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.

 

[TheSword]

Or perhaps you are vastly underestimating the role that nostalgia, price point, nearly ubiquitous market availability, and mass familiarity play in popularity and sales. IME, Monopoly is rarely, if ever, considered a "fun game." Games of Monopoly are rarely finished: they are endured until someone (or everyone) decides to quit. Again IME, it's more often than not the used, banged-up game with missing pieces that people have sitting covered in dust on their shelves for lack of better alternatives that is then forgotten once people are exposed to other games. But I doubt that there is anything I can do to stop you from making fallacious ad populum arguments: I guess there must be something you find fun about those arguments too that I don't understand.

Thank you for sharing your miserable experiences with monopoly. I remember playing monopoly for hours with siblings, parents and grandparents. They ended up with a couple of players fighting to win. We used to write winning scores on the inside of the box with the players name. The games would invariably end up with wheeler dealing and players bailing each other out for future promises, that were sometimes broken, sometimes not. It’s a fun game that the whole family can enjoy.

I’ve played monopoly a fair few times on a tablet app against the computer. Also a fun way of whiling away an hour or two.

I think your feelings about Monopoly say more about you than they do about the game to be honest.

 

[loverdrive]

Rule 0 would seem to be part of what makes a game system flexible such that it can handle a greater variety of playstyles, game types, and other demands GMs and-or players my put on it.

Nope, that's just an easy way for designers to say "ok, do whatever you want, I'm done here". What actually makes game flexible is a solid, understandable framework and loose tolerances.

Dungeon World that doesn't have rule 0, but has comprehensive GM Agenda and GM Principles is more flexible than, say, D&D 5E. You want to play a high-magic fantasy with floating ships and enormous cities, lit up by arcane lamps and with glorious Academy of Natural Philosophy, where illusionists give mind-blowing shows every now and then? It works. You want to play a low-magic game, where magic is a power beyond mere human comprehension and each wizard risks tearing the Veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead with each cast spell? It works too. You make the same Moves with accordance to the same Principles, but within different fictional contexts -- in a world of ubiquouts and well-understood magic, consequence for failing to cast a spell properly probably would be something along the lines of "While you were citing magical formulas, an ork archer shot his bow at you. What ya gonna do?", but not "You feel air around you go cold, the arcane vibrations of your spell attracted something that doesn't belong to this world. In a split-second, a horrendous canine creature, dreaded Hound of Tindalos, forms from the nearest corner and latches on your leg. What ya gonna do?".

Or, maybe you want to play a superhero game, where people are thrown through brick walls, get smacked by sledgehammers and then get up and fight, maybe bruised slightly? It works -- you just don't use long-term injuries as consequences. But in a gritty game, where ribs break, lungs get punctured, internal bleedings makes people pass out -- you do, and the system works too.

You don't make any alterations to the rules, but you make alterations to the fiction.


In a more rigidly-structured game, like, again D&D 5E (or 3.5, or AD&D 2E, or even White Box), you'd either need to brew some new rules at home, or to apply ad-hoc patches with rule zero, because there's no flexibility and no framework that goes beyond "just figure it out".

Complexity is not a vice when the complexity is fun. People like choices. When rules are homogenized into generic terms like has been described by Lowerdrive (and to a lesser extent 4e) any choice becomes no choice because there are no more meaningful differences.

My nickname is Loverdrive. It's Overdrive, but with a little pinch of Love. But that's beside the point.

It's a false dichotomy. Simple, fiction-first games can (and do, actually, the point of fiction-first approach is to maximize amount of meaningful choices) contain choices. Complex, rules-first games can have absolutely pointless choices.

In 5E, difference between a Battleaxe and a Longsword is nonexistent, they both are Versatile weapons that deal the same damage of the same type. In Dungeon World, there's a significant difference, because Longsword and Battleaxe are inherently different weapons -- you can't halfsword and axe and you can't pull down ork's shield with a sword.

