Early roleplaying and the interpretation of scripture

[Alan McVey]

I'm splitting this off of Early Roleplaying because what I'd like to discuss seems to have more to do with theory than play.  At the moment, my ideas are largely based on anecdotal evidence, but I'm hoping that people here can help elaborate on them a little.

Reading through descriptions of gaming experiences in the Early Roleplaying thread as well as in Ron's A Hard Look at Dungeons & Dragons, I'm wondering whether it would be useful to describe gamers' relationships with the text of early games in terms of the interpretive strategies that surround scripture.  In both cases, individuals are faced with texts that they consider authoritative but that are also incomplete and often ambiguous.  Because of the value placed on the texts, however, there develops a sense that they shouldn't be incomplete or ambiguous -- any gaps that exist must be able to be bridged through the proper interpretive tools.

While I like the Cargo Cults metaphor to describe the ways in which gamers constructed their games out of fragmentary texts, I wonder if those ways could also be described by comparing them to the processes of interpretation that eventually formed the Talmud.  Rabbis worked from a set of basic guidelines for dealing with scripture: general rules could be extrapolated from specific ones, phrases could be compared across the text or contextualized in order to unpack their meaning, and so on.  Gradually, an entire body of interpretations develops, and those interpretations in turn generate their own commentaries.

Looking at the "Sage Advice" column in Dragon magazine, or rules debates on gaming forums, leads me to think that the same basic strategies are still in effect.  Not only that, but the cultures of some games (D&D in particular, but others as well) seem to treat conversations about interpretation as a valuable part of the entire gaming experience: "rules gurus" of different sort acquire a particular status within the community, not only because they've memorized rules, but because they can deal creatively with the incompleteness of the text without drawing attention to that incompleteness.  "The answers are all there," they seem to say, "if you know how to look for them."

At the same time, there seems to be a second kind of response to texts, one that resembles a sort of theodicy in that it tries to answer the question of why the game's rules are the way they are.  I haven't thought as much about this part, but at first glance, the answers appear to be dogmatic (e.g., "For game balance" or "It's a fantasy world") or elaborate (like many of the conversations here on the Forge) depending on the community.

For a concrete example of the dogmatic approach, here's an excerpt from the forums for Gygax's game, Lejendary Adventure.  The poster had asked why humans and non-humans get a different number of skills, and received this reply:

Why anything, though? ... Do you ask why Tic Tac Toe uses X's and O's? Why is chess played with 16 pieces per side on an 8x8 board? Why do Elf's have pointy ears? Why do wizards wear robes?  When it comes to games and when it comes to fantasy, you have to be willing to accept things without asking why.

(As a slight tangent: elsewhere in the same forums, a lengthy argument began about whether a section of the LA rules was unclear on a particular topic.  The strongest defender of their clarity took what I can only think of as a fundamentalist approach: not only did he believe that they were perfectly clear, but he did not seem to recognize that any interpretive work was necessary in order to find that clarity.)

With the publication of Troll Lords' Castles & Crusades (which "harkens back to a time when role playing was not constrained by rules but rather, when the rules unleashed the power of the imagination") along with new versions or pdf republications of Judge's Guild products, the Arduin books, and other staples of early roleplaying, it seems that this is a good time to revisit the question of how gamers working with these rules interpret them.  I'd like to try to develop the "rules as scripture" model further, but before I get too far, I would also like some feedback from others: has your experience been similar?

[Valamir]

Alan, I think that's an excellent observation.  You will probably find similar parallels in any endeavor where a body of canon gets established, be it literary, poetry, theater, etc.

A big factor I think is that the development of canon also tends to lead to the development of turf (for better or worse).  As you point out with game rules, a big part of becoming a master of the canon is the prestige / authority that comes from being so acknowledge.  But as soon as that happens the individual then has a vested interest in protecting their position as an acknowledged subject expert (their turf)...and that's when you start heading down the road to dogma.

