LOW OPINION: System Matters

Rehashing an age old argument for the 5e babbies.

People will accuse me of using this as a way of getting a titanic pair of hooters in the title image. They are completely correct.

The System Matters Debate

There is this ancient fucking debate in the tabletop community which is essentially:

Does the tabletop system you are playing matter?

Posting this on any forum would ignite a huge and unrelenting flame war.

Nonetheless for a long time, it was agreed that system matters. You should try to align your choice of system with the type of game you’re playing.

Then came the rise of the YouTube star.

These people have set themselves up as pundits and deliverers of received wisdom, which they have obviously received through the magic of online television.

And, because they don’t want to move away from Dungeons & Dragons for fear of losing their audience, they have started this piece of shit debate again.

Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension20) gives us this particularly tortured metaphor:

[Calling D&D a combat-oriented game] would sort of be like looking at a stove and being like, This has nothing to do with food. You can’t eat metal. Clearly this contraption is for moving gas around and having a clock on it. If it was about food, there would be some food here. [...] What you should get is a machine that is either made of food, or has food in it.

This metaphor seems to completely misunderstand what the fuck a stove is. In reality, using 5e for non-combat gameplay is more like reading the instructions for a stove and deciding you’ll store your pots and pans in it. You can do that, but you’d be better off with a cupboard.

Anyway, let’s get into the actual debate.

The Sides

The functional two sides of the debate are:

• “System Matters” (SM): Systems are important for a group for a variety of reasons.

• “System Doesn’t Matter” (SDM): Systems do not matter, the gamemaster does.

There are softer, and less used, positions but those can be argued apart by both of these. You are welcome to add your refined and elegant intermediary argument in the comments.

A Different Tortured Metaphor

I can probably outdo, as much as you can in roleplaying, an entire crowd of gamemasters regardless of what system I use. For sure, there’s a large amount of gamemasters that blow me away regardless of what system they use.

In reality, you have to think of it like running.

Take two situations:

• Scenario A: Barefoot, in knickers, and half-starved.

• Scenario B: Fancy runners, ultra-science clothing, and a good hearty meal.

In B) I am going to be faster, more comfortable and capable of going for longer than in A). The things that most people consider crucial to running are just overall better in B).

Am I going to outrun Usain Bolt in either scenario? Certainly fucking not.

That’s not really the point though. The equipment standardises and enhances the performance within the potential range, it doesn’t power you up.

This is basically what systems usually do.

Me destroying the player’s precious toys because they didn’t bring me chicken tendies from maccas.

What is a “System”?

There’s a pretty reasonable definition on the old Wikipedia:

A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is expressed in its functioning.

…

Systems have several common properties and characteristics, including structure, function(s), behavior and interconnectivity.

Using the above definition, tabletop gamers have two different definitions on system, which are basically:

• System As Written (SAW): The system is only what is in the rulebook. Anything outside that is not part of the system.

• Gamemaster Altered System (GAS): The system is what is in the rulebook and anything that the gamemaster changes or adds onto it.

People usually think that “system matters” refers only to SAW, when people arguing it are referring to GAS. I genuinely don’t think it makes that much of a difference, but just keep it in mind.

System Fucking Matters

There’s more written on this shit than you could possibly read, endless arguments back and forth on whether it matters. In the interest of keeping this short enough, here’s three solid arguments why system matters:

1. Consensus: Systems matter because we have agreed to come together to play a specific one.

2. Knowledge: Systems matter because they arm the group with knowledge.

3. Design: Systems matter because different designs support different types of play.

If you accept any of these positions, then you agree that system matters.

Consensus

A weak argument to start with, but not a wrong one.

Tabletop groups usually agree to come together to play a certain system, especially in the modern era. They’ve agreed this system is good and is an acceptable arbiter for disagreements between the executive auteur (the gamemaster) and the other shmucks (the players).

You need to pick a system that everyone can be happy when playing.

If you don’t, then someone is going to be miserable all the time. A lot of gamemasters don’t understand this and agree to a system that makes them miserable. Usually this is the most current edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which is designed in such a way to maximise gamemaster misery to sell more splatbooks.

This isn’t to say that gamemasters can make alterations if they need to, or that there are groups where it’s purely driven by one person. You’re welcome to make these arguments if you want to, they don’t really invalidate the point.

Knowledge

For 2), imagine a situation where we’re playing an air combat game set in World War 2. As the gamemaster, I don’t have any idea about the characteristics of any airplane set in the period. How fast do they go? How accurate are they? How crucial is pilot skill to actually utilising that?

Not a fucking clue.

This is where a game designer comes in, builds a system that manages all this and wraps it up in a pretty box. Now I see that Messerschmitt Bf 109s are the kings of the skies in skilled hands, and Mitsubishi A6M Zeros have the best turning circles for dogfighting.

In reality, I could fake all this shit. I could pretend knowledge of it. That’s dangerous because it rapidly introduces instability and inconsistency. If you’re running a one-shot or a handful of sessions, then whatever. If the game runs for longer, then you start to get into shit.

For the players, the knowledge provided by the system allows players to arm themselves with an understanding of the art of the possible within the game world.

This is crucial because it lets players make intelligent decisions utilising the game system, instead of just acting randomly and hoping that you - as gamemaster - arbitrarily decide they convinced you to let it work.

Design

System is important because different types of system designs support completely different kinds of gameplay.

Now if you’ve only played a handful of systems, this is something that’ll go completely over your head. If you’ve only ever been a player and never a gamemaster, the same is likely true.

I think the perfect example is RuneQuest, and similar Basic RolePlaying (BRP) games. Most of these games have historical European martial arts (HEMA) based combat systems, where the attack and damage systems are designed off fighting in real life.

These systems are called limb blenders for a good bloody reason.

It tends to be the case that, within a few rounds of combat, someone is doing his best Black Knight impression and nearly everyone else is bleeding out or dead. If you’re lucky (aka armoured to hell and back) then you are probably the last one standing.

If you aren’t interested in that sort of violent, fast and realistic combat, you probably should avoid that line of games. Instead, what happens is that groups pick up these games and then the gamemaster frantically tries to “fix” the system to align with what he wanted the system to be like.

Everyone would have a better time if the group picked a system that actually supported the type of gameplay that they wanted.

System Can’t Do Everything

There’s a more nuanced argument that is, essentially:

“Good gamemasters are more important than good systems.”

This might be true.

For sure, systems can’t make you a better gamemaster. They can’t make you better at improvisation, responding to player input or running engaging combats. There’s a huge amount of things that system can’t do.

It’s right enough that a poor workman blames his tools.

But that’s because a good workman chooses the right tools.

System can help you fake some of those things, or put together an engaging enough game for long enough to learn them and use them in your future games.

“Yes, I have done it. It is the best 4e shitbrew ever made by man. I will call it… Shadow of the Weird Wizard.”

The Final Argument

As the more astute of you might have realised, “System Matters” wins mostly because it is a non-absolute position. “System Doesn’t Matter” loses because the slightest crack in the facade makes the rest of it crumble.

And, for most people, this is a facade. It’s an excuse to not have to learn new systems, a comfort blanket to avoid leaving behind the familiar.

I can count on the fingers of one of my hands the amount of people that’ve said to me, “System doesn’t matter, so we don’t play with any system whatsoever.”

If system doesn’t matter, why are you playing with the one you are playing? Why not go freeform? Why have any system at all? Is the system just a way to beat people over the head when they do something you don’t want?

I don’t expect this debate to ever actually go away. I do hope that this post will provide a bit of an easier reference for arguments though, and arm people with some points to try to spike the stupid defences of new D&D.