The Origins of ‘Rule Zero’

Jon Peterson discusses the origins of Rule Zero on his blog. It featured as early as 1978 in Alarums & Excursions #38.

 

[Manbearcat]

I've read through this thread.

If we can never get past the Matrix invocation of "the truth is...there is no spoon" when the differences between holistic, intentful, focused game design and discrete, DIY/modular game design are cited and described...

...well, we should just never have these conversations.

The fact that it seems this entire community adamantly asserts "SYSTEM MATTERS BECAUSE I HATE X, Y, AND Z ABOUT THIS CRAPPY GAME AND APPROACH TO GAME DESIGN THAT NEEDS TO DIE IN A FIRE" while simultaneously asserting "SYSTEM DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE MY IDEA OF THE INFINITE EXPANSE OF RULE ZERO AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HOLISTIC, INTENTFUL, FOCUSED GAME DESIGN" might just be ENWorld's biggest hurdle to functional conversation on the post-mortem of our play and coherent game design around varying desired experiences.

 

[Aldarc]

can you please explain to me in what way D&D rules prevent or discourages a person from any of the following.

Stop right there. Not a good start, as we already have a possible strawman. Please stop, slow down, and take time to read/understand what people are arguing rather than getting upset about what you think they are saying. Until you do that, there is little point trying to hold a conversation. I am more than happy to clarify my position and you are welcome to ask me questions to that end, but I personally prefer responding to an actual, sincere engagement of my posts. You have posed four different heavily-loaded queries. To put it another way, what is the one question you really want answered?

* Or maybe you are not following one of the principles that you claim you could follow in D&D just as easily in DW: "ask questions and use the answers."

So before moving onto these principles in connection to D&D, let's start with how these principles exist in relation to DW. You seem to have at least a vague familiarity with DW, particularly if you claim that you would never play the game as it is "too ephemeral," so you likely do implicitly recognize that there are some key differences between the two games, their rules, and what sort of games those rules actively support. But it's important to note that in DW, these principles are not "rules." The game asks, per its GMing framework, that the GM adhere to the given agendas: i.e., portray a fantastic world, fill the character's lives with adventure, and play to find out what happens. The principles are explicitly meant to support that agenda, but they are not rules in and of themselves.

How do you think that these agendas and principles are understood and realized in the play of Dungeon World and what other unlisted game principles may also be intersecting with the principles you have listed?

 

[pemerton]

There are fair number of people, whether here and elsewhere, who try to make D&D as the game that can do anything and everything well but then get upset at either the idea that other non-D&D games may do those things better or when those other non-D&D games actually do the things that they claim that D&D can likewise do. Plus, this is all far too regularly said and done by people without any actual play experience of these other games so it's transparently mostly just about defending the bubble people encase D&D in from any criticism.

I find the whole outlook weird: as if everything anyone might ever say is good about a RPG has to be true of D&D, even if those things aren't things the poster actually cares about or wants in a game!

 

[pemerton]

My player says I want to charge at the ogre, flip the table and hide behind it, throw a fireball at the giants, run over to Alaric and check his wounds. That then gets translated into attack rolls, cover saves, saving throws, heal checks. I then respond with “your sword draws a red line across the ogres chest”, “the arrow thunks into the wood of the table”, “the fireball explodes, crisping scorching the giant’s hair and clothing and leaving their skin a mass of blisters”, “Alaric is still breathing shallow, you bind his wounds and stop the bleeding, he seems to be stable”.

The mix of rules and fiction is one of the things that makes D&D satisfying and feel real.

How does anyone of the stuff you respond with - “your sword draws a red line across the ogres chest”, “the arrow thunks into the wood of the table”, “the fireball explodes, crisping scorching the giant’s hair and clothing and leaving their skin a mass of blisters”, “Alaric is still breathing shallow, you bind his wounds and stop the bleeding, he seems to be stable” - affect the resolution that follows?

It would be no different if you said your sword slashes the ogre's arm or the arrow passes over the table but glances off your helmet or the fireball explodes, causing the ogre to almost swoon from the heat or Alaric is dazed but fundamentally unhurt - you give him a sip of water and his eyes open - he'll be fine!

