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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8864582" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Yup, that is certainly the other aspect of it (how rule-sets interact with a micro table's social contract or a macro TTRPG's culture).So the questions become:* How much should development and design of TTRPGs be beholden to the phenomena of a micro table's social contract or a macro TTRPG's culture?* What are the tradeoffs and stakes when you prioritize one (the applied science of tightly designed systems and leaving it to the table to remove layers of rules or tightness-of-design) over the other (heavy-handed social engineering of both the macro TTRPG culture and the trickle-down effect of micro social contract for individual tables) or vice versa?My opinion is that the tradeoffs are too much and stakes too high because getting tightly-integrated, tightly-tuned design from the inverse is a titanic ask of individual tables (if its even possible...and sometimes it just isn't the case...you're not squeezing the tightly-integrated, tightly-tuned performance and track experience of a Porsche GT3 RS out of a Volkwagen GTI...even though they're the same parent company and both are performance platforms) while asking individual tables to manage their social contract (without the extreme downward pressure of system design that bakes in these kind of top-down social engineering issues) is considerably less of an ask (despite the reality that it will surely lend itself to some awkwardness, discomfort, and potential confrontation for some tables).  Meanwhile, D&D has a robust history of stripping out extremely consequential mechanical architecture (Wandering Monster Clock, Rest Requirement Per 4 Exploration Turns, NPC Reaction, Gold for XP, Encumbrance/Loadout Constraints to name just a few) whose net effect is to drastically change the play paradigm.Another alternative is to design and intensely stress-test a robust chassis with concentric, layered design (several games out there do this) where the designers not only design toward detaching various layers without unforeseen system reverberations, but also explain the layers of design (what they are, what they do, what removing them will do to the play paradigm) and how to add new layers (Fate, Burning Wheel Family, Apocalypse World, Cortex+, Strike!, Blades in the Darkness are the exemplars here).  5e aimed for this lofty goal at the beginning but abandoned the project at some point (therefore falling far, far short of it).</blockquote>

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