To DMs - Don't Obsess About The Rules

I'm breaking from my usual format of talking about technology-intensive video games to discuss something a little more low-tech: table-top roleplaying games. The kinds of games that run off of paper, pens, dice, your imagination, and Mountain Dew. Iconic examples include Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Pathfinder, and GURPS, among others.

Not responsible for violent youths. Definitely responsible for kobold genocide.

For those who might be unfamiliar, let me explain briefly how table-top RPGs work. People gather around with papers and writing utensils (or using online tools, like Roll20,) to tell a story together. Most of the people are players, and one is the Dungeon Master (DM for short.) The players create a fantasy character to play as. The DM then creates a fantasy world and populates it with monsters, people who need help, gold, riches, traps, treachery, and all the other good stuff that makes adventuring fun. The players then run their characters through this world and, collaboratively, they and the DM end up telling a story.

"But how is this a game?" You might ask. "If you're just telling a story then where are the mechanics? How do you win at a story?"

And that's where randomization comes in.

Oh mighty d20, please be merciful.

All those weird-shaped dice you see that you'd never find in a box with Monopoly or Yahtzee are the driving forces of drama and tension in the table-top universe. See, what the books for D&D, Warhammer, Pathfinder, and all the rest really do is set up a series of rules and frameworks. Do you want your character to climb a tree? There's a defined protocol to see if s/he is successful or not. Do you want your character to sneak undetected through a bustling city-street, into the back-alley of the potion shop, pick the lock to the backdoor, and get in to filch some goodies? There are defined rolls and protocols for that as well. Typically, the more complex the action is, the harder the roll is and the greater the chance of failure. Almost anything you can imagine your character doing is possible through the rules set down by each gaming system.

So now imagine a game where the only limit is your imagination. A game with complete freedom. A game that has carefully predicted all of the things you may want to attempt in your imaginary universe and has given you all the guidelines to do so with the appropriate chances of failure.

And all you have to do is follow some rules. Sounds like the perfect game, right?

Well...

The key to a good table-top gaming session is collaboration and flow. If everyone is getting along, laughing, and having a good time, then the results of the game itself are of little consequence. I've had just as much fun having my entire party die through a series of hilarious mishaps as I've had successfully slaying a dragon and plundering his hoard. So long as everyone is interested and adding something fun to the scene, then the session will almost always go well.

This is why I'm issuing a warning to would-be DMs - try not to be too big a stickler on the rules.

The rules are there for a good reason: they introduce randomness to an otherwise perfect story, forcing players to adapt, and thus creating a sense of drama. The rules also give a good sense for how to operate in the confines of this imaginary world. Want to use magic? Read up on the differences between Arcane and Divine magic, and decide which suits your character best. Want to pull off some slick combat stunts? Brush up on your Feats. The rules are an important base that every player and DM should be familiar with.

But the sad truth is that sometimes the rules get in the way of having a good time.

Let me give you an example from my own experience. I was in a party with 3 other adventurers. I was playing a bard - a traveling musician. As it happens, I was injured and couldn't contribute much to combat. I won't go into too many details, but let's just say I'd committed a social faux pas with a local tavern wench and she had some "pointed" opinions about it. In any case, I was limping along in the back of the group as we made our way through a graveyard.

Without warning, the ground before us split open, and a giant skeleton unearthed itself and towered over us. The thing was at least 30 feet tall. Each footstep shook the ground beneath our feet. It fixed its green, glowing eye sockets at us, opened its mouth of rotted, festering teeth, and lunged.

I ducked behind a particularly large tombstone and shouted encouragements to my team. That's me; Mr. Morale.

Scarily accurate depiction of my bard in that moment.

The wizard sprinted out of reach of the calcium juggernaut and tried to get to safe distance in order to start blasting. Our fighter notched an arrow and fired it into the thing's face, only to have the arrow be shrugged off without even being noticed. Our cleric started muttering some holy mumbo-jumbo to try and get the skeleton to run away.

And that might have worked if the skeleton didn't wallop him so hard that he flew twenty feet and fell unconscious.

At this point, our fighter had had enough. So what'd the crazy b**tard do?

He climbed the skeleton.

He climbed the f***ing skeleton.

As he made his way vertically along the creature, it tried to shake him off but failed. The wizard, afraid to loose his arcane payload and risk hitting the fighter, started calling the musclehead every foul name in the book. He even invented some new ones. Me? I pulled out my lute and started playing an inspiring song. If you're going to die from blinding idiocy, you might as well go out with a dramatic score.

Only the fighter didn't die; he scaled the skeleton, drew his longsword with one hand, and drove it deep into the giant's skull. The eerie green light in its eyes exploded and went out. The bones tumbled apart, no longer held together by magic. After all the dust settled, the fighter was laying on a pile of bones with a grin on his face. "You know what they say - 'The bigger they are...'"

This was one of my favorite moments I've ever had in a gaming session to date. Just imagining our brawny warrior scaling his tremendous foe, clinging to the creaking bones as the behemoth tried to get him off, and then felling the monster, single-handed, still gives me a thrill. It's the stuff you'd write songs about.

And it's in no way possible if you strictly follow the rules.

Reality is a harsh mistress.

According to the rules, the fighter would likely have had to make a grapple check against the creature. Then, he'd have to make a climb check with such a high roll (seeing as he was scaling something without good hand-holds that was freaking alive,) just to see if he made it 5 feet up the beast. He'd have to continue these climb checks each round to see if he even made it to the beast's shoulders. From there, drawing his sword would risk throwing him off the creature - another roll. Swinging without a good grip and steady footing would make his attack roll suffer. And even if he'd made it through all of that, odds are that a 30-foot skeleton, weighing many hundreds of pounds, would have an absurd amount of hit points. A single swing would not be enough to even put a dent into him.

But which is more entertaining: a triumphant victory with a plan that should not have worked, or the immediate death of all party members against a foe that is simply too powerful for them?

The answer to that is a matter of opinion. If our session was focused on realism, then every member of the party should have tried to outrun the colossus and flee to safety. But, since our session was more focused on fun and heroics, the absurd risk-taking made more sense. In the end, I treasure the memory of this absurd stunt more than I would have treasured limping away in the opposite direction.

One more story to illustrate my point from the other extreme.

In a different game, with different players, I was a bard (what can I say? I'm a creature of habit) and my party was fighting against some outlaws. One bandit was dying about 10 feet away from me, and 10 feet beyond him was another one locked into mortal combat with one of my teammates. So I tried to rush over and aid my ally.

What ensued was a 10 minute discussion over whether or not I could hop over the prone bandit without suffering a movement penalty. My party and my DM bickered back and forth, scouring the rulebooks for examples, to try and determine just how far I would be able to move, what kind of save I should roll to protect against tripping, whether a dying creature would offer any resistance or not, etc.

In the same time it took to decide one round of movement, my other party had toppled a rampaging mountain of bones.

I'm not saying that the rules should be ignored entirely. Far from it. That same fighter who climbed Mt. Bonemore eventually had his head caved in when he tried to fist-fight a troll while drunk. Ultimately, the decision lies with the group. Is strict adherence to the technical aspects of the rulebooks more important to the session, or is telling an entertaining story? In my experience, a little flexibility with the rules is all it takes to create some truly memorable experiences. And that's what pen-and-paper RPGs are all about - making creative memories with a group of friends.