Over on this thread we started getting into a discussion about the intrinsic credibility of the rules as written. That was veering off topic, so here's one dedicated to that topic.

To start, I think we all agree that the rules as written are a part of system, but that many other things go into system.

My contention is that people in general are conditioned to play a game by its rules as written as a default. If I say to a group, "We're gonna play Monopoly," everyone would assume that we were playing by the rules as written. RPGs, though different than Monopoly (thank the gods), also have baseline assumptions that start with the rules as written.

No brainer, right?

But the thing is that a lot of social contract stuff is traditionally unspoken. If a GM says she's running a D&D 3E game, the amount of game expectation is usually limited to which books are kosher for making characters and which printed optional rules are being used. And, in my experience, GMs tend to make these calls as pronouncements to the group, with little room for discussion.

So the question is: what weight do the rules as written have, in general? I mean, we write them with some expectation that people will follow them during play, right? So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

Discuss.

To enhance--actually, to produce--mechanical toy quality.

First, rules create and sustain unity of vision. We all agree to play by this set of rules, we defer to the rules, consequently it's easy for us to agree what happens in the game.

Rules that don't accomplish this, the group ditches wicked fast. Sometimes it keeps playing without the written rules, sometimes it switches to another set of rules, sometimes it splits up. Sometimes it hacks the rules - this is the group that "simply patch[es] any rules to fit their play style." That's okay.

After a while, we've learned how to create and sustain unity of vision ourselves. We develop enough of a shared commitment to the game and to each others' contributions that we don't need the written rules to keep it up.

Some groups never get to this point, or don't care about it, or whatever. That's okay.

Now consider two possible sets of rules. The first, all it accomplishes is unity of vision. The second accomplishes something more.

If the group has self-sustaining unity of vision and is playing with the first set of rules, what happens? The rules fade away. Naturally! There's no use for them anymore. This is the GURPS group that has character sheets they never refer to, and they roll dice maybe once in a session, maybe less. This is where my own Ars Magica play has happened mostly, over the years. It's okay.

If the group has self-sustaining unity of vision and is playing with the second set of rules, though - the rules don't fade away. The group uses them all the time, just as they were designed, clipping right along. Naturally! The group is getting something from the rules that it can't get without them. It might be toy quality. It might be any number of things.

Now, I'm going to go kind of out on a limb here and say that this last case can be better than okay. The reason is, the best roleplaying, the best that roleplaying can be, right? It's not easy to do uninformedly. You can't usually do it by accident. You need either training or rules.

So the question is: what weight do the rules as written have, in general? I mean, we write them with some expectation that people will follow them during play, right? So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

Hi Jay,

My contention is that people in general are conditioned to play a game by its rules as written as a default. If I say to a group, "We're gonna play Monopoly," everyone would assume that we were playing by the rules as written. RPGs, though different than Monopoly (thank the gods), also have baseline assumptions that start with the rules as written.

A lot of rules are basically "training wheels" (that's what they're called, right, those little extra wheels on the sides of kids' bikes?). You use them until you find don't actually need them any more. If you get a new game, the first thing you do is rip off the training wheels so you can play in the free style you've gotten used to.

Of course, if you start playing a different style of game, you need to follow rules again - for a while. And then they're internalized, and you don't need those rules, either.

...and if you've been playing one kind of game for a long, long time, having to use rules to understand a new way of gaming feels very strange. "Rules? They're for beginners, not for us sophisticated gamers!"

Bankuei

I totally agree with your observations wrt gamers learning to play form each other & what GM says goes.

But in my own experience (which started just after the "cargo cult" D&D phase with Champions) the GM is usually chosen by new players based on familiarity with the rules. "He knows how to play, let's let him be GM." The assumption here is that the GM is most familiar with the rules, and that playing by the rules is the goal, so put him in charge.

Let me put this another way, in case I'm not making sense. The original question that sparked this for me was whether a group is likely to reapportion credibility among players without the rules saying so. Should we expect players to speak up when their visions about the SIS are not fulfilled by the GM if the rules say the GM is the boss of the story?

My experience says clearly no. The dynamic I have nost often observed is that players will speak up about what the GM is doing, if (and *only * if)they have printed rules to back up their point. And if the rules clearly say that the GM runs the story and what he says goes (which *most* of them do), I have experienced player misery and resignation.