[clehrich]

At the same time, there seems to be a second kind of response to texts, one that resembles a sort of theodicy in that it tries to answer the question of why the game's rules are the way they are. I haven't thought as much about this part, but at first glance, the answers appear to be dogmatic (e.g., "For game balance" or "It's a fantasy world") or elaborate (like many of the conversations here on the Forge) depending on the community.

One thing I think is fascinating about the Talmud parallel here is that there is no particular reason to assume that the answers derived by rules gurus (or Rabbis) are the same as those informing the original constructions.

Take Mary Douglas's famous analysis "The Abominations of Leviticus" in Purity and Danger.  She argues that the basic principle underlying a lot of the rules about which animals are clean and which unclean is whether the animals are "whole," i.e. whether they fit neatly into an accepted category of wholeness.  Fish, for example, have fins and swim in the sea; that which swims in the sea but doesn't have fins is therefore not whole, violating the category, because it's partly land-animal-like (has legs, e.g. shrimp) and partly fish-like (swims in the sea).  Therefore shrimp are unclean.  As she notes, if they had penguins in the Near East, they'd be unclean: they're birds, but they don't fly, and they swim instead.

Now the thing is, Douglas is talking about what sorts of structural principles informed (not perhaps consciously) the folks who constructed Leviticus.  But when you look at later Talmudic and other commentaries, this is not at all the principle they derive.  The assumption made by commentators is that there must be an ethical principle at work here, and that it must be seamless in that regard.  So they completely reinterpret the text to fit that model.

In gaming, I think we see the same thing at work.  The D&D or whatever rules are supposed to have been constructed to set up a seamless rules-set that produces certain effects.  But there is no reason to think that the principles informing the original constructors were the same as those desired now.  That assumes that nothing has changed in the desires of players and play-groups, which seems obviously untrue.  So we have to impose new interpretive frameworks upon the texts to reconstruct them as always having incorporated and met the desires we have now.

And the fact that people are clever, and can do this to texts fairly well, then "proves" that the game is perfect: the harder you look at it, the more you "prove" to yourself that the game already thought of what you want and provided for it.  Therefore the game is perfect.

Thus the text becomes canonical scripture: we don't need to add anything, because it's complete; what we have just added we claim is not an addition but merely an explication of what was already there.  This is of course the rhetoric of the supplement, the idea that you add to a text to prove that you didn't need to add anything, and then conceal from yourself that you have added something.

[Sean]

On the one hand, this is an important phenomenon. It's not an accident that 'rules lawyering' is one of your four stats in the card game Hack. The Cargo Cult phase is how the game was built, but many texts, above all the original AD&D books, pushed more and more gamers towards recondite rules interpretation as a way to 'win' a given scene. (I think some of the early hatred of 'metagaming' actually comes from the annoyance of endless rules bickering).

You can't say it wasn't there from the beginning though. "The spell description doesn't say I can't create a Wall of Stone above their heads in midair!"

On the other hand, though, I never enjoyed rules lawyering in RPGs. Give me the cargo cult and the creation-of-rules-through-bricolage-and-play any day; once it reaches the theology stage everything goes to hell and the fun gets sucked out like a whirlpool. That's totally a statement of personal preference, though, and I can even imagine a game (maybe better an open-ended boardgame than an RPG) designed specifically to make rules lawyering fun: say a metarule that says you have to invoke rules to get certain things, and then lots of weird arcane rules in a book that trump each other in various ways. It would be like Scrabble, you would cite rules and people would have to challenge you (with the rulebook closed) if they didn't want to let you do whatever you wanted.

---------

I guess in the first part of this post I was dealing with the process of forming these interpretations in play, which I call rules lawyering, and which I find to be, in general, a drag. But re-reading the original post I also see the idea of the 'body of accepted interpretations', and forming these is an interesting part of communal consensus in open-ended games. For instance: in our D&D games there was no raise dead after about 1980 (since it 'sucked all meaning out of play', we thought). Also, there were no 'magic item shops' save maybe the odd old wizard's tower where he might have a scroll or three if you paid him enough - magic was rare. Lots of stuff like this.