What actually affects the resolution process, and the subsequent play of the game, is how many hp did the ogre lose? and that the attack roll for the arrow, modified in accordance with the cover rules, didn't make the character's AC and the hit point loss suffered by the ogre after resolving its saving throw vs the fireball and what the situation is with Alaric's hit points remaining and death saves and the outcome of a check made in accordance with the "death and dying" rules.

can you please explain to me in what way D&D rules prevent or discourages a person from any of the following. Or please explain how DW encourages this with its rules in a way that D&D can’t. To put it another way are these anything other than a stylistic choice of a DM rather than unique to a game system. Or to put another way, is Dungeon World just not spelling out as ‘rules’ a list of things that can happen any way (exactly the criticism I’ve seen of rule zero). Ive edited out three references to Dungeon World mechanics specifically to use generic terms but that leaves plenty of other principles I modified.

• Make the world fantastic
• Fill the characters' lives with adventure
• Draw maps, leave blanks
• Address the characters, not the players
• Embrace the fantastic
• Give every monster life
• Name every person
• Ask questions and use the answers
• Be a fan of the characters
• Think Dangerous
• Begin and end with the fiction
• Think offscreen, too

How do DW rules mean you can think off screen better in DW than in D&D? How do DW rules mean you can name characters more regularly?

Here are some problems I think an AD&D GM is likely to encounter trying to follow the DW principles. I am not as familiar with 3E or 5e D&D as I am with AD&D, but I think the same sorts of problems are likely to be encountered:

* Making the world fantastic will be burdened by the idea that many if not most magical effects are - in the fiction - the result of discrete, learnable packets called "spells". This is less of an issue in the "classic" approach to D&D, which one still sees reflected in Gygax's DMG with its lists of weird tricks and its random dungeon generation tables that contain circular rooms with magical pools; but the general tendency of AD&D since c 1980 has been away from that sort of ad hoc "whimsy" towards world-building systematisation which spells form a part of. Embrace the fantastic can face similar problems, and is also not helped by the general approach to "mundane" character abilities (eg the rules for resolving hide in shadows in AD&D, or for resolving Stealth in 5e D&D, do not encourage embracing of the fantastic but tend to push towards emphasis on the prosaic).

* I've already discussed drawing maps and leaving blanks. The resolution mechanics for D&D don't support this. For instance, resolving travel is done by measuring distance on a map, reading terrain from a map, reading a movement rate of a "miles per day for a given terrain" chart (or maybe multiplying a base movement rate by a terrain modifier taken from a similar sort of chart) and then dividing the measured distance by the ascertained rate to calculate a travel time. This method is inherited from wargaming. It breaks down if drawing maps and leaving blanks. The point generalises to the various other D&D resolution procedures for actions that relate to architecture and travel.

* I have never seen a D&D module that embraces giving every monster life. Random encounters, encounters with N kobolds or orcs or gnolls or . . ., and the like all push against this. This is intimately connected to the combat and XP rules, which strongly encourage encounters with multiple relatively "faceless" creatures.

* Asking questions and using the answers is at odds with the sort of preparation of maps, keys and the like, which are advocated by key D&D texts (eg AD&D, B/X, the 3E DMG). It is not a technique that is easily integrated with the AD&D or similar approaches to things like searching for traps, secret doors and the like, to listening at doors, to the use of detection magic, etc. These rules elements are all presented as working in a way that presupposes the GM has a map, key and notes to turn to to provide answers to player questions. That's the opposite of the DW technique.

* Beginning and ending with the fiction is something I've already discussed. D&D combat does not do this - the turn structure, the action economy, the damage and hit point subsystem, the saving throw subsystem, etc are all at odds with this.

 

[loverdrive]

Or please explain how DW encourages this with its rules in a way that D&D can’t.

It doesn't. Just like D&D doesn't encourage you to compare result of attack roll with the target's AC. It expects you to follow the principles and spells them out in a clear way, so you don't need to figure them out on your own through experience or by reading forums, watching youtube videos.

can you please explain to me in what way D&D rules prevent or discourages a person from any of the following. Or please explain how DW encourages this with its rules in a way that D&D can’t. To put it another way are these anything other than a stylistic choice of a DM rather than unique to a game system. Or to put another way, is Dungeon World just not spelling out as ‘rules’ a list of things that can happen any way (exactly the criticism I’ve seen of rule zero). Ive edited out three references to Dungeon World mechanics specifically to use generic terms but that leaves plenty of other principles I modified.

