Listen to this episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I have a list of mechanics I’d like to cover on Dice Exploder, and I’d say about a third of them are jokes. One of those jokes is Rule Zero, a maxim that says "the DM (or GM) is always right." I think of Rule Zero as originating in D&D culture, and as part of this D&D miniseries, I thought it'd be interesting to use as a way into talking about the play culture around the game, how it's actually played at the table, and how many of its rules people actually use.
There's no one I'd rather talk with about "do rules matter" than returning cohost Em Acosta (Exiles, Crescent Moon) who's spent a lot of time thinking about what rules they find actually useful in play. And in the end, we find yet another answer to my series-long quest for an answer to the question: "what actually is Dungeons & Dragons?"
Further Reading:
Rule Zero on TV Tropes (I do not endorse this but interesting context)
Em’s Patreon
Em’s banger games Exiles and Crescent Moon
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Transcript
Sam: Hello. And welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and sail with it across the sea. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my cohost this week is returning champion Ema Acosta.
First off last week, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Craig Shipman on his podcast. Third floor wars, tabletop talk. If you want to know more about me and my background, I think this is a great interview and a place to do it, but also Craig's show is just great in general. And you can head over there and check it out at the tabletop talk podcast.
So I have a list of mechanics I'd like to cover on dice Exploder eventually. And I'd say about a third of them are jokes. You've seen some of these come to fruition. Mork Borg's graphic design is probably the best example. It is in my mind, totally a mechanic by my very loose and inviting definition of mechanic. But it's also clearly cheeky to say that.
And since the start of the show, the cheekiest mechanic on that list is rules zero, a kind of Maxim or bit of advice that's grown up around D and D and other games. Rules zero says the most important rule of D and D is that the DM is always right. What the DM says goes, the DMS word is God.
And as part of this D and D mini series, we're in the middle of, I thought it'd be fun to finally pull the trigger on this joke and to use it as a way into a conversation about D and D the culture around it and how it's actually being played at the table. And as soon as I decided that I knew I wanted to have Em Acosta back on the show for it. I first had em on back in season one to talk about the watch and they are still a fabulous friend cohost and game designer. Their latest game exiles is I truly think a masterpiece and its younger cousin Crescent moon is a great one too.
Over the past couple of years, M has developed a lot of opinions about ignoring rules when it's convenient. And we've talked about it a lot. What makes a rule worthwhile? When should you throw them out? What's the point of rules if the game designers themselves are telling us not to take them seriously. Em has thoughts.
This episode is a little weird in that it feels to me like about 40 minutes of us throat clearing and wandering around in the dark until we finally in the last five minutes. land on some really, really clear and compelling ideas about rules and intentionality and the true nature of Dungeons and Dragons. And I can't wait to get into it with you.
So here is Emma uh, Kosta. with rules zero.
Em welcome to Dice Explorer. You're the first ever returning champion.
em: Oh, really? Cool! It's so good to be here. Hi, everyone.
Sam: an honor well deserved. I love you very much.
em: Oh, I love you, too.
Sam: What are we talking about today?
em: We are talking about honestly, I don't even know how to begin to approach this conversation, which I think is very on point, because we will be tackling 5e's rule zero. Whatever that means, which I'm not sure, I don't think you are sure either,
Sam: Yeah, I actually think it is wrong to say That this mechanic is from D& D 5e. I
em: it is not.
Sam: is from the internet.
em: Yes.
Sam: Rule 0, for those who may not be familiar, is the concept that the rules are not in charge of the game, the Dungeon Master is in charge of the game. The Dungeon Master can overrule any rule. The Dungeon Master's way is correct.
And this is sort of like a bit of folk wisdom. I mean, it's billed as a rule, it's billed as rule zero, the rule above all other rules. And I think that there's a reason for that. But also it's just like an amorphous idea out there and I think it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
So, you mentioned 5e though, and there is like a sentence in the 5th edition D& D Dungeon Master's Guide that I think encapsulates rule zero, as it exists in Dungeons Dragons and that sentence is, The D& D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game.
em: Very vague,
Sam: Very vague.
em: because it's not saying discard the rules. It's not giving you instructions on how to do that , and I feel that it fits into this idea of the GM as a really omnipotent driving force, which I suspect is also going to become a theme in this conversation.