I think that part of what's driving C&C and the general resurgence of older D&D stuff and play (the part that's not just nostalgia) is that lots of the people playing went to lots of work to get this stuff ironed out in their own games (their local Rabbinate certified certain things as kosher within their own community) and they don't want to give up that social contract they were once part of, that took so much work to form. It was hard work, interpreting the Law, when the Law was so vague to begin with - see Kafka's Trial and Castle - and having done all that work the last thing we want to do is give it up just because some designer understands mechanics from the top down better than we did.

Darn, having a baby makes it hard to polish posts. Gotta go.

[Callan S.]

I'm going to suggest something a bit strange: Real life narrativism as design.

Normal, in game narrativism is where you imply your morality on the world. You decide, from a difficult choice, what your PC believes in. And it's very fun to do so, for a whole lot of reasons.

Now the thing is, Douglas is talking about what sorts of structural principles informed (not perhaps consciously) the folks who constructed Leviticus. But when you look at later Talmudic and other commentaries, this is not at all the principle they derive. The assumption made by commentators is that there must be an ethical principle at work here, and that it must be seamless in that regard. So they completely reinterpret the text to fit that model.

With the religious texts here, it's much the same. The text tells you something about certain important life events...since the book is important to you, you must make a descision about what that means. You can do nothing except make a narrativist choice. You might work an interpretation of them (showing how you value the text...perhaps valuing it so much you deny your making an interpretation), or even decide the text is to much and split off from the main religion. But the text demanded a narrativist responce.

Ooooh ek, I hope I wasn't too heretical there.

Anyway :) , let's look at early D&D text or similar games like Rifts today. They provoke you to make descisions about how it all works. To make problematic desicisions.

I think the first type is a subtle problematic descision to identify. The problem faced lies in all the millions of ways you could handle a certain rule. Why are you choosing one in particular? Why is that any better than others? These issues make it like a narrativist choice...you just have to end up looking deep into yourself and deciding to believe in something and going with it (otherwise you don't game).

The second thing that makes it a problematic descision is group dynamics. Your can loose people from play, if you screw it up. But often there are just as equal reasons to decide to play a rule a certain way.

Probably rules lawyering is (unsportsman like) gamism in clash with that:
"I want this advantage from X, by doing this!"
"I cannot believe in that!"
"I want it! Acknowledge my step on up!"
"I don't want it! Acknowledge my belief!/narrativist choice!"

[Alan McVey]

Thus the text becomes canonical scripture: we don't need to add anything, because it's complete; what we have just added we claim is not an addition but merely an explication of what was already there. This is of course the rhetoric of the supplement, the idea that you add to a text to prove that you didn't need to add anything, and then conceal from yourself that you have added something.

Looking at the first D&D supplements -- Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry -- I'm starting to wonder whether there's also a second sort of rhetoric at work that plays off of the desires of the group that you mention earlier in your post.  The foreword for each of the first two supplements was written by Gygax, but neither one gives a very clear explanation of why anyone might want them.  Greyhawk "adds immeasurably to the existing game," while Blackmoor "should satisfy your craving for new ideas," but it's only in Tim Kask's introduction to Eldritch Wizardry that I found something more complete:

As originally conceived, D & D was limited in scope only by the imagination and devotion of Dungeon Masters everywhere. The supplements have fulfilled the need for fresh ideas and additional stimulation. But somewhere along the line, D & D lost some of its flavor, and began to become predictable. This came about as a result of the proliferation of rule sets; while this was great for us as a company, it was tough on the DM. When all the players had all of the rules in front of them, it became next to impossible to beguile them into danger or mischief.

Compare this with some snippets from Ten Reasons for DMs to Buy Races of the Wild on the WotC site:

Everyone knows Corellon Larethian and the other nonhuman deities from the Player's Handbook. Now, however, you can introduce some new deities to your campaign...

You'll keep your players guessing with the catfolk, who first appeared in the Miniatures Handbook...

On the one hand, I absolutely agree that supplements work off the rhetoric that you describe, but on the other, I'm also starting to wonder if there's some sort of perpetual deferral of completion going on.  The canon is perfect, therefore any addition is not really an addition, and yet addition must continue perpetually or the game loses its perfection.   (This might also explain the mixed signals present in the advertising for gaming supplements: they're completely optional, and yet you absolutely need them.)

