Systems aren't real*

*This is flippant. They're social constructs, so they are kind of real but only because they are agreed upon.*

Once upon a time, in a stinky Wisconsin basement, a couple white guys got together and invented D&D. There had never been anything like it before. Ope never mind, that's a lie. There was Chainmail, there were Napoleonic wargames, there was Tolkien, Star Trek, chess, and Ancient Greek myths. TTRPGs have always been part of a material lineage. What was actually unique about D&D was that those Wisconsin fellas figured out a way for Capital to capture that play and turn it into a Product to be Sold. 

Play and labor are intertwined in really complex ways. Is making art play? It makes an object that sometimes has value, and sometimes doesn’t. You should listen to Game Studies Study Buddies for more knowledgeable talk about this stuff. For me, when I’m preparing for a ttrpg session, it can feel like one, or the other, or both at once, and at the end of it, we have a text. Maybe its notes, or a zine, or a whole-ass book.

Now lets take D&D, and lets take this book I made, and compare them. Neither of them sprang out of the ether, both have a material lineage of inspirations and components. From the pens to the ideas, all of it was used in the objects’ creations. They are art. They have had thought and soul poured into them, and they have been birthed into the world as objects. Boom. Systems complete, everyone buy them and go play. 

Oh, oh shoot, wait, don’t play it like that. Don’t add your own rules! Don’t replace dice rolling with arm wrestling, NO!

The life of a ttrpg does not end at publication, it begins. Each table brings their own rules, interpretations, feelings, experiences, and they bounce them off the wall that is the system. And then, when they don’t like how things bounce, they change the system. This is work, and this is play. 

Whether its conscious or not, the people that sit down at the table are agreeing on a social contract. They’re going to play by the rules of the book (or wherever they come from). But the rules do not exist in the physical world, they are ideas. They are ideas that are interpreted and enacted by the people at the table. Those people are doing labor, reading those rules, and enforcing them in the world. It is here that the ttrpg’s life begins. It is here where the system is created. Before, it was words in a book, or social rules, or whatever other way your game mechanics are recorded. In play, it is a complex system that players tweak, nudge, pull, ignore, and break.

That’s a hard experience to sell.

Actual plays try to do it. WOTC tries, but they end up having to make a sloppy-ass ecosystem for players to live inside, and people get tired of all the grifting. You can’t really pay someone to DM for you, it just doesn’t feel quite right.

So at the end of all my preaching, does system matter? I dunno. Its real, and it isn’t. 

Go find a table, play with your friends. Change the rules to suit yourselves.