D&D as a Living Rules Set

In his blog Mike Mearls discusses D&D as a "Living Rules Set":

Over at shootingdice.blogspot.com, Malcolm sez:

"After D&D last night I found myself able to articulate something that kind of sucks about the rules. D&D is designed to strictly assign responsibilities and outcomes for dungeon crawling. This breaks down into a number of standard tasks that players constantly undertake. D&D mandates rolls in short intervals in tasks like Search. D&D also assumes that players declare the task each time.

The unspoken balancing mechanism here is that as players have to declare that they're doing exactly the same thing over and over again, somebody will slip up and miss the trap/monster/door. Basically, D&D relies on player boredom to create tension and conflict."

I simultaneously agree and disagree with this statement.

For n00bs, rolling things like Search is fun. The players have little experience with the rules. They aren't familiar with how the game works, how play is supposed to proceed, and how the cliches roll along. Novelty alone makes it really fun to worry about what's behind that door, or what you need to do to properly check an area over for hidden stuff.

After a while, the novelty wears off and that stuff becomes boring. You've opened the door with the trap a dozen times. It's old hat. Rules that were once fun and exciting are now boring.

The problem is that the rules fail to evolve in response to your group. It'd be a mistake to tell people to just cut past all that stuff, since there is a segment of gamers who enjoy it. But the people who don't enjoy it should have some simple tools for getting around it.

The key is striking the balance. You want the DM of the vets to see that it's a good thing to avoid boring roles. You want the DM of the newbies to see that, for many beginners, the sense of novelty injects interest and tension into everything.

I have no insights into how to make that work without confusing both groups or wasting energy. I suspect that, in many cases, DMs who need to change how they do things just ignore the advice to change (that's why they're bad at what they do, they ignore opportunities to improve). The good ones already know tricks like assume the rogue takes 10 on Search, throw in traps for the rogue to find on a take 10 as a tell that tougher traps are coming up, or to reveal something about the plot ("This scything blade trap is brand new. Someone has been in this crypt in the past week!")

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In my experience, the experienced DM adapts to his group, but there is a boring area of varying length while he adapts. A few groups blame the system and don't adapt, rather move to a different system (sometimes following the same sequence there, sometimes finding something that suits the group).

However, I have noticed that a lot of experienced DMs that have adapted only work well with their group(s) or with players at a similiar level of experience. An very experienced DM often has difficulty creating a fun experience for newer players, because he tries to give them an experience appreciated by his experienced players, which isn't always as fun for the new players.

Thoughts?

Interesting.

Some would say D&D to some degree is a living rule set, as experienced DMs invariably have house rules, ranging from the simplistic to the extensive.

Sadly, I think the OGL was built to be a much better living rule set than it turned out to be - rule modules could have (and maybe should have) been inserted or upgraded as different publishers introduced new concepts. Alas, this didn't happen.

The problem with having D&D evolve is that we are all playing a slightly different version of D&D - who is to say which version is the upgrade, and which is a wacky variant?

Although, it might be interesting to ask someone like d20srd.org, since they seem pretty avant garde, if they would put up "upgrade" sections of rules that DM's have come up with - when to award experience points, garrotte rules, and such - open a smorgasboard of options up to people - there's already a lot of energy being spent out there on games, maybe we could make those efforts available some how.

It's all a question of adaptability. Maybe the way we define "experienced" DMs was wrong all along.

Maybe the experience of a DM isn't only about knowing the rules, how many games the guy ran, an extensive culture or how many years he ran this or that successful campaign. Maybe an "experienced" DM is someone who learns how to adapt to different styles of players/genres/playstyles and can provide a high ratio of satisfaction and entertainment in most cases.

Adaptability in RPGs is hard to learn. It requires a GM to stop thinking in terms of his/her years of expertise at running a game or a precise game style, stop in his/her tracks and think that the games that s/he ran before, even though they might have been great for the people involved, do not represent a panacea to the practice of RPGs. Heck, to stop pretending s/he knows how something alien to his/her gaming style works when s/he truly doesn't enjoy it (I come to believe that if one doesn't like this or that aspect of RPGs, it's not so much about tastes as it is about the understanding of this particular aspect of the hobby).

Or, in other, simpler words, it requires a GM to swallow his ego and think in objective terms.

RPGs are not optimal tools to promote objectivity. A GM's position is very much about ego and self-accomplishment. Entertaining people, be a good host, create the coolest campaign ever... it's all about shining as a person. It's about being in the spotlight in many ways.

That's where, I think, the problem comes from, because after years of running RPGs, GMs start to think of themselves as experts, that there's nothing left to learn for them, which couldn't be more wrong in my own experience. Variations are good. Running games for different types of players is good. If I may be a bit "Don Quichotte" too, it's certainly good to introduce new people to the game regularly, or for players to become GMs at least once in a while. This all develops an understanding of the hobby as a whole and the different roles people have at the game table. In the end, it makes the whole game experience all the more intense and enjoyable for the people involved, in my opinion.

In the end, I agree with Mike: "I suspect that, in many cases, DMs who need to change how they do things just ignore the advice to change (that's why they're bad at what they do, they ignore opportunities to improve)." Being individually aware of this is the way to start improvements.

Actually, I thought what Mike was trying to say was that even when you're DMing the same group with the same characters, the rules of the game ought to change between the time you are 1st level to the time you are 20th level (assuming the campaign lasts that long).

This is because there are some things that might be fun to worry about for a while, but become boring and ought to be glossed over after some time. Examples of such things (from my perspective, anyway) are: accounting for each arrow and copper piece, worrying about food and water, and looting bodies and selling second-hand weapons and armor.

Many people have commented that the nature of the game changes between 1st level and 20th level. Maybe the rules need to change too, so that tasks that were resolved in one way at lower levels (because it's fun to do it that way then) get resolved in other ways at higher levels (because they should be glossed over then).

We ran into this, when I resisted allowing the high (lvl 20-22) PCs to cast spells defensively all the time as the default. Even if no one is nearby. The thing that finally convinced me was when they showed me their concentration check was high enough for every spell level that they could succeed even if they rolled a 1.

I think Mike is largely correct, and I can perhaps make a suggstion as to why he, who is pretty wise on the matter, doesn't have an idea how to make things work for everyone - the number of variations required is simply too large.

In many ways, this has strong analogy in adventure design - many folks start out with dungeon crawling as the basic design. Some like it and stay with that forever. Others eventually come to want other things in adventures. The good DM sees that, and provides the things the players want - but note how many different things folks want to see in adventures. It spans the entire realm of fiction. You can't write one book to cover how to do all of it well.

What counts as "the boring bits" will differ from group to group, depending largely on the players involved. Different DMs need to make different adjustments to keep things fun as players adjust their styles over time. The good DM has to keep eye and mind open to new ways to approach things, just to see how they might work.