Or, a rapier or a shortsword is just plain better than a dagger as a main weapon for rogue -- it's not a meaningful choice too, because the winner is obvious. In Dungeon World? Good luck using a rapier when you're held in a chokehold by a dwarven wrestler, while grabbing a dagger from your belt can certainly work.

The thing is, any kind of rule that strives to represent fiction is inevitably going to lose some context, no matter how complex. But when you have a solid framework and a human using said framework, you can meaningfully represent even the difference between sok tat and sok ngat (both are elbow blows from muay tai), let alone something as obvious as difference between a spear and a sword.

The thing is, rule 0 is used for exactly that purpose -- to meaningfully represent fiction when the rules fail to do so.


Here's a quick fix for 5E attacking rules:
When you make an attack against a creature, and you're willing and able to inflict serious harm, roll +Attack bonus. If the result is equal or higher than the target's AC, they take damage equal to your weapon's Damage stat.

Puff! Now you don't need to invoke rule zero when someone completely caught in Web is trying to swing their sword, which seems absolutely ridiculous -- because now they are not able to inflict serious harm.

 

[TheSword]

Nope, that's just an easy way for designers to say "ok, do whatever you want, I'm done here". What actually makes game flexible is a solid, understandable framework and loose tolerances.

Dungeon World that doesn't have rule 0, but has comprehensive GM Agenda and GM Principles is more flexible than, say, D&D 5E. You want to play a high-magic fantasy with floating ships and enormous cities, lit up by arcane lamps and with glorious Academy of Natural Philosophy, where illusionists give mind-blowing shows every now and then? It works. You want to play a low-magic game, where magic is a power beyond mere human comprehension and each wizard risks tearing the Veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead with each cast spell? It works too. You make the same Moves with accordance to the same Principles, but within different fictional contexts -- in a world of ubiquouts and well-understood magic, consequence for failing to cast a spell properly probably would be something along the lines of "While you were citing magical formulas, an ork archer shot his bow at you. What ya gonna do?", but not "You feel air around you go cold, the arcane vibrations of your spell attracted something that doesn't belong to this world. In a split-second, a horrendous canine creature, dreaded Hound of Tindalos, forms from the nearest corner and latches on your leg. What ya gonna do?".

Or, maybe you want to play a superhero game, where people are thrown through brick walls, get smacked by sledgehammers and then get up and fight, maybe bruised slightly? It works -- you just don't use long-term injuries as consequences. But in a gritty game, where ribs break, lungs get punctured, internal bleedings makes people pass out -- you do, and the system works too.

You don't make any alterations to the rules, but you make alterations to the fiction.


In a more rigidly-structured game, like, again D&D 5E (or 3.5, or AD&D 2E, or even White Box), you'd either need to brew some new rules at home, or to apply ad-hoc patches with rule zero, because there's no flexibility and no framework that goes beyond "just figure it out".


My nickname is Loverdrive. It's Overdrive, but with a little pinch of Love. But that's beside the point.

It's a false dichotomy. Simple, fiction-first games can (and do, actually, the point of fiction-first approach is to maximize amount of meaningful choices) contain choices. Complex, rules-first games can have absolutely pointless choices.

In 5E, difference between a Battleaxe and a Longsword is nonexistent, they both are Versatile weapons that deal the same damage of the same type. In Dungeon World, there's a significant difference, because Longsword and Battleaxe are inherently different weapons -- you can't halfsword and axe and you can't pull down ork's shield with a sword.

Or, a rapier or a shortsword is just plain better than a dagger as a main weapon for rogue -- it's not a meaningful choice too, because the winner is obvious. In Dungeon World? Good luck using a rapier when you're held in a chokehold by a dwarven wrestler, while grabbing a dagger from your belt can certainly work.

The thing is, any kind of rule that strives to represent fiction is inevitably going to lose some context, no matter how complex. But when you have a solid framework and a human using said framework, you can meaningfully represent even the difference between sok tat and sok ngat (both are elbow blows from muay tai), let alone something as obvious as difference between a spear and a sword.