So I'm saying that, unless the rules specifically state that you should do something different from the traditional way to roleplay that most folks in the hobby learned from D&D or WW, they won't think of doing them. The rules have to tell you to break from Conventional Wisdom, or you can't count on folks doing it.

Am I making any sense?

Hi Jay,

So I'm saying that, unless the rules specifically state that you should do something different from the traditional way to roleplay that most folks in the hobby learned from D&D or WW, they won't think of doing them. The rules have to tell you to break from Conventional Wisdom, or you can't count on folks doing it.

So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

matthijs wrote: A lot of rules are basically "training wheels" (that's what they're called, right, those little extra wheels on the sides of kids' bikes?). You use them until you find don't actually need them any more.

It seems to me that what Matthijs describes, and what Vincent is calling the "unity of vision" type of rules-set, operates somewhat differently than has been proposed here. I think Jay is dead right to be talking about credibility with respect to textual rules-sets.

To my mind, the process of developing unity of vision in a play-group is very much that of constructing and absorbing a peculiar and difficult-to-pinpoint set of relations between how the group operates socially and how the rules construct those relations.

If the group begins with a set of rules that are formulated to have a strong role in this, as for example AD&D, then the process of constructing such a unity is significantly a matter of constant cross-checking to be sure "we're doing it right." Of course, no set of rules can be so comprehensive and specific that such "doing it right" can occur without significant input from the play-group, but certainly the balance can and does shift a good deal.

Over time, that constructed set of relations becomes internalized and in fact largely naturalized. It becomes "obvious" that gaming "is done like that," not as a matter of choice but because that's what gaming "just is." Once this full internalization has occurred within the group, the rules-set becomes theoretically discardable, but in practice it cannot be discarded, because all play already incorporates the rules as interpreted by the play group.

If the rules-set(s) used to formulate this group practice was formal and constructed rhetorically to have a dominant role, to set aside the rules is to make a gesture against the rules; the group may well not perceive itself as able to play "properly" without the rules symbolically present (the stack of books, the DM screen, etc.). If the rules-set is constructed so as to formulate a "freeform" conception among the group, they may feel that pushing aside the books and such is an act of maturing. WoD games incorporate this rhetoric to a significant degree, in their comments about discarding rules that don't work for you.

But my point is that in any event, the dynamic and ongoing interpretive relationship with the rules continues even if the rules have been overtly set aside. This is the origin of the "common wisdom" about gaming, and I feel strongly that the rhetorical and systematic formulation of certain games---most obviously AD&D---has a lot to do with this.

For example, imagine a group that has been playing AD&D for some years. They are feeling bored and dispirited, and decide to try something new. They have heard about the cool new indie things, and decide to play InSpectres. Now a reaction sets in that Jared and Ron have discussed many times in reference to InSpectres: several basic points about how that game works violate expected norms of play. In some cases, this is liberating: the group sees a new way to play and begins formulating a new unity of vision. In others, they find InSpectres not all it's cracked up to be, overrated by those weirdos on the Forge.

In either case, it is not true that they no longer need the rules of AD&D. They are using those rules, as they play InSpectres. In one case, they are formulating a new unity of vision against the backdrop of a the AD&D rules-set; in the other, they are reconstructing the same unity of vision from the AD&D rules-set. In the latter case, InSpectres doesn't work, because it doesn't run well on those rules, but even in the former case the liberation and fun provided is significantly generated by the fact that AD&D was already there.

Thus the rules credibility in texts to which Jay refers is largely a matter of how such rules are constructed, systematically and rhetorically, as part of the process of formulating a play-group unity of vision. AD&D, and in my relatively limited experience the vast majority of "mainstream" or "big publisher" games, does this strongly. A great many of the smaller indie games do not do so, but some do, e.g. DitV, TRoS, MLwM, and so on. If a play-group plays DitV and nothing else for a while, and loves it, I would expect them to formulate a strong unity of vision that works well for that game, then be disappointed or surprised by the disjuncture experienced when they try to play something that works quite differently.

Consider another analogy. Perhaps the game rules relate to game play for a specific long-standing gaming group in the same way that language principles relate to communication for native speakers.

