DnD is not a game, it's games
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
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Civil and thoughtful comment: QB always gives me something to think about.Cheers! -Professor DM
Usually don't comment, but doing so in a hope that Ben will see this. I'm a big fan of your work and it's really inspiring to me. I love all the interesting games you review and the attention you brought to the OSR is what made me a fan of that play-style. Without you, me and my friends game of OSE wouldn't exist. Thank you for this channel and keep up the good work 🙂
Thats a great comment, Chris. Ben's a good dude who does good work for the community. I'm with you. I've been associated with this "hobby" off & on since the late 70s. I've seen it's evolution. For me it's never been a game for me. It's been a storytelling experience. I think a lot of that storytelling has been lost when the video game culture arose.
Agreed!
Check out his Knave games, too. I’m waiting for my copy of Knave 2. 🙂
All hail maze rats.
Me and my table went 20 sessions deep with such a simple elegant game.
Now I'm trying to write up our personal game tables rules and it's heavily influenced by maze rats.
11:50 "There are few grey areas in AD&D"
HARD LOL
My thought as well!
Technically Dave Arneson grabbed outdoor survival and put it into Blackmoor which was one of the differences from Dave Wesley Braunstein setting. Blackmoor is where DnD gets HP and random encounters with the idea of lvl up from older war games (e.g. ranks), however, earning exp from defeating random encounters to lvl up an individual character was specifically an Arneson invention when he was using Chainmail.
Dave’s contributions to the hobby continue to be extremely understated and it always saddens me. I dream of the day where his name gets the same recognition (if not more) than Gary’s.
From what I understand is Dave never really had any rules to his game. He kinda made things up on the spot and used a mishmash of other game rules like Chainmail.
It's probably why we have never seen an Arneson rules game.
@@swirvinbirds1971honestly that’s the real heart of D&D. It’s not any one set of rules, it’s whatever you can use to play the game, tell the story and have fun,
Arneson tended to run points and start people at hero type/lvl 4.
Chainmail matches up to the first fantasy campaign almost 1 to 1.
@@russellharrell2747 agree. Going back to the early 80's we tended to play a mishmash of B/X and AD&D. We just added what we liked from AD&D to our B/X game.
Luka's take on D&D and RPG in general aligns with how I see the hobby and play. It is helpful to see the multiple games nature of D&D. For me, the "rules" help to put structure and constraints on what happens - to put stakes into the experience - risk and reward.
I think the article is really insightful. The beauty of RPGs is that they are open ended, not constrained to the specific things that the designers were thinking about. The way he describes this is pretty cool. You can absolutely play an RPG with as much or as little rule structure as the players want and you can change those rules as needed. Obviously the big game companies would prefer you to stick to RAW because that's where their money stream is. Having read a lot of Gygax's old writing in Dragon and elsewhere I always get a chuckle at his change of tone as he went from wargamer who created something new and cool to businessman who wanted to make money for TSR.
This is a civil and thoughtful comment.
Good job
I love how Ben not only supports OSR products by reviewing them (and thus reinforcing a sense of what OSR feels like), but also invites to *think* about OSR and RPGs in general. This is such a great channel. Keep it up! p.s. I'm DMing my third session of Knave this week.
Of all the DnD videos I've seen, this might be my favourite.
I enjoy one aspect, one friend enjoys another, another friend enjoys another, etc. And occasionally we get into the part of the game one other player thrives the most in, and vice versa.
It's also why I you will see a plethora of answers and why those reddit questions come up. "How do I run so and so." Or "How do I make it more fun for my players?"
Some players may like something Diablo-esque. Go into the dungeon, slay monsters grab the loot. Others may like political intrigue, and role playing. Some enjoy that outdoors survival part of the game. Every table is different, and there is no right way to play.
I think this ties into your "cultures of play" video nicely. Play groups have emphasized different mini-games through preference, and then through reinforcement have developed into different cultures of play. It's pretty easy to match the cultures to the mini game (or groups of mini games) they do and do not like.
It's not a game, it's a religion 😅
Beyond just the various mechanics from all sorts of TTRPG systems, I've used other games like Jenga to symbolize the PCs fighting against a Mass Dominate Spell.
What I love about TTRPGs is that every facet of game design can potentially be incorporated, giving a different vibe beyond what a single hardback book can contain.
Heyyy... I THOUGHT I recognised you! I think this is such a brilliant idea! I'd love to learn other neat little things like this! Perhaps you can make a list of them in one of your future videos.
I love ur vids
This is a very insightful observation. Not one game, but a bunch of mini-games, loosely united by the "fantasy" theme. Even AD&D still feels very modular to me, and different groups pick and choose which sub-systems they want to bother with (has anyone ever used "weapon speed factors" or "aerial maneuverability classes"?). That easy customizability, to me, is D&D's biggest strength and the thing that sets it apart from every other type of game.
It CAN be an issue, when players with very different experiences and expectations of the game end up in a group together. When every table is different, it can be harder to find one that you vibe with. Since the rules are flexible, the players have to be flexible, too.
Yes! Our table used both of those, in 1 campaign! Great example of the video, one of our many campaigns went super crunchy with the combat rules. There were times when 1 square on the battle map position for 1 player tiled the encounter to win or loss (to cheering at the table). We used all the old "combat and tactics" rules. And the other campaign, in the same world, played at the same time, didn't use all of the super crunch rules because there were a few different people in that group that liked less rigorous combat.
Great video, great ideas
D&D is a folk practice. It's like if someone says "I'm going to church," or "let's go camping." the rulesets, brands, products and authority figures just represent different styles and philosophies of going about it.
I think it's reading a bit much into it to call D&D a bunch of mini-games. Most games of sufficient complexity can be split up into these "mini-games" whether TTRPG or Video game, but that doesn't mean they aren't a coherent game instead of just a collection of mini-games.
An apple pie is a specific food, it is not just a collection of foods, one of which is apples. It is true to say apple pies contain a mini-food called an apple, but the apple pie is still a coherent thing all together regardless.
Honestly this whole topic just seems like navel gazing to me. Ask almost any average player and they are going to say.. "of course D&D is a game.. what are you even talking about". I agree with Gary Gygax, what AD&D tried to do was great.
A game can have multiple sub-systems and features and still all be one game. In fact, I'd say that's sort of a hallmark of RPGs, both tabletop and video games. You see it in something like the Elder Scrolls, with unique systems for fighting, lock picking, engaging socially, casting spells, etc. This doesn't make it a different game, even if the game itself has many facets.
