So there we have a problem. You have a set of experiences that indicate that the chances of a breach of the unwritten premises of a game is significantly higher than the chances of a similarly problematic rules dispute. I have a set of experiences that indicate the opposite.
It might very well be that we are the problem ourselves. We appear to both be rules nerds, but we might still have different approaches to how to interact with rules in a social context. In particular it might be we have different relationship to written and unwritten rules.
Perhaps.
It might seem like you find unwritten rules brittle and rigid due to the challenge of communicate around it, while written rules are easy to bending and forming to your needs as you can readily talk around it, and that way build an explicit consensus.
Yes. Unwritten rules are an invisible spider's web trapping me in place. Written rules are a known structure I can climb on, and even better, I
and others can actually
see when they're going wrong. Because they aren't invisible. They're visible. That's...the whole point. Unwritten rules are invisible, and that has been reiterated quite clearly as
being the point. An invisible rule going wrong can't be fixed, because we don't even know it's there causing an issue.
Meanwhile I find the unwritten rules more flexible as any reasonable interpretation of them are generally accepted, while written rules are tight and brittle as their written form works as an outside authority that need to be interpreted and might have different meaning and importance to the various members of the group.
Whereas that's
nothing like how I've actually seen unwritten rules applied. Different people come to
radically different understandings, but they don't realize this until it's too late to back out, we
have to have a long, drawn-out, frustrating conversation where we nail down every single word and detail and tiny little nuance.
For evidence, I present you
this entire thread, from first to last.
That is while consensus building is more possible for the written than the unwritten rules, the actual process of building that consensus might be really hard in a group of players that is strongly opiniated about various subtle details in the rules.
Anyone who is so strongly opinionated about rules that they cannot, even in principle,
ever accept someone else's interpretation isn't someone who should be participating in a game. Period. Doesn't matter what game it is. Anyone who simply
cannot accept that they personally are wrong and someone else (whether or not it's someone at the table) is right, is a person who cannot play games. They will be no less a problem with unwritten rules--and I argue they'll be much
more of a problem, because when the rule is unwritten, they have a dramatically stronger position to argue that their interpretation is right--because there is no evidence, no public knowledge to draw upon.
I do recognise that this category of people might be in a minority. Me and both of my brothers happens to be so, which mean I have likely been exposed to the issue a lot more than average. I have had clashes with other players as well, so my family is not unique. But that means that if you yourself are quite lentinent and accepting about what rules are at play, and how they are interpreted, (as long as they are explicit and written down) it might not be so surprising you have not found yourself at a table where this type of situation has been a problem.
I just don't understand how rules no one can see makes conversation any easier. If the rules can't be seen, if they're genuinely invisible to us ("invisible rulebooks" being an FKR staple phrase, very much equivalent to the staple phrases of PbtA that so many in this thread love to hate on), two different people can have radically different interpretations and both have equal claim to being right. Worse, they can believe they actually do agree on critical elements when they simply do not...and thus get into far more acrimonious arguments because they misinterpret one another's intentions by
thinking that when each of them says "A", person 1 means <X> and person 2 means <Y>, where X and Y can be almost anything--even diametric opposites. Purely dumping all of that into unspoken, and in many cases
unspeakable, restrictions might smooth away small disagreements when the details aren't too important. But hey will
magnify disagreements when the details matter immensely. If any group on God's green Earth is maximally obsessed with the nitty-gritty details, it's RPG players.
I say that rather than "TTRPG" because I'm including MMO players. A famous--perhaps notorious--joke amongst both D&D and MMO players is, if you want correct information online, don't ask a question because you'll be ignored. Instead, post something which is confidently incorrect. Within
minutes you'll have a swarm of angry commenters correcting you with extensive, and often shockingly accurate, information. (Or, if you're familiar with the online war-simulation games "War Thunder" and "World of Tanks", they have become
notorious for having players that leak classified military documents in order to "prove" that the developers of said games have falsely depicted the characteristics of some particular vehicle.)