(with apologies to linguists, communication scientists, and language scholars for simplifying for the sake of analogy)

Basically, all languages operate according to the interrelationship of langue and parole. Langue is the "official" rules/principles of a given language (including "official" definitions), to which everyone directly or indirectly refers but which no one really uses all the time. Parole is the language as it is actually used by people, which is derived from and shaped by the "official" langue but never completely follows it, instead being formed also by context, situation, and even personal aesthetics. Eventually, parole changes will become so accepted that they are incorporated into langue. And so it goes.

A concrete example in games would be the fact that surveys have shown that the majority of players of Monopoly assume the rule about getting money for landing on the Free Parking spot has always been part of the official rules. No, it has always been a popular house rule (although I remember hearing that it might eventually be incorporated into the official rules -- has that happened yet?). It has been such a popular house rule that it might as well be official -- and if it appears in the written official rules for the game, then the parole of the Free Parking house rule will have become the langue of the game.

I think the same thing happens with games, e.g. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The rules provide a langue off which the individual gaming groups develop their own parole.

In other words, the weight or power of game rules comes from the house interpretations they inspire more than from their ability to command absolute obedience.

Doctor Xero

Dr. Xero,

As I'm sure you can guess, that was the analogy I had in mind. Which then has all sorts of structural implications....

Such as?

clehrich wrote: Dr. Xero,

As I'm sure you can guess, that was the analogy I had in mind. Which then has all sorts of structural implications....

TonyLB wrote: Such as?

Chris wrote: ... the formulation of a play-group's "unity of vision" is a matter of absorbing and naturalizing not only the overt relations---raw mechanics, setting, etc.---but of constituting the rules-set as a social authority structure to which the play-group's specific structures must conform, and of mystifying (concealing even from themselves) the ways in which perceived nonconformity amount to the construction of even more rigorous authority.

Okay, I think I've parsed that. If we return to the subject of roleplaying specifically (as opposed to the broader langue/parole analogy) I get this:

• Groups need to take some time to get used to the formal elements of the ruleset.
• Even people who have played the game in the past with a different group will need to relearn the rules in a new group, because those rules act primarily in their influence on inter-player relations.
• Coincident with and often extending beyond the formal learning they need to get used to the informal structure that they create using the ruleset.

So, if I've successfully dumbed that down to my level, my follow-up is this: Is the influence of the formal elements in forming the informal structure:

• Non-existent• Absolute• It does some things, but the players do others, that breakdown being consistent across multiple groups and rulesets• It does some things, but the players do others, that breakdown being consistent across multiple groups but varying with ruleset• It does some things, but the players do others, that breakdown varying widely across groups

TonyLB wrote: Because it sounds like you're agreeing with what he says about the "first ruleset" (...) But you're phrasing it as if it applies to all rulesets, whether they provide something more or not

TonyLB wrote: Is the influence of the formal elements in forming the informal structure: (...)

I am in complete agreement with Vince's split on the question of what rules accomplish above.

I think its probably self evident that the first case (the "Unity of Vision only" case) is what leads some gamers to conclude "the rules are unimportant", "a good GM can make a great game out of any rules set", "We'll just port the game over to our house version of X", etc.

The second case (the "Unity Plus More" case) is the realm of "System Matters". It is the counter arguement to all of the common views noted in the previous paragraph. There are things that a good set of rules can accomplish to drive play that no mere amount of "Unity of Vision" can accomplish consistantly.

That gets to the heart of the earliest discussion we've had here on the Forge when we were still fumbling for ways to articulate the difference between rules that don't "get in the way" vs. rules that actually "facilitate a desired agenda".

It should come as no surprise that I also agree that current designers designing "unity of vision only" games is largely a waste of time (in the "already been done" sense). But that we're just getting started experimenting with "Unity Plus More" designs.

lumpley wrote:

Chris wrote: ... the formulation of a play-group's "unity of vision" is a matter of absorbing and naturalizing not only the overt relations---raw mechanics, setting, etc.---but of constituting the rules-set as a social authority structure to which the play-group's specific structures must conform, and of mystifying (concealing even from themselves) the ways in which perceived nonconformity amount to the construction of even more rigorous authority.