To get back to a point that you made in the Mary Douglas part of your post, you mentioned that "we have to impose new interpretive frameworks upon the texts to reconstruct them as always having incorporated and met the desires we have now."  While I think those desires do change over time, the two D&D examples (from 29 years apart!) are cases of writers assuming that readers' desires have remained constant -- i.e., "keep your players guessing."  I'd be interested in hearing about supplements that work from a different principle.

More thoughts later.

[Callan S.]

I had another thought on the narrativist design and wanted to extend it. It's in relation to the phrase "The GM's word is law!" or similar.

Apart from some of the other things it represents when some games stipulate it, I'm wondering if this isn't so much a proclamation, but a plea. It's a social contract submission that "The GM shalt suffer no force!".

I'm talking typhoid mary style force. That the GM's descision on how something works should be pretty damn sacrosanct, like a narrativist players choice. I shouldn't even say it's 'like' a narrativist choice...it is a themeatic descision. Basically the theme is 'if you were in charge, could you make a better world?'. I mean, I'm sure you could have a narrativist game about gods and their having to make difficult descisions in creating the world (the implications for their flocks making these difficult choices). If that's a valid nar game (shoot me down if it isn't), what about when the GM decides how something works in the game world? In this case it's not a concern about an imaginary flock, but actual people and how they will react (in addition to the other concern I outlined before).

It's interesting there; The players are a difficulty factor in the narrativist choice before the choice is made. But after the choice is made, their trying to influence stuff toward a better story (in relation to the choice) is typhoid mary syndrome. The GM's nar choice needs to be upheld or it just sucks for him.

I'd really like some input on this. Like with that nar god game I mentioned...how is making choices in that much different from making choice about the world as a GM and the difficulty in that question?

[sophist]

I am urging some caution here. The stakes for religion are most of the time existential, while the stakes in gaming are at best economical (if you want to continue to sell books).

Also, while I am much in symathy with deconstruction, I have much difficulty with the use of a decontructive gesture emplyed in these critiques of reolepaying rules text. Because today, there is no such thing as trying to construct the perfect system. Thus, todays designers are not deceiving themselves as to wether something is an addition/supplement or not. There is no perpetual deferral of of complete perfection. My Dungeaon Masters Guide clearly states that no system can encompass everything.

In my very humble opinion, the comparison of Mr. Kask's introduction to some marketing blurb on a Website seems to me not very fair. It would be better to compare introductions. This further opens the question to not confound opinions of authors, publisher marketimg blurb writers and forum
posters, who might take the texts as more authorative than they are written.

I suggest that accessories are published for different reasons that the establishment of a perfect canon. Insread most authors revel in the gaps
left by any system possible. That is why there can always be another book on the topic, and the publishing explosion for d20 supports this notion.
As to mr. kask's remark, I think he is referring more to the fact that gamist players memorized all the rules and thus would know to interpret
everything that what done by the book. Even here, I cannot see that the author thinks "Eldritch Wizardry" would solve that problem once and for all.
In addition, as log as we're talking commercial RPGs, it's "publish or perish". It is this that some marketing rhetoric is trying to conceal, not
aspirations of metaphysical perfection pursued by game designers.

After all this, I did not find your thoughts without merit, but more as a commentary to a social phenomenon engendered by the publication of certain texts than as that you found something in the texts that needed exposition for a deeper understanding.

[lev_lafayette]

Heh. I really like this metaphor. In particular, I like the idea that the rules seemed to suggest a sense of completeness and a lack of ambiguity, but it obviously wasn't (and possibly couldn't be) the case.

From this situation two types of GMs arose; those who sort to solve the problem of ambiguity through better design (the simulation priests) and those who sort to ride the storm of inconsistency through storytelling (the narrative wizards).

Actually, let's make it three. There were those who accepted the inconsistencies, ambiguity and imbalances and sought to manipulate them in a imaginative way (the gamist mystics). These were typically players rather than GMs however.

