Say you are playing a game and you run into a situation that is not covered by the rules. What do you do to keep the game going, default to the closest rule, disallow the action, argue until you are blue in the face, or create a solution? The solution one chooses speaks as much about the situation as it does what those around the table think about the players involved to some degree. Stopping in the middle of a game to adjudicate the rules is not fun. Not only does it take players out of the social contract that defines the play space, such gaps in the rules mean they have to confront the social contract and its failure(s). There is little to do as a game designer to prevent this situation from arising as it is impossible to predict player behavior or all nuances of the game created. Add to this one very simple truth: all games have gaps in their rules as a condition of the ambiguity in their rules that creates the play space, but which can lead players needing additional clarifications that arise out of their unique experiences within the play space.
Okay, maybe it does not sound so simple after all. To reiterate, no game designer can conceive of every possible situation that can occur in any given game session, regardless of how straightforward or clear the rules are. Some of these come down to the environment in which the game is played. Only players can choose where and when they play. Not even the rules can affect this outside of a required environmental component such as ice for a hockey match. Field hockey does not qualify as a house rule in this example as it has a few additional modifications that changes the game in fundamental ways. Barring such changes and conveniences of modern technology, one cannot play ice hockey outside without a frozen pond or the like. How much of the frozen surface constitutes the legal playing field is a form of a house rule, however. It is the denotation of boundaries that is at the heart of any house rule.
As established in previous entries of this series, performance impacts play. How a player behaves and interprets the rules is as important as the role of the rules in defining what the game is, its inherent sacrosanct obstacles, and the basic performative behavior required to participate. The role of the rules is threefold because the rules have to establish the context of the game without regard to conditions that do not correspond to the internal consistency of its own grammar. Ignoring this consideration runs the risk of confusion. Under ideal conditions, the game works fine, but the environment and the players’ individual personalities change the external conditions. The rules, cannot account for everyone or everything as the list of contingencies would be so long that people would lose interest if not the purpose of the game before they even started playing it. Players have to interpret how to integrate the implied social contract of the game into their surroundings in order for the game to be a successful play experience. This can, and often does, lead to a clash of styles as the players determine what their ideal strategies are under the double imposed conditions and their opponents. Both style of play and interpretation are metarules in the sense that they are beyond the scope of the written instructions of the game. So, what happens when a gap opens up between the internal and external conditions of the game’s rules?
The behavior of players and the experiences they create will always run the risk of falling into the interstice between rules and reality. While part of it deals with the complex interplay of reality, individuals, and the play space, it also stems from the rules. No matter how simplified a game appears, it is anything but. Consider the definitions of each word involved in the sentences that make up the descriptions of the rules. Not only is there the linguistic component of syntax, but also the nuance in meaning that each word contains within it. If the meaning of the construct which is supposed to generate a meaningful experience is tied up in the meaning of the individual words, then something is going to open a breach and allow confusion to creep into the play space in a similar way that this overwrought sentence is likely doing to someone at this point in time. What it boils down to is this: rules are highly complex and their relationships to one another affect clarity.
Complexity between individual rules and the game with external conditions ultimately will lead to a need to amend the social contract whenever gaps between the environment and the play space occur. Yes, this includes play styles and behavior. Whenever anyone engages in an act that disrupts the flow of the game, it transcends individuality and becomes an environmental condition. To prevent a change in the environment from destroying the game, a house rule is enacted so that the game can be adapted to its surroundings. In this way, it is not unlike using modern technology to create ice rinks to play ice hockey in the spring despite the warm weather. The rink does not change the game, only the methods in adaptation along the lines of saying “New rule, we play indoors from now on.” This is an example of how the social contract is amended to preserve the integrity of the game in that the external conditions are manipulated (“If you wish to continue playing with us, you have to do it in there”).
Prevailing conditions can also be used to gain an unfair advantage. This particular rend between the play space and the outside world is one of dishonesty. Rather than relying on one’s own skills to best an opponent, a cheating player uses the environment to compensate, augment, or otherwise gain leverage that can be used with a smaller expenditure of resources to meet the game’s challenges. In effect, the central obstacle becomes less so for the cheater. In American football, the teams change directions so that any environmental condition is neutralized by both sides being able to utilize it for roughly half of the game. Since house rules are not part of the game, both parties must be made aware of them so that they understand what the changes are and have the ability to object should it prove that the change is designed to disadvantage others. Another example from sports is how some stadiums rule what happens if a ball hits a wall or scoreboard. The former is still in play while the latter is often ruled as a ground-rule double. Fenway Park’s prodigious left field wall, the Green Monster, is still an obstacle to right-handed hitters making it fair to both sides trying to get a baseball over the wall. The only real advantage the Boston Red Sox players have is they get to practice against it eighty-one times a year. What has not changed for any player, however, is the methods to achieve the goal of hitting a home run.
Should the conditions not provide a reason for the break between the environment and the game, then another possibility for the creation of a house rule stems from what I call, a broken grammar inherent in the rules. Just like language, games have a grammar. Whenever it is broken, from an inconsistency in how a rule is applied or the multiplicity of meanings generated by play or the semiotics from the game’s physical components, players have to pause in order to sort out the meaning. There is a lot in common with this failure to convey meaning as there is when trying to understand a non-native speaker. If the confusion in the grammar is strong enough, it can destroy the meaning and threaten the pleasure of the experience. Herein lays the problem with the semiotics of games.