Reading the Dungeon Master's manual, it really struck me how the dungeon master is framed as a role because you are supposed to, it's almost like you are creating a game that is yours through the tools of D& D or not really tools because I would argue there are not much tools in the traditional sense. It's much more of like through the lens of D& D.
And I feel that just by going through the text, what this game wants you to do is to take everything that is in there and somehow arrange it in a way that is for the kind of game you want to play and also for the other players, but in a, in a performative role as well. The book really hinges onto you being an entertaining for the other players and there are explicit passages where it's like, oh, you want them to be coming back, so it's almost like the book wants you to like, create something with its material, but that is still of your own ownership,
Sam: Yeah! I did a lot of googling around for old Gary Gygax quotes when I was researching this episode, and a thing that came up in some of those quotes was him talking about how, like, being a dungeon master is, like, not for the faint of heart. Like, you have to create this omnipotent god, and, like, that's a wonderful amount of power, but it's also a big responsibility. And,
em: It is also something the book hinges on a lot, which is this idea of investment, like, of being a specifically Dungeon Master's DM. as a practice that is very deep and consuming and that you are willing to put in the work. It, really does explicitly say, oh, be prepared to like devote many hours beyond those that go into a session every week.
Sam: yeah. Yeah, and that is the philosophy behind the traditional mode of play in this hobby. I mean, when I hear people talk about trad games, that's what I think about.
And, I have a preference kind of against that tread mode of play, and I think that there are pitfalls there, like, DM burnout because you spent so much time, you feel that responsibility to prepare so much and you don't have time to do it anymore. And also, obviously like horrible toxic power dynamics and gamer horror stories that you hear about of like DMs wielding that social capital that comes with being a DM to abuse people basically.
And those things are potential pitfalls of this style of play but they are not inherently baked into this style of play either. Like there are people who like to show up and just hang out in their DMs world. There are DMS who like to do that much work. That kind of play is fun for a certain kind of people and there's nothing wrong with that.
em: Yeah, I think that what is interesting about Rule Zero as it is discussed in the book, is that I think on a lot of games, What you see is that, if you were to picture a hierarchy of power, the source material is at the very top. And the source material says, the facilitator is going to have this role, and the facilitator is then going to trickle down from the instructions in the book. They're going to, like present them to the players. But the source material is still what is governing that experience.
Whereas here I almost feel like what the book is saying is, the book is at the middle, so the book is saying you, the GM, are at the top, and you're gonna draw from this book, and then the players are at the very bottom. And the players can also, like, go and grab things from the book. The book is like the mediator between this omnipotence of the GM and then the players who have to completely exist within that environment.
That is rule zero as understood by this text, but I think that what's really interesting is the way that A, that principle can be applied to any game, but also B that there is a observable difference between what the book says and how online communities have shaped the discourse about how the game is played.
Sam: Yeah.
em: Because I would say that in, if you were to look it up online, the argument would almost be like rule of fun, like the rules are here for you to have fun, so feel free to remove them. But here is more like, you have abdicate what rules go and what rules don't.
Sam: Yeah.
em: But in a more I don't know how to put my finger on this distinction but I feel like there is a very concrete distinction between how it's presented in the book versus how people, like, talk about it online.
Sam: Yeah, well, it almost goes back to that, who has the highest authority for fun to happen at the table? Like, is it the DM's responsibility to show up and entertain everyone? Because that's also, like, kind of a toxic culture y thing that can happen. In this DM as God framework,
em: which is very much ingrained, like, in the, in the manual there is a whole section which I found absolutely fascinating where it says that you should be an architect, a storyteller, an actor, and a referee. Like, you very much are encouraged to be, like, the player's little clown, like,
Sam: must do it all, too, yeah, and you, you must be a master of all trades in order to do this job, is the implication, and again, that's not how, like, all DMs function, but, like, yeah.