This is very true (pray God I understood it). It's also just the luddly puddly again, isn't it? The group incorporates the rules (to some extent) into the process by which they decide what happens in the game?

Why have rules? The answer is, why indeed? - unless the particular ruleset you're talking about contributes more to the game than mere unity of vision.

Hiya,

That's very interesting, Chris (and by extension of course, Jay). I only offer a couple of possible avenues of speculation at this point. Here's one of them.

It's going to be hard for the younger folks to believe this, but back in the early to middle 1970s, the early-teen crowd was not considered a very important target market. Most of the stuff available for us to do was a fairly crappy or hastily dolled-up version of the same stuff that had been offered to the previous wave.

Plus, no real video games (Pong was just out). No MTV, in fact, no cable as currently construed - this was back when the numbers on your physical channel-switcher actually matched the TV channel being shown.

No Walkmans. No home computers. No internet (OK, geeks, yes, I know there was an internet, but it wasn't the internet as currently utilized). No email, no cell phones. There were arcade games, and some were pretty cool, but they were money sinks. No VCRs, and no way to see a movie except in the theater or chopped-up on late-night TV.

It was really really a different world. Back then, a unique, new, and complex activity, which seemed just right for our particular age group (and the current interest in retro swords-and-sorcery a la Molly Hatchet album covers), was incredibly attractive. Now there are hundreds of such activities. Back then, it was sports, getting stoned, reading all damn day and night, hangin' out, getting involved in crimes, or wandering around aimlessly on railroad tracks or vacant lots.

You ever see the movie Stand By Me? Or perhaps River's Edge? How about Fast Times at Ridgemont High (which is totally not funny if you actually watch it)? The first half of Boogie Nights? Just like that.

So say, 1976, after D&D showed up at GenCon and when servicemen were picking it up and spreading it around everywhere ... the drive or need for such an activity could be considered very great, in comparison with today. This view also perhaps justifies the otherwise-ridiculous assertion, which you can find scattered all over gaming culture of the late 1970s, that role-playing was THE next big thing, due in any moment to be hailed by everyone far and wide as their favorite pastime.

Best,
Ron

This is all good discussion and, as far as I'm concerned, not drifting away from the intent of the thread.

I really like the language analogy. It helps me articulate some things:

Just as with language, people have personal tolerances for deviation from the langue (to use the term Dr. Xero did). You can think of the rules as written as the dictionary. They are always there to refer to when someone thinks things are getting out of hand.

Some people are clearly happy to run without reference to that dictionary and make things up as they go (kind of the freeform poets of RPGs). Other folks (I maintain that it's most folks, but please prove me wrong) have a very delicate sense of when the parole veers to far out of alignment with the langue. The natural instinct is to look to the published rules.

Why is a different question.

I still think it has a lot to do with nature of games in general. A lot of folks make a point of saying that RPGs aren't really games, and that's debatable. But they have been *called* games since the start and that has a psychological effect on people.

As soon as we're talking about games, we're thinking about rules. How do you play? How do you win? What can you do that will get you in trouble? Sure, we learn to play almost all games from someone else--same thing with RPGs. But when that someone does something we don't like, what do we do? We look it up in the rules. The rules provide the impartial authority that governs play. Without being able to "check the rules" you are trusting the GM to be impartial and honost--but this is a game right? If he's playing to win, he's not impartial.

Depending on people dynamics, the need to check the GMs authority may never arise. But I think we all deep down need that authority to be there.

But that authority is an illusion!

Jay, you tempt me sorely to get into the issues of GM-selflessness, winning the game, and such. But I overcome my baser instincts, for now.

I think that it's worth looking at why people deviate from the formal rules. In general, I think that folks have a very good (if sometimes unconscious) sense of which rules serve their purposes and which rules get in the way or are just irrelevant. Rules that serve the purpose get used. The others fall away.

As they get better at doing things themselves (particularly what Vincent calls "Unity of Purpose") more and more rules drift from the "serves our purpose" category to the "irrelevant" category. But I am of the opinion that there are things a rule system can do that will always serve a purpose: that any group that gets good enough to do them at level X without the rules will be able to do them at level X+1 with the rules. Hence, some rules will not fall away, no matter how long you play.

Vaxalon wrote: But that authority is an illusion!

