Don’t Sweat the Rules

Earlier this week when we gave you confessions from a rules lawyer, we posed the question, “What advice would you give a novice GM?” Apathy Games editor, Paul von Meerscheidt, had this to say.

First rule: Don’t sweat the rules. Ever.

Especially in your first couple sessions. The rules are there for a reason, yes.  Eventually they will be both your crutch and your damnation, but until then they are a stumbling block to running a satisfying game, for either you or your players.

Rules are important in two situations:

1) Roleplay: Your players are trying to do something that you won’t just let them do, and they need to back it up with dice.

2) Combat: A numbers based abstraction of actions and maneuvers characters might use in a fight, used to delineate winners and losers.

Thus, the rules exist as an aid to enforce fairness (if all the players follow the same rules, favoritism is significantly more difficult) and provide stat based challenges to your players. With this in mind, consider the following: When a player asks to do something and you do not know if a specific rule for that action exists, does it matter? As long as the player is given some numerical way to attempt the challenge, the exact rule is irrelevant.

When I first run a game using a new system, I read the rules before play begins. I attempt to get a general idea of what a standard challenge is, and the way roleplaying and combat are adjudicated. Then I run the game. For any given situation, be it combat or roleplay, I will only look up one rule. The rest will either be adjudicated to the best of MY understanding, according to rules I have already learned, or with a simple test defined on the spot. After the situation has ended, I will look up the correct way to run that rule.

As a new GM, what do you do to avoid getting hung up?

  • http://spyderzt.blogspot.com/ Spyder Z

    I’ll admit that I’ve never run a “Built System” before. As a Storyteller I tend to let good Roleplay win out over “Hard Stats”. Though good Roleplay doesn’t always mean they “Succeed”, just that there is always an interesting reaction to their attempt.

  • http://spyderzt.blogspot.com/ Spyder Z

    I’ll admit that I’ve never run a “Built System” before. As a Storyteller I tend to let good Roleplay win out over “Hard Stats”. Though good Roleplay doesn’t always mean they “Succeed”, just that there is always an interesting reaction to their attempt.

  • Aloysius

    I find that I like the general framework of a built system, but I change things on the fly quite often. Interestingly, I am most likely to stick to a strict interpretation during the middle levels (for d&d) and allow more leeway at both ends.

    In the early levels it is because I don’t want to kill someone’s character. Especially when they just gave me ten pages of backstory. The only thing I accomplish by killing that character is making the player replace them with generic fighter A.

    In the later levels when people are rolling +50 to hit and for maxed buffed skills etc, I’m almost always willing to allow you to do whatever you can sweet talk me into. Especially wizards. You want to roll spellcraft to do what? Go for it.

  • Aloysius

    I find that I like the general framework of a built system, but I change things on the fly quite often. Interestingly, I am most likely to stick to a strict interpretation during the middle levels (for d&d) and allow more leeway at both ends.

    In the early levels it is because I don’t want to kill someone’s character. Especially when they just gave me ten pages of backstory. The only thing I accomplish by killing that character is making the player replace them with generic fighter A.

    In the later levels when people are rolling +50 to hit and for maxed buffed skills etc, I’m almost always willing to allow you to do whatever you can sweet talk me into. Especially wizards. You want to roll spellcraft to do what? Go for it.

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