The Origins of ‘Rule Zero’

Jon Peterson discusses the origins of Rule Zero on his blog. It featured as early as 1978 in Alarums & Excursions #38.

 

[Aldarc]

How do you explain Pathfinders success as the most popular RPG in the world with an unknown brand and no critical role? (Or rather CR was no where near the current popularity in the early 2010’s) I don’t believe it can be attributed purely to 3e players carrying over when that market was split three ways between 4e, 3e and pathfinder. The grew their brand proposition massively beyond this. The world famous d&d branded counted for very little when fundamentally the game rules were better.

You would have a much better argument with V:tM than a D&D OGL Clone published by D&D magazine publishers.

 

[overgeeked]

How do you explain Pathfinders success as the most popular RPG in the world with an unknown brand and no critical role?

Simple. Pathfinder isn’t the most popular RPG in the world. D&D is the most popular RPG in the world...because it’s got deep brand loyalty, mass media and general culture saturation, and Critical Role.

(Or rather CR was no where near the current popularity in the early 2010’s) I don’t believe it can be attributed purely to 3e players carrying over when that market was split three ways between 4e, 3e and pathfinder. The grew their brand proposition massively beyond this. The world famous d&d branded counted for very little when fundamentally the game rules were better.

It’s a matter of taste that the rules are better.

Their success is great. But don’t pretend it didn’t come from piggy-backing D&D, using the OGL, and Paizo being a D&D publisher for years before doing their own thing, Pathfinder. And yeah, disgruntled 3E players “staying onboard” with Pathfinder when 4E launched is exactly why Pathfinder and Paizo are as big as they are.

 

[MGibster]

How do you explain Pathfinders success as the most popular RPG in the world with an unknown brand and no critical role? (Or rather CR was no where near the current popularity in the early 2010’s) I don’t believe it can be attributed purely to 3e players carrying over when that market was split three ways between 4e, 3e and pathfinder.

I think we can attribute Pathfinder's success to two things: They made great products starting with Rise of the Runelords and continued making quality game material. The new Pathfinder RPG was perfectly poised to take advantage of the lackluster reception of D&D 4E with fans who decided they'd rather stick with something that resembled D&D 3.5. But it's not like Pathfinder was a completely new product. It's basically just D&D with some tweaks.

 

[TheSword]

Simple. Pathfinder isn’t the most popular RPG in the world. D&D is the most popular RPG in the world...because it’s got deep brand loyalty, mass media and general culture saturation, and Critical Role.


It’s a matter of taste that the rules are better.

Their success is great. But don’t pretend it didn’t come from piggy-backing D&D, using the OGL, and Paizo being a D&D publisher for years before doing their own thing, Pathfinder. And yeah, disgruntled 3E players “staying onboard” with Pathfinder when 4E launched is exactly why Pathfinder and Paizo are as big as they are.

I spoke past tense. It was the most popular, for several years.

D&D brand wasn’t enough for 4e to out-compete Pathfinder. The 5e product did that, and lo it became the most played version of the game again.

The very fact that they were similar games proves that the Brand is irrelevant. If it was the brand of D&D would have out sold Pathfinder, which it didnt for several years. Believe me there was much celebration in the Pathfinder community when it overtook, almost to communities validation.

I agree with @MGibster. It was quality rules and products that supported them sold consistently that made them successful. Not that 3e was good therefore pathfinder was good.

 

[Thomas Shey]

4e wasn’t a niche game but Marvel Heroic RP / Cortex / Forged in the Dark certainly are if they represent less than half of one percent of games played on Roll20. I’m not saying they aren’t good or fun, or that this isn’t a lot of games - there are a lot of people on Roll20.

There's a couple of things to say here.

1. One can make an argument that absolutely everything but D&D is niche if one wants to. D&D has had a gravitational advantage even from the start that is virtually impossible for any other game to overcome no matter how good it is, in that its already well distributed and the vast majority of people know about it. This is self-reinforcing in that no matter how many people like another given game, they're going to have more heavy lifting to find players/GMs because there are already a lot of people who play D&D and can't be bothered to learn another game. This changes a bit if someone learned something else first, but again, since few people self-teach most games, they're probably going to have learned from someone, and because of the social network already in place its probably going to, again, be D&D.