Calling these different games I feel is disingenuous as these are just different facets of one larger game. RPGs are based around choices, and that requires having different systems to cover what different choices a player may choose. A game can have multiple facets and different tables can focus on different aspects of the game while still playing the same game.
I think him trying to call it not a game is simply inaccurate. If it is played, as the verb, it is a game. You can change the rules and how you play, it is still a game. Roleplaying is always the adjective, and game is the core noun that it modifies. I think his beef with having aggressively prescriptive rules is fair but it doesn't make something not a game. Calvinball, for all of its randomness, is still a game. I think his issue is with structure and he has incorrectly conflated structure with the word game.
Hey Ben! I don't know if you read these but I'm late to the game. I just discovered Knave and Into the Odd, and Cairn within the past year and I just want to thank you. Your work opened my mind up to possibilities that I hadn't dreamt of previously. And that is seriously cool.
I'm on team Folk D&D. This game transcended games and became a hobby and then through the love and creativity of so many, it transcended hobbies and became part of the zeitgeist. When the pandemic has ended and the dust settled, it had transcended that and proved it had been part of the culture for a long time.
That is amazing.
The problem with quantifying is that it makes the box we are in seem to have walls. What is special about role playing is that anything, anything at all can happen. Having GM/DMed it since 1979 I do not always know exactly what it will be. I make a sandbox and see what they do in it. Some build sand-castles, others dig around looking for treasure. Some start kicking around sand just to feel alive. Others look to find people to help. I just never know and if I told them ahead of time this is what the game is. I just minimized what they could do and be. Instead, I recommend being open and allowing it to play out the way they want to. "Yes, and" or "No, but."
Very well-said, my friend!
And about your point about quantifying rules actually *limiting* options, I agree.
That’s something that actually struck me about 5E specifically the more I’ve played it. Initially the class options excited me, but then I realized “This is less of a list of the things I *can* do, and more of the game telling me I *can’t* do anything outside of this very narrow path.”
"I do not always know exactly what it will be"
*proceeds to describe exactly how it will be *
🤔
"The problem with quantifying is that it makes the box we are in seem to have walls"
"I make a sandbox"
🤔🤔
@@tahunuva4254 Mate, you’re being pedantic.
@@Sanguivore Uno reverse card, my friend. A focused rpg system has the same capacity for infinite variation as the sand and tools in your sandbox. What is your system doing, if not focusing on the open-endedness?
I was cruel as a kid, and had no idea... I stuck a big piece of wood into ant hill... But yeah, that's the image I see for how to be GM sometimes.
I can't begin to tell you how often I have struggled with this question. This, in combination with the few videos about styles of play from Matt Colville's channel, has finally given words to some of the problems I have been facing in my perception of the games I'm playing as a player in the games I'm running as a DM.
I started playing 2nd edition D&D in 2007 with my high school friends. But even that game, was not the second edition that was played 20 or 30 years ago from that point. It was a deeply idiosyncratic version of the game and I didn't know that until I started looking at the rules myself later in life.
I have often struggled to adapt the version of the game I want to play and also have it be a version of the game other players want to play because I've been deeply informed by osr type players or at least people who have had a lot of history in the game.
The other players I play with, my contemporaries even, are playing only a few of those types of games that we've listed, while my interests extend to more.
I often run into a problem where what I expect from the game is entirely different then what I end up playing and part of that is my fault without question. Although I have since learned to adjust my expectations.
This video I think does the best job of detailing the many types of mini-games that D&D is capable of doing, even if it's just a start, but still this has been very helpful and reflecting on the nature of the game.
I have the same problem almost entirely, my friend. And for all the same reasons.
My only advice is to do your best to keep the old-school modes of play and the game’s history alive when you’re in the driver’s seat. I recently started a rotating DMing schedule with my group (where I joined as a player for the first time after being a forever-DM for 20 years), and I let everyone vote on what system they wanted to play (they’ve all only played 5E), and I presented mostly OSR options with a few “contemporary” games for the sake of fairness, and they all chose PF2E. I told them that regardless of what we played, my experience as a DM and most of my interests in worldbuilding are informed by being deeply immersed in the game’s history and older editions of RPGs, so that was going to seep into my method of running the game and it would be quite different from what they’re used to.
The first session was a bit of a growing pain for them as they learned that success isn’t guaranteed and you have to play smart, not just rely on your character sheet to do all the heavy-lifting for you. But after that? Oh boy, it’s been such a rewarding experience to see how creative they’ve gotten when they all start putting their heads together to overcome challenges they would’ve never even considered otherwise!
I think most contemporary players just haven’t been *exposed* to many other ways of play, and that once you allow them to experience those things in a somewhat familiar setting that’s just a stone’s-throw away from their comfort zone little by little, I think most of them can come to really appreciate the experience!
@@Sanguivore
It's so strange too since I'm a weird hybrid of liking the styles of the older editions, but preferring the playing with the rules of 5e in the sense that it facilitates play and because I know them the most - the majority of my time playing D&D has now become 5e after about 2018.
My biggest mistake was throwing almost the entire kitchen sink of the first five "mini-games" listed in the video in their entirety at the players who have only really played 5th edition.
I know they are capable players, they've played D&D 5e for at minimum 5-6 years or longer. But it's the only edition they've played. And they're only really interested in the narratives and individual character-centric sub-plots. And that's ok - but it's difficult to convey the drama that can unfold from the other pillars of play when the support is rather lax.
I've taken a lot of the rules for dungeon delving from previous editionas and made a hodge-podge of processes to emulate them in 5e, for example. Believe it or not, it's one of the reasons I am actually looking forward to whatever the next version of D&D is going to become - because in terms of rules specifically - 5e was a good foundation, but not without its holes.
It's strange to be informed so much by what came before yet be eager for what is to come. I feel very out of place most times in online circles because of this strange perspective! Most people either hate 5e or love it. I can concede it has strengths and weaknesses. I wish it was more acceptable to understand nuance.
