I play a game each week called Dungeons and Dragons. It's a wonderful game that tests narrative capacity, improves intellectual response, trains leadership skills, develops communication (if not spelling) abilities... I could go on. Now in this game you have a Game Master who essentially sets the scene for the players to then interact with and overcome (typically the scene involves rescuing virgins from dark towers filled with the forces of evil). Now there are literally hundreds of rule books that describe a multitude of systems that can be employed to bring structure and balance to the game. These rule books contain hundreds, if not thousands of rules.
Recently and not so recently this simple little game of make-believe and group story telling has nearly ripped my friendships apart because one of the fundamental concepts of the game is: The rules are always right, unless the Game Master (GM) decides otherwise (in effect - use the rules till you don't want them/need them etc). The other fundamental is the Game Master is always right. It's his world after all. But something that has always been a major issue in my life as a Game Master is a balance between GM rules, and Book rules. I hate book rules. I really and truly do. I find them so restrictive in terms of narration. It limits the players in what their characters can do, it limits the GM in terms of what he can do. On the other end of the scale though is a game without rules is simply chaos. And different players see actions and requirements differently.
So of late we've been bumping heads - my players and I. Those who love the rules (Rules Lawyers) and those who hate the rules (Rules Anarchists) have been at logger heads. Then compound this with the fact that players misread the rules (both intentionally and unintentionally), apply those rules haphazardly, or in some cases ignore the rules this can cause some major issues. Finally add in a GM aka me who simply uses the rules as pretty pictures and makes up his own anyway. What you get is a potential clash of wills. The Rules Lawyers fight amongst themselves (its amusing to see the squabbles over whether a dwarf can jump a ten foot chasm without being tossed), the Rules Anarchists ignore everyone anyway, and the GM is simply keeping the monsters coming until someone dies.
Not a pretty picture. All those intellectual virtues, those communications skills... collapse into a heap as the kids fight over a +2 or +4 bonus. Finally when you add to the mix vast quantities of caffeine, pizza, salt, sugar, and lack of sleep those tempers shift from being within the game, to without the game. And friendships start to crack. It's the funniest thing. And for a while I couldn't work out why we would prefer a game over a human. Why we blame bad players, and not bad rules. Curious is it not? The conclusion I came to the other day whilst screaming a dear friend of mine over the phone about whether or not a jump forward and down would incur more damage than a simple jump down (who cares?) is that this is the ultimate form of escapism for those of us with the capacity to imagine.
For the game involves/ed using paper, pencils, dice, and occasionally a map. Nothing tangible. The new version of the game now involves little miniatures, but the majority of the play is on paper and in your head. There is the nub of it. In your head. It's a personal experience that you're sharing with others. No wonder we get fidgety over a +2... it's a personal +2. +2 inches could be a whole big difference in the real world, and its more so in the fantasy world. And then I realized as well that there are not only the Rules Lawyers and the Rules Anarchists - but there are also the serious players and the non-serious players. And within those two categories there are two camps. The Serious players are dedicated to the rules first and foremost. The rules, the numbers, the values, are all that matter. Application of those values will in some way give them immense pleasure. The second camp within the serious players are those who play their character for life. They are desperate their this extension of themselves to succeed. And will not vary until they have. Naturally you get people who do both - rules and character obsession.
The other camp - the non-serious guys, play the game because it's interesting to see how the story will unfold for the particular character they're playing. They might be rules lawyers in which case they want to see how far they can push the rules, and how much fun they can have with those rules. Or like myself the non-serious player is there to have fun. He uses the rules in the opposite direction of the fanatical achiever to create characters with flaws, with weak values just to see what happens. And when his character dies, he simply pulls out the next one. For example last night we played, and I rolled (created) two options - a near sighted dwarf or a paranoid elf. I just wanted to see if these could become heroes. The paranoid elf, although afraid of everything trying to kill him, so far, has managed to avoid death.
But what amazes me, and is the actual crux of this post is that whether you're serious or not, a lawyer or not the result is the same: Frustrations in the game spill over into the real world. A slight of honour in the games applications slap the real players. Again as Humans we have managed to create a set of rules that have as much meaning as fairy dust, and those self created rules rip us apart. I'm sure that each of us could go off and write our own rules (hell I've done that three times already in 10 years). Start our own games where we call all play the role of GM.. of god. So is this what we'd call a closed system experiment? A small simple system describing a larger system? The rise of religion? Perhaps I'm stretching the analogy too far, but all I know is that it's really not worth destroying real friendships because of some self created rules...
But then again... why do we do it? Imagination is a powerful thing, perhaps the only thing that separates us from the other animals. After all imagination is what we need in order to develop our skills with manipulating the intangible. So is an attack on our imagination, an affront on our creative mind, then the greatest attack that one can make against man? Attack the only thing that makes us Human? Now there is something to think about...
3 comments:
Your thoughts echo the process which prompted me to start developing a gaming system that used the word 'rules' as little as possible. To create a structure that facilitated play while leaving the GM and Players enough creative freedom to really express their characters and do those fantastical things. I have always found rules let you down when you want you character to do a Trinity style room clearing complete with running on walls. Much easier to throw away all the rules on that and simple say: I do XYZ... The system supports this my providing one roll determining success or failure. All else is placed in the perview of the players. Its up to them to make the action with their words.
Anyhow its a work in progress but it seeks to address just these issues. Play testing has been promising to say the least. I know I keep saying I will send oyu a copy and I shall, the delay comes from me wanting to send you some sort of consolidated, internally consistant document as right now, it exists across a bunch of word and excel docs, jpgs and scribbled pages.
Of course some personalities are never satisfied unless all in attendance, GM and player alike, submitt to their superior judgment and logic. SIGH
I'm going to be blatantly sexist and say that it is precisely those rules and the conflicts that are created from them that make the game attractive to men, and unattractive to women. I know there are female players, and I'm sure most are better at it than I am, but if you want three people arguing about whether or not a particular flagon of ale could have been poisoned and how much damage it might inflict if you took a sip and spit it out, you need boys.
You're kinda missing the point that the metagame - the conversations *about* the game and the rules, and the fights about the game and the rules - are, to a boy, just as much fun, ultimately, as the game itself. You and Watson come to mind immediately when I picture that - and you're both having fun, even if you're baring your teeth in a very primal display of superiority.
At the risk of instant immolation, I'm going to go out on a limb and say : It's basically rugby for smart guys - y'know, the smart guys that got beaten up by the rugby players.
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