I have a ball. I bounce it against the wall. There is a rule that states that a ball thrown against the wall will bounce back. My 3-month-old daughter sees this happen. There is a rule that says seeing a ball bounce against the wall is funny, but seeing a ball thrown down the hall is not funny. I throw ball. If I hit wall, it bounces. If it bounces and daughter sees this, daughter laughs. We are playing a game, and the game has rules. At least it seems natural to me to describe it that way.

I’m sitting idly at a table, waiting for friends to arrive. I have 3 coins that I am sliding around on the table without thinking. It suddenly occurs to me that the two coins farthest from me are rather close together, and I wonder if I can slide this third coin through there? I did, but I clipped one of them on the way through. I am a little satisfied, but a little disappointed it didn’t make it through clean. This seems to be playing a game, and there seems to be rules.

In my mind, the broadest sense of “rules” encompasses everything that connects cause to effect, and outlines which causes can be linked to which effects. “If I describe an event that is objectionable enough to enough of the other players, it will be rejected and therefore treated as if it did not happen, and possibly even crash the whole game” is a rule of every free-form RPG. It constrains what can happen to the game, and when you recognize it exists, it shapes your play. That sounds like a rule.

You may not like the word “rule” being used everywhere I used it, which gets me to my other point. This word is overloaded and anyone discussing “the rules” has to be very careful to point out exactly what they mean by that term. The totality of all causes and effects? The printed guidelines for play? The informal agreements among participants? I'm not saying we need a layer of obscure jargon here. I'm just saying that one can't casually use the word without risking confusion.

This reminds me of a point I made a few months ago.

In the examples given, neither the ball nor the coins have 'rules.' Left alone their just objects or toys in this reference. Even alone you can have 'rules' that you use with a toy, there can even be some really implicit ones (like 'bounces in collisions'), but those are the manufacture of your perception, not the toy's existence.

Having two perceptive agents (you and your daughter) raises 'rules' to a new plateau, communal 'rules.' 'Solo rules' won't work there, but enculturation has seen to it that some 'solo rules' are 'culture-wide.' These 'rules' are not implicit in the toy, nor are they product of one person's perceptions.

You can even add another layer of explicit 'rules,' written down somewhere, like soccer, and play by them. Those 'rules' can become enculturated and used implicitly (I've never seen an actual documentation of 'kick ball' 'rules,' but they seem based upon the enculturation of Baseball in the United States).

Then there are explicit external 'rules,' like when you play a pinball game. Few of these have decent instructions printed on them, but the basics come pretty easily. These are 'rules' you can't escape and still play, but they still only exist when someone is there to perceive them.

Now role-playing games are a really funny animal, Scattershot in particular. If you take just the Mechanix alone (ostensibly 'the 'rules') it really can't be played. Even though it has all these 'rules;' to me it is just a toy. This suggests to me that, in ways, a role-playing game can be nothing more than a toy (much like Sim City's creator speaks of his).

A further derivation is how well-practiced gamers can get using 'yet another' rules-sets. You play enough games and you can play without rules as though they're still there. I think of this as 'systemic expectations' as I've seen practiced by freeform gamers; they play as though they have rules, even though none are present of explicit.

That's why talking about role-playing game 'rules' is a bit confusing. Lately we've (my wife and I, makers of Scattershot) been discussing how role-playing games are more like recipes; the book tell you 'how to make them' (the play), but isn't really an example of playing. Ingredients aren't 'cooking' either, and some people never crack a recipe book; only the actual act of preparing the food is cooking. I'm in the practice of calling role-playing games a type of 'self-engagement practices' in terms of how to 'sell them.' (You could sell the book, you could sell all the tools and props, you can even sell the time and space, but unless the customer does it, you haven't really sold them role-playing game play. That's how we're approaching doing a 'Scattershot Online' edition; trying to get away from MUDDs and MUSHes or chat-room formats without machine-based 'rules.')

Yet another problem that has been being hashed out elsewhere on this forum has to do with 'rules' you aren't using or 'rules' you need but don't have. Ultimately the point I want to make is all the 'rules' in the world don't make the play of a role-playing game, only what the people do is.

So why are we talking so much about 'rules?' Well, how else do we sell a 'self-engagement practice?' Where's the money in it? Failing that, how else do we communicate the 'behaviours' of communal play that is role-playing games? By putting out 'rules!' This is something I've learned putting together the Techniques of Scattershot separately from the Mechanix (the 'rules') of it.

Fang Langford