But I think in a lot of story games, the responsibility for having fun is seen to be on the game and implicitly like on the designer of the game, on the rules of the game, and I think that that's a much fairer thing to do because the designer has had the entire design process to make something that's going to allow you to have fun and, like, also has hopefully done enough conveying of what the game is in its presentation that you need. Know what you're getting into when you sit down to play the game
And I like that. I feel much better about putting that Responsibility for fun like on the designer a little bit more than on the the DM.
But ultimately, having fun with your friends is like everyone's responsibility, right? Like it shouldn't be the DM's responsibility to make everyone have fun It should be like everyone who's hanging out in any context whether that's playing role playing games or not You To be making sure that everyone else involved is having a good time and feels like they can leave if they're not.
em: Yeah. How do you feel that any sort of game, the GM's capacity to decide what rules go and what rules might be best ignored plays into that? Like, would you find more fun in a playing a game as played? Which even in, in story games, in certain tables, I've found cultures where it's like we are going to play this experience to the letter, even when it doesn't necessarily lead to the most fun outcomes for our group in this particular moment, versus even if this game is already a very crafted, intentional experience, very tailored experience. We are still going to be more flexible with what rules we want and what rules we don't?
Sam: Yeah. I've been doing this a lot lately, like, playing a lot of duet games with this other person who doesn't give a shit about the rules relative to, like, what makes sense in the moment. And I
em: You can say it's me. It's okay to say
that it's just me.
Sam: But she's just so much more concerned about what's fun in the moment for her and for us. And I respect that a lot. But I also just have a personal preference towards wanting to know exactly what experience the designer intended for me to have before I start going and fucking around with it. Because I think there are a lot of complicated games where one rule you might look at and be like, I don't understand this, so we're just not gonna do this, whereas like, that rule actually is what the whole game hangs on, and if you take it out, things start falling apart. And you can still have fun even when things start falling apart, but like, I'm really curious about designer's intended experiences.
But you were asking more about the power dynamic, and the DM being responsible for everyone's fun, and I think that there is a thing with rule 0 where when you say the DM can overrule the rules, there's also this implication that players cannot. I think that can lead to trouble where the players feel uncomfortable like speaking up, feel uncomfortable pushing back against the GM and like advocating for themselves and what they want.
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From the creator of Void 1680 AM, pick up No Tell Motel at Bannerless dot games slash Notel motel all one word that's banner lists.games/no tell motel. Okay, so the reason I wanted to talk about rule zero, and with you in particular, is because I feel like a year ago maybe, you really started popping the fuck off being like, Rules are bad, I don't like rules anymore. Like, I'm gonna just play freeform fucking nonsense you've ever heard of, just want the rules light stuff, I don't understand why we're doing any of this, And I'm just, I really wanted to bring you on to the show to talk about what exactly that feeling means to you, more precisely, and where it came from, and how you're feeling about it now.
em: For sure, I feel that it has to do with the way that I have come to understand rules in the kind of games that I like to play and that I like to make. I wouldn't say that it applies necessarily to every game but at least the subset of games that I'm interested in. I feel that, to me, the most effective rules are those who are the bridge between what the play experience is going to be and the kind of fiction that you want to enforce. And I think that games that I find really interesting manage to make their rules almost a hidden, passage to go through the game and to experience emotions and worlds in the way that is resonant to the game.
So I feel that's where my rejection of certain rules has come from where I am now looking at rules as opportunities to enforce certain behaviours or aspects that will lead to the kind of fiction that I want, rather than, like as just something that is there because games need to have rules.
Sam: Yeah, can you walk all that, can you walk through all that again with like an example?
em: That would be really good, but I would need to think of an example, which I didn't bring for this podcast.
Sam: Is there like a moment in play when
em: yeah.
