My Life As A Gamer: Fixing The Dysfunction In RPGs (Part Four)- Playing The Man, Not The Game

(This is the fourth in a series. The previous posts are here, here, and here.)

Introduction

The deviation from the gameplay structure erected by Kriegspiel, then later refined by Chainmail and Braunstein into the two halvs of a proto-form of tabletop role-playing game is the source of most, if not all, of the complaints that have plagued the medium, hobby, and business thereof since its inception almost 50 years ago.

One deviation that is a consequence of the workload disparty dysfunction is that the Referee, due to the expectation that he maintain sole responsibility for generating playable content for the players, is that the Referee is no longer bound by the rules of the game.

It is now considered normal, and even desirable, to change the rules of a game to be what they are not for no other reason than because it can be done. He is not, for all the hot air blown about, expected to master the rules and operate the machine that those rules create as the manual tells him to do- that is what administration means. Instead he is free to make it all up as he goes, and these norms allow him to be both pig-ignorant and a petty tyrant about it. (Above pics related.)

Fortunately there is now noticable pushback against this idea, incoherent and (in some respects) inchoate as it may be, and it is time to bring coherence and definition for these people because they're on the right track.

Playing The Man

An overloaded Referee seeks to allievate that burden. One way to do so is to shirk his responsibility to be an impartial and disinterested administrator and arbiter. Mastering the rules of the game is one of the responsibilities he may decide to shirk, using this social norm as the excuse for his incompetence- and this is one of the many varieties of bad experiences reported online.

This petty tyranny has a corrosive effect on a campaign. The result is that inputs do not match outputs; what works today does not work tomorrow. Players, seeing that they cannot rely on procedures being respected, become disinvested in play or return the dysfunctional behavior in kind and it turns into Calvinball- which is not fun for functional people. It is fun to guess what the other guy is thinking when you're playing Poker or Apples To Apples. It is not when you're playing a tabletop RPG; the rules--in a competently-designed game (few as they are)--exist specifically to minimize the need for human adjudication down to narrow liminal spaces where rare occassions of corner-case circumstances happen.

The problem is that the errant Referee does not know what he is doing. He does not comprehend how the rules of the game work to create the struction of play that he claims to be the adminstrator of for the benefit of the players. This too is a long-standing problem, such that even old-timers from the 1970s did not comprehend why their characters would be locked down and unavailable to play when they leveled up or did research of whatever--yes, I mean "Time Jail", folks--and both their own testimonies as well as their own products show this deficiency of comprehension for all to see.

The worst of them will do their cringiest Judge Dredd impression when called out for doing things wrong:

via GIPHY

NO, YOU'RE NOT!
This is the law.

Playing The Game

Restoring the proper structure makes this entire problem moot. The Referee does not need to worry about making shit up when it is not his job to do so; that's the players' job and they fulfill this responsibility through Patron and Domain Play.

The players must insist upon taking back responsibility for shaping the campaign by taking up Patrons and running Domains, and thereby shove the Referee back into his box where he belongs. The players must also insist upon the Referee administering the campaign by the rules in the manual(s), especially if he cannot articulate how the procedures that his changes will alter work as-written to achieve the stated effect. Too many mess with things that they do not understand because they operate off presumptions that are in error.

It is also not the Referee's job to invent all sorts of new stuff. The players, as they are playing all sides of the conflicts in a campaign, should do most if not all of that themselves. There is a little room, for the purpose of being a catalyst, but that is akin to being the spark that ignite the bonfire and not the pyromaniac hosing down the forest with napalm.

The players must, in turn, act in good faith towards the reforming Referee and each other. This is not a hobby for people of a Low-Trust Culture.

This means that the Referee has the time and the incentive to master the rules of the game. Without any pressure to fix results one way or another, he is has no interest in how events turn out. He is able to maintain the distance necessary to be impartial in his adminstration of the game and in his adjudication of interactions. Players are able to have confidence in his rulings and reports as he has no stake in the outcome, and may instead be entertained by what the players do and how they do it.

The game has rules for a reason. Trust them, use them as directed, and you'll get the outcome(s) that they promise (assuming that you have a competently-made product). If this specific game does not do what you want, put it away and pull out one that does- and be honest about it. Don't promise Pendragon and deliver All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

For some gamers, this is a mind-blowing revelation. For normal people, this "just playing the game".

That's all it takes: Run and play the game as it is written in the manuals. Not as received wisdom says. Not as what Bob says it is. As the manual says to operate the machine- and turns out that it's just fantasy Kriegspiel with some useful innovations, so the old structure still applies- and it applies because it still works AS INTENDED.

Conclusion

I have no idea how or why this "I am smarter than the designer!" Gamma Male habit got normalized, but it is a Boomerism that is finally being challenged- and, believe it or not, by a mix of Millenials and Gen-Z players doing Current Edition if the "DM Crisis" crying about Current Edition is to be taken seriously. (It should, just not at face value.)

Once more, as we end the week, I'm going to put it all together.

Friday I will run down an outline of what a proper, functional campaign play loop looks like for the benefit of those outside the #BROSR that are coming into this discourse recently.