TonyLB wrote: Jay, you tempt me sorely to get into the issues of GM-selflessness, winning the game, and such. But I overcome my baser instincts, for now.

Vaxalon wrote: But that authority is an illusion!

clehrich wrote:

lumpley wrote: Why have rules? The answer is, why indeed? - unless the particular ruleset you're talking about contributes more to the game than mere unity of vision.

But if we're talking about social authority structures, then "unity of vision" is a hell of a lot. It's 99% of Social Contract, for a start. If we have a rules-set that works powerfully to formulate and maintain a social contract, constructs methods by which players negotiate what they can and cannot do within the game, and generates the described results in such a way that it matches social contract expectations (i.e. produces something that the players identify as what they thought the game would produce), then that's huge. I think most games do not do this especially successfully, as texts.

Vincent wrote:

I wrote: But if we're talking about social authority structures, then "unity of vision" is a hell of a lot. It's 99% of Social Contract, for a start. If we have a rules-set that works powerfully to formulate and maintain a social contract, constructs methods by which players negotiate what they can and cannot do within the game, and generates the described results in such a way that it matches social contract expectations (i.e. produces something that the players identify as what they thought the game would produce), then that's huge. I think most games do not do this especially successfully, as texts.

Nah. I mean, I agree with all of that, but big deal. You don't need rules to achieve unity of vision, so it doesn't matter that most games don't deliver it, and it doesn't matter the few games that do deliver it.

Chris, no, I'm pretty sure that I'm saying that your "the ideal case" is a comfortable and achievable standard, and that your "big thing" is no big thing.

Just to make certain, I have this for "unity of vision":

...a rules-set that works powerfully to formulate and maintain a social contract, constructs methods by which players negotiate what they can and cannot do within the game, and generates the described results in such a way that it matches social contract expectations (i.e. produces something that the players identify as what they thought the game would produce), then that's huge.

...the rules and their group interpretation and construction have to be, in the ideal case, so powerful that everyone in the game does not see it that way. They're saying, "That was Icelandic saga, all right, no question about it, what a great game!"

...a much smaller version of this is always going on. The rules are a big part of how the re-interpretation in-game and post-game occurs, such that what was in play X way is described, remembered, and even potentially experienced as Y. And I'm saying that's a big thing.

clehrich wrote: what made those texts act as independent social---even moral---authorities?

[Edit: this is in reply to Vincent's post]

Well, I guess by your terminology, I'm saying that (granted Ron's valuable cultural caveats) it's worth remembering that AD&D achieved the #2 here, "more than mere unity of vision." And I'm saying that actually a surprising number of games achieve this: apparently WoD games do, for a lot of people (not me, but a lot). Which suggests that there's something we're missing, because by most theoretical formulations around these here parts, those games should not achieve this, certainly not with such a wide audience. And I think that the most established and least analyzed way to achieve #2 (I'm loving the double-entendre) is through textual authority.

Is that any clearer?

So the question is: what weight do the rules as written have, in general?

If you're at a traffic light, and all the lights are red... what happens? Within a few minutes, SOMEONE decides that the rules have to go, or otherwise a pathological condition will persist.

The same is true of game rules.

No matter how much authority we ascribe to the rules, they never attain a state where their authority is intrinsic.

Following up from Callan, Vaxalon wrote: If you're at a traffic light, and all the lights are red... what happens? Within a few minutes, SOMEONE decides that the rules have to go, or otherwise a pathological condition will persist.

The same is true of game rules.

No matter how much authority we ascribe to the rules, they never attain a state where their authority is intrinsic.

coxcomb wrote: what weight do the rules as written have, in general? I mean, we write them with some expectation that people will follow them during play, right? So if, as some contend, a group will simply patch any rules to fit their play style, why do we have rules at all?

Vaxalon wrote: If you're at a traffic light, and all the lights are red... what happens? Within a few minutes, SOMEONE decides that the rules have to go, or otherwise a pathological condition will persist.

The same is true of game rules.

No matter how much authority we ascribe to the rules, they never attain a state where their authority is intrinsic.

