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I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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I'm not experienced at all! I'm dming my first campaign at the moment. I did play as a teenager in the 2000s but that was pathfinder which worked quite differently.
It does ask more of players, and it wont work with a group that doesn't have the confidence to ask meta questions about the game but you can definitely foster that! when disputes come up there are multiple ways of handling things, I haven't had any bad ones but 2 come to mind.
In one I didn't adequately communicate to the players the threat of a foe and they felt frustrated, we just rewound time and tried again after a brief chat about non combat options. In another I just asked a player what they thought was fair and they ended up coming up with something reasonable.
I think there's a harmful view that ttrpgs are like a meal the GM cooks and delivers to the players which they either enjoy or not rather than a collaboratory effort of mutual play. Players should add to scenes etc (e.g. "Is there/could there be a window we could jump from?"), be part of adjudication when it wont kill pacing or during tricky situations.
Like all play it requires trust, but that's true in modern DnD too with all sorts of broken interpretations of rules and zany magic items etc. All games where players and DMs are adversaries break down.
You are just bringing examples where insecure people who struggle with social skills (hi, nice to meet you) would not be able to handle it.
You kinda completely blazed past my point while confirming it. Clearly for you rules light is great. I'm trying to tell you there's people who are not you and who need more rules to even dare to try.
Hi, also me. Nice to meet you.
This is why I run "rules-light" systems and why you won't find me running (or playing, anymore) games like DND. The complexity of rules is just too much for me to remember and memorize. I don't have it in me to argue and debate about applying a rule and would prefer not to interact with someone who is rules lawyering. I find that having those rules there is more intimidating to me than anything else. I feel like I have to work with rules first and then find ways to be an agent of my character within that.
Because of my own insecurities, I tend to lean on systems that require more collaboration, discussion and openness. I can't really be wrong if we have collectively decided on a choice about our story. And even in that, calling it, our story carries so much power and lifts a huge weight off of my shoulders in terms of pressure for both playing and running a game. This is how I can skirt around my own insecurities and work with the kind of social skills that I have and prefer to use. I want collaborators rather than adversaries since that is socially much safer. Consequently, this also leads to very rich storytelling.
I envy you for having those kinds of people to play with!
It's taken a while to find "my people." I try to surround myself with good people both ocially and professionally. And the kind of people I like to be around tend to be good discussion partners and usually make great collaborators and storytellers. I hope you can find your people someday too! Keep looking, they are out there.
But I'm an insecure person. I speak maybe 100 words aloud a week outside of gaming.
It's not easy to enforce rules without confience, much easier to build consensus than be a dictator
The easiest way is to say "this is the rules as written, deal with it, we don't do homebrew here" for me. The people I met in game spaces where not the type to reach a consensus quickly. I guess I've just been unlucky.
This is beautifully said. The kind of adversarial approach we see so often, and I see it quite often with DND, is harmful. Of course this is not the only way things have to be, but the context seems to set it up like that more often than not.
Complexity of rules and mechanics tend to lead to adjudication because of the way it can be interpreted. I find that in other systems, particularly in OSR style stuff, you get a different kind of thing. It's not a rule, but a tool. This is kind of what I have loved about games like Mork Borg lately. Rules are simple, easily applied, and when you start to look into the world of supplemental material, there's thousands, if not tens of thousands of additional rules and tables, you can apply to any situation. Take them or leave them. Apply them or don't. Use them once, never or every time.
Ultimately, you do what the situation calls for to make for an interesting story, and just like you said, that takes trust between you and the players to talk about and determine what that is.