The thing is, rule 0 is used for exactly that purpose -- to meaningfully represent fiction when the rules fail to do so.


Here's a quick fix for 5E attacking rules:
When you make an attack against a creature, and you're willing and able to inflict serious harm, roll +Attack bonus. If the result is equal or higher than the target's AC, they take damage equal to your weapon's Damage stat.

Puff! Now you don't need to invoke rule zero when someone completely caught in Web is trying to swing their sword, which seems absolutely ridiculous -- because now they are not able to inflict serious harm.

I think this is where I see a noticeable difference between those who are publishers and game designers and those who just play for enjoyment. Your perspective is invariably influenced by the fact that you design game rules and see them as something that needs improving with your own take on how that should be done based on your ideas and the games you’ve had access to. You have an inherently wider tolerance for change than I do.

I don’t design games, I have no desire to design games. I like playing some games that I like the style of and sometimes I tinker with them to make them fit my likes and those of my group. If I wanted to play Dungeon World, I would. However we enjoy D&D 5e, just as we enjoyed Pathfinder before it. So we spend our limited time playing that. I guess we have trust in D&D because for the large part we know we will like the end product. If that trust is misplaced we might switch to another product (pathfinder). We rely on the game being inherently right for us and we tinker until it fits.

I suspect that’s a different approach to a designers desire to see as many different systems as possible to broaden knowledge. Things is, most people aren’t designers, and don’t have the desire to play dozens of different games, not knowing which will be a duffer and which will be a triumph. I’ll do that with a board game, but not with a RPG that requires a substantial amount of time and effort from all involved... particularly the DM.

I find it ironic that someone who looks at rules and wants to improve them as a publisher, takes issue with a rule that says if you want to make your own improvement to one of our rules then feel free to do so.

Sorry about the name, it looked like Lowerdrive at a glance. Consider me corrected.

 

[Maxperson]

I think what was meant is that if a Game Master were to Rule Zero a game (perhaps with a lot of rule changes), then perhaps there is another game that addresses the problem the GM is trying to solve.

Maybe it does, and probably it has a dozen or hundred other changes that the DM doesn't want to make. Games tend to be very different from one another and most changes are minor, not major.

I took @pemerton to mean that the rules, as contained in a rule book that both players and GM have purchased, constitute a shared set of rules that everyone has (and hopefully have familiarised themselves with), and a GM who has chosen to change a number of rules can surprise the players because they expected to be playing Game X, not Game sort-of-X-but-with-these-quote-fixes-end-quote. This is likely more pertinent to a group of people who have just met than a group that has been together for a few years, but I wager there have been a few groups surprised by their GM presenting their list of rule fixes to a game on the first day.

Plus if I were to have purchased game, I'd like to play it as is otherwise I might feel that I've wasted good money.

Calvinball is a game with no rules. Rule 0 is primarily used to change a few rules, so 99+% of the game rules are still going to be shared. You won't have wasted your money if you play a game and find out that Halflings have been given darkvision.

 

[TheSword]

Maybe it does, and probably it has a dozen or hundred other changes that the DM doesn't want to make. Games tend to be very different from one another and most changes are minor, not major.

Calvinball is a game with no rules. Rule 0 is primarily used to change a few rules, so 99+% of the game rules are still going to be shared. You won't have wasted your money if you play a game and find out that Halflings have been given darkvision.

Totally agree. Calvinball is an expression I usually see used by people who expect an unreasonable amount of perfection in a game system. For me 1% wrong is pretty good going. I can adapt to/ignore/change 1% wrong. I could probably go up to 5% wrong. I can enjoy the game for the 95-99% I like.

Particularly when I’m not telling other people they have to change as well. Rule zero affects me and my table and let’s everyone else ignore me.

 

[Maxperson]

Rule 0 isn’t a patch. It’s a foundation, that reminds us that this is a creative game that shouldn’t be limited if a written rule doesn’t make sense in that moment for that GM.

