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Why do RPGs have rules?
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9015506" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Yeah, in fact D&D is a product of this sort of environment in which there was an overarching structure of a campaign world "The Great Kingdom" et al and then Dave, and finally Gary, focused in on specific elements of that and invented their own rules set to play with a different aspect of that world. Furthermore within that play they had vast numbers of participants and multiple PCs per player, sub-GMs, spin off campaigns, crossovers, etc. So I doubt it is possible to unequivocally say that any one specific person fully 'owned' any of it, 100%. Even the rules were an ongoing team effort in which the various participants extended and perfected parts and then subjected them to scrutiny by other participants, reworked them, discarded them, or incorporated them into the canonical version of the rules.</p><p></p><p>My own play from 1977 to 1980 was all within the context of a large club where there were dozens of D&D games and GMs. Characters and players were constantly exchanged between games (often with no logical explanation of why or how this happened). Nobody 'owned' much of anything. A couple of older and more disciplined GMs ran 'closed games' where they held all the character sheets and only specific people got invited to play, but that was not the usual thing. Even in later years, in the 80s and 90s my friends and I often exchanged roles, running adventures in each other's campaign worlds, spinning off copies of characters into different places, etc. We even had one set of campaigns that were run by different GMs using different systems where we would do crossovers all the time. So we basically had characters moving from 1e AD&D -> Gamma World -> Boot Hill -> Fight in the Skies -> Car Wars -> Star Fleet Battles -> ... Who owned that mess? I'm not sure I could even parse the concept of ownership because its hard to say where the boundaries of games were! My 14th level AD&D super wizard had wings and a dual brain (GW mutations), carried a laser pistol as a backup weapon, and had a Car Wars motorcycle hidden in his portable hole as an emergency getaway device! One of the other PCs had a small wing of WWI aircraft attached to his D&D army! And there was a mexican bandito running around with revolvers who got to like 10th level as a D&D character.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 9015506, member: 82106"] Yeah, in fact D&D is a product of this sort of environment in which there was an overarching structure of a campaign world "The Great Kingdom" et al and then Dave, and finally Gary, focused in on specific elements of that and invented their own rules set to play with a different aspect of that world. Furthermore within that play they had vast numbers of participants and multiple PCs per player, sub-GMs, spin off campaigns, crossovers, etc. So I doubt it is possible to unequivocally say that any one specific person fully 'owned' any of it, 100%. Even the rules were an ongoing team effort in which the various participants extended and perfected parts and then subjected them to scrutiny by other participants, reworked them, discarded them, or incorporated them into the canonical version of the rules. My own play from 1977 to 1980 was all within the context of a large club where there were dozens of D&D games and GMs. Characters and players were constantly exchanged between games (often with no logical explanation of why or how this happened). Nobody 'owned' much of anything. A couple of older and more disciplined GMs ran 'closed games' where they held all the character sheets and only specific people got invited to play, but that was not the usual thing. Even in later years, in the 80s and 90s my friends and I often exchanged roles, running adventures in each other's campaign worlds, spinning off copies of characters into different places, etc. We even had one set of campaigns that were run by different GMs using different systems where we would do crossovers all the time. So we basically had characters moving from 1e AD&D -> Gamma World -> Boot Hill -> Fight in the Skies -> Car Wars -> Star Fleet Battles -> ... Who owned that mess? I'm not sure I could even parse the concept of ownership because its hard to say where the boundaries of games were! My 14th level AD&D super wizard had wings and a dual brain (GW mutations), carried a laser pistol as a backup weapon, and had a Car Wars motorcycle hidden in his portable hole as an emergency getaway device! One of the other PCs had a small wing of WWI aircraft attached to his D&D army! And there was a mexican bandito running around with revolvers who got to like 10th level as a D&D character. [/QUOTE]
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