Sam: like you first started thinking about this?
em: I think when we played Neverland was when I first started to like, have this thought crystallize in me,
Sam: Yeah. So we played the Neverland module by Andrew Kolb, and we played it using Quest, which is a very D& D flavored, rules light but also there's a shitload of abilities and they all live on cards kind of game. And, we used very few rules while doing it. We were very freeform, just kind of walking through the module of Neverland. Um,
em: Example of what I'm talking about. So, Quest, and I feel this philosophy is very reflective in my latest work. It's a game where the rules are the content. Because it is a game that wants to put you in certain fictional situations where it is fundamentally a game of I casted fireball, but the fire, like, spread everywhere, and now we have a problem, we have to escape the fire.
So, the way that the game manages to create those situations is not by making very complicated fire spreading rules, or by creating a general purpose move, like, you could, in a traditional PBTA context, you would just create a move called cast magic, and one of the results of the move is 7 to 9 you create collateral damage, right? That would be like, very textbook PBTA.
Rather, the way that Quest does it, is first, there's a lot of scaffolding, so you don't interact with all of the rules at once. You only interact with their specific instances and those instances are accessed through fiction. So you get to those very flavorful situations by using the spells and the special abilities in the game.
Sam: Yes,
em: and I feel that that creates a system that is very flat, but very wide, because Instead of the mechanics or the rules building on top of a lot of knowledge, you can just navigate them through a very simple mechanic. It's just a D20 system, I think, and there's not more than one type of roll.
And that is the kind of implementations that I'm very drawn towards where it's like there are rules, but in the moment it doesn't feel like there are any rules.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I remember having a spell in the game that was charm person adjacent. And one of the things that happened when there was like a partial success on the roll was that it could become contagious and give people the jimmies, and, like, It was very specific about the consequence that happened. Like, it was always the case that someone got the jimmies as the like, complication on this roll. And maybe it would become contagious and a lot of people would get the jimmies and that was a bad thing.
And that, so we had multiple scenes as I recall where the jimmies started like, spreading through groups of people. So it was like, did not feel like there was a ton of variety to this particular move. But it was very precise and consistent in providing that experience because it was so specific.
em: And then that got incorporated into the story and became a plot point in the story, which is particularly fitting for a setting like Neverland where it's so expansive and silly. Quest with Neverland is really like a good pairing.
I also remember that there was a ability that someone used once where they created like a plane within themselves. They created a world within themselves that the other players and NPCs could access, and what I feel is that those rules led to world building, which then gives shape and richness and depth to the campaign.
Sam: Yeah.
em: And I just think that it's a very fruitful space to explore with games.
Sam: yeah,
em: Because you are not saying this is the story and this is the way that it's going to play out and these are the plot points. But you are giving everyone different pieces and then it's up to them how they are going to fit together and in what order.
Sam: Yes. So, let's bring it back to rule zero a little bit, in that I'm really interested in this question of what do we want rules for in the first place?
And you have laid out your theory of rules in the abstract, and a little bit in the specific here. But, I want to offer like a counter example. Because I personally really agree with you, I think, that interested in rules as I think creating a tunnel to guide you through is a really great metaphor but I have seen I've talked to people who feel two different ways about rules.
One way is like, I want rules for combat, because combat is fun, and I want to play a little fun minigame to beat people up. And the other is I want rules for combat, because combat's not interesting to just sort of freeform your way through, and I need rules to help me through that part, while I freeform my way through everything else.
And, I'm curious how you think about that dichotomy. Like, are rules there as something to mechanize away the part of the story you're not interested in, or are rules there as a way to pull you into the part of the story that you are interested in?
Also, I will just say as an aside I don't know that this is like a useful dichotomy in the first place, and I'm kind of hoping you'll push back against it, but like, go on, and like,
em: I think it depends on how you approach play in the first place because the way I think about it is in terms of storytelling. So of course the parts of the story that you don't care about you're just, in my mind, you're just going to skip, right?
Sam: yeah.
em: If you don't care about tracking rations and food we are just not going to devote any screen time to those things in the first place.
