Sharp-eyed watchers of the meta-discussions that surround tabletop gaming will notice that most criticism of the BROSR (superior) way to play are about tone, credit, and authority. They aren’t really about the games, because critics are either engaging in a rhetorical sleight of hand or they haven’t thought about what games are. It’s hard to understand the BROSR position on games when you can’t admit or don’t know what a game is, and what it means to say you are playing one. So let’s fix that.
To paraphrase Bernard Suits (and credit to Jim Owczarski of the Armchair Dragoons, who introduced me to the concept), in its broadest sense a game is a shared activity where players voluntarily accept artificial constraints in order to pursue goals under uncertainty, producing meaningful outcomes. This definition applies cleanly to everything from chess to sports to card games to miniature wargames and to tabletop RPGs but now I’m repeating myself. Most importantly, this definition gives us a way to tell when two similar-looking activities are actually different games.
The load-bearing word here is constraints.
Games are defined by rules that limit what players may do and define the manner by which outcomes are determined. These limits are not optional flavor. They are constitutive. They create the activity as that game rather than some other activity. Remove or override them, and you don’t get a looser version of the same game – you get a different one, and maybe even a whole new activity.
This brings us to the key question at the heart of tabletop discourse: if you change the rules, are you still playing the same game?
Let’s be generous here and admit that the answer is both no and yes.
No in that some rules are incidental. They affect pacing or emphasis without changing the core challenge. Time controls in chess, minor house rules in poker, the frequency of wandering monster checks, all of them leave the underlying test of skill intact. These are clearly variants of the same game.
Other rules are identity-defining. Chess without checkmate, indoor soccer played 7v7 in a hockey-arena sized space, or poker without hidden information are no longer variants. They look something like the original activity, but they test different skills and produce different kinds of outcomes. At that point, the game’s identity has changed.
So how can you tell which rules are constitutive and which ones are incidental? Ask, does the rule change alter what skill the activity primarily rewards? If yes, you are no longer playing the same game.
Tabletop RPGs complicate this because they lack a single, explicit victory condition. Instead, their identity rests on things like how uncertainty is resolved, whether outcomes are binding, who has authority over disputes, and how risk is structured. That’s why debates over “playstyle” persist. People aren’t just expressing preferences; they’re disagreeing about what game is being played.
Consider two groups using the same rulebook.
One group respects the rules by treating them as binding. Dice are rolled in accordance with the rules when outcomes are uncertain, results are honored, character death and failure are real possibilities, and the referee applies the rules impartially. Players must navigate risk using planning, caution, and creativity within the constraints defined by the text. The process is the (earned) reward.
The other group treats the rules as provisional. Rolls may be ignored for narrative reasons, death requires player consent, and consequences are softened or reshaped to preserve story goals. Risk exists, but only insofar as the group agrees it should. The result is the (unearned) reward.
Both groups may enjoy themselves. Both may create memorable experiences. But they ain’t playing the same game.
They are operating under different constraint-spaces and different risk structures, which means they are pursuing different goals and exercising different skills. One is about decision-making under uncertainty with binding consequences. The other is about collaborative authorship and narrative control. These are different games, perhaps even different activities altogether, even if they share dice, terminology, and character sheets.
And thus does a crucial asymmetry appear.
When someone changes identity-defining rules, they incur an obligation: they must provide an adjective. If you aren’t playing classical chess or roulette, you should inform the reader of the variant you’re playing. To whit, “We are playing speed chess.” or “We are playing Russian roulette.”
No judgement here. This obligation isn’t about purity or hierarchy or authenticity. It’s about communication. A hobby only functions when it has a shared language. When someone says “chess” or “D&D,” listeners reasonably assume a common set of constraints and risks. That shared understanding is what makes advice, criticism, and discussion possible. If you’re not making that distinction, then you’re confusing the issue.
If you are not playing the game as presented in the rulebook – if you have altered its risk structure, authority model, or outcome-binding rules – then intellectual honesty requires you to say so. You are playing narrative D&D, or cinematic D&D, or story-forward D&D. The adjective matters because it signals which constraints no longer apply. It signals to the reader the game that you’re playing, and whether your argument applies to the game the reader is playing.
Failing to do this leads directly to miscommunication. Advice doesn’t translate. Criticism feels unfair. Arguments erupt not because people disagree, but because they are unknowingly talking about different games while using the same noun. Consider the case of a game with multiple editions. Expecting the Oldhammer guys to be clear about what game they are playing isn’t a matter of judgement, it’s merely asking for clarity. D&D editions are same-same, and no one has a problem with the importance of clarity in labels to distinguish between these games.
By contrast, those who play the game as codified in the rulebook are under no such obligation. And everyone loses their mind over it.
Those who play RAW are simply playing Boot Hill. Or Traveller. Or Call of Cthulhu. The noun already applies. Asking rules-adherent players to add qualifiers like “hardcore,” “old-school,” or “purist” quietly reverses the burden of explanation and muddies the shared language of the hobby. And yet, in their infinite patience and generosity, the BROSR does social media the kindness of using an adjective both accurate and descriptive: Real D&D.
And the flak we get for it. Hoo boy!
Rules are not suggestions or vibes. They define the game. To accept them is to accept their outcomes, including loss and failure. If you reserve the right to override those outcomes, you have left that game’s constraint-space and entered another.
That isn’t a moral judgment. It’s a categorical one.
Clear language isn’t pedantry. It’s the price of honest discussion—and of knowing what game we’re really discussing.