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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9708065" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Perhaps.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.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.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 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.)</blockquote>

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