But if you want to think about it. In a more systems based perspective, more akin to a video game, where everything that would reasonably happen in the game must be abstracted or thought about in some way, then it makes sense to want to mechanize that somehow.
I think actually what you're talking about is, my brain goes pew pew serotonin when dice are rolled and there are rules so I want more of those. Which I think is very valid to want in games because feel like what attracts people to games and not theater is that there are challenges of chance or skill and that is enticing to people and people want that to several degrees.
But the question is how do you pair that with a narrative right? Which I feel is like the crux of RPG is like how much of a mechanized abstraction that relies on chance and skill this relies on versus just like constructing a narrative together.
Sam: Mm hmm. I'm just like processing that. I think that bounced off my smooth brain. okay, there was something in there you were talking that it has me thinking about how like in D& D proper, the design philosophy really feels like, oh there's a rule for everything. We intentionally, like, had to create a rule for everything.
think you can see the culmination of that in 3rd edition, and 3. 5 especially. And just how many of those rules most DMs skip over. The ones who really loved having that, like, became Pathfinder players, and I'm very happy for them. And they are running out there, and they love having a rule for everything, and knowing how this ordered world works, and that's great.
But I also think there's sort of a lack of intentionality behind those rules, and that is what often leads to them being rule zeroed, being skipped over. That, oh yeah, there's like rules for how much it costs to rent a room in a hotel for a night in gold, and I have never engaged with that rule as a player or a DM because who fucking gives a shit? Like, we just want to stay at the hotel. Like, exactly what you were saying, like, why would we spend time on this part when we could just skip over it and get to the next good part in the story?
I think that a culmination of a lot of what we've been talking about here is the idea that rules that are there with intention, rather than just there because it seems like maybe you'd need a rule for that, are the kinds of rules that actually get used at the table most of all, whether you are playing a more trad game or not.
Like, because in a trad game context, the reason every rule is there is because the whole point of play is I want a rule for everything.
em: Yeah, and I think that, really clicks with me in the context of D& D where like, skimming through these PDFs, you're like or sorry legally purchased books, you are like, wow, there's a rule for every single thing and it doesn't really come together in any intentional way.
And if I was the lead designer for that game, I think my response would be, of course, because the GM is supposed to take some of these rules and create a coherent experience out of them, right? And that's when the toolbox approach comes back in, which I think the book doesn't necessarily make super clear, which is that we are providing you with a lot of mechanical abstractions, but I think what is left unsaid there is that you are gonna take those and then make something intentional and tailored out of that.
And I think what a lot of people push back upon because most people who want to DM D& D are not professional designers who think about this stuff night and day, they are just people who want to have fun with their friends and tell a cool story, is that when you are not super careful about how you make these decisions you can easily end up with a game where you for some reason have to pay for a hotel room based on a spreadsheet, right?
I think that's when, especially a trad game, which can fall into these pitfalls because of how the experience is set up, can lead you in a situation where you feel that you're just playing a bad board game, because there's no story. And then the rules that there are doesn't really build into anything that is satisfying.
Sam: This is reminding me so much of something I forgot about until right now, which is, Rule Zero as a reaction to rules lawyers. That when I first heard about the concept of Rule Zero, I really understood it as this social tool, for the DM to use, to look at the guy who's like, Actually, the rules don't work like that. This is the way that we should be
em: Mm
Sam: situation. And to say, No, I'm God. That's stupid. We're gonna do the thing that's better for the story instead. And in that sense, I really like Rule Zero. Like, I guess really what I like is not playing with that fucking guy.
But like, I I do think that Rule Zero has become so many different things, but as a shorthand for that conversation of, like, don't let all these optional abstractions that are not pointing towards the thing we are doing as a group, don't let those things get in the way of the thing you're trying to do. I think intentionality really should be the thesis of this, like,
em: Yeah. Have you talked with the person that made Errant?
