Thought of the day: Open vs closed rulesets and the OSR

Having done a lot of deconstructing theory posts now, I'm working on some more positive posts - creating rulesets, logging play etc. But those are coming together slowly, so I thought I'd do a brief little article to keep ticking over.

I was having thoughts about rules-light vs rules-heavy games, and wondering why I've started preferring the former over the latter. And I think the reason actually has to do with a different distinction - rules-light vs rules-heavy or rules-intensive is kind of a red herring. See, the thing about rpgs with lots of rules isn't that there's loads to remember. The reason for preferring light rulesets isn't just laziness. It's to do with the scope of the rules - how much they control. Think of this as the difference between an "open" and a "closed" ruleset, or rather, as the spectrum that exists between those two points.

[Ed. note: The Angry GM has a recent article on this, although he denies it's a spectrum, because, I guess, he's just contrary like that.]

A closed ruleset has a set way of doing things. If you want to perform some action in game, there are rules for how to do that specifically. You can't get around doing it without ignoring some part of the game - "playing wrong", to a certain degree. Boardgames have closed rulesets; if you want to move your troops in Risk, there are set rules for doing so - there's no arranging a peace treaty to move your troops through someone else's territory (this is not an entirely happy comparison, since many boardgames don't represent a fictional narrative, but hey). Most wargames also work like this, although games that use referees (quite rare in wargames nowadays) tend more towards openness - remember that for later.

Open games are different. In a truly open game, the fiction of the game comes first. If it's obvious how something would play out, it happens that way. The rules in an open game are there as a framework, mostly for resolving uncertainties, and are strictly optional. As in, you could play a whole game and never have to call on them to resolve anything for you. Into the Odd is a very open game, as are the various permutations of free kriegsspiel games out there at the moment, because they explicitly tell the referee that they have first say on what happens; what rules there are are tools to help out, they shouldn't intrude on gameplay.

As should be pretty obvious, the open/closed distinction tracks the light/heavy distinction pretty well. But they're not the same phenomenon. And, at least for my money, it's how closed a ruleset is, how intrusive or encompassing its rules are, that determines its appeal (or lack thereof) to a certain sort of gamer. The sort I have in mind is your classic OSR gamer. See, the OSR emphasizes the absolute power of the referee. But this isn't to contrast with the players' power - that would make no sense, since the players are kind of powerless by whatever metric the GM is powerful - it's to contrast with the control the rules have over the game. So emphasising the absolute sovereignty of the referee is the OSR's way of saying "We prefer open games to closed ones." And then we can see the strong strain of extremely rules-light OSR games as a natural correlation of this preference - and the FKR as its natural conclusion.

So far so obvious. But the interesting thing here is that, in this preference, the OSR scene isn't straightforwardly rebelling against modern D&D - not unless "modern" refers to the late 1970s. Because that's when D&D closed up, 'cause that's when AD&D came around.

[Ed. note: Yes, I know that the OSR is only predominantly oriented towards D&D and its old editions, but that's the side of the OSR I want to talk about here. Similar things could perhaps be said of old-school Traveller - Marc Miller reportedly still plays Traveller in an open, almost FKR-ish style - I'm just not the one to say them.]

The driving ethos behind AD&D is difficult to pin down, Gary Gygax's writing being what it is. But as far as one can tell, it seems to be the following: You follow these rules, and if you don't you're not playing D&D. If a specific situation comes up, you use the rules given to resolve it, following them to the letter.

There's a reason this happened, and it wasn't just because Gygax was a control freak. It all has to do with tournaments. Tournaments were already a thing that happened with wargaming, from which D&D is descended. But when D&D itself got popular enough that the designers wanted to start running tournaments (mainly as a ploy to promote new modules), there was a requirement that everyone (i.e.: all the GMs) be singing from the same hymn sheet, for the sake of parity. OD&D, the original, had been something of a palympsest (for this amazing word, and a good article supporting its use here, see The Alexandrian's article on the subject). That is, it was a patchwork of systems, not all of which were framed unambiguously or consistently, and every DM, as a result, used it in different ways. There was no one true D&D; each table played a different game.

AD&D sought to set that straight. Not by creating a universal action resolution system or anything like that, but by sheer coverage and detail. Essentially, it tried to account for almost every possible situation using bespoke systems for each one, to create fairness by taking the GM out of the equation. To give you an idea of the sheer mad scale of the micromanagement, the AD&D supplement the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide contains tables to determine the percentage chance of crashing a raft using the width and speed of the waterway, modified by the piloting character's skill with water vehicles. There are even tables in there for chance of Odour Detection! And all the DM needed to do was turn to the appropriate table and follow the instructions.

By this logic, combined with Gygax's frequent exhortations to use the rules in the books, rather than referee rulings or house rules, it's possible to infer that no-one actually ever played AD&D. That is to say, in order to play AD&D, you'd have to have all of the extremely situational tables in front of you, which would mean owning all the sourcebooks and recalling in which one each situation was to be found, then stopping the game dead while you found the appropriate section. There's a mad simulationism in there, combined with an extreme essentialism about the game itself - what amounted to playing the game, and what sort of play was wrong, by the lights of Gygax himself.

The OSR is many things to many people. But among the first things everyone will emphasize - if not the first thing - is "Rulings over Rules". You don't need a system or a table to tell you what to do in each and every situation. What you need is a referee (GM) to tell you whether your action is plausible, and whether you succeed or fail.

There's a lesson in here for newer GMs too: Don't treat a system as closed when it isn't. The first port of call is the ref's judgement, not the dice. Even in games that have a fancy universal action resolution (or claim to), like D&D, that system shouldn't be used for every little thing. I think of this as "over-rolling" - over-randomising the outcomes of player actions by over-using the games' systems, when a judgement call should suffice. It can be very frustrating for players to put lots of effort into plans or social interactions, only for the dice to be unfavourable regardless. But more than this (because players can stand a little frustration now and again), it stifles their ingenuity, discouraging them from coming up with schemes that will just come down to a coin flip anyway. "Rulings over Rules" negates this problem handily. But its primary function is a reaction to the AD&D mindset - not a single, unified mechanic that appears if anything overly versatile, but an attempt at a comprehensive list of simulationist mechanics, each situational, that act as straightjackets for the action.

I just thought it was interesting that the OSR looks fundamentally to be a reaction to something that itself has been around almost since the very beginning of the gaming hobby.