In my group what you call games we call gameplay loops. There's combat loops, town loops, adventure site loops. Staying in one loop for too long is boring, it's important to cycle through the most fun loops regularly and limit or remove the boring loops. Ideally as a DM we try to make all gameplay loops super fun, but every group is different and values those loops differently, so you need to either surprise them with something unique about a loop they dislike or eliminate unwanted loops. If you've ever played Dave The Diver this concept will make more sense. Soulslike gameplay loop could burn you out, whereas in Witcher 3 you could opt out of the core gameplay loop and play Gwent for 5 hours, allowing the other loop to cool off and become more desirable in its absence. The same way you suddenly miss your spouse 7 days into their 2 weeks vacation.
When Dave Arneson & Dave Megarry (the Twin Cities Gamers) showed "Blackmoor" to Gary & Ernie Gygax, Terry & Robert Kuntz (Lake Geneva Gamers), they asked, "Where are the rules?". Arneson slyly answered, "There are none." After playing the LGG was gobsmacked, speechless. Megarry simply stated, "Cool, huh" - they all agreed. During the playtests of what would eventually become D&D, Gygax once said, this game was a '4th Category' (see Kuntz new book). A revolution in game design.
Most games are finite, you play to win. RPGs are infinite, you play to keep playing (as you point out in the opening of your video). Simon Sinek has many RUclips or TED talks about this subject.
Gygax and Arneson never played D&D by the published rules at their own tables - the spirit of D&D is to enable creativity and imagination via an open framework. As Gygax is oft quoted, "The secret we should never let the game masters is that they don't need any rules." But selling books to make a profit is the antithesis of actually playing RPGs. AD&D was the systemification and closure of the open system that Arneson created. All versions since AD&D, including 3e, 3.5e, 4e, 5e and now OneD&D are remedies to continue closing the open system and drive sales of new book content. OSR has the same conflict - keep the system open for creativity & imagination, or close it down for book sales. I believe that the proliferation of OSR systems shows that TTRPGs, and many players, want the framework to be OPEN.
Of course RPGs are a collection of mini-games, a framework of systems that allow different modes of play in context to make the DM's job a bit easier. From theater of the mind to full tabletop terrain. With pillars for exploration, combat & role-playing (you and I both talk about 'shenanigans' as the 4th pillar). The term RPG wasn't even part of OD&D (what Kuntz calls Classic D&D), the designers couldn't even agree that the "Dungeons & Dragons game" (named by Cindy Gygax, Gary's daughter) was really a game or not. Their prior context was that it was a medieval fantasy war campaign moderated by a referee. It would take years to get term Dungeon Master and Role-Playing Game.
I've been celebrating 50-years of D&D since January 27th, 2024. It is a hugely important part of my life and career.
Keep making awesome content. Thank You!
Great points all around, and important history too! I’m so glad there are so many people in this hobby that are so keen to its roots.
I think "there are none" was probably just an understatement. There was Arneson's notes and rules that were probably not in collected form. But watching the early Blackmoor footage, they're clearly playing with rules of some kind.
I think you can keep a system "open" and continue selling rulebooks, especially if you clarify the rules are optional but here for your perusal and use if you think it fits what you play. This is exactly how I see all rulebooks anyway, so I may be biased.
I had never heard anything attributable to Cindy Gygax before. She, and her sister Heidi are more obscure in the stories than Ernie, Elise and Luke. I assume they helped assemble boxes like the rest, but they don't figure in the lore. Well Cindy does now, I guess. Thanks.
@@rjones6080 I think it’s likely that Arneson foisted the burden of *knowing* the rules solely on himself, which I imagine would’ve been quite an uncommon thing for the wargaming crowd at the time. I’ve heard stories of Arneson running campaigns where players didn’t even have character sheets ‘cos Arneson kept track of all their character’s stats for them.
So, by “there are no rules,” he probably meant there are none for the *player* to worry about keeping track of.
It's not just a game - it's a way of life!!!
TTRPGs are an Experience.
@@justinblocker730 an excellent way to level up your life!
On Gary's point; I think the problem is the more you try to codify and solidify D&D/TTRPG's the faster they break down at the table. Core rules and mechanics are good (Ex: Roll a D20, add a number, beat a target number) but once you begin to make every little thing concrete one of the most important aspects of these games -player creativity- no longer works. When this happens you have made a board game (Not bad, but a different type of game).
TTRPG's need to allow for imagination, creativity, and freedom. So, rulings not rules.
An interesting topic.
It does seem to be more about semantics with 'game' being used to describe a wide range of things and perhaps it's getting too hung-up on that?
I think of DnD, say, as a game system within which there can be many scenarios created within that framework and adapting the system to suit.
I've also never seen game systems as being dictatorial - I bought it after all and will use it as I want provided my friends are happy with the game; I think using any game system is about taking what fits your own group. Are we perhaps just crossing the boundary between free-play into guided play where we have a sweet spot of having a system to work within but not being dominated by the system?
I've recently embraced the idea of rpgs actually being a collection of smaller games.
The OSR has inspired me to make almost everything in the campaign I run as a small game. Finding treasure? That is a small game when you draw from a deck of treasure cards I made. What do PCs do between adventures? I made a custom little game based on the book On Downtime and Demesnes (reviewed on Questing Beast a while ago). Another game is odds/evens: Anytime a PC asks me something that I'm not sure about, but the player really wants a certain answer, I roll a die. Without looking at it, I cover with my hand and ask the player odds or evens. If they pick correct, it goes their way; if not, not. This is fun for the player because they know it was their choice if they get the response they didn't want.
This "collection of games approach" is fun for players because it gives them concrete verbs. Verbs are the specific things that are available to do in a game. People often don't know what to do because they don't know what they can do. Ask a player what he wants his character to do with his downtime, and you will likely get a blank stare often enough. BUT give your players specific verbs (gamble, get drunk, hunt for rumors, buy magic items, etc) and they will enthusiastically give you feedback and ideas.
I also keep games flexible. Sometimes players are inspired by your verbs to invent their own. In my last session, one of the players just decided their character (who likes to read but isn't officially educated or academic leaning) wanted to go to a library. Not for anything specific, just to read and become more knowledgable. As a consequence/reward, I told him that at any point in the session, his character can know one fact about anything in the world of his choosing. This represented some random bit of lore he learned while reading. He later used this to know the history of mystic fountain the characters found, including whether the water in the fountain was safe to drink. (It was safe for chaotic and neutral characters, but deadly for lawful ones.)