In a sense the third group were probably the inspiration for the first and second... I still remember when as a young GM a player showed me the power of a Multispell Disruption Matrix... good lord that was devastating...

Three cheers to imaginative gamist players!

[clehrich]

Also, while I am much in symathy with deconstruction, I have much difficulty with the use of a decontructive gesture emplyed in these critiques of reolepaying rules text. Because today, there is no such thing as trying to construct the perfect system. Thus, todays designers are not deceiving themselves as to wether something is an addition/supplement or not. There is no perpetual deferral of of complete perfection. My Dungeaon Masters Guide clearly states that no system can encompass everything.

I'd agree that the deferral here is not of complete perfection in what we usually think of as a scriptural sense; that is, I think there's no question that everyone accepts (or anyway, just about everyone) that there is a difference between a text written by Gary Gygax or Tim Kask and a text written by God.  But I do think that Alan is pointing to something legitimate here: there is a textual manipulation and supplementation going on that is worth analyzing.  And while I find convincing Kask's point about needing something new to confound the player who has memorized the old stuff, that does not mean that there isn't more going on.

After all this, I did not find your thoughts without merit, but more as a commentary to a social phenomenon engendered by the publication of certain texts than as that you found something in the texts that needed exposition for a deeper understanding.

I don't know about Alan, but I'm fine with that.  Yes, commentary on a social phenomenon, i.e. the social phenomenon of reading, interacting with, and constructing games by means of, these texts.  To be sure, this means that the texts themselves perhaps do not deconstruct themselves in quite this fashion, but I don't think that's been claimed.  Rather, the question that it seems to me Alan is posing, and I think it's a fascinating one, is why these texts have been read in this way at all.  Surely that's not a simple or obvious matter?  Clearly one reason Leviticus (for example) was read in that way was that it was taken for granted that it contained the intentions and thus in a sense the mind of God.  Nobody, except maybe Gary Gygax, would claim this of early D&D texts.  So why read them in this way?  That is very odd, frankly.

Alan,

This is a fascinating suggestion -- that of perpetual deferral of completion in order to claim a kind of perfection.  Where that pushes my mind, anyway, is toward a power-relation.  You note a distinction between Kask, who is quite clear about why these texts are practically useful, and Gygax, who is more concealed.  Might we say that by means of this process of perpetual deferral and construction, the authors -- perhaps especially Gygax -- are in effect claiming (perhaps without knowing it) that they already have a perfect game which, if we only wait for it and keep the faith, we the faithful (purchasers, as Sophist rightly points out) will eventually achieve perfection and totality?  I'm not really suggesting that this is an entirely deliberate mechanism or scheme, though I do think there are some marketing strategies involved.  

But the problem with your suggestion is that it requires something: we should be able to discern in the texts, and we do not in those brief introductory statements so we have to look elsewhere, an implication that the game always already was complete and perfect in the mind of Gygax (or whoever).  If this is a social phenomenon of reader-reception, we have to think about why it was read so; if on the other hand this is a strategic manipulation in the construction of texts, we need to know what in the texts provoked this reaction.

Probably both are true, but I don't know that I'm going to slog through all my old D&D books to figure out which.  Any ideas?

[Sean]

Hackmaster is usefully cited as working to resolve a number of issues that have been brought up here.

The eight-volume Hacklopedia, with twenty varieties each of all familiar monsters, effectively makes it both cost- and time-prohibitive for all but the most insane players to memorize everything in those books. (3e actually accomplishes the same thing more elegantly, by letting you jack up hit dice and/or add class levels to every kind of creature. The downside of the 3e approach though is that your tenth level adventures sometimes look like your first level adventures did, except they're level 5/5/2 fighter/rogue/blackguard goblins instead of level 1 warrior goblins.)

The Hackmaster rules also contain explicit text to the effect that there are no contradictions in the rules, and that if you're seeing them it merely indicates a lack of understanding on your part. I don't know if EGG ever said anything quite like this back in the early days, but one sometimes had the sense that something like this was being claimed.

