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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9004008" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I don't think it's weird. It's just a different preference and point of view. To lean on the comparison to Free Kriegsspiel, I think what allowed the trust to happen was that the referee was (a) not a participant in the game, and (b) an actual expert on the subject matter. With RPGs, we're talking about make believe across a potentially wide range of genres/themes/subject matter, so it's quite different. It's not that a GM cannot be trusted. It's that the nature of play and the contents of the fiction can lend themselves to wildly different interpretations and expectations. Having rules for how things work help to narrow that range. They help to create the &quot;onboarding&quot; that you're talking about in your post. It makes it more clear and defined so that there's less likelihood of mismatched expectations. It helps put everyone on the same page. To take it further, as a GM, I enjoy the constraint. It gives me boundaries to work within, and limits what I can and can't do, which forces me to get creative. You describe this as &quot;honestly weird&quot; but in the second sentence I've quoted above, you describe it as a given; all RPGs require trust regardless of the number of rules. So then perhaps peoples' choice of game type... or dislike of a game type... isn't about what you think it's about?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 9004008, member: 6785785"] I don't think it's weird. It's just a different preference and point of view. To lean on the comparison to Free Kriegsspiel, I think what allowed the trust to happen was that the referee was (a) not a participant in the game, and (b) an actual expert on the subject matter. With RPGs, we're talking about make believe across a potentially wide range of genres/themes/subject matter, so it's quite different. It's not that a GM cannot be trusted. It's that the nature of play and the contents of the fiction can lend themselves to wildly different interpretations and expectations. Having rules for how things work help to narrow that range. They help to create the "onboarding" that you're talking about in your post. It makes it more clear and defined so that there's less likelihood of mismatched expectations. It helps put everyone on the same page. To take it further, as a GM, I enjoy the constraint. It gives me boundaries to work within, and limits what I can and can't do, which forces me to get creative. You describe this as "honestly weird" but in the second sentence I've quoted above, you describe it as a given; all RPGs require trust regardless of the number of rules. So then perhaps peoples' choice of game type... or dislike of a game type... isn't about what you think it's about? [/QUOTE]

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