(This is part of the series ‘D&D: Chasing the Dragon.’ Read more from the home page.)

Before I talk about D&D itself, we need to talk about Rule Zero. We need to talk about RPG rules in general, as a concept. If you’ve followed my work for awhile, you already know that I often talk about how game rules push players into patterns of behavior. That’s the function of game rules, really: by voluntarily taking on constraints and abiding by rules, players should have a particular experience as envisioned by the designer of those rules. Rules shape the play experience from the ground up or else why do we need them?

This is obviously true for video games where the rules are largely immutable and the play experience is quite supervised. It’s hard to imagine the experience being sourced from anything but the game since the game is in control of just about everything. A tabletop RPG feels like a completely different animal. Much of the moment-to-moment play consists of what amounts to free-form narration. It might initially appear that RPG rules are less important, that they take on a lighter hand as they allow the players to take more control over the experience.

But if anything, that makes the rules of a tabletop RPG even more important. Continue reading →