Finally, I love this approach as a DM because I never know what is going to happen in a session. How could I, when I don't know what my players are going to do in all these little games? It's a blast
Thanks for the video. Breaking down the different aspects of a game and saying they're different games is just a trick of semantics. It's like saying football is three games: a offense game, a defensive game, and a special teams game. It's hilarious how folks will come up with a bad premise then twist themselves into knots justifying it by redefining terms and expanding definitions to support their misnomers. "We have games where we contact one another to set up when we'll meet to play other games. We have games where we travel to the place where we are going to play other games. We have games where we tell someone to feel better when they say they can't make it to the other games we will say we played." This is a strawman game.
by this logic monopoly is 3 games, theres the board, where things are up to the luck of where you land, the land owning part, which ios about a race to the top to own the most land and the deal making where you have to flex your social skills and ability to make mutualy benificial deals. What your decribing is called sub systems. The reason these are sub systems is how they interact, you can only buy land based on where on the bord you are, you can only make deals with the land you have. You can only hex crawl in dnd if you have food, you get food with money, you get money by exploring, in order to explore you need to fight, fighting makes you better at fighting as you go from 0 to hero. And the whole time you're improving (also, side note. You said the improve doesn't have rules. Skill checks are rules used in improve).
You can argue that these sub systems are poorly put together but the idea that they are unrelated and should be treated like diffrent games is absurd. If you where just to roleplay that wouldn't even be a game. It would just be play.
We play very fast and loose, pick up and play, beer and pretzels, open table style. It's mostly because my players can't be bothered to read the books. So, as the DM, I did a d20, roll high, and went from there. The number of rules we have could fit on a single page, and we forget half of them from session to session.
RPG’s are often said to be about characters, but I think it’s more accurate to say that they’re about setting. There are so many ways for characters to interact with setting that it’s difficult (and arguably impossible) to incorporate them all into one thematic ruleset.
Dealing with the threats of the wilderness is completely distinct from armed conflict, and palace intrigue (to say nothing of international intrigue) is very different from both.
If all of those things were united under one simple mechanic, most of the setting interaction would suffer for it.
Interesting analysis. It is a game of many hats.
This video about how D&D can be more of an open imaginative play space or simply a "fictional otherworld", and how it's game elements can simply be modes of exploring and enjoying that imaginative play space really makes me think more about the idea of folk RPGs and how most of us in our play club are really seeking that. It makes me suspect that the entire brand approach has been a brain worm in preventing that kind of play. It also makes me want to make a game like Lancer, but with X-wing miniatures instead.
(Most) RPGs aren't really games, but toyboxes
Kieth Burgun reference?
@@LeFlamel It's a base of game theory, but dunno from whom. The difference between a game and a toy is that a game has strict rules and an end goal, while a toy is an open ended system which you can use to play games (or do other activities, like make-believe). You can compare poker, for example, with a physical deck of cards. Given the the open nature of roleplaying (yeah, you usually have to defeat a bad guy, but it's not a game condition, and you can siply live in that world), I'd consider them toys (or toyboxes) rather than game.
I even incorporate war games into it. It's a good thing people like the variety
Great video! I added a mini-game for my out of the abyss campaign that replaced rolling for forage by turning it into a memory match game. Make a match and get the mushroom listed. Finding an item and rolling table a or b was also possible. It was a huge hit!
That’s a great idea! :D I love when people get super creative like that.
The term "game" is multi-meaning, just because something is layered with different sections to the whole doesn't mean its not a game. we roll dice, we move a mini on a grid, or online, we converse over rules and rulings, we take "turns"...this by definition is a game. it doesn't have to have a finality to it to be considered a game. keep 'em rollin cheers
Very much agreed! I feel it is overly limiting to claim a game is just one subsystem. By that definition no modern video game is a game, since they are made up of sometimes hundreds of subsystems. Game is a very all-encompassing term.
The realization I came to, making my game, Dream of the Dragon, was that TTRPG's are game-making games. It's more than just that GM's can change the rules. Every adventure we make or run is a game. We set out the conditions for success or failure, draw out the "board", so to speak, etc. Even if I run Keep on the Borderlands, it will be a different game from the way you'd run it: it would fit into my campaign and setting differently, I'd give different motives to the monsters and NPC's, I might have different ideas about tactics. So, the players are actually playing a game the GM made. The GM is actually the one playing the TTRPG by interpreting the rules, deciding how to use it, etc. and using all that to make a game for the players. That's why Dream of the Dragon is a TTRPG-making TTRPG. It actually has rules for how to change the rules, by building a class based system on top of a point based system and opening up the point based system to GM's to modify classes, make new ones, etc.
The hodgepodge nature of TTRPGs gives license to curate an experience bigger than the sum of its parts. The tastes of the table are catered to by the selection of rules sets and skilled game mastery. The best news is that both Luca and Gary are correct.
I like your (and Luka's) defense of what DnD is here. DND was building itself as it was flying and it was using off-the-shelf components. We still do the same thing... We just have easier access to more components...
The game Outdoor Survival, Dice, and Chainmail are all listed in OD & D as "recommended Equipment."
The purpose of AD&D was two-fold. The *stated* purpose was to allow for 'tournament play' at conventions. Such play was a staple of the chess community, which became a staple of the wargame community which became a staple of the RPG community. A less-openly-admitted purpose was the royalty/copyright struggle between Gygax and Arneson. AD&D removes Arneson's name from the 'authors' of 'D&D'. AD&D takes the specific rules-laden form that it does because, while Arneson was great at coming up with good ideas (and seeing the value in the ideas of others), Gygax was strong on systemization. So, the logical course was to push our Arneson by (essentially) removing creativity from the game and emphasizing resolution tables.
I agree with Luka. D&D is a great game that works best as a collection of mini-games. But I may be biased. Luka lived in my city a few years ago, and played in my game. He's a ton of fun to game with. With the disclaimer out of the way, I've read some academic works on game play and game design, and most academics (Salen & Zimmerman, Chris Crawford, Juul, Deterding, etc) have a hard time categorizing RPGs, or making a solid definition of just what exactly a "game" is because RPGs don't fit in their finely crafted academic terminology. Luka's ideas here help to explain why this is so. Part of D&D play is game play, part of it is not.
D&D to me was a chance to gather, talk, solve problems, try to life through the capabilities of a character and, hopefully, prevail. Deaths came gloriously or not, sometimes just suddenly and ruthlessly, but we were continuously learning and suffering (or celebrating) vicariously through our characters.