I think one point to make is that the traffic light rules have authorty because the drivers have accepted a social contract that says "follow the rules of the road (unless something is really broken)." We are so conditioned by these rules that traffic moves slower through an intersection with dead stop lights than a 4-way stop intersection because each person who arrives has to convince themself that the light really is dead, and therefore they should follow the 4-way stop rule.

I agree that we assign the rules implicit authority, but that's really just a shortcut to establishing a social contract.

Ultimately the only real authority is fear that the other guy will pound you to a pulp (or someone who cares about him will pound you to a pulp).

All that being said, I think it is useful to talk in terms of rules having authority, but recognizing that they only have the authority granted by the players, and that the real authority comes from the players. But it is useful to be able to short cut things and say "Let's follow the rules in this book."

Frank

A lot of these Forge discussions involve taking a common word or words, not defining them for purposes of the dissertation, and using them in a specific and often non-intuitive way. I'm not sure why that is--but it's done very often and it's problematic.

The term "authority" has many meanings If I say:

"Printed Rules have authority [in a manner similar that of a case-law precident.]" You can:

a) argue that I am using my terms wrong and I should say "credibility" or else I am abusing the English language.
b) argue that printed rules are nothing at all like established case-law precidents--but accept that if they were I would be correct to say that.

The problem with these discussions (and John's "contributes" thread) is there's a whole lot of (a) and not so much (b). And people are clinging to (a) really strongly--as though some realization depended on it.

The problem is: (a)'s wrong.

The terms we are using are being used correctly in the sentences we are using them. I can certainly claim that a rule book "is an authority" on how a game is to be played (in the sense of ' An accepted source of expert information or advice'). I can cite rules and claim authority from them (in the sense of case-law precident).

If you go look up "authority" then you'll discover that those are all valid uses of the term and, in fact, those sentences are ones in which people do commonly use them.

By doing (a) people are assuming that only one meaning is the true one (in the 'authority' case I think something like "authority means the ability to enforce a law") and that since rules cannot literally jump off the page and smack you, they lack authority.

Well, that's true (they can't jump up off the page) but trying to build an arugment that says rules have no authority based on assuming that there's only one way that word can be meant is, indeed, speaking crazy-moon-language.

And that doesn't get us anywhere.

-Marco

To follow up Marco's point, the use of the term "authority" in academic circles discussing human culture is very much in line with the use to refer to things like game rules. If anything, they would usually be considered a particularly obvious form of authority. I for this reason see no purpose in debating whether this is authority, or whether it's the right word. The question is how it works, and to what extent.

There seems to be a mix up between "This text has authority that I grant it" and "This text has (intrinsic) authority that it then grants to me"

The latter is incorrect. But rewind me to 10 years ago and I wouldn't have said that. Instead as I reflexively said they had intrinsic authority, as much as I had no control over that reflex, I granted them authority. Since I reflexively gave it and didn't instead pause, think and then consent to grant it, in a way they had authority whether I liked it/consented or not. The personal reflex made it intrinsic, in the same way as you could say a reaction hammer has the intrinsic ability to make your leg kick. Except it doesn't, it hits a nerve of yours and your leg kicks without your consent. But hey, if you can't control it and the hammer does...who has control here?

But eventually you leave the matrix, so to speak.

Noon wrote: There seems to be a mix up between "This text has authority that I grant it" and "This text has (intrinsic) authority that it then grants to me"

The latter is incorrect. But rewind me to 10 years ago and I wouldn't have said that. Instead as I reflexively said they had intrinsic authority, as much as I had no control over that reflex, I granted them authority. Since I reflexively gave it and didn't instead pause, think and then consent to grant it, in a way they had authority whether I liked it/consented or not.

Hiya,

I'm not certain how central this point is to the thread as a whole, but it's addressed to Chris (clehrich) - why would WoD (specifically Vampire) and AD&D have so much "grab"?

I've written about my own answer to this question multiple times - because I think both games happened upon an existing contemporary teen trend. The AD&D one was probably more based on luck; the WoD one was almost certainly more prescient.

In other words, for a brief time, the game-stuff (books, etc) became gear. And yeah, a bunch of unfamiliar faces showed up in the stores and bought armloads of books, staving off yet another Chapter 11 for a bunch of game stores that year. But in each case, it didn't last long.

