Fun vs Rules, Some Thoughts

Some rules systems are very “crunchy”. By this, we mean that they are full of lots of tiny, detailed rules. Think of “crunching numbers” as an idiom and you’ll get what I’m saying. Like all of gaming, and of life, this brings both good and bad. 

The good of it is that there is consistency. When you cast this spell, this is what happens. When you meet up with that monster, then these are the things that it can do. If you try to buy a new suit of armor, or a horse, you can look up how much it will cost you. It also means that the game master doesn’t have to guess at so many things. They can just look up the rule and go.

There are some problems with crunchy rules, though, and one of them is that it creates the need to look up things. “You’re throwing the Fireball at the wall to try and blow a hole through it. Hmmm. Let’s see. I have to look up the Fireball spell. What level is that?  Ok, here it is. Hmmm. OK. Now, I need to look up how much structural damage that wall can take. What book was that in? Oh, yeah. Over here. Let me look in the index. Here it is... Wait. Is this wall brick or stone?” Do you see how that can significantly interrupt the flow of the game? 

Another problem it creates is the rules lawyer. This is a challenge when the player challenges a judgement the game master makes. Then the two dig into the rules books and begin pointing out variations and nuances of the wording of the rules to prove their points. The story grinds to a halt as the two try and hash out the results.

Also, it can be a problem when the GM creates an encounter, and the player immediately looks up the monster’s stats, abilities, and weaknesses. 

I’m not saying clarity of the rules is a bad thing, but there should be room for variation, and for the sake of the story flow, some calls should just be left to the common sense of the game master. 

The game master should, also, be willing to listen to a certain amount of appeal or explanation from the players, but should also quickly roll with a decision and move on in the story.

I think this is particularly important when dealing with younger players. They may not remember the details of the rules, but they will remember the excitement of the story.

How to Make Family Game Night Fit in Your Schedule

This is an excerpt from the upcoming book "Roll Dice, Build Character: How to Use RPGs to Help Raise Great Kids"

Keep coming back for more excerpts and for publication alerts.

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Remember how I said that one of the greater evils of RPGs was the time suck? Remember how I said that if you let it, it will rob you of focus and balance in your life?  That’s a very real danger.

So, to start with, make sure that you set up ground rules so that gaming becomes a good, fun, and healthy part of life, rather than something that takes over your whole life.

I recommend that you start by setting aside regular times. Mark it off on the calendar. Make it a part of the family consciousness. Weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever your family schedule can fit in. For us it works to do it weekly, with exceptions. That’s important as well. All of us realize that the game will happen, and we try to schedule things around it, but that if an event with extended family, or some important school or work event comes to happen on gaming nights, we will skip game night. The family and extended family is very important to us.

If you have to miss several weeks in a row, that can get to be problematic, too, though. It’s easy for memories to fade and then you lose your place in the story. Don’t let too many empty weeks go by.

Also, if one player or two of the party has to miss a week or so, what do you do? One way we have handled this is to simply magically “blip” their character temporarily out of the story. We would joke that that character is “visiting his sick grandmother” that week. That can mess with your story, but it does keep the story flowing. 

Another option is to do a “one-off” adventure or a side quest. This is a short, one-session bit of fun that doesn’t have to impact the main story line. It can even have a different GM and different characters. At one point, I told all of my players to make extra characters so there would be something to draw from if we suddenly needed to “pick up” a game.

While we’re talking about scheduling, It’s also important to find time within your own personal schedule for prep time, if you’re going to be the GM. Gaming sessions can be improvised, it’s true, but they’re never as good as a well-planned storyline. We’ll talk about this more, later.

Blocking out a couple of hours for prep and a full evening for playing each week is a pace that works very well for us. At first, I was doing all of the GM duties, but over time, I’ve allowed my kids to take their turn. Their friends have come into our group as well, and have found friendship and belonging among us. As I’m writing this, one of these friends is our current GM. We’ve made scheduling accommodations for the friends, too, but often we just have to set the calendar and say, let come who may.