One of the things I learned on a primal level while playing the 1974 edition of D&D was how the rules of an RPG can influence and shape play, often in ways that the GM and players don’t even fully comprehend. This can seem surprising or even nonsensical to those who believe that RPG rules don’t matter and who try to play and run D&D and Vampire the Masquerade and Blades in the Dark as if they were all the same game, but these are, in fact, the people most likely not to reflect meaningfully on the choices they’re making. (Which, of course, makes them highly susceptible to being influenced.)
Paradoxically, the fewer rules an RPG has, the stronger the influence of those rules can be.
To demonstrate what I mean, consider that basically all of the rules for dungeoncrawling in 1974 D&D can be found on pgs. 8-9 of Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures in a section titled “The Move/Turn in the Underworld”:
- How far you can move in a turn/round
- How often you need to rest
- How long it takes to search/ESP
- How to detect secret doors
- How to open/shut secure doors
- How traps are triggered
- How to listen at doors
- Light sources and infravision
- Torches can be blown out by gusts of wind
- Two options for adjudicating fireball and lightning bolt spells in enclosed spaces
While introducing new players to my OD&D open table, I would make a point of walking through these rules. (It was part of discussing the ur-game nature of the rules.) Then I noticed something interesting happening: In what was, at the time, 60+ sessions of my Ptolus: In the Shadow of the Spire campaign using D&D 3rd Edition, the players had listened at doors to see what might be behind them maybe a half dozen times.
But these exact same players in OD&D?
They listened at doors all the time.
The notable thing here is that, obviously, rules for listening at doors didn’t disappear from the game. But, of course, in newer rulebooks these rules are lost in a deluge of mechanics filling hundreds of pages. In OD&D, by virtue of being included among a very short list of mechanics, they assumed a central importance and the concept of “you should listen at doors” became a pillar of play.
Am I saying that no D&D 3rd Edition group ever made “make sure you listen at every door” a part of their standard operating procedure? Of course not. There are all sorts of ways that a group could start doing this. This is about influence, not mandates or requirements.
This is also why, surprisingly, these influences can often escape the games which give them birth: Having learned to listen at doors in OD&D, you might find your players more likely to listen at doors in D&D 5th Edition. Or Shadowrun. Or Paranoia. Each time with the behavior being modified by the rules, setting, and narrative structures of the new game, and sometimes being snuffed out because of its irrelevancy in the new context.
You can, curiously, find bibliographic evidence of this endurance in these same OD&D rules, where Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures reads, “Also, torches can be blown out by a strong gust of wind.” Due to the prominence of this rule, if you look at adventure modules from the 1970’s, you’ll find strong gusts of wind all over the place blowing out your torches. It was a ubiquitous part of the D&D experience.
What’s interesting about torch-extinguishing winds is that, by 1979, they were gone from the rulebooks. (D&D 3rd Edition included rules for this, but if AD&D did, they’re buried so deep that I can’t figure out where they are.) Despite this, torch-extinguishing winds continue cropping up in published scenarios for several more years before slowly fading away in the mid-‘80s.
There are several possibilities for why this might have happened. But I’d like to propose that Occam’s Razor suggests that this bibliographic trail indicates that the playing style of including torch-extinguishing winds faded away because the rules were removed from the rulebook. But, notably, those who had already had their style of play stamped with torch-extinguishing winds continued to use them even after they moved to new rulebooks and new games.
MECHANICAL INFLUENCE
My theory is that, if you have a completely neutral rules-light system — maybe a universal mechanic and little more — then you won’t see much influence on the players. Similarly, if you give the players a panoply of mechanical support, you won’t see much influence on chosen actions because the menu of options is so large.
But if you takes a rules-light system and, like old school D&D, bolt on just a handful of specific mechanics, then the players are going to grab onto those mechanics like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. When they pick up a new game and begin running or playing it, the players are looking for guidance on how this game is meant to be played, and these scarce mechanics become beacons guiding them through the dark.
This can be a positive thing, but it can also be a negative one. For example, D&D 3rd Edition’s combat system included a small list of specific maneuvers and provided concrete mechanics for each one. As a result, players have a tendency to latch onto those maneuvers and do just those and nothing else.
OD&D combat, on the other hand, didn’t give you anything more than a universal “point and hit” mechanic. As a result, I see players in OD&D campaigns try all kinds of wacky stuff. (Similarly, when I run D&D 3rd Edition for new players or players less familiar with the specific combat rules, they’re generally far more flexible and creative with the actions they choose. As they learn the specific mechanics, though, I see a lot of these creative players zone in on those mechanics.)
This doesn’t mean Mechanics Bad™. It just means that you should be aware of the influence mechanics — particularly a small number of mechanics focused on specific activities — can have on the players, and make sure that it’s an influence you WANT them to have.
