Rules, not Rulings

[INTERIOR. DITHMER is sitting in a fancy couch, staring straight into the camera. The light music suddenly stops]

“I didn’t come here to make friends”

[DOOOOF]

Why you shouldn’t care about any of this

This is just a little something I figured I’d write about a particular wording I decided to use in Heirs. I don’t really think it’s that important, but I thought it could be fun. I think we stress a lot about particular uses of words and terms, and I honestly think engaging in discussions of it is a great time. All said, I will now state my case against the OSR idiom “Rulings over Rules”, and I will do so vehemently.

What’s a ruling anyway?

I’ve discovered that the slogan “rulings over rules” rubs me the wrong way. For a long time when writing Heirs, it was worded like that, essentially meaning that the group can interpret the rules however seems fit for the table, adapting and remixing them in the process. You know, some situation in your particular game cannot quite be served by the one basic move the game offers? Make a ruling! Think a little, and just do something! Trust the GMs and the players! Good stuff.

What I don’t like is the word “Ruling”, so I changed it into… Rules.

The case against rules is often stated like this: We don’t need them. So many different things can happen in a game, it is nonsensical for the designer to try and predict them, and create particular rules for each and every edge-case. Much better to just let the GM do a little magic, figure out some way things can work, and BOOM you have something. I’ve seen it happen in play, and it usually takes no more than a minute to do this kind of wrangling. Compare this to all the times I’ve run or played a traddy game, where occasionally the game will just stop as we find the correct paragraph in the rulebook, applying a ruling usually takes nowhere near as much time, and it works better because, and this is true, designers are probably not great edge-casers. And of course, this IS the kind of mentality that I would like to encourage the players and GMs of Heirs to utilize.

Wait, wasn’t I supposed to rail against rulings?

100% Unadulterated Pedantry

I don’t like the word “ruling”. And I definitely do not want it placed right next to rules, one of my favourite words.

When I think of “ruling”, it kind of implies that the ruling is based on something. Like, how a judge in a courtroom passes a verdict based on, well, a law. Some form of codified text. Kind of like a rulebook.

The reason I don’t like the wording “Rulings over rules” is that it sounds like these rulings have to be based on something authoritative. In our case, the rulebook. It makes it sound like the GM is somehow the arbiter of the designer’s vision, the grand interpreter of the will of the rulemaker gods. And this, quite frankly, goes directly against what I want players and GMs to do – I want them to design things themselves, damnit!

I often think I hear something entirely different than other people when the word “rule” is used. To some it sounds extremely authoritative, and for good reason: As a kid, when we played games, we were told to “follow the rules”. If one player doesn’t follow the rules in chess, the game falls apart. And because most of us were probably introduced to RPGs through massive tomes of rules-heavy law-texts, it makes sense that we would try to “follow the rules” in roleplaying games too. After all, not following the rules is cheating.

Particularly the last decade or so, however, I have gotten increasingly erratic when it comes to actually following rules. Now, make no mistake, I do love rules – I love reading them, I love using them, I love making them. I have absolutely no qualms about reading 40+ pages of rules for a wargame, and then try to follow them to the letter. But in roleplaying games this makes little sense, and quite frankly, I’m not sure it makes sense in other games either.

I have long since stopped learning all the rules for a complex board game before explaining them to other players. I usually just skim them, and assume that I remember them somewhat correctly, and occassionally I just make up rules to help cut a first game down from 12 to 8 hours (yeah, it’s those kinds of wargames. Have I ever told you about my 40+ hour Carthage: The First Punic War game?). Then I can reread the rules for the next time, and correct any mistakes I’ve made. I don’t think anyone should be stopped from just making up rules for a board game halfway through a game, if something is clearly not working as people want it to. And when it comes to roleplaying games, I think it makes sense to rethink the word “rule” completely. I spoke earlier about from where we derive authority in roleplaying games, and I think it makes sense to use a collection of rules at the outset of a game, but derive the authority to actually change the rules of the game from the group instead.

Also, when I say “group” I’m not implying any kind of roleplaying democracy – sometimes a vote on something will work, but often someone just gets a good idea, and everyone should run with it. Sometimes one particular player dislikes something, and so it should be changed.

This is why I changed the section from “Rulings over Rules” to just “Rules” – because I think games become better, if players start to think of themselves as game designers. When we say “rulings”, we still imply that the written design is what we derive authority from – the GM simply rules based on this. But if players are instead asked to create a wholly new rule, something I believe people do all the time without thinking about it, they train themselves to think like designers. The best thing you can do for your game is not neccessarily to just think up a cool monster, or map a dungeon, it’s to use prep as practice by making some rule that changes how your table interacts with the game. I trained my rulemaking chops by making sure to make a custom move between Apocalypse World sessions every single week. Even if you’re running Dungeons & Dragons, you can gain a lot by looking at a stat block and ask yourself “how can I make a particular rule for this monster, that makes it a little bit more interesting?”.

When I look at what Heirs has become, I think I wanted a game where making new rules was intuitive: There are places to attach rules, but not a lot of pre-existing rules to mess with whatever you make. After a session you can look at the Sources that have been defined, pick any of them, and make a rule to make it a little special. Maybe, when you’re persuading the war-guild, you always roll with Strife. Or maybe, the Daemon that lurks behind the frontal lobe of Rendraz the Sage, could use a move that triggers whenever time passes in the realm.

I think this wording is a lot more interesting, and useful to the way I want people to actually play the game – to serve as a catalyst making every GM and every player realize that they’re designing just by playing the game.