Sam: no I have not.
em: I would be really curious to hear their take on this discussion. Because Errant is what comes to mind when I think of what is a game with mini games? But that is actually built with that statement made much more clear, where, I have not played Errant, but I would assume that even if you tried to fit in as much of the rules as you could, they would still fall within a certain framework of intention, because that's the thesis of the game, right? Like, you are going to abstract the parts that you want, and you want to bust out the rules for when something comes up and you want to mechanize it.
Sam: yeah. And AErrant akes this really interesting approach to it where it very clearly states up front, pull out these procedures as they sound fun. Pull out whichever ones feel important to you, it says, rules light procedure heavy. And in that way it's doing it's take on rule zero of saying, there's some core rules, you really don't want to fuck with these if you are playing this game. But then there's all these other optional things, this big toolbox, very, I might even use the metaphor, of the toolbox that you've been talking about and like take out your favorite toys and the ones you think are going to make your game better and do that.
I, for reference, did a whole episode of Read The Fucking Manual, rtfm podcast, on Errant with the host over there and talked for like an hour and a half about exactly this part of Errant so I think I'll leave things there. I, spoiler for that episode, I think Rules like procedure heavy is a misnomer, because what are rules if not procedures? But I think that the framing around it of rules like procedures heavy is essentially just saying exactly the same thing that you were talking about.
em: And I think that is in communication with the framework that I was telling you about, where rules are just ways to access parts of the game. Errant, I don't think, as far as I can remember, points you to any fictional outcomes out of the procedures that it wants you to take on.
Sam: It depends on the procedure.
em: Okay, cool. it is another example of a very horizontal structure where as you're navigating the little maze that is the fictional compounds of the game, you stumble onto these things and they are at their best, ideally, ways for you to propel that narrative forward.
Sam: Yeah, I am curious how you feel about complexity level in games as it relates to this concept of rules trying to build a tunnel to shepherd players through. So, I closed out season 3 of Dice Exploder with a pair of episodes on Stewpot. Which I think is a very, very rules dense game to some extent.
em: I know nothing about Stewpot except the fact that you love it
Sam: it's, it I did. It's, give me the credit. Stewpot is a Firebrands hack, so it's like a series of mini games, and on your turn you pick one of the mini games, then we all walk through the mini game.
But the mini games are whole little scenes, like a friendly tavern brawl. And within the scene, it's like, okay, who are brawlers, and who are de escalators? Brawlers answer this very specific question. De escalators answer this very specific question and the scene always goes the same way. There's a fight and you de escalate it and then it restarts a little bit and then you de escalate it all the way and then people shake hands and go home.
And that is a really, really precise way of guiding people through a really pre ordained scene with a preordained outcome, and there's room to fill in a lot of the details, but playing through it feels like a rail shooter. Last time you were on the show, I talked about my rail shooter RPG term, and I really still like it. That, I think
em: Yeah.
Sam: effective.
But on the other hand, the other episode I concluded the season with was on Ribbon Drive, which is this game about, you like, bring a playlist of music
em: The
playlist game.
Sam: of like, vibe and make the whole fucking thing up with the playlist as inspiration, and it's super freeform.
But like, the vibes of the game still sort of gently corral you into a really precise experience, but the way they do that is so much gentler. I mean, Stewpot's a very gentle game, but there's so much less
em: Specificity. I feel like that's what No, it's not necessarily specificity, but instruction, right? It's pointing in a direction, but it's not telling you exactly,
Sam: yes, cause the thing is that Ribbon Drive is actually extremely specific, and that
em: Yeah.
Sam: it to get away with having so little. And I'm curious, do you have a preference between those two kinds of things in terms of rules, like a lot of rules versus a little rules, if all the rules are intentional?
Or I mean, both of those are obviously valid options, I love both those games, but I'm curious to hear your reflection on that, like, kind of quantity and subtlety of rules.
em: Yeah. I think that, personally, I like fewer rules because I find that to me the most important part is the conversation as it goes, which I think is like an unspoken part of the rules, right, like the rules plug into your characters and your fictional's device that you've got going on, and for me that initial dynamic can already be very fruitful to explore without necessarily the aid of rules a lot.
