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 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?