The last campaign I played with my childhood group before moving off into the world was D&D but using rules from Mage. It was very flexible and our characters were now a closer reflection of what we each enjoyed playing. It was an amazing campaign! In the Army I played a number of different flavors of D&D, often in the back of an armored vehicle maybe by chemlight with hand-drawn maps on MRE box cardboard. Regardless of the rules being used, it was always "advertised" as D&D.
All of the 'mini-games' mentioned still take place inside the core TTRP-**game** of Shared Imagination. The rules governing Shared Imagination and the conversation which creates it are a key part of any TTRPG rules text, i.e. how do the players come to agree on which ideas enter the shared fiction and which don't? Everything else is gravy.
Obviously this takes place in a social context of hanging out with friends, no different from 'Netflix and chill' or playing board games.
I, unequivocally, agree with Luca. I've learned that the best attitude towards D&D/TTRPGs is when everyone is simply hanging out and playing pretend. Because, at the end of the day, that's really ALL we are doing.
Allowing ourselves to negotiate what we agree are the rules and optimising the fun for the table is time much better spent than adhering to a set of rules that must be complied with in order to have fun.
The problem is, there are players who probably fundamentally oppose this way of thinking. There are players who want to be rewarded for their knowledge of the mechanics and "rules as written". They want to be able to flex their knowledge of lore and optimised builds. And to those people, I say, "Go with God! More power to you".
That sounds like a total buzz kill and I would prefer my tables to be more centered around the *social event* that it is. Game mastery takes some time, but when you're surrounded by people willing to contribute to a session by playing the set of games (i.e. roleplay, battle, all the different mini games that may pop-up during the story) it's better than anything you'll see from an 'actual play' with pros.
Freedom of play with guidelines and restrictions that are agreed upon is infinitely more fun than adhering to one solid set of rules. Shoot, if I wanted a streamlined fantasy RPG experience I'd just play Elder Scrolls.
I have long felt this way and he explains it so very well. This is partly why I'm not so into the one cohesive mechanic idea. I like the idea of Say combat being a dice mini game, Traps being a problem solving game. Encounters being and inprov' mini game. This is wonderful. The add on mini-game modularity is part of the joy imho - like the addition of the paper/rock/scissors chase mechanic. I love the idea that D&D is this side-show ally combination of activities!!!
Luka Rejec is awesome! 🤘
Just grabbed Labyrinth and Dark Crystal because of the links you shared!
Watched about 20sec of your review and was sold 🤘😝
This paves the road to procedures and mini-games-within-games that I love so much. Adhoc and judgment based rulings. If we each make some rules that work for US, then we can focus on adventures, content and experience. Thanks Ben
The simulative / "make beilief" nature of roleplaying games (and D&D in particular) glues togheter all those mini-games to a single coherent game. Each type of situation has a different mechanical presentation, but the overall fictional reality glues all of them togheter and can even override (by DM rullings mostly). A players will most often skip a situation / minigame not because the mini-game is not fun, but because entering the situation represented by the mini-game does not serve the party's goals.
It's not "many games in one", it's a single game, with different mechanics for different situations.
The second claim is true however. Each group plays the game differently. The games of two groups can be very different in nature.
I agree with the view that D&D is a collection of game systems that facilitates a creative time with friends. This is actually why I, for one, keep coming back to it over smaller, tighter RPG systems, which _feel too much like a game_ in comparison, experience wise. Also, this allows for individual subsystems to be replaced with something a given group wants to try out or something more suitable for a given campaign or play session. Works well, imho.
There's always been a tension between the hobby and the game aspects of D&D. Succeeding versions of D&D have tried to make it more of a game to appeal to more people, while still monetizing it like an expensive hobby. They'd take the Do-It-Yourself element out of the game if they could, but then it would cease to be D&D without the freeform interaction.
Ben, one small historical note. Outdoor Survival was definitely an Arneson addition to the game and was used in Blackmoor before the game was demoed for Gary.
It should be noted that many modern board games, both euro-games and wargames, have multiple interlocking mechanics and can have several mini-games or even one level of game that feeds into another level of game. There are even some board games where the victor condition is simply not to fail. Classic D&D does have a victory condition, not to die and to progress in level. Plus, D&D is better compared to cooperative games than zero-sum games.
I see TTRPGs basically as "grown-up" games of pretend. The mechanics that exist in the book can be picked and chosen by the table to give the games a central point of reference for adjudication of what the players do.
That being said, it's hardly uncommon for other mechanics and mini-games to be added in for new situations as needed. I've had a deck of cards brought out for a Blackjack mini-game as a character's side hustle before, and it only added to the enjoyment of the group.
Some people overthink everything. Great breakdown but do we need this to confuse, muddle minds? Mr. G said if you like a rule keep it. If you don't don't use it. The current version of d&d has fallen so far.
A game is defined by what its rules cover. Just because it has multiple aspects that encompass entire other games doesn't matter. You buy one set of rules, not multiple. Yes, each table has a different style of game, but they are all D&D. Optional rules and different areas of focus don't make it a separate game.
Only combining separate games (Monopoly and Risk) would make a game not a game but rather games.
D&d is not infinite once you actually play it. Lots of people back in the day did not use a lot of the rules to play or skipped entire sections.
BX is the rule set most copied by the osr because those are the pre-Domain level play rules where people typically had the most fun. D&D had rules for mass combat, but less people used them because you had to get through 11 levels of dungeon crawling to get there and by that time, you were probably in it for the dungeon crawling if you made it that far.
D&d was actually quite limiting for what it would allow you to do; that is why there have always been competitors. Sure you can woo the queen and open a lemonade stand in d&d, but because there is exactly the same amount of mechanical support in Settelers of Catan, I do not see why it should be considered an intricate part of d&d specifically, especially when specific games set up to do that specifically.
Sorry but I have to disagree. As an example: What is Monopoly? It is a property acquisition game, no, it is a property management game, no it is a life growth experience, no it is a contest to acquire the most wealth.
All games are a combination of themes, parts and concepts. D&D was an outgrowth of Miniatures war gaming. What if, instead of focusing on an army, you focused on the leader. Its greatest strength is its ability to be customized. I think that is why the genre has growth to the extent it has.
I disagree with the assertion that a game cannot have sub-games, or that the collective influence of play towards a shared goal (that is, exploration of the fictional world and the party's path through it) does not constitute a clearly bounded meta-game. That said, the tautology is moot. It doesn't matter if it is or isn't a game - that does not affect the activity in the least - what DOES is the more general conclusion: that being aware of the seams in the product you are playing (or activity you are engaged in) makes you and your group better able to adapt it to your specific culture of play.
