun than the given rules and therefore better. The problem? Fun is subjective. Fun is fleeting and, oftentimes, fun is only realized in hindsight. The issue with the rules that the Calvins of the world have is not one of fun but one of time preference. Time preference will be elaborated on in the next chapter. The result of this emphasis on homebrew over rules-as-written (RAW) is that the objectivity of the game has been stripped away. There is no guarantee in RPGs that the same game will be played on each field with each referee. A player may get flagged for holding in one game and then horse collar tackled in the next. As English occultist Aleister Crowley prescribed, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” This philosophy has led no small number of people to lives of ruin and that too is what has become of the RPG industry and the communities that surround it. It is chaotic destruction. We will not be bound by such a fate. Instead, we will embrace order.