What's especially funny about this in the Hackmaster case is that there are several rules that are deliberately left incomplete and/or incorrect in the player's handbook - and, of course, if the player cites the correct rule from the GMG, he is immediately docked honor and experience for 'cheating'.

So anyway, HM at once takes advantage of the Kask point and parodizes the scripture point, but in both cases is hearkening back to what David Kenzer, Jolly Blackburn, and 'the gang at Hard 8' perceived as features of early play.

Oh yeah, here's a thought. Maybe the 'scriptural' approach to RPGs is just a straightforward response to being traumatized by poorly written, incomplete, and self-contradictory rules-texts. "But, we were having fun, a minute ago. Surely, these rules contain the solutions to these problems. Surely these seemingly intelligent men can't have missed such an obvious problem..."

If I were a less charitable man, I might draw an analogy to religious texts, and suggest that the scriptural approach to them is also a straightforward response to being traumatized by poorly written, incomplete, and self-contradictory rules-texts, except there the stakes are higher, because it's not perceived as 'just a game'. And then I might go on to talk about Kafka some more. But being a charitable sort, I'll pass on the opportunity.

Damn, though, I wish Hackmaster was not such a nightmare in terms of handling time, because I'd play it some more if it was functional.

[Callan S.]

Damn, though, I wish Hackmaster was not such a nightmare in terms of handling time, because I'd play it some more if it was functional.

Perhaps if you're seeing long handling times it merely indicates a lack of understanding on your part

Sorry, couldn't resist paraphrasing you, since it ties into the whole 'If there's a fault, it's your fault' that comes along with games worded that way! ;)

[Alan McVey]

I am urging some caution here. The stakes for religion are most of the time existential, while the stakes in gaming are at best economical (if you want to continue to sell books).

I should make my own biases clear here: I'm an academic, and my field is religious studies.  That means that I tend, like Chris, to look at texts through a particular set of lenses, and to use comparisons from the material and methods with which I am most familiar.

(T)oday, there is no such thing as trying to construct the perfect system. Thus, todays designers are not deceiving themselves as to wether something is an addition/supplement or not.

Again, it's a feature of my background that I tend not to look at authorial intent.  I can't tell whether or not designers are deceiving themselves (or anyone else) any more than I can tell whether some posters on forums are taking texts "as more authoritative than they were written."  Once the text is out there, it's up to the readers to decide how they're going to interpret it; there may be an implied reader discernable from the text, but there will also be readers who resist the imposition of certain interpretations.

But this is starting to veer away from what I had in mind.  Chris' follow-up to your post put across most of my ideas quite well: what I'm interested in is why and how certain strategies of reading rules developed, and what effect they might have had on the ways of playing games and of creating them between the mid-'70s and now.  If we start by asking questions about gaps and ways of dealing with them, and by looking at what areas seemed to call for elaboration and what ones didn't, we might be able to say a few things about trends in the various cultures of gamers.  (E.g., what prompted Judges Guild to think that bust size was important in its city guides, while in the first volume of the Field Guide to Encounters, a character's name is described as "not a vital part of the character, but it can be helpful and/or amusing"?)

I tend to agree with you that game-designers today tend not to present their work as complete (or even absolutely authoritative), but I wonder if that itself isn't a reaction against an earlier tendency to present games in just that way.  That reaction, in turn, seems to have started a counter-reaction that's not exactly a return to '70s-style game-writing, but a more conscious attempt to reproduce the exhaustive-yet-incomplete feel.  Hackmaster, as Sean points out, does this on the level of parody, but I suspect that there are other games that do it more seriously.  (While I haven't looked at the new editions of City State of the Invincible Overlord or Wilderlands of High Fantasy, I wonder whether they resemble the old versions in having page after page of encounter locations, each summarized in a sentence or two.  The originals were, in my opinion, masterworks of reflecting the sparseness of the rules in a setting.)

A few short and final thoughts for the day:

Lev -- I've been wondering about whether you could make divisions in a way similar to what you've done with respect to other responses to gaps in the rules.  "It's realistic," "it's part of the genre," and "it's for game balance" seem to match up fairly well with your priests, wizards, and mystics.