Cool idea, but asking if D&D is a game or many games is like asking if a pizza is a food, or many foods. Just like with pizza, not all components always work well together.
Great video and lots of great points. I hope this concept will permeate the RPG community so we can all get back to mixing and matching our mini game systems into the perfect fit for our groups
D&D is more of a hobby. Equal parts storytelling game, board game, and skirmish war game. i think most people will lean toward one or two of those on their own.
I kind of see what Arneson was doing as a folk artist or outsider artist. Just taking the ideas and materials at hand to create something new to entertain the players. He took the idea of a ref, like they had used before, and expanded on the importance of the character that continues from session to session, an extended campaign which is a war game term. Using bits of other games and scary movies he was binge watching on TV one weekend.
Absolutely loved the perspective on D&D not being a traditional 'game' but rather a 'playtime' with friends. It's fascinating to think about D&D as a collection of mini-games - from hex crawls to improv - each with its own set of rules, yet all under the vast umbrella of TTRPGs. This flexibility is what makes tabletop RPGs so special. Every group's approach can vary widely, creating a unique blend of rules and narratives that define their own style of fun. It's the ultimate creative freedom, mixing and matching from different systems to tailor the experience. In essence, each table crafts its own version of D&D, distinct and rich in its storytelling and gameplay. This diversity is the heart of TTRPGs, not the adherence to a single structured path dictated by corporations. It's about the stories we create, the memories we share, and the fun we have together.
The title made me think that there was some Twitter hipsters thinking that D&D wasnt a game lolol. I mean a lot of games have sub games, especially videogames.
I prefer a mostly unified system, but one that is lightweight enough to modify or slot stuff in or move stuff out. I like a game system that doesn’t tell me what to do, but rather suggests how I do it.
He makes some good points.
All I know is I like to get together with friends and have fun and D&D is the medium
I've said similar myself for a few years. Though I came at it more from the idea of contrasting story based players and optimizers, and world builders vs random generators. not that anyone is ever purely one or the other, or that you can't have mixed groups... Just that the guy that goes home a charts out a hotrod character is playing a solo game at home to have this thing t show off at the table, while somebody else is forming character connections in backstories with other characters and the world as a together at the table. and likewise worldbuilding might be something some DMs do as a solo game they show off their creation to the table, vs the ones who uncover the world with the course of playing it at the table and cooperatively with the players. none of it is wrong, but it can feel wrong if you and your group are all playing different games. Just knowing what to expect, being open to different styles of play at the table and clearly communicating with each other can make a world of difference.
I absolutely adore this video! Luka's idea of D&D aligns with how I feel is the most enjoyable way to play. I've been thinking of making a Discord server for all my fav players and DMs and I might just pin this video to welcome channel
As a game writer, I think everyone should try a game the way it was intended by the writer at least once. Even if the game sounds unfun after simply reading it, playing it can be a completely different experience, and maybe a fun one that the folks playing it would have never tried if their GM felt the need to heavily modify the rules before anyone ever even made a character or rolled dice.
I think describing D&D as a ‘set of games’ is incorrect in the same way that describing Final Fantasy X as a ‘set of games’ because it has Battling, Character Building and some minigames. D&D is a ‘game’. The different subsystems have been assembled in a way to create the experience that the designer intended. Dungeon crawling, domain play, and wilderness exploration are different *systems* but the intention is that they all combine to form one *game*.
But like someone can mod a video game, someone can mod a tabletop game. Don’t like domain play? don’t use it. Feel like combat is too complicated? Simplify it. Feel like it’s too simple? Complicate it. The party wants to start a traveling circus? Import circus management rules from Clowns and Circuses.
Agree with this 100% as a non-game writer/ designer. I'm the same way with mods. I like to try a game out and figure out what I actually want to change to be more fun for me.
I also want to understand why a game was designed a certain way to help predict how any changes I make are going to interact with other parts and potentially break something.
D&D specifically, and RPGs generally, are often what WTF said - structured playtime. There is no ultimate, rule-defined win condition for the players. There is an ultimate fail-state in the sense of a TPK - but the story could continue from there with some creative work by the group. There is no win AND no lose state for the GM. The GM can't even cheat at D&D, because there's no boundary on what they can or can't do - even Gygax's AD&D DMG, which in the video notes would codify everything and remove ambiguity, says the DM can ignore any die roll they want and should to preserve fun. That's not a traditional game structure. Adversarial games (chess, checkers in simple examples) have clear win/lose states, and strict rules for interaction. Cooperative games - even D&D inspired ones (Descent, Gloomhaven) - do not require a GM, use algorithms for the antagonists, and the players have clear win/lose states and very strict rules governing their turns and behaviors.
D&D doesn't share that.
Other games, not D&D, have done more to codify what a GM can or can't do in the game, but the lack of a win/lose condition for the GM usually remains the same. For me, that really solidifies that this "game" is structured play time, and is a game in the sense of "just messing around" with whatever rules we've agreed upon, as long as its fun. The amount of homebrew and house ruling that happens in D&D and RPGs in general also shows how malleable it is - most other games wouldn't support that level of mutability without becoming something different entirely - or hopelessly broken.
The closest D&D comes to an actual game is something like Adventurer's League and Tournament Play. Compare the really structured way those are handled to the home game, and the differences are even more clear.
The Domain game was already in D & D with the building (and defending) of Strongholds (and the clearing of the land around them).
Well done. I think Gary wanted us who enjoy d&d to make it our own, a universe of similar but different home brews. Thanks Ben
D&D is a roleplaying system. As systems go it is pretty rigid. Different games have different elements within the nodes of their system architecture, some fall apart if one piece is removed. Others function adequately whenlots of elements are removed.
Having a core mechanism that helps connect the various "game" systems together is really the "system".
A good system should be one where players can enter and exit with a character and it should still be able to function whether all the "rules" or systems are in place or not.
Inside me are two wolves
One prefers rulings over rules
The other thinks system matters
I like both OSR and storygames
Maybe the reconciliation of the two: systems that provide tools to facilitate making good rulings.
