Rule Obsessions
Last week, out of the blue, the Big Bad Blog received its first comment debate. It doubtlessly appeared under the radar to most regular readers, as it was on an article written back in January — the infancy of Big Bad Blogdom. It was hardly a debate — in it, I looked for an in-game rationale for the existence of magic shops in a standard D&D world, along with more interesting (and more plausible) alternatives to such shops.
My formidable opponent referred back repeatedly to rulebooks — treasure tables, assigned monetary values, and guidelines for what can be purchased within a town provided all the evidence needed that magic shops were a necessary piece of the game as written.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that the discussion went nowhere. I wanted to explore the rationale behind having (or not having) magic item shops, auctions, distribution networks, and the like. The origins of magical items. Why can any given magical item below a given price threshold be easily found in a town above a certain size?
These are the quesitons that plague my mind, sometimes. They are rooted in a belief is that the rules of a roleplaying game are not there to simply be followed, or to ensure everybody is on the same page when playing the game. They are there to facilitate the game; to ease the resolution of conflicts within the game and to act as a guide to help the players (GM included) to experience the game they want to play.
I am not alone in this, I am sure.
There is a problem, then, in drawing a line. What should we consider to be the hard-and-fast agreed-upon rules for resolving in-game conflict? Which are the rules that need to be followed, or at least require a prior agreement that they will not be? And when are the words in the rulebook a guide? When are they instructions for achieving the game designer’s vision; the places where the “rules” should not be followed if their vision is not your own? And at what point do we accuse the game designers of oversharing — of not allowing the players or GM to explore their own vision of the game, instead subjecting them to their own vision, without regard to the game the players might want to play.
That line exists somewhere — exactly where is different in different games. Boutique games such as Call of Cthulu or Feng Shui sell a vision more than a system. More mainstream ones, such as Dungeons and Dragons or GURPS are selling a means to achieve a variety of visions within certain parameters (or, for GURPS, any parameter whatsoever). The amount that game designers should impose their own vision is clearly much greater in the former than the latter.
If you want a good example of stepping over the line, check out this rant about the Rust Monster in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The game designers decided that it was unfair that players might lose some of their stuff in a battle with a Rust Monster, and designed rules to make sure that they could recover the value of their lost stuff (should said Rust Monster be defeated).
No leaving it to the GM to decide if they wanted the players to face such a loss — otherwise why throw a Rust Monster at them?
No leaving it to the GM to decide if the players should have their lost items replaced somehow afterwards — the recovery is encoded in the rules.
In other words, rather than have those playing the game have the game they want — including one in which the players might lose everything (or big things) in a horrible Rust Monster attack — the game designers have imposed their own vision on your 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game: That things that are earned cannot be lost.
The Rust Monster is just another in a long series of similar decisions — other such losses, such as level-draining creatures have also disappeared.
I never used Rust Monsters, Wights, or other similar creatures that took away character achievements when I ran games in old systems. That was a choice I was free to make, based upon my own philosophy on why I played and why I felt my players were playing in my game. Such things did not fit the stories I was telling.
But other people tell different stories — ones in which the heroes might fall, only to rise again. Taking their tools away is poor game design. The rules should facilitate the stories your players want to tell, not force them down different roads.
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