Rules, what are they good for?

Most RPG blogs seem to have an opinion on which edition they like, be it OD&D, Pathfinder, Swords and Wizardry or “the edition that must not be named”. What’s the difference? Well, rules. But what good are rules? Personally, I think the fewer the better, but I can understand the appeal of more. Pick your set and run with it. Whatever gets the group together is a good thing. At the end of the day, though, I don’t find the rules to be the most important thing. What the hell is, then? A flexible DM. Dear god, they make a world of difference.

I don’t care what game you play, you will find things you don’t like. How could you not? You didn’t write it. But it’s a game, and it’s supposed to be fun. What do you do with these rules that you feel go against that? Nuke them! No, really. Let’s take S&W for example. It’s pretty damn rules-lite. We do a shitton more role-playing than we do roll-playing. For us, this is beautiful. But, if we played it by the book, our party wouldn’t exist. There are no halflings or amazons, no vikings or druids. Well, there goes half our party.

Our DM is pretty damn flexible. He really let’s us play. And boy do we. The scenes we come up with are pretty epic. Go read some of the recaps in his blog. (There, Paul, two links to you. I want some exp for that) We are allowed this type of game play not because of the ruleset we choose, but because of the DM and players we have. One of players, Corey, has mentioned bringing the Alchemist class from Pathfinder over. I’m pretty excited to see how this templates out.

Find a ruleset that has a half-elf, half-dwarf. I dare you. We have one in party. If we didn’t the following would have never happened. And that would have been a sad, sad thing. From Tibag’s journal:

10:15pm – “Last few” crotch goblins called their friends. These things must do nothing but breed. Thankfully we kill them faster than they can reproduce…just barely, though. It’s fun to watch hair guy and little guy kill three of them with one sweep. Nature guy skewered a couple at once. Twenty or thirty crotch goblins down. I worry sometimes that I’m enjoying this too much.

10:16pm – Not worried any more. Crotch goblin jumped on my face and started tearing at my head with his claws. I bit his junk off. Nobody teabags Tibag. Did NOT enjoy that. Crotch goblin blood tastes like evil and decay. Hope someone has some mead.

10:30pm – Other crotch goblins stunned, easy to dispatch. Victory! Still feel kind of sick. We decide to take a break.

Pure gold.

So, the tl;dr version: don’t sweat the rules. Do what it takes to have fun. After all, that’s why you’re playing.