"the only wrong way to play the game is the one that isn't fun" - this is a minor anger point of mine whenever it comes up because it's usually said in good faith, it's usually meant earnestly, but it's also a thought-terminating responsibility abdication which has stifled a lot of possibility for design and understanding for concepts and how they loop back into the experience of a game. It's the more-kindly-meant version of "systems don't matter, silly". It frustrates me, but I can't usually respond directly to people saying it because I'm not in a secure enough place to do that without looking like the villain.
If I were on a panel and someone said that you BET I would go "ok, so, I get what you're saying but let me tell you why that's not accurate" because there I would have the social positioning to be ABLE to say a thing like that without being abstractly Rude and Mean (and yeah, I know, transfem trauma IS at work here, there are cis guys I see do this all the time without the backlash I get for being even slightly abrasive)
But like. Ultimately, yeah, I agree. If something isn't working, do something else. If a game isn't clicking, see how to make it click. Sure. I don't want to waste my life struggling with something that's supposed to be fun which I hate! That messaging is fine, "just walk out" as the skeleton says, it's not "well, bad D&D is better than no D&D" it's "actually, NOT SUBJECTING YOURSELF TO BAD D&D is better then bad D&D"
But there ARE wrong ways to play the game, and thoughtlessly jettisoning elements that cause friction just because you don't like 'em has a ripple effect. A harmless example: "nobody"1 likes to play with Encumbrance, Travel Time, Exhaustion and Supply rules in D&D 3.X through 5.N, or even other time-and-tracking based rules. Ammo count? No, why bother, eventually it'll be meaningless, so why not just give every archer a functional Endless Quiver so that when they get to the appropriate level they don't have to waste a magic item slot on a boring item and can have the FUN one instead. Who likes always being at a penalty? Just let them CARRY the goddamned loot, you're no fun.
This is such a popular rules abdication at tables that it's even functionally gotten more and more prominent in consecutive editions of the game: 5.N HAS these rules, they're just not very noticeable and are deliberately placed and part of the general section of "oh these are BONUS rules if you WANT to use them" in phrasing, for example. Arguably, this is great for fun, and improves the fun of the game immensely.
...until it doesn't.
One of the unexamined foundational assumptions of Dungeons and Dragons (and its related offshoots and ideological and artistic relatives) is The Crawl / The Trek / The Expedition. Whether it's an overland trek to a destination, an exploratory roam through an obscured map, or the archetypal dungeon delve, characters start at what is often a place of relative safety and comfort (though not always; some treks are escaping from a bad situation) and venture through territory which is hostile to them, with minimal - or even NO - options to safely rest and replenish supplies. An archetypal non-D&D example of a Trek is the game Oregon Trail, where the player takes charge of a traveling group trying to make it across the western half of the North American continent and arrive with as many family members alive as possible.
I cannot say with authority that Oregon Trail is "fun". There is much ink to be spilled in analyzing the game. I will say, however, that Oregon Trail with the supply and resource limits removed, relying only on Interesting Events to entertain and educate the player - from experience, I can tell you that version of the game is FUCKING BORING. It removes the main lever which would entice players to make difficult choices, which is where the actual meat of the game, the part that makes it MEMORABLE comes in. Do you think we make "ford the river" jokes because the river fording was the thing? No, we make those jokes because after we struggled and sacrificed and prayed to the weather gods to get there, we STILL hat to hold our breath and hope the wagon didn't capsize, killing our three sons who had only just survived dysentery! ...speaking of, if there's no issue with spoiled food and bad water, you don't even get THAT memorable gravestone, because y'all won't die of dysentery!
At first glance, it doesn't seem like that lever is in play for D&D. I mean, isn't the game about heroic, actiony combat vs. dangerous enemies? You know, movie dramatic action scenes! Except that the stakes and context of those action scenes are informed heavily by the framing of, believe it or not, inventory and time management.
