Rules as Written, Game as Played

 “The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience.”

— Gary Gygax

Chevy Chase's character from
Community prepares to run D&D....

After last week’s missive about “rigid” and “free” rules I started thinking about the flexibility roleplaying games have always offered and the variable experience they provide when mixing a rules system with a setting, a particular gamemaster, and a certain group of individual players. Sure, all games provide some variability with different participants within the more rigid structure rules impose. But roleplaying games offer a lot of room for interpretation to suit different play styles: which rules a gamemaster relies on and which they use infrequently or even ignore completely; to what degree the participants focus on rules, character roles, or setting; where an adventure moves and how it involves players and their characters. Roleplaying games give us lots of freedom between the rules as written and how we run them, subject to interpretation and collaboration between everyone at the table. All these variables sometimes lead to inconsistent quality. Sometimes game sessions can be terrible; but with the right combinations, the experience can seem magical. Each person at the table and their interpretation of a game (internally as a mindset and externally through play) represents a wide-ranging variable...all of which can affect the course of the game and the satisfaction each person finds in it.

Roleplaying games have been around for 50 years now, but our individual discovery of them remains part of our own personal experience. As a new form of entertainment when they appeared in the mid-1970s, roleplaying games presented the challenge that nobody quite knew how to play them if they weren’t in the designers’ immediate circle of players. People involved in the fan fiction and Society for Creative Anarchism might have found inspiration in their own imaginative storytelling endeavors. Wargamers shifted from a tabletop experience to a more immersive game with fewer constraints. Most everyone interpreted the rules and ran games to provide a satisfying entertainment experience to some degree. And the more they played, the more they fine-tuned the process. Disparate groups across America interpreted the rules in their own way, running adventures according to their own vision of how the game worked and what satisfied their players.

My initial exposure to neighborhood kids playing Dungeons & Dragons inspired my own amateurish efforts in the months before I actually received the D&D Basic set as a gift and could, on my own, determine first-hand how the rules intended players run games. One of the neighborhood kids had the D&D Basic set and we were hanging out while he was “running” a game for a friend; it consisted of the friend pointing to connected locations on the map of B2 The Keep on the Borderlands and asking what was in each room, and simply describing how he was going to deal with what he found there. Maybe they rolled some dice. I don’t recall seeing a character sheet. But the game captivated me. I went home and created a similar game where a wizard or warrior explored a dungeon map, rolling dice,slaying monsters, and collecting treasure (something that later became Creatures & Caverns...). Once I got my own copy of the D&D Basic set I spent an entire weekend reading the rulebook, trying to wrap my head around the intricacies of this game which seemed so imaginatively different than anything I’d ever encountered.

Before the internet gamers relied on each other and a few industry publications to demonstrate how to play the game. Eventually a consensus emerged, but it was still subject to individual interpretation at every gaming table. Some folks even developed their own modifications beyond a core game and published their own roleplaying games; something folks still do today with greater ease thanks to the internet. Today we have videos and other online resources to help orient newcomers to the core concepts of how to run roleplaying games. Sometimes I fear it’s too many to process, with everyone voicing their opinion of the best way to handle numerous aspects of the game...and the viewer left to figure it all out on their own...just like the old days. Whether someone learns from the core game materials or from a host of resources, everyone’s game table has plenty of room for personal interpretations, customization, and creative freedom even within the framework of a published game.

My favorite Mike Vilardi artwork:
Platt Okeefe running a Star Wars game.

A game’s host — usually the gamemaster — plays a large role interpreting the rules as written and the game as played. How much of the game’s inner workings does the host share with players? Does gameplay skew closer to the rules as written, with players min-maxing their characters’ stats and abilities, or does play focus more on character, motivation, and interaction? And how well does the host guide the game experience? This isn’t simply how they adhere to the rules, but how they convey a sense of the setting, engage characters in a scenario’s action, and give them a sense of the scope and themes integrated into the game. Does the gamemaster help make the players feel like their characters are the heroes of the story? How a host presents a game at the table affects how players engage with it.

Ages ago a few non-gamer friends had tried a particular roleplaying game with one gamemaster...and they hated the experience. Something was off. Perhaps they didn’t know enough about such games to gain a level of satisfaction, but maybe the gamemaster wasn’t attuned to their unfamiliarity with the game format and rules. Luckily a friend recommended they try the same game with a different person running it...and they loved it. No doubt they sensed differences in both gamemasters’ play styles: how much they focused on rules, how they interpreted character actions, how they conveyed a sense of the setting and action, and, ultimately, how they made players feel during engagement in the game as their characters.

Players, too, interpret the rules as written and the game as played through their characters. Assuming players have access to and fluency in the rules (as opposed to the gamemaster intentionally shouldering most of the procedural and reference burdens), their own focus on rules or character helps set the tone at the table. Certainly they must engage in some “game” element of the roleplaying game, but how much? Do they slavishly consult their character sheet to allow primarily their highest stats and skills to govern their character actions? Do they weigh possibilities of success in game terms? Do they approach each problem not as an in-universe character using setting resources but as a player applying the rules to their optimum advantage? The alternative — approaching game situations purely from the character’s perspective, using rules minimally to resolve conflicts and challenges — challenges players to focus primarily on the imaginary, to surrender themselves to the setting, the problems it presents, and their characters’ response as people, not players.

I’ll freely admit to varying my player approach all across the spectrum. In my youth I easily allowed game concerns to consume my play experience. Much of this activity focused on D&D and the dungeon-crawling mindset where players focused on characters exploring catacombs, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. Even when engaged in more cinematic fare like West End Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying Game — despite my older and presumably wiser perspective — I still sometimes slipped and focused on applying game rules for success rather than staying true to my character. As a gamemaster, no matter how intuitive or basic the game system, I’ve far too often seen players comparing stats to see who stood the best chance for success when their characters confront an in-universe challenge. It’s not easy to overcome the natural urge to “win,” even at a cooperative group experience like roleplaying games. Players affect the course and tone of a game differently depending on their approach to the wide freedom roleplaying games offer them, both in employing rules and in the much greater environment of their characters’ actions.

When we gather to play games of whatever kind we’re all part of the experience as much as the game components and rules. Our actions and attitudes define the game just as much as anything in the box. Everyone — players and gamemasters — plays a role in making the game enjoyable for themselves...and each other.

“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don’t need any rules.”

— Gary Gygax