I do like the vision of TRPGs being a session of playing with toys! But that said I quite like it when a game designer tells me exactly how to use her game! When she carefully chooses which toys to put in the toybox she made and explains what the purpose of each toy is and how to use them. While this might seem authoritarian, with a great ruleset it feels like the designer is at our table playing with us and making the experience better. I play plenty of games as the game designer, porting in new toys from other boxes. But in all of those games I feel like lose a player (though if I’m doing that the designer wasn’t very much fun to play with anyway).
Not so much exactly how to use her toys but her intentions of why she chose these toys, giving a structure for players to be inspired by and freedom for imaginary play.
In a way, he's right. This game was not designed in a corporate boardroom, rigorously focus-grouped and market tested. it was gradually compiled thru numerous groups of players developing rules that worked, and the occasional writer making up a whole set of rules for something that hadn't been covered yet. So it's always been a fairly uneven collection of different mechanics for different purposes, even once the d20 system came in. And i think it's still open enough to work like he suggests, with rules grafted from other games for specific aspects of play. if it's better than what's "official" then it's your table and your game(s). Do what you want. Call it what you want.
I realized while watching this why I never liked Pathfinder or the 3rd & 4th editions of D&D. Their systems were too thorough. They weren't easily broken apart in their component "games." This is why I rejoy 5e and OSR much more. I've always said they're easier to customize and homebrew. Now I realize it's because the component parts are easier to separate into their own game systems. Then those game systems can be streamlined for faster and easier play... or they can be expanded for a more specific play style. This allows greater customization for genre, player preferences or campaign theme.
Like if Jar-Jar Binks magically appears for one round (preferably @ inopportune moments) & the PCs get a bonus if they can kill him is that a mini-game? Whenever a PC criticality fumbles the player has to hit the bong, is that mini game? No such thing as one rule set to rule them all. RPGs are constantly evolving. My players will map caverns out as the go. I'm not very familiar w/ 4e or 5e but "subsystems" or mini games were part of D&D in BECMI, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e. Puzzles & traps, races & chases, ship to ship combat, character duels/jousting/gladiator or spell duels, political intrugue/espionage, castle building/ship building,kingdom/ domain play, small group skirmishes , mass-combat, sports, fortune telling, bard public performances, tournament/ carnival/fair games, drinking games, arm wrestling, gambling, etc have been part of D&D/RPGs a long time & all have presented subsystems before. Im w/ Lucas on this one. A perfect unfied system would be ideal but it doesn't exist & never will.
Wow, that video got me thinking.
I just masteres my first Runequest session with a group of experienced role-players, and realised they wanted to play the game differently than I - and to some extent, the rules - had in mind. They actually "woke up", when the fight started and wanted to put miniatures on the table, even though I was hoping for them to solve the situation with as little combat as possible. And the new Runequest rules do not really use miniatures and dungeon boards either.
So yes, every player not only has their own expectations, but also their own talents, interests, and personality. So, indeed, you can try to play a game "following the rules", but in the end you have a group of real persons sitting around a table having fun together.
D&D is a gaming framework.
There is something to be said for different people in different groups in different areas having an activity in common through which they can have a shared experience. While style or rules might vary, there's value in having an experience that can be related to one another. Thus, wholesale liberty with subsystems is tempered a bit.
This goes for editions except 1e.
1st Edition is a closed tournament rukes set that is made of sub systems meant to enable Games Workshop style multi table grand narrative/tournament play.
It is a shame that the vision was not able to be realized and that Gygax split from Arneson.
The gap that grew between the wargame/hq/tactics play and the hq/pc/story focus grew too wide.
Thabks for your content man.
Correction.
Even with the Alt d20 system Chainmail was required due to a lack of turn order and other rules such as morale hence it allowed the combat game to be played whether it was d6 or alt combat.
Ad&d 1e took the subsystem/mini-game system to an all time high.
Such an amazing work.
I love how DnD is a shared experience. The good and the bad.
It begins from making characters, "oooh what if I am... I seen this anime and I really want to."
To the first session, trying out the characters and powers.
Then well, it just grows, in the end you have a growing character and story. And once the DnD game ends, all is perfectly fine.
I love the idea of running a game that re-incorporates hexcrawl travel and map-drawing dungeon exploration, that sounds like a lot of fun.
Excellent video, Ben.
I like Luka's point. I've been saying for 3 decades that D&D is a very good excuse for me to hang out with my nerd friends. OTOH GG's point (my 2nd favourite D&D cocreator) seems to be about telling people across states, groups etc what the "right" way to play was. I don't like that. The right way is whatever my friends and I think it is right (meaning... Fun).
On the minigames point: In the late 1990's I even created a poll on yahoogroups to get a sense of which of those minigames (or adventure styles as I called them in the poll) they liked better: city adventure, Dungeon, hexcrawl, more interaction with NPCs (social, intrigue), etc.
Thanks so much for giving us so much food for thought,
V
Well now we are bumping into a topic that is coming up a LOT at the moment. Why are we calling playing TTRPGs "playing D&D"?
I play ironsworn, which has the "same mechanics" for all the minigames.
Your tasks that are tougher than 1 successful roll have 10HP and the difficulty of that task determines how much progress/damage you do to those 10 points . 1 progress for a "Troublesome" task 3 full boxes. But for an "epic" task, 1 progress = 1/4 of one box.
However, you can attempt to finish a progress bar at any time with any amount of progress, but if you "end a fight" or "reach a destination" or "fullfill a vow with" 3/10 progress boxes ticked... chances are you will Miss/fail and the narrative will dramatically turn against you and make life worse for your characters. So its wise to try and finish your task with 6-10/10 progress boxes ticked to avoid a complete failure.
Therefore, you have scenes where you set task bars for combat, journeys, relationships, dungeon devles, failure experience, retiring your character.
But they all use the same 1d6v2d10 mixed success mechanics for EVERYTHING.
You use the same dice for taking/ ecovering damage, stress and supply. Same dice for creating and completing quests, creating and completing journeys and writing the characters epilogue/ending based on how many bonds they filled out on their "epic" difficulty bond track.
Everything has been built around 1 type of dice roll and a medium level of detail. You can RP as much or as little as you want. You can zoom in or zoom out as much as you want. People have hacked the game for a stardew valley or pokemon style of play. Because the rules are soooo cohesive it doesn't feel like you are playing a bunch of random minigames, you are just playing ironsworn with a new setting.
But non of it is playing D&D. And maybe D&D has lost that cohesive feeling with how many rules need to be changed to fit the dice mechanics each edition.
