Playing by the Rules as Written

Part 1? Maybe...

Let me start off by saying that I think every RPG should be played by the rules as written. At the very least everyone involved should make the effort to follow the rules of the game on their first play through.

"But but but....a talented GM can make things up on the fly and make the system more dynamic in the areas that the game is lacking." -says the person that disagrees with me that I made up for the sake of furthering my blog post.

Well imaginary devil's advocate, that may well be, but that's not what the game was designed for originally. Game designers create their games in order to evoke a certain kind of storytelling and play. Each piece they've decided to include is made to help create the experience the designer had in mind when they created the game. Each system has it's own strengths and weaknesses, because the game designers approached creating the game with an intent for what sort of games would be played with their system.

This is especially true about board games. Sure writing your own cards for Monopoly can be fun to play with your friends, but any change you make to the rules as written changes the intended experience of Monopoly. The designers made the rules the way they are to create the game experience they felt needed to be created.

That doesn't mean every set of RPG rules is worth using to play your own game. You wouldn't use Rifts to play a down to earth modern setting game about getting by without a job in college.  That's a hyperbolic example, but the concept is illustrated. It wouldn't make sense to even try that type of game with those rules. I wouldn't use D&D of any edition to play a game about merchants in a medieval village trying to make it rich by selling their wares. I wouldn't use one of the Star Wars RPG systems to play a game that didn't have the force as an aspect of the universe.

RPGs are designed to help people create the situations and stories the authors find compelling. This means that not every RPG is going to be good at every kind of game. Some just weren't designed to be played certain ways. That's where the temptation to start changing rules shows up to lure you down a dark path. It seems like it makes sense to just alter a few rules to make the game work, but if the game was just not designed to be played the way you want to use it then instead of changing the rules to make it work, a better approach would be to look for a game that covers what you want covered by the rules.

Understanding that the rules were intended to create the intended in game experience also means that you can accept not every RPG is gonna be liked by every player or GM. This is an important thing to remember not only as a GM, but as a human being that doesn't enjoy getting into needless arguments with people about things that don't really matter.

This happens a lot more than you'd think with RPGs. You see it a lot in the comments section of posts on r/RPG where someone is asking what system to use for some homebrewed world they've created. Inevitably you will hear someone arguing that some game or other is the perfect game for that. There will be someone who disagrees about the quality of the game system and an argument about how the person who doesn't like the system just didn't play it right. There is every possibility that the person who doesn't like the system did play it exactly right and it's just not for them. That's okay too.

It's hard not to try to argue that a game you love is worth people's time, but it's much more productive to instead focus on what other games are around that would offer a better fit for the game you want to play.

tl;dr Game rules exist to help. Don't fight them or fix them before they break. Remember not everyone will love the game you love no matter how obvious you feel it is that they should.