And that does not apply to every game, right? Like, an OSR game, for example, does not care in the slightest about the fictional device. It's more like let's find out as we go, right? Like, there's necessarily a lot of thought put into who your character is, or where you are, like, those things are supposed to be explored through play as the game happens. feel like, as I understand it, like, in a lot of OSR games, you're supposed to find out who your character is kind of as you're playing.
And
Sam: I like to do that in PBTA games, but, go on.
em: No, but like, like in a PBTA game what I mean is like, in a PBTA game you're like, okay, I am the driver, and I can look at my character sheet and I know what kind of moves I'm going to get later on. In an OSR game it's like I'm called Bob, and you don't really know much more beyond that,
Sam: yeah. And I'm a fighter, but I, oh shit, I guess I only have two strength. Okay,
em: Yeah,
Sam: we'll figure it out.
em: yeah, yeah. So, I think it depends. That's my boring answer.
Sam: I mean, that's a great answer.
em: yeah, it depends on how much the rules stop you, because if, there are five important rules. That come up quite a lot, but you learn them, it can become quite fast like it can, help you maintain momentum. I think that the pitfall some games can fall into, either by having too many rules or by having few rules that are very complex, is that you are always stopping that momentum between the players
which I feel that, Again, it's hard for me to like, just say a thing in this conversation because RPGs can be so many different kinds of experiences. It can range from we are basically doing improv to we are basically playing a board game. And, the role of the rules in that is going to vary greatly depending on which of those two poles the designer is probably pointing you towards. So. Yeah, I think that the density and the quantity will come down to how you want the game to flow in that spectrum.
So as someone who likes games that have a lot of interaction with the players that is not necessarily scripted or mechanized, I prefer fewer more impactful rules. But you could also definitely make a case for games that are driven by the rules, where the actions and the events happen because of the rules, like, in a very literal moment to moment way, where, in that case, yeah, you definitely want, like, a lot of stuff, because the game is not going to go forward without them.
Sam: yeah,
em: Another thing I wanted to touch upon was that, I think in a lot of these, like D&D look in the Excel spreadsheet to see how much the inn costs tonight is what do the rules want to arbitrate? Because I think that in a lot of poorly designed rules, there is not really a clear point of what the rules are going to decide.
The most obvious example is success versus failure. Right, so, the skill check, the conceit of that rule is that you're going to succeed or you're going to fail, so it's a binary. Whereas there are more specific rules, like the Firebrands example you mentioned, where you said there were brawlers and escalators.
And I would imagine the point of that rule is not necessarily to figure out whether the fight is going to go on or be stopped or when it's going to be stopped. It's not necessarily tracking the specifics of the fight in a physical sense. It's trying to be like, a stage for you to, get more information about the characters the situation.
Sam: Yeah, the thing that is at stake is not how is the fight going to go. We know how the fight is going to go. the rules are handling that. The thing that it's asking is, How are we going to get there and how are your characters going to be acting?
Are they going to be on the brawling side or the de escalating side
em: Yeah,
Sam: there?
em: yeah. also remembered there's a Firebrands minigame where you're supposed to talk about one thing, but you are secretly talking about a different thing.
Sam: Mm hmm.
em: I don't know if that's in all of the Firebrands games, it was in the one that I played. So, guess what I'm trying to point out is that rules usually try to guide you to an outcome, or to a binary of outcomes, or to a couple of outcomes. And it becomes important to , as a designer at the very least have a grasp of what kind of situations you want the rule to lead you to.
Ideally, all of those situations are interesting. Or if only one situation is interesting, the mechanics of the rule are fun as a challenge to overcome that not favorable situation.
Sam: Yeah.
I do think the rules as negotiating outcomes and conflict is very much not the only use of rules. Like another example might be For the Queen, where the whole game is just these question prompt cards, and those questions are not resolving conflicts. Those questions are just asking you to interrogate how you feel about the situation at hand. And that's a completely different purpose of rules, and I think that that's great and beautiful.
em: Expression.
