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Rules, Rules, Rules: Thoughts on the Past, Present, and Future of D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8850252" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Not content with spinning out one long essay from a single sentence in your post, I'd like to talk about and expand on this one.</p><p></p><p>D&D is not a system or a game that was ever defined by its ruleset because D&D is not a system that is defined by the sort of game it is trying to be. Again, this goes back to Jon Peterson's observation that the creators of D&D weren't merely trying to create a game that simulated something, but in their mind they were creating a game that simulated everything - they were "Playing at the World". D&D as a game was defined by its limitless horizons, and the belief - right or wrong - that you could do anything and everything within the imagined game space.</p><p></p><p>You can see that not only in the language the game uses to describe itself, or the rambling and expansive topics that Gygax covers in the 1e DMG or that would eventually be covered in the collected BECMI rules, but in the early issues of Dragon and its equally esoteric treatment of what rules you might possibly need for the game of D&D. The answer really is, "All the rules". The assumption is that this is game where the players might mine ore and mint currency, start up the fantasy equivalent of the East India trading company, lay siege to castles and be besieged themselves, run a thief's guild, journey to the old west, explore the crashed remains of the Star Ship enterprise, interact with any number of figures from history and myth, and on and on.</p><p></p><p>And you can also see that in the rule responses to the game by other designers. Some designers like Steve Jackson responded by saying with some justification, "Wait a minute. If you really want to do the generic game of everything, you need to start from a more generic foundation and not make so many assumptions in the core game." And so, you get game systems like BRP and GURPS, which themselves aren't really defined by their ruleset either but by what the GM did with them - how they thought about the game - the first rules engines if you would. And on the other hand, you got games like Chivalry & Sorcery where the designers responded by seeing the rules as being too generic and too abstract and too unrealistic and too little tied to a specific setting to actually simulate anything well, and so added in what they thought was missing or altered what they thought was wrong to create a narrowly focused game experience.</p><p></p><p>But despite the fact that you wouldn't be wrong in saying that D&D isn't a generic rules system, it wasn't in fact created to be the rules for a specific sort of game. It was an organically created tool kit of codified rulings for things that had come up in the play with the assumption that that tool kit of rulings would be infinitely extensible to cover whatever was coming up in your play. What defined D&D was not just that it had classes or hit points or quasi-Vancian magic offered up as solutions to problems of play, but also that it didn't realize it had any barriers doing anything and everything well and was trying to simulate everything. (What really did it have initially to compare itself to?) Again, how you think about playing the game is as important as the rules of the game.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8850252, member: 4937"] Not content with spinning out one long essay from a single sentence in your post, I'd like to talk about and expand on this one. D&D is not a system or a game that was ever defined by its ruleset because D&D is not a system that is defined by the sort of game it is trying to be. Again, this goes back to Jon Peterson's observation that the creators of D&D weren't merely trying to create a game that simulated something, but in their mind they were creating a game that simulated everything - they were "Playing at the World". D&D as a game was defined by its limitless horizons, and the belief - right or wrong - that you could do anything and everything within the imagined game space. You can see that not only in the language the game uses to describe itself, or the rambling and expansive topics that Gygax covers in the 1e DMG or that would eventually be covered in the collected BECMI rules, but in the early issues of Dragon and its equally esoteric treatment of what rules you might possibly need for the game of D&D. The answer really is, "All the rules". The assumption is that this is game where the players might mine ore and mint currency, start up the fantasy equivalent of the East India trading company, lay siege to castles and be besieged themselves, run a thief's guild, journey to the old west, explore the crashed remains of the Star Ship enterprise, interact with any number of figures from history and myth, and on and on. And you can also see that in the rule responses to the game by other designers. Some designers like Steve Jackson responded by saying with some justification, "Wait a minute. If you really want to do the generic game of everything, you need to start from a more generic foundation and not make so many assumptions in the core game." And so, you get game systems like BRP and GURPS, which themselves aren't really defined by their ruleset either but by what the GM did with them - how they thought about the game - the first rules engines if you would. And on the other hand, you got games like Chivalry & Sorcery where the designers responded by seeing the rules as being too generic and too abstract and too unrealistic and too little tied to a specific setting to actually simulate anything well, and so added in what they thought was missing or altered what they thought was wrong to create a narrowly focused game experience. But despite the fact that you wouldn't be wrong in saying that D&D isn't a generic rules system, it wasn't in fact created to be the rules for a specific sort of game. It was an organically created tool kit of codified rulings for things that had come up in the play with the assumption that that tool kit of rulings would be infinitely extensible to cover whatever was coming up in your play. What defined D&D was not just that it had classes or hit points or quasi-Vancian magic offered up as solutions to problems of play, but also that it didn't realize it had any barriers doing anything and everything well and was trying to simulate everything. (What really did it have initially to compare itself to?) Again, how you think about playing the game is as important as the rules of the game. [/QUOTE]
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