Some aspects of games are highly subjective. This stems not just from the symbols used, but also the concepts described by the rules. An individual’s interpretation of what is expected does not necessarily correspond with an opponent’s because rules are fuzzy to allow wiggle room to overcome the central obstacle of the game. If I change the way I make my moves in a chess match without violating the rules and it confuses my opponent, then my interpretation in how I can move my pieces is different than my opponent’s. For instance, if I lifted my pieces a foot or more off the board before placing them in their final resting place, it may distort the meaning, which is what happens when someone tries to speak a language he or she does not fully grasp. I have stretched the limits of communication without fully destroying the grammar, but breaking it just enough to force my opponent to work harder to understand the movements I am making that have nothing to do with the game’s final outcome. However, it is an interpretation that lets me play the game just as well as my partner. If the pieces are changed to a set that does not conform to the shapes most recognized, that too can affect the way in which I or my opponent interact with the game. Semiotics, through symbols and nebulous concepts, stretch and deform the grammar of language while being the language of the game.
One of the things that games cannot do is provide players with a list of every conceivable rule for not only how to play, but how to set up the game and govern player actions. That was in part what my previous example about the chess match demonstrated. How does one know where to put the board for the board game and its subsequent orientation? Where does one put the bank in Monopoly in relation to the game? For the most part, these are unwritten rules that default back to the environment in which the game is played. That said, how does one roll the dice, use the spinner, etc? Again, there really is no way to rule on this from the standpoint of the game designer other than possibly where the rolling should be done in relation to the board and the players (e.g. on or off the board and in full view of other players). These rules are either missing or assumed, depending on your perspective on the issue. They have no direct impact on the game in the same manner as external conditions.
Ambiguities in this area are a pain to encounter and fix for most players. It is not hard to understand why. After all, who wants to spend money and time on a product only to have to go through it a fix the problems encountered? The reason is usually because the overall concept and experience the game creates is worth it. Often, the need for house rules is encountered in ongoing serial games like roleplaying games where situations occur repeatedly that produce a gap in the rules or a conflict between them. Which rule takes precedence? Sometimes it is not clear and players adjudicate how to deal with the problem from that point onwards for as long as they continue to play the game. Fixing the grammar is thus a way for players to share the same interpretation of the rules and rein in the potential meanings generated by semiotics.
Those are the problems that can occur, but they do not represent the full panoply for why house rules are designed. One of the most salient reasons for house rules is that tweaks to a game’s core design keep the game alive for its players. The changes essentially create new challenges or new conditions (sometimes both) for the game’s core obstacles for the players to solve. This keeps the game from growing stale so that players feel they have gotten everything out of the game that they possibly can. Experimentation of this sort can lead to game design and further exploration of the play space that the players favor. So, in addition to extending the life of the game, the house rules lead players to become designers of their own experiences which they can then test and share with others. It is not quite the same as creating an entire game from scratch, but it is one of the more surefooted methods for getting there.
Some games just naturally leave themselves open to interpretation. RPGs are one such genre. Not only are players engaged in a shared experience via storytelling and world-building, the rules are designed to facilitate the majority of common elements, but the setting, a conceptual environment, imposes itself on the implementation of various rules. The more compartmentalized the game, the easier it is to patch it, ignore it, or rewrite it so that the feel matches the world envisioned. What could be a clearer sign that house rules or interpretations of what is written in the books invites change as needed? While it is explicit in roleplaying games, all games are subject to the whims of the players to reinterpret or restructure the game as they see fit.
House rules provide a hidden experience that many players may not know they are accessing: agency. Games designed with too much rigidity are quickly abandoned after mastery. Take the game tic-tac-toe, for example. Once players learn that the game is essentially rigged in that there is a system for O to prevent X from winning, there is little incentive to keep playing. Should you lose the players, the game ceases to exist. Let me rephrase that for emphasis: players are the game’s true core. Remove them, and the experience cannot be had. Thus by changing the rules players are given permission to rework the experience. This change is powerful and shows the players how crucial they are to the game, albeit it is a subtle mechanism. The self-designed experience gives players ownership. It is the ultimate form of mastery of the skills developed by the game. Once one has gone beyond the point of diminished returns, another challenge is needed to keep a player’s attention.
The gaps in the rules are there for a reason. This is not to excuse poor game design, but rather to highlight the impossibility to make a rule for every situation. House rules are necessary because of this. They develop the unique play experiences of the players and fix or enliven the challenge. By taking an active role in interpreting and applying the game’s mechanics to any given situation, players become the focal point of play. Breathing new life into a conquered test exhibits mastery, which means house rules are important. Bridging the gap exhibits another form of skill that may not be part of the game per se, but does show how well a person knows the game. House rules therefore show who really has power over the social contract governing the play space: us.
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Anatomy of Game Design: Kitchen Table Theater
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Anatomy of Game Design: Blurring the Lines