Chris -- I'm going to have to start digging through my growing library of older games before coming up with ideas to answer your final question, but I'm inclined to agree with you that it's a mixture of both a part of the rhetoric of game-writing for some authors and a reponse on the part of some readers.  I'll be able to give a few more examples once I've done the appropriate slogging.  As for the idea of perpetual deferral, I was modelling it off of some apocalyptic movements, which may say something itself about the kinds of power-relations you mention.

Noon -- I'm sorry I couldn't offer any useful comments on the question you asked earlier in this thread, but I'm pleased to see that you've set up a thread to discuss it separately.  I'll keep up with that one as best I can.

[Sean]

Alan -

I was actually part of the Necromancer Games design team for the new Judges Guild stuff. I didn't really wind up doing that much except put on my old fogey hat, tell the youngsters what the feel was like, though I did get credited in the Wilderlands boxed set and on the Caverns of Thracia module retread.

One bit of actual design I did was the fixed-location encounters for Map 2 (Barbarian Altanis), though, and I did sometimes have this feeling like it was all going wrong. I mean, I think some of my ideas were cool-for-D&D - I wrote a wererat bard with illusion spells setting up the party with hallucinatory terrain, and goblins on worgs, and a weird techno-artifact, and vampire berserkers, and some other stuff - but the whole thing that was cool about the ORIGINAL wilderlands is that everyone got to fill quirky tidbits and tactics and connections for themselves from these weird little sentences of terse description. Now it's just going to be a Wilderness supplement - a pretty big and cool one, maybe, but it's all going to be 'done' for the people reading it in a way that it wasn't quite for us. I mean, it's a big world, and there's still a lot of chance for improvisation ("what if these guys over here know that dragon over there...") - it's not like a damn Dragonlance adventure or anything. It's still a setting for you to do what you want with. But still. Not just endless lines of text to riff off.

Of course, riffing is time-prohibitive in 3e anyway, which is why I stopped playing it a while back. So I'm not really sure an old-style supplement would be functional for a game where it actually matters how many ranks of Spot a Dire Flumph has. And I will say that the Necromancer people and the design team had a keen appreciation of the old-school issues, and that we did the best we could to try to convey the old feel with the kind of detail necessary to sell a product to current 3.x players. But ultimately I just think the two things are really different.

Anyway, returning you to scriptural interpretation discussion...

[sophist]

the clarifications in your posts make your theory more likely to me than before.
recstricting it to a rhetoric of certain texts, especially older ones, reminded me
of some examples, too.

But a thought came up right then: what if this rhetric structure was demanded by what
the text tries to do? if it does not *promise* from the outset that you can use the
rules without constant amendment, why use them in the first place? One could see here
a structural similarity to scripture, which needs to promise that it can be a complete
guide for your life.

I am not suggesting here that a text is person or something like that, but about basic
performative properties in language that influence the rhetirc it needs to employ.
Because we want to stick on topic here, I cannot delve further into that, but I think
I can deduce from your posts that you know what I am getting at here.

I call it the rhetoric of promise here (rather than deferral) because I want to interpret
this rhetoric in a more positive way then in the framework of eschatology. It might be
that very promise that allows us to interpret a whole fictional world with a limited system.

At the same time, a basic premise of roleplaying - that you can do anything within the
bounds of verisimilitude -, must subvert that very promise. That is why (if you follow
lev's terminology) simulationists will always need yet another supplement. This subversion
led to the profilation of genre basesd systems etc.etc.
cOmpare this to the needed supplementary interpretaions of the e.g. the bible on cloning.

So in my mind there is both - a scriptural aspect in rpg rules text and its subversion,
and this subersion is reflected my *MOST* authors today. I would even suppose that this

Sean wrote:
The Hackmaster rules also contain explicit text to the effect that there are no contradictions in the rules, and that if you're seeing them it merely indicates a lack of understanding on your part.

might be a case if irony if it were not that you loose ep at al. for citing "correct" rules.

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PS: lev, I want to use your gamist mystic definition in my sig. Can I?