overgeeked
B/X Known World
I haven't read this one yet, but it's next on my Peterson reading list. Though I did just finish The Elusive Shift. That's an amazing book. There should be a big discussion thread for that.
As for the question of Arneson and rules. It might be helpful to have read The Elusive Shift, which I know at least Snarf has, and to have watched The Secrets of Blackmoor. I'm curious @Snarf Zagyg , if you'd already read The Elusive Shift when you originally made this post and if you still feel as strongly about the rules angle.
A few questions to consider re: rules.
How many rules are actually required to play a game like D&D? I know we're all modern gamers used to several thick books filled with rules that try to cover most eventualities if not literally try to have a rule for everything. But the original D&D came out of wargaming and free Kriegsspiel, where the main focus was on the players declaring their intent and the referee adjudicating the outcome, isolating the players from the rules as a conscious choice to speed up play and keep the players thinking in terms of the situation rather than the rules of the game. We see this explicitly in The Elusive Shift and Secrets of Blackmoor.
This isolation of players from the rules is mentioned quite a few times throughout The Elusive Shift and several of Arneson's Blackmoor players comment on finally getting their hands on the OD&D booklets and saying they finally know the rules...only for Arneson to laugh and tell them those aren't the rules they're using. ("These are not the rules you're looking for.") Bob Meyer, who still runs the annual Blackmoor game, uses opposed 2d6 rolls and the players only know they want to roll high. Here's an interview with him talking about it.
How did Arneson use rules? From all accounts, Arneson ran games in almost pure free Kriegsspiel fashion. To him, the rules were whatever the referee wanted to use. From their own personal judgement in the moment to long charts with dozens of modifiers and contingencies factored in. Eventually the players had something like a rudimentary character sheet, but, importantly, the players never knew the rules. The rules were for the referee to use or ignore as their pleasure. The oft repeated, "these are guidelines," comes to mind. You can also see this in some other early RPGs like Traveller. For a lot of modern gamers these old games are "incomplete" (even to some gamers at the time they were "incomplete"), but the designers were coming from a specific school of though, namely free Kriegsspiel, and designed as such. Their mistake, if you could call it that, was not articulating that point of view explicitly enough.
What difference of opinion did Arneson and Gygax have about what the rules were actually for? Though this isn't directly talked about in The Elusive Shift, it comes up in discussions about OD&D vs AD&D. OD&D was designed to be an open system, a toolkit for referees to create their own games in the vein of free Kriegsspiel. The point was for each table to play a unique game suited to the players at that table. Not a universal game played as nearly as identically as possible at every table in the world. AD&D took the opposite approach, a closed system, that was meant to be followed to the letter as much as possible to create a uniformity of experience across as many tables as possible. And, despite protestations to the contrary, AD&D was very much trying to simulate the medieval world in detail with rules for (just about) everything. The very notions that free Kriegsspiel was created to escape. Arneson had more of a hand in OD&D, with its rules as guidelines and toolkit feel. AD&D was all Gygax, locking down the rules and trying to get everyone playing the game one way, his way. And also sell product.
To me, this all speaks to their different points of view on the purpose of the rules. Arneson likely viewed the original rules as near as complete as possible and only ever meant them to be rough guidelines with the intent of getting on with playing the game, whereas Gygax rather quickly learned that people wanted as much pre-packaged and complicated rules as possible so he pivoted to pumping out merchandise. You can see this same tension in modern games that use increasingly absurd mechanics to justify unique components that the players are expected to buy just to play the game. Be creative and make it up yourself vs let me sell you everything.
As for the question of Arneson and rules. It might be helpful to have read The Elusive Shift, which I know at least Snarf has, and to have watched The Secrets of Blackmoor. I'm curious @Snarf Zagyg , if you'd already read The Elusive Shift when you originally made this post and if you still feel as strongly about the rules angle.
A few questions to consider re: rules.
How many rules are actually required to play a game like D&D? I know we're all modern gamers used to several thick books filled with rules that try to cover most eventualities if not literally try to have a rule for everything. But the original D&D came out of wargaming and free Kriegsspiel, where the main focus was on the players declaring their intent and the referee adjudicating the outcome, isolating the players from the rules as a conscious choice to speed up play and keep the players thinking in terms of the situation rather than the rules of the game. We see this explicitly in The Elusive Shift and Secrets of Blackmoor.
This isolation of players from the rules is mentioned quite a few times throughout The Elusive Shift and several of Arneson's Blackmoor players comment on finally getting their hands on the OD&D booklets and saying they finally know the rules...only for Arneson to laugh and tell them those aren't the rules they're using. ("These are not the rules you're looking for.") Bob Meyer, who still runs the annual Blackmoor game, uses opposed 2d6 rolls and the players only know they want to roll high. Here's an interview with him talking about it.
How did Arneson use rules? From all accounts, Arneson ran games in almost pure free Kriegsspiel fashion. To him, the rules were whatever the referee wanted to use. From their own personal judgement in the moment to long charts with dozens of modifiers and contingencies factored in. Eventually the players had something like a rudimentary character sheet, but, importantly, the players never knew the rules. The rules were for the referee to use or ignore as their pleasure. The oft repeated, "these are guidelines," comes to mind. You can also see this in some other early RPGs like Traveller. For a lot of modern gamers these old games are "incomplete" (even to some gamers at the time they were "incomplete"), but the designers were coming from a specific school of though, namely free Kriegsspiel, and designed as such. Their mistake, if you could call it that, was not articulating that point of view explicitly enough.
What difference of opinion did Arneson and Gygax have about what the rules were actually for? Though this isn't directly talked about in The Elusive Shift, it comes up in discussions about OD&D vs AD&D. OD&D was designed to be an open system, a toolkit for referees to create their own games in the vein of free Kriegsspiel. The point was for each table to play a unique game suited to the players at that table. Not a universal game played as nearly as identically as possible at every table in the world. AD&D took the opposite approach, a closed system, that was meant to be followed to the letter as much as possible to create a uniformity of experience across as many tables as possible. And, despite protestations to the contrary, AD&D was very much trying to simulate the medieval world in detail with rules for (just about) everything. The very notions that free Kriegsspiel was created to escape. Arneson had more of a hand in OD&D, with its rules as guidelines and toolkit feel. AD&D was all Gygax, locking down the rules and trying to get everyone playing the game one way, his way. And also sell product.
To me, this all speaks to their different points of view on the purpose of the rules. Arneson likely viewed the original rules as near as complete as possible and only ever meant them to be rough guidelines with the intent of getting on with playing the game, whereas Gygax rather quickly learned that people wanted as much pre-packaged and complicated rules as possible so he pivoted to pumping out merchandise. You can see this same tension in modern games that use increasingly absurd mechanics to justify unique components that the players are expected to buy just to play the game. Be creative and make it up yourself vs let me sell you everything.
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