The niche games may have different approaches. They are still niche and as long as they remain so they aren’t a reasonable comparison. Obviously there are other things that make D&D more satisfying for people to play than Fate.

@loverdrive also got it wrong when she said that Rule 0 is for rules forward games. It's actually used more for her style of gameplay. She once gave an example in a thread where the DM ignored a rule, because it would be cool for the scene if the rule didn't take effect like it was supposed, and the game was about cool story. That's a prime example of Rule 0 in play. Ignoring/changing/adding to the rules to make a cool scene like roleplay forward gameplay likes to do, uses Rule 0 far more often than a rules forward game does. People liking rules forward games tend to stick to the rules more often and use Rule 0 less.

 

[TheSword]

In cubicle 7’s WFRP there is a very active large scale community of several thousand people registered that interacts closely with the designers and freelancers working on the projects. The community has embraced rule zero, and designers have frequently said we chose this because we like it but we can understand why you might not, so feel free to change it. Or perhaps, feel free to change it but be aware it might impact X. I haven’t seen that since the early days of Pathfinder.

I find claims that a base rule of flexibility is redundant to be bizarre.

 

[Maxperson]

And that doesn't change the fact that rule 0 itself is an ad-hoc patch (and each application of it is an ad-hoc patch too) either.

Your opinion about rule 0 is not a fact. It's also not a patch, but rather a DM tool. There's a difference.

 

[Aldarc]

I think your feelings about Monopoly say more about you than they do about the game to be honest.

And I think your posts say more about your feelings towards D&D than anything substantive about Rule Zero.

I think this is where I see a noticeable difference between those who are publishers and game designers and those who just play for enjoyment.

I think this is where I see a noticeable difference between people who can't handle any criticism of games they like and those who can.

I suspect that’s a different approach to a designers desire to see as many different systems as possible to broaden knowledge.

I am no designer so you will have to find a different excuse to dismiss my opinion as you are doing now with Loverdrive's. I like playing different card games, board games, video games, and TTRPG games because I also like cultivating different gaming experiences and some games are better suited for certain play styles, game types, etc. than other games. Simple as that. But the idea that Rule Zero is somehow necessary to run any TTRPG seems absolutely ridiculous given the sheer number of TTRPGs of various complexity, genre, or system that do not fall back on this notion and work swimmingly well.

I find claims that a base rule of flexibility is redundant to be bizarre.

Because it's how most other games already operate. The thousands of house rule variations of Monopoly, again for example, did not require Rule Zero to empower. People simply did it, and then Milton Bradley was super surprised to learn from their own internal research that people were not necessarily playing with the rules as written.

 

[Maxperson]

Or perhaps you are vastly underestimating the role that nostalgia, price point, nearly ubiquitous market availability, and mass familiarity play in popularity and sales. IME, Monopoly is rarely, if ever, considered a "fun game." Games of Monopoly are rarely finished: they are endured until someone (or everyone) decides to quit. Again IME, it's more often than not the used, banged-up game with missing pieces that people have sitting covered in dust on their shelves for lack of better alternatives that is then forgotten once people are exposed to other games. But I doubt that there is anything I can do to stop you from making fallacious ad populum arguments: I guess there must be something you find fun about those arguments too that I don't understand.

I think Monopoly is a fantastic game. I especially love when I win a free fries or Big Mac. I never seem to be able to get the third property to win the car, though. I think the game is rigged.

::wife runs into the room and whispers something to me:: What? That's not the Monopoly he's talking about? Crap!

Monopoly is a children's game. They find it to be very enjoyable and the parents play it with them, because they like when their kids have fun, and it teaches them a few life lessons the process. As an adult I find it to be a very boring game, but when my son is old enough to play, we will play it. Probably a themed version like the unopened Game of Thrones Monopoly I have sitting on the shelf. He will have a blast, because that's what kids do when they play that game. I will have fun watching him have fun, but won't particularly enjoy the game, because it's not really made for adults. I also don't really like playing Chutes N Ladders or Candyland, but my son likes it, so we play those games as well.