Attentive readers may have noticed that the titles and topics have shifted a bit here on the Grumpy Wizard Blog in recent months.

Though there are a few posts where I declare a strong opinion, I have written many blog posts with the phrase, “How I…” or “How do I…” in the title.

How do I create random generation tables?

How do I bait players into creating their own objectives in a sandbox campaign?

These posts are not about how “you should” do those things. They are posts that state how “I” do those things.

I prefer to offer ideas and examples of how I play so that you can decide if that works for you. My perspective is one perspective on how classic fantasy roleplaying games can be played among many others.

Should vs Can

One problem with thinking there is a narrow and limited set of rules, methods and desired experiences is that other gamers aren’t me.

They don’t have the same life experience as me. They don’t have the same life circumstances as me.

I prefer to play in person. There are many reasons why others prefer to play virtually.

Finding a consistent local group can be hard. Maybe they have an illness or disability that makes leaving the house difficult. Maybe their spouse works the night shift and someone needs to be home with the kids. Maybe they simply prefer to play online.

The question isn’t, “Should you play online?” The question is, “Can you play online?”

The answer is, “Yes, if it suits you and your situation better than playing in person.”

“Can you play this way?” applied broadly

Having a bias toward “can” and not “should” applies across all parts of the hobby.

Can you ignore encumbrance rules?

Can you play without clerics?

Can you substitute a spell point system because you don’t like spell slots?

Can you put grey aliens, time travel, and firearms into your Dungeons & Dragons campaign?

The answer once again is, “Yes, if it suits you and your situation.”

You can do whatever you want to do.

The only thing preventing you from doing that is finding people who want to play the game you want to play the way you want to play it.

“Can” is not always applicable

Some topics are true or false. I don’t think there are a lot of them but there are some.

WotC editions of D&D encourage players to apply a mechanic rather than interacting with the game world in a diegetic way. Playing a retro-clone or the original ruleset is playing an old school version of the game. Rolling 1D6 produces a flat graph and 2D6 produces a bell curve. Fudging dice is lying to your players; perhaps well intentioned but still lies.

There are some practice that all gamers should adhere to if they want to play or run a satisfying game. What those practices are is a matter of debate that will never reach consensus but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Even in these elements of RPGs, experimentation is worth a try.

You can mess with the elements of a game, but there are trade offs.

Your experiments may fail. Ignoring or tinkering with the small area of roleplaying games that are true/false, correct/incorrect will probably fail. That can be a good thing. You’ll learn something about game design and game mastering. It might be an unpleasant lesson, which is good too. You won’t forget the lesson after it’s kicked you in the ass.

Should has tradeoffs and limitations

While I do think there is a small area of near absolute truths about roleplaying games, there is a broad range of possibility that has yet to be explored because a lot of gamers think in terms of should.

I’ve learned that many of most commonly recommended methods and techniques of building and running games could be improved or that there are other methods that produce different results that I like better.

A lot of the commonly adhered to “best practices” are just practices that are good enough in most circumstances for most gamers. They are popular methods not necessarily the best methods.

You know what else is popular? Walmart. McDonalds. Folger’s coffee. Fruit of the Loom underwear. What makes those things popular is that they consistently don’t suck. They are consistently good enough at a price that the largest possible market will accept.

Most people will pick the 100% chance of good enough over the 25% chance of truly life changing.

Many gaming practices, methods, aesthetics reliably don’t suck at a cost of time and effort most game masters or players are willing to accept. Many game masters and game designers believe that these not-shitty methods are what you should do when in reality, they are just one thing you can do.

Some methods require more effort and more time investment than the majority of game masters want to spend. The different method might not work for them even if it works for someone else. So they go back to the consistently good enough approach. A more risky or time consuming effort might produce the best gaming session they ever had but they don’t know and they’d rather not take the chance. A game master like that comes to believe that the thing they habitually do is what should be done.

Should mindset can cause a game master to stop experimenting in ways that might actually suit them better than the standard method. When you believe you are doing something the way it should be done, you stop asking the question, “What if I did this other thing instead?”

Should stifles creativity.

The major upside I’ve found by earnestly asking the question, “Can I do this…” has been to open up the possibilities of the play experience.

The standard belief is that murder hobos are a bad thing for a campaign. If I just accepted that belief as how the game should be played then I would have never asked the question, “Can murder hobos be fun?“

I decided to create situations in my campaigns where players are tempted, or even encouraged to play a band of homicidal transients. I found that can be rewarding when NPCs and factions respond to that sort of behavior by putting bounties on the heads of the PCs and other consequences for player characters who choose to do evil deeds. I liked the experience of playing that way more than I liked the experience of applying mechanical constraints (like experience point penalties) to encourage players to stick to good alignments and heroic deeds.

I prefer to let players have the option of choosing evil to reach their goals. It requires extra effort on my part and some players are not very comfortable with that sort of thing so it limits my pool of potential players. That’s fine, I accept that.

“Should” all gamers adopt a “Can” mindset?

There is benefit in sticking to certain tried and true approaches to gaming. The rules, procedures, and methods that Gary and the early RPG designers created do produce the experience that most gamers want.

There is also a benefit to experimenting with different forms. Sometimes the old methods don’t fit a group’s circumstances. Sometimes the old methods don’t produce the result we are looking for. Experimenting may reveal an experience we didn’t know we could have with a game.

“Different games for different people” has become one of my favorite aphorisms for a reason.

I want the kind of gaming experience I want to have.

Discarding the theory that there are only certain ways a particular game should be played and experimenting with how it can be played has helped me to get more of what I want than accepting the common advice given by people who are not me and do not want what I want.