I'm gonna run out of energy before I list all the examples, so let me start with a big, basic one. Everyone - again, figurative, if you're one of today's lucky 10,000 let me congratulate you - has heard of spell slots, the arbitrary game-world restriction that a Wizard can only cast X spells of Y level per day. I am not here to discuss whether these suck, or whether mana systems or exhaustion rolls or spell points or focus checks or mystic tokens are a better way to represent magic. I am here to say that the game is fundamentally built around the assumption that when you're out, you're out.
In currently-most-recent edition 5.N, Wizards aren't the only class with "spell slots" - every class has some combination of "this recharges on a Short Rest" and "this recharges on a Long Rest". The Wizard arguably has the MOST such options, particularly for Long Rest recharges, but everyone runs out of juice. This has led the designers down an honestly interesting road - not FAR down that road, but they've scuffed their toe past the demarcation more than they did in previous editions - of "hey, what if. What if we actually toyed with giving different classes different focus by playing around with their recharge rate vs. their total number of options and power of options" and so you get interesting splits like the Wizard, who has a depth of spells going all the way up to the top level of 9, getting up to 4 spell slots from each level that recharge on a Long rest, vs. the Warlock, who gets a whopping 2 spell slots TOTAL that top out at level 4(?) aside from a couple of bonus features, but gets them ALL back on even a Short rest. With the core assumptions of supply and safety management in place, this is actually interesting meaningful interaction! Shallow, but INTERESTING!
But if you've played Baldur's Gate III, you're probably already seeing where I'm going with this.
At first it's just "a short rest is any chance to catch my breath, right?" No, a Short Rest is supposed to be "about an hour of minimal stress", that's the definition of a chance to catch your breath and refocus - but a lot of DMs don't like that, don't like being all "oh, well, it's only been 45 minutes so you didn't get a rest before you stumble into the next fight" and also don't like being "well, ok, just TELL ME you're taking a rest" over and over and over, and then get tired of players asking "so did we have a rest?" and so every single fight is basically "haha yeah you had a Short Rest don't worry about it" and that.... well, that seems fine. Even from a cinematic standpoint, ok, I can see it being exhausting to insist "no you didn't say you Rested, you don't get to do your thing" and if there's no pressing time constraint, I guess it's ultimately harmless to just go "yeah ok sure if it's not EXPLICITLY back to back you can just assume "short rest" means "each combat" it's fine". And then you get to the Wizard Issue, where most of their stuff DOESN'T come back on Short Rests and they "have to" save it.
On the one hand, no, from experience, it's often no fun to sit on your powerful spells because you're not sure whether you'll have them when you need them and feel useless and powerless while Fighters get to Do Something Meaningful every round, even if that is "1d10 longsword damage!" once per round. It's so tempting to let go and fling your spells. It feels good. It's the Cool, Fun Thing you get to do to Play The Game. And then you run out and you look at the dangerous hallways ahead and you say "hmmm. Friends? Can we take a Long Rest so I can get my spells back so we can be prepared to face the mid-boss at full?" and that sounds like a great idea and they'll get their HP back as well and so sure, let's Rest.
A Long Rest is supposed to be 8-10 hours of camping and maintenance. You just left camp 2 hours ago. You made it 6 rooms deeper into the dungeon. Now it's time to hunker down for another 8-10 hours. Tick tick tick, mezzer Adventurer.
So you complain to your DM about running out of food. That isn't Fun. The DM agrees: if you're miserable that just doesn't feel good to anyone. So supplies get handwaved. So now the only thing actually penalizing you for taking a Long Rest whenever you feel like it is an outside time pressure - but the DM also knows that springing one of those on you un-foreshadowed is gonna cast them as the Rocks Fall Everyone Dies no-fun DM.
