Gamers of all stripes tend to fiddle
with their material to some degree. Tinkering only seems natural in a
hobby with such imaginative games and numerous rules systems for
achieving different play experiences. After running some games
by-the-book, gamers start taking rules into their own hands to
customize the experience to their play styles, audience, and personal
vision for a game.
Merriam-Webster defines the verb form
of “tinker” as, “To repair, adjust, or work with something in
an unskilled or experimental manner,” with the noun form of
“tinker” being one who engages in such activity.
The adventure gaming hobby not only
relies on some imaginative game mechanics and themes across its
various forms, but attracts creative, intelligent, and critical
individuals who have no qualms about imposing their own adjustments
on existing games. Some gamers customize existing settings and
scenarios for their own gaming table, while others completely rework
rules and campaign worlds, adding their own imaginative
interpretations on published material to craft games emphasizing a
particular style of play or thematic elements. Some games offer
optional or advanced rules individual gamers decide upon using right
at the game table. Others tinker with existing rules after extended p
lay reveals deficiencies in procedures or more efficient ways of
resolving conflicting game elements. Really ambitious gamers take a
much-played game and decide to run with their own visions for its
design, in the process creating an entirely new game inspired by but
quite different from the original.
For some this seems to happen all the time, albeit at very superficial levels. At convention games where I’m running a game using West End Game’s iconic D6 System players often ask me if I’m using the “Wild Die,” a critical d6 among a player’s die pool that can indicate a catastrophic failure when rolling a one or an extreme success when rolling a six. (I almost always avoid the Wild Die since results can fluctuate drastically within the die pool.) I’ve “house ruled” Jedi powers in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game; instead of Jedi having access to all powers within their particular discipline of control, sense, and alter, I give them a list of starting powers they know from past study or a former mentor. This not only limits their power but reduces the number of spell-like powers with which players must familiarize themselves. Such small “house rulings” happen all the time at roleplaying game tables around the world to customize the play experience to a group’s style and the gamemaster’s vision of what rules remain central and which could work more smoothly in their own estimation.
Sometimes a game’s mechanics seem
fine but – in the eyes of a gamer – could use some adjustment for
perfectly logical reasons. For instance, I’m fond of taking
miniature wargaming rules and messing with the scale. I’ve played
French and Indian War rules intended for 15mm or 25mm and used
appropriate 54mm soldiers from Armies in Plastic, which look good on
the wargaming table yet consistently use movement and range
measurements intended for the smaller scales; I just don’t have
25mm painted, period metal miniatures that would work. Sometimes
gamemasters in old-school-style games make choices about character
creation – such as how players randomize or choose stat values, or
whether they should randomly roll or maximize hit points – to alter
survivability levels for starting characters.
I’m reading a reprint of Donald
Featherstone’s War Games I received as a Christmas gift
and immediately started tinkering with rules in my head. Featherstone
stands out not only as one of the founders of modern miniature
wargaming but as one who advocated basic systems and easily grasped
rules. Aside from seeking his insights on miniature wargaming issues,
I’d hoped to find some guidance in mechanics for running different
period engagements; the book offers guideline for running battles in
the ancient, horse-and-musket, and modern periods (all relevant to my
varied wargaming interests in ancient Egypt, various continental
American wars, and World War II). Even as I’m reading and grasping
his revelations on rules he devised for various periods I’m already
thinking, “Hmmm, I like how he handled this, but if I changed this
rule to work another way and re-interpret this one to another
historical period....”
Solitaire gamers tinker with rules all
the time in an effort to transform group games into solo endeavors
through a variety of techniques dependent on the game form. Wargamers
create rationales for the “Artificial Intelligence” behind
opposing forces, fog-of-war mechanics for hiding enemy troops behind
false markers on miniature wargaming tables. Roleplaying gamers work
with random tables, story dice, and tools to generate unexpected plot
and character developments. My work on Schweig’s Themed Dungeon Generator came about in part from my dissatisfaction with several
systems for creating randomized dungeons for my own solo roleplaying
needs. I recently tried playing Collins Epic Wargames’ Spearpoint 1943 card game solitaire; while I didn’t alter the core rules
governing play between two opponents, I drafted a detailed rationale
prioritizing the non-player’s actions in terms of committing units,
using Command Cards, and targeting my own units.
Several fields within the adventure
gaming hobby tend to discourage tinkering, emphasizing the game’s
published incarnation as the only permissible one for play. These
primarily include Euro-board games and any game relying on organized
play. Board games (and many card games) rely on standardized rules
governing player actions, leaving very little room for modification
without throwing off the game’s inherent balance mechanisms. In a
similar sense games intended for organized play rely on standardized
rules to provide a level playing field in tournaments. Personal
tinkering disrupts the game’s baseline and contradicts the
“standard operating system” of rules governing the group play
experience.
A Legacy of Tinkering
The adventure gaming hobby has a long
legacy of tinkering going back to the earliest days of games. Peruse
R.C. Bell’s Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations
(1969) – my standard handbook on traditional board games – and
one realizes people have modified abstract board games across
different civilizations throughout recorded history.
The earliest wargames – arguably von
Reiswitz’s Kriegsspiel and H.G. Well’s Little Wars
– were “homebrew” collections of rules by amateur gamers that
spawned an entire hobby of creator-published and gamer-adjusted
rules. The various histories of Dungeons & Dragons
document its growth from modified miniatures wargames into rules
approximating our current concepts of roleplaying games through
individual efforts and tinkering at the gaming table. Nothing says
“tinkering” like mimeographed copies of rules originally hammered
out on manual typewriters.
Even after roleplaying games got their
“official” start with saddle-stitched, digest-sized booklets and
even hard-cover rules tomes designers seemed to leave players on
their own in both rules interpretations and scenario/setting
creation; heck, the original creators of Dungeons & Dragons
initially intended only to release rulebooks and believed gamers
would create their own adventures and campaign worlds. Numerous
fanzines and house-organ magazines, including the venerable Dragon
Magazine, provided forums long before internet venues enabled
tinkerers to debate mechanics, post rules variants, and even publish
entirely new games.
Throughout the history of the adventure
gaming hobby designers and companies have emerged driven by the basic
idea of creating a game in a field where they felt they could have
greater success by their own interpretation of rules and setting.
Steve Jackson left Metagaming to form Steve Jackson Games based on
some of his core creations. Scott Palter supposedly founded West End
Games to publish chit-and-board wargames that he wanted to
play. Numerous laid-off designers and staffers from TSR and Wizards
of the Coast moved on to develop their own visions of ideal fantasy
roleplaying rules and settings (among other genres). One might argue
that the entire Old School Renaissance movement (OSR) stems from an
urge to tinker with earlier fantasy roleplaying rules, a process
enabled by the revolutionary Open Gaming License.
The Internet Age – along with the
Open Gaming License – has lowered the difficulty threshold for
fans, independent designers, and others to create and share their own
tinkered variations and original games. Some seems extremely
professional, other material looks amateurish; yet gamers can find
what best suits their interests in genre and play style and
incorporate it into their own games...further tinkering with modified
bits produced by gamers from around the world.
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