Sam: Totally.
I have some, like, kinda concluding thoughts, but like, do you have like another half hour, of rambling about the DMG you wanna do?
em: I want a D& D book that's just the pictures, with none of the words. That doesn't give me a headache every time I try to understand what is happening.
I think I actually need to do like a three hour live stream where I go by it, page by page, because it, it deserves it. . .
Sam: Yes.
em: might be pretentious, but I thought about the Bible, because it kind of doesn't matter what the Bible actually says, it just matters that it's the Bible, it's the vibes of the Bible. And I feel like D& D has that same aura around it,
Sam: Yes.
em: where It's not really about the specifics but what it entails what people associate to it.
Sam: I need to do a whole episode on this. I've been developing this theory, like, a lot with Sam Roberts of Escape from Dino Island on the Discord
em: Yeah.
Sam: He has a lot of opinions about this. We're doing an episode on prestige classes from 3. 5 uh, that may have, or may not have come out by the time people are hearing this, and like, I think we'll get into it there some too.
But I've also been playing this D& D campaign recently for the first time in a lot of years and we used so few of the rules. Like we did a whole session where we just like showed up and the DM had written a play
em: Yeah.
Sam: that took place in the world of the game and handed out scripts to all of us because we'd been cast in this play and had us like read this script and like you won't find fucking rules for that play in the dungeon master's guide but it felt so D& D because there are orcs, we're running around with our swords, like, all of the vibes are there.
We use so little of the rules, but we use all of the vibes, and that's what D& D
em: That's what
Sam: part, actually give a shit about. Because all the people who don't give a shit about vibes first went and played Pathfinder. Like, the
thing
that is left is the vibes.
em: and I feel like that sort of like anything goes attitude is also core to what D& D has become as a cultural artifact that goes beyond what you can read in the books, which is that, and I was trying to find a way to like say this, but it's like, you can be a designer. You can design games.
Sam: Yeah.
em: You can be interested in design experiences, but that is not necessarily the same as I want to entertain my friends creatively. I want to express myself and my ideas creatively. And I'm gonna use D& D as a cultural to do that.
Sam: It's a medium.
em: yeah, the medium is the message, in the sense that like, what D& D is saying is that it's an infinitely scalable experience and you are using that sort of like as a baseline for you to riff on,
Sam: Mhm.
em: right? Because if you didn't have D& D and your friend just one day came and like, gave you scripts, you'd be like, what the fuck, man? But because you're playing D& D, it makes total sense that it's like, okay, we're doing this creative thing that has some baseline, but also the point is that you create your own stuff on top of it.
Then it becomes so much like, that's the point, right? Like that's what I feel like as a community, what that game is about.
and I feel like when people talk about rule zero, an underlying aspect of it is pointing to that, pointing to saying the game is just the base for you as a GM, to be creative upon and to like, surprise your players with things that are not expecting.
Sam: It's the cauldron for you to brew your stew inside. Okay,
em: Filthy as fuck.
Sam: But,
em: Yeah,
Sam: Let me take us out with a conclusion here.
Rules should exist with intention. There's so many different things you can be doing with games and with rules and with getting together with your friends to be having fun, but as a designer and as a player, if you understand the intention behind every rule and every, like, piece of a game, you're gonna do such a better job of creating a quality and intended experience at the table, and you're gonna have more fun doing it, whether that means you are playing in really trad style, or really like freeform y story game style, OSR style, whatever the hell you're doing, just know what you're doing, and go have some fucking fun, kid. Like, just that, that's the thing too, is like, just go have some fucking fun doing it.
How do you feel about that?
em: Preach.
Sam: Thanks to Em for being here, you can find their work, including the incredible game Exiles at exilerpg.com you can follow them on Patrion for even more. Look at. Oh, they're cute. Little guys that drawings go shower them with money.
As always you can find me on socials at S Dunnewold or on the dice Exploder discord.
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