And soon you're gleefully flinging your favorite spells in every encounter because I mean, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't everyone? Why WOULDN'T everyone just play wizard, look how much FUN you're having! You get all these cool toys! You get all this power! Why NOT fireball and finger of death every fight, my god, this is amazing! OK it's been 30 minutes let's all go back to bed now, what roleplay scene are we going to have shirtless by the campfire? I hope it's a juicy one.
And then you get that old debate from the forum days about "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" and no one points out that this is only true in "empty table" scenarios where you can freely alpha strike in every battle because you've removed all context, because... you've removed all context. You've put a bonfire right outside the elden ring boss room, so there isn't even a runback, and if you get there low on health you can just top up before you walk in, 's fine. Just take a nap. No one can tell you no, the only wrong way to play a game is one where you aren't having fun, after all - but here, by removing the things that are "un-fun" without an understanding, you have taken entire segments of the game and rendered them irrelevant, removed so many levers for motivating characters and driving interesting dramatic events in the name of seamless, comfortable Fun.
"Mara aren't you overthinking this, it's a silly little elfgame with friends, why are you wasting-" listen, Strawmans Georg, I'm not here to say Dungeons and Dragons is good. Not once in this screed did I say it was good. I have said interesting, I have motioned in the direction of occasionally compelling, but this isn't about "is the game good" or "is the game worth it". This is about "I think quality game design is a legitimate art, I take my skill seriously, I take my philosophy seriously, and I am frustrated that 'oh ho ho ho it's just a game, man, lighten up, the only wrong way to play is the one you aren't having fun in' gets played with LetPeopleEnjoyThings.jpg frequency". I am nitpicking because "understanding why things work" is a part of my design and art, and "understanding why things DON'T work" is a huge step towards "understanding why and how things COULD work" and from there, "how can we provide an Experience and ALSO have Fun" instead of just "eh, it's just D&D, do whatever, systems don't matter, chop off anything that causes you friction and irritates you, there's no wrong way to play".
THERE ARE MANY WRONG WAYS TO PLAY.
Ultimately, yes, I wholeheartedly agree that what matters most is the connections you make with other people. That takes precedence. I will (I HAVE!) gladly throw out the rulebook entire in order to give a new player or a kid a thrilling emotional experience with the trappings of The Game We're Supposedly Playing, because if they like the experience I can then step them organically through the Rules later. I wholly defend the privilege of players to remove rules that cause them distress, though I'd prefer it if they examined the rules first and understood them. I have issues with whole rules segments in several of the games I'm running. Some of them I've excised. Some of them I've kept, but I'm replacing subsystems (the Bond XP rates in Lancer really are built for people to cap out in just a few sessions, huh?) so I'd be a giant hypocrite if I tried to say "no no no, stick to Da Rulez!" in any sense!
But beloved of Sjofn, please, first aim to understand why they are present and what they are DOING, before you chop them.
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if you're here to tell me that you DO play with these rules, thank you, I acknowledged this with the figurative quotes, but also I appreciate your exception proving the rule
I saw a post yesterday talking about what someone (I do not remember who, offhand) understands by "friction" in game design, and how they've seen it drift to simultaneously encompass "I did not feel good every second I played" and "if I don't feel good every second I play, that's Bad Game" and arguing that for a lot of games, if you take out waiting and working for things — frustrations, things that don't Feel Good in the second-to-second — you have excised The Game.
For a video game example, you know how a lot of Minecraft mods do the thing where they let you play the game-game modes, but take out the time/materials/work requirements for making things?... And you know how that's obviously the work of, and I say this as kindly as possible, literal children who don't grasp the point?
If you want the "everything is free and I am playing with blocks!" sandbox, that's already in Minecraft. You simply can't actually have the game-game modes and have them work on the same (lack of) rules as the sandbox; if you even try, you do not understand the game part.
You simply can't take the resource/risk game out of D&D without reducing it to the Who Wins an Alpha Strike Spreadsheet, either. Gygax may have been insufferable when he talked about "strict time records", but he was expressing something true about how D&D functions.