Great Video! I have often thought that DnD is less like a game and more like a game engine, it's' the tool a GM uses to create there game at the table. When you play DnD you are not really playing DnD but playing Michael's West Marches campaign or Beth's rendition of Keep on the Borderlands. All GMs are game designers, different RPG systems are just sets of tools that the GM can mix and match as they see fit to create the experience they want.
IMO you can't unsee the seams between RPG sub-games once you hear of them.
But they're heavily intertwined: the Survival manages same resources used in combat, then combat can exclude characters from the Improv part (by death), etc.
RPG systems usually strive for these systems to be coherent, to envision some sort of experience. This ties neatly to the "6 genres" article -- everyone has their own style, their own "books". You will inevitably pick apart the books and mix them together; but you will still create something structured.
That said, a system built for OSR is vastly different than such for Nordic Larp and their subsystems probably wouldn't work well together.
Oh, but if you meant the last question like "the entire humanity should play the same sort of D&D", I think its plain tyrannical and anyone advancing it is objectively wrong. I owe WotC the same gesture Linus Torvalds gave NVidia.
Yeah I like thinking of it as an organized play activity with games slotted in. Partially that's me as a DM who likes to experiment adding different pieces of different games together: exploration mechanics to 5e, stress mechanics from Mothership into Stars without Number, Nanos from CY_BORG into Cities without Number, etc. So recognizing the modularity helps make that experimentation easier.
Oh! This article explain me why I wanted a boardgame for politic, one for exploration, etc and only use DnD for roleplaying game.
I still have the idea of this amalgamation of games. Flesh and Blood TCG for combat, Fiasco for RPG, Scythe for Politics,
Great video! I agree a lot with the article and it is probably a big reason why so many different RPGs were developed early on, and continue to be. Since D&D was actually multiple kinds of games in one which could be dissected and adjusted or replaced, many variations of "D&D" developed with players and many of those got released as published RPGs with their own names.
I personally have found that those who learned D&D from original D&D in the 70s, or from DMs who had, will tend to see any edition of D&D as just a consolidation of optional rules to be used, changed, or ignored as one wishes. While those, like me, who learned D&D from the Basic Set by Tom Moldvay, and then quickly moved onto AD&D, view "D&D" as a rule-set to be followed as closely to the book as possible with only minor tweaks (house rules) to enhance play for particular players. But that the expectation is that a "D&D" game will be very consistent from table to table, which is how I experienced AD&D games to be from the early 80's until the late 90's. In the late 90s the 2nd Edition AD&D Skills & Powers books presented a plethora of variant rules which when used, often fundamentally changed the game.
To this day I see editions of D&D, and RPGs in general, to be defined by their rules. And that if you change the rules drastically, my point of view is that you are no longer playing that particular game, but instead one of your own creation, and should be given a unique name so as to not confuse or mislead players who are invited to play in those games.
One critique I would like to give to the article and that is on the role-playing aspect of the game. I believe role-playing is a part of all the facets of the games within D&D, not just the "game of improv". Role-playing is taking actions in the game as the character would as opposed to just the player. For "overland exploration/travel game" players thinking where their character would want to choose to travel are role-playing. For the "combat game" players thinking what their characters would want to do during combat are role-playing. Same while exploring a dungeon. And generally how they play their character while playing the "hero simulation game". There is role-playing in all those parts of the game, as long as the player is taking into consideration what their character would do, according to things like alignment, race, class, and experiences. The "game of improv" is just that, improv acting. Which many play D&D without, because you can be role-playing speaking of your character in 3rd person and not speaking as them with its voice. I probably played D&D for 15 years before I spoke in 1st person as my character and using a unique voice for him. I was still very much playing D&D, and role-playing, before I did that.
Anyway, the article was an overall fun look at the games within the game of D&D.
What is described as a "playtime with friends" is what, to me, always defined a role-playing game -- this is the main reason I refused to call any videogame an RPG for a long time, since that kind playtime in a fantasy world *WITH* *FRIENDS* around a table is not captured outside tabletop / pen-and-paper RPGs.
All of these issues, and more, but certainly including the tension between set and reliable rules vs referee interpretations, emergent story vs plot/story guided by the ref, players being able to know the rules vs the rules being known only by the ref to allow more immersion, are as old as D&D, and even older in the wargaming scene of the 20th cen. Have you read Jon Peterson, The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity (2020)?
Big fan of Luka’s work… and I think he’s absolutely correct on this. The rules of RPGs are the basic building blocks and the constraints… but each game played is unique by its experiences; tweaks, homebrew, and rule toss-outs notwithstanding.
Great video. I occasionally see comments in D&D groups along the lines of "if you use houserules or homebrew you are not really playing D&D but instead a game you made up". I fundamentally disagree with this, and I think it is very much a consumer mindset, beholden to the product it is being fed from on high.
The contrasting mindset is the engineer or hobbyist, DIY viewpoint (one which I think many DMs fall into). I think the flexibility, mutability and easy-to-hack nature of D&D is part of it's charm and a major reason for its success and longevity. Creating new subsystems, minigames, or expanding on existing ones is something that was demonstrated in many modules and magazine articles, and intrinsically encouraged.
I think taking all those pieces and making a game is great, but I do think there is something to be said by trying at least once to adhere to an author’s intent when playing or learning a new game - it leads me to an experience I might not ever have tried in my own, and to see things from a new point of view, which leads me to be a better, more well-rounded GM and player. I can discard what doesn’t work for me after I’ve tried, but at least I’ve expanded my repertoire and understanding.
11:28 Let us not forget that, at this point in time there was a schism between dnd Basic(BECMI) and ADnD. Gygax had a lot of incentives, especially because of Tournament plays, that HIS ruleset had to be enforced and followed. The two games were very much at odds and one another's throats during that time.
Drawing a map of the dungeon as we explored it that my friend designed (in basic D&D from BECMI) was what I loved about it. I was confused when I played AD&D with theater of the mind later on. No idea what to do when we created characters and played the same way in Shadowrun and Vampire. The Basic book was so good at explained “what you’re supposed to do” to play.
I'm very much on the "playtime with friends" side of the issue. Having run a campaign for ~35 years, the published rules are just a starting point.
In addition to the many games of D&D, there are many styles which make "one game" a very different experience from group to group.
The opposite of this is tournament play, which may still be several games, but _needs_ consistency and structure to be fair to the participants. As you might imagine, I don't care for tournament play.