• Make the world fantastic
• Fill the characters' lives with adventure
• Draw maps, leave blanks
• Address the characters, not the players
• Embrace the fantastic
• Give every monster life
• Name every person
• Ask questions and use the answers
• Be a fan of the characters
• Think Dangerous
• Begin and end with the fiction
• Think offscreen, too

How do DW rules mean you can think off screen better in DW than in D&D? How do DW rules mean you can name characters more regularly?

Now, please, point to where does D&D state these things.



So, ok, the thread is kinda derailed anyway, so I'm gonna jump into analogy land.

Google's Material Design didn't invent shadows, or grid layout, or using animations to empathize the flow of the UX, and these things aren't endemic to Material Design in any way.

But Material Design merges all of these things into a coherent design system, that greatly simplifies, well, design process -- the UI designer still needs to make moment-to-moment judgement calls, but they have an understanding how to solve problems in the spirit of Material Design. It's more than a list of components -- it's not a UI library, it's a design system.

So, Dungeon World, with its Agenda, Principles and Moves is like a design system -- it not only provides individual "components", but also clearly explains how to use these components and what to do when none of the existing components apply.

D&D, on the other hand, is closer to a UI library. It has tons and tons of components, most of which are usable only in a narrow list of cases, but when none of them apply -- you're on your own. Figure it out.

Of course, an experienced UI/UX designer already knows how to build good interfaces, just like an experienced DM knows how to handle situations that aren't covered by the rules well, but it doesn't mean that having only a UI library is enough.

 

[Maxperson]

What's your point? Are you querying my memory?

Just being helpful.

If you look at the rule in the DMG, though, it's not part of the PC build process. It allows the DM to change rules when it makes sense to do so, which is what we are saying.

 

[Fenris-77]

The first rule of Dungeon World is that people who haven't played it and don't know how it works shouldn't pretend that they do. I'm not saying the everyone should play it, as it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I have significant doubts about the opinions of people who make fundamental mistakes in their characterization of the game and it's rules.

In short, I will never play Dungeon World but let me tell you all about it anyway strikes me a silly place to start.

 

[Maxperson]

Where do I find this stated? What rulebook? Does that rulebook use the label "rule zero"?

Well I literally just told you the rulebook and page number for the 3.5 rule zero in the post you responded to immediately above this one. And no, none of the books use the label rule 0. They simply spell out the rule by which all other rules can be changed, removed and new rules added. The players have dubbed this rule, rule 0 since it overrides all other rules.

Why do I need a rule published by a game publisher to play an RPG that I want to play? They're not the police!

I just do it.

Cool. A lot of people aren't comfortable adding, removing and changing rules like that unless the game tells them that they can do it. That you do it regardless of such a rule doesn't negate the need for it to be codified in the rule books.

 

[Maxperson]

The fact that it seems this entire community adamantly asserts "SYSTEM MATTERS BECAUSE I HATE X, Y, AND Z ABOUT THIS CRAPPY GAME AND APPROACH TO GAME DESIGN THAT NEEDS TO DIE IN A FIRE" while simultaneously asserting "SYSTEM DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE MY IDEA OF THE INFINITE EXPANSE OF RULE ZERO AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HOLISTIC, INTENTFUL, FOCUSED GAME DESIGN" might just be ENWorld's biggest hurdle to functional conversation on the post-mortem of our play and coherent game design around varying desired experiences.

That's a simplistic approach to the situation.

System matters, because I don't have the time(or desire) to sit down and design a system from the ground up. That means that I need a system that generally supplies what I am looking for. System matters.

System doesn't matter, because with rule 0 I can change anything about the system I am using to more closely match what I am looking for. No system is perfect, so I need to make changes to improve the game and maximize fun. Rule 0 is perfect for that. System doesn't matter.

So you can see, there is such a thing as holistic, intentful and focused game design, but those things fall second to rule 0 and the ability to change and improve upon that design.

 

[pemerton]

none of the books use the label rule 0.

I have a pretty strong recollection that the 3E PHB does have a rule labelled "rule zero", in the character build rules.