This does not say that there are not things about D&D that attract people or that its of bad quality; it does, however, say its entirely possible for it to be a mediocre experience for someone and still get played for the same reason a rather large number of people use Windows.

2. I realize one only has what data one can find, but there's a dynamic that makes Roll20 less commonly select for some systems than others one shouldn't ignore; and that issue is how relevant any sort of battle board is to play of the game. Obviously Roll20 offers some other things, but I'd suggest people who are not concerned with being able to move pieces around a board are notably less likely to bother with Roll20 because other platforms--often free ones--provide much of what they need without the need to pay for it or be as dependent on their servers. I can't speak for Forged in the Dark,, but none of the Cortex games I'm familiar with would be in the least difficult to play with just Discord if you're not super fussy about being able to supervise dice rolls. As such you're not going to get the same ratio of Roll20 games vis a vis D&D and its immediate kin and Cortex games as is likely in actual use, because I higher proportion of online Cortex game just aren't going to bother with Roll20.

But there’s obviously something there that makes people choose d&d, I don’t believe that is Brand name... or Critical Role.

I think you're seriously underestimating the benefit of the social network. For someone new especially, just being able to find a game is often the most important criterion, and guess what game that's most likely to be true about?

 

[MGibster]

The very fact that they were similar games proves that the Brand is irrelevant. If it was the brand of D&D would have out sold Pathfinder, which it didnt for several years. Believe me there was much celebration in the Pathfinder community when it overtook, almost to communities validation.

I won't go so far as to say that it proves brand is irrelevant. But it does support my belief that brand isn't enough to make a bad product successful. Even huge brands like Coca-Cola screw the pooch and give us unpopular products like New Coke. 4th edition D&D was a radical departure from what people expected D&D to be. During the AMC years, Harley Davidson was producing some truly crummy motorcycles.

I agree with @MGibster. It was quality rules and products that supported them sold consistently that made them successful. Not that 3e was good therefore pathfinder was good.

Without the success of D&D 3/3.5 there would be no Pathfinder. But you're right that Pathfinder wasn't good simply because 3E was good. We all remember the dark days of d20 glut that saw crummy product after crummy product produced using the SRD.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Rule Zero was always just a "fill in the Blanks" and a "Tweak to the Genre" rule.

It was never meant to be used willy billy and was mostly to make the infancy of RPGs work.

As RPG design developed, the blanks were mostly filled and the games tweaked to match genre. So Rule Zero is still needed but it shouldn't be used often without consent of all at the table.

Well, at the very start of D&D, at least the "fill in the blanks" really was expected to be used willy-nilly because OD&D as a rule set was downright skeletal. Any mechanics being combat a couple other limited areas beyond the completely ad-hoc were going to have to be made up as you go along, or pre-constructed houserules, because there just wasn't much to work with.

 

[TheSword]

There's a couple of things to say here.

1. One can make an argument that absolutely everything but D&D is niche if one wants to. D&D has had a gravitational advantage even from the start that is virtually impossible for any other game to overcome no matter how good it is, in that its already well distributed and the vast majority of people know about it. This is self-reinforcing in that no matter how many people like another given game, they're going to have more heavy lifting to find players/GMs because there are already a lot of people who play D&D and can't be bothered to learn another game. This changes a bit if someone learned something else first, but again, since few people self-teach most games, they're probably going to have learned from someone, and because of the social network already in place its probably going to, again, be D&D.

This does not say that there are not things about D&D that attract people or that its of bad quality; it does, however, say its entirely possible for it to be a mediocre experience for someone and still get played for the same reason a rather large number of people use Windows.

2. I realize one only has what data one can find, but there's a dynamic that makes Roll20 less commonly select for some systems than others one shouldn't ignore; and that issue is how relevant any sort of battle board is to play of the game. Obviously Roll20 offers some other things, but I'd suggest people who are not concerned with being able to move pieces around a board are notably less likely to bother with Roll20 because other platforms--often free ones--provide much of what they need without the need to pay for it or be as dependent on their servers. I can't speak for Forged in the Dark,, but none of the Cortex games I'm familiar with would be in the least difficult to play with just Discord if you're not super fussy about being able to supervise dice rolls. As such you're not going to get the same ratio of Roll20 games vis a vis D&D and its immediate kin and Cortex games as is likely in actual use, because I higher proportion of online Cortex game just aren't going to bother with Roll20.