Conversely, if you’re a GM or a player and you’re aware of the influence different game systems can have on your roleplaying and scenario design, then you might also realize the advantage of playing lots of different RPGs: Each one will teach you new things about playing RPGs, giving you new angles for viewing the experience and new solutions to the problems you might run into at your table. Some of those influences you’ll want to discard. Others will only be appropriate for the game they’re designed for. But you’ll find that others endure, being carried from one game to the next and enhancing all of your campaigns.
There is also, of course, the influence of much larger and significant rules. (Or perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to them as sub-systems.) But those wield their influence differently, and usually more noticeably, then the little rules.
How do you compare this to the special place of e.g. burning oil in odnd, which did not have a set rule, but which quickly gained the same standard use because players intuited that it Should have a use?
You also see this with bigger rulesets. Look at how players choose their armor in 1E vs 3rd edition. With the older games, Fighters want to get the best AC they can and so they gravitate towards plate. In 3.0+, with its introduction of the battle board, players now gravitate to light armors with the highest AC bonus. They want to preserve that 30 foot tactical movement rate. I’ve almost never seen a player go for plate armor.
The Heretic
Question: Do you think universal systems tend to accrete specific rules over time, exacerbating this “too many rules” problem?
@Thoth: I think all RPGs have a natural tendency to accumulate more rules. There will be questions the player base has that are so ubiquitous you add a rule to answer it. Supplements will create additional rule systems, and often with a new edition there’s a desire to pull all that material together into the core rulebook to make it easier to use. And so forth.
And not necessarily a bad thing.
An example of this is, in fact, the burning oil Icelander mentioned. I have a full article talking about that. It’s what you might call a nerf cycle, but nerfing stuff isn’t the only path rule revisions/additions can follow, obviously.
This is also more or less how I build characters in campaign settings that are new to me – read most of the setting, then hyperfocus in on some small detail that speaks to me and beat it with a stick until a character concept falls out. Works pretty well, but it never occurred to me that people do the same with rulesets.
Equipment lists have the same effect.
Remember when every party had at least one 10′ pole?
Equipment lists also tell you what the game designers really think the game is about.
Most games will tell you combat is only one way to resolve conflicts but then focus on providing a hundred types of weapons and armor.
How about a bonus to you persuade roll if you wear a finally-tailored suit? Maybe monsters could be bypassed with a batch of fresh meat pies?
In all fairness @d47, more gear can also obviate the need for some stuff. Who needs torches when you can get an Eternal Flame attached to a burnt out Ioun Stone (Pathfinder 2e literally made this a normal item, the Everburning Ioun Stone). Or you can learn Light as a Cantrip, which can’t blow out. Or you can just get Darkvision via Race or magic. A 10 ft pole is great for finding traps, but a low level summon can do that as well.
Systems only really have rules for things they expect the players to do *and* that they expect the GM needs guidance on. The GM doesn’t really need guidance on whether or not the fancy nobles at the ball will notice the PC’s in tattered armor reeking of zombie guts… either it’s a big deal, or the GM decides to handwave it and presume the characters get cleaned up and changed. Nonstandard ways of bypassing the monster are often included in adventures, you don’t need formal rules for whether Kobolds will let you pass if you bring them food. But it might be unclear if you can kill the ogre with your sword (he has a sword too, after all), which is why we have rules for it. It’s not clear if your low STR wizard can even walk while wearing Full Plate armor, much less make use of it, that’s why we have rules for it.
I completely agree,- The fewer the rules, the more the impact! I use the least amount of rules, as much as possible. The DM was and IS supposed to be THE ultimate arbiter. NOT the players. The players are supposed to socially experience, not use the rules as stone hard law!
“What’s interesting about torch-extinguishing winds is that, by 1979, they were gone from the rulebooks. (D&D 3rd Edition included rules for this, but if AD&D did, they’re buried so deep that I can’t figure out where they are.)”
Room 2 of the sample dungeon in the 1e DMG includes a torch-snuffing wind (p. 96). Just a few pages past the section on using excise taxes in your campaign, which I’m assuming everyone read in detail, you can’t miss it.
I think part of the problem is the Gust of Wind spell, it took many of the mechanics from elsewhere that would ordinarily be found in the DM’s section and placed them in the PHB Spells selection. There isn’t a good reason in the Typewriter days to repeat the writing in the DMG as potential environmental effects. and IIRC the Guards and Wards spell (the two that refers back to the Gust of Wind Spell) that guards a wizards Base is making the situation even worse. More spells that lock mundane events behind magical prowess.
And thinking about it until the DSG did we even have an environmental hazards section? I guess traps but ehhh?