Since then, as the three-tier system settled into place during the early 1980s, distribution drove the market rather than the customers. Distribution dogma said, "D&D sells," and so it was. (It's a very odd version of supply-side marketing, which probably has a name.) Same thing happened in the early 1990s - any sale of a WoD book reinforces the prevailing dogma that "White Wolf sells," and the guy re-orders every damn available text.

So don't fall into the trap of thinking that a wall of White Wolf or TSR means "oh my, look at all that customer demand." You're looking at an artifact of a small, closed, and extremely non-reflective distribution system, whose members are certain they "know" what sells, regardless of empty slots where cool games once sat, and a proliferation of books collecting dust on their shelves.

In other words, not much "grab" after all. Not no grab, certainly, but not much.

Best,
Ron

I'm with Ron on thinking we may be drifting, but I defer to Jay.

I don't entirely agree with you, Ron, about WW and TSR. Everything you say factually seems right to me, certainly; I'm not denying that. And I do think it fits very nicely with my rather brief experiences with WoD games. But it strikes me that there is a disjuncture when it comes to AD&D.

You say that this happened by luck, and perhaps it did, but I do not think that this means we must ascribe the successes primarily to exterior factors. I rather suspect that the texts themselves, and their manner of composition and presentation, had a significant role in their success. After all, there were other games in the mid-70s, and some of them were quite successful, but none dominated the way D&D did. I mean, even now a vast audience of people who do not play games and never did do, when asked about RPGs, immediately jump to "oh, Dungeons and Dragons, right?"

I have no conclusions to offer at the moment. One of these days I plan to sit down and pore over those texts very, very closely. I'm hoping that others with a deeper knowledge of those specific texts might offer suggestions for how they did it. Because there really is something in the books that clicked. I'm damn sure of it, even though I cannot at the moment prove it.

Noon wrote: There seems to be a mix up between "This text has authority that I grant it" and "This text has (intrinsic) authority that it then grants to me"

The latter is incorrect.

It seems like this topic has about run its course, and I certainly don't want to argue the metphysical nature of "authority" with anyone here. I am interested in the subject of the success of D&D and Vapire that crept in here, but it probably belongs on a different thread.

Anyway, as a last part of my argument that the written rules do have authority assignedby virtue of RPGs being "games", here is an actual play (albeit not of an RPG) example.

The other night I played the wonderful board game, The Traders of Genoa, with some friends. I explained the rules, being the most familiar with them, and we got going. Part way through the game, one of the players didn't like the way a rule affected him. He started by asking the human authority (me), "are you sure...". When I confirmed, he grabbed the rules to look it up.

Sure, board games and RPGs are very different, but I have seen this same scenario a thousand times in RPG play. The group accepts the authority of the experienced player (usually the GM) until something in the game makes them unhappy. Then they start leafing through the rulebook to check the rule. The authority of the rules trumps the authority of the human authority--but most of the time you don't need to refer to the rules, because you don't have a problem.

So I think that a group selecting a game to play means that, at the social contract level, they are agreeing to give the rules of that game authority over play. This is particularly important when a traditional GM is present, because the players are agreeing to give the GM power over the SIS in exchange for his agreement to at least appear to be playing by the rules (I say appear to be playing by the rules, because lots of things can happen behind the GM screen that have nothing to do with the rules, but that is a topic for another thread.)

they are agreeing to give the rules of that game authority over play

John Kim wrote:

Noon wrote: There seems to be a mix up between "This text has authority that I grant it" and "This text has (intrinsic) authority that it then grants to me"

The latter is incorrect. But rewind me to 10 years ago and I wouldn't have said that. Instead as I reflexively said they had intrinsic authority, as much as I had no control over that reflex, I granted them authority. Since I reflexively gave it and didn't instead pause, think and then consent to grant it, in a way they had authority whether I liked it/consented or not.

Wow. In my experience, that's peculiar. Virtually everyone I have known in gaming had house rules and/or fudging. As far as I know, this has been true since the start of the hobby. For example, Gary Gygax was near-universally mocked for his "play by the book" rants. I believe that you unquestioningly played exactly as written -- it's just that it is very different from what I have seen of gaming.

M.J. Young wrote: but the players grant that authority the moment they say, "We want to play D&D." To play D&D, you check the authorities on how D&D is played, and those authorities are the rule books.