I think you're seriously underestimating the benefit of the social network. For someone new especially, just being able to find a game is often the most important criterion, and guess what game that's most likely to be true about?

I don’t disagree with a lot of this. That may be the case now, but it wasn’t 8 years ago. There is a reason D&D has risen to such prominence the brand isn’t it. Because the D&D brand has been around throughout.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But they are synonyms. To me, simple is elegant. Especially when it comes to RPG game rules.

I'd say that's an idiosyncratic usage. Simplicity and elegance are, by common usage, orthogonal descriptions, even within the hobby

 

[Jaeger]

Remarkably Rule Zero is even absent in a number of OSR products. I cannot find any mention or discussion of anything remotely approaching a Rule Zero in Beyond the Wall & Other Adventures. Likewise Stars Without Number, for example, doesn't mention or discuss Rule Zero, though it does note the obvious point that GMs can obviously change the rules at their table, which comes across more as an admission that he can't control what you do at your table, but Crawford actually encourages first playing by the rules as written. Then he proposes a list of some possible house rules. I cannot find mention of Rule Zero in Mork Borg nor can I find it in Index Card RPG. It's also completely absent in Forbidden Lands.

Yes, because in general people buying OSR games don't need to have rule zero spelled out for them in print.

Because this:

Monopoly has a rule zero. It’s implied in the culture of the game. It just hasn’t been spelled out in the rulebook.

The only reason any kind of "Rule Zero" is spelled out in D&D is because it is the gateway drug into the hobby. And new people may have little to no cultural assumptions about the RPG hobby.

n 5E, difference between a Battleaxe and a Longsword is nonexistent, they both are Versatile weapons that deal the same damage of the same type. In Dungeon World, there's a significant difference, because Longsword and Battleaxe are inherently different weapons -- you can't halfsword and axe and you can't pull down ork's shield with a sword.

I disagree.

In dungeon world a Battleaxe and a Longsword do damage according to your classes base damage. There are no meaningful mechanical differences. (If you are a fighter you can select enhancements to your signature weapon, but another fighter can easily choose the same enhancements for his as well. My "Axe", my "Sword" - It's all just flavor.

"Half-swording" and "pulling down a shield" are just attack descriptions. Not specific rules options.

The PC describes what they are doing , the GM makes a ruling on it and says "Ok, roll x" - Done.

Someone with an Axe could easily say "I shorten my grip to use my axe in close so I can ram the tip of my axe-head through the chink in his armor." Someone with a Longsword can easily say "I swing with all my might to knock the ork's shield aside so that the Elf can shoot them." Same effect, different descriptions. All subject to the GM's rulings.

AW games are all about the GM making constant rulings /judgement calls because of their relatively rules light structure. They just provide good framework and guidelines for GM's to use when making those rulings.

In fact chapter 19 in Dungeon World is all about how a GM can change the game to suit their fancy. You can easily interpret pgs. 343-357, As one big "Rule Zero" exposition.

But there’s obviously something there that makes people choose d&d, I don’t believe that is Brand name... or Critical Role.

It's the #1 RPG. Ease of finding a game rules the day.

Considering the increasing number of people who insist on using D&D when a smaller game would more suit the style of play those same groups are after, it does appear that this edition’s popularity is a large part brand loyalty and a large part Critical Role. Not a complaint at all. More people playing games is good.

Yes. This.

D&D got this brand loyalty by being First.

And by its rules being Good Enough.

Especially with the common B/X sets that made D&D early on they were easy to pick up and play for newbs because they hit certain RPG design points that worked really well together:

1: Easy PC creation.
2: Graspable Rules complexity.
3: Easily grasped Default play mode.
4: Easily understood setting.
5: Straight-forward reward mechanism.

But being First and Good Enough are very big trumps. Once you have established market dominance it can be very hard for any competitors to mount a real challenge without "help" from the market leader in the form of mistakes.

As we can see in places Like Japan with Sword World, and Germany with The Dark Eye...

If someone hit all/most of those design points in their respective native languages First; they were able to shut D&D out of the top spot of fantasy RPG's in their respective countries.

Where 4e failed against Pathfinder 1e was that a lot of D&D players felt that the 4e rulesets was no longer Good Enough for the way that they wanted to play and experience D&D.

In hindsight lots of things about 4e were WOTC Own goals of epic proportions.

.